Impersonal Krishna.

[jiva]

May 23, 2022 12:03:51 GMT -6 Nitaidas said:

 We should focus our attention on cultivating and experiencing bhakti-rasa here and now in this life and not depend on anything after death. This is the best I can say based on the evidence available to us now. I could be wrong, but it seems unlikely.

Something similar was said by Jagat ji on his blog or Facebook page, or at least that's how I understand it

You do sadhana here, and you gain siddhi here.
For God is known internally.
If you do not see Him in the here and now
What do you think you will see after death?

[Nitaidas]

May 25, 2022 23:24:38 GMT -6 jiva said:

May 23, 2022 12:03:51 GMT -6 Nitaidas said:

 We should focus our attention on cultivating and experiencing bhakti-rasa here and now in this life and not depend on anything after death. This is the best I can say based on the evidence available to us now. I could be wrong, but it seems unlikely.

Something similar was said by Jagat ji on his blog or Facebook page, or at least that's how I understand it

You do sadhana here, and you gain siddhi here.
For God is known internally.
If you do not see Him in the here and now
What do you think you will see after death?

Thanks for this, Jivaji. It is nice to know someone else is thinking along similar lines. I would say something like "Great minds think alike," but though that great minds stuff might apply to Jagat, it certainly does not apply to me. So I am going for the monkey (me) typing randomly on a typewriter and, given enough time, producing one of Shakespeare's plays.

[meeno8]

"Nah! I think I will just leave things as they are as monuments to the folly of anger. What do you have against apologies? You should try it sometime."

If I started writing apologies for everything I have posted online, I would probably be spending the next century on that with little time for much else.

There is a difference between the occasional faux pas and actions based on pure malice. I do not think anyone here thinks you have genuine ill will towards others here. Why would anyone else be posting here, if they were not somehow aligned with the rest of the community?

Can we really separate ourselves from our emotions at the end of the day? The spectra of those corresponds to the various rasas of dramaturgy and its aesthetics.

I think what really needs to be published is a compilation of the more interesting content here on this symposium. Certainly translations of texts into the English language are a pillar of continuity of a CV literary tradition, be I do not see those as the be all and end all of the same.

[Nitaidas]

May 25, 2022 23:08:05 GMT -6 kirtaniya said:

Jihad seeps out of every pore of religion as such. Of any religion. I know what it is in essence and don't get upset with all sorts of shitty commandments and opinions. When I forget this I fight back on the same level. It's like healing of a rotten cow hoof. Definitely one need a sharp knife to take off all the mess, but also one have to apply some medicine in order to lift up the struggle to the level of healing.

Jihad is a method of correlating the material and the spiritual. Religion tries to curb this method, but does not change its essence. Jihad means a struggle for the spiritual, for the value of the supermaterial, the extramaterial. But this is just a struggle. Paritranaya sadhunam vinasaya ca duskrtam - a vivid highlight of jihad.

Then there is another method - no rage but only fear of God. And here comes bhakti, the selfcontradictory concept. So much stress is in the scripture and folklore on superiority and inferiority in the same body. If one is a good bhakta he is not bhakta at all but just a worm in a shit.

The idea of a kind and merciful God is based on the fear of God. Das Gosvami says: I don’t care if he is good or nasty, my boy. This is the third method: no rage and no fear. He cares of a boy and not of some resolver and giver. He doesn’t cheat himself with imposed spiritual values but he has ones, his own. He doesn't need to rate scriptures, he is already practicing. Lila smarana teaches us to deal with a person and his actual response. And to deal not with just one person, care of all of them. If Krsna is acting like an asshole, the kinkari will say, “you asshole, get out of the kunja”. This is the trick by the Gosvamis. There are two cubes in the room, one is white, the other is black. The teacher asks the children in the room, what color are these cubes? All the boys and girls (except for one of them) are told in advance that they should say the same: "both are white." And they say it, one after another. And then the last boy in the group, who is actually being tested, says it too: "both are white." The task of the teacher is to build the personality of this pupil in such a way that he will be confident: "You are all wrong (morons), these are the black cube and the white cube."

