Looking at the Cultural Background 91
Srila Prabhupada’s Letter to the Los Angeles Times

January 14, 1970

Editor

Los Angeles Times

Dear Sir:

With reference to your article in the Los Angeles Times dated Sunday,
January 11, 1970, under the heading ‘‘Krsna Chant,”’ I beg to point out
that the Hindu religion is perfectly based on the personal conception of
God, or Visnu. The impersonal conception of God is a side issue, or one
of the three features of God. The Absolute Truth is ultimately the
Supreme Personality of Godhead, the Paramatma conception is the
localized aspect of His omnipresence, and the impersonal conception is
the aspect of His greatness and eternity. But all these combined together
make the Complete Whole.

Dr. J.F. Staal’s statement that the Krsna cult is acombination of Chris-
tian and Hindu religion, as if something manufactured by concoction, is
pot correct. If Christian, Muhammadan, or Buddhist religions are per-
sonal, that is quite welcome. But the Krsna religion has been personal
from a time long, long ago when Christian, Muhammadan, and Buddhist
religions had not yet come into existence. According to the Vedic con- ,
ception, religion is basically made by the personal God as His laws.
Religion cannot be manufactured by man or anyone except God superior
to man. Religion is the law of God only.

Unfortunately, all the swamis who came before me in this country
Stressed the impersonal aspect of God, without sufficient knowledge of
God’s personal aspect. In the Bhagavad-gitd, therefore, it is said that only
less intelligent persons consider that God is originally impersonal but
assumes a form when He incarnates. The Krsna philosophy, however,
based on the authority of the Vedas, is that originally the Absolute Truth
s the Supreme Personality of Godhead. His plenary expansion is present
m everyone’s heart in His localized aspect, and the impersonal Brahman
effulgence is the transcendental light and heat distributed everywhere.

In the Bhagavad-gita it is clearly said that the aim of the Vedic way of
searching out the Absolute Truth is to find the personal God. One who is
satisfied only with the other aspects of the Absolute Truth, namely the
Paramatma feature or the Brahman feature, is to be considered possessed
of a poor fund of knowledge. Recently we have published our Sri
