History of Gaudiya Vaishnavism I – Pre-Chaitanya Vaishnavism

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When we have to study the Gaudiya Vaishnav tradition there are we can study it in different ways one way we study it in our standard devotional classes is by hearing about the lives and activities of our Acharyas we hear about how they preached and how they lived and that gives us some historical understanding so one way of studying the our tradition is to study its history the different personalities and how they preached.
The second way we can study it is to study the philosophy and when we study the philosophy we can also study how the philosophy has been presented and represented by our Acharyas in different times and thirdly how we can study is we can look at the different books that have been published by our Acharyas and try to study those books to see what is being presented there now in one sense all three are not unconnected but they are not the same the philosophy is not the same as the books because the books may contain something which is more contextual or the books may contain something which is required to address the specific issues at that time and the book may also contain things other than our philosophy which builds up to our philosophy for example the Bhagavad Gita, the Srimad Bhagavatam they are not explicitly or entirely Gaudiya Vaishnava books they talk about Vishnu Bhakti, they are surely Vaishnava books but they are not talking specifically about the kind of Vaishnavism that Chaitanya Mahaprabhu has taught us so if you want to say Gaudiya Vaishnava books Chaitanya Charita Amrit, Bhakti Rasa Amrit Sindhu the Shakshandarbha, these are Gaudiya Vaishnava books so if we study the scriptures then only if we are studying the Gaudiya Vaishnava scriptures then we will be studying our tradition if we are studying Bhagavad Gita or Bhagavatam then yes we will also be studying the understanding of how our tradition is connected with the larger Vedic tradition so from the scriptural point of view the Gaudiya Vaishnavism is a part of Vaishnavism and Vaishnavism is a part of the Vedic tradition so Srila Prabhupada focused on these three main books Bhagavad Gita, Srimad Bhagavatam and Chaitanya Charita Amrit so the Bhagavad Gita is a Vedic book that is a broad category so practically all kinds of followers of the Vedic culture they accept the Bhagavad Gita as authority so Bhagavad Gita is a Vedic book so that you can visualise that as a large circle within that there is a smaller circle of Vaishnavism now smaller does not necessarily mean that it is less significant this is like a mountain peak or as a pyramid as we move upwards what is at the apex is naturally smaller in diameter but that does not mean it is lesser in significance in fact it is higher in altitude, it is greater in significance so within the book Srila Prabhupada introduces us to the broad Vedic culture by commenting on the Bhagavad Gita then specifically within that broad circle we have the circle of Vaishnavism and the Srimad Bhagavatam is a Vaishnav book so it is very clearly focussing on Vishnu Bhakti and then within this circle of Srimad Bhagavatam the Srimad Bhagavatam is accepted as authority by all Vaishnava Sampradayas, within that we have Chaitanya Charita Amrit which is a Gaudiya Vaishnav book so it is like a pyramid with three levels Bhagavad Gita is the ground level the Srimad Bhagavatam which is a Vaishnav book is a first level or if you call the ground level as the first level, this is the second level and Chaitanya Charita Amrit is the third level so the point I am making here is that we could study our tradition either as from the historical point of view, from the philosophical point of view or from the literature point of view the scriptural point of view so my plan was when we go into the scriptural or the philosophical things will become quite intricate and we will have to study them sometime or the other but we can start with the historical perspective so I had planned this in four classes first we will discuss pre Chaitanya Vaishnavism then we will, that’s what we will try to discuss today, then we will discuss Gaudiya Vaishnavism from Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s time till the Bengali Renaissance time, that means till the time of Bhakta Vinod Thakur and then in the third class we will discuss the times of Bhakta Vinod Thakur and Bhakta Siddhanta Thakur and then fourth we will discuss Vishwa Prabhupada’s time and ISKCON how we have been in ISKCON continuing this tradition so any questions, clarifications till now or am I clear what the plan is ok, yeah so ok, yes so we are discussing about Gaudiya Vaishnavism from the points of three perspectives, one is history, philosophy and literature where its terms in literature are books written by Avaracharyas and philosophy includes not only our literature but also Mahabharata Bhagavad Gita Bhagavad Gita and you explained the thing of pyramid how Bhagavad Gita is Vedic book Mahabharata is Vaishnava book then CC comes as Gaudiya book yeah you will tell this class in four levels one is before Chaitanya Mahaprabhu what is the status of Gaudiya Vaishnava then till Bhakta Vinod Thakur comes after that Bhakta Vinod Thakur and then Siddhanta Saraswati then Srila Prabhupada Vishnu yeah good, very good understanding just one clarification in the philosophy it doesn’t necessarily include other philosophies what I was saying is that if we want to study the philosophy now we may not find one book which contains our full philosophy if we want to study Gaudiya Vaishnavism we can’t read even Prabhupada CC and get the full Gaudiya Vaishnavism over there so probably the best book for us to study Gaudiya philosophy will be the Sandarbhas but even the Sandarbhas are often because the Sandarbhas were presented at around 500 years ago so they primarily presented dialogue with the Indian tradition whereas now we also have modern influences, western influences so as of now we don’t have any one book which will encompass all of the Gaudiya philosophy so we have to assimilate and integrate it from different places and we will do that eventually so what is the major difference between philosophy and literature is philosophy part of literature or something else also good question is philosophy a part of literature philosophy is a the word philosophy means feeling is to love so force is truth so love of truth is called philosophy in the Vedic context it is called darshan so a philosophy is a well rounded body of thought which presents itself in a systematic and logical way so when we talk about Srimad Bhagavatam there are philosophical sections within the Srimad Bhagavatam but the say like Baldev Vidya Bhushan says that Bhagavad Gita talks about the five subjects Jiva, Ishvara, Kaal, Karma, Prakriti so now even when we study the Bhagavad Gita it is not as if the Bhagavad Gita is divided into these five sections one chapter on Jiva, one chapter on Ishvara, one chapter on Prakriti, it’s not like that all of them are presented in a synthetic integral way see the traditional way of studying we may go a little off track, we may not be able to study the history so much today but you have raised an important question