Thanks, Kirtaniya, for your thoughtful comments on this thread. They are always a pleasure to read. If I don't immediately respond, it is not because I have not read them or learned from them.

You are right. Jihad is a feature of every religion, even ours, as you demonstrate. Krsna comes on the plea of Mother Earth to kill the demons. If one reads carefully, however, one sees that the demons are really not so demonic. Duryodhana was by all accounts loved by his citizens and subjects. The same can be said even of Kamsa if one overlooks his efforts to destroy his eventual nemesis, Krsna. And thanks for quoting Krsnadas Kaviraj (worm in shit), though I think the sentiment he expresses has become a badge of good-bhaktahood, being mistaken for humility. Like Nietzsche before me, I have always been suspicious of such declamations. "I am the most fallen, prabhu!" is clearly what we nowadays call virtue-signaling. It is actually an expression of a strangely camouflaged protuberance of arrogance. It should be met with, "How can you be the most fallen? You certainly have a high opinion of your ability for wickedness and love to parade it around like a trophy!" Anyway, I see it as an expression of ego. Tamp it down in one place and it pops up in another. We are all at various times trying to out worm-in-the-stool each other. I may be better at it than you.

[kirtaniya]

Nitaidas ji,

Thank you for support and clarification.

The essence of jihad does not change when rage is directed at the real wicked. Who to decide what is good and what is bad? I can just decide, as you can. I am not constrained by the framework, about whom or what I can decide and about whom or what I do not have the right to decide. This is the reality of our village. There is something really spiritual that works for me and for you. And not fictional spiritual, which ought to be because somebody else decided and applied.

The thing is, all three methods can be applied.

And they can all be imitated.

And the trouble with our civilization is that rage, love and compassion are imposed and enforced without cultivating conditions. And it turns out to be forced imitation, when the material world remains the only value for consciousness, and when values without material outcome - are leveled. Moreover, they are irrevocably denigrated in the minds of almost the entire society. End of an era, Kali Yuga. The golden calf wins. Dependence on the material - wins. More and more cruelty - wins. He who already sees clearly will not falter.

It is impossible not to imitate if there is no clarity in the fact that matter and material means produced, born. Dependence on the born is always burden. Jihad, as well as service (out of love or fear) or care and compassion are just ways, methods. Whenever I am into the essence of the spirit I can heal this burden.

[Nitaidas]

I just watched an incredible video of Robert Sapolsky talking about his book Behave. I highly recommend watching this. It is science at its best and yet clearly not the final word. Much work still needs to be done. How can there ever be a final word anyway, given the vastness of interstellar space and the possibility of parallel universes? Our theology needs to take in to account and incorporate these scientific discoveries. We cannot discover these things ourselves by merely meditating or remembering or chanting or self-examination. Sri Jiva's analysis of the pramanas, especially of pratyaksa, is deeply flawed. I have just been through it in his Sarva-samvadini. He could not image ways in which sense perception can be confirmed by repetition and controlled experimentation. It was the best he could do given his time and training, but it needs some serious rethinking today. We don't live in the same world he did.

Anyway, here is the link.


Now, what does this make of Krsna and Radhika and bhakti? They are clearly figments of our consciousness. That is why I call them cit beings or consciousness beings. And when evoked or focused on they become sources of pleasure or longing. Thus, they are also bliss beings or anandamaya. But what about sat? Do they really exist? Do they have meaningful being? My first impulse is to say yes. They make people do strange things like shaving their heads, wearing strange clothes, smearing mud on their noses and other body parts. They take over tongues and lives, cause people to leave home and learn ancient languages. These are real things and it is hard to attribute their causes to unreal things. Perhaps we have no way of adequately describing the nature of their reality. Their reality seems like unreality to us, on par with figments like nation-states which cause those infected with those figments do strange things, often murderous things, as well. Perhaps on that consciousness level we cannot distinguish what is real from what is not so, presently. In order to be affected by those parcels of consciousness we need to attribute reality to them. Otherwise, they are just fantasies or dreams.

