Is KC also exclusivist because those who don’t accept Krishna’s form are said to be doomed?

From Raja Parikshit Prabhu

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
thank you great Krishna question from Rajpal Chitraguru is Krishna Consciousness also exclusive exclusivist because sometimes it is said that that those who don’t accept the lord’s body as spiritual they are going to go to hell and similarly those who don’t accept and Krishna as a person they are Krishna’s form is transcendental they are going to go to hell so how do we understand this answer Krishna Consciousness is definitely not exclusivist in the sense that it is a matter of consciousness and to the extent a person develops consciousness of higher spiritual reality to that extent a person will be elevated if you look at Bhagavad Gita Krishna talks about the principle of reciprocation all people are on my path and rather than saying that my path is the only path Krishna is using a very inclusive statement all people are on my path and further he states that as all people surrender unto me I reward accordingly so what does this mean in our discussion yes Dacher has also explained the purport that Krishna Chakratakor explains for example that if somebody considers the lord’s body to be material then the lord reciprocates by keeping them attached to a material body and they continue to stay in their material existence but where they go in material existence that depends on multiple factors so for example if somebody is living an overall sattvic life then that is also a factor that determines the destination Urdhvam Gacchan is the first action so that so there is the disposition or inclination towards Krishna that plays a significant role in determining one’s destination and there is one’s overall lifestyle which more one is that also determines one’s destination so in specific philosophical context to illustrate how dangerous it is to consider to not only have a misconception about the lord’s form but to propagate that misconception certain strong statements are made those who consider lord’s body to be material they for example the Puranas may give a statement that their faces also should not be seen they should be because they are going to go to hell the point of this statement is that this is a dangerous misconception why because the lord’s form is the means by which we can come out of the illusions of this world because we are attracted to the forms of this world and to the extent we can to the extent we can find some other form that can attract us, that can uplift us to that extent we can more easily detach ourselves from the forms of this world but if we don’t have such a form then we tend to stay materialistic so Bhaktivinoda Thakur says that those religions which do not have deity worship are often largely materialistic religions where they consider material prosperity as the sign of their religious piety so and we do see this largely in the world’s history also now worse than this is when someone knows about the lord’s form but considers it to be material so for example if somebody has got false currency and the person recognises that false currency to be false that is good but if somebody gets true currency and he calls it false that is unfortunate because true currency has so much value so the impersonalist recognises the forms of this world are false but they extrapolate and assume that even the lord’s form is also temporary and illusive and they are like people who are considering the true currency also to be false and that is a serious blunder so that means there is goodness, passion ignorance and one’s overall lifestyle the way one is living that can take on upwards or downwards so there is no denying that say people who follow some spiritual path and have some amount of regulation, some amount of discipline they are moving from the lower modes towards goodness and some of them may be very elevated goodness also so such sattvic people their sattvic lifestyle needs to be appreciated at the same time sattva guna also creates although it can create illumination about the truth because the intellect is good in sattva guna but sattva guna also has its attachment and just as rajo guna was attracted to sense objects, in sattva guna one becomes attached to one’s opinions and one’s opinions become one’s possessions and one becomes very passionately attached to them somehow or the other one tries to prove that my opinion is the right opinion and then such people may even end up misinterpreting scripture to try to get scripture to support their opinions so when that happens that is dangerous so when such people sometimes propagate misconceptions then that is something which is a great disservice so that’s like a person who is not only rejecting the true currency as false but is also telling everyone give up this currency throw away this currency because it’s all false well actually it is true so that is a disservice so it’s not that bhakti yoga or Krishna consciousness is exclusivist because exclusivism would mean that you accept Krishna as God, if you don’t accept Krishna as God you are going to go to hell bhakti yoga doesn’t say that at all what bhakti yoga says is that there is goodness, passion, ignorance and depending on one’s overall way of living one is going to get a destination the fact of analysis of goodness, passion, ignorance where is that sort of thing given in other traditions that is not there so we can’t compare bhakti yoga’s exclusivity, bhakti yoga’s statement with other religions exclusivity and these sort of statements are primarily meant to help us, you come to a right spiritual understanding and to avoid wrong philosophical understandings we should see those statements as meant for cautioning and guarding us from misconceptions thank you