Ishvara Parama Krishna

“Fools deride Me when I descend in the human form. They do not know My transcendental nature and My supreme dominion over all that be.” (Lord Krishna, Bhagavad-gita, 9.11)

The internet revolution has brought about great advancements in the dissemination of information. We can quickly search for information on virtually any topic. This is generally a good thing, but it has its drawbacks as well.

According to Vedic teachings, knowledge of God should be heard through the process of disciplic succession, from someone who knows Lord Krishna. That person is the spiritual master, or the pure devotee of the Lord. The pure devotee spends all his time in devotional service to Krishna, thus the Lord reveals Himself to such a person. The devotee has no other interest than to please Krishna, so thus he is the proper person to go to. There are many other mundane scholars who study the Bhagavad-gita and come up with their own concocted theories about Krishna. Some say that He is just an ordinary human being, while others say that the Gita’s teachings are merely symbolic and not to be taken literally. Such people can be classified as atheists.

The internet provides freedom of access, allowing anyone and everyone to publish their thoughts and ideas. One of the drawbacks to this is that one can find conflicting and contradictory information on the internet on matters relating to religion and Krishna. Shankaracharya instituted the Mayavada, or impersonalist, philosophical interpretation of the Vedas in the late eighth century, and that philosophy has gained widespread popularity ever since. Thus the internet is filled information and opinions along this line, i.e. that God is impersonal and that the point of human life is to study Vedanta and hopefully one day merge into the impersonal effulgence known as the brahmajyoti.

“Everyone serves the purpose of the Supreme Godhead, and what to speak of such small and insignificant living entities as ourselves? We are surely eternal servants of the Lord. The Mayavada philosophy maintains that the demigods, the living entities and the Supreme Personality of Godhead are all equal. It is therefore a most foolish misrepresentation of Vedic knowledge.” (Shrila Prabhupada, Chaitanya Charitamrita, Adi 7.157 Purport)

Mayavadis tend to think that each of us are personal Gods, and that the Supreme Absolute Truth is an impersonal energy, called Brahman. They take Lord Krishna and His various incarnations to be human beings or regular living entities, products subject to the spell of maya. The Lord describes the foolishness of such people in the Bhagavad-gita, yet if one does internet searches on Lord Krishna or Lord Rama, one will encounter many such teachings of the Mayavadis. Some people even go so far as to criticize the activities of Krishna, focusing especially on His dancing with the gopis in the rasa-lila. The pastimes of Krishna are detailed in the tenth canto of the Shrimad Bhagavatam.  Many people ignore what is contained in the rest of the book, namely that Krishna is God, and instead cherry-pick certain things which they can use to criticize the Lord.

Lord Chaitanya warned us to stay away from such philosophy and try not to even hear it at all. He believed that one who was instructed in the ways of the Mayavada philosophy would have a very difficult time coming to the platform of love for Krishna.

“Vyasadeva composed the Vedanta-sutra to deliver the conditioned souls from this material world, but Shankaracharya, by presenting the Vedanta-sutra in his own way, has clearly done a great disservice to human society, for one who follows his Mayavada philosophy is doomed. In the Vedanta-sutra, devotional service is clearly indicated, but the Mayavadi philosophers refuse to accept the spiritual body of the Supreme Absolute Person and refuse to accept that the living entity has an individual existence separate from that of the Supreme Lord. Thus they have created atheistic havoc all over the world, for such a conclusion is against the very nature of the transcendental process of pure devotional service. The Mayavadi philosophers' unrealizable ambition to become one with the Supreme through denying the existence of the Personality of Godhead results in a most calamitous misrepresentation of spiritual knowledge, and one who follows this philosophy is doomed to remain perpetually in this material world.” (Shrila Prabhupada, Chaitanya Charitamrita, Adi 7.114 Purport)

People are naturally inclined to think of God as being personal; someone we should worship and be devoted to. By reading about or hearing the Mayavada philosophy, one is taken away from their natural inclination to know and love God. Even for those who are already devoted, reading such philosophy can be very depressing. We all love our parents and we never like it when others criticize them. In the same way, Krishna is our original father, and seeing Him treated as an ordinary human being is very offensive. The mind should be purified by thinking good thoughts.

The internet represents one of the most advanced forms of communication, so we should take advantage of this medium to disseminate the truth about Krishna. God is very nice to us, so we should be equally kind to Him by using everything at our disposal to distribute His Mercy to everyone. If we hear the truth about Krishna and lovingly serve Him, then no contradictory philosophy can ever touch us.