Some of the intellectual
celebraties in the world of the
West and the East had the following things
to say about Hinduism:
48. Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964) first prime minister of free India, was more than a deeply moral human being. He yearned for spiritual light. He was particularly drawn to Swami Vivekananda and the Sri Ramakrishna Ashram. The Upanishads fascinated him. Nehru called the Vedas as:
"The unfolding of the human mind in the earliest stages of thought. And what a wonderful mind it was!." It is the first outpourings of the human mind, the glow of poetry, the rapture at nature's loveliness and mystery." A brooding spirit crept in gradually till the author of the Vedas cried out: 'O Faith, endow us with belief'. It raised deeper question in a hymn called the ' The Song of Creation'.
"The Bhagavad-Gita deals essentially with the spiritual foundation of human existence. It is a call of action to meet the obligations and duties of life; yet keeping in view the spiritual nature and grander purpose of the universe."
"I am proud of this noble heritage which was and still is ours, and I am aware that I too, like all of us, am a link in that uninterrupted chain which finds its origin in the dawn of history, in India's immemorial past. It is in testimony of this and as a last homage to the cultural heritage of India that I request that a handful of my ashes be thrown in the Ganga at Allahabad (formerly known as Prayag) so that they may be borne to the vast ocean that bears on the shores of India."
(source: The India I Love - By Marie-Simone Renou p.128).
Jawaharlal Nehru in his book - A Discovery of India wrote:
" The statue of Nataraja (dance pose of Lord Shiva) is a well known example for the artistic, scientific and philosophical significance of Hinduism."
(source: A Discovery of India - By Jawaharlal Nehru p. 214).
49. A. E. George Russell (1867 - 1935) the Irish poet, essayist, painter, Nationalist leader, mystic, and economist; a leader in movement for cooperation among Irish farmers; editor The Irish Statesman 1923-30.
Russel paid an eloquent tribute to the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita.
'Goethe, Wordsworth, Emerson, and Thoreau among moderns have something of this vitality and wisdom but we can find all they have said and much more in the grand sacred books of India."
"The Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads contain such godlike fullness of wisdom on all things that I feel the authors must have looked with calm remembrance back through a thousand passionate lives, full of feverish strife for and with shadows, ere they could have written with such certainty of things which the soul feels to be sure."
(source: A Discovery of India - By Jawaharlal Nehru p. 93).
50. Paul Deussen (1845-1919) a direct disciple of Arthur Schopenhauer, preferred to be called in Sanskrit, Deva-Sena was a scholar of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, has observed:
"Whatever may be the discoveries of the scientific mind, none can dispute the eternal truths propounded by the Upanishads. Though they may appear as riddles, the key to solving them lies in our heart and if one were to approach them with an open mind one could secure the treasure as did the Rishis of ancient times"
About Vedanta, he said : It is now, as in the ancient times, living in the mind and heart of every thoughtful Hindu."
(source: Indian Antiquary (1902) - By Paul Deussen and reprinted in Outline of Indian Philosophy - 1907).
He writes in his Philosophy of the Upanishads,
"God, the sole author of all good in us, is not, as in the Old Testament, a Being contrasted with and distinct form us, but rather.....our divine self. This and much more we may learn the lesson if we are willing to put the finishing touch to the Christian consciousness, and make it on all sides consistent and complete."
(source: India And Her People - By Swami Abhedananda p.234).
The Vedanta gives profoundly based reasons for all charity and brotherliness.
Dr. Deussen says, "the fact is nevertheless that the highest and purest morality is the immediate consequence of the Vedanta. The Gospels fix quite correctly as the highest law of morality 'love your neighbor as yourself'. But why should I do so, since by the order of nature I feel pain and pleasure only in myself and not in my neighbor?' " The answer is not," he says, "in the Bible but it is in the Veda in the great formula:
'That thou art' (Tat tvam asi) which gives in three words, metaphysics and morals together.
