How Vedic knowledge is understood

[Guest guest]

Vedic knowledge is transcendental and cannot be understood by mundane

educational procedures. One can understand the Vedic mantras only by the

grace of the Lord and the spiritual master (yasya deve para bhaktir yatha

deve tatha gurau).

 

>>> Ref. VedaBase => Iso mantra 18

[Guest guest]

achintya, "Bhakti Vikasa Swami"

<Bhakti.Vikasa.Swami wrote:

>

> Vedic knowledge is transcendental and cannot be understood by

mundane

> educational procedures. One can understand the Vedic mantras only

by the

> grace of the Lord and the spiritual master (yasya deve para

bhaktir yatha

> deve tatha gurau).

>

> >>> Ref. VedaBase => Iso mantra 18

 

As a follow-up, I just wanted to post something on how Prabhupada

and Shrila Bhaktisiddhanta seem to use expressions

like "transcendental" vs "mundane education", and "accepting the

grace of guru", etc, if I understood these correctly.

 

From the essay "Humbler than Grass" by Shrila Bhaktisiddhanta:

http://www.harekrsna.com/philosophy/bmgs/acaryas/bhaktisiddhanta/writ

ings/humble1.htm

 

"A submissive temper with unconditional surrender on the part of a

disciple to the All-love will invoke His mercy and He will

condescend to fulfill our prayer. The cogent but loving potency of

the All-love will then be operating on us to pacify the turmoil

arising out of our baneful activities. The Preceptor will never let

us fall into the extensive snare of maya as he has no ulterior

motive to dissuade us from having a sure access to the

Transcendental treasures. He will show us for our inspection or

examination a comparative chart of the magnitude of time, space and

entity."

 

The last sentence is a reference to ontological knowledge. That

seems to be at least part of the grace transmitted, and it can

be "felt" (not just artificially memorized) *only* in a mood of

humble surrender and enthusiastic service.

 

Similarly, a quote from Shrila Prabhupada in the Preface to the

Shrimad Bhagavatam (*Delhi* Editions) --

http://krishna.tv/srila-prabhupadas-original-delhi-bhagavatam-set-p-

988.html

 

"The human society, at the present moment, is not in the darkness of

oblivion. It has made rapid progress in the field of material

comforts of life, education and economic development of the entire

world. But it suffers a pin-prick somewhere in the social body at

large and therefore there is large scale quarrel even on less

important issue. Therefore there is the want of the clue as to how

they can become one in peace, friendship and prosperity by the

common cause. Srimad Bhagwatam will fill up this gap by ontological

aspect of human education. It is therefore a cultural presentation

for re-spiritualisation of the entire human society."

 

The above para seems to be suggesting that the Shrimad Bhagavatam

will add to the existing mundane education of modern society. That

additional transcendental knowledge is in the form of

an "ontological aspect".

 

An example of a specific quotes from Prabhupada about what exactly

is wrong with mundane education --

 

"This is the defect of modern education. We are educated in a way in

which we have misunderstood, This is my body. This is my hand. This

is my leg. This is my country. This is my mother. This is my father.

This is my school. This is my, I know. I have the concept of my. But

who is conceiving my? We have no information where it is. This is

the greatest drawback of modern education, that not only in your

country or any country they have completely neglected what is meant

by God." (680611LE.Mon tape)

 

The above is again about evaluation of objects of experience, i.e.,

the meaning we assign to them. This is a function of our ontology.

 

Prabhupada's excoriating criticism of the modern mundane educational

system is matched by that of Alfred Korzybski (died 1950). I am

posting this sample quote from his landmark "Science and Sanity":

http://www.esgs.org/uk/art/sands.htm

 

"There is no doubt that a civilized society needs

some 'morals', 'ethics', etc. In a general theory of evaluation and

sanity, we must consider seriously such problems, if we are to be

sane humans at all. Theory and practice show that healthy, well-

balanced people are naturally 'moral' and 'ethical', unless their

educations have twisted their types of evaluations. In general

semantics, we do not "preach" 'morality' or 'ethics', as such, but

we train students in consciousness of abstracting, consciousness of

the multiordinal mechanisms of evaluation, relational orientations,

etc., which bring about cortico-thalamic integration, and then as a

result, 'morality', 'ethics', awareness of social responsibility,

etc., follow automatically. Unfortunately, our educational systems

are unaware of, or even negativistic toward, such neuro-semantic and

neuro-linguistic issues. These are sad observations to be made about

our present educational systems.

 

"May I suggest that readers consult 'Apes, Men and Morons' and 'Why

Men Behave Like Apes' by Earnest E. Hooton....and many other studies

of this kind. They might then more cleary understand how the

aristotelian type of education leads to the humanly harmful, gross,

macroscopic, brutalizing, biological, animalistic types of

orientations which are shown today to be humanly inadequate. These

breed such 'fuhrers' as different Hitlers, Mussolinis, Stalins,

etc., whether in political, financial, industrial, scientific,

medical, educational, or even publishing, etc., fields..."

 

"If we train in methods which in principle lead to splitting the

personality, we obviously train or prepare the ground for demential

praecox or schizophrenia, which very often involves a split

personality. At any rate, it does not seem to be advisable for

sanity, and so proper evvaluation of 'facts' and 'reality', to

trainn our children in delusional methods. Personally, the author is

always profoundly shocked that parents, who after all care for their

children, can tolerate educators, physicians, scientists, etc., who

train their children in such pernicious and hopelessly antiquated

methods. I also always wonder whether educators, physicians,

scientists and other professionals realize what harm they can do by

disregarding factors of sanity, or by ignoring them."

 

Yours in service,

Carl