If we neglect all the emotions of the mind are we being impersonalistic?

Transcript

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If we just neglect the emotions of the mind and think I should act simply as a soul is that we are being impersonalist? Because the personality right now is a composite of the body, mind, soul. Yeah. Definitely.
If somebody is sick and say somebody I love your soul but I don’t care for your body. That won’t work. If somebody is sick, we have to help them at the level of the body also.
There are incidents in which the Prabhupada himself was very caring. There was one time when Prabhupada was exiting Guru Puja in Mayapur with hundreds of devotees coming and offering flowers. One devotee came limping and Prabhupada actually went to him and called him and asked him what happened.
Prabhupada prescribed some medicine which he could make at home and apply. Prabhupada cared for the body, mind and soul. Complete unit.
Now when we talk about being personalist there is always a difficult question that how much of our present personality is coming from the soul’s personality and how much is present as a conditioned personality. But it really doesn’t matter at this stage because whatever personality we have right now, that is the personality with which we are going to serve Krishna. Recently I was asked this question that if pure devotees are beyond the modes then where does their nature come from? Is their present nature of pure devotees the soul’s nature or is it the nature of their body-mind? They said when pure devotees transcended the modes that transcending is in terms of intention.
That the modes don’t determine the desires of a pure devotee but the body and the mind is the tool with which the pure devotee is going to execute the desire. So a devotee may desire to speak about Krishna. That desire is not affected by the modes.
I am talking about a pure devotee. But how that devotee speaks about Krishna will naturally be affected by the body-mind that they have. When Srila Prabhupada was in Mumbai a prominent Hindu leader who was from South India He was a Hindu leader.
So he came and met Prabhupada. He was a Hindu political leader. Swamiji, he said you pronounce Sanskrit in a very Bengali way.
What can I do? I am from Bengal. So now Prabhupada was speaking Krishna’s message but obviously that Krishna’s message when he is speaking it, it is going to come through his body. So we say that Prabhupada said that Krishna wrote my books.
Krishna wrote the books. But does that mean that Prabhupada did not write the books? If only Krishna wrote the books then Prabhupada could have put Krishna as the author of the books. Prabhupada put his name as author of the books.
That means that there is a dynamic reciprocation between Krishna and Prabhupada. Krishna gave the message and Prabhupada expressed it. Otherwise we would have the idea that through Prabhupada’s books we can know only about Krishna and nothing about Prabhupada.
Because Prabhupada’s personality is not there in the book at all. But if that were the case then we can see Prabhupada’s style of writing is very different from Bhakti Sahan’s style of writing. Which is very different from Bhakti and Thakur’s style of writing.
All of them we consider as pure devotees. If Krishna has written through all of them why are their writing styles different? It is because Krishna’s intention is pure. They all want to glorify Krishna.
But they all have a particular body-mind through which they are expressing that intention. So even with respect to pure devotees we see their personality is pure in the sense that it is purely intended to serve Krishna. But it may not be pure exactly in terms say Bhakti Sahan’s Thakur was not known particularly as a very good musician.
He would ask others to sing Kirtans. Prabhupada’s English pronunciation was not all that good. Sometimes.
But that doesn’t matter. Because his intention was to serve Krishna. So we could see that this is just their Leela.
Krishna could have made them entirely perfect in a way. But Krishna chose to do it in a particular way. Whatever way we see it.
But the point is that we respect and love them as they are right now. As they have manifested in this world. So similarly, rather than worrying about whether a particular personality trait is spiritual or material we understand this is the way I am and this is the way this person is.
So if I have to serve this is the tool with which I have to serve. If I have to work with this person this is the tool with which I have to work with this person. So yes, acknowledging the kind of body and mind with its particular you could say quirk with its particular idiosyncrasies, particular tendencies that is actually being personal.
Some devotees when they meet they just like to hug each other. Some devotees they just stare at each other. They don’t like to touch.
If I just try to touch and hug a devotee who doesn’t like that then I may say I am showing affection but that devotee you are imposing, don’t do this. So I have to customize. So I have to customize.
So that way I say yes, it’s being personal. Acknowledging the body, mind and the particular emotions that come from that and then moulding our actual execution of things accordingly that being personal.