Summary
- Introduction: Swami Medhananda is a monk of the Ramakrishna order and an academic philosopher.
- Personal Background: Swami Medhananda shares his personal journey from being a culturally Hindu but agnostic Bengali-American to becoming a Vedantic monk and scholar, influenced by the Bhagavad Gita, Sri Ramakrishna, and Swami Vivekananda.
- Philosophical Discussion: Swami Medhananda and Rick Archer discuss various philosophical topics, such as the epistemology of mystical experience, the nature of ultimate reality, the status of the world, the diversity of spiritual paths, the role of ethics and practice, the relationship between Vedanta and other traditions, and the challenges of neo-Advaita and self-deception.
- Conclusion: Swami Medhananda concludes by emphasizing the importance of humility, sincerity, and openness in spiritual life, and invites the listeners to explore his books and lectures for more details on his views.
Full Transcript
Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of conversations with spiritually awakening people. We’ve done nearly seven hundred of them now, and if this is new to you, and you’d like to check out previous ones, please go to batgap.com, B-A-T-G-A-P and look under the past interviews menu where you’ll see all the previous ones arranged in several different ways. You’ll also see a menu about the BatGap bot or chatbot. We have an AI chatbot now that in its knowledge base has tens of thousands of documents related to interviews that I’ve done, and you can ask it all kinds of questions and you’ll get all kinds of interesting responses, so, try that out. Also, if anyone would like to help in various ways, we are still in the process of proofreading, the transcripts of all the BatGap interviews, so we can always use help with that, and there are some other things that you could help with. And also, finally, this program is made possible through the support of appreciative listeners and viewers, so if you appreciate it and would like to help support it, there are PayPal buttons on the website and there’s a page which explains alternatives to PayPal. My guest today is Swami Medhananda. I’m going to read his official bio here because it packs in a lot of details of what he has accomplished so far in his young life. He seemed pretty young. Swami Medhananda is a monk of the Ramakrishna order and an academic philosopher, currently serving as Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy at the Vedanta Society of Southern California in Hollywood. He’s also, the Hindu Chaplain at both UCLA and the University of Southern California. He is Section Editor for the International Journal of Hindu Studies, overseeing submissions in Hindu and cross-cultural philosophy of religion. From 2010 to 2021, he was associate professor and head of the program in philosophy at the Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda Educational and Research Institute in Belur Math, West Bengal. He received his PhD in 2009 from the University of California at Berkeley, where he specialized in German aesthetics. He was also a Fulbright Scholar at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin and a visiting student at Oxford University. His current research focuses on global philosophy of religion, the epistemology of mystical experience, Cosmopsychism, Indian scriptural hermeneutics, and Vedantic philosophical traditions, especially the philosophies of Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda, and Sri Aurobindo. He’s the author of three books, Swami Vivekananda’s Vedantic Cosmopolitanism, Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality: Sri Ramakrishna and the Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion, and third, The Dialectics of Aesthetic Agency, Re-evaluating German Aesthetics from Kant to Art Adorno. He is the editor of the Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Vedanta and co-editor of Panentheism in Indian and Western Thought, Cosmopolitan Interventions. He’s also the editor of two special issues of the International Journal of Hindu Studies, one on Swami Vivekananda as a cosmopolitan thinker and one on Vedantic theodicy. He has published over thirty articles in leading academic journals. He’s currently working on two book projects, Karma and Rebirth in Hinduism, and All-Embracing oneness Shri Aurobindo’s Integral Advaita and the Legacy of Shri Ramakrishna. And I would like to try to cover all that stuff with him. We’ll see how we do because it all fascinates me. I’ve listened to quite a few hours of his talks, well, mostly while shoveling snow or skiing in it for the last couple of weeks, and I felt like I’ve learned a lot actually. Listening to his talks has really broadened my perspective on certain things which we’ll be discussing, and I hope to find the time to read three of his books which he sent me, which I’ve already named the titles of, in the coming year when I’m not busy preparing for other interviews, because I feel like I’ll learn a lot more if I read them. Okay, so that’s your formal stuff. Now, one thing that puzzled me when I first started listening to your talks was why you didn’t seem to have any kind of an Indian accent, and then I discovered you were born in Boston and you don’t even have a Boston accent.
Swami Medhananda: That’s a good point.
Rick: Maybe you’ve been around too much and that’s worn off. But in any case, let’s get into a little bit, just a little personal bio for a few minutes, as contrasted with the academic bio that I just read. So born in Boston, how old are you now?
Swami Medhananda: I am forty-three.
Rick: Forty-three. And I remember a story you said your parents used to drag you to the temple on worship days, you’d be out in the yard playing football with your friends and you were an agnostic. And how did you go from that to the life of a Swami that you now live?
Swami Medhananda: Yeah, that’s a great question. So yeah, I was born and raised in Boston as a Bengali-American. And so, I spoke Bengali at home and my parents would take me to Bengali school on Sundays. So, I learned how to read and write Bengali from age six to about twelve, which I’m very grateful for now. At the time I found it boring but because a lot of the texts in our spiritual tradition are in Bengali actually in the original. And yeah, I was agnostic for much of my early adult life, and part of the reason was because I was raised Hindu in this kind of generically Hindu sense or you might call it culturally Hindu sense, which meant a couple times a year going to pujas, big grand kind of worships of different forms of gods. So, there’s a Durga Puja, that’s a form of Divine Mother, Saraswati Puja and others. And nobody explained to me what the deeper spiritual significance of what these festivals were about. What does it mean when I’m bound down to an idol? How is that related to the one infinite god? How do these different deities relate to each other? Is Hinduism polytheistic? Is it monotheistic? Is it monistic? Is it some combination? So, nobody was there to answer these questions. I wasn’t equipped to answer these questions for myself. So, I found it all very uninspiring, to be honest. And as a result, I would play football outside with my friends and just go in for the kichidi. Kichidi is a famous food made on, I’m sure you know, it’s good on–
Rick: Rice and dahl.
Swami Medhananda: Yep. Yeah, it’s great. So, I’d go in for that and then come back out and just talk to friends. That was my childhood and then in college, I studied philosophy pretty deeply. – but western philosophy, and at the same time I had a deep interest in religion And so, I was having lots of debates with friends- who are who are all along the spectrum. Some were religious, some were agnostic, some are atheists- about religion and I just felt like if religion is true, then it’s got to be extremely important, but then there’s this question of which religion is true. So, I started reading around in the world’s religious scriptures. This is in my first and second year undergraduate and third year I was at Oxford, and I was I went even more deeply into these kinds of studies and thinking on my own really. It was kind of extracurricular, and so I was reading Buddhist scriptures, the bible, the Gita. Bhagavad Gita was the first Hindu scripture I read that really inspired me, and even as an agnostic, it really resonated with me. I just kind of ignored the bhakti side of the Gita which is very prominent now I see. I’m teaching the Gita now and I see that that’s kind of the keynote, but at the time I just kind of ignored devotion god but what I loved, is the idea of attaining a kind of transcendental peace, Shanti through renunciation of worldly attachments and worldly pleasures and this Vedāntic idea that we are eternal souls, an eternal spiritual self-separate from the body-mind complex, and that all suffering stems from this misidentification with the body-mind complex. So, those ideas resonated with me even as an agnostic, and that was my kind of entry point into spirituality, we can say. And it was only later when I joined the PhD program at Berkeley that I started studying the life and teachings of Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda. And when I did, my ideas about spiritual life became a lot clearer. But I have to say that even before I knew anything about either of those spiritual personages, I had already decided I’m going to finish my PhD, move to India and be a sanyasi, which is interesting. It had to have come from previous life, samskaras or something, because I don’t know where it would come from. There were no spiritual kind of gurus to guide me or any, I never met really any monks in my life, but I just knew that I had to be a monk in India specifically. And toward the end of my PhD, I was getting so restless about leaving the country. I was like itching to get rid of my western clothes and just give them to the goodwill and get the heck out of here. And ironically, by divine dispensation, I’m back here where I grew up, but with a different attitude, I’d say. So yeah, hopefully more mature.
Rick: Yeah. Okay, I’ve been having conversations with an old dear friend, name Curtis. And he’s an atheist, although he has years of meditation under his belt, and used to be, gung-ho believer, but various things caused him to shift to his current perspective. And I just love our conversations, and he does too, because we love and respect each other, have completely opposite points of view, and we go at it trying to sort of like find common ground, you know? And Curtis and I have worked out a question, I’m going to start with here. Here it goes. “It seems improbable”–this is Curtis speaking– “It seems improbable to me, that anyone could achieve a state of mind that reveals the fundamental nature of reality. How can people making this claim demonstrate to others that their personal insight is more than just that, a personal insight? It may be unreasonable to demand scientific proof, but it is entirely reasonable to expect some evidence that this internal state aligns with ontological truth, more credibly than the claims of people who feel that their personal beliefs do so. Okay, what do you say to that?
Swami Medhananda: No, that’s a great question. This is a huge question in epistemology, in philosophy of religion, and it’s a question of do putatively mystical experiences have epistemic value? That’s the technical question, exactly what he’s saying, except put in technical terms. The idea is a mystic or an alleged mystic claims to have an experience of ultimate reality, call it the self, call it nirvana, call it God. And the question is, well, why should we even accept that? It could just be a kind of subjective experience. It could be a hallucination. I want proof. So, I’ve done a lot of work on this. I’ll just mention a couple of the references, but chapters five and six of my latest book, Swami Vivekananda’s Vedanta cosmopolitanism is about this very issue, and about how Swami Vivekananda answers this question. In chapter six of my book on Ramakrishna, Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality is about the same issue. So, I’ll just talk about a couple things that I discussed there in much more detail and rigor in those books. So, the first issue is, let me turn the tables on, what’s his name?
Rick: Curtis.
Swami Medhananda: Curtis. Let me turn the tables on Curtis for a second here.
Rick: And Curtis is probably listening, he can send in follow-up questions maybe.
Swami Medhananda: Oh, that’d be great. Yeah.
Rick: You go ahead.
Swami Medhananda: Curtis, my question is, prove to me that your experience of the laptop or the iPad or the phone on which you’re watching this podcast is not just your own personal experience. Prove to me that it makes some connection with an ontological reality.
Rick: Okay, I’ll be Curtis for a second. The fact is that ten people could be in my room here and they could all see my laptop if I had one or my phone or my clock or something. So, there’s some kind of subjective agreement among the people. We all see the moon, you know?
Swami Medhananda: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. The problem with that is all those people occur in your perceptual field. So that’s also part of the subjective perception. Imagine you’re in a dream. And I’m wondering whether this tree I’m seeing is a real tree or a tree in a dream. And then I ask these eight dream figures around me, “Am I dreaming or is this really a tree in front of me?” They go, “Yeah, it’s a tree. It’s a real tree.” And then, lo and behold, five hours later, I wake up and I realized all those people who are cross-checking my experience of the tree, were part of the dream.
Rick: Okay, so you think that argument really applies, because dreams are so subjective and hallucinatory and everybody dreams differently, so you’re saying that…
Swami Medhananda: No, no, no, no. So, the moral of the story is not that, it’s not that everything is a dream. The moral of the story is that Curtis, you, and almost everybody else in the world who is sane, accepts that when we perceive something, like a laptop in front of me, or a microphone, or a tree, that that thing actually exists and that I’m actually making contact with an objective reality, right?
Rick: Right.
Swami Medhananda: Right. Even though we can’t prove it to anybody. There’s no non-circular way of proving it. And so, it makes no sense to hold mystics to a higher standard than we hold ourselves with respect to sense perceptions. That’s the lesson.
Rick: Huh. One way I think of it is that, well, if everybody experienced what mystics experience, then we would take for granted those realities just as we now take for granted the realities of cars and trees. But the fact is that those experiences are so comparatively rare that it’s not part of the popular understanding. And so, it’s easier to dismiss them as aberrations or as lunatics or as hallucinators or whatever. But what I would say sometimes to people, and see if you agree with this argument, is that, well, let’s say, it takes -do the experiment. You don’t believe that God exists? Okay, do X, Y, and Z for 15, 20 years or whatever and you may arrive at that experience. And so, there’s something scientific about that. And you might compare it to like the Higgs boson. They say they’ve discovered the Higgs boson. I kind of believe them because they seem like they know what they’re talking about, but I couldn’t confirm that for myself unless I went through decades of study and special expertise and had particular intellectual abilities to confirm it for myself. But that’s the way science works, right? There’s a kind of a collective agreement based upon what the experts say, and it’s always open to challenge.
Swami Medhananda: Absolutely, and I think that’s another part of the answer, which is what you just said, which is that go ahead and follow these methods, which are pretty tough. It’s not as easy as mixing this chemical with this chemical, but if you do it, if you put in the time and the effort to establish the ethical and spiritual kind of prerequisites needed for that spiritual experience, then you should have the same experience as I’m having. So, that is a kind of cross-check, but it’s more complicated and elaborate, maybe more challenging than like typical cross checks. Another factor is, observe the life of the person who claims to have undergone that spiritual experience or that alleged spiritual experience. Does that experience seem to have transformed him or her? I think that’s a very important criterion. And as Swami Vivekananda used to say, a person going into a very high state of samadhi, spiritual experience, will come back a saint, even if he goes into it as an ordinary person. So that’s another criterion. You can just look and see whether that person is really saintly. If he or she is not, then you have some reason to believe that maybe it was not a genuine experience. But again, that’s hard, I mean, it’s not hard and fast because some saints actually hide themselves and behave like ordinary people so as not to attract attention. There’s also that factor.
