Some of the intellectual
celebraties in the world of the
West and the East had the following things
to say about Hinduism:
Amiel refers to the Hindu
streak in him. He writes:
“There is a great
affinity in me with the Hindu genius – that mind, vast, imaginative, loving, dreamy
and speculative, but destitute of ambition, personality and will.
Pantheistic
disinterestedness, the effacement of the self in the great whole, womanish
gentleness, a horror of slaughter, antipathy to action – these are all present
in my nature, in the nature at least which has been developed by years and
circumstances. Still the West has also its part in me. What I have found
difficult to keep up a prejudice in favor of my form, nationality or
individuality whatever. Hence my indifference to my own person, my own
usefulness, interest or opinions of the moment. What does it all mater?
Sensing that India
possessed a great richness of spiritual unity, Amiel, a contemporary of Alfred-Victor
de Vigny and Victor Hugo, saw the need of ‘Brahmanising souls’ for
the spiritual welfare of humanity.
It is not perhaps not
a bad thing,’ he says, ‘that in the midst of the devouring activities of the
Western world there should be a few Brahmanical souls.”
(source: Amiel's journal: The Journal intime of Henri-Frédéric Amiel - By Henri Frederic Amiel p. 159 161,
224. and 269 and Eastern Religions & Western Thought - By. Dr. S.
Radhakrishnan p. 248).
402. Sant (Saint)
Eknath (1533 -1600) Was born in a Brahmin family in Paithan near Aurangabad. Eknath was
the great-grandson of Shri Bhanudas. He lost his parents at an early age and
was brought up by his grandfather. For 6 years, Eknath worked for Janardan
Swami (Janardan Swami, a devotee of Lord Dattatreya, worked in the
courts of the Muslim king of Devgiri). He turned Eknath towards the path
of Krishna. Eknath was a devout gurubhakta and
wrote under the name of Eka-janardana meaning Eka of Janardana. Eknath was a scholar, fluent in Marathi, Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic. He wrote Bhavartha Ramayana, Rukmini Swayamvara, Eknathi Bhagavata and numerous abhangas and bharudas. Many incidents in his life, tell about how he fought against untouchability. He shocked the contemporary Brahmin community by such deeds. He faced their anger by holding a crying untouchable child in his arms, or serving food to untouchables instead of inviting Brahmins or giving Ganga-Jal to a dying donkey.
Eknath is known as a scholar of the Bhagvata Purana. The Jnaneshwari, which is available today, is the one amended amd edited by Sant Eknath.
He did a translation of the Bhagavad Gita into Marathi. His writings are philosophical, yet he wrote with great devotion:
"Hasten, hasten, O Rama, Lover of thy Bhaktas,
Through lustful desires I am entangled in worldly things.
In my youth, through pride, I became still in my conceit,
Sensual things, especially love of wealth, flourished in me like twigs on a tree.
While enjoying sensual things, I ministered to my body,
But I did not remember my true good, and I neglected to think of Thee.
But now I am forsaken by these sensual things, and therefore have come as a suppliant to Thee
At Thy feet, I, Eka Janardan, humbly place myself."
He sang of Lord Vishnu's (Panduranga) real physical presence, who has the
earth and the individual souls as his body:
"How sweet is the curdling of liquid ghee. So blissful is the seeker,
when the hidden one reveals his form. Dark is he, dark is the totally unknown
and locked is the way to thoughts and words: the scriptures are silent, the
Vedas do not utter a word. Not so the revealed one. How bright! How near! Our
thirst is quenched if only he appears, who is so dear to our heart. The ever
perfect one, eternal bliss, being and thought - see, it is Govinda, source of
ecstasy and rapture. Strength, courage, honor, and exalted spirit - see, we
witness our God sharing all this. If I catch a glimpse of God, my eye-sight is
restored. I have escaped the net of life, the guilt of my senses is cancelled.
In the light of the lamp all hidden things are made apparent - so it is when I
think of my God: the god from faraway is here!
(source: Religions of India - By Thomas Berry p. 53 and A Survey of Hinduism - By Klaus K Klostermaier p.
146).
403. Immanuel Kant (1712
– 1804) was apparently the first important German philosopher to have some
acquaintance with Indian philosophy. Kant’s differentiation between the
physical world as seen in the space and time, and the unknowable thing in
itself beyond these concepts, is very similar to the doctrine of Maya. There
are certain parallels between Kantian thought and Buddhist philosophy. Like the
Buddha, Kant declared a number of questions unsolvable such as “Has the world a
beginning or not?” “Is it finite or eternal?”
Theodore Stcherbatsky (1866 - 1942) Russian Indologist, has shown
that Kant’s doctrine of the categorical imperative has its counterparts in
Hindu philosophy, and has pointed out similarities between Kantian thought
and later Buddhist thinkers like Chandrakirti.
Moreover, according to
Hermann Jacobi, Kant’s Aesthetics had been preceded by Indian writers on
poetics.
These are important
parallels and strongly indicative of Kant’s familiarity with Indian philosophy.
In his lectures at Konigberg University in East Prussia
from 1756 to 1796, he talked about the physiography of India and the customs and manners of the people,
and it seems likely that an intellectual of his genius would have gathered
other information about India
and reflected upon it with utmost care and competence.
His observations about
Buddhism in Asia and about Hindus appear to
endorse the view that he had extensive and accurate knowledge of Indian
thought. He said the Hindus were gentle and tolerant of other religions and
nations.
He was very much
impressed by the Hindu doctrine of transmigration which corresponded in some
respects to his own teaching about the destiny of the soul after death.
Similarly, Kant’s
successor, Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762 – 1814), includes in his Amweisung
Zu einem selingen Leben (Hints for a Blessed Life) numerous passages which
approximate the Advaita doctrine.
(source: India and World Civilization - By D. P. Singhal Pan
Macmillan Limited. 1993 p. 234 – 235).
French
Orientalist Anquetil-Duperron
(translated the Upanishads - Oupnekhat from a Persian translation of Dara
Shikoh) pointed out that Immanuel Kant’s idealism had many things in common
with the Upanishads.(source: The Soul of India - By Amaury de Riencourt p. 264).
404.Nancy Wilson Ross (1901
-1986) made her first trip to Japan,
China, Korea and India in 1939. She was the author
of several books including The World of Zen and Time's Left Corner.
Miss Ross lectured on Zen Buddhism at the Jungian Institute in Zurich. She served on the board of the Asia
Society of New York which was founded by John D. Rockefeller III since its
founding in 1956 and was on the governing board of the India Council. In
private life she was known as Mrs. Stanley Young.
She has written:
"Anachronistic as
this labyrinthine mythology may appear to the foreign mind, many of India’s
ancient theories about the universe are startlingly modern in scope and worthy
of a people who are credited with the invention of the zero, as well as algebra
and its application of astronomy and geometry; a people who so carefully
observed the heavens that, in the opinion of Monier-Williams, they determined
the moon’s synodical revolution much more correctly than the Greeks."
"Many hundreds of
years before those great European pioneers, Galileo and Copernicus, had to pay
heavy prices in ridicule and excommunication for their daring theories, a
section of the Vedas known as the Brahmanas contained this astounding statement:
“The sun never sets or
rises. When people think the sun is setting, he only changes about after
reaching the end of the day and makes night below and day to what is on the
other side. Then, when people think he rises in the morning, he only shifts himself
about after reaching the end of the day night, and makes day below and night to
what is on the other side. In truth, he does not see at all.”
"The Indians,
whose theory of time, is not linear like ours – that is, not proceeding
consecutively from past to present to future – have always been able to accept,
seemingly without anxiety, the notion of an alternately expanding and
contracting universe, an idea recently advanced by certain Western scientists.
In Hindu cosmology, immutable Brahman, at fixed intervals, draws back into his
beginningless, endless Being the whole substance of the living world. There
then takes place the long “sleep” of Brahaman from which, in course of
countless aeons, there is an awakening, and another universe or “dream” emerges.
"
"This notion
of the sleeping and waking, or contracting and expanding, of the Life Force, so
long a part of Hindu cosmology, has recently been expressed in relevant terms
in an article written for a British scientific journal by Professor Fred Hoyle,
Britain’s foremost astronomer. "
"Plainly,
contemporary Western science’s description of an astronomical universe of such
vast magnitude that distances must be measured in terms as abstract as
light-years is not new to Hinduism whose wise men, millennia ago, came up with
the term kalpa to signify the inconceivable duration of the period elapsing
between the beginning and end of a world system.
It is clear that
Indian religious cosmology is sharply at variance with that inherited by
Western peoples from the Semites. On the highest level, when stripped of
mythological embroidery, Hinduism’s conceptions of space, time and multiple
universes approximate in range and abstraction the most advanced scientific
thought.
