When scriptures teach bhakti clearly, why do Mayavadis misinterpret scriptural teachings?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so the question is when the Bhagavatam talks about bhakti so clearly how do the Mayavadis take those same verses and interpret them impersonalistically there are multiple reasons for this the first is that the scriptures are state specific state specific means that depending on our state of consciousness the scriptures are perceived accordingly in the Bhagavatam itself it is described that when the Vedic knowledge was given by Krishna to Brahmaji at that time first time when Brahmaji heard it he thought that karma is the conclusion of the Vedic literature is the conclusion message of the Vedic literature at that time it was not in the form of books it was in terms of message so he thought the path of karma is auspicious and that is the conclusive path second time when he heard it he understood oh actually the path is not karma it is jnana and third time when he heard it he understood it is bhakti so actually what was happening now at one level we can say that Brahmaji is also an exalted devotee how can he have any misunderstanding but many things that happen at the start of the history of the universe they demonstrate some universal truths which are like a pattern that will be repeated throughout that the Vedas they if a person is looking for sense gratification then the sections within the Vedas that talk about sense gratification and material improvement they will strike out the person they will seem them they will catch the attention and the person will focus on that on the other hand so that’s what happened in the first reading to Brahmaji but then just the contact with the Vedic literature is purifying and elevating and therefore in the second reading when he heard then he understood oh actually no material improvement is not the ultimate goal because it is temporary ultimately so then there is one has to go beyond temporary to the eternal and then he concluded the idea of jnana but then when he heard third time yes but just spiritual oneness is not perfection reciprocation relationships love and then he came to the conclusion of bhakti so depending on one’s level of consciousness one perceives the scripture accordingly this doesn’t mean that the scriptures do not have a conclusion it simply means that people because of their consciousness will bounce on certain sections in the scriptures because that’s what they can relate to that’s what they feel the most important so like that when people when the Mayavadis study the scriptures they have an impersonal bent of mind beforehand and because of that they just focus on those verses which talk about impersonalism and the Mayavadis focus on the verses which talk about impersonalism because that is their predisposition that is their mentality and apart from that the devotees they because they are open minded they focus on the bhakti section which are conclusive so therefore what we should focus on when we are practicing bhakti is we don’t have to brand people as demoniac or something like that we focus on recognizing that people have different kinds of mentalities and because people have different kinds of mentalities so we focus on the kind of mentality that is recommended in the scripture itself the scripture itself recommends that we practice devotional service seriously and when we practice devotional service seriously then by that we make spiritual advancement and we start seeing the import of the scriptures clearly so that is the first point that scriptures are state specific second is that because of people’s own past cultural upbringing and conditionings also you know in Indian history if we see the prominent strand of thought that was there before in India in modern history was impersonalistic if we look at most of the spiritual so people who claim to be spiritual teachers right from say Ram Mohan Roy who founded the Brahmo Samaj and we go through a list of spiritual teachers down to Radhakrishnan who wrote a very widely respected commentary on the Bhagavad Gita and the Vedanta Sutra most of them they had this intellectual predilection towards impersonalism because their idea was that they were not so much spiritualistic as they were nationalistic and their idea was that we want to unite India and for the sake of uniting India they thought that if we talk about Bhakti then oh there is Krishna here, there is Durga there, there is Shiva there, there is Ganesh there, there are so many Gods so if we talk about Bhakti then Bhakti will not be a very unifying force because there are so many different Devatas so let us put all these Devatas as subordinate reality and let us make the Brahman which is formless as the eternal reality and their idea is that okay whichever God you want to worship you can worship because ultimately we have to go beyond all Gods to the Supreme so that’s why this mentality of wanting to worship the Supreme as a as a not because of what the Supreme is but just as a tool for say nationalistic purposes that sort of motivated mentality also colours people’s vision so if we can go beyond these colourings and then let the scriptures speak for themselves then we will be able to see that scriptures do talk about reality as being personal it’s significant that if you see most of the people especially the independence fighter political leaders who fought for independence they wrote commentaries in Bhagavad Gita most of them wrote their commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita when they were in prison and now what is the significance actually they often pride also by saying that we when we read the Bhagavad Gita we did not let our thoughts be skewed be distorted by any of the traditional commentators so what does it mean it means that actually they are simply bringing their speculation into the Bhagavad Gita and then they are exporting it outwards so I’m in jail I can’t do anything else let me study the Bhagavad Gita and let me write something based on this so it’s not necessary that they were having a evil mentality but the giving of primacy to political nationalism and not to spiritual elevation that also coloured their perception and from their perspective impersonal liberation impersonal conception was more unifying than the personal conception so because of this also the impersonal interpretation got much more popularity in many circles because the influential spiritual leaders or those who are considered spiritual leaders they endorse the impersonal land now 9.34 in the Bhagavad Gita clearly says Krishna is using the word mam five times and a commentator says that actually we don’t have to surrender to Krishna we have to surrender to the unborn within Krishna so this is complete distortion of Krishna’s words so like that for two reasons because the scriptures are state specific and the conditioned soul looks at scriptures based on one’s own state of consciousness and secondly because people often especially in modern Indian history people imported their political and nationalistic ideas into the study of scripture because of which they felt impersonal idea was more unifying that’s why the impersonal idea is more widespread but in both these cases how do we come out of this pitfall is by learning knowledge about scripture as the scripture recommends scripture recommends that we should go to a guru guru in parampara and we learn from their guru in parampara so there are many devotees who were from impersonalist backgrounds earlier but when they associated with devotees and studied the commentaries given by Vaishnavacharyas then they understood how the devotional message is the ultimate conclusion of the scriptures thank you