Page 26 - SBV (English)

xxiv Preface

Presumably Çré Bhaktisiddhänta Vaibhava will be of interest also to secular
students of religion, particularly those specializing in Gauòéya Vaiñëavism.
However, notwithstanding their scrupulous standards of research and exegesis
and their laboriously acquired accumulation of facts and figures, such external
inquirers are by their very outlook disqualified from inner appreciation of
Vaiñëavas and Vaiñëavism; for the neutrality and aloofness that purportedly
define the academic position are self-defeating in the realm of spirituality, where
commitment alone is the key. Indeed, that such a monumental äcärya as Çréla
Bhaktisiddhänta Sarasvaté has to date been largely overlooked by academicians
specializing in Gauòéya Vaiñëavism bears testimony to their committed
mundaneness and resultant inability to recognize the essential. *
acintyäù khalu ye bhävä na täàs tarkeëa yojayet
prakåtibhyaù paraà yac ca tad acintyasya lakñaëam
Whatever is beyond material nature is thus inconceivable to persons
within it, and cannot be grasped through mundane reasoning.
(Mahäbhärata, Bhéñma-parva 5.22)

The endeavor of small-minded scholars to classify Vaiñëavas according
to psychological or sociological criteria, as if like ordinary mortals Vaiñëavas
are primarily products of their environment, volitionally denies the spiritual
dimension that empowers devotees. Certainly, to subject Vaiñëavas to analytic
methods born of partial experience and imperfect conceptions is from the outset
preposterous and offensive. Those who consider transcendental personages to
be objects of empiric study, ipso facto can never understand them. Only they
who seek mercy from such great souls may be blessed with comprehension of
their glories. In the words of Professor N. K. Sanyal, a prominent disciple of Çréla
Bhaktisiddhänta Sarasvaté:
The empiric historian, with his geographical and chronological
apparatus of observation, can have really no proper idea of
the grotesque anomaly that he unconsciously perpetrates by

* An example of such woeful ignorance is in Professor Dimock’s introduction to the
Harvard edition of Caitanya-caritämåta. Despite being a lifelong scholar of Bengali
Vaiñëavism, Dimock stated that Bärñobhänavédayita Däsa and Bhaktisiddhänta
Sarasvaté were separate authors of two different commentaries, both called Anubhäñya,
within different editions of the Gauòéya Maöha publication of that text. Even a cursory
inspection would have revealed that the “two” commentaries are the same, with
merely the author’s name presented differently. (Edward C. Dimock, Jr., trans., Caitanya
Caritämåta of Kåñëadäsa Kaviräja (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 66–67.