Vasu Murti's blog

In e-mail correspondence with my friend Tim Parks (a Protestant missionary, now preaching in China) during the late '90s, I told him that Lord Krishna identifies Himself as an avatar, or incarnation of God—the Supreme Being, and the Father of every living entity (Gita 14.4).

Modern Jewish theologian Martin Buber has written that there is only one God whom we are all worshipping under a variety of names. Christians and Muslims, for example, also claim to be worshipping the one God of Abraham. Do Jews deny this?

I said that as Vaishnavas, we identify ourselves as worshippers of Lord Vishnu, the Supreme Being in the Hindu pantheon. The Judeo-Christian tradition is monotheistic, but the apostle Paul does make a passing reference to the cult of angel worship in his Epistle to the Colossians. Lord Krishna similarly spoke Bhagavad-gita to the sun-god millions of years before He spoke it to His disciple Arjuna.

Like the Christians and Muslims, we also claim to be worshipping the one God of Abraham. I said further that numerous scholars and theologians, many of them Christian, have even openly acknowledged the theological similarities between the Christian and Vaishnava traditions.

Dr. Klaus Klostermaier says, "if you look long and hard enough, you can find points of similarity all the way through; and you can even reconcile many of the obvious differences that the two religions have come to engender."

For example, in his 1983 essay, "A Jewish Encounter with the Bhagavad-gita", Harold Kasimow writes that the doctrine of the incarnation of God is as central to the Gita as it is to Christianity, and neither Jews nor Muslims have been able to reconcile this doctrine with their own understanding of God.

I told Tim that if belief in the *godhood* of Jesus is a requirement of the Christian faith, then obviously, we're not Christians. I've heard it said that fundamentalists derisively refer to the Unitarians as "Jewnitarians", because the Unitarians do not believe in the godhood of Jesus.

We do believe in the incarnations of God—the different avatars of Lord Vishnu, as Lord Rama, Narasimha, Krishna, Chaitanya, etc.—a doctrine foreign to Judaism and Islam, but familiar to Christianity.

The doctrine of the godhood of Jesus is questionable (Matthew 12:18, 27:46; Mark 13:32; Luke 23:46; John 14:2, 17:21, Acts 3:13). Yes, Jesus says, "The Father and I are one," but he also prays with his disciples, "As You and I are one, let them (the disciples) be one in us" (John 17:21), implying this "oneness" is a relationship others may also experience.

The biblical phrase about Jesus sitting at the right hand of God would also be meaningless if there were not two distinct individuals—God and Jesus: the Lord and His servant.

We believe in original sin and a fall from grace. We believe in the incarnations of God. We worship a guru, or spiritual master, as an intermediary ("intercessor") as the only way to God, who suffers for the sins of his or her disciples.

We worship images of the incarnations of God. At a Jewish-Vaishnava interfaith conference in 1986, none of the rabbis would take prasadam, because it was food offered to idols. On the other hand, Catholic clergy have defended us against charges of idolatry from Christian fundamentalists, and have favorably compared prasadam with the Eucharist.

We venerate saints (e.g., Bhaktivinoda Thakura, Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura, the Six Goswamis, etc.) on our altars, as well as sacred plants (Tulasi), rivers (the Ganges, the Yamuna) and mountains (Govardhan Hill).

We believe God has a personal form, yet is simultaneously present as an observer in the heart of every living entity, and is also an omnipresent spirit. Srila Prabhupada even compared this Vaishnava understanding of the Three Aspects of God (brahman, paramatma, bhagavan) to the Christian conception of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

We worship a plural Godhead (e.g., Radha and Krishna; Jagganatha, Baladeva and Subhadra; Gaura Nitai, the Pancha-tattva), similar to the Christian Trinitarian conception of God. We even refer to the Deities in the plural, as "Them" or "Their Lordships".

