Violence and the Age of Kali part I

Violence and the Age of Kali

Puranic Chronology and Prophecies

Thousands of years ago, prophecies in India tell us of the Iron Age, the Age of Kali. It was predicted that this age would take millions of years to unfold. Given the free-fall of human society into terrorism, violence, sexual decadence and ignorance it may be that this time frame has been compressed, collapsed into only a thousand years.

According to scholars who cite the Surya-Siddhanta, Kali-yuga began at midnight on February 18th 3102 BC. In his Krisha-Saṁhita, which I take to be authoritative, Bhaktivinoda Ṭhakura traces the beginning of the age of Kali to the battle of Kurukṣetra, which occurred according his his calculations, around 1,829 B.C. Bhaktivedānta Swāmī puts the duration of Kali-yuga at 432,000 years. The Mahabharata war takes place at the juncture of yugas, where the ancient golden age of Dwapara-yuga transitions into the iron age of Kali.

Prophecies of Vyāsa

Vyāsa describes the dark omens of the age of Kali in the Bhishma Parva, prior to the battle. His prophecies are as dark as anything Biblical:

“No one can halt the events which are about to unfold. The slaughter will be great.

“Look around you. You can see the omens of terror. Great birds of prey now rest, waiting on the treetops. Herons perch quietly and watch. Vultures eye the field, hungry for carrion.Brave lords, kings and princes armed with steel shall be struck down. I see them slain and lying on the earth. These visions possess me when at night I sleep.  I hear the fierce cries of tigers and wild boars engaged in fighting. Statues and images of gods and goddesses laugh at me in the night. Sometimes these statues vomit blood and tumble to the earth. All these are inauspicious signs, omens of grief and destruction.”

"'O King, unbeaten the battle drums sound. Riderless chariots move without their horses. Kokil birds and watercocks sing funeral dirges and parrots chant hyms to the dead in Sanskrit rhyme. I see cavalry soldiers in chain mail running in terror, covered with blood, crying in the dark.

“I see hordes of locusts darken the skies with clouds of bloody insects. The clouds themselves shower blood and flesh and dust. I see the inauspicious signs among the stars that herald the coming of the age of Kali.  The moon and stars and Saturn juxtaposed in strange positions. Then while the sky is cloudless and calm I hear a terrible roar. Cows weep to see the coming of the Kali age when their kind will be slaughtered in multitudes. Strange mutations and unnatural births befoul the earth. Cows give birth to asses and women give birth to monsters.

“Man-eating birds and beasts feast together. Deformed monsters with three horns, or with four eyes, or five legs utter unholy cries of lust and terror.The mare brings forth the calf, the dog is mother to the jackal, and the parrots curse in weird and foreign tongues. All these presage the coming of a new era: the time of Kali, the iron age.

"'O King, the omens of the downfall of civilization are everywhere. The lowest of men and women dance and sing, intoxicated. Infants draw images of death and destruction in the dust. Children attack one another with sticks and clubs, killing their playmates. Lotuses grow on trees. Strong winds blow through the earth raising dust storms. The earth trembles and quakes, while the black planet Rahu courses towards the sun. The constellations tell the destruction of the Kurus."Strange changes are seen in the crops: weird mutations in their size and growth. The barley-stalk has five ears and paddy-stalk a hundred. The cows, when milked, tremble and produce only blood. Weapons glow. The archer's bows are radiant as the sun, and iron arms blaze like silver."

Vyasa continued, "It is clear to me after seeing these signs, O King, that terrible events shall now unfold, even the end of the world. In this battle between the Kurus and the Pandavas, there will be a river of blood that will carry the warriors flags as if they were rafts floating on the waters.  I have seen strange and monstrous birds, their beaks blazing like fire, moaning tortured cries foreboding evil. I saw a one-eyed, one winged, one legged vulture hovering in the night screaming in wrath. Those who heard its shrieks vomited blood. Rough winds portending danger blow throughout the land.

Vyasa continued, "All these signs and omens foretell a great and tragic war. The great rivers are flowing in opposite directions and are polluted with dark blood. Showers of meteors course the heavens. When people go out of their houses to meet their peers they carry arms. Fear is upon the land. And darkness.  The great rishis have said that when such signs are present, the earth drinks the blood of thousands of kings. Your sons will not escape the slaughter."

The Iron Age of Kali is supposed to last 432,000 years according to the ancient Puranic Chronology. But what if these seers were calculating according to linear time? The ancient prophets of the Puranas may have looked at the trends that were current in their time and foreseen the future according to those trends. Having seen men armed with steel and arrows and the dire tendencies of the age of iron, they predicted that the descent into darkness and decadence would last 432,000 years.

But what if time frame for the Age of Kali accelerates in exponential fashion? What if the progress into darkness and destruction moves at an ever-accelerating rate according to mankind’s own race to violence and genocide?

Geometric Progression of Kali-yuga

As destructive as was the Kurukṣetra war thousands of years ago, the technology of war was nowhere near as advanced as it is today when it is possible to incinerate hundreds of thousands of human beings in an instant as was done at Hiroshima, Dresden, and the fire-bombings of Tokyo during World War II. As insane a despot as Kaṁsa, the would-be assassin of Krishna, plotted to kill the children of Mathura. But even Kaṁsa himself would have been appalled at the insanity of Hitler and Himmler and their Schutzstaffel putting millions of Jews and Ukrainians to death.

Could it be that the exponential advances in the technology of war and death have accelerated the time-line of Kali-yuga beyond what was once contemplated by the ancients? We live in a time of exponential or geometric growth.

Exponential Progression

The Chess Game

Once upon a time, the story goes, there was a king in ancient India. This king had everything: marble palaces, silk garments, golden goblets, a harem of beautiful wives to satisfy his every whim, horses and elephants, and wise ministers. And yet the king was bored. He no longer found pleasure in life. He had lost interest in his life of luxury. Nothing interested him.

One morning as he was walking through his royal gardens, he sighed, “Alas.”

A slave who worked in the king’s gardens heard him and said, “Excuse me, Maharaja,” but why do you sigh, “Alas,” to which the king replied, “I’m bored.”

The slave smiled. “If it please your majesty, I can help you,” he said.

“You?” said the king. “How could you possibly help me?”

The slave said “Follow me.”

He led the king to his quarters and showed the king a small chessboard. He showed the king the pieces: the horse, the tower, the bishop,the queen. He walked the king through the moves and taught him the game of chess. The king was intrigued.

After a few days, he commanded the royal architect to build him a fine chess set with pieces in ivory and ebony. He soon taught the ministers to play the game. He found, as did the 19th century grand-master Siegbert Tarrasch, that chess, like love, like music, has the power to make men happy. He enjoyed the intellectual challenge and found that the men of his court were equally charmed. This game, a nonviolent imitation of war, became a fashion. Soon everyone was playing chess. The king was no longer bored.

One day, pleased with himself, the king returned to where the slave was working in the garden.

“Slave,” said the king. “You have given me something truly delightful. I should like to reward you. What can I give you?”

Now the slave was no fool. He looked up from his gardening trowel and smiled. He held a grain of rice in his hand.

“Oh, king,” said the slave. “My reward is simple. All is ask is that you lay a grain of rice on the first square of the chessboard. On the second square, lay two grains of rice and on the third square, four. Continue until you reach the last square on the board. This is all I ask in return.”

The king laughed. “Your humility surprises me,” he said. “Indeed I am prepared to give you something in charity, my friend. An elephant; a beautiful wife. A treasure in gold if you like. Do not be so paltry in your request. Ask for something important.”

The slave shook his head and said, “Please indulge me.”

And so the king began the task.

Double it.

1 grain on the first square, 2 grains on the second. 4 grains on the 3rd square. And so he continued. 8,16,32,64,128,512, 1024 grains of rice. On the 12th square he found that a kilo of rice would not fit on the chessboard. But he continued. For the 13th square square he needed 2 kilos, then again 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 512, 1024 kilos on the 21st square. Very well. A ton of rice. He needed 2 elephants to move a ton of rice.

The king summoned his ministers and elephants. They watched as the elephants multiplied.

The 22nd square on the chess-board required 4 elephants. 2 tons of rice, 4 tons of rice, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, a thousand tons of rice. For the 30th square on the chessboard two thousand elephants were required.

As the elephants thundered across the earth with their terrible load of all the harvested rice in the kingdom, the king knew he was defeated.

Still, the chessboard demanded its tribute. 4,000 tons, 8,000 tons, 16,000 tons...There weren’t enough elephants in the kingdom, nor enough rice to satisfy the slave’s simple request.

With this, the king kneeled before the slave. The ministers bowed.

“You are a man of great wisdom,” said the king. “You rule.”

And so, bestowing the kingdom on the slave, the king retired to spend his days playing chess with his favorite queen.

I’ve always loved this story, which describes the origins of chess, which may have come from Persia or India according to the story-teller. The story illustrates many points. the charm of chess, Hegel’s slave-master analogy, where the slave becomes the master.

