From: Luis De La - Bhadra rupa Das

To: HpSwami

Cc: Ramanan Nagarajan Sent: Thursday, December 1, 2016 4:20 AM
Subject: Importante

Dear Maharaj Hanuman Presaka Swami,

My obesiances

Jay Srila prabhupada!

Thank you very much for your message and your wonderful association!

Your paper of education helped me a lot Maharaj . Thank you very much! 

I will wait for your reply about Radhika Raman Prabhu. statements.

HpS - Hare Krsna.   I sent him a text about our trip to India and he has not yet responded to that, so I suspect he is very busy and do not want to push him, but this weekend I will call him by the grace of God and ask him for some statement about the Harvard Symposium.

Ah!  Ha!    I just thought to Google "ISKCON 50 Harvard" and there it is. Is that enough for you?

1.- Would you have some written information about the process to attain knowledge within the vaishnava perspective in comparison with the western approach? i would like to explain it in my speech.

HpS - Again, the Introduction to the Sri Isopanisad: Iso Introduction, is a fantastic summary of our epistemology. In turn it is a summary of Jiva Goswami's 'Tattva sandarbha", as far as I know, which, as far as I know, is our definitive statement on epistemology. The only thing I might add is that it goes through induction, deduction, deduction based upon Vedas and stops there, but then there is knowledge gained by 'insight', 'intuition', the super soul. for that you can see BG 10.10-11. O.K?

Maharaj the university asked me yesterday to include in my speech at the parliament about the contributions from music.

2.- Could you please send me your verbal statements or something you have written about the gifts to practice music for the physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual levels?

Will this do?
In Indian, Vedic tradtion, the word Veda can be taken to mean 'wisdom'. Vastu-veda is then the path to wisdom though architecture, city, planning etc; Danda-veda the same through political science; Ayur-veda through medicine; and Gandharva-veda through music, dance and drama.
In the West the tradition of drama comes through Aristotle who saw the plot as the essence of the drama. This passes down through a long history of theory and practice to such recent authorities as Constantin Stanislavskii and later Paul Sills, whose influence we see see pervasive in the way cinema is now produced.

This can be read in the Britannica, Stanislavskii's autobiography, "My Life in Art", and "Improvisation for the Theater" by Viola Spolin.

In Indian the tradition starts Bharata Muni about 500 B.C., and this is wonderfully described by Prof. David Haberman in the Introduction to his translation of  "Bhakti-rasa-amrta-sindhu", a most prominent work on Gandharva-veda in the modern times.
Bharata-munis idea was that music, dance, opera, drama, was not just about the story, but more about changing the perspective that the audience had. In Sanskrit this would be Bhava or Buddhi. We act. We think. We understand.

This ability of music, which if it is good, automatically results in a desire to dance, and then act out the meaning of the song, is its real glory. In the BRS Rupa Goswami presents all the elements of music, opera, spiritual opera, from the time of Bharat to the very prominent Saint Sri Krsna Caitanya, who showed how music can drag us to the lower centers of our body or lift us to the higher ones, then beyond the body to the functions of the mind and then finally take us to the non-material ecstacies in love of God which is rich in the history of all religions traditions.
 

Thank you very much Maharaj!

Your servant,

Bhadra Rupa das