Secular historian Dr. Martin A. Larson, in The Story of Christian Origins, notes that according to Hindu, Buddhist, and Pythagorean thought, "hell itself was actually a kind of purgatory, since it was a place in which perhaps a majority of all people underwent repeated refinement and punishment," before being reborn as a plant, animal, or human being.

The priests and monks (bramachari and sannyasis) in our tradition take lifelong vows. We chant the holy names of God on beads of prayer, similar to the rosary. John Plott has compared the theology of Ramanuja, an acharya, with that of St. Bonaventura, a Franciscan who lived centuries later.

Tim replied, "Christians accept Jesus as God. Your theology could be compared to that of certain heretical Christian sects, like the Mormons or the Jehovah's Witnesses, and to some extent, the Unitarians."

I had heard this comparison before. Back in 1985, a devotee named John, who was a Roman Catholic barber, who had seen Srila Prabhupada speak on three different occasions, predicted that ISKCON would grow into a respected Christian denomination like the Mormon church.

"Mormons are respected?" I asked, surprised. "Maybe not by the fundamentalists," John replied, "but in theological circles, they're a respected branch of the Christian faith."

In 1987, one devotee, Mike DeCamp, whose nickname was "computer Mike," because he helped San Diego devotees with their computer, commented: "Devotees all think the spread of Krishna Consciousness in the West is going to be like the spread of Christianity— that it'll take centuries for it to become a world religion. Actually, it resembles the history of the Mormon church." (Mike has a degree in Art History from Yale.)

I agreed with Tim that Krishna Consciousness does have a lot in common with Mormonism. Though Mormons may not believe in reincarnation, they do believe in the pre-existence of the soul. When I met with a couple of Mormon missionaries in 1991, they said that prior to conception and taking birth here on earth, we existed in a spiritual realm.

A 1992 article in US News and World Report said Mormons have one of the fastest growing religions in America, and one of the reasons for this is (like Vaishnavas), they don't believe in eternal damnation.

The Mormon church has also advocated a mostly vegetarian diet as part of its philosophy of health and reverence for life. This began in 1833, when church founder Joseph Smith received a revelation of such a health code as God's will, emphasizing grains as the staple for one's diet. Meat is meant to be eaten only rarely, such as in times of famine or extreme cold, when animals will likely perish.

The exact statement from the Mormon scriptures reads as follows:

"Yea, flesh also of beasts and of the fowls of the air,
I, the Lord, have ordained for the use of man with
thanksgiving; nevertheless they are to be used
sparingly;

"And it is pleasing unto Me that they should not be
used, only in times of winter, or of cold, or famine."

- Doctrine and Covenants 89:12,13

Mormons, like Vaishnavas, abstain from all forms of intoxication, including things like caffeine and tobacco. And Mormons abstain from gambling. A vegetarian Mormon would be following three of the four regulative principles.

Back in the early '90s, Ratha Yatra dasa (Randall Bostwick, a Prabhupada disciple) showed me an article from the Vedic Village Review entitled "Grihastas and Illicit Sex," which quoted Srila Prabhupada as saying that apart from procreation, the genitals must not be used. I told Ratha Yatra that if we allow for illicit sex within marriage, e.g., the rhythm method, what to speak of contraception and divorce, we'll be like the Mormons!

We believe in the incarnations of God in other parts of the world besides Palestine, and the Mormons, likewise, believe that Jesus Christ incarnated among the Native Americans:

The Reverend Alvin Hart, an Episcopal priest in New York, says that John 14:6 is often mistranslated. The original Greek—ego emi ha hodos kai ha alatheia kai ha zoa; oudeis erkatai pros ton patera ei ma di emou—should read "I am the way, the truth, and the life, and none of you are coming to the Father except through me."

According to Reverend Hart, "...the key word here is erkatai. This is an extremely present-tense form of the verb...You see? In Palestine, two thousand years ago, Jesus was the guru. If he wanted to say that he would be the teacher for all time, he would have used a word other than erkatai, but he didn't."