But even more fascinating is the question of exponential or geometric progression.

The problem may be solved using simple addition. With 64 squares on a chessboard, if the number of grains doubles on successive squares, then the sum of grains on all 64 squares is: 1 + 2 + 4 + 8... and so forth for the 64 squares. The total number of grains equals 18,446,744,073,709,551,615, much higher than what most intuitively expect. The exercise of working through this problem may be used to explain and demonstrate exponents and the quick growth of exponential and geometric sequences.

The problem warns of the dangers of treating large but finite resources as infinite, i.e., of ignoring distant but absolute and inevitable constraints.

Astronomer Carl Sagan wrote when referring to the fable, "Exponentials can't go on forever, because they will gobble up everything.” Exponential growth never can go on very long in a finite space with finite resources.

An important area of exponential growth is technology. If you’re reading this article on the internet, you might find that your PC has an Intel chip. Intel’s founder was an engineer named Gordon Moore. In 1965 Moore wrote a paper suggesting that given the pace of technological innovation, the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit increases exponentially, doubling every two years. Known as “Moore’s Law,” this principle states that engineering and scientific progress in the realm of IT does not increase arithmetically, but geometrically, constantly doubly. According to “Moore’s Law,” computer processing speed and memory double almost every two years. Strangely, the computing industry has kept pace with Moore’s Law over the last 50 years and is expected to continue to do so in the near future.

I myself remember when I began using a computer in 1982, in San Jose California. It was a computer-driven typesetting system marketed by Mergenthaler called the “Linoterm.” The computer itself was the size of a large desk and sported 16k of memory. The monitor displayed three lines of green phosphorescent type on a black screen. “Debugging” meant opening a huge steel panel and removing the transistor boards, blowing compressed air inside the units and removing moths that got caught inside the fan so the CPU wouldn’t overheat.

Technological Progress in the Age of Kali

At Guardian of Devotion Press, we were amazed by the first Macintosh. 128k with a black and white screen. A year later, we saved up and bought the 512k upgrade. Soon we were looking at megabytes of memory and storage and the old Linoterm machine looked like a dinosaur. We had a hard time selling it for salvage. 1 Megabyte became 2, then 4 and before long 512 megabytes was outdated. Now we speak in terms of Gigabytes and Tetrabytes. Where 16k of memory once meant going to the bank to discuss financing, a fingernail sized USD memory holds 128 gigabytes and sells for a few dollars.

Gordon Moore, Intel Scientist, author of "Moore's Law of Exponential Growth"

Ray Kurzweil invented the OCR reader, as well as advanced speech recognition and text to speech technology. He expands Moore’s law to technology in general. In his “Law of Accelerating Returns,” Kurzweil tells us that with the geometric progression of technological innovation as a given, humankind will not experience a mere 100 years of growth in the twenty-first century. 




If one applies Kurzweil’s historical exponential view we will experience more like 20,000 years of progress in the next 100 years. Not only do science and engineering progress geometrically, but the pace of technological progress itself increases geometrically as well.

Kurzweil says, “An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense “intuitive linear” view. So we won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century — it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today’s rate). The “returns,” such as chip speed and cost-effectiveness, also increase exponentially. There’s even exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth. Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to The Singularity — technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light.”

Kurzweil argues that progress is not linear, but exponential. He cites for example, the genome project: “Scientists who have not studied technology trends look at what's going on, they take the current pace or progress and it's just obvious it's going to take hundreds of years. I mean for example, half way through the genome project, 7 years into a 15 year project we had finished 1 percent. And the critics that were in the main stream said "I told you, this is going to take 700 years." My response was "no, we are almost done, 1% in a geometric progression is only 7 doublings from a 100%."

Facebook was founded in 2004 with a handful of users. Doubling exponentially, Facebook is now a household name, reaching out and touching over 900 million lives. 


You-tube was unknown when it began in 1980. Now it’s not uncommon for a video to go viral and reach millions of viewers.

Exponential growth: 
Population Explosion and Pandemics in Kali-yuga

Kurzweil’s thesis is fascinating, since it posits the need to think in terms of geometric growth instead of linear growth.

Another example is world pandemics or epidemics such as the recent influenza outbreak that began in Mexico with a single patient, a boy in rural Veracruz. Within weeks there were cases reported in China, in Germany, and in the United States.

Population growth is another nonlinear growth problem. If we calculate the rate of growth of today’s population, we can project figures for the next 5 or 10 years. The problem is that people reproduce. So an increased and reproducing population doesn’t grow in a linear way. While world population growth is not entirely exponential since wars, famine, and disease have a weaning influence, world population has doubled twice since World War II. Before World War Two, world population was calculated at about 2 billion. By the 1970s it had reached 4 billion. We are are the verge of reaching 8 billion by 2017.

The exponential growth in population puts pressure on our eco-system. Oil production and consumption has doubled and doubled again since the 1950s. More people use more resources. Strain on resources increases as the world population doubles and doubles.

Oddly nothing is done.

In ancient times, when riddled by Yamaraja about the “most wonderful thing,” Yudhisthira replied, “The most wonderful thing is that although everywhere people are dying every second, no one believes that he will die.”

In these times, as we walk through the steel walls of parked cars, gasping automobile exhaust, no one seriously considers that car production should be halted. I’m old enough to remember photos of Beijing showing thousands of people on bicycles in Tiananmen Square. The message was, “In our cooperative society, we don’t need cars. We’re environment friendly.” And in India, while notoriously overcrowded, the trains served millions as transportation. 

Now cheap cars are coming online for the people of China and India.

 That’s great news for the Chinese and Indians who are tired of walking and riding bicycles. Not such good news for the planet, considering what happens if we add an additional 2 or 3 billion cars to the mix. How long can we keep milking the planet?

 Won’t Bhumi get tired of being over-exploited by all those overheated engines? How can you suck all the oil out of the planet and burn it and not change the climate? The exponential growth in exploitation is impossible to sustain.

Kali-yuga marches on.

Exponential growth in Violence

And yet exponential growth is also found in violence, war, and mayhem. 

Nowhere is it easier to see the exponential acceleration of the age of darkness and ignorance than in the culture of violence. H. Rap Brown once said, “Violence is as American as Cherry Pie.”

But violence is not an exclusively American product. Around the world violence is ratcheting up. Low-level conflicts involving 3 or 4 killings a day gradually become middle-level conflicts without our even noticing. Change comes about gradually, and like the frog in the boiling water we don’t notice the rise in temperature until it’s too late. Now we are engulfed in violence everywhere, but we hardly notice.

We have been conditioned by violent movies, violent video games, violent TV programs to accept the new waves of murder and mayhem that wash over us as the “new normal.”

For the first time since the 1920s the New York Times published an editorial on the Front Page yesterday, in response to the latest brutal waves of killing. It said, “It is a moral outrage and national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency.” But a newspaper’s editorial is unlikely to change anything. Rather, frightened citizens will no doubt arm themselves against these threats of terrorism and random shootings. Driven by fear, more people than ever will buy more guns, more bullets, more assault weapons. Exponential growth.

Politicians advise “toughness.” “Bomb the shit out of them.” And goaded and gulled by their incendiary words citizens support more violence as retaliation. But violence begets violence in a vicious circle of blood and death.

Mono mythical Hollywood: Violence is Beautiful

Joseph Campbell used to teach his students about the “Monomyth.” His theory of mythology was that there is a certain congruence or resonance between the different stories that human society tells itself over the ages. We find truth in the stories that we tell that illustrate deeper realities. His views were siezed upon by Hollywood myth-makers and condensed into story-telling formulas that could yield easily reproducible block-buster movies that would sell tickets to millions of movie-goers. 

They began telling the same story over and over and over: “Violence is good. Violence is beautiful. Violence will free your soul. Violence is spiritual.” In action movie after action movie, from “Rocky,” to “The Terminator,” to the “Hunger Games,” or “Star Wars,” even “Harry Potter,” the hero’s journey describes an arc from innocence to awareness colored by his acceptance of the use of power and violence to achieve his ends. But by seizing on this one aspect of the heroe’s journey and negating the true work involved in any spiritual path, mythology becomes propaganda promoting exploitation, consumerism with violence as the mends to the ends.

Karmic Boomerang

How can it be any wonder that, like a karmic boomerang, violence comes back to haunt us?

The recent shootings in San Bernardino will be forgotten as quickly as the murders in Paris or the killings in Columbine. They are part of the fabric of the society in which we now live.

I recently saw the Pope ask, “How is this not World War III?” War in Russia and Ukraine, War in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Kurdistan, terror wars everywhere, drug wars everywhere. How is this not World War III?