there are two ways to study a subject one is analytic and the other is synthetic so analytic means we divide things into their parts so like I was saying studying the Bhagavad Gita analysis means to divide, synthesise means to unite so the analytic way is the western way of studying, you divide it into parts of course our Acharyas have also done it but the west has prominently done it divide this is talking about Jiva, this is talking about Prakriti this is talking about Ishvara, so like we can divide the Bhagavad Gita into three parts, first part is about Karma Yoga, second is about Bhakti, third is about Gyan so this sort of analytical way, because we have come from the analytical mode of studying in our education we find it natural but actually that is not the natural way of studying, if we see the natural way of learning, how does a baby, as the baby grows up learn a language the baby doesn’t learn, ok this is adjective this is a noun, this is a pronoun, this is adverb, the baby just hears the parents and the siblings speaking and starts speaking and gradually after it starts speaking maybe when the child grows and starts going to school, then he understands, ok what I spoke it contained a subject, it contained a predicate it contained a pronoun, a noun and then what it had already learnt seems much more difficult than what it was when it was being learnt so the point I am making here is that laughing so you just learn to speak by seeing how others are speaking and it’s like addressing a class laughing brilliant example laughing laughing laughing laughing exactly, very precise example laughing so laughing so the synthetic way means we live a particular concept or a we live the language by speaking the language and by living we learn it so the traditional way of learning philosophy is by living the philosophy so when we live the philosophy, naturally we understand ok this is God, he is to be worshipped I am a servant and we start practising it so we see many devotees may have a very deep level of faith although they don’t seem to have a very it may seem to us that they don’t have a very good intellectual understanding, they may not be able to analyse or they may not be able to present but that is because we are evaluating only from one perspective the analytical way is useful, it is even important and to some extent for intellectual presentations it is indispensable but it is not the exclusive way to learn a philosophy or a culture the natural way is the synthetic way by living it so if we see when Krishna and Arjuna are speaking or Shukadeva Goswami, Parikshit Maharaj Asutha Goswami and Namisharan Sajeda are speaking, they are not doing an analytical presentation in the sense of, now we will talk about this particular conceptual subject then this particular conceptual subject so whatever the questions come up the questions are answered over there and a holistic understanding comes up so now if we want to study the philosophy of the Shravanth Bhagavatam then we will have to see which are the philosophical sections within the Shravanth Bhagavatam say we have 1.2 and then we have especially the Kapila section 3.26 onwards and the main probably the biggest philosophical section in the Shravanth Bhagavatam is the Utthogita so 23 chapters almost, more than that in fact but the point is that if I have to study the philosophy of Shravanth Bhagavatam I can read the full Shravanth Bhagavatam but the book Shravanth Bhagavatam has more than just the philosophy it has a narrative it has discussions between characters it has description of events and within that within the discussion between people there is the philosophy also integrated so when we talk about say the philosophy of Shravanth Bhagavatam then one of the Shri Bhakta Sanath Tagore scholarly disciple Nishikant Sanyal he wrote that famous book Shri Krishna Chaitanya which was used by Bhakta Sanath Tagore for preaching to the west of course he and Parashila Bhakta Sanath Tagore both of them almost like co-authored the book and Bhakta Sanath Tagore wrote a foreword to that book so Nishikant Sanyal he has written a book called the Philosophy of Shravanth Bhagavatam so what is that book about? He has taken the various sections from Shravanth Bhagavatam where philosophy is there and then he compares contrasts and integrates all these sections so that way we get the philosophy of Shravanth Bhagavatam so similarly if you want to understand the philosophy of Gaudiya Vaishnavism so now if you look at Bhakta Sanath Sandhu that also talks about the philosophy but that is primarily focussing on the practise of bhakti so philosophy generally involves various issues so those issues those subjects have to be addressed and if it’s a general literature like Bhagavad Gita Shravanth Bhagavatam or even Chaitanya Chaitanya Amrit then that may be addressed during the course of the flow of the book but they are not addressed in a analytical and systematic way so that’s why there are sometimes separate books on the philosophy itself so now Madhvacharya wrote many books but one of the most prominent scholars in the Madhva Santradaya was B.N.K. Sharma he wrote a full book which is the standard for Madhva Santradaya it’s called the philosophy of Madhvacharya similarly another of Bhakta Sanath Sandhu’s disciples O.B.L. Kapoor he wrote a book called the philosophy and religion of Shri Chaitanya so philosophy in general involves some questions now modern western philosophy in a broad sense involves four divisions there is epistemology, ontology ethics and aesthetics so epistemology and ontology means epistemology means how can we know anything so for example in our normal study so that is a part of epistemology epistemology means knowledge about how to acquire knowledge knowledge about how to acquire knowledge so that is epistemology and then there is ontology, ontology means what is the nature of existence what all exists so now considering our philosophy epistemology would be that we consider shabda to be the highest pramana and then among shabda we consider Srimad Bhagavatam to be the sarvasa sarva pramana chakravarti bhuta Jiva Goswami says that the emperor among all pramanas so in philosophy the first is epistemology epistemology means what are your sources of knowledge then there is ontology so now epistemology and ontology in a general sense correlate with sambandha ok how can I know and what is it that I know so ontology means what exists so according to our ontology we have jiva, ishwara prakriti these are the three primary tattvatraya three constituents of existence and in their and in their interaction we have kaala which brings about the interaction and what we do that comprises karma so ontology refers to what exists so how do I know what exists and what actually exists these two are the components of sambandha then ethics roughly correlates with abhideya abhideya means what should I do so ethics also tells us ok this is what is desirable for us to do this is undesirable to do and aesthetics roughly correlates with prayojanam now prayojan is the goal now in our sampradaya the ultimate goal is not just mukti it is rasa aswad so it is to experience rasa and aesthetics is about experiencing that aesthetic pleasure so of course