Unfortunately, the stubborn impersonalists cannot comprehend that the final spiritual destination, beyond even the four Vedic goals (religiosity, economic development, sense gratification, and liberation) is absolutely pure and transcendental love of Godhead. They mistake the devotees of the Lord for sentimentalists and consider them their philosophical opponents. Besides these out-and-out impersonalists, there is a certain group of devotees that has deviated from the path of pure devotion and fallen prey to pretension. These cheaters actually end up following the impersonalists' path of trying to merge with the Supreme Lord. Such materialistic sentimentalists are not counted among the devotees of the Lord. Like their impersonalist counterparts, they cannot understand the true position of the Supreme Lord's name, form, qualities, pastimes, associates, or paraphernalia, for they wrongly consider these transcendental subjects illusory. They act capriciously and confuse the mass of people.
These materialistic sentimentalists reject the spiritual conclusions of Śrīla Rūpa Gosvāmī and try and take shelter of impersonalism. Yet they miserably lack the scholarship and discipline of the impersonalists. They divorce themselves from the impersonalists' scriptural studies and philosophical discussions, regarding discussions on the scripture as dry speculation and their ignorant, sentimental outbursts as spontaneous devotional fervour.
Some of these pretenders very closely follow in the impersonalists' footsteps and so may be accepted as a deranged offshoot of the impersonalist line. But they are certainly not part of the Vaiṣṇava discipline followed by those in the line of Śrīla Rūpa Gosvāmī. These pretenders diligently cultivate and exhibit certain mannerisms of devotees, and so the impersonalists reject them from their fold. Thus ostracized by both impersonalists and Vaiṣṇavas, they form a cult of demented sentimentalists. Śrīla Rūpa Gosvāmī declares that such pretenders create an outrage in spiritual society. As the Brāhma-yamāla says,
- śruti-smṛti-purāṇādi-
- pañcarātra-vidhim vimā
- aikāntikī harer bhaktir
- utpatpayaiva kalpate
- (Brs. 1.2.101)
Devotional service of the Lord that ignores the authorized Vedic literatures like the Upaniṣads, Purāṇas, and the Nārada Pañcarātra is simply an unnecessary disturbance in society.
To show mercy to such pretenders, impersonalists, empiricists, and fruitive workers, the Supreme Lord, Kṛṣṇa, has in the Bhagavad-gītā discussed jñāna-yoga, or yoga through knowledge. I therefore embark upon the same subject in this essay.