Hinduism has seemed
singularly able to accept the dispassionate impersonality of the All in One
without crying out against it in despair, rage or rebellion. Perhaps this is
the genius of this paradoxical land of so many blended cultures and
people…"
"Hinduism – not
only in philosophy and literature but also in art – has the capacity for
immense conceptions, profound an subtle apprehensions, that can entice the
imagination and stun the mind with their depth, range and boldness. The many masks of the
many gods, their various appearances and incarnations, have been employed to
suggest the infinitely possible variations of one supreme essence. In seeking
to give expression to that almost inexpressible idea of a unity which admits
also of polarities, a “union beyond the opposites,” Hinduism created such
arresting icons as the divine two-in-one embrace of Shiva and Shakti; or Shiva
alone, half male, half female, or the two-sided figure of Hari-Hara, an
expression of the seemingly “opposite” creative-destructive forces of Vishnu
and Shiva embodied in one being.
Down the millennia of
its existence, Hinduism has made a priceless contribution to the
collective religious life of mankind through the remarkable findings of her
many brilliant mystics and philosophers, as set forth in a voluminous
literature. Perhaps, however, her most significant contribution to the
universal body of religious inquiry is the persistent, unshakable belief that
union with the Divine is attainable while one is still on earth. Moreover,
any man in India
is at liberty to pursue salvation after his own fashion with no danger of
finding himself at some point branded as heretic. Indeed, heresy in Hinduism is
virtually impossible, for as the authoritative Upanishads firmly state:
“Reality of One though sages call it by different names.”
(source: Three Ways of Asian Wisdom – By Nancy Wilson Ross p. 64 - 67 and 74 - 76).
405. James Henry
Tuckwell ( ? ) in his book, Religion and Reality: A Study in the philosophy of Mysticism
rightly says:
“In our main
conclusion we have long ago been anticipated by the religious philosophy of India. In the
West our philosophy has been surely but slowly moving to the same inevitable
monistic goal. In Professor Ladd of Harvard we have a notable Western thinker
who by a process of careful and consistent reasoning, concrete in character,
has also arrived at the conclusion that the ultimate reality must be conceived
of as an Absolute Self of which we are finite forms or appearances." "But it is the crowning glory of Vedanta that it so long ago announced, re-iterated and emphasized this deep truth in a manner that does not permit us for a moment to forget it or explain it away. This great stroke of identity, this discernment of the ultimate unity of all things in Brahman or the One Absolute Self seems to us to constitute the masterpiece and highest achievement of India’s wonderful metaphysical and religious genius to which the West has yet to pay the full tribute which is its due.”
(source: Is India Civilized - Essays on Indian Culture - By Sir John
Woodroffe Ganesh & Co. Publishers 1922 p. 140 - 141)
406. Dr. Mahendra Lal
Sircar (1833 – 1904) was not only the greatest homoeopath of his time in India, but also
a great scientist. In the field of physical science, Dr. Sircar has made great
contributions and was' a pioneer of scientific research in India. Dr. J.
C. Bose and Dr. P. C. Ray were also inspired by him.
He wrote:
“Some of their (Hindu)
investigations were solid achievements in positive knowledge as in Material
Medica, Therapeutics, Anatomy, Embroyology, Metallurgy, Chemistry, Physics and
descriptive Zoology. And in these also, generally speaking, Hindu enquiries
were not less, if not more, definite, exact and fruitful than the Greeks and
Medieval Europeans. “
“The Hindu intellect
has thus, independently appreciated the dignity of objective facts, devised the
methods of observation and experiment, elaborated the machinery of logical
analysis and true investigation, attacked the external universe as a system of
secrets to be unraveled, and has wrung out of nature the knowledge which
constitutes the foundations of Science.”
(source: Is India Civilized - Essays on Indian Culture - By Sir John
Woodroffe Ganesh & Co. Publishers 1922 p. 183 - 184)
407. Edgar Quinet (1803
- 1875) French Historian. His first publication,
the Tablettes du juif errant (Tablets of the Wandering Jew) appeared in 1823.
Being struck with Johann_Gottfried Herder's Philosophie der Geschichte (Philosophy of
History), he undertook to translate it, learnt German for the purpose,
published his work in 1827, and obtained by it considerable credit. At this
time he was introduced to Victor Cousin, and made the acquaintance of Jules
Michelet. In 1839 he was appointed professor of foreign literature at Lyon, where he began the brilliant course of lectures
afterwards embodied in the Génie des religions. Two years later he was
transferred to the Collège de France, and the Génie des religions itself
appeared (1842).
In his Génie
des religions (1841),Quinet introduced the title ‘The Oriental
Renaissance’ to his chapter describing the event: ‘In the first ardor of their discoveries, the Orientalists proclaimed that, in its entirety, an antiquity more profound, more philosophical, and more poetical than that of Greece and Rome was emerging from the depths of Asia. … [One that promised] a new Reformation of the religious and secular world. … This is the great subject in philosophy today.’
Quinet believed that:
‘When human revolutions first began, India stood more expressly than any other country for what may be called a Declaration of the Rights of the Being. That divine Individuality, and its community with infinity, is obviously the foundation and the source of all life and all history.’
(source: The Oriental Renaissance: Europe’s Discovery of India and the East,
1680-1880 - By Raymond Schwab, p. 11 New York, 1984).
408. Alun Lewis (1915
-1944) was one of the few great British writers of the Second World War. His
early death at the age of twenty-eight robbed Wales of its most promising poet
and story writer. Born and brought up near Aberdare in south Wales, the son of a teacher, he read history at
Aberystwyth and Manchester.
After a period of unemployment he became a teacher in south Wales, before
enlisting in the Royal Engineers in 1940. Later in 1942 Lewis's new regiment,
the South Wales Borderers, travelled to India. His experiences there are
recreated in the beautiful poems of Ha! Ha! Among the Trumpets and the stories
and letters of In the Green Tree.
After E M Forster, the
only British writer, to find the Imagination physically confronted by India was Alun
Lewis, whose early death in the jungle is frequently regarded as a sad loss to
literature. One of his last stories, “The Earth is a Syllable” acknowledges
its debt to the Upanishads both by its title and within the story itself.
(Note: ‘The
Earth is a Syllable’ deserves to be considered as his passage to more than India. Lewis's
short story is read in terms of the Upanishad from which it takes its title and
his death considered in the light of both).
The story takes its
title from a short and important Upanishad, the Mandukya, but it also includes
a reference to the older Brihad Aranyaka, to which the Mandukya Upanishad is
itself indebted.
What the story shares
with the two Upanishads (the two which also especially attracted the attention
of Yeats) is a concern to discover the stages of enlightenment a man may pass
through before his death. Perhaps the closest approach poetry has made to
mysticism is to say, as does the first line of the Mandukya Upanishad, that the
whole Earth is the syllable Om, a mystic utterance thought not only to be
inclusive of all sound in the mouth and thus all language but to be the Logos which
is creation.
The Earth is a
Syllable' is the story of a soldier who, as he lies mortally wounded in an
unspecified part of the jungle, experiences the various stages of consciousness
towards enlightenment. The opening line of the Brihad Aranyaka comes to
the soldier’s mind close upon that of the Manduky Upanishad: “the dawn is the
head of a horse.
In ‘The Earth is a Syllable’ Lewis reveals his
familiarity with both the Brihad Aryanka and the Mandukya Upanishad.
(source: India and the Romantic Imagination - By John Drew p. 285 -
294)
409. Alexander
Zinoviev (1922 - ) Russian sociologist and works in
Russian Academy of Sciences. He has been many times in India and
interested in Indian culture.He has recently written:
" But I would like to believe Hinduism is too valuable for humanity, and sacred Indian books contain too much precious and unique knowledge that it will not sink in oblivion. I’d like to believe that the principles of Indian philosophy and religion are much more in agreement with the needs for the future than any other religion in the world, in agreement with the tendency, known in Western countries as New Age. It’s my deep belief that without India the world will sink in spiritual darkness and ignorance."
"So, what must be done in order to save Hinduism and stop the Islamic flood? There is only one way and it is called mass conversion of Muslims into Hinduism. If Hindus want to survive, they must convert. They must adopt the strategy of Catholic missionaries and Muslim mullahs. I don’t mean only conversion of one-time Hindus that only recently adopted other religions.
"Hinduism must convert also people of non-Hindu origin. The fact that they live in India is enough because all Indians, notwithstanding their religious affiliation, had once had Hindu ancestors."
(source: For India’s survival Hinduism has to prevail - By Alexander Zinoviev - organiser.org and http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=102&page=33).
410. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822)
was one of the major English Romantic poets. He is perhaps most widely famous
for such anthology pieces as Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind, To a Skylark,
and The Masque of Anarchy; but his major works were long visionary poems such
as Adonais and Prometheus Unbound. Shelley's unconventional life and
uncompromising idealism made him a notorious and denigrated figure in his own
life, but he became the idol of the following two or three generations of poets
(including the major Victorian poets Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, Dante
Gabriel Rossetti and Algernon Charles Swinburne, as well as William Butler
Yeats). Both Percy Bysshe Shelley and his wife Mary Shelley were strong
advocates of vegetarianism. In his essay "A Refutation of Deism", composed in 1812-13, and privately published in 1814, Shelley mounts a frontal attack on Christianity but declares himself "willing to admit that some few axioms of morality which Christianity has borrowed from the philosophers of Greece and India dictate ... rules of conduct worthy of regard."
