Questioner: Dear James, I’ve been studying with a teacher who criticizes you for not requiring your students to learn Sanskrit. What do you have to say?
James: Actually, only a few Sanskrit words need to be used to effectively communicate the teaching because English has suitable equivalents for the bulk of the important terms. Vedanta is spreading so quickly among Western people (and secular Indians) because at the direction of my guru, Swami Chinmaya, I was told to make it accessible in English. So I have only retained a few key Sanskrit terms that have no reasonable English equivalents and which need considerable unfolding. While the Hindu swamis like Chinmaya and Dayananda and others were Self-realized and/or Self-actualized individuals, they were unsuccessful spreading Vedanta to people who were not Vedikas in past lives, such as myself, or to people who are not Hindus now. Most of the Vedanta organizations abroad are oriented around preserving Vedic culture and tend to emphasize spiritual practice because most householders are not qualified for liberation.
In no text is Sanskrit listed as a qualification for liberation even though the source texts are in Sanskrit. It is certainly helpful if you know Sanskrit but there are many Sanskrit scholars who are not liberated, because they have no desire for liberation and/or they don’t have a qualified teacher if they do. You can’t read your way to freedom, because the very fact that you are independently investigating the Self means that you are ignorant that you are it. In Bhaja Govindam Shankara makes fun of an old man who is studying Sanskrit grammar and suggests that he seek the Self, which is the meaning of Bhaja Govindam. So you will interpret the words according to your own experience, which is not a valid means of Self-knowledge insofar as the Self is beyond perception and inference, the only means available to you. You need to be taught by someone who uses the means of knowledge effectively, which is someone who has been properly taught by a qualified person. If I say “properly taught by a srotriya or a brahmanistha” I still need to explain in English what a brahmanistha and a srotriya are and the conditions that require one or the other, i.e. the qualifications.
For your information a brahmanistha is someone who has completed the nididhyasana phase, in other words, someone who has no sense of doership and who knows how to wield the means of knowledge (Vedanta pramana). A srotriya is someone who is in the nididhyasana phase and has learned the method of teaching, which is all about creating a logical experience-based context in which the words can work their magic. A person in the hearing phase can’t teach, because he or she doesn’t know the proper definition of the words, and a person in the reflecting phase can’t teach, because he or she has a doubt about his or her identity as existence/consciousness. And a person in the nididhyasana phase can’t teach unless he or she can use the teaching in such a way that it removes ignorance.
Swami Dayananda, who was one of my teachers, said Sanskrit was necessary for liberation (moksa) at one time but to his credit he corrected himself. Sometimes people tell me that they want to immerse themselves in Vedanta, which is usually a sign that they have misunderstood the meaning of Vedanta as a means of knowledge, a pramana. No text says that a means of knowledge has to be in a certain language, only that its words wielded by a competent teacher convey accurate Self-knowledge. The words “existence,” “consciousness” and “bliss” are any time as good as satchitananda or Brahman or any of the many Sanskrit words that have the same meaning, when they are contextualized by the complete teaching, i.e. if their meaning is exhaustively unfolded and available for personal verification, which they are insofar as nobody needs a means of knowledge to know that they exist or that they are conscious. The meaning of Brahman, for instance, is “limitless bliss/consciousness/existence.” So limitless consciousness needs to be identified as one’s Self no matter what you call it. For an English speaker the word Brahman offers no practical advantage in terms of liberation.
However, liberation, which is the meaning of “limitless/completeness/bliss/existence,” does not usually accompany one’s knowledge of one’s Self, because the body-mind-sense complex is invariably associated with one’s Self-knowledge. Once the meaning of the words of Vedanta is clear the means of knowledge has done its job. Intellectuals with rajasic intellects often get fascinated by Vedanta and don’t “gain” moksa, because they are loath to let go of the means, which is more or less equivalent to discarding the Coke and drinking the bottle. But the nididhyasana phase is all about scrubbing away teaching remnants, leaving the person as a (more or less) faithful reflection of who they really are.