Rick: that’s an interesting point because these days there have been so many examples of famous gurus and other spiritual teachers behaving reprehensibly, usually secretly so, until eventually it’s discovered. And there have been some who have, like, there’s one guy, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, who died of alcoholism in his forties, and others have been womanizers, and this and that. And I’ve actually had arguments with people, they keep coming up, where they say, “That has nothing to do with awakening. You can be an awakened drunkard or an awakened womanizer or whatever. And to me, when somebody says I had an awakening, or I’m awakened I think, what actually are you talking about? We really need to define that term.
Swami Medhananda: Absolutely. Yeah, I can say a couple things. I’m going to give a lecture on Sunday called Self Deception in Spiritual Life. And this is a cardinal example.
Rick: I hope you put it online. I’d like to listen to it.
Swami Medhananda: Yeah, it’ll go on YouTube. Yeah, yeah. stay tuned for that. But I’ll give you an incident from the life of Shri Ramakrishna. Shri Ramakrishna was an Indian mystic in the 19th century and a monk, a Sadhu from a different state of India came to that area and Shri Ramakrishna heard about him but he also heard that this monk had fallen and that he is actually having an illicit relationship with a woman even though he’s supposed to have taken a vow of celibacy. So, he approaches that monk, and he says, “Hey, what’s this I hear about what’s going on? And he says, oh yes, yes, let me explain. He was a follower of Shankara. Okay, so he says, he says, you see, everything is Maya. So how can just my affair with that woman alone be real? That’s also part of Maya. And then Sri Ramakrishna in response said something in very strong language, which has been kind of like watered down in translations but the original Bengali really meant I piss on your Vedanta. So, I think that’s the perspective that I think you and I share which is that, what’s the good of a so-called awakening, if you’re leading a worse life than ordinary people who – and what does awakening mean? I think that’s part of the question what does it mean? In Vedanta it means awakening your true nature, which is completely free from any selfish qualities and egoistic qualities, so if you’re still indulging in those things and it means that you haven’t really had the awakening.
Rick: Yeah, I’m glad you brought that story up. I actually have it in my notes. I was going to bring it up.
Swami Medhananda: Oh, okay, well look at that. Let’s do it.
Rick: heard you tell it a couple of times, because I’ve actually had people argue that very thing with me. “Oh, I’m not doing it. God is doing it. God is sleeping with all these women in my sangha.” Or “It’s just bodies having physical sensations. I am not the doer, yada yada.” And it kind of gets my goat because I do feel that spirituality is so precious and so important for individuals and the world, and this kind of stuff disillusions people, and it gives the whole thing a bad name. And these are just kind of bullshit alibis for… it’s like, if that’s enlightenment, you can have it, you know? I don’t want it
Swami Medhananda: Yeah.. let me open this very big can of worms because I think it’s important, I don’t think it’s discussed enough. This is a big issue in what’s called neo-Advaita right now. Okay, here’s the issue. Let’s go back to Shankara. Okay, Shankaracharya He is one of the great sort of, he’s not the founding father of classical Advaita Vedanta, but he’s one of the earliest figures. Before him was Gaudapada. There were probably others. But in any case, we have his commentaries on this on the scriptures the Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, and the Brahma Sutra. It is commentary on the very first Sutra of the Brahma Sutra Okay, 1.1.1 – Athāto brahma jijñāsā – and now we begin our inquiry into Brahma. He has a long commentary, saying “Who is eligible to study Advaita Vedanta?” Very important question and his answer is, “Only those who are perfectly equipped with the sadhana cathuṣṭaya – the fourfold sadhana.” Viveka, perfect discrimination between What’s real and what’s unreal, what’s self and what’s not self? Vairagya, intense dispassion, intense detachment toward everything in this world, all worldly attachments and pleasures. Third, Shat Sampat, the six treasures in spiritual life, perfect self-control, perfect sense control, perfect control over the mind, so on and so forth. There are many other qualities. And then finally, intense Mumukshutva, which means an intense longing for liberation. He says, “as long as you have not attained perfection in this fourfold sadhana, this fourfold spiritual practice, you are not eligible to practice Advaita Vedanta, you are not qualified to practice it” and what’s happened is that, more recently, just what not so what’s happened is that more recently, Vivekananda and others have kind of opened the floodgates to other -to many people. Vivekananda for instance, taught Advaita to everybody, but there’s an open question about exactly what’s the nature of his Advaita philosophy, okay? And that’s complicated, and so, I wrote an entire book kind of trying to understand what exactly Vivekananda’s Advaita philosophy was. But Neo-Advaita is even more recent than that. Basically, they take their inspiration from certain great Advaitic saints, like Ramana Maharshi. And I’m not saying anything about Ramana Maharshi himself, he was a great saint, there’s no doubt. The danger is when people who don’t have his level of ethical and spiritual fitness, try to do what he did, and then they end up falling flat on their face or deceiving themselves and others. That’s the danger. So I’ll give you a little another anecdote here from my own life about this. 2010, just months before I joined the Ramakrishna order in India, I was doing a six-month pilgrimage and during that pilgrimage, I visited a hill station in South India in Tamil Nadu called Kodaikanal. And I walked into a bakery, and I was wearing white clothes signifying that I’m a Brahmachari, which means I’m kind of on the way to becoming a monk. And a lady working there, who might have been the owner, she looked at me and she said, “Oh, what do you plan to do?” I said, “Well, I’m planning to join the Ramakrishna Order and I’m planning to be a sanyasi, this and that.” And she was very interested. And then she said, “Oh, why go to all that trouble?” She said, “I’m a follower of Ramana Maharshi and he taught that we should just dive into the Atman, so why don’t you just dive into the Atman?” and I said, “I wish it was that easy, but it’s not,” and this is important because there’s a big question of who is eligible to practice Advaita Vedanta and if you’re not, then you’re going to be… Sri Ramakrishna used to say that those who are not eligible to practice Advaita Vedanta and who nonetheless try to, end up deceiving themselves, and deceiving others. And Neo-Advaita kind of just lifts the eligibility requirements, as far as I can tell. They say that eligibility requirements is also part of Maya, so it doesn’t make it, so forget about it. There’s no need. I think that’s where the problem is. If you downplay, if you under-emphasize the eligibility requirements for practicing these high-level spiritual disciplines, you end up with self-deception and hypocrisy.
Rick: Yeah. Neo-Advaita people tend to say things like, there is no personal self, and spiritual practices are unnecessary and practicing them will only reinforce the notion of a personal self, because there’s a practice. And then they draw other conclusions such as, well, since there’s no personal self, there couldn’t be any reincarnation, because there isn’t anything to reincarnate and, all you have to do is get it, realize that you are that and you’re done and so on and so forth. So, now, and we can take issue with all those points. But another thing though is that like you, you give talks in Hollywood, and a lot of people come to your talks and then they go online, and thousands of people watch them and the same is true of Swami Sarvapriyananda and other legitimate teachers and, probably only one percent of the people who are watching these talks meet Shankara’s qualifications that you just outlined. So, how do you deal with that?
Swami Medhananda: I don’t teach Shankara’s Advaita Vedanta. That’s how I deal with it. So that’s the key difference between, I mean, arguably between Sarvapriyanandaji’s approach and mine. It depends on…you can ask him about how he teaches it, but yeah, I don’t. That’s why I don’t. I teach Shri Ramakrishna’s philosophy, which I take to be Vijnana Vedanta. And I see that as much broader than Shankara’s philosophy. And it doesn’t say that you have to practice, that Jnana Yoga is a higher practice than Bhakti Yoga or Karma Yoga. I says, here are the main tenets of what I take to be Sri Ramakrishna’s philosophy. Number one, what’s the nature of ultimate reality? Brahman and Shakti are inseparable. Brahman is the nirguna brahman of Shankara’s school.
Rick: Nirguna meaning without qualities?
Swami Medhananda: Impersonal attributes, non-dual pure consciousness, which is our true nature. Vijnanavedanta fully accepts it. But this is the key sticking point with respect to classical Advaitins versus our tradition, Ramakrishna. He said that, that Nirguna Brahman, is just the static aspect of this infinite divine reality which is Shakti in its dynamic aspect.
Rick: Define Shakti.
Swami Medhananda: The personal God.
Rick: Okay, like Saguna Brahman.
Swami Medhananda: Saguna Brahman. Okay. And so, Sri Ramakrishna used to say, “When I think of God as inactive, Nishkriya, then I call it Brahman. When I think of that same reality as creating, preserving, and destroying this universe then I call it Shakti or Kali. So that’s the first fundamental ontological or metaphysical tenet of Vijnana Vedanta and that already differs from Shankara’s -I think -narrower philosophy, because he only accepts the ultimate reality of Nirguna Brahman and not the ultimate reality of Shakti. So that’s a crucial difference. And then second, what’s the status of this world? On Shankara’s understanding, Brahma Satyam Jagat Mithya, this world is an illusory appearance, and he uses the example of rope and snake. There’s a rope, I see it as a snake. When I realized that that was actually a rope, I realized it was a rope all along. It wasn’t that it transformed into a snake for a certain amount of time and then I realized… No, it was a rope all along. It was a mistaken perception. Exactly like that. We are misperceiving Brahman as this world of names and forms. But in fact, none of these names and forms exist by themselves. Okay, whereas by contrast, Sri Ramakrishna’s position is that Brahman actually manifests as everything in this world. Every name and form in this world is a real manifestation of Shakti. And then third, what are the implications for spiritual practice? Shankara, not surprisingly, and I think very logically, because of his metaphysical assumptions, privileges one spiritual practice over all the others. He privileges Jnana Yoga, the path of knowledge, which is meditation on your true nature as non-dual pure consciousness. Everything else, every other practice he relegates to a lower level. Karma yoga is good. That’s the path of selfless works. It’s good so long as you have an impure mind, and the goal of karma yoga is not liberation because it can never give you liberation. It’s purification of mind. It makes you eligible to practice jnana yoga. Likewise for bhakti yoga, the path of devotion. It’s a lower practice for inferior spiritual aspirants who have not attained sufficient purity of mind. Once you attain sufficient purity of mind, you stop those practices, karma yoga and bhakti yoga, and then you practice jnana yoga alone, and then you can attain liberation, because the only direct path to liberation is jnana yoga. By contrast, because Sri Ramakrishna accepts the ultimate reality not only of non-dual pure consciousness, Brahman, but also Shakti, the personal god, he can place all the four yogas on an equal footing. So, bhakti yoga, the path of devotion, Karma Yoga, the path to selfless action, they’re not on a lower footing than Jnana Yoga. And the beauty of it is spiritual life becomes that much richer, because then you can practice any one of the four yogas to your heart’s content. You can even combine them. Whereas Shankara is against this idea of what he calls Jnana Karma Samucchaya. He says this is a no-no. You cannot combine Jnana Yoga with Karma Yoga because it presupposes different kind of fundamental assumptions. Karma Yoga presupposes doership. Jnana yoga says I’m the self, which is the non-doer, so he says they’re meant for different aspirins But no Vijnanayoga, Vijnanavedanta says that you can practice all these at the same time, and make maximal spiritual progress in a given day. You might feel like let me practice bhakti yoga in the morning, jnana yoga in the evening. You can do that too. And so, it’s I think it’s much richer and more flexible. So that’s a short answer to your question,
Rick: Good. I have two or three questions that spring from all that. One is I thought of an analogy or metaphor for what you just said. Like, let’s say I want to fly to India, right? I want to go to India. I have to take a jumbo jet. But I can’t take a jumbo jet from Fairfield, Iowa. I first have to drive to the airport, and then I have to take a small jet to Chicago, and then I can take a jumbo jet to India. Now, none of those means of conveyance is inferior, really. And you have to kind of use all three, getting to the airport in Iowa is just as important as flying from Chicago to New Delhi or something. So, all the different practices, you can’t say that they… now obviously driving in my car isn’t going to get me to New Delhi, I’m going to have to get on a jumbo jet, and so that might be kind of the Shankar’s argument that Karma Yoga is not going to get you to liberation, but it’ll get you to a faster conveyance. So anyway, does that hold up or am I just supporting Shankara’s view?
Swami Medhananda: Well, the point is, even that metaphor still shows that on Shankara’s view, Karma Yoga and Bhakti Yoga are only indirect paths to liberation. They can’t take you directly to liberation. That’s the key difference with Ramakrishna’s philosophy. Because each of the four yogas is a direct and independent path to liberation.
Rick: Exclusively. So, you could do just Karma Yoga and you’ll get liberation?
Swami Medhananda: Absolutely.
Rick: Now, is that really a matter of one’s proclivities or one’s nature? Some people are wired to be a karma yogi, etc.?
Swami Medhananda: Sure, absolutely. Yeah.
Rick: Okay.
Swami Medhananda: I think it just better honors human nature and the diversity of human beings and temperaments.
Rick: And is there proof for this? Are there examples you can think of?
Swami Medhananda: Ramakrishna. Yeah, well, because the thing is, he practiced these different paths and realized the divine in different forms and aspects through all these different paths.
Rick: he was already realized. When he started to practice Christianity, for instance, he didn’t go from A to Z, he was already at Z and giving Christianity a try.
Swami Medhananda: Yeah, look, okay, let’s take a broader view, right? I think if you’re a serious, committed follower of Shankara school, you have to say that these great Christian mystics, there are one or two possibilities, who claim to have realized God, right? Like Meister Eckhart and all these great, St. Francis and St. Augustine. Either the experiences they claim to have had are not the ultimate kind of experience. They’ve stopped short of realizing the highest truth, which is impersonal, nirguna brahman. Or they have to say that Meister Eckhart was a closet Advaitin and that his realization was not Christian actually, but actually non-dual. And I think in either case, you’re really doing violence to the self-understanding of mystics and all these great traditions. There are countless saints, who claim to have experienced God, the personal God, some form the personal God or even the formless personal God through the path of devotion. Do we want to grant them that it’s possible that they actually had this experience? Or do we want to say that they’re on a lower footing, that they’re sort of still on the way, but they haven’t quite gotten there? It gets problematic. Do you see what I mean? So, if you just look at all the mystics across the world and then we get this very broader swath of people to deal with, empirical samples, data to deal with and then to account for.