The Indian element in Shelley has been noticed by several critics. Sydney Owenson's novel, The Missionary, An Indian Tale, is a book that appealed to Shelley very much. It narrates the story of a Catholic missionary proceeding to India where he meets a veiled Hindu priestess who is a devotee of mystic love and Vishnu. Shelley recommended this novel to Hogg in his letter of June 21, 1811.
Robert Southey’s Curse of Kehama was a favorite poem with Shelley. On December 17, 1812, Shelley ordered a list of books from Thomas Hookham. Among those supplied was a book entitled Hindu Pantheon by Edward Moor (London 1810). There is a great deal in it that would have fascinated Shelley’s imagination. The symbol of the eagle and the serpent is one of the archetypes of the human imagination. The Mahabharata begins with a long account of this myth. Moor’s book is abundantly illustrated.
There are numerous pictures showing Hindu deities in their association with serpents as emblems of eternity. In particular Vishnu and Lakshmi are shown as Sesha or Ananta or Anantanaga – the endless eternal serpent. Seshnaga the eternal coiled serpent on which Vishnu reclines.
In the Revolt of
Islam, Shelley uses the serpent explicitly as the symbol of Eternity, and
of good and evil in Time. Shelley had already portrayed Cythna and Laon as
avatars of Lakshmi and Vishnu. His idea of nonviolence and its Indian basis of
ahimsa are discussed by Art Young in his book, Shelley and Nonviolence.
Shelley was
also familiar with Sir William Jones’s translations from Sanskrit.
Besides the books cited, Shelley would have read others in the India Library at
London. Whatever
his sources, there is ample evidence in his poem of the appeal of Vedantic
ideas, myths and symbols to him. His fervor springs from his innate
mysticism aided no doubt by his wide reading. He believed the sacred writings
of Christianity had their source in “the Brahmanical records of the early
history of the world,” its institutions in the “ancient worship of the Sun,”
and its axioms of morality in “the maxims of the philosophers of Greece and India.”
Prometheus Unbound is unique in world
literature as an imaginative fusion of the Hindu and Greek branches of ancient
wisdom. Its core is the identification of Prometheus and Asia
with Vishnu and Lakshmi, and the philosophy of The One above the Maya of
cyclical time. Following Jacob Bryant and Sir William Jones, Shelley traces all
mythologies and religions to their common source in the worship of the Sun and
Agni as symbols of divine light.
Throughout the play
Shelley uses Hindu ideas of the Yugas of time. Prometheus has suffered
through “three thousand years of the hours” He prefers the idea of the cycles
of the four yugas moving to and fro between the golden and iron ages in Hindu
myths of periodic time to the concept of linear time. From Queen Mab to
Prometheus Unbound the Hindu myth of avatars appear from time to time to
restore cosmic order after its decay recurs in Shelley.
Shelley valued the
finer truths of Hinduism embodied in its myths. He uses them from his first
philosophical poem Queen Mab, to his last, “The Triumph of Life”, Prometheus
Unbound is a sublime synthesis of the best in mystical thought and feeling in
the East and the West.
His tutor
Frank Newton who converted him to vegetarianism. Towards the end of his life he
desired to migrate to India.
Shelley
had desired to seek employment in India, and was disappointed when
Thomas Peacock whom he consulted wrote to him it was not possible.(source: Vedanta and Shelley - By S R Swaminathan p. 1 - 60 and India and the Romantic Imagination - By John Drew). (Note: Even though famous for his Ode To the West Wind, (If winter comes`85can spring be far behind), Percy Byshe Shelley has an Indian connection too. A rare pamphlet containing a hitherto unread poem by Shelley, containing references to British oppression in India and elsewhere, has been discovered. The pamphlet has excited scholars, who knew that it had been searched for in vain since 1811.(source: Shelley’s India link - tribuneindia.com).
411. Professor John Stuart Mackenzie (1860 – 1935) commented on Indian religion and metaphysics. He writes in his book Elements of Constructive Philosophy published in 1918 p. 475
“The Religion that is most nearly akin to a philosophical reconstruction would seem to be that of Brahmanism.”
(source: Is India Civilized - Essays on Indian Culture - By Sir John
Woodroffe Ganesh & Co. Publishers 1922 p. p. xxxv)
412. Ranchor
Prime ( ? ) was born in Leeds and has spent his life as a
devotee of Krishna in Britain
and India.
He now works with the World Wide Fund for Nature as their Religious
Network Officer in UK.
He is also currently running a tree planting and restoration project in Vrindavan, India,
on behalf of WWF. He is the author of several books including Vedic Ecology: Practical Wisdom for Surviving the 21st Century and Ramayana: A Journey he has observed:
“The West has much to learn from the wisdom traditions of India. Having exposed most of the rest of the world to our own traditions, and having largely abandoned them ourselves, we now need to learn from others; to put aside our swords and guns, our computers and microscopes, our cars and televisions, and have the courage and the vision to journey to new territory where these seemingly indispensable aids may be of little value.
Reincarnation is a good example of a teaching which has been largely ignored by Western civilization, despite the fact that it has existed in one form or another in the unofficial religions of Europe. It is important because it stresses the equality of all life forms and their transience too. It does not support the human-centred culture of the West which permits human society to terrorize the animal kingdom and dominate the cycles of nature for its own convenience. Nor does it support the empire-building mania of the European societies who wanted to possess as much of the world as they could, believing that they only had one life in which to do it all. It is these attitudes that have encouraged us in our present path of industrial and technological war upon nature and the world."
Reincarnation and other knowledge of the spirit is taught by the Vedas, the sacred books of the Hindus. They contain the collected wisdom of the Vedic culture, the world’s oldest living civilization, which in modern times has come to be known as Hinduism."
Western civilization considers human life to be sacred, but Hindus have gone much further and said that not only human life but all life is sacred. Therefore all life forms, not just human beings, must be revered and respected. This is the reason for being vegetarian, which is ecological in the deepest sense.
Earth is our mother,
earth is goddess, earth is Kali, earth is Parvati, earth is Sita, Earth mother
- and she is the home of God.
The Isa Upanishad says
it all. Nature is sacred, all life is sacred, the whole earth is sacred. That
is the Hindu contribution. Western industrial life has become desacrilised
Hinduism
is a holistic religion. It is a way of life rather than a religion or a set of
beliefs. It includes economic life, sexual life, political life -
everything is part of Hindu religion. 'Religion' is a Western word, and so is
'Hindu'. A correct description is 'Sanatan Dharma'. Sanatan means eternal,
and dharma means the true state. The dharma of fire is to burn; the dharma of
water is to quench thirst. So 'sanatan dharma' means to find the true,
everlasting state of being, the eternal path. Hindus (we call them Hindus, but
we mean the Indian people) are searching for the dharma of the soul, the
meaning of life. That is the quest. The Isa Upanishad says it all. Nature is sacred, all life is sacred, the whole earth is sacred. That is the Hindu contribution. Western industrial life has become desacrilised. The only sanctity left is human life. We have to push the frontier beyond human and include the whole earth. Earth is our mother, earth is goddess, earth is Kali, earth is Parvati, earth is Sita, Earth mother - and she is the home of God.
(source: Hinduism and
Ecology: Seeds of Truth - By Ranchor Prime p. 1 - 6
and 78).
413. Edward J Urwick
( ? ) British intellectual and the late Ratan Tata
Professor of Social Science in London University, remarks:
“I will not
attempt - it will need a separate volume
– to show how the Indian thought may have filtered through Socrates and Plato;
how far it may have reached Plato in his wanderings, how far through
Pythagoras, how far even before the death of Socrates, a direct stream of the
Eastern doctrine may have flowed through Asia Minor into Greece. But I affirm
very confidently that if any one will make himself familiar with the old Indian
Wisdom – Religion of the Vedas and the Upanishads, will shake himself free, for
the moment, from the academic attitude and the limiting western conception of
philosophy, and will then read Plato’s dialogues, he will hardly fail to
realize that both are occupied with the self-same search, inspired by the same
faith, drawn upwards by the same vision.”
Urwick maintains that,
in order to understand Plato’s Republic, we should first grasp the
fundamentals of Hindu thought.
Comparing the social
thought of Manu and Plato, he writes:
“Again, just as Manu
of ancient India
instituted the caste system upon the basis of the three principles in the
individual soul, so Plato divides his state into three classics, representing
the three psychical elements. The lowest caste of producers and traders,
corresponding to the vaishya caste, reflects the element of ignorant desire,
Epithumia. The class next above this, the Auxiliaries, corresponding to the
Kshatriya caste, reflects, the passionate element, Thumos. The highest class,
the Guardians, corresponding to the Brahmin caste, represents the principle of
prudent reason, the Logistikon.”
