From the Editor
No Urge to Merge
I OFTEN DRESS IN A WAY that identifies me, in the West at least, as a devotee of Lord Kṛṣṅa. But when I’m asked, “Are you a Hindu?” I’m never ready to reply with an unequivocal “Yes!”
Why is that? As a member of the Hare Kṛṣṅa movement, I, like Hindus, accept the Vedic literature as the best source of knowledge, especially spiritual knowledge. And I’m a disciple of Śrīla Prabhupāda, who gave his life to spread the teachings of Bhagavad-gītā, “the Hindu scripture.” So why am I uneasy with the label “Hindu”?
You’ll find one important reason if you look up “Hinduism” in any number of reference books: the goal of Hinduism is usually stated to be “to merge with the One.”
Well, that’s not my goal. I bristle when I hear it, as does any aspiring Vaiṣṅava. Prabodhānanda Sarasvatī, a great devotee in our line, said that for him, merging with God would be worse than life in hell. Why? Because in hell he would be able to serve Kṛṣṅa by remembering Him, chanting His names, and so on. Service to Kṛṣṅa is the devotee’s life; the thought of losing that service is unbearable.
Consider Kṛṣṅa’s greatest devotees, the cowherd girls of Vṛndāvana. They’re so captivated by seeing Kṛṣṅa that they want to curse Brahmā, the creator, for making eyes that blink. They can’t bear to lose the sight of Kṛṣṅa for even a moment. Merge with Kṛṣṅa? Never.
Some followers of the Vedas argue that all this devotion to Kṛṣṅa, however intense, is temporary, a means to the real goal, which is to merge. A common claim is that bhakti is one of many paths. Accept bhakti if you like, but merging is the final goal.
But in the Bhagavad-gītā (15.7) Kṛṣṅa says that we jīvas, minute souls, are eternally His parts (aṁśa). Earlier, in verse 2.12, He says that He, Arjuna, and all the soldiers on the battlefield exist as individuals in the past, present, and future.
Once, when Śrīla Prabhupāda was speaking with a man in South India who was following the path of bhakti to attain “oneness,” Prabhupāda kept emphatically repeating a line from Bhagavad-gītā (9.14): nitya-yuktā upāsate—“engaged in My worship perpetually.” True devotees of the Lord never give up worshiping Him.
Various arguments are put forward to support the idea that bhakti should end in merging. The most despicable for devotees is the claim that one must merge into the unknowable beyond Kṛṣṅa because Kṛṣṅa is a product of the material energy. Of course, if Kṛṣṅa is part of the material world, then there is no question of having an eternal relationship with Him. Ultimately, Kṛṣṅa is not real, and any relationship with Him is only an illusion.
Kṛṣṅa soundly refutes this idea in many places in the Gītā, perhaps most notably in verse 7.6: “There is no truth superior to Me.” Again, in 10.8, He says, “I am the source of all material and spiritual worlds.”
True to the mood of his spiritual predecessors, Śrīla Prabhupāda presented the direct meaning of Kṛṣṅa’s words, without interpretation. Despite what your encyclopedia might say, Prabhupāda—with “the Hindu scripture” in hand—awakened in people’s hearts not the urge to merge, but eternal devotion to Lord Kṛṣṅa.
—Nāgarāja Dāsa