As contents of our consciousness they must exist somewhere in our biological nervous systems, but where? My guess would be in our frontal cortexes, the latest and highest functioning part of our brains. I can see arguments arising suggesting that scary gods like Jesus, Yahweh, and Allah are located in our amygdalas, the home of fear and anxiety. Surely Radha and Krsna belong in the frontal cortex judiciously bathed in the hormone oxytocin (aka, bhakti, hladini-sakti?), the hormone of love and devotion. Ocytocin, though, has its dark side, too, enmity towards others who do not belong to our group.

Quick note to Kirtaniyaji: You say matter has a beginning, but isn't it true that matter has no beginning nor any end. The matter of our bodies existed before our bodies and will continue to exist after them. Matter merely combines for a while and separates, thus transforming into all we see around us and much more that we don't see. Matter is also spirit and spirit is matter as the very fact of my writing this note to you demonstrates. It is my biological matter that is doing it which by combining in certain ways has produced an awareness mistakenly identified as spirit or soul. But, really it is just a combination of factors as Dr. Sapolsky points out in the video, ranging from a second earlier to ages earlier. When these chemical reactions stop happening so do I and so do you. Radha and Krsna and bhakti live on in other minds and hearts and in literature and song and art, in philosophy and ritual, but we die. They are in this sense clearly immortal, unlike us.

[meeno8]

Mapping specific deities to regions of the brain is interesting, no doubt. However, I have to question if that is a reductionist approach. And, if so, that could be the best of all possible worlds.

The age old problems philosophers have grappled with down through the ages, such as the nature of time and space, still remain for science to explore for now and for the future.

The comparison between scientific inquiry and theology is all good and well, but it does not account for mysticism in any way shape or form, at least as far as I can tell.

[meeno8]

At its core, the very nature of reality is somewhat problematic. What my perception of the world is via sensory input may not be the same as yours or of person X, Y, Z, ... What I see as the color blue you may see as red. There is no way to know for certain, at least not until our technology advances enough to answer that definitively. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." 

Mathematics as a field is just as significant as the hard sciences, and without math, they could not really exist as they are. Where would physics be without equations like E=MC2 (Energy = Mass times the constant, or the speed of light, squared)? In multiple universes theory, one hypothesis is that in another universe the laws of physics may not be the same as they are in ours.

Intuition is very real for those of us that have it in spades. In fact from what my own research tells me, the teachings of the ancient mystery schools coming down to us via freemasonry and its branches state the everyone has the capacity for intuition, and it can be developed to a high degree. How do we account for it as a natural phenomenon? Perhaps field theory. We already know that magnetic fields, for example, are invisible, yet have a very tangible effect on objects, particularly on our planet with its north and south poles. I really see no point in thinking of consciousness as something strictly with the locus of the brain and its synapses, when in fact it lends itself to some sort of field phenomenon in the final analysis. Intuition is just one of several phenomena involving our consciousness and how it interacts with this universe through linear time in 11 dimensional space (at least according to string theory). But is time linear in the first place? Just because we perceive it that way, does not guarantee that it is.

OK, now I am repeating myself again on all of this, but I think I have also elaborated even further with a deeper dive, so this post should not be for naught. Given the very, very small audience that may even read this, is it even worth my spending time to write this? You never can tell...

[kirtaniya]

Nitaidas ji,

writing this and that note is a good example of production, you have given. Right now, my attention is shifting from the thought I'm holding to the fingers typing these letters, and to the attention of the eyes, whether the letters are typed correctly and whether the text of the thought is formed and whether the thought has changed while I type it and send it to you. This is how this process of materializing is within pratyaksa. There must be some kind of spirit that originates this process? Not necessarily so.