Rick: And actually, as I understand it, one of Shankara’s four primary disciples, Trotakacharya, he was down at the river washing laundry when he got awakened. He wasn’t intellectual like the other three, he was just doing his seva and feeling his devotion and boom, he woke up.
Swami Medhananda: Yeah, I’m always wary of stories, because India is notoriously bad on history, and you have no idea whether anything that’s in these books are true. So, I know that Shankara wrote these commentaries on the Upanishad, Bhagavad Gita, Brahmasutras, so that has authenticity to me. And so, I place my evidence on what he actually said, rather than on pseudo-legendary stories about what his disciples did or what he did. There are weird stories about how he entered a king’s body and did all that.
Rick: I heard that one, yeah.
Swami Medhananda: Yeah, so it’s just, I just, don’t know whether it’s true or not, but I don’t, I wouldn’t put much weight on those kinds of stories, to be honest.
Rick: Yeah, there’s a story that Hanuman picked up a mountain and flew to Sri Lanka with it.
Swami Medhananda: Yeah, I’m not atheist, but I’m agnostic about all that stuff.
Rick: Yeah, that’s a good attitude. I kind of treat everything as a hypothesis, which means I don’t totally believe in it or totally rule it out, but it’s like, all right, how much credibility does this have? How much evidence can we find for that?
Swami Medhananda: Yeah, the reason why I say this is because, when I present my case for how Sri Ramakrishna’s Vijnanavedanta is broader than, notice I say broader than Shankara’s philosophy, there are a lot of people who are up in arms who are followers of Shankara, who object and the first thing they say is well Shankara was a great devotee, because he wrote these great devotional hymns Bhaja Govindam and this and that, and my response is we don’t know whether he composed those devotional hymns that’s number one. We really don’t know. What happens in India that this is a very common practice in India- once somebody becomes extremely famous and prestigious, everybody wants a piece of him, and so if an author has just composed a beautiful hymn, the easiest way to get popularity is say that was ascribe to Shankara. So possibly or Vyasa and so, I don’t trust this. They also even if you wrote it, even if you wrote it, then there’s another problem. Try to reconcile the devotional sentiment in Bhaja Govindam, for instance, this devotional hymn, with his uncontroversial statements about Bhakti in his commentaries, which are known to be his and then you end up with prima facie contradictions. And then you have to some someone try to reconcile what he says about devotion and bhakti yoga in his commentaries and the Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, Brahmasutra, what he’s saying in these devotional hymns. So even then you’re not out of the woods, even if you accept it as his, it’s still problematic. Or finally there’s a third possibility, which is that he composed these devotional hymns for inferior spiritual aspirants who are not ready for the heights of Advaitic practice.
Rick: Yeah, okay. One thing I like about your attitude is that it’s kind of scientific in a way because you’re not adamant about something being true just because you happen to believe it, but you’re kind of open to all possibilities. I like that. But then, you obviously do have beliefs. You believe that Sri Ramakrishna was an avatar. And for most people, many people are going to think, “Well, who knows? Maybe, I don’t know.” A lot of people say they’re avatars these days. But would you stake your life on something like that? Or do you feel like it just makes sense to you based on everything you’ve learned so far that he seems to have had that status?
Swami Medhananda: My principle is follow the evidence and I’m skeptical by nature. I’m a philosopher and I try to follow the evidence to the best of my ability. That’s why for people who disagree with my views, I just ask them for evidence for their view and usually it’s not forthcoming, but the evidence is really bad. But in my case, yes, I’m not gonna try to persuade anybody that Ramakrishna is an avatar. That’s my own assessment of the evidence that has been made available to me that I’ve accessed. He said it himself. His character matches the statements other people have attested to his divinity, Those kinds of things. That’s all a part of this kind of cumulative case for for Ramakrishna as an incarnation.
Rick: Yeah, yeah, okay Another thing I found interesting in listening to your videos, was all the different flavors of Vedanta, because I had pretty much just always heard about Advaita Vedanta, Shankara’s view and I had kind of imbibed that to a great extent. But then, you’re talking about all these other different aspects which are somewhat different or even completely contradictory to one another. And Vedanta means the end of the Veda, supposedly, well it means the Upanishads, right? But it also means, I guess, the highest pinnacle of knowledge because it’s the end of this whole huge means of gaining knowledge, the Veda. And yet, have all these different founders of these schools of Vedanta ended up on different mountain peaks which are of equal height, or they would mostly, most of them would argue that their views are correct, and the other ones are lacking in some way. Now, I understand, you can talk about Vijnanavedanta, and I understand Ramakrishna tried to reconcile and harmonize all this into a larger basket using the blind man and the elephant metaphor. So why don’t you go and explain that a little bit.
Swami Medhananda: Sure, there are two metaphors. The blind men and the elephant is more well-known, and it is not original to him. And there’s a chameleon parable which may very well be original to him, but I don’t know whether– I don’t know exactly whether there’s a precedent for that. But let me start with the blind man and the elephant. Yeah, there are five blind men touching different parts of the same elephant, and they’re all bickering among themselves about what is the true nature of this elephant. And then one person who can see the whole elephant adjudicates and says, “Well, wait a minute, you’re all right and all wrong. You’re all right because you’re touching different parts of the elephant, but you’re wrong because you’re all touching different parts of the same elephant. The elephant is all those things at once. And the lesson is, well, the question is, who is the person with vision in the story? The vijnani, the person who has had a more expansive realization of ultimate reality, not only in one form or aspect, but in multiple forms or aspects. Chameleon parable that he also is fond of repeating, reciting. He says there’s a chameleon on a tree. And one person goes up to the tree, sees the chameleon, sees it as blue, comes back to his friends and says, “Hey, I saw this beautiful blue chameleon. Go check it out.” Second friend goes, sees it as yellow, says, “Why is my friend lying to me? What is he, pulling my leg?” Goes back, says, “Well, you know, give me a break. It’s not blue, it’s yellow.” Third friend goes to confirm, and it’s turned out to be colorless. They start fighting with each other under the tree. There’s a guy living under the tree who says, “Hey, hey, hey, calm down. This thing is a chameleon. It doesn’t have one color. It changes colors throughout the day. Sometimes it’s colorless.” So, there are a couple lessons here. Number one, again, who’s the person sitting under the tree? It’s the vijnani. The person who’s had a more expansive realization of ultimate reality in multiple forms and aspects. But secondly, the colorless chameleon is no more real or somehow truer than the yellow chameleon or the blue chameleon or the green chameleon. They’re all, which means that, Advaita Vedanta, that realization of nirguna Brahman, is not put on a higher footing than theistic realization of a personal God.
Rick: Yeah, so you’re saying in a sense that a vijnani, the guy sitting under the tree, is more mature in his understanding or experience than those who are locked into the chameleon being one particular color or the elephant being one particular thing, like a snake or whatever. And so,
Swami Medhananda: I don’t know if the word mature is the best word, to be honest. I like the word expansive. He just has a broader, it’s like I’ve traveled, I’ve been to several continents, whereas other people might have only visited one continent. It’s like that.
Rick: Right. But if Vedanta is supposed to be the highest realization or the pinnacle of Indian spiritual thought, then it would seem that it would be the Vijnani’s perspective. It would be all-encompassing and these guys who were just locked into a particular flavor of it, are not getting, not grasping the whole truth.
Swami Medhananda: Yeah, but they don’t need it. That’s the key. So there’s a key difference. I make this distinction very sharply in my work, my academic work. There’s a difference between a particular spiritual path, salvific efficacy, its ability to afford the highest kind of state of salvation. Salvation is very Christian, call it liberation if you want, And doctrinal truth, okay? Whether it’s only a partial vision of truth or whether there’s a philosophy that has a fuller vision of truth. So, we need to keep these two things separate, okay? The Vijnani has a broader, more expansive conception of ultimate reality, okay? But the Christian realizing God as Christ or the Sufi mystic realizing God as Allah or the Vaishnava realizing God as Krishna or the Advaitin realizing Brahman as non-dual of pure consciousness, they’re all also realizing that’s the ultimate goal for them. There isn’t anything higher than that for them. Do you see what I mean? It’s not mandatory for them to then go on to realize… So, the Advaitin, Sri Ramakrishna never says the Advaitin has to then finally accept the reality of Shakti. That’s silly. He doesn’t need to. In fact, what he says instead is there are two fundamentally different paradigms of the ultimate state of liberation. One is eating sugar and the other is becoming sugar. And he says, Advaita Vedantins are people who want to become sugar. Let them become sugar. They want to be Brahman, let them be Brahman. Bhaktas don’t want to become sugar. They want to eat sugar. And eating sugar for them is sufficient. And there’s no need for them to become sugar. The Vijyani has both become sugar and afterwards also enjoys eating sugar. That’s a very unique thing and it’s… That’s just a kind of a very rare soul who can do that. And who wants to do that. But most people neither want it nor do they need it.
Rick: So you’re saying that liberation doesn’t necessarily conform to a clear, comprehensive understanding of the mechanics of creation. Let me read something I wrote down. I said, “The fact that many different schools of Vedanta offer perspectives that differ from and even contradict one another, reads one to believe that they are all propounding beliefs or at best hypotheses which might conform with their subjective experience, but which don’t represent a fundamental universal reality. So, like one school of Vedanta might say, Krishna or Vishnu is the ultimate reality and the impersonal is just like his big toe or something and the others are saying it’s all impersonal reality and God is just a manifest state or result of maya which is an intrinsic property of Brahman and so on. So, you’re just kind of implying that both of these proponents could be defined as liberated, having achieved liberation, but they have very different concepts of what even ultimate reality is, what to say of relative reality.
Swami Medhananda: I think that’s true. And I think, the way I like to think about it is, I think Shri Ramakrishna conceives the ultimate state of liberation as a many-roomed mansion.
Rick: Jesus said that too. He said, “In my Father’s house, there are many mansions.”
Swami Medhananda: Many mansions, so yeah. And so, there are different ways of interpreting that. So, my Vedantic way would be to say, the Christian, the liberated Christian will dwell in the Christian room of that many-room mansion. The liberated Muslim will dwell in the Muslim room, the Jannah, they call that heaven Jannah. The Advaita Vedanta, they will object to the language of rooms, and they’ll say that’s dual, dualistic or whatever. But in any case, they get their Advaita Vedanta, and they can live happily together, except they’re not all inhabiting the same literal space, because they don’t want to be inhabiting the same space. The Advaitins don’t want to dwell with Christ in heaven.
Rick: Are you talking about post-mortem outcomes?
Swami Medhananda: Yeah, absolutely.
Rick: Okay. Yeah. So, even there, I mean, who knows? These are all just, like, maybe Christians go and end up seeing Jesus, or maybe they get a rude surprise and it’s Christian standing there. All this is speculative to me. I mean, I do believe something happens after you die, and all these ideas of different lokas and all resonate with my intuitive feeling, but who knows?
Swami Medhananda: Yeah, again, I would say it’s not quite that bleak, I think, in terms of like a total lack of evidence. I think that near-death spirits are a very important source of evidence these days of people of varying beliefs, whether Christian or agnostic or atheist who sometimes they’re atheists who are converted on the spot after a near death experience to believe in a higher power and I think that we should take that evidence seriously. There are mystics who claim to be able to just kind of inhabit these post-mortem realms while still in the body but in a mystical state of consciousness and they also they may come back and say, “Hey, I saw these divine beings dwelling in these higher realms.” And you might be like your friend Curtis and be skeptical of that, but again, as I said, then you should be skeptical of this external world, because how do I know that my perception of this microphone and this laptop is not a subjective hallucination? You know, you can’t prove it. Descartes proved that a long time ago.
Rick: Yeah, I hear you. It’s just that some things are more readily provable than others, I suppose. They’re more universally verifiable, anybody can come and see your microphone. Others, you have to…
Swami Medhananda: Remember, remember what I said about that. It’s exactly what Descartes said too. Any of the cross-checkers, anybody else confirming it could be part of the dream and you can never rule it out. That’s part of the problem. There’s no independent cross-check. There’s nobody who can come from outside your dream to verify that it’s not a dream.
Rick: Yeah. Okay.
Swami Medhananda: a real problem. So, you end up with epistemic circularity.
Rick: Are there questions, Irene? Yeah, I’ll be sending. Oh good, Irene will be sending some questions. Okay, let’s see here. Here’s a question that I I wrote down. Well, this is kind of rehashing the same topic, but let’s see if it brings out anything more. So, Vedanta’s been around a lot longer than science, of course. So reportedly many have realized what it promises. But it’s an individual subjective exploration, so one person realizing Brahma doesn’t do much for everyone else trying to realize it, unless doing so enlivens Rupert Sheldrake’s morphogenetic field and helps all the other aspirants, which I think it may. Science, on the other hand, is a shared objective like exploration, so everyone benefits from anyone’s discoveries, although that might not yield the same, the kind of experiential fulfillment that Vedanta promises.
Swami Medhananda: Yeah, one thing I’d say to that is, I’m not a scientist, and I often do accept what scientific studies conclude, but not on the basis of my own verification of what they’re saying. I’m not equipped, I don’t have the qualifications, I’m not to go to a lab and verify whether… How many of us actually verify the results of scientific studies? Almost none of us right?
