Here’s number three:

Q3. Hare Krishna! Please, accept my humble obeisances, Hari Sauri prabhu!

You said “Islam is definitely mayavada as is Buddhism”, but how it can be, if the Lord Chaitanya in the dispute with Abdullah Patani proved that Allah is personality in the Koran? And besides, even if someone worships to impersonal aspect of God, can we call him mayavadi because impersonal aspect is also God?

Ans: While its a fact that a deep reading of the Koran can reveal that God is ultimately the Supreme Person,

800 years old Koran

as Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu explained,

the fact is that almost all Muslims are in denial of this.

As I understand it, in the Koran there is an injuction that one should not ascribe mundane characteristics to God, or describe Him in mundane terms. They think it is the greatest offence to speak about God in personal terms–to describe his characteristics and form etc. They think He is so great that He cannot be described and that to describe Allah as a person is to reduce him to ordinary human status or to make him simply a product of our mundane experience or minds.

This is typical mayavada thinking. Thus you will see in Vrindavana and other places in India so many temples where carvings depicting demi-gods or Krsna Himself, or the Dasa-avataras, have been smashed by invading Muslim forces. The faces, hands and feet of these figures have especially been destroyed.

As far as whether a person who worships the impersonal feature of the Lord is a mayavadi or not, that depends on their mentality. There is a difference between an impersonalist and a mayavadi.

Some persons, as they progress in spiritual understanding, come first to an appreciation of the impersonal Brahman. If they are not offensive, they may progress further to Paramatma realization and finally to Bhagavan. This is because each stage has some aspect of bhakti, and because of this Krsna is disposed to reveal Himself more and more. The four Kumaras are examples of this, as is Sukadeva Goswami.

The mayavadis however are those unfortunate souls who, after realizing the all-pervasive aspect of the Lord, stop at that point and claim that God cannot be anything other than impersonal.

They decry the other stages of realization, they decry the spiritual form of the Lord and they interpret the incarnations of Krsna and His many forms as transformations of material nature. They are in fact offensive to the Personality of Godhead and because of this they cannot make any further advancement. In fact, when they leave their bodies they becomes almost non-entities like stones or trees.

So we have nothing against a genuine impersonalist, if they are progressive in their spiritual quest. But we reject the mayavadis outright because they can destroy a person’s whole spiritual advancement with their word jugglery and their envy of the Supreme Lord.

Your humble servant,

Hari-sauri dasa

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