The point where you go wrong is when your true pratyaksa ends and pure imagination begins. As a scientist, you may consider: in the process of interpretation of your pratyaksa this or that interpretation is not the only possible one. You can put it under question: what if it is wrong? There is the production noticed, but the idea of producer behind it is an extreme view, the eternalism. You reject the stupid idea of the soul as a producer, but replace it with the idea of matter as a producer. In addition to the fact that you directly observe the material formation, through pratyaksa, you also impose the need for a producing matter. It is rather difficult to consider an alternative to this idea but it should be done. Look: what if there is no need for an actuator for all that you can observe through pratyaksa?

Fortunately, the question of existence is not a question of physics or biology. The question of existence has two levels. Relative (conditional) and absolute (unconditional). Something exists when there are signs by which this something can be recognized. This is a cognitive problem.

Natural science only affirms the dependence of some conditional features on others. But we can consider the non-randomness, the law-ness, regularity of our pratyaksa. Simply put, if something is recognized, it is recognized precisely because the features that distinguish it are not accidental. We see conditioned reality and focus on the law within it. But the law of the emergence of this reality can be explored as well. It is possible to discover and test the law of karma operating in the realm of the mind, beyond the realms of the visible, the audible, the smelling, the tasting, and the tangible.

To neglect the emergence of this conditioned reality is to think that there is nothing else besides the sensible. Please consider this kind of limitation. As if everything is here - perceived by the five senses. And what is perceived only by the mind, not confirmed by the five senses - is not a real world of forms, but simply random glitches, since there are no patterns in them that could be identified or verified. This is how it looks. The philosophical mind only conjectures for this a universal superstructure, substratum, without trying to rely on pratyaksa here. The direct method of manasa cintana is meant to recognize this world. But who cares? A philosopher of CV wanna grab it with conceptual thinking. And when he fails he declares: it was all meant just for fun.

Therefore, pure materialists are deluded in a rather naive way, simply by not having the necessary experience in the study of the mind. Exactly the same mistake is made by Advaitist spiritualists. This is the same extreme view of eternalism. Instead of research they decide, ok, there must be something as the original cause. To the inexperienced attention, the realm of the mind can appear chaotic, frighteningly chaotic. But no one will say that the sphere of the mind does not exist. It should be seen how it is represented by a huge variety of forms in which their signs, the features are connected in a way that is by no means accidental (otherwise these forms could not be recognized and distinguished). You can call these forms matter, and this is absolutely correct.

The level of relative truth lies in the fact that under certain conditions a certain result is found. Everyone lives in the world, but some comprehend the world, others comprehend the nature of the world, and still others wander and lost in ideas about what goes beyond the world. Jiva Gosvami makes an absurd statement but skilfully guiding us to the right view. There is no point in talking about of his being more limited than us, as if we are not bound with the same frame. He makes your mind and mine torment for years with the same problem. What else special limitation do you want to cherish apart from such vividly popping out torment?

Existence is always the subject of pratyaksa. I could not just rest anymore on an arbitrary decision, extreme statements: yes - no, exists - does not exist. We can look practically: how exactly does everything exist? The mind only pulls at each moment what it considers adequate (inherent = atman, constant = nitya, calming = sukha) to this moment from past experience, thereby giving birth to something existing in the moment and filling the moment with expectations and anxiety (suffering), which is why is born (not inherent in this moment = anatman) the next moment (variability). That to which clinging arises is seen as existing, not illusory. That to which clinging does not arise is seen as abstract, illusory, unreal.