(source: The
Message of Plato – By E J Urwick p. 14 and 28 - 29).
414. Karl Christian
Friedrich Krause (1781 - 1832) was even more strongly influenced by Indian
philosophy. He praised the Vedanta particularly in his Vorlcsungen uber die Grundwahrheiten
der Wissenschaften (1829), although he wrote on Buddhism, Jainism, and the
Carvakas.
(source: India and World Civilization - By D. P. Singhal Pan
Macmillan Limited 1993 p. 236)
415. Rupert Sheldrake (1942
- ) is a biologist and author of more than 75 scientific papers and ten books. A former
Research Fellow of the Royal Society, he studied natural sciences at Cambridge
University, where he was a Scholar of Clare College, took a double first class
honours degree and was awarded the University Botany Prize. He then studied
philosophy at Harvard University, where he was a Frank Knox Fellow, before
returning to Cambridge,
where he took a Ph.D. in biochemistry.
When he was 44, he
first went to Hyderabad, India, in 1968 as a plant
biologist, more than just pollen and dirt rubbed off on him. He began digging
into the Vedas and Upanishads, examining Buddhist doctrine and
Sufi mysticism. He learned meditation. In 1974, India became this Briton's home,
and his views of biology were becoming radically altered by his Eastern
musings. Eventually, he would create a science theory so wide that it carried
an ethical message of being psychically responsible for our thoughts and
actions. It was so deep it receded back through transcendent creation gods to a
God state that reads like many Upanishadic passages.
He would say in 1987, "My
ideas find readier acceptance in the Buddhist and Hindu traditions of the East
than in Western culture."
Sheldrake saw how a subtle, trans-physical field was responsible for defining, regulating and advancing biological form and intelligence - like the akashic form-building of the Vedas. In 1978, Sheldrake entered an ashram by the sacred Cauvery River in South India. Here he extended his biological insights to include inorganic matter, formulated a scientifically testable theory and wrote a brilliant book, A New Science of Life. He called his theory "formative causation." It simply stated that the combined form and the learned intelligence/behavior of anything appearing in the universe - from an atom to man-is guided by a single morphogenetic (form-evolving) field: M-field for short. One field per new form, no matter how numerous it appears in our universe. According to Hindu metaphysics, this is precisely how the interior astral universe works.
(source: Hinduism Today February 1988).
He spent
seven years in India
where he wrote his first book, A New Science of Life (1981), while
living at an ashram there. That book soon became the target of criticism among
Sheldrake's peers, who view many of his theories, at best, as
"unconventional." In 1968, Sheldrake went to India for three months while on his way to Malaysia to
study tropical botany. Even after a year in Malaysia,
he couldn't forget what he'd seen in India. "That had a huge impact
on me," he says. "I suddenly saw this astonishing culture which I
found completely fascinating, which had riches and depths beyond anything I had
ever been taught about in England."
"One of the effects of this exposure to India
was to put the scientific perspective on the world that I had learned in Cambridge into a much
wider context," he says. Sheldrake saw how a subtle, trans-physical field was responsible for defining, regulating and advancing biological form and intelligence - like the akashic form-building of the Vedas. In 1978, Sheldrake entered an ashram by the sacred Cauvery River in South India. Here he extended his biological insights to include inorganic matter, formulated a scientifically testable theory and wrote a brilliant book, A New Science of Life. He called his theory "formative causation." It simply stated that the combined form and the learned intelligence/behavior of anything appearing in the universe - from an atom to man-is guided by a single morphogenetic (form-evolving) field: M-field for short. One field per new form, no matter how numerous it appears in our universe. According to Hindu metaphysics, this is precisely how the interior astral universe works.
(source: Hinduism Today February 1988).
"I saw that this was one rather limited way of looking at things. I was also much influenced by Indian meditation practices, starting with Transcendental Meditation around 1970, and various other forms of meditation and Yoga over the years. This gave me a different perspective on the workings of the mind and on realms of experience I had not known about before."
For the first time, Sheldrake was exposed to the teachings of Hinduism.
"I was impressed by the way that Hindus relate to the land of India and the holy places, and was moved by the great variety of pilgrimages and holy animals and plants and festivals. There are so many aspects of Hinduism that link it to the land and to the natural world in India. It is also closely linked to the culture and languages of India. I realized that as an English person I could never fully enter into those aspects of Hinduism."
(source: Rethinking
Science - http://www.hinduismtoday.com/archives/2001/9-10/40-43_sheldrake.shtml)
416. Stephen
Cope ( ? ) is a psychotherapist who writes
and teaches about the relationship between contemporary psychology and the
Eastern contemplative traditions. He is currently Scholar-in-Residence at the Kripalu
Center for Yoga and Health in Lenox,
Massachusetts, the largest
residential yoga center in the world.
He has written about Yoga:
"Here is a language
that, unlike our current psychological language, is deeply concerned with the
relationship between the soul and the self, the body and the soul, the divine
and the human. Here is a systematic exploration of the unconscious that
predates Freud by thousands of years. Here is a philosophy that understood life
as archetypal pilgrimage to the center long before the New Age. Here is a
psychological language not yet rendered impotent by cliché or commercialism,
and, even more refreshingly, one that is uncomplicated by Calvinism and
Puritanism and is free of the Western obsession with guilt and
shame. "
"Yoga puts our
experience of enlightenment at the exact center of our being. Though we may
appear separate from one another, we are no more separate than the wave is
separate from the sea, or than the air in a glass jar is separate from the
surrounding air. We are pervaded by and animated by the same spirit, the same
nature, and that nature is constant through the manifold changes of birth,
growth, and dissolution; it cannot be wounded, or separated from itself. "
“Born divine” is a
notion that fairly saturates Indian philosophy and spiritual practice. It was
first systematically articulated in the tradition known as Vedanta, which arose
on the Indian subcontinent as early as 600 BCE, and has been powerful force in
Indian spiritual history even to the present day. Most of the branches of
Vedanta hold one fundamental view in common: all individual souls are one with
the great river of life, we are all, in effect, just a single soul. We are, in
the classical dictum, “One without a second.”
(source: Yoga and the Quest for the True Self - By Stephen Cope p.
xii and 42)
417. Paul Utukuru (Gopala Rao) ( ? ) has a
Master's degree in Physics and a Doctor of Science degree in Radiological
Science. During his professional career as a medical physicist, he published widely
in the field of the physics of medical imaging and radiation oncology. Since
his retirement from the Johns
Hopkins University
in 1995, Utukuru has been active in matters related to bridging the gap between
Science and Religion. His writings and lectures reflect his interests from the
point of view of Neurotheology, Spiritual Transformation, Christian ethics,
Epistemology and Hindu Cosmology. He is a retired medical physicist in the Science
and Theology News, a French monthly newspaper.
He has recently
written:
"Brahma, Vishnu
and Shiva are said to be the creator, sustainer and the destroyer respectively
of the universe in Hinduism. Setting aside the personified symbolism here, the
idea can be seen as an extrapolation of what is observed on earth to the
universe at large: birth, growth, decay and recycling are central to everything
we observe in the world within us and around us. Extrapolation from the
particular to the general is commonly done in science, especially physics.
Based on similar
considerations, some ancient astronomers seemed to have arrived at the
conclusion that the creation of the universe, its growth, its eventual decay
and regeneration are eternal processes without a beginning and without an end,
repeating in endless cycles. The Hindus named each half cycle a night or day of
Brahma in symbolic terms. There is also the mention of a transition or a
twilight zone referred to as Yugasandhi between these half cycles.
The metaphor extends
to some amazing mathematical details. According to the Hindu scriptures,
each half cycle is said to last for 4.32 billion years. The Sun, too, revolves
around the center of our galaxy once in 325.5 million years. Modern science
pegs this in the range of 225 to 270 million years. The point of departure
between ancient Hindu cosmology and modern cosmology is that unlike modern
cosmology, ancient Hindu cosmology relates the rotational speed of our own
galaxy to the period of oscillation of the endless cycles of creation, growth
and eventual decay. Our known galaxy is known as Parameshti Mandala, and
it is said to rotate around Svayambhu Mandala, the center of all
galaxies with a time period of 4.32 billion years,
Pursuing this
chronology further in detail, it can be shown that the present day of Brahma
began exactly 5 Brahma hours, 28 minutes and 40 seconds ago as of April 1,
1986. Going a step further, they calculate the age of our present universe is
19.252 billion years, amazingly close to the modern-day estimate. Modern
historians have also documented that according to some ancient Hindu
scriptures, the Sun is 108 Sun-diameters from the earth and the moon 108
Moon-diameters away. The modern values for these figures are 107.6 and 110.6
respectively. Parenthetically, the number 108 has special
significance in astrology and in most Hindu rituals even today. The rosaries
used in many Hindu and Buddhist chanting routines contain exactly 108
beads."(source: East meets west: cosmology then and now: Eastern religious traditions can provide us with new cosmological insights if we have eyes to see them - By Paul Utukuru - June 6 2005). Refer to Ancient Hindu Cosmology and Modern Cosmology - By Paul Utukuru
418. Georg Morris Cohen
Brandes
(1842 – 1927) was born in Copenhagen of middle-class Jewish parents. He
was a Danish critic and scholar who had great influence on Scandinavian
literature from the 1870s through the turn of the 20th century. He is the
author of several books including Jesus, A Myth and The World at War and Voltaire and Friedrich Nietzsche
In the midst of these polemics the critic began to issue the most ambitious
of his works, Main Currents in the Literature of the Nineteenth Century,
of which four volumes appeared between 1872 and 1875 (English translation,
1901-1905). The brilliant novelty of this criticism of the literature of major
European countries at the beginning of the 19th century, and his description of
the general revolt against the pseudo-classicism of the 18th century, at once
attracted attention outside Denmark.