aesthetics is generally not so much emphasised nowadays in modern philosophy although it is a branch of study also so in a general sense philosophy now from the vedic perspective if I have to explain what was philosophy we will have to introduce a lot of new terms we will do that later but I am just giving you an introduction of what philosophy means so now if I want to answer questions about epistemology, ontology ethics and aesthetics now in our literature the answers are there but they are scattered in different places that is not scattered they are distributed in different places and we will have to integrate them to understand our philosophy so to some extent the shat sandarbha does that and that is why it is a philosophical treatise and if you see the gaudiya bhashya of Baldevidya Bhushan is also a philosophical book but it need not necessarily address our philosophy in a systematic way because there the focus is not explaining our philosophy the focus is showing how our philosophy is consistent with vedanta sutra so now here I will explain this from two perspectives so the modern academic or critical perspective is that actually every teacher within the vedic tradition comes up with his own philosophy and then tries to prove how his philosophy is consistent with or it draws from the scriptures that means from their perspective Ramacharya came up with his own philosophy, Shankaracharya came up with his own philosophy Madhacharya came up with his own philosophy and after they came up with their own philosophies now nobody would consider their philosophy respectable just because they spoke it so they had to get the respectability for their philosophy by showing how it is based on the literature that are respectable so the same way they will say that the Gaudiya philosophy also is Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and his followers came up with their own philosophy and then they tried to show how their philosophy draws from the scriptures that were respected over there now this is not necessarily true for the Vaishnavacharyas it is true to some extent for Shankaracharya Shankaracharya had a specific agenda at that time of refuting Buddhism and that’s why he took the concepts of higher level reality and lower reality which were very popular which were popularised by a Buddhist teacher named Nagarjuna and then he interpreted the Vedic literature in that way but if you see the Vaishnavacharyas our understanding is that what is there in the scriptures that is explained and illuminated by them it is not that they are so it is not that Jiva Goswami came up with his own philosophy rather what was there in the Vedic literature but what was not highlighted what was not emphasised they emphasised it but while they emphasised a particular part it is natural also that they downplayed some other part so when say Vishwanath Chakrathakur comments on the Srimad Bhagavatam at that time the Srimad Bhagavatam will contain various sections and not all of them are of, all of them are important but not all of them are of equal importance so every section of the Srimad Bhagavatam is purifying at the same time we also have the concept of Chatushloki Bhagavatam that means if we want to understand the concentrated essence then these four verses are there so like that within the broad library of Vedic literature some are important, some are more important, some are most important so the most important parts will be emphasised by Racharyas and the less important parts will be downplayed they will be contextualised and they will show that this is not the highest reality this is not the most important reality so in a sense the Vedic literature are like, the word Sandarbha itself means to weave, you may be knowing this from this Radhikarmanpur’s book so it’s like the Vedic literature are like a cloth and the cloth contains many threads, so you, we take the threads from that cloth and the threads are taken from that same cloth but using those threads a beautiful design is embroidered on that cloth so now what is embroidered is not something which is made of any material different from the original cloth so the same cloth is there but now the embroidery helps us to appreciate the beauty of that cloth so the same in that sense the Gaudiya Vaishna philosophy now of course this cloth example may convey the idea that the design was originally not there, the design is something which is imposed afterwards so all examples are ultimately inadequate so the example that that Gita Mahatma gave is Sarva Upanishado Gao Dogdha Gopalanandana so the Upanishads are like cow and the Gita is like the milk so same way what is originally there in the Vedic literature but what was not easily known to people that was highlighted and emphasised and brought to the attention of people by the Gaudiya Vaishna Vacharyas so Krishna says by all the Vedas I am to be known but but till actually our Gaudiya Vaishna Vacharyas wrote their books how it is that Krishna is to be known by all the Vedas this is very difficult to understand because the Vedas talk about so many different things, they talk about demigod worship, the Upanishads talk about worshipping the impersonal Brahman so how is it that all the Vedas talk about Krishna so if we study the Satsang Darbhas and then in that Yugoswami reveals systematically how the Vedic thought is building up towards a particular conclusion and then he shows actually indeed Krishna is the goal of all the Vedas so to summarise the point which I am making is the books have a wide variety of teachings and stories all together in a sometimes an order that may seem sometimes arbitrary to us but for the philosophy to be understood it has to be presented in a systematic analytical categorised way but that philosophical teaching is not something which is imposed on the scripture as the mundane scholars may say, it is something which is there but not not recognised or not understood previously and the Acharyas bring it to highlight for us is it clear what I explained? Gaurampu please feel free to comment at any time if you feel okay no problem fine so so now coming to any other questions on this? Is analytical approach essential for our own practise and purification we don’t need the analytical approach to some extent, to large extent but for our outreach if you want to reach out to people especially intelligent people and show them how our philosophy answers questions and addresses issues in a systematic way then we do need an analytical approach now I will give a simple example now in western philosophy there is a serious problem of the problem of evil now if god is good why does evil exist in this world? and the christians face this philosophical problem and because they don’t accept reincarnation they find it very difficult to answer this question now the vedic philosophy does have an answer because it incorporates the concepts of karma and reincarnation but if we want to address this issue of the problem of evil just a synthetic study where can we say that the problem of evil is addressed in our vedic literature directly in one sense in the 16-17 chapters of the first canto of shimit bhagavatam the 16th chapter is the talks between dharma and bhoomi so that prabhupada