Here in Mexico the three secrets of Fatima and the apocalyptic visions seen by Portugese shepherds are given currency by the Catholics. The virgin who appeared to them is known as Our Lady of Fatima. The prophecies predicted among other things World War I, World War II and the assasination attempts on the life of Pope John Paul. Some Christians believe that Ezekiel prophecies that Persia, (Iran) and Magog (Russia) with a group of allies including Turkey, Libya, and Sudan will attack and invade Israel. In Ezekiel 38-39 the Bible warns this coming war between Iran and Israel will take place sometime after Israel has been re-gathered into Her land as a nation. Śrīla Prabhupāda warned his disciples that a Third World War might be possible given that Pakistan and India had nuclear weapons. The United States would back Pakistan and Russia would back India in a proxy war. Now that a second cold war is heating up between Russia and the United States all bets are off.

In the end violence does not resolve violence. This is a good rule of thumb that most of us learned in kindergarten. Violence is not a proper resolution strategy.

And yet if we cannot resist violence with violence, how is it to be resisted?

Jesus Christ said, “Resist not Evil.”

Now that Christmas is coming up, we are all exhorted to “get into the holiday spirit,” and spend and consume as much as possible.

I live next door to a church. I hear the bells ring daily calling the faithful to worship. But amid all the church bells and piety, condemnation of sin and celebration of mass I rarely hear people speak of the true message of Christ.

For me, that message is explicit in the Gospels; especially in the Sermon on the Mount which was always my favorite expression of the words of Jesus Christ. I have always derived much inspiration from this talk delivered by Jesus himself.

What passes for Christianity today is a pale watered-down version of the radical teaches given by Jesus himself. Of course theologians such as Rudolf Bultmann neutered the message of Jesus by arguing that the study of his teachings are moot; the message of Jesus is both futile and unnecessary. The “whatness” of Jesus, what he said, what he taught, or even where he lived is unimportant. What matters is the “thatness” of Jesus; in other words that he was crucified and died for our sins. His personal teachings are not germane to our salvation.The important thing is that we reach salvation through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. In any case, he felt that the historical reliability of the Gospels may have been questionable whereas Christ’s sacrifice is what frees us from sin. Insofar as faith is not a question of history, I’m inclined to give Bultmann the benefit of the doubt. But when it comes to dismissing the message of Jesus as insignificant in comparison to his transcendental sacrifice, I’m inclined to say, “Hold your horses.”

I’m not sure you can have Christianity without the message of Christ. 

Christ’s message as I have said is much more revolutionary than it appears to be. On the surface, Christianity is about the sacraments of the church: baptism, marriage and so on. But what about the teachings. Christ’s message is no more evident than in the Sermon on the Mount.

This is perhaps the most difficult of his teachings to follow, while it is at the same time the easiest to understand:

"Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:

39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.

41 And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.

42 Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.

43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.

44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

46 For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?

47 And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?

48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."

The idea that we shall not resist evil is truly revolutionary. If we do not resist evil, then how do we make it go away? Are we simply to allow evil to exist?

But evil cannot be expunged through opposition. If actions have reactions, if bad deeds lead to bad consequences, then how can violence resolve violence?

But how are we to resolve violence if we do not oppose it?

In the 20th Century, an important answer to this question was offered by Mohandas Gandhi in his struggle for Indian independence. Arguably the most influential political figure of the last hundred years Gandhi’s idea was called Satyagraha. He felt that evil may be “resisted” but only through holding to the good and the eternal. Lies may be opposed through truth. But it’s not enough to be a truth-teller, to call out lies. One must be a “truth-seeker” as well.

In the United States, Martin Luther King achieved great accomplishments in the black man's struggle for civil rights and respect during the 1960s by following principles laid down by Gandhi. In the end,  the evils of violence and racial hatred led to his assassination and martyrdom.  It remains to be seen whether Gandhi truth-seeking and nonviolence can overcome the evils of the age of Kali. 

In my own life, I find the teachings of Śrī Chaitanya Mahāprabhu as exemplified by Bhakti Rakṣaka Śrīdhara dev Goswāmī and A.C. Bhaktivedānta Swāmī Prabhupāda to be of the best hope and comfort. 

According to the ancient wisdom of the bṛhan-naradiya Purana [38.126] 

हरेर् नम हरेर् नम हरेर् नमैव केवलम्

कलौ नस्त्य् एव नस्त्य् एव नस्त्य् एव गतिर् अन्यथ

Harer nama harer nama harer namaiva kevalam
kalau nasty eva nasty eva nasty eva gatir anyatha: 

"In the iron age of kali, the only salvation is the holy name.
The holy name, the holy name. There is nothing else, nothing else, no other way." 



As a footnote, Here’s the Sermon on the Mount in its entirety. I challenge you to read the whole thing. It's short:

[Matthew 5-7 King James Version (KJV)]

5 And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him:

2 And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying,

3 Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

4 Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.

5 Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

6 Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

7 Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.

8 Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.

9 Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

10 Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

11 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.

12 Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

13 Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.

14 Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.

15 Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.

16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.

18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

19 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

20 For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.

21 Ye have heard that it was said of them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment:

22 But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.

23 Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee;

24 Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.

25 Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison.

26 Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.

27 Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:

28 But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

29 And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

30 And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

31 It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement:

32 But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.

33 Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths:

34 But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God's throne:

35 Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King.

36 Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black.

37 But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.

38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:

39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.

41 And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.

42 Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.

43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.

44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

46 For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?

47 And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?

48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

6 Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.

2 Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

3 But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth:

4 That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.

5 And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

7 But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.

8 Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.

9 After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.

10 Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

11 Give us this day our daily bread.

12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

14 For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you:

15 But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

16 Moreover when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

17 But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face;

18 That thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret: and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.

19 Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:

20 But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:

21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

23 But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!

24 No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

25 Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?

26 Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?

27 Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?

28 And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

29 And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

30 Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?

31 Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?

32 (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.

33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

34 Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

7 Judge not, that ye be not judged.

2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?

5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

6 Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.

7 Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:

8 For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

9 Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?

10 Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?

11 If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?

12 Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.

13 Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:

14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

15 Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

16 Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

17 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.

18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.

19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.

20 Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

21 Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

22 Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?

23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.

24 Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock:

25 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.

26 And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand:

27 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.

28 And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine:

29 For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.

[Adin Ballou, 1803-1890 was perhaps the most eloquent exponent of the doctrine of non-resistance as if was formulated by Jesus Christ. Tolstoy quotes at length from his teachings on non-resistance in “The Kingdom of Heaven is Within You,”]

Tolstoy from "The Kingdom of Heaven is Within You,"

Later on I received a letter from [Lewis G.] Wilson, a disciple and assistant of Ballou, and entered into direct communication with Ballou himself. I wrote to Ballou, and he answered me and sent me his writings. Here are a few extracts from them:

“Jesus Christ is my Lord and Master,” says Ballou in one of the articles [The Non-Resistant, Vol. I, No. 4, 15 February 1845], in which he arraigns the inconsistency of the Christians who recognize the right of defence and war.

I have covenanted to forsake all and follow Him, through good and evil report, until death. But I am nevertheless a Democratic Republican citizen of the United States, implicitly sworn to bear true allegiance to my country, and to support its Constitution, if need be, with my life. Jesus Christ requires me to do unto others as I would that others should do unto me. The Constitution of the United States requires me to do unto twenty-seven hundred thousand slaves [1] the very contrary of what I would have them do unto me, viz., assist to keep them in a grievous bondage.... But I am quite easy. I vote on. I help govern on. I am willing to hold any office I may be elected to under the Constitution. And I am still a Christian. I profess on. I find no difficulty in keeping covenant both with Christ and the Constitution....

Jesus Christ forbids me to resist evil-doers by taking “eye for eye, tooth for tooth, blood for blood, and life for life.” My government requires the very reverse, and depends, for its own self-preservation, on the halter, the musket, and the sword, seasonably employed against its domestic and foreign enemies. Accordingly, the land is well furnished with gibbets, prisons, arsenals, train-bands, soldiers, and ships of war. In the maintenance and use of this expensive life-destroying apparatus, we can exemplify the virtues of forgiving our injurers, loving our enemies, blessing them that curse us, and doing good to those that hate us. For this reason, we have regular Christian chaplains to pray for us, and call down the smiles of God on our holy murders....

I see it all; and yet I insist that I am as good a Christian as ever. I fellowship all; I vote on; I help govern on; I profess on; and I glory in being at once a devoted Christian, and a no less devoted adherent to the existing government. I will not give in to those miserable Non-Resistant notions. I will not throw away my political influence, and leave unprincipled men to carry on government alone....

The Constitution says — “Congress shall have power to declare war....” I agree to this. I endorse it. I swear to help carry it through.... What then, am I less a Christian? Is not war a Christian service? Is it not perfectly Christian to murder hundreds of thousands of fellow human beings; to ravish defenseless females, sack and burn cities, and enact all the other cruelties of war? Out upon these new-fangled scruples! This is the very way to forgive injuries, and love our enemies! If we only do it all in true love, nothing can be more Christian than wholesale murder!