RICK: but we actually benefit from the from the outcome of those studies very often our cell phone
Swami Medhananda: if you accept it. Why should we accept scientific testimony? Why? Look at all the… You know what’s called the replication crisis, right? It’s a massive problem people are making up data, scientists …Why should we…so this is part of the problem, is scientism is this huge thing now. What’s happening is that science has gained so much prestige now, that if a scientist says it, it must be true. If a mystic says it, bogus, it’s just subjective. And so, Vivekananda in the late 19th century, he said that these scientists, they become like popes. He says these popes of modern science say the most outrageous and wonderful things, but people will swallow it without any questioning. I think that’s part of the problem is that we don’t verify these scientific claims for ourselves, but we still accepted because it’s scientific. Vivekananda says, “religion is equally scientific in this way, and if we accept the claims of natural science, why is it that we’re so hesitant to accept the claims of spiritual science?” You see? Because it’s equally based on verification and it’s inviting you to verify. Most of us don’t take the trouble or the effort to actually do the verificatory process, but that doesn’t make it any less of a science. That’s Vivekananda’s standpoint.
Rick: I agree. And I have this hope and thought that science and spirituality can, and may eventually will, merge into a kind of a collective enterprise and that each of them as they now exist has something really valuable to offer the other, that science can perhaps save spirituality from being too imaginary and fanciful and by encouraging people to use an empirical attitude in their spiritual path. And spirituality, on the other hand, can probe all kinds of realities that science either denies exists or doesn’t even dream exists.
Swami Medhananda: I think that’s a great way of putting it. I think that the way that spirituality can help science and kind of push back on science is to prevent science from collapsing into scientism in a dogmatic way. And that’s just another way of saying what you just said.
Rick: Now here’s a question from my friend Kanta Dadlani in Mumbai. All the monks from the Ramakrishna Mission infuse their teachings with flavors of Christianity, while the source of all religions is one. Many whom I know have observed this. Is it to make their Western audiences embrace the teachings more comfortably? I should add Yogananda did this too. If yes, why? After all, if the message is clear, people will be drawn to the teachings without any doubts.
Swami Medhananda: Yeah, I’d be cautious about any kind of sweeping generalization about all Ramakrishna mission monks say this or that. It’s just not true. I like to bring in Christian teachings and the reason is because our founder, Sri Ramakrishna, taught the harmony of religions. Isn’t Christianity one of the great world religions? And so, doesn’t it make sense to bring in Christianity as much as it does to bring in Sufi mysticism and Buddhism? I talk about Buddhism; I give lectures on mindfulness. So, I worry that that kind of question is coming from a place of possibly right-wing Hindutva kind of stuff about like, “Trump just didn’t really include Christianity in the harmony of religions, right?” That kind of a thing. But no, yes, you can be a Christian and you can realize the highest goal to the path of Christianity. And so why be embarrassed to bring in religions like Christianity? Especially when we’re preaching Vedanta in the West, where people are familiar with Christianity, many people are practicing Christians. It seems like a no-brainer to me.
Rick: Yeah, and I would say, the reason that many Eastern spiritual teachers have done this is not just as a kind of a marketing technique to a Christian audience, but because it helps people find the deeper values of their own tradition without conflicting with it, you know?
Swami Medhananda: Absolutely, and then, I gave a lecture near Christmas called “Did Sri Ramakrishna Really Practice Christianity?” And I just…
Rick: I listened to that one, yeah.
Swami Medhananda: Yeah, and I said, I consider myself Christian as much as I’m Hindu. My fundamental orientation is Hindu, Vedantic, but as a Vedantin, I can fully embrace Christ as an incarnation of God. A large part of my spiritual practice is listening to Christian spiritual music of the great classical composers like Bach and Buxtehude and Mozart and others, who put these wonderful psalms and other Christian themes to music, I just don’t see any problem. It’s hard for me to understand or be sympathetic to the standpoint from which that person is posing the question, I guess. I have to know more about the person why he sees it as a problem.
Rick: Yeah, it’s a she, Kanta.
Swami Medhananda: Yeah, so why does she even see it as a problem? That’s what I don’t know.
Rick: Maybe she’ll ask a follow-up question, but here’s another question from her. She said, “In a recent discussion between Bernardo Kastrup and Michael James,” Michael is a kind of a devotee of Ramana Maharshi. Michael reiterated the fact that we see and believe events because we identify with them. Bernardo refused this on the premise that the recent massacre of innocent Jews was real and did not agree with Michael. Your thoughts?
Swami Medhananda: Yeah, again, I’m not a follower of Ramana Maharshi. I accept him as a great saint, but I’m a follower of Sri Ramakrishna. And so, on my understanding of Ramakrishna’s philosophy, we don’t think that this world is a dream. We say that everything is God. And so, these poor Holocaust victims were all manifestations of God who were actually suffering in the concentration camps.
Rick: And that’s also the issue, referring to October 7th, the Hamas attack on Israel.
Swami Medhananda: Yeah.
Rick: Yeah, the whole idea that the world is an illusion is kind of problematic if you’re about to get hit by a bus. I mean, you better take it seriously. Yeah, there’s the whole vyavaharika idea, right? The transactional reality, but…
Swami Medhananda: Yeah, a lot of confusion comes from mixing the two standpoints, the ultimate and the empirical standpoints. And I think that mixing comes more frequently when people lift the eligibility requirements and think they’re already eligible to… I’m already Ramana Maharshi, and that’s where the problem is. They’re fully embedded in empirical reality and yet they’re kind of talking big about being the Atman and that’s where the problem started.
Rick: Yeah, there’s an old Tibetan saying that don’t mistake understanding for realization.
Swami Medhananda: That’s a huge problem in Neo-Advaita in my opinion.
Rick: Yeah, mine too, having interviewed a bunch of them. Well, here’s a line of thought. So, you know, Shankara says the the world is an illusion. Sri Ramakrishna says the world is a manifestation of God and is real and has a divine manifestation. The Gita says the unreal has no being, the real never ceases to be. I think maybe Shankarites would argue that the world can’t manifest, because manifestation implies change and I meant the unmanifest can’t manifest because manifestation implies change and the impersonal non-dual can’t change. It can’t convert itself into something else. And if it has done so, what is that something else actually made of if we look closely enough? What do you think about that?
Swami Medhananda: Yeah, absolutely. And that’s why the key sticking point between classical Advaita Vedanta and Ramakrishna’s Advaita is the nature of ultimate reality because, it’s because the Advaitins accept only Nirguna Brahman, non-dual pure, impersonal non-dual pure conscious as the ultimate reality that they end up with that logic and that the world therefore has to be unreal. Because Sri Ramakrishna starts with a different metaphysical premise which is that Brahman and Shakti are inseparable, Sri Ramakrishna can concede to the classical Advaitins that yeah yeah you’re right- non-dual Brahman can never actually transform into anything and yet Shakti does because Shakti is that is the dynamic aspect of one and the same infinite divine reality. And it’s Shakti that manifests everything in this world. It’s not non-dual Brahman. Brahman is completely transcendent.
Rick: the ultimate reality, therefore, has components.
Swami Medhananda: Uh, components? aspects. I don’t like components.
Rick: Aspects.
Swami Medhananda: Yeah, aspects, absolutely.
Rick: There’s this tendency to want to boil it all down to one unified field or one essential ultimate constituent of everything, you know?
Swami Medhananda: Yeah.
Rick: And not to find multiple constituents. constituents.
Swami Medhananda: Yeah, and it is. That one fundamental is the divine, the infinite divine reality.
Rick: Yeah.
Swami Medhananda: Which has the capacity to manifest.
Rick: Well, okay, let’s take water, for example. So, water is a manifest thing, and we can drink it, we can drown in it. And if we look at it closely, we see, well, actually, , if we, let’s say, had Superman’s microscopic vision, we’d say, “Oh, actually, there is no water per se, it’s just hydrogen and oxygen.” And then if we look at those more closely, we say, “Well, there’s actually no hydrogen and oxygen, it’s just quarks and electrons or something.” And then even more fundamentally, it’s just super strings. So, it’s almost like we take the manifestation of the world as real in a way because we don’t have the kind of microscopic perception that we theoretically could have. And if we had it, we would see that the world isn’t in fact what it appears to be. just all this sort of primordial soup of possibilities.
Swami Medhananda: Well, I don’t know if that’s, yeah, like some physicists call it strings, right? They call it different things, like what that ultimate bedrock kind of reality is. Nonetheless, that still differs from classical advaita, right? Because they don’t say that those strings are unreal, right? Physicists, I’m saying. So, we’re not, we’re still far away from the classical advaitic view that everything is an illusion. If that’s what you- I don’t know what exactly where you want to move in this argument, but…
Rick: I’m not quite sure where I want to move either. I’m just pondering it. Maybe one way of treating the word illusion is that things are real, but they’re not what they appear to be.
Swami Medhananda: Uh, sure. Yeah. And I think classical advice and say that they say that this thing looks like a snake, but it’s not a snake. It’s a rope, right? You’re misperceiving the rope as a snake, right? Exactly like that. I’m misperceiving this laptop. I’m misperceiving Brahman as this laptop. I’m misperceiving this this brahman as this microphone, right? Ramakrishna will say it’s not a misperception brahman as shakti lovingly manifest to us in these different forms You see so every mystic is right, right? The Christian mystic god will lovingly manifest the Christian mystic as Christ or as Mary God will lovingly manifest to Muslim mystics as Allah. God will lovingly manifest to Vaishnavas as Krishna and they can all be true. But you see so that’s not subjective. You’re explaining it from the side of God. Sri Ramakrishna used to use the term in Bengali, “Bhakta-vatsal.” God is “Bhakta-vatsal,” meaning He’s a lover of His devotees. So, he’ll lovingly manifest to different devotees, different spiritual aspirants in the form that they love, that they cherish. That’s the idea.
RICK: Yeah. I’m just playing devil’s advocate with you a little bit just to kind of get…
SWAMI MEDHANANDA: Of course, please. No, no, I enjoy it.
Rick: get this stuff out of you. But I resonate with what you’re saying. And,
Swami Medhananda: If you don’t mind, I mean, do you mind my saying one more thing, which is…
Rick: please.
Swami Medhananda: I think it’s useful in the context of Vedanta to go back to the original scriptures. And in our case the Upanishads are authority or the authoritative scriptures and so Chandogya Upanishad. Does it talk about ropes and snakes? No. What does it talk about? What kind of metaphors does Chandogya Upanishad use to explain the relationship between the ultimate reality Brahman and this world of names and forms? I want to highlight two. Clay and pots, gold and ornaments. Okay, I can give you the passages later if you’re interested. But that’s – How does Brahman manifest in this world? The Upanishad answers, just as a potter will shape this kind of formless clay into differently sized and shaped pots. How does Brahman manifest in this world of names and forms? Just as a goldsmith will take molten gold and shape various golden ornaments out of it, whether they’re bracelets or earrings or necklaces. Now tell me, how in the world are you going to get the world as an illusion from this, from these metaphors? It’s more plausible to see this world, to take the Upanishad and be saying that this world is a real manifestation of the Divine.
Rick: Yeah, and it would be true to say two things. You could say there’s only clay in this room, and you could also say there are pots in this room, and both things would be right.
Swami Medhananda: Exactly, without the either/or kind of thinking that Advaitas I think fall prey to, which is that because it’s nothing but clay, therefore the pots never existed. That’s absurd. It’s absurd. It’s absurd to say that an ocean, when it forms into a wave, and then when the wave subsides after a few seconds is that the wave never existed. Of course, the wave existed, but it’s temporary. That’s exactly what this world is.
Rick: Yeah. One thing I always find fascinating, and I often ponder it even as I walk the dogs down the street, is to consider the miracle of what you’re actually looking at. Every blade of grass, a single cell if you could actually see what was going on in it. How much intelligence is lively in every particle of creation. Even if you go way out in intergalactic space somewhere and look at a cubic centimeter of it, there are all these, waves passing through and various laws of nature on display. So, it’s like the whole universe is just this ocean of intelligence and we take that for granted. So, that to me evokes a kind of a religious sentiment when I contemplate that.
Swami Medhananda: I think that lends itself better to the Vijnana Vedanta paradigm than to classical philosophy, to be honest.
Rick: Yeah, I do too.
Swami Medhananda: Just the pure wonder of this world, yeah.
Rick: Yeah, I mean it almost seems kind of crude to just dismiss it all as mere illusion when you ponder the magnitude or the beauty, the majesty, the mystery of this so-called illusion.
Swami Medhananda: Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah.
Rick: Okie dokie, here’s another question. This might be from Curtis, for some reason the name says “Curtis not” I don’t know what he means by that. He says, “I am not claiming to reveal absolute reality in my perception of the world. I am wrong all the time.” Yeah, this is Curtis. “I would never claim to have that kind of epistemological solidity from my perceptions. Statistics may reveal things we are confused about. We use tools. What are the tools in Vedanta that support such a grand claim of the absolute reality?”
Swami Medhananda: Yeah, I still think, I want to push back a little on the very first part. look, you use the example of if a truck is coming towards you, what do you do in that context? Do you believe that they’re actually, if you perceive a truck coming towards you and you’re in the middle of a street, are you really going to start like Curtis saying, “I don’t really know whether there’s a truck coming towards,” of course you know there’s a truck coming towards, that’s why you get the heck out of the way.
Rick: you ever hear that story of Shankara and the elephant?
Swami Medhananda: No, go ahead.
