Myths arose as a necessary part of human evolution. Storytelling and mythology is how humans conveyed ideas, passed down information about historical events and created mirrors of their social and psychological selves throughout history
I don't have a problem with mythology as a vehicle for studying human evolution and archeological, anthropology history. I enjoy mythology. From a symbolic standpoint, it's very telling of the human condition.
My problem is that we live in a time where there is ample modern-day storytelling in the form of novels, film and all manner of scientific and historical records.
Modern-day storytelling is relevant to our current day psychologies and realities. The mythology of archaic people may hold some rudimentary building blocks to who we are today, but they certainly don't have a dramatic relevance in this day and age. That's my main qualm with using archaic mythology as a guidance point to base an entire spiritual system on. In other words, we take aspects of such systems that have proven scientific value and we implement them to build out methods for navigating life. Some of that is being done: Yoga as an exercise practice, mindfulness/mediation, even more non-secterian methods of bhakti like promoted by Eknath Easwaran, founder of the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation has more modern day relevance and pluralism. And obviously contemporary thinkers like Joseph Campbell and Doniger, Devadutta etc have all shed a more rational light on how vedic/puranic myths can be woven in for practical comprehension and use in modern days psychology, spirituality and so forth. If one is so inclined.
I think modern humans need to face the overwhelming reality that the gods of various religions and the myths of various faiths no longer hold water in the present age. When a person reads the ramayana for the bhagavatam they are not reading some kind of timeless wisdom. They are definitely reading stories of a bygone age that have absolutely no relevance to a modern humans predicament.
One has to contextualize how the veda and subsequent puranas took shape. They were slowly baked by assorted religious groups vying for social post and status. Brahmanism, Buddhism, etc etc all intermingled and shared stories, myths and legends. In a time before literacy, TV, Radio, Internet, the average thinking human had immense time and creative energy on their hands. Stories were assembled, reassembled, resolved and reborn. As they continue to be and evolve into the stories and myths we tell ourselves today.
Humanity is built upon myth making. Take something as simple as money, territorial borders and brands/corporations. They are fictitious. They are myths we all agree upon. We agree that money has value, we agree that there are territories and borders and we treat corporations as "entities" autonomous and able to dictate social realities. The stock market is a bunch of fictitious creations affecting the economy of the entire plant. We all, as human race, agree to abide by those myths/fictions. It's what allows the human-animal to cooperate on such a grand scale.
That is exactly what vedic/puranic stories did for the social structures of India. It helped society function and cooperate socially. As did the myths of the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans for those civilizations. And believe me, there are modern day egyptian/greek/roman cults that believe in the gods of old and their ideology with the same verve and an answer for everything on par with the Hare Krishnas.
Without getting into too much detail, we have to keep it real. We have to be realistic and honest about the larger picture religion plays in the modern age.
You have hare krishna candidates like Tulsi who are propagating misinformation and continuing to pretend that racism and all manner of misunderstandings pertaining to sexuality, parental and government roles and any number of other social political realities don't exist. She continues to pedle the idea that some kind of abstract mainstream media (MSM) and political Elite is churning a massive military machine and infringement upon the rights of people. She is wrong. Close-mindedness and religion do that and continue to do that in this day and age and are largely to blame for the big fight that Humanity has had in creating a true world of Tolerance, acceptance, peace, love, equality and unity. And I can 100% guarantee you it has nothing to do with a blue God who plays with cows and 12 year old girls and chanting his so-called all powerful holy name.
You can troll the Facebook pages of thousands of devotees and you will find nothing but grossly misinformed, conspiracy theorist close-minded people. Pedaling foolish ideas about everything from cosmology, history and science. You will find many propagating complete misinformation about things like post-birth abortions and all manner of nonsense without a shred of evidence except some news article from an online tabloid. It's all so dramatically alarming how such supposedly spiritual people have such a grand political opinion about everything. And for those that don't, they choose to ignore the problems of life in the world, they are simply floating in a cloud of Krishna mythology and sing song spirituality. As you put it, Bliss heads.
Believe me. I have tried having rational discussions with many devotees over the years. It does not end well. They cannot and will not see their ideology as flawed or the result of sentimental religious fanatical wishful thinking. And it's not just the atheism that they run from. It's literally rational thought and critical thinking. In fact they almost run to the opposite spectrum willingly. Hence why so many subscribe to a "us vs. them", Demons versus devotees dogma. It's the only way to reconcile their cognitive dissonance. Like someone who is convinced that baking soda will cure cancer with not a shred of rational evidence to show how exactly that mechanism works.
A nicely written article I came upon about New Vrindabhan—prabhupadas grand varnashrama project gone horribly wrong, and still going strong: [
longreads.com]
I think often about my gurukula classmates from Butler's PI school. You can barely find any of the 40 boys online. No record. Where are they? New devotee names? Personal servants of Butler? Slaving at business for Butler/Wailana? Helping Tulsi stay in the political spotlight? Living out their mundane lives in deep confusion and self-hatered that they did not make it as devotees? Where are they? What happened to 40 or so boys who grew up waking at 4AM every day, taking cold bucket showers and chanting on repeat learning about the pastimes of the blue god they fell for?
If you are reading this my brothers, I hope you make it out of this cult and build an authentic life for yourself. Wishful thinking.