Here is the moment when you can consider how the idea of ​​isochronous timing, onelinear time, reinforces the idea of ​​a superstructure that must necessarily exist, unconditionally. It is very habitual to think of something unchanged in the past, present and future. The same idea is present in Advaita. We are all aware of the Vedantic discourse when they say, no, not pradhana originally, something else. They trade one thing for another, inaccessible to pratyaksa, a thing-in-itself. Because of the pressure of the idea, we may think of moment-to-moment pratyaksa as taking place in time. But time is just one of the features of forms, connecting forms. Also other lives may look like they have to line up. When the support of time is thrown away, all lives are seen as a bunch of grapes, berry to berry, separate, but reflected in each other. Alternative features that are implemented or not. Therefore, some of the possibilities are perceived very vaguely and fleetingly, if such a capacity to perceive is developed at all. When you think about things, or about matter, which must necessarily exist before the moment of perception, think about what meaning you put into the concept of existence? How do you know about their existence if pratyaksa does not work there? What if the seer, the seen, and the seeing are all the pratyaksa subjects without being separated from one another in the imagination? Simply because pratyaksa has no essence of its own.

The regret for mortality is directly associated with the imagined homunculus.The funny (but sad) thing is, you still believe in some life infused in matter. What if, there nothing is alive? Is Solaris alive or not? Is impression of the video (or book) of a person different from him? Just look at the core of different expectations.

[meeno8]

As far as I know, I am the only scientist here with a career as a computer scientist spanning over 3 decades, and as I already mentioned in a prior post a degree in the Philosophy of Science.

There may be others here that are scientists, but they have not posted anything about themselves to that effect on this and a few other threads.

The landscape of the philosophy of science changed dramatically in the 20th Century, far more than it had after Isaac Newton. It has to be updated every few years to keep up with the latest discoveries and proving or disproving of any theories put forth.

For my independent study of Aristotle in college, the professor and I read through his Physics but not his Metaphysics (meta just referring to the book that came after Physics on the subject of the nature of the soul et al). It goes without saying that the ancient Greeks had a very primitive knowledge of this universe, as did the Medieval Bengalis of the CV tradition. The 5th Skanda (Canto) of the SB has some pretty wild (yet entertaining) concepts of cosmology and the fantastic and whimsical idea that the sun (just another star in the galaxy) is a deity that flies across the sky in a celestial chariot draw by flying horses. Today we know that is pure bunk, yet people of that era took it as gospel truth, as did those before the European astronomers eventually worked out (to the chagrin of the authoritative Church) the structure of the solar system and the orbits of the planets including ours.

On the other hand (from a Google search):
"240 B.C. Eratosthenes Measures the Earth. By around 500 B.C., most ancient Greeks believed that Earth was round, not flat. But they had no idea how big the planet is until about 240 B.C., when Eratosthenes devised a clever method of estimating its circumference."

But I digress...

People that like to 'mix it up' with theology and science in some holistic outlook tend to be of that 'new age minded' ilk, as in quite flakey if you ask moi. Mysticism, on the other hand, is of the nature that Nitai Mahashoy describes in terms of our tradition of CV accounting for the latest scientific discoveries in rebranding itself with each new generation. This is akin to what Pinker describes in his Enlightenment Now, whereby the principles of the The Enlightenment and the Age of Reason need to be reaffirmed for each new generation. After all, those are the cornerstone of our free society, in juxtaposition to populist douche bags and tyrannical autocrats waging horrific wars with total disregard for the rules of engagement established centuries ago in ancient Indian empires (hey, at least they were good for something after all - haha). Dim witted people think the founding fathers of America had freedom of religion in mind when they drafted the Bill of Rights, but it was freedom from religion they were more concerned with, being nearly all Freemasons (with the only exception being Thomas Jefferson), who historically were always at odds with the Church (remember how the Church ordered the hunting down and assassination of all the Knights Templar?).

Here is a good story line for a fictional novel and screen play: The original Devatas of the Devanagari texts were AIs created by computer technology that did not survive, so no evidence exists until some archaeologists find some remnants with silicon microchips on a dig in one of the Indus Valley Civilization (Harrapan) sites. Run with that one of you fiction writers! I have practically no time to write anything these days, although I do have a little extra time to post here over this 3 day holiday weekend.