(source: Is India Civilized - Essays on Indian Culture - By Sir John Woodroffe p. 264)
In his Philosophy of the Upanishads, recently translated by Rev. A. S. Geden, Prof. Deussen claims, for its fundamental thought "an inestimable value for the whole race of mankind." It is in "marvelous agreement with the philosophy founded by Kant, and adopted and perfected by his great successor Schopenhauer." differing from it, where it does differ, only to excel.
"It was here that for the first time the original thinkers of the Upanishads , to their immortal honour, found it when they recognized our Atman, our innermost individual being as the Brahman, the inmost being of universal nature and of all her phenomenon." (p. 39-40)
(source: Hindu Superiority - By Har Bilas Sarda p. 298-299).
" the Upanishads have tackled every fundamental problem of life. They have given us an intimate account of reality."
"On the tree of wisdom there is no fairer flower than the Upanishads, and no finer fruit than the Vedanta philosophy,' and he added,
'The system of Vedanta, as founded on the Upanishads and Vedanta Sutras and accompanied by Shankara's commentary on them---equal in rank to Plato and Kant---is one of the most valuable products of the genius of mankind in his researches of the eternal truth.'
(source: Paul Deussen's address before the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society on February 25, 1893).
Regarding the Cosmological hymn in the Rig Veda, he wrote:
" In its noble simplicity, in the loftiness of its philosophic vision it is possibly the most admirable bit of philosophy of olden times. .. .. .. No translation can ever do justice to the beauty of the original."
(source: History of Philosophy - By Paul Deussen vol. I p. 119 & 126)
51. F. C. Frederick Crossfield Happold (1893 - ) author of several books including Mysticism: a study and an anthology and Religious faith and twentieth-century man, said about the Upanishads:
"The most profound and revolutionary statement on the nature of reality, which mankind has as yet made"
(source: The Upanishads Translated for the Modern Reader By Eknath Easwaran. Nilgiri Press. 1987 quoted on book cover).
52. John Elignton ( ? ) author of A Memoir of A E Russell, wrote:
"The Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads contain such godlike fullness of wisdom on all things that I feel the authors 'Goethe, Wordsworth, Emerson and Thoreau among moderns have something of this vitality and wisdom, but we can find all they have said and much more in the grand sacred books of the East. The Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads contain such godlike fullness of wisdom on all things that I feel the authors must have looked with calm remembrance back through a thousand passionate lives, full of feverish strife for and with shadows, ere they could have written with such certainly of things which the soul feels to he sure.'
(source: A Memoir of A E Russell - By John Eglinton 1937 p. 20).
53. Ashby Philips of Princeton University echoes:
"The Hindu argument that all religions are equally valid may well sweep the world in the next 25 years. It may well be that within the foreseeable future, it will be Hinduism which will be challenging Christianity not only in India but in the west as well. Hinduism indeed has a new vitality not only suitable for defense but also adaptable for offense against Western religions."
54. Nani Ardeshir Palkhiwala (1920-2002) a brilliant legal brain and a philanthropist. Former prime minister Morarji Desai had described him as 'India's finest intellectual'. A vocal proponent of press freedom, Palkhivala was one of the directors of Press Trust of India (PTI) representing public interest since 1985. None other than C Rajagopalachari had once observed, ''Nani is God's gift to India''. India's best known constitutional lawyer, author, former Indian ambassador to the US, has said:
"India is eternal. Though the beginnings of her numerous civilizations go so far back in time that they are lost in the twilight of history, she has the gift of perpetual youth. Her culture is ageless and is as relevant to this present 20th century as it was to the 20th century before Christ."
"Our culture is primarily concerned with spiritual development is of special significance in our age which is marked by the obsolescence of the materialistic civilization."
Ahimsa, peace and non-aggression were the hallmarks of Indian culture. In her crowded history of over 5,000 years during which she had thrown up vast and puissant empires, India never practiced military aggression on countries outside her borders. Thanks to our ethos, even today the Indian people patiently suffer miseries and endure injustices which would result in devastating explosions in any other country. In these days of spiritual illiteracy and poverty of the spirit, when people find that wealth can only multiply itself and attain nothing, when people have to deceive their souls with counterfeit after having killed the poetry of life, it is necessary to remind ourselves that civilization is an act of the spirit.