In another pamphlet, under the title, How Many Does It Take? he says, “How many does it take to metamorphose wickedness into righteousness? One man must not kill. If he does it is murder. Two, ten, one hundred men, acting on their own responsibility, must not kill. If they do, it is still murder. But a state or nation may kill as many as they please, and it is no murder. It is just, necessary, commendable, and right. Only get people enough to agree to it, and the butchery of myriads of human beings is perfectly innocent. But how many does it take? This is the question. Just so with theft, robbery, burglary, and all other crimes.... But a whole nation can commit it.... But how many does it take?” Why must one, ten, one hundred men not violate God’s law, while very many may?

Here is Ballou’s catechism (translated freely, with some omissions), composed for his flock (The Catechism of Non-Resistance):

Q. Whence originated the term “non-resistance?”

A. From the injunction, “Resist not evil,” Matt. v. 39.

Q. What does the term signify?

A. It expresses a high Christian virtue, prescribed by Christ.

Q. Is the word “resistance” to be taken in its widest meaning, that is, as showing that no resistance whatever is to be shown to evil?

A. No, it is to be taken in the strict sense of the Savior’s injunction; that is, we are not to retaliate evil with evil. Evil is to be resisted by all just means, but never with evil.

Q. From what can we see that Christ in such cases prescribed non-resistance?

A. From the words which He then used. He said, “Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you that ye resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.”

Q. To whom does Jesus refer in the words, “It has been said?”

A. To the patriarchs and prophets, to what they said — to what is contained in the writings of the Old Testament, which the Jews generally call the Law and the Prophets.

Q. What injunctions did Christ mean by “It hath been said?”

A. Those injunctions by which Noah, Moses, and other prophets authorize men to inflict personal injury on injurers, in order to punish and destroy evil.

Q. Quote these precepts.

A. Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made He man (Gen. ix. 6). He that smiteth a man, so that he die, shall be surely put to death, and if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe (Ex. xxi. 12, 23 — 25).

And he that killeth any man shall surely be put to death. And if a man cause a blemish in his neighbor; as he hath done, so shall it be done to him: breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth: as he hath caused a blemish in a man, so shall it be done to him again (Lev. xxiv. 17, 19, 20).

And the judges shall make diligent inquisition: and, behold, if the witness be a false witness, and hath testified falsely against his brother; then shall ye do unto him, as he had thought to have done unto his brother: and thine eye shall not pity; but life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot (Deut. xix. 18, 19, 21). These are the precepts of which Jesus is speaking.

Noah, Moses, and the prophets taught that he who kills, maims, and tortures his neighbors does evil. To resist such evil and destroy it, the doer of evil is to be punished by death or maiming or some personal injury. Insult is to be opposed to insult, murder to murder, torture to torture, evil to evil. Thus taught Noah, Moses, and the prophets. But Christ denies it all. “But I say unto you,” it says in the Gospel, “that ye resist not evil, resist not an insult with an insult, but rather bear the repeated insult from the doer of evil.” What was authorized is prohibited. If we understand what kind of resistance they taught, we clearly see what we are taught by Christ’s nonresistance.

Q. Did the ancients authorize the resistance of insult with insult?

A. Yes; but Jesus prohibited this. A Christian has under no condition the right to deprive of life or to subject to insult him who does evil to his neighbor.

Q. May a man kill or maim another in self-defence?

A. No.

Q. May he enter a court with a complaint, to have his insulter punished?

A. No; for what he is doing through others, he is in reality doing in his own person.

Q. May he fight with an army against enemies, or against domestic rebels?

A. Of course not. He cannot take any part in war or warlike preparations. He cannot use death-dealing arms. He cannot resist injury with injury, no matter whether he be alone or with others, through himself or through others.

Q. May he choose or fit out military men for the government?

A. He can do nothing of the kind, if he wishes to be true to Christ’s law.

Q. May he voluntarily give money, to aid the government, which is supported by military forces, capital punishment, and violence in general?

A. No, if the money is not intended for some special object, just in itself, where the aim and means are good.

Q. May he pay taxes to such a government?

A. No; he must not voluntarily pay the taxes, but he must also not resist their collection. The taxes imposed by the government are collected independently of the will of the subjects. It is impossible to resist the collection, without having recourse to violence; but a Christian must not use violence, and so he must give up his property to the violence which is exerted by the powers.

Q. May a Christian vote at elections and take part in a court or in the government?

A. No; the participation in elections, in the court, or in the government, is a participation in governmental violence.

Q. In what does the chief significance of the doctrine of non-resistance consist?

A. In that it alone makes it possible to tear the evil out by the root, both out of one’s own heart and out of the neighbor’s heart. This doctrine forbids doing that by which evil is perpetuated and multiplied. He who attacks another and insults him, engenders in another the sentiment of hatred, the root of all evil. To offend another, because he offended us, for the specious reason of removing an evil, means to repeat an evil deed, both against him and against ourselves — to beget, or at least to free, to encourage, the very demon whom we claim we wish to expel. Satan cannot be driven out by Satan, untruth cannot be cleansed by untruth, and evil cannot be vanquished by evil.

True non-resistance is the one true resistance to evil. It kills and finally destroys the evil sentiment.

Q. But, if the idea of the doctrine is right, is it practicable?

A. It is as practicable as any good prescribed by the Law of God. The good cannot under all circumstances be executed without self-renunciation, privation, suffering, and, in extreme cases, without the loss of life itself. But he who values life more than the fulfilment of God’s will is already dead to the one true life. Such a man, in trying to save his life, shall lose it. Besides, in general, where non-resistance costs the sacrifice of one life, or the sacrifice of some essential good of life, resistance costs thousands of such sacrifices.

Non-resistance preserves, resistance destroys.

It is incomparably safer to act justly than unjustly; to bear an insult than to resist it with violence — it is safer even in relation to the present life. If all men did not resist evil with evil, the world would be blessed.

Q. But if only a few shall act thus, what will become of them?

A. If only one man acted thus, and all the others agreed to crucify him, would it not be more glorious for him to die in the triumph of non-resisting love, praying for his enemies, than to live wearing the crown of Cæsar, bespattered with the blood of the slain? But one or thousands who have firmly determined not to resist evil with evil, whether among the enlightened or among savage neighbors, are much safer from violence than those who rely on violence. A robber, murderer, deceiver, will more quickly leave them alone than those who resist with weapons. They who take the sword perish with the sword, and those who seek peace, who act in a friendly manner, inoffensively, who forget and forgive offences, for the most part enjoy peace or, if they die, die blessed.

Thus, if all kept the commandment of non-resistance, it is evident that there would be no offences, no evil deeds. If these formed a majority, they would establish the reign of love and good-will, even toward the ill-disposed, by never resisting evil with evil, never using violence. If there were a considerable minority of these, they would have such a corrective, moral effect upon society that every cruel punishment would be abolished, and violence and enmity would be changed to peace and love. If there were but a small minority of them, they would rarely experience anything worse than the contempt of the world, and the world would in the meantime, without noticing it, and without feeling itself under obligation, become wiser and better from this secret influence. And if, in the very worst case, a few members of the minority should be persecuted to death, these men, dying for the truth, would leave behind them their teaching, which is already sanctified by their martyr’s death.

Peace be with all who seek peace, and all-conquering love be the imperishable inheritance of every soul, which voluntarily submits to the Law of Christ: “Resist not evil.”

In the course of fifty years, Ballou wrote and edited books dealing mainly with the question of nonresistance to evil. In these works, which are beautiful in their lucidity of thought and elegance of expression, the question is discussed from every possible side. He establishes the obligatoriness of this commandment for every Christian who professes the Bible as a divine revelation. He adduces all the customary retorts to the commandment of non-resistance, both from the Old Testament and from the New, as, for example, the expulsion from the temple, and so forth, and all these are overthrown; he shows, independently of Scripture, the practical wisdom of this rule, and adduces all the objections which are usually made to it, and meets all these objections. Thus one chapter of a work of his treats of non-resistance to evil in exclusive cases, and here he acknowledges that, if there were cases when the application of non-resistance to evil were impossible, this would prove that the rule is altogether untenable. In adducing these special cases, he proves that it is precisely in them that the application of this rule is necessary and rational. There is not a single side of the question, either for his followers or for his adversaries, which is not investigated in these works. I say all this, in order to show the unquestionable interest which such works ought to have for men who profess Christianity, and that, therefore, one would think Ballou’s activity ought to have been known, and the thoughts expressed by him ought to have been accepted or refuted; but there has been nothing of the kind.

The activity of Garrison the father, with his foundation of a society of non-resistants and his declaration, convinced me even more than my relations with the Quakers, that the departure of state Christianity from Christ’s law about non-resistance to evil is something that has been observed and pointed out long ago, and that men have without cessation worked to arraign it. Ballou’s activity still more confirmed this fact to me. But the fate of Garrison and especially of Ballou, who is not known to any one, in spite of his fifty years of stubborn and constant work in one and the same direction, has also confirmed to me the other fact, that there exists some kind of unexpressed but firm understanding as to passing all such attempts in silence.

