The purpose of the historical quest

The evolution of religious ideas

As I return to this theme of svakīyā-parakīyā and the research work I did while doing my doctoral dissertation in connection with the current work on Kṛṣṇa-sandarbha, some thoughts have been coming to me about the general thrust of my own thought about the history of religions and what I see as being the purpose of my own intellectual quest in this regard.

Krishna consciousness, like any other thought system, is based in positive principles that are universal and should be exportable to other religions and ideologies. In other words, they are translatable.

Now in order to translate religious experience from one linguistic and symbolic conversation, often one that has been going on for thousands of years, first one must discover what that experience is, not just by looking at the entire complex in isolation, but also by looking at the universal experience of humanity.

This is the logic behind the study of comparative religion, just as it is with comparative linguistics. The Chomskian theory of a natural linguistic hardware in the brain can be exported to thinking about religion also. And such a language includes atheism, as that is part of the conversation, which is the question of life's ultimate meaning or meanings.

The first thing to do in order to pass from the relative to the universal where religion is concerned, is to dissolve literal beliefs into symbolic understandings. The symbols themselves may or may not easily communicable or exportable because of their cultural or historical anchoredness, though by their very nature they do touch some deep aspect of human consciousness, but as soon as one insists on the absoluteness of a certain symbol system, one automatically undercuts the sense of unity, i.e. love.

This is one of the reasons why the analogy with language is accurate. Nearly all religions have a sacred language, the loss of which has been damaging to the sense of mystery that is an integral part of spiritual life. This loss has come about in the interests of democratizing religious experience and participation and as a rebellion against the religious professionals elites. These elites were required to communicate that to the non-professionals at whatever level they were capable of doing, but people feel, justifiably, that mediated religious experience is not direct experience. The problem is getting to the direct experience.

At any rate, to translate jala to "water" we have to dissolve the phonemes of the first word, look to the significand, and then find the appropriate equivalent in the second language.

But as soon as one undercuts literal beliefs, then that necessarily means changing the very tradition itself, since all traditions seem to have their beginnings in direct experience and literal belief, and then develop philosophical and theological systems in order to discover exactly what it was that was being believed in, and then to either protect and defend it, or supersede or embellish it. The goal is to further the conversation so that the truth hidden away in it is indeed that Truth in which I can believe.

This process is observable historically, and indeed, this is the purpose of the current ongoing discussion on this blog about svakīyā and parakīyā. What is the meaning of this debate? Why is Jiva Goswami so conflicted and yet so driven to bring Radha and Krishna together, to not allow them to be forever separated, as the cruel Krishna of the Bhagavatam seems to wish, making empty promises, "I will return, I will return." (āyāsya iti dyotakaiḥ).

In my opinion, it really is about understanding love in this world. The tradition itself points to human love as the highest value, as the locus of the Divine, and so the conversation that is taking place is about the dynamics of love, as humanity experiences them, and is furthermore an attempt to deepen the understanding of love in such a way as to enhance humanity's individual and collective experience thereof. In other words, it is evolutionary, which means there is a traceable historical development of the interpretation of symbols.

And if you don't understand the historical ground where a particular seed sprouted, warts and all, i.e., in what might be considered a "backward" or "less-evolved" culture, as it were, then you will never clearly understand the plant, nor fully enjoy its flowers or fruits.

The insight of our version of devotion to God, i.e, religion, arises from direct experience of Love of God. This is where our microscopes and telescopes are focused. This is where the seed of revelation first comes into view.

Now how do we view its growth and transformation? A seed that grows in a dark room does not flourish like one in a natural environment, or an enhanced one. So we examine the seed (the vision of pure love of God) and its manifestations and subsequent historical transformations. Has it remained true to its destiny?

But whether we accept all change as degradation and loss of pristine archaic primitive purity, or as the divine hand of evolution -- and "aren't we all so grand and wise and enlightened nowadays!" -- change happens. Call it adjusting to conditions at the worst. But in our particular case, that of Gaudiya Vaishnavism, we have been told a few things about the specific glory of a historic event, namely the appearance of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, whose inner world was known to Rupa Goswami. And by extension, we incorporate a Chaitanya world, and a Rupa-Raghunath world, and a Radha-Krishna world in this complex.

So what is the nature of post-Chaitanya Vaishnavism, and what is the necessity or importance of pre-Chaitanya Vaishnavism or Hinduism? Do not many things get rejected when we say things like na dharmaṁ nādharmaṁ śruti-gaṇa-niruktaṁ kila kuru and so on?

All the scriptures are about rejecting other parts of the scriptures. Gita tells you to revamp your understanding of yajna and not to bother with the old, superficial understanding. Mahaprabhu says eho bāhya āge koho ār. This means that choices are being made and certain things are considered necessary for a particular path of sādhanā and others are considered problematic and create obstacles.

Of course, obstacles of various sorts must be present so that every variety of material temptation can be evoked, but whereas the purpose of sādhanā, if there is one underlying discovery that is at the basis of the whole Indian system or approach, it is that you must be ekānta, ekāgra. One-pointed. You pick a sādhanā and you follow through on it. And you focus so closely, like Arjuna and the target bird's eye, that you see nothing else.

If your goal is madhura-rasa, then madhura-rasa is your sādhanā. Madhura-rasa is your object of study. Because that is the empirically verifiable source of our minds and bodies.

That is what Rupa Goswami did: He showed the purpose of eroticism as a path to the divine. A trained and pure eroticism, that eventually becomes so refined that it permeates every corner of the universe, but that is the subject, that is the means and that is the end. Prema.

Borrowing, influences

But the point is that borrowing does take place. Some things are hard to place exactly, i.e., clear and direct lines of influence are not readily available. For instance, few Hindu believers would enthusiastically admit to Muslim influence, and yet the Muslim presence in India for 700 years would necessarily have resulted in cross currents of influence. We readily hail "Muslim poets writing about Krishna" but what direct and indirect responses were there? The entire bhakti movement can and indeed SHOULD be seen as a reaction to both Islam AND Brahminical orthodoxy. In a sense, their respective critiques of each other have both been embraced, especially in the nirguṇa schools.

So now the goal is this: Having experienced the Krishna consciousness movement as it appears to us in the late 20th century and early 21st century in Western countries, which messages are ours? Whose insights can we use? What WAS the intent of the Goswamis? Can it be distilled and essentialized without losing its cultural vitality, and if it can't, then what are we holding on to?

And of those above questions, the first one which I have tried to deal with is, "What is the evolutionary flow of the Vaishnava religion, and what is its direction?"

My answer is that it is Prema. It flows towards prema.

And therefore the goal is to understand according to our acharyas what is pure prema and how does that get implemented in practice.

Then once we know that, then we can apply it in foreign environments (beginning with our own brains). Then we can start to see how prema is the universal human goal into which all human beings have some insight and therefore can make some offerings to the universal human quest for prema, from which we, as participants in this universal quest, can borrow.