[kirtaniya]

Meeno8 ji,

I mean, a scientist in the sense that he is an explorer of the nature of the mind. Those who practice the Goswami’s method may sooner or later come to the conclusion that the nature of the mind is all-encompassing. While it is not clear, it seems that CV is some kind of religion, like other religions, with limited application. And then faith is very weak, determination is scattered on different types of support, and the practitioner does not train his ability to immediately cast aside any doubts. But CV can be primarily an exploration of the nature of the mind.

As for the mixing of theology and science, that is quite another matter. But this, too, can be interesting, albeit highly bizarre. It turns out that the gods of religions are not at all the same as the one who worships used to think. These are certain semantic patterns that are repeated again and again in different mythologies, passing from one culture to another, preserving and transmitting deep allegorical meanings, archetypes. There has been a lot of fresh news and discoveries in this area lately. As for the nature of the mind, everything has been known about it since the time of the Abhidharma.

[meeno8]

Explorers of the nature of the mind would include neurologists, who are indeed actual scientists. Explorers can just be spelunkers who descend into caves. Some of them could be scientists like geologists and zoologists, whereas others could just be hobbyists that like the thrill of viewing stalactites and stalagmites.

I have already provided the analogy of divers of coral reefs with respect to meditative states, and the analogy of spelunkers works as well.

I was being facetious in referring to 'mixing it up'. It is more like the pursuit of bridging the gap between religion and science, and more likely than not the twain shall never meet. Those involve completely different mindsets. On the other hand, many scientists consider themselves to be men or women of faith. But in the final analysis is that not just some cultural baggage as opposed to pure mysticism?

[kirtaniya]

Faith is a key element in any activity. Without admitting something on faith, it is impossible to investigate what is admitted. The same goes for self-realization - hard, hard work. Therefore, faith is needed that this comprehension gives a significant result. Otherwise, there will simply be no determination.

As far as neuroscience is concerned, I consider it a secondary way of extracting facts (although there are many good instructive visual examples here that the ancients did not have). The problem is in general psychology. To date, it is still not sufficiently general. Neurophysiology follows general psychology. It either confirms certain models, or refutes them, or can neither confirm nor refute them. Ahead is a general, fundamental idea of ​​what the psyche is. Without understanding this, it is impossible to understand the delimitation of areas of research, the relative and the absolute level.

[meeno8]

The personality types measured by the Briggs-Meyers test (which is originally based on Jungian archetypes, which are in turn based on myths) are objectively real and quantifiable:
www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test

I was at a conference where the speaker broke it down into 4 types for marketing purposes:
Assertive, Persuasive, Analytical, Amiable
That was valuable information in selling services for software development consulting, because of different strategies for each type. How does one recognize the type? For instance, the amiable person will tend to have a jar of candy or some snacks on the desk. Once one picks up on the clues, they can mirror the respective type themselves to sync up in a sales meeting.

What was very interesting about that presentation is that the speaker would tell jokes that evoked laughs from one of the four types, and little pockets in the room would laugh, and they were almost all seated at the same tables with each other.

Re myths themselves:

As I related elsewhere on some thread on this symposium, when Jagannath Das and I had an audience with Haridas Navatirtha Shastri in Vrindavan in 1980, Jag asked him about how we could possibly believe in those fantastic tales in the Puranas and Itihas. Babaji mentioned multiple levels of meaning with the literal level the base level, and above that the other levels, including the metaphorical. He said that Ravana being described as having 10 heads and 20 arms just alluded to the fact that he was highly intelligent and very strong in battle. But, even with that interpretation, can we even say that Ravana was an actual historical person that walked the earth?