Ballou died in August, 1890, and his obituary was given in an American periodical with a Christian tendency (Religio-Philosophical Journal, August 23d).

In this eulogistic obituary it says that Ballou was a spiritual guide of a community, that he delivered between eight and nine thousand sermons, married one thousand pairs, and wrote about five hundred articles, but not a word is said about the aim to which he devoted all his life — the word “non-resistance” is not even used.

Vacaciones de Hegel

Vacaciones de Hegel

Celebración Hegeliana

Desde hace un tiempo ando pensando en escribir algo acerca de Hegel y sus peculiares puntos de vista, cómo pueden estos estar relacionados de forma tangencial con mi propio viaje personal hacia la rendición. No sé si es éste el artículo que deba escribir, pero tal vez pueda servir como nota para una pieza posterior.

 En su tiempo, Hegel era la estrella del rock de los filósofos.

Incluso se veía como una estrella de rock.

Has escuchado de Hegel: Tesis, Antítesis, Síntesis. 

Pero ¿cómo llegó a jugar un rol en la filosofía India? Algunas de sus ideas son útiles para entender la consciencia de Krishna. Mi propio gurudeva, Śrīdhara Mahārāja se refirió constantemente a Hegel en sus pláticas. Y sin embargo, este alemán idealista no tenía sino desprecio por la India, por el pensamiento hindú, y por el propio Bhagavad-Gita. ¿Cómo llegó a influenciar tanto la interpretación Vedántica moderna? Cuando trabajé como editor en la Guardian of Devotion Press, a menudo nos topamos con esa pregunta. Śrīdhara Mahārāja hacía múltiples referencias a Hegel.

Para captar más sus ideas fue a la librería y exploré la Fenomenología del Espíritu de Hegel, y sus influyentes Lecciones sobre la Filosofía de la Historia. Mi trabajo estaba en la línea “corroborar hechos.” No queríamos publicar algo de equívoco que dijera Śrīdhara Mahārāja acerca de su visión de Hegel. Algunos lectores Hegelianos eruditos podrían ofenderse y criticar a nuestro guru de ignorante de la filosofía. Quería saber en dónde de Hegel dice, “morir para vivir,” o “El Absoluto es por sí mismo y para sí mismo”.

Al viajar a Alemania en 1980 e incluso vivir en Berlín en 1989 cuando el Muro cayó, tuve oportunidad de estudiar un poco el lenguaje. Pero Hegel era desconcertante. No sólo cuenta con un sistema filosófico arcano e imposiblemente difícil, sino que ha inventado su propio lenguaje en el que lo explica y lo discute.

Toma la palabra Geist, por ejemplo. Geist puede traducirse como “Espíritu” o “Fantasma”, dos significados muy distintos. Fenomenología del Geist contiene ideas muy profundas. Fenomenología es el estudio de estructuras de consciencia y experiencia. La autorreflexión es la clave para este acercamiento filosófico hacia la ontología en donde las estructuas de consciencia y los fenómenos que aparecen en los actos de consciencia son vistos como base de la realidad. Las escuelas fenomenológicas de filosofía, en donde uno intenta entender cómo la consciencia es la base de la realidad difiere de las escuelas analíticas en donde el mundo es visto en términos de objetos que reaccionan entre sí en un tiempo-espacio continuum.

Hegel es el último de los grandes filósofos que explorara el idealismo: “¿Está el mundo en la mente, o la mente en el mundo?” Es la pregunta básica que fascina a los filósofos como Berkeley, Locke, y Hegel. Hegel desarrolla un sistema para responder a esas preguntas ontológicas, uno que toca las bases de la realidad en un sentido muy cercano al del Vedānta. Sus pensamientos resuenen en el trabajo de otros filósofos tales como Husserl, Heidegger y Maurice Merleau-Ponty.

Y sin embargo, mientras que las visiones de Hegel tienen alguna resonancia con la interpretación Vedántica, era difícil para mi entender porque serían estas abrazadas de corazón en India.

El impacto de Hegel en la historia del pensamiento Europeo de los siglos diecinueve y veinte es incuestionable, pero es poco estudiado y menos entendido hoy en día. Tuvo una gran influencia en pensadores de izquierda y derecha, de Marx a Heidegger, especialmente en términos de su dialéctica y el dinamismo de su lógica. En sus conferencias sobre el avance del Espíritu, el ancestral “Mundo Oriental” era considerado como un período en la historia en donde el Espíritu era vagamente entendido y la libertad apenas y se pensaba.

De hecho, las ideas de Hegel sobre la historia son patentemente eurocéntricas. Hegel contempla el Cristianismo como la religión absoluta. Sus críticas hacia India en particular rayan en el racismo. Pero este es un análisis superficial de la profundidad de Hegel, su pensamiento total.

Hegel ha desarrollado una teoría de la evolución de la civilización la cual ha clasificado la mitología India y las supersticiones como primitivas, cuando se encontró con la traducción del Bhagavad-gita de Wilhelm von Humboldt. Su crítica de Humboldt es casi un acto reflejo de alguien que ha invertido bastante en probar que había un progreso histórico de cultura primitiva hacia la  cristiandad europea moderna.

Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt

Cuando confrontó la sabiduría del Bhagvad-gita, reaccionó negativamente, criticando a Humboldt y su traducción. Tal vez a partir del orgullo europeo y el nacionalismo alemán, consideró necesario refutar y cualquier reclamo de que la India tenía un sentido filosófico más profundo que el de los alemanes. Y sin embargo, su exposición del Bhagavad-Gita lo obligó a cuestionar las propias bases de las declaraciones que hiciera previamente acerca del sitio del pensamiento Indio en la historia del mundo. Y ya que luchó contra los alegatos presentados por Humboldt en su ensayo, Hegel fue forzado a confrontar las similitudes subyacentes entre el pensamiento indio y gran parte de la filosofía alemana, especialmente el pensamiento de Kant y de los Románticos.

Esta confrontación ha de haber sido desestabilizadora para Hegel por dos razones: Primero, la recurrencia de temas presentados en el pensamiento Indio al mundo moderno llamarían a cuestionar el esquema narrativo central de la filosofía de Hegel de la historia en la cual cada cultura histórica y sus productos constituyen un momento en el desarrollo del Espíritu que es el de la historia del mundo. Segundo y quizás el más desestabilizador para Hegel sería la idea de que su propio pensamiento, el cual tenía sus raíces en la filosofía crítica de Kant podría también compartir estas afinidades profundas, con el pensamiento Indio. Estas posibilidades pudieron provocar una reacción en el pensamiento de Hegel que se expresa en sus actitudes “Anti-India” y su furiosa reacción hacia el trabajo de Humboldt. Era como si se resintiera al descubrir que muchas de sus ideas más interesantes hubieran sido robadas, plagiadas por Vedantistas, miles de años antes de que él naciera. Imaginen su rabia al encontrar que su trabajo no era del todo original, sino que había sido precedido por Shankaracharya, por Madhva, y por los grandes pensadores de India mucho antes de que él contemplara la fenomenología del espíritu.

No hay duda de que el pensamiento de Hegel ha evolucionado con el tiempo y sin embargo él ha establecido sus ideas acerca de Inda a inicios de su carrera en la Fenomenología del Espíritu. Qué extraño que un filósofo cuyos puntos de vista están realmente en simpatía con el pensamiento Indio tenga tal desprecio hacia la cultura India, sin haber nunca visitado la India.

El entendimiento del pensamiento Indio que se discute en Fenomenología del Espíritu viene realmente del filósofo Friedrich Schelling. La visión de Schelling contribuye al concepto de Hegel de lo que él llama “Religión Natural”. Hegel llama a esto “la flor de la religión” o “la religión animal”, y critica la “idolatría” que ve en la representación de India de Schelling. Por supuesto, la crítica de la religión Hindú como “idolatría” es tan conocida como superficial,  pero carece por completo de comprensión hacia las grandes ideas que el Vedanta descubre. Es fácil entonces para Hegel situar la “idolatría” y la “religión animal” al principio del pensamiento filosófico y desarrollar su tesis acerca de la evolución en la religión desde la visión primitiva del animismo hacia la religión de la compasión del amor divino como se ve en el cristianismo.

En su propio tiempo, Hegel reacciono en contra del romantisísmo fácil que invitaba a los alemanes a prestar de nuevo atención a la mitología pagana y la poesía. La determinación de Hegel era crear una comprensión “científica” del espíritu. Pensadores como Schlegel y Schleiermacher, quienes promovían una teología romántica de sentimiento e intuición, eran la verdadera némesis de Hegel, pues promovían una visión sensual de lo divino.

