asa[e], yoga ladder, karma vs. jnana

Hare Krsna dear Gurudeva

Please accept our humble obeisances

All glories to Srila Prabhupada

I hope you're in good health.

ASA(TB/BW) - There is no KDPC right now. The mail is not overwhelming our poor HpSwami.

Please, I would like to ask you a question for which I have not yet found an answer.

Srila Prabhupada mentions in many sections of the Srimad Bhagavatam about the fate of Karmis (heavenly planets) and Jñanis (merging into the Brahman effulgence). The fate of Karmi that pursues enjoyment is easy to understand because of a great desire, a proportional reward. What I cannot understand is how knowledge, logical deduction and philosophical speculation leads the jñani to his spiritual identity nullification. In what way can knowledge result in emptiness, being seemingly substantial and capable of neutralizing the illegitimate desire of the karmi?

Can the gross desire of karmis be understood to be opposed to the mental speculator's lust for control, or are they basically different expressions of a similar consciousness?

Your servant

Gandharva das

ASA - To quote our Siksa guru, Jayananda Das, "I don't know, but it seems to me that...".

NOI 10 gives some basic perspective!

Then we have to distinguish between Karma-yogis, Jnana-yogis. Bh. V. Th. defined Bhakti as commitment to honesty. So, Socrates and his recent follower Anthony Flew (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_Flew), were Jnanis, but they were honest. Flew shocked the entire world, and maybe drove many atheists to the pub, when he announced he believed in God. For years he had been a POWERFUL debater and proponent of Atheism.

When he announced his change he explained that at the beginning of his career and association with others at Oxford he had adopted Socrate's basic idea, that we shall use logic and argument (jnana) to consider the problem and then we shall accept wherever the process takes us without personal consideration.

So, Flew said that after considering the situation for so long he had come to the conclusion that there must be a God as Aristotle describes.

So, in a certain way he as a jnana-yogi.

Prabhupada said that Socrates we a good boy, just didn't have a Guru.

By jnana we can only come to realize brahman (there is a reality) and paramatma (reality has eternal forms and there is "the hand of God" in things).

To realize a personal, Bhagavan, relationship with God you need His divine grace.

O.K.?

A Karmi is not progressive. He demands only potatoes for his sacrifice, and does not want to develop wisdom (jnana).

A jnani is not progressive. He is not a jnana-yogi. He demands impersonal wisdom for his sacrifice.

We see phrases like, "When you go for revenge, better to did two graves first", from Confucius, which detaches you from Karma but leaves you in a void.

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Can we say that the most prominent Jnana community in the modern world are the Mathematicians?

Of course, science is termed as Rational Empiricism, or can we say Mathematical Empiricism. By taking Mathematics to pragmatic empirical level it surely results in sense gratification, smart phones, Hulu, latest Tom Cruise movie.

Look at Mathematics. How fundament is Euclid's Elements [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclid%27s_Elements] to Mathematics? There seem to be "higher" mathematics after that, but many are still based upon his fundamental axiom, postulate, in which we must place blind faith, the definition of The Point.

It seems that in Higher Mathematics they go outside of this and we get into another kind of Jnana, but is it still determined to be atheistic or is it like Socrates? I have heard that Srila Bhakti-siddhanta Sarasvati gave a demonstration of Bhagavata philosophy from Mathematics. I mean there are "transcendental numbers" in Mathematics. 😎

Coming back to the point which is that basis of so much of our modern jnana, you know that it is described as that which has no extension: no width, no depth, no weight, no mother, no cellular, no... no... no... In Sanskrit you know this philosophy? Neti neti. No this, not this. So that leads us to impersonalism. Some rare Mathematicians might follow this to its conclusion and enter the Brahmajyoti.

Are these some useful ideas, or have we completely missed the point of your question, or do you have more details?