tells in that chapter as how pariksha received the age of kali so there there is a discussion ok why are you suffering and you see there dharma when he asks this question he says it is very difficult to answer the question some people say that it is because of prakriti some people say it is because of this because of that so there dharma wants to set the example of that how we should not blame others for our sufferings and that’s why he does not give a clear answer now the problem of evil does have an answer but we won’t find it explicitly addressed in our scriptures so if we have to give this answer to some people who ask this question then we need to some extent study in an analytical way so especially for our outreach analytical study is important is that clear any further questions yes is philosophy can be learned in the same way again is it necessary that that philosophy has to be learned in an analytic way can it actually be learned just like a child learns a language it depends on again what is our objective for studying the philosophy now in one sense everyday when we hear shrimad bhagavatam class or everyday when we hear brahmachari class we are actually learning the philosophy and we are learning it to some extent in a synthetic way we may not necessarily be going by category wise this subject today this subject today of course every devotee will have some subject but all of them may not be necessarily integrated so we learn a good amount of philosophy that way and for most purposes even of preaching that understanding will be sufficient so if we are going to go to colleges and we are going to give classes over there to the students then probably most of the questions which they are going to ask are answered in some way or the other during the classes that we hear and we will be able to present them so here we are talking about see in general our our college outreach has not been to humanity students it has been only to engineering medical and to some extent some other students so now to some extent this makes our preaching a little more difficult because these people have scientific understanding and so then we have to answer the scientific questions and when we answer the scientific questions they get convinced so to some extent we have to study science but then philosophy itself is a different branch of study and if we want to address, if we go to humanities and if there are students in philosophy and if we have to answer their questions then they will know a lot about philosophy just like they will know a lot of philosophy and to answer that we will need to know philosophy so the point is that if somebody is not preaching to science students he doesn’t need to know science he doesn’t need to know even how scientifically our philosophy is to be presented so similarly if somebody is not reaching out to philosophical to a philosophical audience primarily so then one doesn’t need to necessarily study in an analytical way but if one is being trained to become an intellectual who studies the philosophy so that is how can we present it to intellectuals now we often use the word intellectual in a very broad sense, anybody who has a good memory, anybody who has a good language anybody who is a master in a particular subject we say intellectual, that is fine but in a more specific sense somebody who is a philosophical intellectual person who has some reading in philosophy then there are philosophical issues to be addressed so those issues to address that we need to study in a analytical way, is that clear? any other questions? so let’s start with our pre-Shaitanya Vaishnavism and we will see how much can be completed today in that how much time do all of you have? ok then we will try to have this class for about an hour so its 36 minutes now maybe we will go on for about 20-25 minutes 20 minutes more and we can have 5 minute question answer so historically speaking Indians are infamous for being ahistorical ahistorical means that at least from the point of view of the traditions of historicity as are established in the west by the Greek thinkers the it’s said that Indians don’t keep history systematically so Al Baruni was a Islamic thinker who came to India and he wrote a book on India and that is considered to be one of the primary books for knowing about the history of India now there is a reason why Indians did not bother much about recording the history of course its not that it is not recorded if we go to the Jagannath Puri temple then even now there are the records of the kings who are considered to be like the Naradev, the representative of god on the earth so which king was when there is a systematic record over there and there are several other temples also where the records have been kept like that but in general the modern sense of history that ok on this date this thing happened so it said history is same old things happening to new people the same old things happening to new people ultimately what happens in life somebody wins, somebody loses somebody gains, somebody has some difficulty somebody dies, there is a battle somewhere so ultimately whether we look at the narrative of events even historically or from the contemporaneous point of view its the same things happening ok the world cup was won, ok in this year this country won the world cup, in that year that country won the world cup but ultimately its the same things happening to different people that is all so from the Vedic point of view because the Vedic culture was so focused on the other world so focused on returning to the spiritual world as the ultimate goal of life that the events of this world were not given undue importance and because of that the recording of this worldly events was not emphasised and that’s why we may not find a systematic exhaustive account of history within the Indian tradition and to some extent this works to the historical disadvantage of Vaishnavism and Gaudiya Vaishnavism because from the modern historical point of view they consider Vaishnavism to be a recent recent in the sense that it started according to them maybe 1500 years ago 2000 years ago, 2500 years ago at the most 2500 years that’s all that they say so they say that if we look back at the archaeological remains 5000 years ago 6000 years ago then we don’t see any archaeological remains of the worship of Vishnu so of course this whole method of studying history is highly prejudiced by the concept of the Aryan invasion and so many people have voiced scepticism about it and not just Hindus or Indians but even western intellectuals have to some extent accepted this point that the Aryan invasion theory is questionable and if it is found to be wrong then the whole history of India needs to be revised so Srila Prabhupada explains to us that actually what to speak of India the whole world in the past was Krishna conscious so on my website there are 3-4 places where I have answered this question in case if any of you have this question you know was there a wheel, was wheel invented in Satyuga or if any culture was there all over the world why don’t we see so many remains of it in the archaeology so if this is your interest you can hear those answers on site I will send you the links later but