Hegel consideró que cualquier ruta directa para unirse de inmediato con Dios era demasiado fácil: en su prisa apasionada por conocer al Absoluto de inmediato, la actitud romántica era impaciente para los momentos que componen la vida en su conjunto. Los éxtasis entusiastas como los de Byron y Shelley, alcanzados a través del opio y el frenesí orgiástico guiaría únicamente hacia castillos en el aire.  Para Hegel, la filosofía era tanto ciencia como meditación en el absoluto. Él determinaba que los buscadores sinceros de la verdad tenían que ir a través de la contemplación antes de declarar la iluminación.

En cualquier caso, es claro que Hegel estaba ocupado constantemente con el pensamiento Indio y su estudio influyó su pensamiento en forma significativa. Su pensamiento se movió de una manera curva, tal como su dialéctica se movió a través de la tesis, la antítesis y la síntesis hacia un entendimiento más elevado.

Hegel nos pide el concebir la diversidad del sistema filosófico como la evolución progresiva de la verdad; como etapas que no son meramente distintas sino que se suplantan una a la otra como si fueran incompatibles la una con la otra. Este movimiento constante hace que cada momento de verdad fluya hacia su opuesto como parte de una unidad orgánica. El movimiento encarna la contradicción como positiva que suplanta la negativa y sin embargo como momentos de una unidad orgánica cada realización de verdad es tan necesaria como aquella que surgió antes. Cada descubrimiento es tan importante como el último y este movimiento igual y opuesto constituye el todo. Entonces el todo es más grande que la suma de sus partes.

En Fenomenología del Espíritu, Hegel postula que el propio conocimiento es la realidad y que esa realidad es tanto mental como espiritual. Hegel expone esta emergencia orgánica y coalescencia del conocimiento y realidad, su “dialecto” a través de un ejemplo simple: el de la maduración del fruto: “El brote desaparece cuando aparece la flor y podríamos decir que el primero ha sido refutado por ésta última; de la misma manera, cuando llegue el fruto, la flor se puede explicar como una forma falsa de la existencia de la planta, puesto que el fruto aparece como su verdadera naturaleza en el sitio de la flor”. [Fenomenología de la Mente, Prefacio. J.B. Baillie, Londres 1949]

Pero permanece la pregunta, ¿cómo y cuándo Śrīdhara Mahārāja entra en contacto con las ideas Hegelianas? Y cómo desarrolló la dialéctica del idealismo alemán hacia la visión vedántica del siddhānta Gaudiya Vaishnava?

Algunos indicios de este dilema se pueden encontrar en un estudio llamado “Renacimiento Bengalí”

El Renacimiento Bengalí inicia en el siglo diecinueve con el intelectualismo de Raja Ram Mohan Roy y continúa hasta mediados del siglo veinte con el poeta Rabindranath Tagore. Este fue un despertar intelectual en Bengal que confrontó el colonialismo del Raj británico con movimientos literarios vibrantes, culturales y religiosos. Estos movimientos se intensificaron tras la Rebelión India de 1857 y creció más poderoso alrededor del siglo veinte. En esa época Bengal era la sede del gobierno británico; como respuesta al poder del movimiento de independencia en Bengal la capital de India fue trasladada de Calcuta a Nueva Delhi en 1911 por el virrey, Lord Hardinge. Para ese entonces Calcuta era un semillero de ideas revolucionarias.

Los nombres de los hombres que tomaron parte en este fermento cultural son fácilmente reconocibles: estaban nacionalistas como Arobindo Ghos, (más tarde Śrī Aurobinda) y Shubhas Chandra Bose, Industriales como PC Roy, intelectuales como Bipin Chandra Pal y Rabindranath Tagore, y grandes pensadores religiosos como Bhaktivinoda Thakura y Bhaktisiddhānta Saraswati.

Sabemos que Śrīdhara Mahārāja estudió en el Presidency College, (actualmente Presidenciy University). Podríamos mirar a algunos de los pensadores y catedráticos del Presidencial College para darnos una idea de si Hegel tenía alguna posición en esos días.

Me es difícil imaginar que Śrīdhara Mahārāja leyera a Hegel en Alemán; a mí me parece que es más probable que haya absorbido a Hegel como parte de su educación liberal. Sabemos que estudió leyes en el Presidency College. Una de las figuras intelectuales interesantes envueltas con el Presidency College en ese entonces era un hombre llamado Brajendranath Seal, o B.N. Seal.

Brajendranath Seal (1868-1938) era un intelectual bengalí quien ocupaba la prestigiada cátedra King George V en la Universidad de Calcuta entre 1913 y 1921. Durante ese tiempo él publicó un análisis llamado “Estudios Comparativos entre el Vaishnavismo y el Cristianismo”. Tal vez no era un Gaudiya Vaisnava en la escuela de Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati, pero era un pensador contemporáneo involucrado en la comprensión  de la relación entre Occidente y el pensamiento Vaishnava en ese entonces cuando las creencias aún eran importantes en la vida cotidiana. Pasó una gran parte de su vida temprana académica fascinado con Hegel y posteriormente se volvió hacia el Vaishnavismo.

Mientras que rechazaba las opiniones de Hegel sobre la historia como parroquial y eurocéntrica, estaba interesado en las ideas de Hegel sobre la evolución subjetiva de la consciencia.

Desde su posición como cabeza de la Universidad de filosofía de Calcuta, la influencia de Brajendranath Seal en el Presidency College pudo sentirse por dos de sus prominentes estudiantes: Bhakti Rakṣaka Śrīdhar Dev Goswāmī y A.C. Bhaktivedānta Swāmi, ambos estudiaron ahí. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brajendra_Nath_Seal

Mientras Seal fue influido por Hegel, él tenía su propia versión de cómo podría aplicarse la dialéctica; podía ver falacias en las teorías de la historia de Hegel, filosofía, y lógica. Hegel había ignorado los curiosos cuentos de los Puranas como supersticiones y mitología y sin embargo su propio razonamiento acerca de la consciencia como el origen y fundamento de la realidad se acerca bastante a la visión Vedántica. Seal abrazó la concepción de Hegel de la Razón Absoluta como Por sí misma y para sí misma. Abrazó la dialéctica y la aplicó a su propio análisis del Vedanta. Seal admiró el sistema de Hegel: su exposición lógica concisa, la aplicación de sus métodos en varias disciplinas. Hegel trató lógicamente con todos los fenómenos de la vida natural y espiritual y la puso contrapuso a la dinámica de su dialéctica: tesis-antítesis, síntesis, lo que Śrīdhara Mahārāja encapsulara en la expresión “Morir para Vivir”.

Al final Seal difirió de Hegel. Sintió que su método de análisis era poderoso, pero su entendimiento de la cultura y el pensamiento Indio habían sido superficiales. Escribió, “Cualquier sistema filosófico que falle en aceptar y reconciliar la realidad atemporal y la relatividad temporal de inmediato se coloca fuera de la corte y es tan poco científica como filosófica.

Se diferenció así del esquema triádico de Hegel y favoreció en cambo un análisis extraído de la concepción catur-vyuhic. La expansión cuádruple de Vishnu como Vasudeva, Sankarshana, Prashyumna, y Aniruddha: Primero dividiendo en dos y después duplicando la división. Seal sintió que esta metáfora podía usarse en el análisis filosófico y por ello se distanció de nuevo de Hegel.

Frustrado con el hegelianismo, al final, Seal volvió hacia el Vaishnavismo, usando el Bhagavad-Gita como vehículo para expresar su filosofía a modo de comentario en “El Gita una interpretación sintética”.

Su programa educacional se usó como modelo educativo en colegios y universidades en Calcuta y Bengal en la primera parte del siglo veinte. Su programa educacional empieza con el periódo “Védico temprano” y progresa a través de un estudio de los diferentes sistemas de Vedanta, cubriendo todos los sistemas mencionados en el sarva- darshan-samgraha de Madhva con el análisis y la crítica de todas las vías de pensamiento indio. En su análisis se incluyeron temas como “el principio de la experiencia, la dialéctica y la nesciencia, dialéctica del yo, el realismo v. idealismo, mecanismo v. teología, epistemología y lógica, ontología v. teleología, epistemología y lógica, ontología v. teleología, teoría del ser, fundamento de la ciencia de la mitología, etapas en la historia cultural, y el culto a Krishna.

Picado por la acusación de Hegel de que la filosofía India no había ido más allá de la etapa mitológica, Seal intentó mostrar la importancia de la versión Puránica en el desarrollo de la ontología Vedántica y la epistemología.

Parte de su contribución al pensamiento Indio fue enseñar tanto a los académicos británicos como a los europeos la riqueza de la Filosofía India.  Se anticipó a Carl Jung en demostrar el valor de tomar la interpretación mitológica hacia un nivel más elevado en donde el significado alegórico puede presentar las ideas profundas en ontología, cosmogonía y epistemología. Seal demostró que la gran tradición del pensamiento y el desarrollo del razonamiento en Europa como filosofía tenía mucho que aprender de la tradición contemplativa de ética y misticismo hallado en India.