Brandes claimed that:
‘His spiritual home was on the banks of the Ganga.”
419. His Divine Grace
A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896 - 1977) The founder
of ISKCON - The International Society for
Krishna Consciousness also known as 'the Hare
Krishna' was founded in 1966. its core philosophy is based on scriptures such
as the Bhagavad-Gita and Srimad Bhagavatam, both
of which date back many years into antiquity.
The distinctive
appearance of the movement, and its culture come from the Gaudiya Vaishnavism
tradition, which has had adherents in India ever since the late 1400s.
After
publishing three volumes of the Bhagavatam, Srila Prabhupada came to the United States,
in September 1965, to fulfill the mission of his spiritual master.
Subsequently, His Divine Grace wrote more than fifty volumes of authoritative
commentated translations and summary studies of the philosophical and religious
classics of India. When he first arrived by freighter in New York City, Srila Prabhupada was practically penniless. Only after almost a year of great difficulty did he establish the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, in July of 1966.
ISKCON formed to help
spread the practice of Bhakti yoga (the yoga of devotion). Bhaktas, or
devotees, dedicate their devotion towards Krishna,
who they call "The Supreme Lord" or (God); Radha, who is Krishna's divine consort; and the many other incarnations
of Lord Vishnu, such as Sita and Rama.
Devotees believe that
the sound vibration created by repeating these names of God gradually induces
pure God-consciousness, or "Krishna
consciousness."
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna
Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama
Rama Rama Hare Hare
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna
Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama
Rama Rama Hare Hare
The founder of ISKCON,
Srila Prabhupada stated that 'Krishna' and
'Rama' are both names of God and Hare (vocative of 'Hara' and pronounced
"ha ray") refers to God's Energy or 'Shakti', known as Srimati
Radharani.
420. Jean-Pierre
Lehmann is professor of International Political Economy at IMD — a leading
international business school, based in Lausanne,
Switzerland. He
also is an adviser to WTO Director General, Dr. Supachai Panitchpakdi. Mr.
Lehmann studied in Japan, Switzerland, the United
States (Georgetown) and
received his doctorate from Oxford.
He eloquently talks
about the dangers of Monotheism in the Age of Globalization.
As Jean-Pierre Lehmann
argues, monotheistic religions have caused much turmoil throughout history -
and continue to do so today. What is needed is a new global ethical and
spiritual role model, and in his opinion, the best candidate to fill that spot
is India.
He has written:
“The great
pre-Christian civilizations of Greece
and Rome had no religious wars and had a far
healthier view of their frolicking gods and goddesses than the intolerant
monotheistic Christianity that later came to dominate Europe.”
“Polytheistic
religions also tend to have a far more positive and healthier attitude to sex,
which is seen as a good thing, than do the monotheistic faiths, where there is
a much stronger tendency to equate sex with sin.”
“India's one
billion plus population is the most heterogeneous in the world. There are far
more ethnic, linguistic and religious groups than in, say, the European Union.
Yet, a far greater degree of unity has been achieved among India's disparate ethnicities than among the
tribes of Western Europe.”
“But in a
global environment desperate for ideas, philosophy and religion, India is the
most prolific birthplace of all three - because of the great synergy of
democracy and diversity, and the much greater degree of self-confidence that
Indians now feel. Indians and members of the enormous Indian Diaspora - over
which the sun never sets - are the thought leaders in economics, business,
philosophy, political science, religion and literature.”“The planet needs quite desperately a sense of moral order, spirituality and an ethical compass. The Indian religious and philosophical traditions can provide a great deal of all three. It was in a recent conversation with an Indian religious guru that I was also pleased to discover I could adhere to his religious tenets, while maintaining my secular convictions. No imam or priest would allow me that.”
“The planet also needs an alternative geopolitical force to the American Christian Fundamentalist brand of hegemonic thinking that the Bush Administration has generated - and that is not likely to evaporate even after his departure from office.”
“Europe is an inward-looking and, in many ways, spent force. China is a dictatorship. The Islamic world is going through an awkward moment - to put it mildly.”
“Hence the importance of the role India must play in this respect - both because of its innate qualities and because there is no other serious contender. The 21st century better become the century inspired by the virtues of Indian polytheism - or else we are headed for disaster.”
(source: The Globalist.com - Global Development Thursday, March 30, 2006).
She was culturally very different from most of the English Ladies who came to India along with their husbands.
She was a great lover of India and clearly stated in her Journal that one of her purposes was 'to exhibit a sketch of India's former grandeur and refinement so that I could restore India to that place in the scale of ancient nations, which European historians have in general unaccountably neglected to assign to it'.
She wrote eloquently about the grandeur of Sanskrit
language and literature, its majesty of thought and loftiness of expression. Which was written eight years before the birth
of Max Mueller and almost half a century before he published the first volume
of his famous series 'Sacred Books of the East'.
She went to Mahabalipuram along with a Brahmin servant of Col Colin Mackenzie and stayed there for three days. The Oriental Manuscripts Library in Madras today contains all the manuscripts collected by Col Mackenzie between 1792 and 1815. Lady Calcott gave a beautiful description of Mahabalipuram and its environs in her Journal.
About the glory and greatness of Sanskrit language she wrote with great passion as follows:
'Were all other monuments swept away from the face of Hindustan, were all its inhabitants destroyed, and its name forgotten, the existence of the Sanskrit language would prove that it once contained a race who had reached a high degree of refinement, and who must have been blessed with many rare advantages before such a language could have been formed and polished. Amidst the wreck of nations where it flourished, and superior to the havoc of war and conquest, it remains a venerable monument of the splendour of other times, as the solid Pyramid in the deserts of Egypt'.
This was written eight years before the birth of Max Mueller and almost half a century before he published the first volume of his famous series 'Sacred Books of the East'.
(source: Lady Callcott in Madras, a great lover of Sanskrit - By V Sundaram - newstodaynet.com). For more refer to chapters on European Imperialism and First Indologists and Sanskrit
422. Sir Brajendranath Seal (1864-1938) Knight Vice Chancellor Mysore University. Seal's major published work is The Positive Sciences of the Ancient Hindus, which, besides being a work on the history of science, shows interrelations among the ancient Hindu philosophical concepts and their scientific theories. Sir Brajendranath Seal, had coined a very appropriate term to describe India as 'ever ageing but never old'. That is also the meaning of Sanskrit word purana which usually means ancient and old. Shankaracharya in his commentary of Gita describes Atman, the infinite self of man as Purana.
"The Hindus no less than the Greeks have shared in the work of constructing scientific concepts and methods in the investigating of physical phenomena, as well as of building up a body of positive knowledge which has been applied to industrial technique; and Hindus scientific ideas and methodology (eg. the inductive method or methods of algebraic analysis) have deeply influenced the course of natural philosophy in Asia - in the East as well as the West - in China and Japan, as well as in the Saracen Empire. "
Seal explains in his book, The Positive Sciences of the Ancient Hindus:
"that the Sankya-Patanjali system of cosmology expresses the fundamental idea of conservation, transformation, and dissipation of energy. Every phenomena in the universe is based on the interaction of intelligence, energy and mass. This is modern physics in a nutshell - a world view that was born out of the ashes of the materialistic and mechanistic views of classical physics of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries."
(source: The Positive Sciences of the Ancient Hindus - By Sir Brajendranath Seal).
423 Professor Edward Washburn Hopkins (1857-1932) graduated at Columbia University in 1878, studied at Leipzig, where he received the degree of Ph.D. in 1881 and became professor of Sanskrit and comparative philology in Yale University in 1895.He became secretary of the American Oriental Society and editor of its Journal, to which he contributed many valuable papers, especially on numerical and temporal categories in early Sanskrit literature.
He observed:
"Plato is full of Sankhyan thought, worked out by him, but taken from Pythagoras. Before the sixth century B.C. all the religious-philosophical idea of Pythagoras are current in India (L. Schroeder, Pythagoras). If there were but one or two of these cases, they might be set aside as accidental coincidences, but such coincidences are too numerous to be the result of change. "
And again he writes: "Neo-Platonism and Christian Gnosticism owe much to India. The Gnostic ideas in regard to a plurality of heavens and spiritual worlds go back directly to Hindu sources. Soul and light are one in the Sankhyan system, before they became so in Greece, and when they appear united in Greece it is by means of the thought which is borrowed from India. The famous three qualities of the Sankhyan reappear as the Gnostic 'three classes."
