Is Anything Real?

15 September 2007. While I was standing in a long queue waiting to clear customs at London Gatwick airport I spent some quality time blissfully chanting the Hare Krishna mahamantra on my japa beads. Then, since I had arrived in the home of the Beatles, I thought deeply about the concept "nothing is real", which they popularized in one of their songs.

To say that nothing is real is an absurdity because if nothing is real, the statement "Nothing is real" is also unreal and therefore has no meaning. Even the mere utterance of "Nothing is real" articulates the reality of a philosophical principle. In other words the principle "Nothing is real" cancels itself out and therefore cannot be accepted as true. And if we consider the other philosophical position that something is real, the statement "nothing is real" is of course untrue.

So, no matter how you look at it, it cannot be true to to say that nothing is real. Therefore we can logically conclude that something is real. And to discover what is that something is the purpose of the human existence. This is confirmed as follows in the Vedānta-sūtra:

athāto brahmā jijñāsā

"Now that you have come to the human form of life you must inquire about what is real."

Sankarshan Das Adhikari

Answers According to the Vedic Version:

Question: Are All Great Teachers Avatars?

A question that has been burning in me the past months is this: Are all the great spiritual teachers of the world [Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, etc.] avatars of Krishna? And if so, what kind of attention should we pay to their teachings? Should we honor them and learn from them as well?

Thank you for your guidance,
Namaste,

John Gilliam

Answer: Avatar or Shaktyavesh Avatar

All the great teachers of the world are either incarnations of God or pure devotees of God. In either case they are equally venerable or worshipable because the pure devotee of God is meant to be worshipped on the same level with God. Because the pure devotee is fully invested with the shakti or energy of Krishna for uplifting the global consciousness, he is known as a shaktyavesh avatar.

The various incarnations and pure devotees appear again and again throughout history for the purpose of re-establishing religious principles. They sometimes speak the full truth, sometimes partial truth, and sometimes sometimes focus on sub-religious principles, as in the case of Lord Buddha.

If you will carefully study the Bhagavad-gita as it is, you will understand the full truth and then see how all the incarnations and pure devotees taught their students in such a way to bring them closer to the highest truth.

Sometimes the great teachers present principles which are against the higher principles of Vedas for the purpose of regulating sinful men so that they gradually come to the ultimate standard of pure devotion. So in terms of what principles and teachings to embrace and which ones to leave aside, by studying the following the teachings of the Bhagavad-gita you will realize everything.

Sankarshan Das Adhikari