Rick: There was a quick story and then I’ll resume what you’re saying. So apparently, according to the story, Shankara went to visit some king or something and the king decided to test him by letting loose a wild elephant. So, the elephant’s running along, Shankara climbs up a tree and then the king says, “Hey, if the world is an illusion, why’d you bother climbing the tree?” And Shankara said, “Well, the illusory elephant chased the illusory me up the illusory tree.”
Swami Medhananda: Right, right. I see. Yeah, yeah, right. That’s helpful. The point is, I mean, this is in the context of why should we take mystical testimony as genuine or legitimate? Why not just see it as subjective? My pushback on that was, why should I take your perception of this laptop or your listening, your audio listening to the podcast or visual one as valid? They’re all on an equal par. And what he’s saying is, well, no, but I’m not 100% sure that this is real. And that’s fine. And I think many mystics don’t claim 100% certainty either for their spiritual experiences. I distinguish in my work between what I call, it’s not what I call, but what philosophers call self-authenticating mystical experiences from mystical experience that are not self-authenticating. And the difference is, a self-authenticating mystical experience is one which, by the very having of which, you can’t doubt its genuineness. And the interesting thing is that mystics like Saint Teresa of Avila, the great Catholic mystic, Sri Ramakrishna, they themselves will classify their different spiritual experiences within these two categories. Some of them are self-authenticating, some of them are not. So, I think mostI don’t want to speak for most mystics. I want to say that there are many mystics who don’t claim that all of their spiritual experiences are self-authenticating, so that it would be inaccurate to say that. Some of them will say, “It certainly feels as real, if not more real to me than my perception of this external world, but I can’t be 100% sure.” And then there are these very, very lofty, what these mystics consider to be the absolutely ultimate apex of spiritual experience, which they say, which they tend to say are self-authenticating. You can’t doubt them, logically.
Rick: At least the person experiencing them can’t doubt them. Others can doubt all they like, but.
Swami Medhananda: Yeah, of course.
Rick: And of course, you know, you could have fundamentalist Christians who said, “Well, I, Jesus saved me, and it was a huge experience for me and I absolutely believe it and it’s true and I’m going to heaven,” and all that stuff.
Swami Medhananda: That’s wonderful. They have that, that’s wonderful, yeah. Yeah. Oh, more power to them.
Rick: Yeah, whether or not that actually happened, or it was just a big mood.
Swami Medhananda: God knows, is what I say. knows.
Rick: Right. Okay, okay, here’s another question. This is from Prachi Dixit in Torrance, California. Do you agree that God or even spirituality is a very personal experience and that no matter what path we take; it is all going to one ultimate truth?
Swami Medhananda: Yeah, I think so. It depends on what you mean by personal experience. Is that deflationary or is that it’s an intimate encounter with the ultimate? And, our tradition is all about how different people, different spiritual aspirants meditating on the divine reality in different forms and aspects all ultimately reach the same goal of spiritual realization of the divine in some form or aspect. And because we haven’t really brought into play doctrines like karma and rebirth and universal liberation, but that’s also an important part of the overall package that I’m kind of –
Rick: Yeah, let’s get into that a little bit in a minute. I want to –
Swami Medhananda: Sure.
Rick: follow up a couple more things. Curtis just sent me a follow-up question just in my personal email. He says, “Thanks for getting our question in. Well done. I think you also had excellent follow-up perspectives. This is a little confrontational, but you can take it. What he tried was to shift the burden of proof. It was a tactic, not a philosophical response. The fact is that science and my own claims are not that we know the ultimate reality of life. that requires support. If I am challenged on being wrong about anything, I am never surprised. He is saying that since we can’t be sure about our perceptions, we have no right to ask for a proof of a claim to ultimate reality, false equivalence. He is representing a tradition that makes a very exciting claim, the ultimate reality of life. The answer to “Where’s the beef?” cannot be, “I know you are, but what am I?”
Swami Medhananda: Yeah, no, I get the drift away saying, yeah, it’s because I haven’t introduced like the key, There’re some key principles that I talk about in detail in my scholarly work. So, I’ll just, I’ll introduce them now.
Rick: Good.
Swami Medhananda: Richard Swinburne, this very prominent philosopher of religion, he’s still living, but he’s very old at this point, I think he’s in the mid 80s or something at Oxford. He presented what he considers to be rock, bedrock epistemic principles. One of them he calls the principle of credulity. Okay, that may not be the best language to use other people like John Hick calls it the principle of critical trust, but in any case, what is the principle? The fundamental principle is this, it is reasonable for me to take what I perceive to actually exist. You might think well, duh. Well, yeah, it should be duh, right? But now, interesting implications follow if we accept this epistemic principle of credulity. What follows? Any perception I have is by itself in the absence of reasons for doubting that that perception. If I’m on drugs, I have a good reason to doubt that that that’s a veridical experience. But if I can rule out any reason for thinking that this perception might be bogus, it’s reasonable for me to take it at face value and to think that what I’m perceiving actually exists. If we accept that principle, it applies equally to all perceptions across the board, whether sensuous or super sensuous. This is the key principle that needs to be introduced to kind of complete the picture that because what he’s saying about the tactic, it’s true. That’s just it’s just a response. But that’s the kind of prelude to bringing in the positive epistemic principles. So this is the first principle. Okay, second principle, the principle of perceptual testimony, it’s reasonable for us to accept the perceptual testimony of others in the absence of reasons for doubting in the absence of doubt. Right? We accept both of these principles all the time in our daily life, newspapers, history books, science textbooks, when my father says, “Hey, take an umbrella, it’s raining outside, “ it’s raining outside today, for instance, in LA, it’s a rare occurrence, right? If I know it’s April Fool’s Day and my dad has a tendency to kind of pull my leg on April Fool’s Day, then I’m not going to accept that principle on this occasion. Otherwise, you’re going to accept it. Now, if we accept those two epistemic principles, the principle of credulity and the principle of perceptual testimony, then just as we, which we do, and I don’t think Curtis is going to argue against these principles because that would be crazy, and you’d lose your any sense of rationality if you did. If you accept those principles, those principles equally apply the super sensuous perceptions and the sensuous perception. The perception of this mic, of this microphone and laptop, just as much as a mystic’s punitive perception of God or the Atman or Nirvana.
Rick: That’s good. I wish I could talk like that. Yeah, it’s funny actually. There’s been such a spate of conspiracy theories going around, especially the last few years it seems like, I’ve actually tangled with people who believe the Earth is flat and that everybody’s lying to you. And, of course, people who try to debunk conspiracy theories say that the larger the conspiracy, the more improbable it is that it’s a valid theory. So, the fact that the Earth is flat, there’d have to be millions of people in cahoots hiding something from us. Or the moon landings were faked and so on and so forth. And actually, this leads to a good question, which I’ve come more and more to appreciate the importance of developing critical thinking skills on the spiritual path because I’ve seen so many examples of people who’ve been on spiritual paths for decades even who are kind of off in la-la land in terms of the clarity and and rigor of their thinking and are susceptible to brainwashing and all kinds of magical thinking. So anyway, what thoughts do you have on that particular point?
Swami Medhananda: Absolutely. I think that critical thinking is essential for all spiritual aspirants. I gave a lecture a few months ago, you can look it up on YouTube. It’s called, “We Are All Philosophers.” And I think that there’s a common mistake made by a lot of spiritual aspirants, which is that there’s a small minority of super smart and intellectual spiritual aspirants who are into philosophy, who are kind of nerds about philosophy. So, philosophy is for them, but not for us. We don’t need it. And I push back on that. And I think that that’s a mistake because, and I bring in, first of all, I think it’s important to recognize that the Buddhist, the fundamental Buddhist spiritual practice is the noble eightfold path. And the first factor in that eightfold path is Samyag Drishti. It’s the right view, right understanding. It’s the foundation for all of the subsequent spiritual practices for everything else. Because without a right understanding of this world, no matter what you do, it’ll be like, it’s like trying to, It’s like rowing a boat, but in a completely directionless way. You need to know where you are now, where you want to go, and how to get from point A to point B. All of that, you can only arrive at that through critical thinking and through some philosophical inquiry, however rudimentary. And every tradition gives you a different philosophical roadmap, so, you have to have some understanding. Even if you just take the name of God, which is a standard devotional practice, who is God? You don’t need to be Aquinas and go into the theological subtleties, but have some basic understanding. Is God a supreme person who loves me and who responds to my prayers? Or is God, you know, non-dual pure consciousness? Doesn’t that matter to your spiritual practice? Shouldn’t it matter? Surely it does. But these are philosophical questions and they’re things that you arrive at through critical thinking.
Rick: They kind of remind me.
Swami Medhananda: And then, another thing I would say, sorry just to…
Rick: No, that’s alright.
Swami Medhananda: Sorry for interrupting you, but critical thinking takes many different forms. So, I just mentioned one form, which is philosophizing, but there are many other forms. other forms. So, for instance, viveka, the Sanskrit term viveka, which often is translated as discrimination. These days discrimination has a bad connotation, so people say discernment. But in any case, that itself is a form of critical thinking. That’s also important to keep in mind. And that’s fundamental in every path, apart from the path of knowledge. But viveka, this idea that you have to discriminate between what is real, what’s unreal, what’s permanent, what’s impermanent, what’s eternal, what’s non-eternal. That’s all-critical thinking, right? Yeah.
Rick: It reminds me of the whole Shravana, mañana and Nididhyasana thing where you hear it, you really think about it deeply, you do something to confirm it experientially or explore it experientially. And I think sometimes there’s an imbalance in people’s spiritual development where they favor one of these things more than the other and it kind of doesn’t have a good outcome. Another, along similar lines, Swami Sarvarapriyananda, I started this with some friends, I started this organization a few years ago called the Association for Spiritual Integrity to try to popularize the importance of ethical behavior on the spiritual path, which is often lacking in contemporary circles. And Swami Sarvarapriyananda addressed our group one time for a webinar. But anyway, I appreciate hearing your thoughts on that because it’s, as I mentioned, it’s very often left out in modern spiritual teachings and yet it’s very much a pillar of the more traditional teachings.
Swami Medhananda: Absolutely, and I 100% agree. And I think part of the problem with so-called neo-Advaitins is that they don’t read their source texts. They don’t read Shankara’s commentaries in general. They’re only reading Ramana Maharshi. And even Ramana Maharshi will sometimes emphasize eligibility requirements. And if you look at his life of course you saw that he was just obviously an extraordinary soul, right? And at the age of 16 he just, his uncle died I think, and then he just lay flat on the floor and then he just had the enlightenment experience. But that’s because he had already attained perfection in previous births, right? That would be the Vedantic understanding. So, I think it’s absolutely essential. I think that it’s very, very dangerous to, I personally think that it’s dangerous to teach classical Advaita Vedanta to the masses precisely because of this problem. You can teach Advaita Vedanta in a different form. That is, in my understanding, Vijnana Vedanta because it’s still Advaita. There’s only one reality. But this is not an Advaita that says this world is an illusion. It doesn’t say that the path of knowledge is the only direct path to liberation. Those are the things that are, I think, more problematic in this context.
Rick: Yeah. I interviewed a woman about a year ago named Jessica Nathanson who, or Jessica Eve, she sometimes calls herself, who has kind of been on a campaign to help people who’ve actually been damaged by neo-Advaita. People who are householders by nature, they have families, jobs, etc., are becoming cynical, unmotivated, their family is an illusion, they’ve made and become suicidal and so on, and she’s become like a clearinghouse for these horror stories.
Swami Medhananda: Wow, that’s interesting. I didn’t know that it went that far, but I think that the key term here is spiritual bypassing. Yeah. I think that’s what’s happening in a lot of these cases. It’s people who are frustrated in their home life or their whatever work life and they take to Advaita Vedanta as this sort of like spiritual quick fix to avoid thinking about their psychological and, kind of daily mundane issues. I think that’s a huge problem.
Rick: Yeah. All right, playing off of this, you just said that it’s not good to teach Vedanta to the masses, but that maybe Vijnana Vedanta would be okay. So, reiterate, if you’ve already said some of it, in what form do you think Vedanta should be presented to a larger audience? And part of the question is, what are the actual mechanics through which studying Vedanta in the way you’re going to describe brings about realization.
Swami Medhananda: Sure, great. These are both great questions. Yeah, so the first part I actually kind of answered, but I’ll just remind you of the three main tenets of Vijnana Vedanta. Number one, ultimate reality, it’s not only personal and it’s not only impersonal. So, it’s already differing from the traditional schools of Vedanta in that way. Do you see? Because all the bhakti schools of Vedanta are saying that God is only Vishnu, God is only Krishna, or that other forms of God are lower than Krishna and all this stuff. Advaita Vedanta is saying ultimately ultimate reality is only Brahman and the other things are just lower forms of reality. Sri Ramakrishna’s philosophy says, Vijnana Vedanta says, that ultimate reality is equally Brahman and Shakti, equally impersonal and personal, equally with and without form. That one infinite divine reality manifests in different forms and aspirants to different mystics and spiritual aspirants.
Rick: Right. So, if a householder hears that, for instance, he’s not going to be inclined to sort of give up his family and lose interest in the world.
Swami Medhananda: Exactly. Exactly.
Rick: Whereas he might with a more Shankarite emphasis.