All the erudition amassed over decades still would not allow one to penetrate the mysteries that are in the realm of mysticism. CV as a mystical tradition asserts that the nature of the AtmA is that of sat, cit, and Ananda. To put forth the argument that the jIvas do not really exist except for within the phenomenal realm, and following that logic consciousness has no continuity beyond the organism's life span (which according to the postulate is not real either in the grand scheme of things). I hope I am not over-simplifying here, but I have to stongly object to any such postulate. What is the actual point of lIlA-smaraNam and using guTikAs for sAdhana, if one elects to adhere to that point of view? How can there be such a thing as a siddha or siddhis? Yet, CV as a mystical tradition does except those, with yoga darsana as a foundation, not just Vedanta. Visualization is key in many forms of meditation, but what is special about the projection of oneself into aSTakAlIya-lIlA in one's siddha-deha? Indeed there is something very special about that, and I assert that it is not just imagining because it is a good fantasy, as good as any other fantasy one can imagine. It is also special due to the fact that other practices do not incorporate anything like it into them. Mantras might be there, but not that.

Are we to just take up practices only because they are prescribed by a guru, or are we to also accept them as mystical in nature? You be the judge, gentle reader. You can be steam rolled over by someone with more Sanskrit knowledge and erudition than you possess, or you can seriously consider the ramifications of what they might be asserting.

[meeno8]

Speaking the truth can be harsh, and in this case it probably is. The acharyas of the past were likely masters of the stories of all those story tellers that came before. We all have our own stories to tell. If we can master a lot of stories, then what precludes us from becoming acharyas ourselves? That would probably have to be the element of mastering the mysteries explored by mysticism. That completes the whole picture. Discuss amongst yourselves.

I may be a computer scientist, but how much above the level of a dilettante am I compared to luminaries like Turing, among many others? At least I do have some credentials, at any rate. I had an interview at Fermi Lab back in the '90s for writing code for the collectors for the experiments with the large collider they have there in the far west suburbs of Chicago. The physicist that interviewed me was writing his own code, and just needed someone else to pick up the thread so that he could focus more on the science itself. If I had managed to land that gig, then I would certainly be more knowledgeable about particle physics than I am today. Still, I read a lot on the subject, and on the subjects of genetics, neurology, immunology, ecology, geology, including a lot of articles published in Discover Magazine that comes out monthly.  I said I did not really want to necessarily 'toot my own horn' (or in my case it would be that flute sitting in the case collecting dust waiting to be taken into the shop for an overhaul), but Nitaidas Dr. Delmonico Ji seems to have taken umbrage at my pointing out my credentials here. It evokes that quoted attributed to Voltaire:



From a Google search:

“I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” is said to have come from Voltaire. It is not from Voltaire, the 18th-century philosopher, but it was a paraphrase from a biographer named Evelyn Beatrice Hall of what she thought Voltaire was thinking.



There seems to be some controversy (or not) surrounding that very quotation itself. I think in this age of misinformation and disinformation on the World Wide Web, I think we need to qualify that statement and limit it to remarks that are not outside the boundaries of civility and that do not promote senseless violence with firearms that should not be in the hands of most individuals in the first place. Heck, look at all the disinformation and misinformation vomited online by IGM postings claiming to represent the one and true Caitanyaite tradition. Just like those Mormons who preach that their church is the one and only true church.

So be it.   I never set out to butt heads with the man here, and after all this forum is his pet project, not mine.  Perhaps we know each other too well after all these decades stretching back to those Sanskrit classes in Vrindavan that he was teaching in 1976.  Maybe I pushed one of his buttons.  Hard to tell, because he can be quite inscrutable at times.  I know he just tried to push some of mine, but to no avail, and the intention was good to somehow motivate me to figure out how to utilize foreign alphabets in Ebooks.  The truth is that I do not have any real buttons to push.  My armor has no chinks in it, and one can search for them until one is blue in the face (like Krisha - ha ha), but will not find any.  At the very least the 2 of use share much common ground, despite our differences.  After all, we are 2 different individuals with 2 different sets of life experiences (granted his stretch back just about 3 years earlier than my own to the very week).  I would not want a Vulcan mind meld any more than he would.  We all need to be grateful to the man for creating this site as a free forum without censorship (except maybe in some extreme circumstances - that is above my pay grade not being a site admin).  Thank you Nitai!  Jai Nitai!  Jai 108 Tinkori Baba!  Jai Sri Radhe!