focussing here is that if you look at the historical perspective by historical perspective as it is recorded by the modern historians Vaishnavism seems to start sometime before or after the 80s in fact there are some similarities between the story of Jesus and the story of Krishna so Krishna was born in a cow shed and Jesus was also born in a barn when Krishna was born there were a lot of miraculous events that happened around him when Jesus was born also there were some people who came and some stars formed in a particular way some miracles happened and it is said that Krishna was born from Devaki but there was no insemination so it was not like a normal biological birth it was a mystical birth and according to the Catholics the Protestants and the Orthodox Christians don’t accept the idea that Mary was a virgin but these are three divisions of Christianity, the Orthodox Christians the Roman Catholics and the Protestants so but the Catholic Christians say that Mary was a virgin so there are some similarities like this between the story of Jesus and the story of Krishna and because of this when the western scholars started studying the Indian tradition their whole attempt was to downgrade post-date and downsize the Vedic civilisation so downgrade means actually these people were not very advanced they were of low grade, downsize means that these kingdoms it’s not that they were ruling all over the world they were just in small patches of some parts of this country called India and post-date because if it’s very ancient then oh that means this civilisation has been existing for so long, there might be some substance in this civilisation it’s all very recent, post-date so downgrade, downsize and post-date so some of the Christian scholars tried to prove that actually the whole story of Krishna is a mythology and it is not only a mythology it is not even an original mythology it is a borrowed mythology it is borrowed from the story of Jesus so subsequently of course there are scholars who have refuted that based on based on archaeological remains one of the Alexander came around 3rd, 4th century BC to India and after he came he left some Greek generals over here as an ambassador so one of them was Megasthenes and you know one of the Greek generals was in India he built a big column called the Herodotus column and in that Herodotus column he actually inscribed that this is dedicated to the Hindu god Krishna so now this column is known to be clearly in the BC, so by that at least if somebody asked this question it’s very clear that Krishna worship was there long before the Jesus worship now some Hindu scholars they try to go to the other extreme and they say that Jesus story is borrowed from the Krishna story no, we don’t have to go into all these sort of things yeah, actually they are two different stories they are at a spiritual level we accept that both of them are Krishna is God and Jesus is the empowered representative of God so there will be similarities in themes at a spiritual level but that doesn’t mean that the stories are necessarily one has to be borrowed from the other so there is reasonable evidence that Krishna worship was there even in the BCs now later on when we discuss the literature we will discuss how in the Rig Veda or in the Upanishads are there any references to Krishna? there are a few references but more importantly from our perspective so what the modern scholars think is that the Rig Veda is the oldest book so they consider the Vedas came first and then later on the Upanishads came so the Upanishads are a sort of response to the Vedas and then later on the Puranas came and when the Puranas came they say that Puranas are actually they have later on become what they call today as popular Hinduism so they consider each of these to be like a different genre of literature with its own different conceptions of reality and modes of worship but rather what we understand is they are all part of one revelation but with different emphasis so the Vedic literature has the path of Karma, the path of Jnana and the path of Bhakti so the Rig Veda and the other Vedas primarily emphasise the path of Karma the Upanishads emphasise the path of Jnana and the Puranas especially the Satvik Puranas and the Vaishnav Puranas they emphasise the path of Bhakti to Vishnu so we understand that they are all a part of one revelation but that one revelation is progressive not progressive in a chronological sense that one came after another but progressive in the sense of the revelation of higher and higher concepts so from their point of view from the academic scholars point of view they say ok in the Rig Veda there doesn’t seem to be many references to the worship of Krishna so therefore Krishna worship was not there at that time and then they tried to use their own system, ok Puranas talk about Krishna worship ok what is the rate of the Puranas then they say ok Krishna worship must have started sometime before this Purana was written, that is their idea but in spite of this idea there are surely evidences from the archaeological point of view as well as the literature point of view that Krishna worship is clearly pre-Christian now if you look at the Indian history Krishna worship after Kali Yuga started, if you look at the Mahabharata the events of the Mahabharata took place at the time of just before the start of Kali Yuga so even in the Mahabharata we will see different Devatas are being worshipped so Drupada when he wants to take revenge against Drona he goes and worships Shiva and from that worship of Shiva he gets Draupadi as a daughter and Vrishadyumna as a son similarly Yudhishthir when he wants to have food for all the Brahmins who are following him in the jungles when he is in Manvas and Dhaumya is his sage guide sort of spiritual preceptor and Dhaumya tells him to worship Surya, so demigod worship was there even for the Vaishnavas but it was not with the confusion that the demigods are supreme no but it was understood that they are given charge of certain departments so we can worship them for specific purposes so the Vedic literature are conclusively monotheistic they are not exclusively monotheistic exclusive monotheism means only one god is to be worshipped so Christianity Islam, Judaism they are exclusively monotheistic and according to them there is only one true god and all other gods are false gods so the Vedic understanding is not that Shiva Brahma or Devi are false gods nor are they competitor gods they are assistant gods so there is a supreme god and there are the assistant gods even actually in the Quran and to some extent in the Old Testament when there is god speaking, god refers to himself in the plural we have arranged for all of you to do this we will arrange for all of you to come back in the future and there are some places where god refers to himself in the singular so the idea of there being multiple gods is there in the literatures of the Abrahamic tradition also the Abrahamic tradition means Christianity, Judaism and Islam they all accept as one of their old prophets is Abraham so all of them are called as Abrahamic traditions so because the western intellectuals came from that tradition so their idea was either you are monotheistic or you