Swami Medhananda: Absolutely. And number two, number two, what is this world and how does it relate to ultimate reality? Sri Ramakrishna says this world is a real manifestation of the divine, of Shakti. Another reason for not abandoning your family is that you can’t abandon God. Where are you going to go? You’re going to leave God for God. So, stay where you are and do your duties and do it as a loving worship of God by serving your wife, serving your children and going to work, doing your karma yoga and whatever you do, your 9 to 5 job or whatever it is, do it as an offering to the Divine who is omnipresent and both transcendent and imminent. I edited a volume on panentheism so it’s the panentheistic view that God is both immanent in the world and transcendent also beyond it. And third, how does that affect our understanding of spiritual practice? Well, I think it affects it radically because instead of privileging one path like jnana yoga which is again part of the problem for neo-advaitins because they kind of, a lot them look down on people who follow bhakti, devotional traditions and they say that’s based on blind faith, our path is the only rational one and we have greater lucidity than you do and they can be very patronizing and condescending. I’ve seen that from my own experience from encountering different, even some monks and but also many devotees, um, Vijnanamayas don’t do that. Why? Because they put all the different yogas on an equal footing and they say that it’s a matter of temperament. Which yoga you take to the most and you can even combine them to your heart’s content if you want. So, it leads to, I think it fosters a much richer and more expansive spiritual life where you don’t have to feel like, first of all, the danger of the spiritual superiority complex like I’m on the fast path, the fast track to liberation whereas these other fools are kind of it might take them a thousand more lives to come to where I am and you don’t have that condescending attitude. And secondly, you don’t have to just practice one yoga at the expense of the others. You can actually combine them in creative ways. And there isn’t any one way to do it. There are many ways. Make religion, make your spiritual path your own. Vivekananda used to say, “No person is born into a religion. Each person has a religion, a kind of custom-made, individualized religion in the depths of his or her soul.” And the first step in spiritual life is discovering what that custom-made, individualized religion is. You can make it for yourself. And Vijyana vedanta gives you the tools to do that.
Rick: That’s good. Actually, Ramana Maharshi, as I understand him, and Papaji, H.W.L. Poonja, who was one of his disciples and from whom many of these Neo-Advaita people sprang, were quite devotional. And so was Nisargadatta. They would get out the puja kit and the symbols, and a lot of times that kind of, that aspect isn’t brought forth very much.
Swami Medhananda: I think that’s true, but I think it’s also not obvious how to understand that, To be honest, I’ve read many of Ramana Maharishi’s teachings, I’ve read Nisargadatta’s “I Am That” and other texts, and they do seem to say, sometimes at least, that the personal God is not the ultimate reality, and if so, then there’s this question of, okay, yeah, they might be engaging in devotional practices, but one explanation would be they’re doing it to cater to the masses who are not ready for the highest teachings. Another is they have to spend their time in some way while they’re still in the body, which is itself an illusion. And so, they may as well worship an illusory God within the dream, do a dream puja of a dream personal God, in this dream, to make it just because there’s no loss in doing that. It’s better than smoking tobacco. Or Nisargadatta maharaj, both smoke tobacco and do devotional practices. So, it’s not just by noting that they’re devotional -that they were also devotional, That doesn’t mean that they subscribe to Vijnana Vedanta. You see that would be what I call lazy harmonizing I think that’s a really, really great danger in traditions, especially that try to be ecumenical and syncretic The danger is they leap too quickly to the assumption that all paths just lead to the same goal without being rigorous about the mechanics of it, which is the second part of your question, which I really like.
Rick: Yes, we haven’t gotten to that yet. We want to talk more about mechanics. So, I can understand how something like meditation, which I’ve been doing for like 55 years, has neurophysiological effects and so on and can restructure your whole makeup, gross and subtle, and things like yoga and so on. But how about the vedanta itself? Maybe there’s the analogy that you pull one leg of the table and the whole table comes along. So, what is the table leg of studying Vedanta? How does it drag along the rest of one’s makeup and actually transform, it would even have to be neurophysiological, transform one so that realization can become an abiding, living reality?
Swami Medhananda: Yeah, I think that’s great. We have to be careful about the term Vedanta. This is another thing I kind of emphasize in my work and my lectures because Vedanta is too broad and it encompasses many different traditions.
Rick: Let’s say Vijnana Vedanta, we’ll keep it at that.
Swami Medhananda: Alright, so with Vijnana Vedanta, here’s the key premise. We are already God. We are already God. And we are already children of God. And the problem is the layers of impurity from many past lives that are covering over that innate knowledge that we are divine. And so, the way that Swami Vivekananda puts it is, yes, every yoga is a direct path to liberation and there are people who push back and question. For instance, Anantarand Rambachan, I don’t know if you’ve had him on your podcast, he’s an interesting scholar, he’s a Hindu scholar, who wrote a book criticizing Vivekananda’s ideas, and he has a whole chapter devoted to a kind of critical demolition of Swami Vivekananda’s view, the Vijnana Vedanta view, which is that all four yogas are direct paths to the same goal of moksha, liberation. And he’s criticizing Vivekananda from the standpoint of Shankara, interestingly, he’s a follower of Shankara. And he says that Shankara gives a really logical, airtight argument for why the path of knowledge, mechanics of how the path of knowledge can afford liberation. Vivekananda doesn’t give an explanation of the precise mechanics by which bhakti yoga, raja yoga, karma yoga can equally lead to liberation. That’s the criticism. And in my book on Vivekananda, Swami Vivekananda’s Vedanta cause of Balkanism, in chapter two of the book, I respond to Rambachan’s criticisms, and this is the way I do it. The key premise is we are already knowers of Brahman. We are already knowers of Brahman. That knowledge of Brahman is already innate in us. But we’re not aware that we have that knowledge, because of these layers of impurity covering over that knowledge. Now, every single yoga, the aim of every yoga, whether it’s jnana yoga or bhakti yoga or jnana yoga or raja yoga, is to purify our hearts and minds. That’s it. That’s it. So that if through the successful practice of any of these yogas, what’s the result? You’ve purified your heart and mind, and that innate knowledge of divinity, of your own divinity, shines forth, manifests. That’s the mechanics of it. You’re just removing those layers of impurity covering over that innate knowledge of Brahman. And if you want a scriptural precedent, actually the Bhagavad Gita says exactly that. It says that we are already, we already have jnana, but that that jnana is covered over by worldly desires and attachments, that kind of impurities. Remove those impurities through any path and that knowledge will shine forth.
Rick: And I think, doesn’t the Gita say, knowledge is the greatest purifier?
Swami Medhananda: Absolutely!
Rick: Something like that?
Swami Medhananda: Yeah, but in this case, I’m saying something different; I’m saying that that knowledge is already within us.
Rick: Right.
Swami Medhananda: And through any spiritual practice, whether it’s the path of knowledge or devotion or whatever, you remove those layers of impurity, covering that innate knowledge, preventing you from realizing that you’re already a knower. I mean, in that sense that you already have that divine knowledge.
Rick: So, for instance, you’re saying that a person might have the makeup that inclines him to be a jnana yogi, to do a lot of study and thinking as you have done, and he may not even meditate or be interested in bhakti or something, but all that study and thinking, even without any other kinds of spiritual practices, could have such a purificatory effect that it would bring him to realization.
Swami Medhananda: Yeah, study is, I think that’s part of the danger of neo-advaita because I think it’s like, just studying a few scriptures or reading a few teachings of Ramana Maharshi is enough for liberation,
Rick: I don’t mean just a superficial, dabbling. Yeah.
Swami Medhananda: Absolutely, absolutely. That by itself will take you to the same goal as any other path. Yeah.
Rick: Yeah, and I guess the whole question of which is faster and which is best, comes back to like who you are and what your makeup is.
Swami Medhananda: Exactly. Yeah. That’s absolutely right. And there’s, you can’t say that for everybody, there’s one path that’s objectively better than the others. And Sri Ramakrishna would use the example of a mother cooking different fish preparations for different children, right? And I think it’s a very intuitive example because it makes no sense to say that pasta is objectively better than couscous. It’s just a matter of taste.
Rick: Different strokes for different folks.
Swami Medhananda: Different strokes for different folks.
Rick: Okey-dokey. Here’s another question that came in. This is from Mrinalini Singh in New Delhi, “Could you please speak more about Kalima and why she is always shown as so fierce and deadly? Takurji, in other words, Sri Ramakrishna, spoke so lovingly of her and described her as Shakti, which was omnipotent.”
Swami Medhananda: Yeah, thanks. It’s a great question. Yeah, so, I’m teaching Bhagavad Gita in the light of Sri Ramakrishna, it’s an ongoing class that I’m teaching, and we’re using Sri Aurobindo’s essays in the Gita as our main text. And we just discussed a chapter where he says really beautifully, he says Hinduism is one of the few religions in the world that accepts unflinchingly that God is not only the creator, but God is also the destroyer. God is not only, manifest as a good but also manifests as evil and we don’t have to posit some other entity like Satan or Ahriman in the context of Zoroastrianism as this kind of counterpoint to God to explain everything that’s bad or dark in the world. No, God is equally both and you have to accept God in the forms of both good and evil. Sri Ramakrishna used to say that Kalima has manifested as both avidya maya and vidya maya. Avidya maya is the maya of ignorance, which includes all selfish qualities, egoism, lust and greed and all that stuff. And vidya maya, all of those spiritual qualities, like devotion, like knowledge, like discrimination, like detachment, which bring us to the highest knowledge of ultimate reality. And she’s equally both. She’s equally both. And so, I think that it’s just a very sobering and also realistic and expansive understanding of God as encompassing everything in this world, warts and all.
Rick: Yeah. And about a month ago I was corresponding with a friend and I used Bing Chat or something like that to bring up a list of the various points in the Bible that discuss the omnipresence of God. And there are a number of them that are very plain. God is omnipresent. So, if God is omnipresent, then God equally pervades everything by definition, including Auschwitz and what not. And if God is missing from some of those places, then there are holes in God. And God is not omnipresent. And but people bring that up as an obvious example of, how could there be a God which would allow something like that? I don’t want to, I mean, if that’s the way God can behave, I’m not interested in the guy.
Swami Medhananda: Absolutely. So, this is exactly the question that came up in the gospel of Shri Ramakrishna. There’s an incident when the author of the gospel, M, he mentions to Shri Ramakrishna, there was this great pandit at the time named Vidyasagar. Vidyasagar says, and he told this to M, and M conveyed it to Shri Ramakrishna. Vidyasagar said, Genghis Khan was faced with a difficult situation. He had about a hundred thousand prisoners, and to maintain those prisoners you have to feed them, doesn’t have the resources. So, somebody asked him, what do we do do with these prisoners?” He said, “Well, just kill them.” Vidyasagar says, “Didn’t God see that? If God is omnipotent, wouldn’t he have prevented that? If God is perfectly loving, shouldn’t he have prevented that?” And so, if we accept the theistic God, the traditional God of theism, which is that God is perfectly loving and omnipotent, then you have no way of explaining the presence of this tremendous suffering and evil in the world. That’s the problem of evil in philosophy and philosophy, religion and theology. I’ve devoted a lot of my scholarly work to kind of discussing our traditions response to the problem of evil. So, do you want me to kind of go into that?
Rick: Yes I do, yeah.
Swami Medhananda: Okay sure, so I’m now basing what I’m gonna say on chapter 7 and it’s a three-part theodicy. Remember the word that you had trouble pronouncing, theodicy. What does theodicy mean? Theodicy was a point, was a term coined by Leibniz, And it means justifying God’s ways to human beings, okay? Explaining why God permits all this evil and suffering around us, that we see around us. Now, how does Sri Ramakrishna do it? I think it’s a three-part response. And they’re all kind of interrelated in interesting ways. First-line response is what philosophers called “skeptical theism”. And that’s his first-line response to Vidyasagar, actually. He says, “How can we ever know why God does the things she does?” God creates, preserves, and destroys. How can we ever know why and when she destroys? This is what’s called skeptical theism in technical language. What it means is, why in the world should we think, that we are in any position to know why God would do the things that he does, or she does, you see? And an example that William Alston uses, which I like, is he uses the example of chess. Imagine a chess grandmaster. We can think of Magnus Carlsen, for instance, the greatest chess player in the world, Playing against another very high-level player, I’m watching in the audience, I’m just an amateur chess player, I know the rules but I’m terrible at chess, which is true about me. Okay, I’m watching Magnus make this move which seems like way out there, like it’s a move I would never make. Would I jump to the conclusion that Magnus is making a huge mistake? I don’t think I have good evidence for that because I’m just an amateur, right? I don’t have the mind that Magnus does. He’s thinking 100 moves in advance whereas I can’t even think two moves in advance. If that’s true of Magnus Carlsen, who’s still a finite human being, how much more true would it be of God, who’s infinite, who’s omniscient and omnipotent? That’s skeptical theism. That’s true Ramakrishna’s first-line response to the problem of evil. Just because we don’t understand why God permitted Genghis Khan to slaughter all those people, or Hitler to allow for all those Jews or order all those Jews to be killed in the concentration camp doesn’t mean that God didn’t have a good first-line response. But that’s not all. There are two other dimensions which I want to elaborate. Second, the second dimension of Shri Ramakrishna’s theodicy is what I call his saint-making theodicy. Saint-making theodicy. And it has three main doctrines. In the Gospel of Shri Ramakrishna, Shri Ramakrishna raises the problem of evil himself and he asks, “Why has God created all these evil worldly tendencies in us?” All this selfishness, lust, and greed, and anger that leads to so much suffering for so many people. Untold suffering. He gives a very succinct answer. and you can write whole books on it as I tried to myself. His answer is, “In order to create saints.” It’s a very interesting answer. “Mahot lok toyyer korben bole.” And then he says, “You learn how to control the senses and how to overcome ego and how to overcome your selfish qualities and egoistic tendencies through the encounter with evil and suffering both in yourself and in this world and in other people. You learn from other people’s mistakes for instance but you also learn from your own mistakes, from both good and bad and all the things that you do in the course of your life. And it’s through that that we grow morally and spiritually. If we weren’t tested, if we weren’t challenged, if this world were just a kind of utopia or a heaven, we wouldn’t make ethical progress. That’s why this world is so unique. That’s why this world is what’s called the karma bhumi. That’s why even more than any of these temporary heavens that people go to because of their good karma, this world alone is the karma bhumi in the sense that in this world alone can we work out our karma and actually make ethical and spiritual progress. precisely because it’s not a perfect world and it’s not all peaches and roses. In those higher realms where it’s all good, you’re not going to grow because everything is great. It’s a kind of hedonistic paradise. Okay, that’s it. Now, what are the three key doctrines here that help to kind of fill out the specifics of this picture? Karma, rebirth, and universal liberation. The doctrine of karma. This is one of the fundamental tenets of Hinduism. We believe that there is this law of karma. Every single one of our acts has a certain ethical quality. It could be wholesome or good, it could be unwholesome or bad, unethical, or it could be neutral. And the ethical quality of our actions has consequences for us, either later in this life or in a subsequent life. And so, karma is linked to the doctrine of rebirth, which is that this is not our only embodiment. We have had past embodiments in other human beings, but also possibly lower creatures, even plants. And until we attain liberation, we’ll have to come back again in another body and assume human form again, ultimately to get liberation. Now, jointly, karma and rebirth. Now, there’s a big question about how to interpret this law of karma. One traditional way that the Hindu doctrine of karma has been understood, not just Hindu, I think many Buddhists understand it this way, is what’s called the retributive doctrine of karma. Karma is retribution. It’s a kind of punishment. You get what you deserve. And so, if you do something bad, you’re punished for it. You’re going to be born as a, I don’t know, as a whatever, something really bad would be like in really unfortunate circumstances or you’re born as a cow who’s ultimately going to be slaughtered and served as grade A beef in some restaurant, whatever it is. And if you do something good, you’re given a lollipop. And good for you, and you’re going to be born into a nice family and have a lot of wealth and be happy in your life. Okay, that’s one view. Now, there’s another way of understanding the doctrine of karma, which is I think Shri Ramakrishna’s way, which doesn’t deny the fundamental principle of law of karma, which is we reap what we sow, but takes the sting out of the retributive dimension of it. He says the primary aim of the law of karma is not retribution, it’s not reward and punishment, it’s our spiritual growth, it’s our ethical and spiritual growth, our spiritual and moral evolution. And so, by contrast with the retributive doctrine of karma, I think Shri Ramakrishna, our tradition upholds an evolutionary doctrine of karma.