Dr. Boyd Daniels of the American Bible Society concurs: "Oh, yes. The word erkatai is definitely the present tense form of the verb. Jesus was speaking to his contemporaries."

According to the Book of Mormon, God Himself specifically refutes the misconception that He can only make Himself known to one particular people at one point in human history, and leave only one set of written scriptures:

"Know ye not that there are more nations than one? Know ye not that I, the Lord your God, have created all men, and that I remember those who are upon the isles of the sea; and that I rule in the heavens above and in the earth beneath; and I bring forth My word unto the children of men, yea, even upon all the nations of the earth? Wherefore, murmur ye, because that ye shall receive more of My word?

"Know ye that the testimony of two nations is a witness unto you that I am God, that I remember one nation like unto another? Wherefore, I speak the same words unto one nation like unto another. And when the two nations shall run together, the testimony of the two nations shall run together also...And because I have spoken one word ye need not suppose that I cannot speak another; for My work is not yet finished; neither shall it be until the end of man...

"Neither need ye suppose that I have not caused more to be written. For I command all men, both in the East and in the West, and in the North and in the South, and in the islands of the sea, that they shall write the words which I speak unto them. For out of the books that will be written I will judge the world..."

Like the Mormons, we experimented with polygamy. There are devotees who still advocate polygamy. If you visit Ameyatma dasa's website, www.16108.com (thus-named, because Lord Krishna Himself had 16,108 wives), Ameyatma is repeating Srila Prabhupada's teachings that the girls all be married by age 16, and that men can take more than one wife.

But, wait a minute! Isn't mayavadi philosophy at the heart of Mormonism? Don't Mormons believe one can become God in one's own universe?

Back in 1987, Anubhava dasi, an Irish devotee, favorably compared Krishna Consciousness with her own upbringing as a Mormon.  When I asked her if it's true that Mormons believe that one can become God in one's own universe and give birth to the Christ child, she replied, "It's worship of Lord Brahma."

My friend Anantarupa dasa, an Irish Catholic devotee, says of Mormonism, "It's definitely Brahma-worship or Prajapati-worship."

I agreed with Tim also, that like the Jehovah's Witnesses, we also call upon God by a personal name and regard Jesus as a "Jewish Prabhupada," i.e., a human teacher or empowered representative of God, or messiah, and that Srila Prabhupada also rejected the cross or crucifix (the instrument of Jesus' death) as a divine symbol. But the similarities end there.

Jehovah's Witnesses believe in a physical resurrection of the dead, and a terrestrial paradise here on earth. We're at the other end of the theological spectrum: teaching the complete separation of the soul from the body, and its transmigration throughout 8.4 million different species of life, different planetary systems, etc.

I even told Tim plainly that unlike these "heretical" Christian sects, we are not a new or recent innovation. The bhakti tradition can be traced back historically to at least the second century BC. Far from being a "cult," we're older than Christianity, and almost as old as Buddhism (if not older).

It's interesting how others see us! At least Tim was honest enough to acknowledge the similarities between our faiths. Back in 1992, I was dating a girl, Adriana. We were never boyfriend and girlfriend, it was more of a romantic friendship.

Adriana's father was a Protestant minister, fond of the epistles of Paul. Adriana was rebelling against her Protestant upbringing, and once told her mother over the phone that she didn't consider herself a Christian any more; she considered herself "half New Age and half Hare Krishna."

Adriana told me she once belonged to (another group the Christians would consider a "cult") "The Way International," and that their leader had written a book entitled Jesus Christ is not God. She was surprised by my tolerance of people worshipping Jesus. I tried to explain to her that in Krishna Consciousness we venerate saints and other exalted personalities, and we worship a spiritual master as an intermediary between God and man, as the only way to God, who suffers for the sins of his or her disciples. I don’t know if she understood.

The point I’m trying to make here is that it’s a mistake to compare Krishna Consciousness with mainstream Christianity, as its anti-cult critics so often do.