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Originally Posted by Still_Waters
It's interesting to hear your impressions of the jnanis and Ramana Maharshi as I personally am jnani-inclined with high degrees of bhakti as well as karma yoga. As you know from the Bhagavad Gita, three personality types are identified with suitable practices for each: jnani, bhakti, and karma yogis.
Prabhupada was an intriguing and charismatic bhakti devotee of Lord Krishna with unwavering faith. Being a jnani, you can imagine that we had some interesting personal interactions.  The jnani approach is not for everyone. As a matter of fact, I have often said that, given a large group of people whom I had not met before, I would probably mention all three approaches but focus primarily on bhakti (unless there are strong indications to the contrary) as it harnesses one's emotions and focuses them on an ideal. It should be noted that jnanis often have a bhakti element in the form of Lord Shiva who is considered to be the Lord of Yoga and Meditation. Ramana Maharshi was considered by many to be an incarnation of Shiva.
Many jnanis can be argumentative, as you duly noted, but the jnani approach is quite effective for those who can deal with it. I have noticed that jnanis can fully understand and relate to the bhakti and karma yoga approaches ... but .... it seems that most bhaktis and karma yogis have difficulties in relating to the jnani approach for reasons which are quite obvious at least to me.
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It's interesting that you should mention Rumi, as he is one of my favorites and I am actually going to a Rumi reading this evening, Thursday, September 3rd, which I believe is held every Thursday at 7 PM. This will be my first time so I am not in a position to comment further. It was mentioned on a Sufi site that I frequent so I think that it should be interesting.
*Topic: Rumi Reading
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That looks good, the Rumi Reading Event, perhaps i'll pop in if that is ok but i most likely won't as it will be quite late here GMT. Have a good time. I struggled a bit with the Hare Krishna's idealism to be fair and found there approach a bit puritanical in the end, i learned as i got older that there was such a thing as what was called 'fundamentalism' in all religious paths etc. ? Nevertheless as you can see I'm still very attracted to their devotion and song and in general wish them well, do they wish me well, a karmi like myself
?? Maybe not. Think i recounted here my tale to the last Hare Krishna restaurant i visited in Dublin Ireland. The basis of the story was that i felt absolutely blown away with love and a deep feeling of spiritual recognition because i had this feeling that they were singing about me
Maybe a jnani might understand that feeling better than a bhakta ? But isn't it strange if i had said to any of the devotees ..you're singing about me ..they would have taken offence lol so ..hmmm not sure what happened there on that day.
I became a Hare Krisha devotee for a short time and lived on an island here. We had a teacher who insisted we needed a speed boat
Stuff like that and i also I felt that they kind of missed out on the opportunity to train young monks and to take it more seriously. A bit of that kind of stuff. Hey i can only imagine trying to win an argument with prabupad or his devotees. You got to be made of strong stuff to be a devotee i think. We had an ex IRA member at the time who had become a devotee in the H Blocks, a British internment camp for IRA prisoners. Quite a change of heart in some ways. He was a very nice chap...but stone mad
in the sense of his zeal lets say. ok thanks for the insights and thoughts. I will think a bit more about the 3 divisions mentioned as you say in the Gita, Bhakta, Jnani and Karma yogas. All the best. Joe.
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