Rick: Which ties in with the previous point, which is the difficulties of life or learning experiences.
Swami Medhananda: Absolutely, exactly. I think this gives us a much richer, much saner, much more humane way of thinking about the law of karma. It gives us a more humane way of thinking about when other people are suffering. We don’t say, “That person’s getting what’s coming to him.” No! We try to help that person because we know that we’re also going to evolve spiritually and morally by… this is an opportunity for us to serve, by helping others, by trying to alleviate their suffering. Now, the third doctrine, because we’re not done yet with the saint-making theodicy. The third doctrine which is crucial is the doctrine of universal liberation. Shri Ramakrishna says, he uses a metaphor, he says, “Some people will be fed at 6 in the morning, other people at 12 noon, other people at 6pm, other people at midnight, but everybody will be fed without exception.” He says, “Likewise, everybody will eventually attain liberation, if not in this life, then in the future.” Now, why is that relevant to the problem of evil? Because a massive problem in theological discussions of the problem of evil in the context of Abraham’s Hammock Religions is the doctrine of an eternal hell. This is a huge problem. Christian theologians themselves are starting to acknowledge the problem, like John Hick for instance points out in a book, a beautiful book he wrote called “Evil and the God of Love”. He says, look, traditional Christians believe in an eternal hell for some souls. If God were perfectly loving, he would not want a single soul to be condemned to eternal damnation. Why? Well, because at worst, First, whatever evil that person has committed, it’s a finite sin. Why punish somebody for a finite sin with an eternal punishment? So that’s the first part of it. Secondly, God is also omnipotent, John Hick points out. If God is omnipotent, God is perfectly powerful, which means that God is in a position to prevent any soul from being condemned to an eternal hell. So, if both these things are true, we have to jettison one of these two theistic attributes. Either God is perfectly loving, but not omnipotent, or God is omnipotent, but not perfectly loving. But he can’t be both at the same time. Okay, so that’s a challenge, right? Even within Abrahamic religions, some liberal Christian thinkers, as a result, have actually abandoned the doctrine of eternal health. So, I think the drift, even in some traditional theologies, is toward universal liberation. I have a friend at University of Michigan-Dearborn named Imran Ijaz, who’s working on, we’re thinking of editing a volume together on universal, it’s called universalism, that’s the term, which means universal liberation, universal salvation in Islam because he’s an expert in Islam. And he’s fascinated by these Islamic theologians who actually believed in universal liberation. You might not even know that some Muslims believed in that, but that is an unorthodox view within Islam as well. And so, our tradition fully accepts that every single soul without exception will eventually attain liberation. And therefore, God can be perfectly loving and perfectly omnipotent, because he’s not condemning anybody to an eternal punishment.
Rick: I like all that. Go ahead. I’m sorry. Go ahead.
Swami Medhananda: If you want to follow, yeah, because there’s a third dimension, which I would just
Rick: Do your third dimension first.
Swami Medhananda: All right. Third dimension. Then we could. So, the third dimension. But that’s not all, folks. Okay. So still, you might say, after all this, you might say, well, okay, I get it. I get karma, rebirth, universal liberation. But boy, that is putting God is putting us through all sorts of ordeals and challenges. Just what for his own amusement. Why couldn’t you just made us saints in the first place? Why put us through all this trouble? Why have go through millions of lives before you attain the goal. It’s a legitimate question. Isn’t that kind of cruel on God’s part to make us jump these hoops? That’s a question. That’s why there’s a third crucial dimension and it’s a kind of mystical/spiritual dimension of his theodicy. Vijnana. I’ve been talking about Vijnana a lot. Actually, we never even talked about what Vijnana is in the context of Ramakrishna. So let me just mention that first actually. Because I was talking about Vijnana Vedanta but people might want to know what the heck Vijnana is. Okay. Shri Ramakrishna often distinguishes jnana from vijnana and he says it’s like this you want to climb to the roof of a house you want to get to the roof how do you do it by climbing a staircase climbing the staircase, is like the process of neti neti reasoning not this not this brahman is not this world brahman is not this soul brahman is not this not that so it’s the path the traditional path of jnana yoga the path of knowledge until you reach the roof which signifies what knowledge of your true nature is non-dual pure consciousness this is the ultimate goal for classical advaita vedanta like ramana maharshi, Sankara and all these others. That’s reaching the roof. Sri Ramakrishna then said something really interesting. So that’s jnana for him. Jnana means just knowledge of non-dual Brahman. He says there are some people who after reaching the roof will look back on the staircase and say, “Wait a minute, the staircase is made of the same materials as the roof. Bricks, lime and brick dust.” That’s the vijyani, who after realizing non-dual Brahman in the state of nirvikalpa samadhi can come back to this world and realize that that Brahman as shakti has become everything in this world. Okay, so now and realizes that Brahman and Shakti are inseparable. Now coming back to the problem of evil. There’s an incident in Shri Ramakrishna’s life during his period of spiritual practice when he sees a wounded butterfly and this poor butterfly has a splinter in one of its wings and it can barely fly and it’s probably going to die soon. Shri Ramakrishna feels tremendous anguish for this butterfly, fly, and he speculates, he thinks what cruel boy must have inflicted this pain on this butterfly just out of a sheer kind of sadism that some children have. And in the next moment, he flies into the state of spiritual ecstasy and he starts laughing uncontrollably. And then he says, “I realize at that moment, the butterfly is divine mother, the splinter that the boy has put into the butterfly’s wing is equally divine mother, the cruel boy inflicting suffering on the butterfly, equally divine mother, I am divine mother, so, who’s to praise and who’s to blame? There’s only divine mother.” This is the ultimate response to the problem of evil because I see this final level of response as not solving the problem of evil but as dissolving the problem of evil. That’s the way I put it. In what sense? Well, the problem of evil is grounded in a fundamental presupposition. That presupposition is that God is there out there and we, his poor suffering creatures, are on this side. There’s a duality presupposed between God on the one hand inflicting suffering on poor us human beings and other animals. Vignana denies that very presupposition at the root of the question, at the root of the problem of evil. Therefore, I call it dissolving the problem of evil because it just says you’re not different from God. So, there’s one place where there’s a very poignant moment in the gospel of Sri Ramakrishna when the future Swami Turiyananda, okay his name was Hari, he’s hearing Sri Ramakrishna explain this whole saint making theodicy, karma, rebirth, it’s all mother’s will and Turiyananda says something very poignant. He says, “But mother’s play, mother’s Leela is our death.” That’s the statement. And Shri Ramakrishna immediately responds, “But who are you? Divine Mother has become the 24 cosmic principles. You are not different from God. And when you realize that the problem of evil, it won’t just be solved, it will dissolve away. It won’t be a problem.” Ludwig Wittgenstein, the great Austrian philosopher, toward the end of the Tractatus, he said, “The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem.” That’s what Vignana does. It dissolves the problem instead of solving it.
Rick: That’s good. I like all those points and I look forward to reading the books in which you, describe them in much greater detail. I have another thought, what did Einstein used to call them? Thought exercises or something. Another way that I look at it, I don’t know if this fits into any of the three, but I try to take a God’s eye view of it. Firstly, the time span of God’s subjective experience, if you will, is eternal, if not at least 13.7 billion years, but eternal, really. And so, we with our little time spans, don’t get that, have that perspective and things might seem very unfair from our myopic little vision. Secondly, if there’s going to be a creation, it seems to me by definition, it has to be structured in polarities and opposites and different, qualities. If there’s gonna be hot, there’s gotta be cold, fast, slow, good, bad, all the different relative polarities. You couldn’t have it be all, like you said, peaches and roses or something without their counterparts or you wouldn’t have, I don’t think such a creation could function. And thirdly, what might seem to be cruel and difficult is actually from the big picture, if we could really zoom out, in service of our evolution. So, our bodies, your body and mine, are made up of the remnants of stars which died and exploded and dispersed their contents throughout the galaxy. And, if there were inhabited planets orbiting those stars, that wasn’t a pretty experience for the people who lived on those planets. We might have been one of them, but now here we are with a body made of the heavier elements that were forged in the death of those stars. And could God have done it differently? I don’t know. Perhaps there are certain laws of nature, as science understands them, that just have to be the way they are in order for the universe to function.
Swami Medhananda: Yeah, I would add one more example because we brought up Auschwitz or Holocaust a number of times in this interview. But Viktor Frankl, Hunkle I think would be the German pronunciation, he wrote a whole book on that, how he grew morally and spiritually from all his experiences in the concentration camp. from all his experiences in the concentration camp. And I think that’s significant.
Rick: Yeah, as did others. Elie Wiesel, there was a woman who actually, I forget her name now, but she was having these beautiful celestial experiences in the concentration camp.
Swami Medhananda: Yeah.
Rick: Having these spiritual experiences. Okay, so let’s give our brains a rest for a second and come up with another question here that came in. This is from, let me check, okay, got that one. This is from Patrick Brockman in Nirguna, Vancouver. I didn’t know there was a place in Vancouver named after Nirguna. Okay, your contempt for Shankara has always amused. Could you share your realizations about Gaudapada’s doctrine of Ajatavada and would your insight into Vijnana change if you regarded Sath as an appearance rather than a manifestation?
Swami Medhananda: Okay, I think he used the word contempt, is that right?
Rick: Yeah, he did.
Swami Medhananda: That’s a strange word to use. I have absolutely no contempt for anybody.
Rick: I never gathered you did. I’ve listened to you talk about Shankar a lot.
Swami Medhananda: I think it’s people on the Shankara side who kind of call me names But anyway, so that that I’m just like disavowing because I don’t think that’s fair. Yeah. Um, but he’s asking what about Gaudapada? I think is the question, right?
Rick: yes. Gaudapada and all that.
Swami Medhananda: Sorry, what was That?
Rick: Didn’t he do a commentary on the mandukya upanishad?
Swami Medhananda: Absolutely the mandukya karika exactly. Yeah, and one of the famous karikas there is is, “na nirodho na cotpattirna baddho na ca sādhakaḥ na mumukṣurna vai mukta ityeṣā paramārthatā .” It’s Ajatavada, which means that there is no spiritual aspirant, there’s no liberation, there’s no bondage, there’s no universe.
Rick: Nothing ever happened.
Swami Medhananda: Yeah, nothing ever happened, it’s just non-dual pure consciousness. I’m not entirely sure what the question is actually, because yes, and I think Shankara actually accepted Ajatavada fully. It’s not actually that Shankara differs from Gaudapada. You’ll find if you study the Mandukaya karika carefully is that he’s kind of almost equating the waking state with the dream state. Okay, he’s putting them on an equal ontological footing. He’s saying the waking state is no more real than the dream state. And Shankara doesn’t say that. If you look at his commentary on the Brahmasutra, he’s pushing back against, he’s criticizing Yogachara Buddhists who hold that view. And it’s not a coincidence that Gaudapada himself was strongly influenced by Buddhist traditions like Yogachara Buddhism and Nagarjuna. That’s why some opponents of Shankara like the Bhakti schools of Vedanta call followers of Shankara Crypto Buddhists, call Shankara Prachanda Buddhists. And I think there’s some truths to that. So, in any case, Shankara does not put the waking state and the dream state on equal footing. He says that the waking state is for certain reasons more real than the dream state. And he gives a bunch of reasons. One reason is that we wake up from dreaming every single night and that dream experience is sublated on a daily basis, whereas our waking experience is not sublated until we attain knowledge of Brahman. But at the same time, the caveat is, when we attain knowledge of Brahman, we realize that nothing in this world ever was. We never even pass through a dream. It’s that radical. So, I think he’s as radical in Ajatavadhan as Gaudapada, but that he placed greater emphasis on honoring this empirical reality, this waking state, then did Gaudapada. That’s the difference. And it’s a kind of subtle difference and it’s not actually a fundamental metaphysical difference. They were both equally ajatavadins. And then I think another part of the question was, I think it’s a confused question to be honest, because he’s asking whether if he takes Sat to be manifestation rather than appearance, does that solve the problem? Can you repeat that?