are polytheistic but when they came to India and they studied the Indian literature they said these people what are they? they are worshipping so many gods but it seems that whichever god they worship they consider that god to be supreme so then some people consider Shiva to be supreme some people consider Devi to be supreme some people consider Vishnu to be supreme so Max Muller came up with a new term so Max Muller trying to make sense of the Vedic way of worship came up with a new term called Hinotheism so Hinotheism is what? it is there is one formless absolute god and that god is conceived in various mythological dresses in various mythological forms so one mythological form of that god is Krishna one is Vishnu, one is Shiva one is Devi whatever like that so basically the problem was they came with their own conceptual categories and their own philosophical presumptions so their idea of exclusive monotheism is there is one god and everybody else is false but our understanding the Vedic understanding is that no there are false gods of course there are some people who may be false gods in the sense that we have Poundrak claiming to be god he is a false god but Shiva, Durga they are not false gods, they are assistant gods so our understanding is not exclusive monotheism but conclusive monotheism concluding there is only one god one supreme god whom we worship but for those people who are not capable of worshipping that supreme god there are other alternatives also so in this way the Vedic Vedic culture opens its doors for those who are not yet ready to worship the supreme lord and allows them also admission in the house of religion so the western religions they if you have to enter into the house of religion you have to worship the one supreme god only otherwise you are out and you are going to go to hell and we will help you to get there faster also so that sort of thought breeds a high level of intolerance but yeah rest of eternity yes that’s also true but the Vedic thought it was, it understands different people are of different mental tendencies and they are also at different levels of their own spiritual evolution and even if they can’t worship the supreme lord, yes let them worship whoever they can and gradually make spiritual advancement so the Vedic understanding is conclusive monotheism not exclusive monotheism but so the Rig Veda has some references to Krishna even in Chandogya Upanishad there are some references to Krishna which we will discuss in detail later but from the historical perspective the Vaishnavism as we know it it starts taking off from the 7th 8th century onwards Ramacharya was in the 10th, 11th century now before him there are the Alvars so the Alvars are 12 great saintly personalities who who popularised Krishna Bhakti, Vishnu Bhakti very extensively in South India and Ramacharya was in one sense the systematiser of their teachings so in general wherever Vaishnavism has spread Vaishnavism has spread in the vernacular languages let me say in most of the Alvars they wrote their songs in Tamil similarly we have Mirabai writing in if we look at the North she wrote in the local language of that place so Krishna worship that’s why I said earlier the Puranic worship people consider to be the popular Hinduism the academic scholars say it is not Vedic Hinduism it is not philosophical Hinduism but it is actually the Vedas and the philosophy it is all ultimately meant to conclude in Bhakti so Ramacharya in one sense was the first prominent teacher within the South India Vaishnav tradition who showed how the teachings of the Vaishnav saints had a basis in the Sanskrit scriptures so in this way he sort of gained legitimacy in the eyes of the conservative or orthodox people actually something is written in Sanskrit something is based in Shastra and that is bona fide so of course there were a large number of people following it and a significant number of intellectuals accepting it also but Ramacharya sort of started the process of showing how Vaishnavism is not just popular Hinduism but it is also scriptural Hinduism now when I am using the word Hinduism the word Hinduism was invented in the 18th century so it is not really applicable over there but the point I am making is that the showing of how it was based on scripture now after Ramacharya there were Ramacharya lived an exceptionally long life he lived for 120 years and he preached quite vigorously and after him the Sri Vaishnavism got divided into two prominent branches one was headed by Pilai Lokacharya and the other was by Vedanta Desika so they are called the Vadgali and the Tengalai and even till this day Sri Vaishnavism is going on quite prominently in South India although of course much of it is today reduced to ritualistic piety they don’t have much vigour of preaching see the idea that everybody is at different levels of spiritual evolution this has led to some sort of soporific effect soporific is a medicine which puts you to sleep so it has had a dulling effect on some modern Hindus because they feel okay if somebody is a Christian let him be a Christian let him evolve in his future life he will be born as a Hindu so that is their idea so they say what is the need to preach let them evolve at their own spiritual level but the idea is Krishna himself comes to preach so although Sri Vaishnavism or even Madhavaishnavism they have tremendous philosophical depth but what they seriously lack is the preaching vigour and that is because of a misunderstanding or misinterpretation of the original philosophy’s implications in modern times so I will elaborate this later in our next class when we discuss but I will just quickly come to Chaitanya Mahaprabhu now so we know after Ramacharya there was Madhavacharya and if you look at historically speaking sort of Vaishnavism swept from South India upwards to North India now that is the academic way of putting things but it’s not necessarily or entirely wrong because even in the Vedic times not everybody was necessarily a Vaishnava there may be Shaktas there may be other people and even in the Vedic times see the Bhagavatam is also saying that that that a devotee of Vishnu is rare even among Mahamunis so why is that? if at that time people were following Vedic culture then why is a person devoted to Vasudeva why is he so rare? because even at that time pure devotional service was not necessarily the widespread or the mainstream practise among people it was a conclusive understanding among these scriptures the highest understanding but it was not necessarily the mainstream practise throughout history it may have been at sometimes when the kings were exceptionally powerful and Vaishnav but other times overall Vedic culture was there and Vaishnavism was also there so there have been saints who saintly personalities who spread Vaishnavism so we have Narasimha Mehta in Gujarat, we have Mirabai in Rajasthan then we have many other personalities we have in North India especially there is a wave of Ram Bhakti in North India with Tulsidas Ramcharitmanas and then there was in Assam there was a great Vaishnava who also who actually met Chaitanya Mahaprabhu also and through him reaching spread and in Bengal itself if we read Chaitanya Bhagwat the Vaishnavas