How to respond to people who say that they are satisfied with their mental maps?
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so some people say that we have our own maps and we are satisfied with them then how do we address that yes a map has to correlate with the reality so say I have a map of Melbourne and I am travelling in Sydney and I am trying to correlate it just doesn’t correlate I may try sincerely I may think optimistically but nothing is going to make it any help well if I got the wrong map so yeah so now when say we have a materialistic map that means we think that everything is matter and there is no reality beyond matter so now this may seem very convenient I don’t have to practice in spiritual life I just enjoy life at the material level but the materialist repeatedly have to walk off the material map why is that because if we consider materialism scrutinizingly what it means is everything is pure material if everything is material then even all the cherished emotions that we experience say if I if a mother experiences love for a child and all that is happening from the material perspective is oh so instead of saying mother saying to a child I love you the mother should say oh some chemicals are coming in my brain when I see you will a mother say that even if a person is a brain surgeon and that brain surgeon comes home and his wife is upset with him so will the brain surgeon say please come I will do your brain scan to find why you are upset no so no one lives purely as a materialist people live functionally as materialists but materialism is strictly taken reduces all our emotions to simply flows of chemicals so is that the way anyone can live a life would become totally meaningless if we lived like that there have been philosophers but their existential is philosophers suppose there is a philosopher Albert Camus so he said that he everything there is no spiritual side to life everything is just material and he was intelligent in one way but his conclusion was that life is meaningless and miserable therefore the only philosophical question worth asking is whether to commit suicide today or tomorrow we may laugh at this this is really this is a living philosopher who came to this thesis so materialism is a map that does not coincide with reality our own reality lived reality we cannot explain in terms of materialism so now somehow when it comes to spirituality people think that you can have your map I can have my map it’s true we all can have our maps we all have been given that freedom by God to live the way we want but in no other field of life will we be so apathetic towards enquiring what is the reality if I am going in Sydney I won’t say okay you can have a map of Melbourne somebody else can have a map of Perth somebody else can have a map of Adelaide and we all travel our way we only check does this make sense so if we really enquire seriously we will see the limitations of whatever map we are claiming to have and we will be forced to walk off our map because that map it will describe a part of the reality but will not describe the reality in a way that is meaningful for us specifically this is not a matter of authoritatively imposing one world view on everyone else it is a matter of intelligent choosing the Bhagavad Gita is not a book of commandments where Krishna says do this do this do this or you will go to hell no Krishna he Bhagavad Gita reveals to us a vision of God who respects human intelligence and respects human independence after speaking the full Bhagavad Gita at the end Krishna says to Arjuna in 18.63 he says deliberate deeply on the subject and then you decide what you want to do so Krishna is not imposing he is inviting does this make sense to you deliberate on it Krishna is not calling for faith Krishna is calling for deliberation so if we open minded if we can present the spiritual message of the Bhagavad Gita in an intelligible way to people and some people may be interested some people may not be interested so we don’t have to be confrontational with others should always be cordial even if somebody has some other world view people sometimes people hold on to certain world views not because they have thought about a world view properly and come to a conclusion there are various reasons maybe it is my culture maybe it is my upbringing maybe it is what I like whatever but even sooner or later the inadequacies of that world view will become apparent to them so if they are right now open to discussion and cordial debate that is fine we can try to present things properly or we can consult senior devotees who are more learned and with their guidance we can present things properly but even if they are not ready even if they are not able to present properly we should discuss and leave things at a cordial note so eventually if people feel yeah I met some nice person this person was speaking about the Bhagavad Gita was talking about Bhakti Yoga he was a nice person so eventually when they fall off their map because their map takes them to no man’s land what am I doing where am I at that time they will turn towards Krishna so we shouldn’t think that it is by our preaching that we are changing people actually it is Krishna in their hearts who will change them all that we can do is we can try to present Krishna’s message Prabhupada when he went to America he was not saying that I am going to make all his Americans into devotees Prabhupada was praying Krishna please make my words understandable to them so that is the mood with which we devotionally and respectfully challenge this notion of all maps being relative and we end on a cordial note inviting people to explore what the Bhagavad Gita is teaching does it answer your question any other questions yes please