Rick: If you regarded Sat as an appearance rather than a manifestation, I guess he’s saying that Sat means what? The reality, truth?
Rick: The reality. So, I guess he’s saying that if you regarded the reality of the creation as an appearance rather than having more substance to it as a manifestation of the divine.
Swami Medhananda: What’s the question exactly? Does he want me to believe that or what does he want me to do?
Rick: Would your insight change if you regarded the creation as a mere appearance as I suppose Goudapada did, rather than a substantial manifestation.
Swami Medhananda: Oh I see. Of course, it would. And that’s exactly the difference between what Sri Ramakrishna calls a jnani and a vijnani. The jnani, he says, looks upon this world as a framework of illusion, as an illusory appearance, as an illusory snake superimposed on the real rope. And the vijnani, by contrast, sees this world as a mart of joy. Everything is divine bliss. Of course, that’s a fundamental difference in phenomenology. Of course, it’s a completely different outlook on the world. Of course. That’s why Vijnana Vedanta is so different in its outlook on the world than classical advaita is. Yeah.
Rick: You know what I find interesting is how influential one’s philosophical understanding can be on one’s life. I mean, it has ramifications in terms of the way it influences your behavior and your relationships and your motivations and everything else. It makes a huge difference what you understand or believe philosophically.
Swami Medhananda: Absolutely. That’s why in the Buddhist Noble Eightfold Path, the first step is, the first factor is right view. Because depending on the view, your practice will follow. Even if it’s not kind of like explicitly articulated, right? Even if it’s just unconscious or implicit, it’s still there. And it’s going to take some Un-digging to make what’s implicit explicit, but you’re still, everybody’s a philosopher, either an unconscious philosopher or a conscious philosopher. That’s the way I put it.
Rick: Yeah, I think of the people who just regard life as meaningless and everything is accidental and might as well take heroin or fentanyl or something because life sucks and then you die.
Swami Medhananda: That’s a controversial philosophical position among others and people differ to the degree that they’re able to articulate the underlying philosophical tenets that they subscribe to and to what extent they’re able to defend them, in a coherent way, but in a compelling way, but yeah, I think everybody is a philosopher and they have their own however rudimentary kind of worldview of how things are.
Rick: Interesting, yeah. Okay, here’s another question. This is from Nicholas in New Zealand. Many spiritual teachers today are claiming that there… this is a good one, I wanted to ask about this. Many spiritual teachers today are claiming that there is no more “I” to refer to anymore, referring to themselves. I’ve interviewed people who have argued that they’ve lost all sense of a personal self and that there never was a personal self and so on. Sri Ramakrishna said that even great saints such as Shankara came back from Nirvikalpa Samadhi and still retain the ego of knowledge. I’ve heard it said that since Sri Ramakrishna came to earth it made it easier for regular spiritual aspirants to reach the claim “I am he.” What do you think about that?
Swami Medhananda: Right, yeah, okay, there’s a lot going on here. Okay, there are a few things. Sri Ramakrishna used to say that Vijnanis, these people, this is a small category of people who after attaining knowledge of non-dual Brahman in the state of nirvikalpa samadhi can come back to this world either holding on to the I of a devotee or holding on to the I of a jnani of a knower of Brahman one or the other and he said he used to say that Shankara retained the I of knowledge not ego. Ego is not really the right word, ami in Bengali, t just means I that identity as what as a knower and he said that so the vijnani can take two forms, the kind of jnani oriented Vijyani and the Bhakti-oriented Vijyani. Vijyana, according to Sri Ramakrishna, takes one of two forms. You can either retain the I of knowledge and come back and serve people and teach people the path of knowledge, like Shankara did, or a Vijyani can come back retaining the I of the Bhakta, of a devotee of the personal God, and then see this whole world as a manifestation of God and serve others in the spirit of worship. Sri Ramakrishna used to say, “Siva Gyane Jiva Seva” Serve others in the spirit of worship by trying to see God in everyone. That would be the Bhaktavijyani’s kind of approach to the world, attitude toward the world. And the other part of the question was, can you remind me?
Rick: Yes, let me see.
Swami Medhananda: Oh, I know what it is. It’s about… Okay. So, after Sri Ramakrishna came, it seems like he made available the state of “I am Brahman” to many more people. That’s the idea. Here, I think there’s a bit of a confusion because if you go back to the teachings, he warned against saying to yourself, “I am Brahman, I am Brahman.” He said that only very, very few highly evolved spiritual aspirants are eligible to practice that. He said that bhakti is actually a far safer and better path for the vast majority of human beings on this earth. But did he make the state of vijnana available to a greater number of people? I think yes is the answer. And that even though in the past vijnana was a very, very rarefied spiritual state available only to a very small minority of souls. I think he has broadened the accessibility of the state of Vijnana to a broader number of people. That doesn’t mean everybody has to be a Vijnani. He doesn’t say that that’s mandatory at all. He says, he said, he gives a very simple example. He says, there’s this beautiful river, the Ganga, the holy river Ganga in India, running throughout India, right? Or most of India. He says, in order to touch the Ganga, do you have to run your figure from the, from the source of the Ganga and then run it all the way down to where it to the South India where it kind of flows into the Pacific Ocean? No! The Indian Ocean. No! You have to if you touch the Ganga in one place you can say I’ve touched the Ganga. Exactly like that. People don’t have to realize God as Krishna and Allah and as Christ and as non-dual Brahman. No! You realize in whatever form you like and that’s realization for you. So Vijnana is not mandatory, but I think he did make Vijnana, the state of Vijnana accessible to greater people, to more people through his advent and his teachings in his life.
Rick: So, we were talking about neo-advaita earlier and one of the points that they hammer away at is that there is no self. There is no personal self. And some of them argue that they themselves live that way without any sense of personal self. And I say, “Okay, can I whack your thumb with a hammer?” and see if you feel that it’s happening to somebody and not just happening to a rock over there.? So, I just, maybe they’re experiencing, some of them are experiencing something that I haven’t and just don’t understand, but I just have, I’ve never been able to wrap my head around the notion of being able to function as a human being without any sense of personal identity or existence.
Swami Medhananda: Absolutely, I think that’s great pushback. And I think the funny thing is, Sriram just says exactly that, using just a slightly different analogy. He says, those people who say, “I am Brahman, I am Brahman, I am not this body,” the real test, the ultimate test is, stab them. And then they’ll be bleeding profusely. Can they say in that moment, I’m not feeling pain? Right. And there’s some who can actually say that, because it completely lifted their mind from body consciousness. And he says only those people alone are eligible to practice Advaita Vedanta. He says it. Now look, you can argue with and say that that’s too restrictive, that’s too extreme. You can even argue in Shankara, even if you’re a follower of Shankara otherwise, you can say, well I just look that that fourfold qualification that’s way too high-level stuff for ordinary people. I want to study Advaita Vedanta even though I don’t have those four qualifications. Why is that a problem? I am on the side of Shankara and Ramakrishna on this point. I think that in order to be eligible to practice Advaita Vedanta, you better be able to lift your mind completely away from the body and literally say I’m not the body, so that if your body is in tremendous agony, you can still say, I’m completely unaffected, I’m not in pain at all.
Rick: Yeah, Swami Sarvapriyananda tells the story of Ramakrishna dying of cancer and some guy comes to him and he says, “Sir, everyone says you’re suffering so much, but I see that you are in bliss and Ramakrishna says, “Ah, the rascal has found me out.”
Swami Medhananda: Yeah It’s Turiyananda, Swami Turiyananda. Turiyananda,
Rick: I’m sorry.
Swami Medhananda: Absolutely, exactly. That’s exactly right. Yeah.
Rick: Yeah. In my opinion or even experience to some extent, it’s a dimensional thing, a multi-dimensional thing, where on the one hand, you might be in physical pain. On the other hand, there’s a level or dimension of your experience which is beyond that. And it’s not that you don’t feel the pain, but there’s also a dimension in which the pain doesn’t reach. Or touch.
Swami Medhananda: It’s about where your consciousness resides. That’s the way I put it. And there are different states of consciousness. So, for instance, with respect to Sri Ramakrishna and that earlier question about whether you retain some sense of “I” or not, Sri Ramakrishna would often refer, he would not say “I”, he would sometimes say, he would refer to this place. Ekon God. The teachings of this place. That’s when he’s at a certain level of consciousness, when he’s completely lost “I” consciousness. But there are many places where he says “I”. He even says, “I’m in pain”. He broke his arm. “I’m in pain”. What does that mean? How can both these things be true? They’re true at different levels of consciousness. I think that’s the key. And one of the beauty, one of the nice things about the Vijnana Vedanta paradigm, he uses this beautiful example of a flute and he says “I’m a flutist. I can do one of two things. I can play one note on the flute the whole time and say, ‘I am Brahman, I am Brahman'”. And he says “But that’s boring. I’m a Vijnani. I want to play ragas and raginis on this flute”. Those are Indian classical terms, but it means beautiful, melodious, kind of complex harmonies and songs. I want to revel with God and relate to God in many different ways. As a servant, as his child, as his parent, sometimes as his lover, sometimes I want to say I am he. And he even says in one place in the gospel, “That is my final view.” Sometimes I think of myself as a servant of God, sometimes I think of myself as an amshah, as a portion of God, and sometimes I like to think of myself as identical with God. But no hierarchy there in the way that there is in the traditional schools of Vedanta.
Rick: , good. All right, well, we’ve done just about two hours, and we could easily go another two or four or six, but is there anything like that after we hang up, you’re going to feel like, “Darn, I wish we’d talked about that.” Is there any other key thing like, maybe like what you’re working on now or anything that really floats your boat that we haven’t touched upon?
Swami Medhananda: Well, since you’re asking me, I may as well plug some of the work I’m doing now, which is very briefly. So, I’m writing a book now on karma and rebirth and Hinduism. It’ll be published by Cambridge University Press sometime in 2025, I believe. It’ll be a small little book, but I think it’ll be good for people across the spectrum. Hindus who have faith in these doctrines, but who maybe aren’t as confident about defending those views or articulating those views themselves. I think that’ll be helpful. And also, for skeptics and agnostics and people who are very, very critical of the doctrines of karma and rebirth. I’ve got several–I’m going to be writing several chapters on arguments for and against karma and rebirth. And so just to kind of encourage people to think for themselves, we’re talking about critical thinking, but I think that’s important. And secondly, a book that’s in the pipeline that’ll be coming out with Oxford University Press, it’ll be the third book, the third installment in what I call my Integral Advaita Trilogy of books. The first book in that Integral Advaita Trilogy is Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality. It’s a philosophical study of Shri Ramakrishna, published in 2018. The second one was published last year or two years ago, Swami Vivekananda’s Vedantic cosmopolitanism. And the third is going to be on Sri Aurobindo. You had mentioned it in the beginning, an all-embracing oneness, Sri Aurobindo’s integral Advaita and the legacy of Sri Ramakrishna. So, what I’m claiming is, it’s a very bold claim, I’m claiming that these three figures, Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda, and Sri Aurobindo have developed a new school of integral Advaita within Vedantic thought. And it’s new in the sense that it’s non-sectarian and extremely expansive and that it gives us a way of harmonizing the traditional schools of Vedanta. And it’s integral, it’s still Advaita, it’s non-dual, but it’s an integral Advaita in the sense that it’s all-encompassing. It doesn’t exclude anything or dismiss anything as unreal, it says that everything is that same divine reality in different manifestations or forms. So, stay tuned.
Rick: Wonderful. Oh, I will. Yeah, like I said in the beginning, I really want to read all your books. I convert them to audio and listen to them while I walk in the woods or ski in the woods or whatever. But I’ve learned a lot from you in the last couple weeks and I feel like I really want to stay focused on what you’re doing, and I’ll learn a lot more. And I’ll be in touch. I’ll probably be sending you emails, “What about this?”
Swami Medhananda: Thank you so much for the thoughtful questions and conversation. It was a pleasure.
Rick: Yeah, thank you. And thanks to those who’ve been listening or watching. The next interview after this one, I think will be number 700 or close to it, maybe that’s the one after that. But it will be with Anna Breytenbach, whom I interviewed quite a few years ago, who is an animal communicator, and Brad Laughlin, whose wife Leslie Temple Thurston I interviewed about 12 years ago, and they’re going to. be offering a course called For the love of Animals. But it won’t just be for animals. There’s a whole spiritual dimension to it, and we’ll be talking about a number of things. Leslie’s interview was I think my fourth most popular of all, so she’ll be coming back for a recap. And there’s an upcoming interviews page on batgap.com where you can see what we’ve got scheduled, and if you go there, explore the menus, you’ll find some interesting things. And that’s it for now. So, thank you Swamiji.
Swami Medhananda: Thank you so much Rick, it was a pleasure.
Rick: Yeah, I hope to meet you in person someday.
Swami Medhananda: Likewise, yeah. And thanks for all the insightful questions from the online audience.
Rick: Good. Okay. Thanks. Bye.
Swami Medhananda: Bye.