Jagat

Several people commented on my recent note on Rupa Goswami and History , that they could not see any reason for a conflict between the empirical approach and the devotional or spiritual life. On the surface, it seems reasonable to think that there should be no conflict, but those who are on the inside know that historical and other kinds of research do in fact conflict with what the shastras and traditional gurus with a literal belief in them say or have said. And this leads to doubt and schism. And if the doubter perishes ( saṁśayātmā vinaśyati ), then this is certainly going to create problems. In questions related to the past, there is no better illustration of this than the conflicting versions of paramparā history. The first problem is that if one is bound out of loyalty to a tradition to ignore empirical data or evidence, then certainly one's commitment to Truth, written large, is compromised. This devalues one's God-given intelligence and one develops a habit of ...

In the FB discussions that followed the posting of Sex and Bhakti Yoga, parts I and II , many objections were presented, some of which I responded to and have since cross-posted to this blog, often with corrections, elaborations, and embellishments. This was partly possible due to my being in Rishikesh where I have been for the last two weeks having a good meditation refresher, sitting for three or four hours a day. I like the ashram lifestyle. This ashram is pretty loose in its discipline, but still I like the framework of a sattvika spiritual community. I have been giving one class a day on "Bhakti, rasa and psychology," trying to find ways of communicating my ideas to a group of yogis. Because my philosophy is a bit of a hybrid, as the title of the lectures itself indicates, what is accessible to one audience is outside the realm of comprehension for others. Looking back on the two weeks I see that (as one of the students actually told me) I am usually trying to ...