A reader has written a very important question, which I would like to share with our whole Esoteric Teaching community:
“You said in a recent talk that the Mayavadi impersonal philosophy was the source of all the immorality in the world today. Frankly, I don’t see the connection between the philosophy of impersonalism and the immorality of Kali-yuga. The impersonalists I know are good people. They are mostly vegetarians, and trying to find God in their own way. Why are you so negative towards their beliefs? I find this contradictory.”
There are so many angles or facets to this question, I don’t know if I will be able to cover all of them in one talk. But let’s start from the philosophical level.
If God is impersonal, then who is Kṛṣṇa? All the Vedic sources and sages accept Kṛṣṇa as the Supreme Personality of Godhead. He declares that He is the Supreme Personality of Godhead in Bhagavad-gita, and so many others, including Arjuna, confirm this. The Vedas declare,
dharmam tu saksad bhagavat-pranitam
“Religious principles are directly created by the Supreme Personality of Godhead.” [Srimad-Bhagavatam 6.3.19]
In other words, we are supposed to follow God’s, Kṛṣṇa’s instructions. Kṛṣṇa can do no wrong, because He is completely pure. Therefore all His instructions are perfect. We cannot imitate Him, but our duty is to follow His perfect instructions, as revealed in Bhagavad-gita and other Vedic works.
But if Kṛṣṇa isn’t God and everything is one, then we are all god and can do whatever we like. This is a recipe for chaos in human society. The spiritually-inclined Mayavadis may be vegetarians and sincerely trying to find the truth. But what about the criminally-inclined person who reasons, “Well if everything is one and I’m god, then I can lie, cheat, steal, rape and kill with impunity. Why not?”
Philosophies, like other things, tend to roll downhill. The effect of the Mayavadi philosophy on the mass of people in Kali-yuga has been catastrophic. They have given up all pretense of accepting higher spiritual direction, and the world has been plunged into chaos due to the resulting moral vacuum.
dosair etaih kula-ghnanam
varna-sankara-karakaih
utsadyante jati-dharmah
kula-dharmas ca sasvatah“All kinds of community projects and family welfare activities are devastated by the evil deeds of those who destroy the family tradition and thus give rise to unwanted children.” [Bhagavad-gita 1.42]
The unscrupulous political leaders of Kali-yuga support the Mayavadi philosophy, because it provides them with a rationale for their immoral acts of aggression and exploitation against weaker countries and even against their own people. They like the varna-sankara, the unwanted children of this immoral age, because they are easy to deceive and manipulate.
They fill the leadership vacuum caused by the rejection of religious principles with their own schemes for selfish aggrandizement at the expense of the very people they are supposed to nourish and protect. Thus the leaders in Kali-yuga are nothing but polished rogues and thieves. Their rationalization for their heinous activities is—guess what—Mayavadi impersonalist philosophy.
Kṛṣṇa describes this demoniac mentality in Bhagavad-gita:
“The demoniac person thinks: ‘So much wealth do I have today, and I will gain more according to my schemes. So much is mine now, and it will increase in the future, more and more. He is my enemy, and I have killed him, and my other enemies will also be killed. I am the lord of everything. I am the enjoyer. I am perfect, powerful and happy. I am the richest man, surrounded by aristocratic relatives. There is none so powerful and happy as I am. I shall perform sacrifices, I shall give some charity, and thus I shall rejoice.’ In this way, such persons are deluded by ignorance. Thus perplexed by various anxieties and bound by a network of illusions, they become too strongly attached to sense enjoyment and fall down into hell.” [Bhagavad-gita 16.13-16]
Does this sound like anyone we know? Now considering the social consequences of Mayavadi philosophy, it seems like a bad idea even if it is the truth. But is impersonalism really a fact? Is God ultimately personal or impersonal?
It is clearly explained in the Bhagavad-gita that while impersonal Brahman is an aspect of the Absolute Truth, it is subordinate to the complete Supreme Person.
brahmano hi pratisthaham
amrtasyavyayasya ca
sasvatasya ca dharmasya
sukhasyaikantikasya ca“I am the basis of the impersonal Brahman, which is immortal, imperishable and eternal, and is the constitutional position of ultimate happiness.” [Bhagavad-gita 14.27]
Brahman is more explicitly explained in Vedanta-sutra to be like the rays of the sunshine. The impersonal Brahman is the shining rays of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Impersonal Brahman is incomplete realization of the absolute whole, and so also is the conception of Paramatma. But Kṛṣṇa is the Supreme Personality of Godhead and the Supreme Absolute Truth.
