Just as the mind is personified are other things such as Bhakti devi and Kali also personifications?
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respond? So we see sometimes there is personification in scripture also, just like the mind is personified. So are other things also such as Bhakti Devi or Kali, are those personifications? Answer? No.
We cannot decide what is the personification or what is not based on our current modern scientific or rational world view. Because the Bhagavatam offers a very different world view. actually if we take the scientific world view to its extreme conclusion, it will depersonify even you and me.
Because it says ultimately we are all just chemicals acting according to the laws. So our free will is an illusion. So what to speak of others, even we are not persons.
So the reductionistic world view it cannot even explain our world satisfactorily. What to speak of the Bhagavatam’s world satisfactorily. So now, in that sense, just because something seems difficult for us to understand, something seems difficult for us to believe, we don’t, can’t use that as a reason for deciding what is a personification and what is actually a personality.
Now we have to look from within the Bhagavatam’s world view itself to understand what is being talked about. So, the mind may be referred to as an enemy. But the Bhagavatam has elaborate sections elsewhere where it talks about, say in the third canto, there is analysis of material nature where the elements, the characters are described and clearly it is described the mind is a material element.
So then from that philosophical section we can understand the Bhagavatam is not Bhagavatam is clear that the mind is a thing. The mind is a material object, subtle material object, but it’s an object. So then, with that philosophical context, then when we look at the description of the mind is your enemy or the mind speaks like this, then we understand this is personification.
And now, this is, so this, in the Bhagavatam’s philosophical world view, it’s clear that the mind is matter. But within the Bhagavatam’s philosophical world view, there are various other personalities. For example, Devatas.
It explains that the various aspects of the cosmos, there are particular deities who are supervising them. And those are real persons. So, similarly, with respect to the various positive energies, such as Bhakti energy, there is a person who is in charge of that.
Ultimately, Bhakti Devi is Radharani. And similarly Kali, the four ages, just as different geographical areas have different kings, so different heads of state, just as different cosmological departments have different in-charges, the different Devatas. Similarly, different chronological phases also have different in-charges.
when Kali is talked about, the Mahabharata also says that Duryodhana was an incarnation of Kali. So, in that sense, Kali as a person is talked about repeatedly. So, I would say that from the Bhagavatam’s philosophical perspective, there is no clear basis by which we could say that Kali is a personified conception.
Rather, whatever Bhagavatam reference we get, just as we know there are many Devatas, there are many beings beyond what are perceivable at the human level, so Kali seems to be one of them. Therefore, we have to be, if at all we have to say something is a personification, that has to be based on the Bhagavatam’s own philosophical worldview, not based on our own conceptions of what may be a personification. Does that answer your question? Anything else?