Excerpted from Agehananda Bharati's survey of mysticism entitled 'The Light at the Center: Pretext and Context of Modern Mysticism 1976
'(footnote on page 236) 'Sri Caitanya (1485-1533) was a Bengali Brahmin, and the foremost devotional reformer of the late Bengali Middle Ages. His influence, although localized in Bengal and Orissa generated a powerful millennial type movement which peaked in the 17th Century all over Northern India and declined thereafter. There is no doubt that Swami AC Bhaktvedanta (Prabhupada) 'the Lord's Food) silver bullion broker of Calcutta turned saint, founder of the Hare Krishna movement in the western world, created a genuine duplication of the Caitanya movement in an expatriate setting.'
(Bharati wrote this before the Swami died and ISKCON became corrupted by power struggles among his successors)
( Note: Bharati does not say so, but one wonders whether the period in which Caitanya's movement peaked would correspond to the worst period of Moghul persecution of Hindus. Aurangzeb was an Islamic bigot who created a social wasteland by persecuting his Hindu subjects and driving his best Hindu supporters from court. Aurengzeb's long reign ended early in the 18th century--which correponds to the peak period of Caitanya's movement in India)
Bharati's observations on Prabhupada's theology.
'(page 186 of Light at the Center published in 1976)
'It is much more difficult to find a troupe of 'Hare Krishna' singing and dancing devotees in the streets of Calcutta (Note: Bharati wrote this in the early to mid 1970s) than in the US...Except for Bengalis abroad, Hindus have hardly heard about 'Hare Krishna' singing in India(Corboy italics) only now do they witness in the West what some saint, unknown to them, created a few centuries ago in rural northeastern India.
'Krishna Consciousness' in the mind and in the words of Swami Bhaktivedanta and his roughly 4,000 followers (1976) in North America is a term referring to an interpreted mystical state.
Since the Vaishnava does not want to "merge" (that is does not want to merge with the Deity but remain separate while ecstatically adoring the Deity--Corboy note, not Bharati's) being different from KRSNA in playful eternity, a zero experience (Bharati's term for merger of human consciousness with the Absolute) occurring to the Vaishnava is interpreted about as negatively as a Christian orthodox mystic's experience.
Bharati writes:
I asked Swami Bhaktivedanta about this--and he got quite irritated, rejecting monistic Vedanta in the same irate style in which Vaishnavas have been rejecting it as heresy for 800 years.' (Unquote)
In other words, one adores God while remaining separate from God, vs the monistic Vedantin's goal of merging with God.
One guru said it is the difference between tasting sugar (conscious adoration)
vs becoming sugar (merger with the Absolute)
'(footnote on page 236) 'Sri Caitanya (1485-1533) was a Bengali Brahmin, and the foremost devotional reformer of the late Bengali Middle Ages. His influence, although localized in Bengal and Orissa generated a powerful millennial type movement which peaked in the 17th Century all over Northern India and declined thereafter. There is no doubt that Swami AC Bhaktvedanta (Prabhupada) 'the Lord's Food) silver bullion broker of Calcutta turned saint, founder of the Hare Krishna movement in the western world, created a genuine duplication of the Caitanya movement in an expatriate setting.'
(Bharati wrote this before the Swami died and ISKCON became corrupted by power struggles among his successors)
( Note: Bharati does not say so, but one wonders whether the period in which Caitanya's movement peaked would correspond to the worst period of Moghul persecution of Hindus. Aurangzeb was an Islamic bigot who created a social wasteland by persecuting his Hindu subjects and driving his best Hindu supporters from court. Aurengzeb's long reign ended early in the 18th century--which correponds to the peak period of Caitanya's movement in India)
Bharati's observations on Prabhupada's theology.
'(page 186 of Light at the Center published in 1976)
'It is much more difficult to find a troupe of 'Hare Krishna' singing and dancing devotees in the streets of Calcutta (Note: Bharati wrote this in the early to mid 1970s) than in the US...Except for Bengalis abroad, Hindus have hardly heard about 'Hare Krishna' singing in India(Corboy italics) only now do they witness in the West what some saint, unknown to them, created a few centuries ago in rural northeastern India.
'Krishna Consciousness' in the mind and in the words of Swami Bhaktivedanta and his roughly 4,000 followers (1976) in North America is a term referring to an interpreted mystical state.
Since the Vaishnava does not want to "merge" (that is does not want to merge with the Deity but remain separate while ecstatically adoring the Deity--Corboy note, not Bharati's) being different from KRSNA in playful eternity, a zero experience (Bharati's term for merger of human consciousness with the Absolute) occurring to the Vaishnava is interpreted about as negatively as a Christian orthodox mystic's experience.
Bharati writes:
I asked Swami Bhaktivedanta about this--and he got quite irritated, rejecting monistic Vedanta in the same irate style in which Vaishnavas have been rejecting it as heresy for 800 years.' (Unquote)
In other words, one adores God while remaining separate from God, vs the monistic Vedantin's goal of merging with God.
One guru said it is the difference between tasting sugar (conscious adoration)
vs becoming sugar (merger with the Absolute)