are lamenting oh people are not worshipping Krishna, they are worshipping the Goddess and they are doing all sorts of Nyaya but they are not worshipping so they are not Vaishnavas, so the Vaishnavas are in minority if we look at Chaitanya Bhagwat Chaitanya Mahaprabhu comes but Vaishnavism is there so within in the East India area in Maharashtra of course we know there were many great saints who popularised Vaishnavism start from Gyaneshwar onwards and comes Tukaram and many in between Gora Kumbhar and Ekanath and many of them were there so in Bengal in Bengal Orissa area before Chaitanya Mahaprabhu came there was Jaidev Goswami and Jaidev Goswami’s Geet Govind became immensely popular and along with that there were others like Vidyapati, there was Chandidas and others who also practised and popularised Vaishnavism and in this way Vaishnavism was there it is there in the scriptures it was there in the culture but it was not widespread and in the next class we will discuss about exactly little bit more detail about what were the similarities, differences between these different expressions of Vaishnavism that flowered in the what is called the mediaeval period of Indian history say from the 10th century onwards till the 15th, 16th, 17th centuries and what was the specific contribution of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and how Gauri Vaishnavism flourished down through the 16th, 17th century till the 18th century and the turn of the 19th century when Bhaktivinoda Thakur appeared so any questions? yes, who is this? yes, I can ok, good question again as I was telling the datings is always a debatable issue so traditionally yes it is true that they consider the Dalvars to be considered to be in Dwapar Yuga and to some extent we don’t have to debate that so when we talk about history as I was telling, whatever I was speaking today it was having both these strands you know how we understand it and how we have to how we should understand, how the academicians understand it so the Alvars the traditional Sri Vaishnavas they date them backward for almost, they are spread over thousands of years almost their appearance so now again last time if you remember we discussed, how can we know when a particular personality existed one way is, there are no historical records available one way is that we can look at their literature when was that literature available? so now the latest manuscripts that are available of the Alvars literature they are not very old because in India manuscripts don’t survive, but the oral tradition itself has been much longer and nobody can actually know how long the oral tradition has been going on so that point is well taken that the Alvars at least some of them or all of them may have existed in remote times in the past but the point for us is that the systematisation of Vaishnavism was done by Ramacharya in the 10th, 11th centuries so good point you made yes we have to be conscious of this contemporary way of dating things and the traditional way of dating things any other questions? yes please your comment that the Sri Vaishnavas they are lacking the preaching as of now, not Ramacharya Ramacharya preached a lot from the point of your view the old religions the religious warriors in that lecture also you are mentioning in a similar light let them follow their religion we will just give them some support that lecture also was in the same terms let them follow their own religion correct so now if somebody is following some other religion should we try to convert them to our path or should we try to let them go on their path so if you look at Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s approach itself Chaitanya Mahaprabhu went to South India and what to speak of somebody practising Islam or Christianity Venkat Bhatta was following Sri Vaishnavism and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu sort of converted him from Sri Vaishnavism to Gaudiya Vaishnavism but we also see Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was very sensitive to such an extent that when a Ram devotee was disturbed that Sita had been kidnapped you know he found the particular manuscript of the Kurma Puran had a copy made and then didn’t get the copy with him, he got the original to reassure that devotee so we also have within Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s associates also, Murari Gupta was primarily a worshipper of Lord Ram Anupama was a worshipper of Lord Ram Chaitanya Mahaprabhu appreciated their Bhakti to that particular deity but then we will also see Murari Gupta is not an initiating spiritual master in our Sampradaya if you look at the Chaitanya Chaitanya Amrit you know there is the Chaitanya tree and the expansions of Chaitanya tree are who? the expansions of Advaita Acharya, the expansions of Nithyananda Prabhu the expansions of Gadadhar Pandit these three were the primary spiritual masters from whom the Chaitanya Sampradaya has been going on so our understanding is that from Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s example if somebody is very devoted to a particular particular path and that path is bona fide, it may not necessarily lead to the highest revelation Sri Vaishnavism may not take a person to Goloka but will surely take him to Vaikuntha and that is glorious, it is not that Vaikuntha is any lower it is liberation so we don’t have to pull people out of their paths just to prove the superiority of our path but if people are interested and if people are inspired at least they should know what is our path and if they are inspired let them follow so Prabhupada’s approach when he preached in the west was that if somebody was just a nominal Christian that means somebody is just born in a Christian family but doesn’t have much faith in Christianity nor is he practising Christianity very much then that person can be inspired to take up Krishna Consciousness and develop love of God because in Krishna Consciousness the support systems that are available the support systems in the sense that we have such a clear and endearing conception of God and we have such a well delineated pathway for spiritual advancement and we also we have this Shraddha, Salsa, Bhajan, Kriya and Madhura Kadambini gives many more step by step analytical levels of how we have to grow and along with that we also have such a powerful pushing system in the sense that the holy name can help us go along this path very fast, the Hare Krishna now to some extent all these are there but they are in a more threadbare or bare bones form over there there is some outline of a conception of God, there is a rough charting of the pathway and there are no primary names of God in the other traditions so so should we so Srila Prabhupada is a nominal Christian, you would inspire him to practise Krishna consciousness while at the same time acknowledging that Jesus is also definitely a son of God but then if somebody was a dedicated Christian, maybe Srila Prabhupada would talk with Christian priests he would not tell them to chant Hare Krishna, he would tell them please stop eating meat so you talk about universal principles that they could incorporate within their own practises so the idea is that Srila Prabhupada wrote a letter, a