covered personalists

There is a Spiritual Sky. There is another nature that is beyond manifestation and non-manifestation. But how will you know that there is a sky where the planets and inhabitants are eternal? All this knowledge is there, but how will you make experiments? It is not possible. Therefore you have to take the assistance of the Vedas. This is called Vedic knowledge. In our Krsna Consciousness Movement, we are accepting knowledge from the highest authority, Krsna. Krsna is accepted as the highest authority by all classes of men. I am speaking first of the two classes of transcendentalists. One class of transcendentalist is called impersonalist, Maya-vadi. They are generally known as Vedantists, led by Saṅkaracarya. And there is another class of transcendentalist, called Vaisnavas, like Ramanujacarya, Madhvacarya, Visnusvami. Both the Saṅkara-sampradaya and the Vaisnava-sampradaya have accepted Krsna as the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Saṅkaracarya is supposed to be an impersonalist who preached impersonalism, impersonal Brahman, but it is a fact that he is a covered personalist. In his commentary on the Bhagavad-gita he wrote: "Narayana, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, is beyond this cosmic manifestation." And then again he confirms, "That Supreme Personality of Godhead, Narayana, is Krsna. He has come as the Son of Devaki and Vasudeva." He has particularly mentioned the names of His father and mother. So Krsna is accepted as the Supreme Personality of Godhead by all transcendentalists. There is no doubt about it. Our source of knowledge in Krsna Consciousness is directly from Krsna, Bhagavad-gita. We have published Bhagavad Gita As It Is, because we accept Krsna as He is speaking without any interpretation. That is Vedic knowledge. Since the Vedic knowledge is pure, we accept it. Whatever Krsna says, we accept. This is Krsna Consciousness. That saves much time. If you accept the right authority or the source of knowledge, then you save much time. For example, there are two systems of knowledge in the material world, inductive and deductive. From deductive, you accept that man is mortal. Your father says man is mortal, your sister says man is mortal, everyone says man is mortal-but you do not experiment. You accept it as fact that man is mortal. If you want to research to find out whether man is mortal, you have to study each and every man, and you may come to think that there may be some man who is not dying, but you have not seen him yet. So in this way your researching will never be finished. This process is called in Sanskrit, aroha, the ascending process. If you want to attain knowledge by any personal endeavor, by exercising your imperfect senses, you will never come to the right conclusions. That is not possible.    (More...)