Material progress is not to be mistaken for inner progress. When technology outstrips moral development, the prospect is not that of a millennium but of extinction. Our ancient heritage is a potent antidote to the current tendency to standardize souls and seek salvation in herds.
"It has been my long-standing conviction that India is like a donkey carrying a sack of gold - the donkey does not know what it is carrying but is content to go along with the load on its back. The load of gold is the fantastic treasure - in arts, literature, culture, and some sciences like Ayurvedic medicine - which we have inherited from the days of the splendor that was India."
" Indian culture encouraged the cultivation of the intellect, not as a commodity for sale in the market-place, but for the inner joy experienced by the questing mind."
(source: India's Priceless Heritage - By Nani A. Palkhivala 1980 p.1 - 39).
"Modern India will find her identity and the modern Indian will regain his soul when our people begin to have some understanding of our priceless heritage. A nation which has had a great past can look forward with confidence to a great future. It would be restorative to national self-confidence to know that many discoveries of today are really re-discoveries and represent knowledge which ancient India had at her command. World thinkers have stood in marvel at the sublimity of our scriptures."
(source: Let's regain our lost soul - By Nani A Palkhivala - Tapovan Prasad - Chinmaya Mission vol. 39 #2 February 2001p 29)
55. Huston Smith (1919 - ) born in China to Methodist missionaries, a philosopher, most eloquent writer, world-famous religion scholar who practices Hatha Yoga. Has taught at MIT and is currently visiting professor at Univ. of California at Berkley. Smith has also produced PBS series. He has written various books, The World's Religions, "Science and Human Responsibility", and "The Religions of Man".
He found in Vedantic Hinduism what he described as: "a profundity of worldview that made my Christianity look like third grade."
(source: Philadelphia Inquirer Section: Faith - By David O'Reilly Sunday June 18, 2000).
He was "perfectly content" with Christianity until the Vedanta came into his life some five decades ago. "When I read the Upanishads, I found a profundity of world view that made my Christianity seem like third grade."
(source: Rediff.com - 'Religions are like human beings).
"Men and women that are lining the Bathing Ghats are all
Hindus, but how different they are. But India looked past their bodies into
their minds where she found the prolific
ness of the infinite exploding like a Roman cantle.
No other civilization saw, appreciated, and classified so precisely the
full spectrum of human personality types…an achievement that has earned for
India – the title of the world’s introspective psychologist. The key to this
psychological perceptiveness is her recognition to the extent to which people
will differ and the degree to which these differences are to be respected.
The stages of life -
The kind of person and way we approach God – affective – loving him, reflective
person – by knowing him, active person – by serving him, contemplative – by
meditating. All four of these way to yoga – union reach the same summit – which
you follow depends on your spiritual temperament. Side of the mountain – which
you start climbing. Hinduism’s
cosmology was prodigious in scope and depth, but India did not stop there. She
went on to advance what was probably the most daring hypothesis man has ever
conceived. We are ourselves are the infinite, the very infinite from which the
Universe proceeds. Everything in Hinduism works to drive the point home.
(source: The Mystic's Journey - India and the
Infinite: The Soul of a People – By Huston Smith).Here are Smith's views on Symbols and Idols of Hinduism:
O Lord, forgive three sins that are due to my human limitations:
Thou art everywhere, but I worship you here;
Thou art without form, but I worship you in these forms;
Thou needest no praise, yet I offer you these prayers and salutations,
Lord, forgive three sins that are due to my human limitations.
(source: The World's Religions - By Huston Smith p. 34).
“The invisible
excludes nothing, the invisible that excludes nothing is the infinite – the
soul of India is the infinite.”
“Philosophers tell us
that the Indians were the first ones to conceive of a true infinite from which
nothing is excluded. The West shied away from this notion. The West likes form,
boundaries that distinguish and demarcate. The trouble is that boundaries also
imprison – they restrict and confine.”
