​How to understand when some sages feel greater bliss in impersonal realization than in personal realization?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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pastime. Some impersonal questions, some impersonalists say that they offer, they experience Bhagawan, they offer some make some devotional offerings to Bhagawan also.
But they don’t feel satisfied. They don’t feel satisfied to the same level as they feel satisfied when they experience the omnipresence of the Lord as manifested in His impersonal manifestation. And because they experience because they feel that they experience greater satisfaction in experiencing the impersonal than in experiencing the personal.
So, they feel that the impersonal is the higher manifestation. So, how do we understand this? There is Bhagawan says that whatever state of consciousness we desire to experience, accordingly we get that experience. That means that the experiences that we get in life are not necessarily things which are always reflections of reality.
They can also be distortions of reality. Just like when we are practicing bhakti, although the pleasure in Krishna bhakti is far higher than the pleasure in sense gratification. But sometimes for us based on our conditionings, we may feel that there is no pleasure in bhakti or there is not much pleasure in bhakti and we feel that the pleasure in sense gratification is much higher.
So, that means our experiences are not necessarily always reflections of reality. They can also be distortions of reality based on our conditionings. So, now of course for those who are very exalted in terms of having gone beyond gospel conditionings, for them there may not be any experience of bhakti in these terms.
There may not be any experience of conditionings and the distortion from conditionings as we experience it. But, there can be this subjectivity wherein if somebody is extremely attached to the impersonal aspect of the lord and that is what is their aspiration, that is what is their longing, then they may even when they are experiencing the supreme, still they may not feel captivated by the supreme in the personal manifestation. They may still want to go towards the impersonal manifestation.
We have two different examples in the Bhagavatam. One is of Dhruva Maharaj having darshan of the lord and then second is of Maharaj Pururava having darshan of the lord. We have that after Dhruva had darshan of the lord he said that Why did I give up? Why did I give up? jewel for a mere stone? It was foolish of me.
For a broken piece of glass actually. So that was foolish. But, that’s not the experience of Maharaj Pururava.
Even after he saw Vishnu, he did a yajna and he saw Vishnu. But what he experienced there was he felt Oh! I want Urvashi. So, it was even darshan of the lord himself did not purify him.
That’s why it may happen for some impersonalists that if their attachment to the impersonal manifestation is very strong they may feel that that they actually have nothing. That they have something lower when they are having the personal manifestation and it’s only when they are experiencing the impersonal at that time they are experiencing the highest. Now we also have to understand that when one is not when one is still having attachment to the impersonal manifestation then one cannot actually experience one does not have the completely open and receptive heart that is necessary for experiencing the the deepest sweetness of the personal manifestation because the consciousness is somewhat misdirected away from the personal to the impersonal so even when the impersonal is experienced even in the personal is experienced still one doesn’t experience that essentially one experiences it one experiences it in a fragmental sort of way personal manifestation that’s why one may not get the taste so that’s why there are multiple aspects to this and if we look at the impersonalist traditions we may well find that in those traditions people do focus more on the on striving to not just experience the impersonal but striving to prove how the impersonal is higher than the personal and we recognize that this is the way in general every tradition will try to interpret things and not only try to interpret things in scripture but even they will try to interpret once a person is an advocate of a particular kind of thought then they will try to not only interpret scripture but they will try to interpret their own experience also in a way that fits their frame of reference that there are lot of psychological studies which have been done which show that when people study something or people in science researchers do some experiment this is called as researcher bias what is researcher bias? that means if a researcher is doing a particular theory or rather is trying to do experiment to prove a particular theory that the researcher has himself proposed then researchers try to downplay or neglect evidence that falsifies their theory and they try to they may not do it, it’s not that they intend to cheat but it is just that they tend to downplay the results which falsify their theory it happens subconsciously instinctively without their own realizing it also and they try to try to amplify the results that support their theory so usually our experience should challenge our conceptions and we need to revise our conceptions according to our experience but sometimes our conceptions will be so strong that we may that our conceptions may actually we may not only interpret our experience according to our conceptions but if we are very attached to our conceptions then Krishna may also give us experiences that that lend themselves to an interpretation that further reinforces our conceptions.
This is the meaning of yathamaam prapadyante tam sathaiva bhajaam neham in 4.11 Krishna says all people surrender to me, I reward accordingly that means based on how we try to on how we approach Krishna and which of his manifestation and what motivation or consciousness all that will determine what kind of revelation of Krishna we will get. So the impersonalist perception may either be because of their own conceptions determining their experiences or their conceptions distorting their experiences and such experiences are not necessarily reflections of reality they are actually selective or selective or to some extent self distorted experiences of reality