(source: Religions of India - By Edward Washburn Hopkins p. 559-560).
424. Henri Bergson
(1859 - 1941) French Philosopher and the son of a Jewish musician and an
English woman, was educated at the Lycée Condorcet and the École Normale
Supérieure, where he studied philosophy. After a teaching career as a
schoolmaster, Bergson was appointed to the École Normale Supérieure in 1898 and
held the chair of philosophy at the Collège de France. He was elected to the
Académie Française; then was president of the Commission for Intellectual
Cooperation of the League of Nations.
He observed that:
"From the
earliest times divine and many of the great pilgrimages of Hindu India were focused upon sacred rivers such as
the Ganges, Indus, Yamuna, Krishna, Godavari, and Brahmaputra.
The largest religious
festival in the world today, held every 12 years near Allahabad, India
and attracting upwards of twenty million pilgrims, takes place at the
confluence of two rivers."
The power of that
blended water is said to grant a spiritual realization that does not die with
the passing of the human form. Holy mountains were also known to be sources of
sacred waters. Upon their lofty summits resided storm gods and weather deities,
whose gifts of rain sustained all plant, animal and human life. Particular
frozen waters were also favored and pilgrims still trek long distances in the
high mountains to reach Amarnath cave in Kashmir and Lake Manosarovar
(the lake was first created in the mind of the Lord Brahma. Hence, in
Sanskrit it is called "Manas sarovara", which is a combination of the
words manas (mind) and sarovara (lake) in Tibet.
Sprawling miles along
the holy river Ganges, the city of Banaras
(also called Varanasi or Kashi) is the most
visited pilgrimage destination in all of India. Myths and hymns speak of
the waters of the Ganges as the fluid medium
of Shiva's divine essence and a bath in the river is believed to wash away all
of one's sins. The Hindu scripture Tristhalisetu explains
that,
"There whatever
is sacrificed, chanted, given in charity, or suffered in penance, even in the
smallest amount, yields endless fruit because of the power of that place.
Whatever fruit is said to accrue from many thousands of lifetimes of
asceticism, even more than that is obtainable from but three nights of fasting
in this place."
One of seven Holy Cities of India, one of twelve Jyotir Linga Shiva sites and a Shakti Pitha goddess site as well, riverside Banaras is also the most favored place for Hindus to die. Cremation at the holy city insures moksha, or final liberation of the soul from the endless cycle of birth, death and rebirth. Dying persons and dead bodies from far-off places are brought to Banaras for cremation at the five principal and eighty-eight minor holy sites along the river Ganges . But the water borne holiness of the ancient city is not limited to the river alone. Adjacent to Visvwanatha temple, the city's primary Shiva Linga, flows the Jnana Vapi well, the ritual center and axis mundi of Banaras . The Jnana Vapi, or Well of Wisdom, is said to have been dug by Shiva himself, and its waters carry the liquid form of jhana, the light of wisdom. Encircling the holy city at a radius of five miles is the sacred way known as the Panchakroshi Parikrama. Pilgrims take five days to circumambulate Kashi on this fifty-mile path, visiting 108 geomantically situated shrines along the way. If one is unable to walk the entire grid of the sacred geography, then a visit to the Panchakroshi Temple will suffice. By walking round the sanctuary of this shrine, with its 108 wall reliefs of the temples along the sacred way, the pilgrim makes a symbolic journey around the sacred city. Another important Banaras pilgrimage route is the Nagara Pradakshina, which takes two days to complete and has seventy-two shrines.
One of seven Holy Cities of India, one of twelve Jyotir Linga Shiva sites and a Shakti Pitha goddess site as well, riverside Banaras is also the most favored place for Hindus to die. Cremation at the holy city insures moksha, or final liberation of the soul from the endless cycle of birth, death and rebirth. Dying persons and dead bodies from far-off places are brought to Banaras for cremation at the five principal and eighty-eight minor holy sites along the river Ganges . But the water borne holiness of the ancient city is not limited to the river alone. Adjacent to Visvwanatha temple, the city's primary Shiva Linga, flows the Jnana Vapi well, the ritual center and axis mundi of Banaras . The Jnana Vapi, or Well of Wisdom, is said to have been dug by Shiva himself, and its waters carry the liquid form of jhana, the light of wisdom. Encircling the holy city at a radius of five miles is the sacred way known as the Panchakroshi Parikrama. Pilgrims take five days to circumambulate Kashi on this fifty-mile path, visiting 108 geomantically situated shrines along the way. If one is unable to walk the entire grid of the sacred geography, then a visit to the Panchakroshi Temple will suffice. By walking round the sanctuary of this shrine, with its 108 wall reliefs of the temples along the sacred way, the pilgrim makes a symbolic journey around the sacred city. Another important Banaras pilgrimage route is the Nagara Pradakshina, which takes two days to complete and has seventy-two shrines.
The sacred
architecture of the temples on both these sacred geographies was designed with
the mathematical and magical formulas of Vastu Purusa, an Indic geomantic
system similar to but older than Chinese Feng Shui.
Hindus call the sacred places to which they travel tirthas, and the action of going on a pilgrimage tirtha-yatra. The Vedic word tirtha means river ford, steps to a river, or place of pilgrimage. Tirthas are more than physical locations, however. Devout Hindus believe them to be spiritual fords, the meeting place of heaven and earth, the locations where one crosses over the river of samsara (life and death in the illusion of the material world) to reach the distant shore of liberation. As thresholds between heaven and earth, tirthas are bridges for psychic sojourns and the passage of prayers, they are portals into our physical realm for spirits and deities, angels and elementals.
Hindus call the sacred places to which they travel tirthas, and the action of going on a pilgrimage tirtha-yatra. The Vedic word tirtha means river ford, steps to a river, or place of pilgrimage. Tirthas are more than physical locations, however. Devout Hindus believe them to be spiritual fords, the meeting place of heaven and earth, the locations where one crosses over the river of samsara (life and death in the illusion of the material world) to reach the distant shore of liberation. As thresholds between heaven and earth, tirthas are bridges for psychic sojourns and the passage of prayers, they are portals into our physical realm for spirits and deities, angels and elementals.
"Karma has quite
a karma. Long after India's
seers immortalized it in the Vedas, it suffered bad press under European
missionaries who belittled it as "fate" and "fatalism," and
today finds itself again in the ascendancy as the subtle and all-encompassing
principle which governs man's experiential universe in a way likened to
gravity's governance over the physical plane. Like gravity, karma was always
there in its fullest potency, even when people did not comprehend it."
(source: experiencefestival.com).
425. Savitri Devi (1905
- 1982) was born Maximiani Portas, of English and Greek parents in Lyons, France.
After becoming a Greek national she took to Hellenism, and was disillusioned
with Christianity. It was the swastikasigns on the palace of Athens,
built by 19th century German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, that
stirred Maximiani's first feelings for the Aryan race. She left for India to search
for the roots of the Aryan civilisation. She regarded Hinduism as the only
living Aryan heritage in the modern world and was convinced that only Hinduism
could take on and oppose the Judaeo-Christian heritage. Soon, she adopted the
name Savitri Devi which would make her famous in neo-Nazi circles.
India fascinated her - she
noted now even a street-side vendor would discuss the Mahabharat in the
morning. In 1939, she published A Warning to Hindus under the auspices
of the Hindu Mission. In the book, she scorned the Congress for its secular
policies and said there was no India
but a Hindu one and warned the Hindus not to let the Muslims overwhelm them. In
1939 Savitri Devi met and married a Bengali Brahmin, Asit Krishna Mukherjee,
in a Hindu ceremony in Calcutta.
During the war the couple gathered intelligence on behalf of the Axis, and
Mukherji put Subhas Chandra Bose in contact with the Japanese, who would
later support his Indian National Army in its abortive campaign against the
British
"We defend
Hinduism, because it is India’s
very self-expression; and we love India,
because it is India."
Hinduism is really superior to other religions, not for its spirituality, but
for that still more precious thing it gives to its followers: a scientific
outlook on religion and on life." "Even
if India
itself were to disappear just now, the philosophical and spiritual inheritance
of the Hindus would remain. Mankind would preserve Hinduism, because it is
worth preserving. It is immortal, and needs no one to defend it."
"Hinduism is the most perfect type of such "religions" Apart from the high philosophies contained in the Hindu Scriptures and from the high spiritual ideal realized by the Hindu seers, we want to defend Hindu civilization and society, against the increasing forces of rival proselytizing societies strongly united by the consciousness of a common creed. Even if India itself were to disappear just now, the philosophical and spiritual inheritance of the Hindus would remain. Mankind would preserve it, because it is worth preserving. It is immortal, and needs no one to defend it."