¿Fue Seal responsable de formar el pensamiento temprano de Śrīdhar Mahārāja? No estoy seguro. En todo caso, no era el único pensador Hegeliano que enseñaba en Bengal. Otro nombre que aparece es el de Hiralal Haldar. Uno de los contemporáneos de Seal y compañero Hegeliano era Hiralal Haldar, uno de sus colegas en el Renacimiento Bengalí quien estuvo comprometido desde el principio con la moda de Hegel que surcó la psique India a finales del siglo XIX y principios del XX.

Haldar desarrolló su propia concepción del Idealismo y del Absoluto como una síntesis de la visión de Hegel acerca de la fenomenología y el Vedanta Indio. Encontró en Hegel un vehículo adecuado para expresar sus propias visiones Vedánticas sutiles.

Haldar rechazó la unidad de Shankar del Absoluto, argumentando que el objetivo y propósito del Absoluto, el cual es Por sí Mismo y Para sí Mismo, es su propio placer personal. Haldar no ve el porqué de que un Dios Personal sería ilógico, encontrando que el Propósito del Absoluto es realizarse a través de individuos constituyentes. Estos individuos son “totalidades relativas dentro de la unidad del absoluto y contribuyen en formas variadas y únicas para ese propósito total”. [Haldar 1918:376]

En un sentido Haldar es el más elocuente Hegeliano Hindú. Sus visiones pueden usarse para sostener la idea de un Dios personal quien es en Su esencia tanto positivo como negativo, una síntesis del Purusha-Prakriti, masculino y femenino en la línea Radha-Krishna cuya síntesis divina se encuentra en Chaitanya Mahāprabhu.

Por supuesto, no es necesario estudiar a Hegel para entrar en Consciencia de Kṛṣṇa. No hay necesidad de pasar desde el Buddhismo a Shankar a Madhva a Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. Uno puede superar todas las consideraciones filosóficas simplemente a través de la rendición y cantar Hare Krishna. Solamente comparto aquí algunos de los problemas filosóficos que he encontrado mientras trabajaba en las publicaciones que hicimos hace años en el Guardian of Devotion Press. Empecé intentando asegurar que el Credo de Śrīdhara Mahārāja, “Morir para Vivir” fue de hecho, de algún modo, fundado en un precepto filosófico propuesto por Hegel.

Nunca podremos convertir a Hegel en un devoto de Hare Krishna, pero es justo decir que podemos contar con la dialéctica Hegeliana para la comprensión de la Fenomenología de la Rendición.

Hegel's Holiday

Hegel’s Holiday

For some time now I've been thinking about writing something about Hegel and his curious points of view, how they may be related in a tangential way to my own personal journey to surrender.  I'm not sure if this is the article I set out to write, but it may serve as notes towards a subsequent piece.

Hegel was the rock star of philosophers in his time.

He even looked like a rock star.

You’ve all heard of Hegel: Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis. But how did he come to play a role in Indian Philosophy? Some of his ideas are helpful in understanding Krishna consciousness. My own gurudeva, Śrīdhara Mahārāja referred to Hegel constantly in his talks. And yet this German idealist had nothing but contempt for India, for Hindu thought, and for the Bhagavad-Gita itself. How did he come to be so influential in modern Vedantic interpretation? When I was working as an editor at Guardian of Devotion Press, we often came across this question. Śrīdhara Mahārāja made numerous references to Hegel.

In order to better grasp his ideas I went to the library and checked out Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, and his infuential Lectures on the Philosophy of History. My work was something along the lines of “fact-checking.” We didn’t want to publish Śrīdhara Mahārāja misrepresenting Hegel’s views. Some scholarly Hegelian readers might take umbrage and criticize our guru of being ignorant of philosophy. I wanted to see where in Hegel, he says, “Die to Live,” or “The Absolute is By Himself and For Himself.”

Having traveled to Germany in the 1980s and even having lived in Berlin in 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down, I had the chance to study the language a bit. But Hegel was baffling. Not only did he have an arcane and impossibly difficult philosophical system, but he had invented his own language in which to explain and discuss it.

Take Geist, for example. Geist may be translated as “Spirit” or “Ghost,” two widely different meanings. Phenomenology of Geist contains quite profound ideas. Phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness and experience. Self-reflection is key to this philosophical approach to ontology where the structures of consciousness and the phenomena that appear in acts of consciousness are seen as the basis of reality. The phenomenological schools of philosophy, where one attempts to understand how consciousness is the basis of reality differ from analytic schools where the world is viewed in terms of objects which react upon each other in the time-space continuum.

Hegel is the last of the great philosophers to explore idealism: “Is the world in the mind, or is the mind in the world?” is the basic question that fascinated philosophers like Berkeley, Locke, and Hegel. Hegel developed a system to respond to these ontological questions, one that touches on the basis of reality in a sense very close to the Vedānta. His thought resonates in the work of other philosophers such as Husserl, Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty.

And yet, while Hegel’s views have some resonance with Vedantic interpretation, it was hard for me to understand why they would be whole-heartedly embraced in India.

Hegel’s impact on the history of nineteenth and twentieth-century European thought is beyond question, but he is little studied and less understood today. He had a wide influence on thinkers from left to right, from Marx to Heidegger, especially in terms of his dialectic and the dynamism of his logic. In his lectures on the advancement of Spirit, the ancient “Oriental World” was considered as a period in history where Spirit was only dimly realized and freedom could scarcely be thought of.

In fact, Hegel’s views on history are patently Eurocentric. Hegel contemplated Christianity as the absolute religion. His criticisms of India practically verge on racism. But this is a superficial analysis of Hegel’s depth, his entire thought.

Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt

Hegel had developed a theory of the evolution of civilization which had classified India’s mythology and superstition as primitive, when he came across Wilhelm von Humboldt’s translation of Bhagavad-gita. His criticism of Humboldt is almost a knee-jerk reaction from someone who had invested quite a bit in proving that there was a progress of history from primitive culture to modern European Christianity.

When he was confronted with the wisdom of the Bhagavad-gita, he reacted negatively, by criticising Humboldt and his translation. Perhaps out of European pride and German nationalism, he considered it necessary to refute any claims that India had a deeper sense of philosophy than the Germans. And yet his exposure to the Bhagavad-Gita compelled him to call into question the very basis of the claims he had previously made about the place of Indian thought in world history. And as he grappled with the claims put forward by Humboldt in his essays, Hegel was forced to confront the underlying similarities between Indian thought and much of contemporary German philosophy, especially the thought of Kant and the Romantics.

This confrontation may have been destabilizing for Hegel for two reasons: First, the recurrence of themes present in Indian thought in the modern world would seem to call in to question the central narrative scheme of Hegel’s philosophy of history in which each historical cutlrue and its products make up a moment in the development of Spirit that is world history. Second, and perhaps most disconcerting for Hegel would be the idea that his own thought, which had its roots in Kantian Critical philosophy might also share these profound affinities with Indian thought. These possibilities might have provoked a reaction in Hegel’s thinking that was expressed in his “Anti-Indian” attitudes and his angry rejection of Humboldt’s work. It was as if he was resentful upon discovering that many of his most interesting ideas had been stolen from him, plagiarized by Vedantists, thousands of years before he was born. Imagine his rage at finding that his work was not at all original, but had been anticipated by Shankaracharya, by Madhva, and by the great thinkers of India long before he had contemplated the phenomenology of the spirit.

There is no question that Hegel’s thinking evolved over time, and yet he had set down his ideas about India early in his career in the Phenomology of Spirit. How odd that a philosopher whose views are really in sympathy with Indian thought had such contempt for Indian culture, without ever having visited India.

The understanding of Indian thought under discussion in Phenomenology of the Spirit really comes from the philosopher Friedrich Schelling. Schelling’s views contributed to Hegel’s concept of what he called “Natural Religion.” Hegel calls this “flower religion,” or “animal religion,” and criticises the “idolatry” he sees in Schelling’s representation of India. Of course, the criticism of Hindu religion as “idolatry” is as well-known as it is superficial, for it betrays an absolute lack of understanding of the great ideas discovered in Vedanta. It’s easy for Hegel to then place “idolatry” and “animal religion” at the primitive beginnings of philosophical thought and develop his thesis about evolution in religion from the primitive views of animism to the compassionate religion of divine love as seen in Christianity.

In his own time, Hegel was reacting against a facile Romanticism which invited Germans to hearken back to intuitive and ecstatic pagan mythology and poetry. Hegel’s determination was to make the understanding of the spirit “scientific.” Thinkers like Schlegel and Schleiermacher, who promoted a romantic theology of feeling and intuition, were really Hegel’s nemesis, since they promoted a sensual view of the divine.