very beautiful letter of Srila Prabhupada to the Pope, Pope John Paul II and you can see it in Vedabase Prabhupada says that the way Atheism is spreading all over the world no religious teacher can tolerate this so let us unite together and let us counter the spread of Atheism so at one level we want to spread God consciousness and if somebody is nominally Christian but he is not God conscious, then by becoming Krishna conscious, he will become very powerfully God conscious if somebody is God conscious in Christianity, the Krishna conscious philosophy can help them understand how they can become more God conscious so this the emphasis which I was making out over there with respect to Sri Vaishnavas is that we know in South India huge amount of conversion is happening and we are not talking here about pulling Christians from Christianity to become Krishna devotees but okay we may not want to do that if they are following Christianity nicely but if people are within the Vedic path and from within the Vedic path Vedic culture, they are going outside the Vedic culture and if they were actually becoming God conscious by that that would be fine but unfortunately that doesn’t happen to many of the people who get converted because they get converted for two or three main reasons one is that they are offered financial allurements to convert they are given money to convert second is that they often find that Christianity does not bring as many moral scruples on our behaviour as Hinduism brings we can eat meat, we can eat cow’s beef we can drink anytime and in fact we can go to the church and do all these things so basically when people are getting converted today in South India as well as in North India, it’s not that they are getting converted they are already converted majority in North India is Christian only so what is happening is they are actually not developing a higher level of God consciousness they are only becoming more materialistic and sinful and not only that they are also developing an anti-Vedic attitude because what happened earlier when the Christians would offer money to Hindus to convert some of the Hindus would get converted they would say we are converted but they would continue to worship the Hindu deities in their homes because they had that affection based on their upbringing or past culture so now the Christians have devised a test that how do you prove that you have converted what is your commitment like when we have for initiation I teach in Chinese History ground, followers of the regular principles so when somebody becomes a Christian he has to show his commitment to Christianity by eating beef that you have renounced your pagan beliefs and often you have to show your commitment to Christianity by stamping and spitting and tearing all the pictures and idols of the false gods that you are worshipping earlier so this makes them intolerant intolerant towards towards the Vedic path so that’s we had prepared a special issue of BTG on Christianity and Krishna consciousness there I had written an article called conversion to what intolerance or transcendence so what is happening is unfortunately when people get converted we want to convert people to transcendence we want to convert people from immaterialist to spiritualist whereas when people get converted to Christianity whether they are becoming spiritual is very debatable but they are becoming intolerant that’s not at all debatable and that’s why we are concerned about it so what has happened is the idea of gradual spiritual evolution does not mean that the spiritual teachers be apathetic and lazy about protecting and promoting the culture yes we would also like to accelerate spiritual advancement see Prachini Parishad is doing Yajnas and he is doing it according to Karmakand but Narada Muni goes and tells him what are you doing this is all nonsense you just worship the supreme lord Daksha Prajapati is he is in one sense a materialist person sense gratifier and he wants to engage his sons in sense gratification and it’s not sinful sense gratification it is religious sense gratification but Narada Muni goes and tells him you renounce the world so you know if you look at the example of Narada Muni and the Srimad Bhagavatam Narada Muni is very emphatic that don’t take the slow path slow path within the Vedic culture come to the rapid path rapid path is take devotional service right away so it’s not that he is intolerant about other paths but it is that if a person has the Adhikar to take the faster path why should he take the slower path so if our Acharyas can encourage people to take the faster path from within the Vedic tradition even if they are following some other path which is bona fide and which is within the Vedic tradition still our Acharyas are urging them to give up that path and take up the a faster Vedic path then what to speak of somebody who is following something which is not even a Vedic path which is going to lead to a dubious level of spiritual advancement many times because of improper practise and why not encourage them to take up to spiritual life so the primary thing is not that we tell all other paths are false to prove the glory of our path but rather we care for the for the people so that they can make spiritual advancement so I will conclude with a simple example see so different religions different religious paths are like different hospitals and they have different levels of competency and some hospitals they have a complete curative system that means first they will treat you so that all the sickness goes out and then they will offer you proper exercise and nutrients so that you become positively healthy also some hospitals they may cure you of the disease but after that now you can go out now you have to get your strength on your own only to become to presume normal healthy activities so the path of Jnana is like a hospital which cures you of materialism but then before one has recovered the normal strength it tells you go out so then you are in Brahma Jyoti not knowing what to do after that so now if somebody is following a spiritual path he is like trying to take some treatment so if he is taking the treatment then now our goal is not that somebody is admitted in a particular hospital you pull him out of the hospital and bring him to our hospital no we don’t have to do that but there are so many people who are sick and the hospital’s purpose is to cure the sick people so the attitudes of the sick people they will also evolve in their own way if they die in the next life they will get cured what is the botheration that is not the compassionate doctor’s attitude so what I was highlighting was that the apathetic attitude is something which is not at all in accordance with our Vedic tradition is it clear now ok so thank you very much maybe I will talk with Kiran Prabhu and we will finalise when we can have the next class should we have this once a week or once a fortnight or twice a week once a week is ok ok fine then next Monday twice a week is also ok twice a week ok then I will just look at my schedule and I will inform Kiran Prabhu then accordingly if we can have it if possible on Thursday or Friday or otherwise next Monday I will let you know ok thank you very much