"We defend Hinduism, because it is India’s very self-expression; and we love India, because it is India." Hinduism is really superior to other religions, not for its spirituality, but for that still more precious thing it gives to its followers: a scientific outlook on religion and on life. Hindu spirituality is a consequence of that very outlook. That scientific character of Hinduism should be looked upon by the Hindus as their strength, not as a weakness, like some seem to believe. The man of one book and of one creed may be strong, for the time being; but in the long run, it is a strength (and the greatest of all strength) for a religion, to have no particular founder, no particular book, no particular creed, settled once forever; to be just a continuous flow of thought, in search of knowledge, on the basis of a continuously renewed experience." " free thought in all matters, including religion, is a feature of Hinduism." Philosophically, Hinduism is an attitude of mind, and an outlook on life. The Hindus are one of the few modern civilised people who are openly Pagans."
"Creation is only
half the Play of Existence. Men thus generally worship only one side of God.
But the Hindus praise Him all round, for the beauty of His Play. They praise
Him in Destruction, as well as in Creation. They praise His Energy (Shakti) in
Mother Kali, in Durga, in Jagaddatri, in Chinnamasta, continuously destroying
and recreating Her own Self; in all the ten “Mahavidyas,” who are one and the
same. They praise Him in the Dancing King (Shiva Nataraj), whose feet are
over-treading life, and destroying it in a furious rhythm, . . . while His dispassionate
face, expressing Knowledge, is as calm as the smiling sea. Creation and
destruction are one, to the eyes who can see beauty.
"And the greatest
praise to India is this: not only are her people beautiful; not only are her
daily life and cult beautiful; but, in the midst of the utilitarian,
humanitarian, dogmatic world of the present day, she keeps on proclaiming the
outstanding value of Beauty for the sake of Beauty, through her very conception
of Godhead, of religion and of life."
(source: L'Etang
aux lotus (The Lotus pond) - By Savitri Devi, and A Warning to the
Hindus - By Savitri Devi). Refer to The strange case of Savitri Devi - By Koenraad Elst.
426. Sir George Edward Gordon Catlin (1896 -1979) was an English political
scientist and philosopher. A strong proponent of Anglo-America cooperation, he
worked for many years as a professor at Cornell
University and other universities and
colleges in the United States
and Canada.
He was an early advocate of Indian independence after meeting Mahatma Gandhi in
1931 in London.
He visited India
in 1946 and 1947 and published his tribute to Gandhi after his assassination
with In the Path of Mahatma Gandhi (1948).
In his book “In the
path of Mahatma Gandhi” he asks:
“What has Islam to offer to compare with the
philosophy of Vedanta and the Upanishads?”
"Broad-based and
lofty, Hinduism was and impressive structure? Mohammedanism, with its simple
theology and simple dualism, offered no comparison?"
427. Vera Christine Chute Collum (1883
- 1957) scholar and author of The Dance of Civa or Life's Unity and Rhythm
has observed:
"The conviction that seeming diversities
and differences are but passing and rhythmically varying phases of a
fundamental unity led the East to symbolize Life and Death as the ever supple
and continuously flowing Dance of Civa, in which construction and
destruction are rhythmically pulsating patterns that the subtle dancer
eternally presents and dissolves with the swiftness of a rapidly turning
wheel."
The work
done by physicists since Rontgen’s accidental discovery has revealed to us
Indian conception of the Dance of Civa – which is continuous, and which is both
constructive and destructive at one and the same time."
"Modern science, likewise, is conquering
fresh fields of knowledge since it became aware that many traditional barriers
are illusory. Civilization itself is a ceaseless rhythm in which Western and
Oriental characteristics are vividly remembered patterns rather than actual
attitudes arrested in their motion."
The Book suggests that recognition of the
ceaseless and musical flow of the Dance of Civa is the antidote to vain regrets
for a pattern that has dissolved only because it never was fixed, and that
reverent acknowledgement of this underlying synthetic unity is the most
promising cure for the jealousies and misunderstandings that have arisen from a
Western habit of assuming that phantom barriers and conventional categories
have tangible existence.
"Western science has grown up so
entirely in the tradition of Western thought that very few have questioned
whether the current distinctions between living and non-living, organic and
inorganic are based on real differences in kind or merely on the idiosyncrasies
of Western modes of thinking. Construction and destruction have been accepted
as mutually antagonistic realities. But the work done by physicists since Rontgen’s
accidental discovery has revealed to us Indian conception of the Dance of Civa
– which is continuous, and which is both constructive and destructive at one
and the same time."
"If we think how
truly an Indian dance is a question of “patterns” – changing patterns that
unceasingly melt into one another – the symbolism of the Dance of Civa appears
to be poetic in that highest sense in which poetry is a perception of the
specific significance and beauty that informs an idea or thing and renders it
alive and valid. The Western no less than the Eastern man has always known that
the procession of the seasons, and the cycle of seed-time and harvest have been
characterized by their continuous rhythm, their “life” dissolving into a sleep
of “death” in which a mysterious and unseen activity has gone on which in due
time once more emerges, as “life” from death. The beauty of the rhythm – the
“Dance” – has again and again kindled poetry in the mind of the men who have
reflected on it. "
428. Professor Ernest E Wood (1883 - 1965) a Sanskrit and Asian
scholar, introduced the Montessori philosophy to the study group who
were considering establishing a new nursery school. Professor Wood lived in India for 38
years. He founded two University Colleges, acted as President, Principal and
Professor of Physics, English and Sanskrit at different times. His love for India and its people, and his deep experience,
found expression in active aid to an educational renaissance initiated by the
leaders of India,
including the poet Rabindranath Tagore. He wrote several books including Practical
Yoga and The Glorious Presence.
Vedanta is considered in India to be the
loftiest achievement in thinking of God. Schopenhauer, Emerson, William James
and Whitehead are deemed by the Wood to be most in accord with Vedantist
teachings.
"The Vedanta
philosophy has as its basis the belief that the universe of our experience is
only one reality and it can be known."
"If truth is
truth, how can it be unknowable? Wake up, O man, and look straight, without
prejudice, at the facts of being!"
Shankara did not leave the Vedanta teaching as a matter of religious belief, however, but said we must verify it by thinking, and the realize it by experience, as did the illumined men of old. This may be a startling claim, until we remember how busy we are in these modern days, how preoccupied with "a number of things," how little we want "to konw" and how much "to have."
Shankara did not leave the Vedanta teaching as a matter of religious belief, however, but said we must verify it by thinking, and the realize it by experience, as did the illumined men of old. This may be a startling claim, until we remember how busy we are in these modern days, how preoccupied with "a number of things," how little we want "to konw" and how much "to have."
"The ancient
Aryan thinkers who collected, collated, classified and commented upon the
thought-traditions accumulated by their distant progenitors performed a
rational and ethical service of the greatest value to posterity, when they put
together a set of brief sayings, which they called the Vedanata (the end or
highest point, of knowledge; the "last word"), and presented them for
study along with further statement: "you will not be able to understand or
realize the full import of these Great Sayings unless you first put your mind
in order by certain practices or disciplines, which we will describe."
"The Yoga School
does not bring God in as Ruler of the World, but as a picture of the ideal
soul, for purposes of meditation - a soul self-governed, and unaffected by the
sources of the trouble. To this Shankar would raise no objection, for with him
there is no objection to idols and images, which have the function of dolls, as
assisting the mind to concentrate in its earlier stages. Even the Vedantist can
meditate on God, provided he remembers that there is no such external being,
and so such being at all unless that is also his own self."
(source: The Glorious Presence: A study of the Vedanta
Philosophy and its relation to Modern Thought - By Ernest E Wood p. 1
- 243)
429. S N (Surendranath) Dasgupta
(1887 - 1952) Sanskrit scholar and philosopher. He was the author of several
notable books on Indian philosophy and literature, including the famous
one-volume a History of Indian Philosophy and Yoga Philosophy.
Speaking about Hindu scriptures he wrote:
"The Vedas were regarded as
revelations of eternal truths, truths which no human reason could ever
challenge, naturally divested reason of confidence in its ability to unravel
the mysteries of man and of the world. The Vedas, then are the only repository
of the highest truths, and the function of reason is only to attempt to
reconcile these truths with our experience and sense-observation. Reason was
never trusted as the only true and safe guide. This Vedic mysticism prepared
the way for the rise of the other forms of mysticism that sprang up in India."
"The Upanishads
represents one of the most distinctive, types of mysticism that India has
produced. The word "Upanishad" has been interpreted etymologically by
Shankara to mean "that which destroys all ignorance and leads us to
Brahman." It has also been interpreted to mean a secret or mystical
doctrine, or a secret and confidential sitting. The Upanishads are mystical
experiences of the soul gushing forth from within us; they sparkle with the
beams of a new light; they quench our thirst, born at their very sight. It was
of these that the German philosopher Schopenhauer said: "How does
every line display its firm and definite and throughout harmonious meaning. "From
every sentence deep, original, and sublime thoughts arise and the whole is
pervaded by a high and holy and earnest spirit."