Hegel felt that any direct route to immediate unity with God was too easy: in its impassioned rush to know the Absolute immediately, the romantic attitude has no patience for the moments that make up the life of the whole. The rapturous ecstasies of romantics like Byron and Shelley, achieved through opium and orgiastic frenzy would only lead to pipe dreams. For Hegel, philosophy was both science and meditation on the absolute. He was determined that truth-seekers should go through the process of contemplation before declaring enlightenment.

In any case, it is clear that Hegel was constantly engaging with Indian thought and his study influenced his thinking in significant ways. His thought moved in a crooked way, just as his dialectic moves through thesis, antithesis, and synthesis to a higher understanding.

Hegel asks us to conceive of the diversity of philosophical systems as the progressive evolution of truth; as stages which are not merely differentiated but which supplant one another as being incompatible with one another. This constant movement makes each moment of truth flow towards its opposite as part of an organic unity. The movement embodies contradiction as positive supplants negative and yet as moments of an organic unity each realization of truth is as necessary as the the one that came before. Each discovery is as important as the last and this equal and opposite movement constitutes the whole. So the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

In Phenomenology of the Spirit, Hegel posits that knowledge itself is reality and that reality is both mental and spiritual. Hegel expounds this organic emergence and coalescence of knowledge and reality, his “dialect” through a simple example: that of ripening fruit: “The bud disappears when the blossom breaks through and we might say that the former is refuted by the latter; in the same way, when the fruit comes, the blossom may be explained to be a false form of the plant’s existence, for the fruit appears as its true nature in place of the blossom.” [Phenomenology of Mind, Preface. J.B. Baillie, London 1949]

But the question remains, how and when did Śrīdhara Mahārāja come into contact with Hegelian ideas? And how did he enfold the dialectic of German idealism into the Vedantic views of the Gaudiya Vaishnava siddhānta?

Some clues to this conundrum may be found in a study of the so-called “Bengali Renaissance.”

The Bengali Renaissance begins in the 19th Century with the intellectualism of Raja Ram Mohan Roy and continues until the middle of the 20th Century with the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore. This was an intellectual awakening in Bengal that confronted the colonialism of the British Raj with vibrant literary, cultural and religious movements. These movements intensified after the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and grew more powerful to the turn of the 20th Century. At this time Bengal was the seat of the British Government; as a response to the power of the independence movement in Bengal India’s capital was moved from Calcutta to New Delhi in 1911 by the Viceroy, Lord Hardinge. By this time Calcutta was a hotbed of revolutionary ideas.

The names of men who took part in this cultural ferment are readily recognizable: there were nationalists like Aurobindo Ghose, (later Śrī Aurobinda) and Shubhas Chandra Bose, Industrialists like P.C. Roy, intellectuals like Bipin Chandra Pal and Rabindranath Tagore, and great religious thinkers like Bhaktivinoda Thakura and Bhaktisiddhānta Saraswati.

We know that Śrīdhara Mahārāja studied at Presidency College, (now Presidency University). We might look to some of the thinkers and lecturers at Presidency College to get an idea of whether Hegel had any standing in those days.

It’s hard for me to imagine that Śrīdhara Mahārāja read Hegel in German; it seems more likely to me that he absorbed Hegel as part of his liberal education. We know that he studied law at Presidency College. One of the interesting intellectual figures involved with Presidency College at the time was a man named Brajendranath Seal, or B.N. Seal.

Brajendranath Seal (1868-1938) was a Bengali intellectual who occupied the prestigious King George V professorship of philosophy at the University of Calcutta between 1913 and 1921. During this time he published an analysis called “Comparative Studies in Vaishnavism and Christianity.” He may not have been a Gaudiya Vaishnava in the school of Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati, but he was a contemporary thinker involved in understanding the relationship between Western and Vaishnava thought at a time when belief was still important in quotidian life. He spent much of his early scholarly life fascinated with Hegel and in his later life turned to Vaishnavism.

While he rejected Hegel’s views on history as parochial and Eurocentric, he was interested in Hegel’s views on the subjective evolution of consciousness.

From his seat as the head of philosophy at Calcutta University, Brajendranath Seal’s influence on Presidency College would be felt by two of its prominent students: Bhakti Rakṣaka Śrīdhar Dev Goswāmī and A.C. Bhaktivedānta Swāmi, both of whom studied there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brajendra_Nath_Seal

While Seal was influenced by Hegel, he had his own version of how the dialectic might be applied; he could see fallacies in Hegel’s theories of history, philosophy, and logic. Hegel had dismissed the curious tales of the Puranas as so much superstition and mythology and yet his own reasoning on consciousness as the origin and foundation of reality comes quite close to the Vedāntic view. Seal embraced Hegel’s conception of Absolute Reason as By Itself and For Itself. He embraced the dialectic and applied it to his own analysis of Vedānta. Seal admired Hegel’s system: his concise exposition of logic, the applicability of his methods in varied disicplines. Hegel dealt logically with every phenomenon of natural and spiritual life and set it against the dynamic of his dialectic: thesis-antithesis, synthesis, what Śrīdhara Mahārāja encapuslated in the expression “Die to Live.”

In the end Seal differed from Hegel. He felt his method of analysis was powerful, but his understanding of Indian culture and thought had been shallow. He wrote, “Any philosophical system which fails to accept and reconcile the timeless reality and the temporal relativity at once puts itself out of court and is as unscientific as it is unphilosophical.”

He differed as well from Hegel’s triadic scheme and favoured instead an analysis extracted from the catur-vyuhic conception. Fourfold Vishnu expands as Vasudeva, Sankarshana, Pradhyumna, and Aniruddha: First dividing in two and then duplicating the division. Seal felt this metaphor could be used in philosophical analysis and so distanced himself again from Hegel.

Frustrated with hegelianism in the end, Seal turned to Vaishnavism, using the Bhagavad-Gita as a vehicle for expressing his philosophy by way of commentary “The Gita a synthetic interpretation.”

His educational syllabus was used as an educative model in colleges and universities in Calcutta and Bengal in the early part of the 20th century. His syllabus begins with the “Early Vedic” period and progresses through a study of the different systems of Vedanta, covering all the systems mentioned in Madhva’s sarva-darshan-samgraha with analysis and critique of all avenues of Indian thought. Included in his analysis were such topics as ¨principles of experience, dialectic of nescience, dialectic of the self, realism v. idealism, mechanism v. teleology, epistemology and logic, ontology v. teleology, theory of being, foundations fo the science of mythology, stages in cultural history, and the Krishna cult.

Stung by Hegel´s accusation that Indian philosophy hadn´t gone beyond the mythological stage, Seall tried to show the importance of the Puranic version in the development of Vedantic ontology and epistemology.

Part of his contribution to Indian thought was to show both British and European academics the richness of Indian Philosophy. He anticipates Carl Jung in demonstrating the value of taking mythological interpretation to a higher level where allegorical meaning can stand for deeper ideas in ontology, cosmology and epistemology. Seal demonstrated that the grand tradition of thinking and reasoning developed in Europe as philosophy has much to learn from the contemplative traditions of ethics and mysticism found in India.

Was Seal in any way responsible for shaping Śrīdhar Mahārāja’s early thought? I’m not sure. In any case, he wasn’t the only Hegelian thinker who taught in Bengal. Another name that comes up is that of Hiralal Haldar. One of Seal’s contemporaries and fellow Hegelians was Hiralal Haldar, one of his colleagues in the Bengali Renaissance who was engaged early on with the vogue for Hegel that flashed through the Indian psyche in the late 19th and early 20th Century.

Haldar developed his own conception of Idealism and the Absolute as a synthesis of Hegel’s views on phenomenology and Indian Vedanta. He found in Hegel a suitable vehicle for the expression of his own subtle Vedantic views.

Haldar rejects Shankar’s unity of the Absolute, arguing that the aim or purpose of the Absolute, who is By Himself and For Himself, is his own personal pleasure. Haldar sees no reason why a Personal God would be illogical, finding that the Absolute Purpose is realized through the purposes of constituent individuals. These individuals are “relative wholes within the unity of the absolute and contribute in various and unique way to its total purpose.” [Haldar 1918:376]

In a sense Haldar is the most eloquent of Hindu Hegelians. His views may be used to support the idea of a personal God who is in His essence both positive and negative, a synthesis of Purusha-Prakriti, masculine and feminine along the lines of Rādhā-Krishna whose divine synthesis is found in Chaitanya Mahāprabhu.

Of course, it isn’t necessary to study Hegel to become Krishna Conscious. There is no need to pass from Buddhism to Shankar to Madhva to Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. One may surpass all philosophical considerations merely through surrender and chanting Hare Krishna. I’m merely sharing here some of the philosophical problems I encountered while working on one of the publications we printed years ago at Guardian of Devotion Press. I began by trying to make sure that Śrīdhara Mahārāja’s Credo, “Die to Live,” was indeed somehow founded in a philosophical precept advanced by Hegel.

We may never convert Hegel into a Hare Krishna devotee, but it is fair to say that we may the enlist the Hegelian dialectic in understanding the Phenomenology of Surrender.