Impersonalism philosophically perpetuates the padlock on the
heart by Chaitanya Charan Das Based on Bhagavad Gita Chapter 12
Our heart naturally longs to move outwards in search of a
worthy object of love. However, this search often ends in misery when those we
love don’t live up to our hopes.
Being burnt by such distressing experiences, some people
develop a fear for love. They put a padlock on their heart, not letting
themselves emotionally touch or be touched by anyone. When they explore life’s
spiritual side, they gravitate towards its depersonalized depictions. After
all, if the Absolute Truth were an impersonal effulgence, and spiritual
perfection meant dissolution of individual personal identity by merging into
that effulgence, then there would remain no scope for love and the risk of pain
thereof.
What our love needs is not a padlock, but a purificatory
pathway.
Such fear-driven philosophization about spirituality may
sound safe to some, but it’s actually life-denying. It perpetuates the padlock
on the heart. What impersonalists think of as protection – suppression of our
loving nature – ends up becoming restriction. Impersonalists sentence
themselves to eternal emotional deprivation, feeling nothing, living largely
like a stone. The longing for love lies at the core of our being – to deny it
is to deny the very sentience that defines our existence. Impersonalism is thus
self-chosen spiritual deprivation. Pertinently, Bhagavad-gita (12.05) cautions
that obsession with impersonal conceptions makes the spiritual path
troublesome.
Gita wisdom indicates that what our love needs is not a
padlock, but a purificatory pathway. Spiritual perfection requires not the
incarceration of love, but its redirection towards Krishna, the highest
manifestation of the Absolute Truth. He is the transcendental personal source
of the impersonal effulgence. We as souls are his eternal parts and are meant
to delight with him in an eternal harmony of love. Our longing for love when
reposed in him attains perfect and perennial fulfillment.
Why incarcerate the heart in perpetual lovelessness through
impersonalism when bhakti can liberate it into eternal love?
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