"Cases are known in which even Christian missionaries, sent
out to India to teach church doctrines to clergymen or to preach Christianity
among the Indians, became so fascinated by the high and lofty teachings of the
Upanishads that they introduced the teaching of the Upanishads in the Church
and as a consequence were compelled to resign their posts. "
(image source: The
Upanishads - Continuum - Ways of Mysticism).
"Cases are known
in which even Christian missionaries, sent out to India to teach church
doctrines to clergymen or to preach Christianity among the Indians, became so fascinated
by the high and lofty teachings of the Upanishads that they introduced the
teaching of the Upanishads in the Church and as a consequence were compelled to
resign their posts. "
"To the Hindus of
all denominations there is nothing higher and holier than the inspired sayings
of the Upanishads."
"The forces of nature with their
wonderful manifestations of inexplicable marvels appeared to the early sages
like great beings endowed with life and personality. They were treated at time
as friendly, but again as hostile. Sometimes the mystery of the natural
phenomena seemed stupefying in its psychological effect. The laws of nature
were no obstacle to the free flight of the imagination. When the Vedic sage saw
the sun proceeding in his upward and downward course through the sky he cried
out in his wonder:
"Undropped beneath, not fastened firm,
how comes it
That downward turned he falls not downward?
The guide of his ascending path, - who saw it"
That downward turned he falls not downward?
The guide of his ascending path, - who saw it"
The sage is full of wonder that "the
sparkling waters of all rivers flow into one ocean without ever filling
it."
Writing about Hindu
mysticism he observed:
"The tiller of
the soil and the grocer in the shop of India may be uneducated and often wholly
illiterate, but even they, while tilling the ground, driving a bullock cart or
resting after the work of the day, will be singing songs full of mystical
meaning, and for the moment transporting themselves to regions beyond the touch
of material gains and comfort.
"The sky and the
earth are born of mine own eyes.
The hardness and softness, the cold and the heat are
the products of my own body;
The sweet smell and the bad are of my own nose."
"A traveler in the village of Bengal or on board the steamers plying the rivers of the interior or rural Bengal, may often hear a Hindu singing mystical, philosophical or mythical songs of the love of Krishna and Radha while a large crowd of men is assembled around the singer listening to him with great reverence and feeling."
The hardness and softness, the cold and the heat are
the products of my own body;
The sweet smell and the bad are of my own nose."
"A traveler in the village of Bengal or on board the steamers plying the rivers of the interior or rural Bengal, may often hear a Hindu singing mystical, philosophical or mythical songs of the love of Krishna and Radha while a large crowd of men is assembled around the singer listening to him with great reverence and feeling."
"The singer is
probably describing the world as a mirage or a mere phantom show of maya, or is
expressing the futility of his worldly life on account of his having lost his
friendship with his own self.
"My hope of the
world is all false,
What shall be my fate,
O kind, good lord?
I am not in love with him (self) with whom
I have come to live in this house (body)
O kind, good lord."
What shall be my fate,
O kind, good lord?
I am not in love with him (self) with whom
I have come to live in this house (body)
O kind, good lord."
"So the sublime
teachings of philosophy and the other worldly aspirations of mysticism, with
their soothing, plaintive and meditative tendencies, have watered the hearts of
Bengal right into the thatched cottages of
this land. Wealth and comfort they all appreciated as do people everywhere, but
they all know that money is not everything, and that peace of mind and the
ultimate good of man cannot be secured through it or any other worldly thing.
They are immersed in the world; but still the wisdom of the ages and the
teachings of the saints have not been in vain, and at times they are drawn away
from the world - their souls unknowingly long for deliverance and find mystic
delight in it.
"It is only the
educated or Anglicized Hindu who dazzled by the gay colors of the West,
sometimes turns a deaf ear to the old tune of his country - the flute of
Krishna calling from afar through the rustling leaves of bamboos and the
coconut groves of the village homes - and, in the name of patriotism and
progress, installs a foreign god of money and luxury in the ancestral throne of
the god of the Indian heart - the god of deliverance."
The thoughts and
aspirations of the ages, our myths, our religions, our philosophies, our songs
and poetry, have all interpreted and formed a whole which cannot be expressed
through a portrayal of its elements. They represent a unique experience which I
feel with my countrymen, but which is incommunicable to anyone who is unable
imaginatively to bring himself into tune with that spirit. The British in India have
understood as much of the country as is necessary for policing it, but no
foreigner has ever adequately understood our land."
(source: Hindu Mysticism - By S N Dasgupta
p. 1 - 30 and 141 - 168).
430. Lowell
Jackson Thomas (1892 - 1981) was an American writer, broadcaster. A war
correspondent in Europe and the Middle East while in his 20s, Thomas helped
make T.E. Lawrence famous with his exclusive coverage and later with the book With
Lawrence in Arabia. His radio nightly news was an American institution for
nearly two generations, and he appeared on television from its earliest days.
Out of his lifelong globetrotting came lectures, travelogues, and more than 50
books of adventure and comment, including Kabluk of the Eskimo
and The Seven Wonders of the World.
He observed in his
book, India:
Land of the Black Pagoda:
“These things ease the
heart of man from sorrow,” says an Indian sage, “water, green grass, and the
beauty of a woman.”
“Hearts ease from the
burden of existence – that is the refrain that runs through all the literature
of Hinduism. This is true of ancient times as of the present. When the
forefathers of the Pilgrim Fathers were still painting themselves a deep blue,
Indian culture was known in Babylon
, and when the chariot of Boadicea was scything a lane through the Roman ranks,
the Romans of Rome were studying Aryan culture. Literary India at the
dawn of the Christian era was acting and reacting in a wider world than the
West was to know for fifteen centuries. But release, absorption of the self in
the cosmic whole, Nirvana, has ever been the keynote. Hindu art-consciousness
rests on the sacramental view of life."
"The Vedas,
believed by the Hindus to be the very Word of God, are among the oldest books
in the world, and reveal in beautiful simplicity the life of a pastoral people,
the Aryans, who migrated from central Asia to
the Indian plains. The Vedas and their glosses and commentaries, forming the
vast and as yet only partly translated library of ancient Sanskrit writings,
deal with every phase and aspect of human emotion with a particularity and
minuteness that have hardly been equaled." "Emile Coue’s (1857 - 1926) formula
of getting better and better was long ago anticipated by the mantra of the
Ganges-side; Sigmund Freud (1865 - 1939) is an ignoramus beside the
psychoanalysis of the Upanishads; while as regards marital relations the
Tantras makes Dr. Marie Stopes (1880- 1958) of England seem a girl of
seventeen. "
'The later Sanskrit
poems of men like Tulsi Das – the sweet singer of the Ramayana – Kalidasa, and
Bhartihari, who delivered himself of the apothegm quoted above, are
characterized by copiousness, ingenuity, and a remarkable and very modern
interest in the function of thinking. Hardly any intellectual process has been
left unaccounted for.”
After visiting Konark Sun
Temple (Black Pagoda) he
remarked:
“We stand astonished.
We saw a great, ornate pile of the general form common to Hindu architecture,
in which the pyramid seems to be the general origin of design. It was a species
of flattened pyramid, with lines and proportions exquisite and perfect."
“As we approached, an extraordinary wealth of sculptured decoration made itself
manifest, for the sloping faces of the Black Pagoda were carved, inch by inch
over all their huge expanse, with countless figures in deep and delicate
relief. I recalled the telling phrase of the renowned Bishop Heber, that
the Hindus “build like Titans, and finish like jewelers.”
"Hindus build
like Titans, and finish like jewelers.” - wrote Bishop Reginald
Heber.
Konark, Sun Temple
was built during the reign of King Narasimhadeva I (1238 - 64).
The temple was conceived as a gigantic stone representation of the Sun God's Chariot. Twelve huge wheels are carved into the plinth, and the building is preceded by seven sculptured horses.
The temple was conceived as a gigantic stone representation of the Sun God's Chariot. Twelve huge wheels are carved into the plinth, and the building is preceded by seven sculptured horses.
“We sauntered among
broken masses of sculptured stone, where accessories of the giant structure
have fallen. We walked with eyes now lowered to some delicately carved fragment,
now lifted to the majestic proportions of the temple. We trod the ancient
floors of lofty inner rooms and sanctuaries. The sculptures were exquisite,
some of them in a green stone almost as lovely as jade. The temple has the
symbolical design of a chariot, appropriately symbolizing the sun god. Great
wheels are carved in the lower exterior walls to represent the proper
appendages of a chariot. Dominant among the human figures is the splendid
presence of Vishnu in his solar guise. He is seen in perfectly sculptured
effigies of stone that are models of proportion and of strength and delicacy.”
(source: India: Land of the Black Pagoda - By Lowell Thomas p. 238 – 240 and p.
326 – 329).
Om Tat Sat
(Continued...)
(My humble salutations to , H H Swamyjis, Hindu Wisdom, great Universal Philosophers, Historians, Professors and Devotees for the discovering collection)
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