Prabhupada

I have just sent the following message to a YouTuber who is the follower of Prabhupada, a disciple of Hare Krishna:

Please don't think I am attacking you or mean you any wrong, I was listening to the Radha Krishna Temple album at home and Googled it, which led me to your YouTube channel. But after a brief visit to a couple of the links, I was left with a few questions I needed to pose to you concerning certain elements of your views. Furthermore, I like to be able to engage in philosophical exchanges as each one assists my comprehension and experience of this life, helping me to relate and empathise with others around the world and make sense of my observations and contemplations on life.

Please could you explain to me why you consider this enlightened man to be a divinity? Surely all that he is, is a human being who has attained a level of existence which allows him to glimpse at a clearer understanding of life above that which is not even contemplated by billions of closed, lost people around the world?

It always troubles me when I encounter beings who allow themselves to be revered as "gods," regardless of whether their intentions are for the good or for other ulterior motives. Jesus Christ; the Dalai lama; Halie Selassie; Sathya Sai Baba; His "holiness" the Pope. etc. etc.

I personally don't accept or believe any form of god exists simply because the concept requires believers to employ blind faith above everything else. Placing their lives and their "fates" in the hands of something which will never physically intervene to make any difference. Each beings' experiences and understanding of life is relative to that specific individual, none of us knows what is inside the head or heart of anyone else. A snail's concept of life is poles apart from from a bird's and the same is true for everything else. None of us can ever truly "know" what it is to be the other.

'Humanity's' understanding or concept of "god-head" is more or less the same regardless of which particular religion they follow: An otherworldly extra-dimensional life force which is responsible for and determines the existence of everything else in the universe. A creator or originator with some kind of divine plan or purpose for everything and everyone, who resides in another dimension considered to be a form of "heaven" or "Nirvana," where each of us might go if we have devoted ourselves freely to its prescribed subjection and oppression of the true self.

Maybe Prabhupada is different and the teachings you and he follow do not require acceptance of this form or mode of theology, however, I did read that he is not in agreement with Darwin's theory of evolution, claiming that it could not have occurred through an act of random chance. To which I would ask the question, "Why not?" Why is it not possible, if he himself has found a degree of enlightenment (and through doing so altered and shaped his own existence), for every other living thing which possesses a life force to achieve the same? Obviously this would be relative to the individual life force and subject to a myriad alternative experiential processes, but if each life force, after having negotiated an apparently random event, then retains the experience and conveys it to others within its species during its lifetime, so that they may prepare themselves for a similar occurrence happening to them, then wouldn't that original random event be the impetus for a "change" in the whole species over many generations?

It would not be enough to make claims that, "Maybe the event was not random because it was orchestrated by "God" in order to initiate the alterations and conditions needed for the life forms to continue to propagate and evolve," or, "Through reincarnation, the "Soul" or "Spirit" retains its past life experiences which in turn become the vehicle for change and the impetus for evolution to take place" because that would require the above mentioned act of faith and empirical scientific proof that everything is in fact ordered and predictable, which it is not. Furthermore, if the "Soul" is eternal and it carries its past experiences and knowledge through with it, then wouldn't that preclude the need for any new "souls" to come in to "being" after a set amount of time?

As a philosophical Taoist I can accept that certain "energies" are constant, after all it has been scientifically proven that matter can not be entirely destroyed, because of this I also ascribe to the notion that these "energies" become "re-cycled" or "reused" and "re-formed," however, my senses will not allow for me to accept that whole entities remain intact in the event of death, then proceed to take another "host" and get "re-born." Following "The Way" one becomes enlightened to the notion that our brief existence is the one and only opportunity to embrace the challenges and demands of life, our opportunity to be a living example of spiritual evolution. Through our interaction with others and by the choices we make given our relative circumstances, we alone have the ability to determine our "fate" and the direction of our lives. Whether we are born rich or poor; in England or in India; whatever the random circumstance into which we are born, we alone choose to be who we are.

As for trying to make guesses about whether there really is an afterlife or not, isn't it wiser just to accept and make the most of what we have in the physical world, rather than expending energy on preparing for the "after-life" based on divine conjecture?

I'm sorry if my arguments are clumsy and ill formed, hopefully, if you are willing and able to respond to this message, I will be able to redress this.

I will leave you with a chapter from "Tao Te Ching" which I feel is potentially hypocritical given my ramblings above, however, it may provide you with a little more insight as to why I am intuitively suspicious of organised religion and troubled by human "divinities," it is not specifically directed at anyone in particular,


71

Not-knowing is true knowledge.
Presuming to know is a disease.
First realise that you are sick;
then you can move toward health

The Master is his own physician,
He has healed himself of all knowing.
Thus he is truly whole.

Lao Tzu.