yasmat ksaram atito ’ham
aksarad api cottamah
ato ’smi loke vede ca
prathitah purusottamah“Because I am transcendental, beyond both the fallible and the infallible, and because I am the greatest, I am celebrated both in the world and in the Vedas as that Supreme Person, Purusottama.” [Bhagavad-gita 15.18]
The Supreme Personality of Godhead, Purusottama, is above both impersonal Brahman and the partial realization of Paramatma. The Supreme Personality of Godhead is called sac-cid-ananda-vigraha. The Brahma-samhita begins with this truth:
isvarah paramah Kṛṣṇah
sac-cid-ananda-vigrahah
anadir adir govindah
sarva-karana-karanam“Govinda, Kṛṣṇa, is the cause of all causes. He is the primal cause, and He is the very form of eternity, knowledge and bliss.” [Brahma-samhita 5.1]
Impersonal Brahman realization is the realization of His sat (eternity) feature. Paramatma realization is the realization of sat-cit (eternal knowledge). But realization of the Personality of Godhead, Kṛṣṇa, is realization of all the transcendental features: sat, cit and ananda (eternity, knowledge, and bliss) in complete vigraha (form).
So the impersonalist philosophy is part of the Supreme Absolute Truth, and when a sincere impersonalist hears about Kṛṣṇa from Vedic evidence, he at once accepts the complete Absolute Truth. For example, when the four Kumaras, the mental sons of Lord Brahma, met Lord Visnu, they immediately became devotees.
tasyaravinda-nayanasya padaravinda-
kinjalka-misra-tulasi-makaranda-vayuh
antar-gatah sva-vivarena cakara tesam
sanksobham aksara-jusam api citta-tanvoh“Even though they were attached to the impersonal Brahman understanding, when the breeze carrying the aroma of tulasi leaves from the toes of the lotus feet of the Personality of Godhead entered the nostrils of those sages, they experienced a change both in body and in mind.” [Srimad-Bhagavatam 3.15.44]
Sincere Brahmavadis like the Kumaras accept Kṛṣṇa, but the Mayavadis do not accept. They think that Vyasadeva, the author of the Vedas, has made some mistake, and so they concoct their own interpretation of Vedanta-sutra instead of accepting Vyasadeva’s own commentary, Srimad-Bhagavatam or the Esoteric Teaching.
They conveniently ignore the contradiction inherent in their reasoning: If Vyasadeva is capable of making mistakes, then why base your philosophy on his Vedanta-sutra? So they misuse the authority of Vyasadeva to construct an artificial interpretation of Vedanta based on taking certain statements in the Upanisads out of context.
The Mayavadis imagine that when God appears in His personal form, this form is made of material energy. In other words, God becomes subject to, or covered by, material illusion just like an ordinary man. They cannot explain how the Supreme Brahman becomes affected by matter. And they cannot understand the first truth of Brahma-samhita, that Kṛṣṇa’s body is completely spiritual, sac-cid-ananda-vigraha. Therefore Kṛṣṇa says,
avajananti mam mudha
manusim tanum asritam
param bhavam ajananto
mama bhuta-mahesvaram“Fools deride Me when I descend in the human form. They do not know My transcendental nature as the Supreme Lord of all that be.” [Bhagavad-gita 9.11]
Here Kṛṣṇa directly calls the Mayavadis fools and asses, mudha; Kṛṣṇa is our Master, so we also have to repeat the same. It will not help us to avoid the issue, or cover it over out of some misguided sentiment for political correctness. The Mayavadi philosophy is offensive, because it covers the intrinsically personal nature of God with a concocted misinterpretation of the original Vedic philosophy, and says that God is fallible and subject to being covered by illusion. This is ontologically, philosophically, theologically and morally unacceptable.
The Mayavadi theory sounds very reasonable, but actually it is based on ontologically inappropriate false logic: the Mayavadis liken Brahman to an ocean of consciousness, and the individual soul to a drop that has become separated from that ocean. Then they go on to suggest that when the drop merges back into the ocean, it loses its separate identity and becomes part of the original ocean of spirit.
This analogy is ontologically incorrect because Brahman cannot be split up into pieces. Brahman is always and unconditionally one. Yet at the same time, each spiritual living entity is eternally individual, and the Lord is also an eternal individual. Thus the Lord and the living entities are inconceivably, simultaneously one and different. This is contrary to the kind of material logic we use to reason about material objects such as sticks and stones, but it is entirely correct when applied to spirit. And if you want to argue that this logic is non-standard, quantum mechanics uses much stranger logic, so what is the problem? It is the truth.
The real truth is that God is fundamentally personal, but He also has an impersonal aspect, Brahman. The impersonal Brahman is subordinate to His personal form, just as the sunshine is subordinate to the sun itself. The living entities are simultaneously one with, and different from the Lord. This philosophy, known as acintya-bhedabheda tattva, was taught by Lord Caitanya to His direct disciples, and it is the same philosophy expressed in Vyasadeva’s commentary on his own Vedanta-sutra: Srimad-Bhagavatam.
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