“India saw this clearly and turned her face to that which has no boundary
or whatever.” “India anchored her soul in the infinite seeing the things
of the world as masks of the infinite assumes – there can be no end to these
masks, of course. If they express a true infinity.” And It is here that India’s
mind boggling variety links up to her infinite soul.”
“India includes so
much because her soul being infinite excludes nothing.” It goes without saying
that the universe that India saw emerging from the infinite was stupendous.”
While the West was still thinking, perhaps, of 6,000 years old universe –
India was already envisioning ages and eons and galaxies as numerous as the
sands of the River Ganga. The Universe so vast that modern astronomy slips into
its folds without a ripple.”
(source: The Mystic's Journey - India and the
Infinite: The Soul of a People – By Huston Smith)
56. 
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) imperial
poet of British India, as well as a writer, who spent his earliest years
blissfully happy in an India full of exotic sights and sounds. Kipling was a Nobel Laureate in Literature, and was famous for
his poem, The White Man's Burden. He said this to Fundamental
Christian Missionaries :
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) imperial
poet of British India, as well as a writer, who spent his earliest years
blissfully happy in an India full of exotic sights and sounds. Kipling was a Nobel Laureate in Literature, and was famous for
his poem, The White Man's Burden. He said this to Fundamental
Christian Missionaries : 57. William Macintosh wrote: "All history points to India as the mother of science and art,"
"This country was anciently so renowned for knowledge and wisdom that the philosophers of Greece did not disdain to travel thither for their improvement."
(source: The Invasion That Never Was - By Michel Danino and Sujata Nahar p. 18).
" When I read the Bhagavad-Gita and reflect about how God created this universe everything else seems so superfluous."
"We owe a lot to Indians who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made."
(source: http://www.agbioworld.org/biotech_info/articles/prakash/prakashart/plant_biotech.html)
"We find among the Indians the vestiges of the most remote antiquity....We know that all peoples came there to draw the elements of their knowledge ... India, in her splendor, gave religions and laws to all the other peoples; Egypt and Greece owed to her both their fables and their wisdom."
(source: The Invasion That Never Was - By Michel Danino and Sujata Nahar p. 18).
"Ancient India gave to to the world its religions and philosophies: Egypt and Greece owe India their wisdom and it is known that Pythagoras went to India to study under Brahmins, who were the most enlightened of human beings."
(source: Arise O' India - By Francois Gautier Har Anand publisher ISBN: 81-241-0518-9 p.25).
" I am no Hindu, but I hold the doctrine of the Hindus concerning a future state to be incomparably more rational, more pious, and more likely to deter men from vice, than the horrid opinions, inculcated on punishments without end"
" I am in love with the gopis, he wrote to Wilkins in 1784, 'charmed with Krishna, an enthusiastic admirer of Rama and a devout adorer of Brahma. Yudhisthir, Arjuna, Bhima and other warriors of the Mahabharata appear greater in my eyes than Agamemnon, Ajax, and Achilles appeared when I first read the Iliad.'
(source: India Discovered By John Keay p-28).
In 1794, he published a translation of the Ordinances of Manu. He said about Manu:
"A spirit of sublime devotion, of benevolence to mankind, and of amiable tenderness to all sentient creatures pervades the whole work: the style of it has a certain austere majesty, that sounds like the language of legislation and extorts a respectful awe; the sentiments of independence on all beings but God, and the harsh admonition even to kings are truly noble: and the many panagyrics on the Gayatri, the mother, as it is called, of the Veda, prove the author to have adored not the visible material sun, but the divine and incomparably greater light, to use the words of the most venerable text in the Indian Scripture, which illumines all, delights all, from which all proceed, to which all must return, and which alone can irradiate not our visual organs merely but our souls and our intellects."
(source: Eminent Orientalists: Indian European American - Asian Educational Services. p.6)
(source: The Hindu Phenomenon - By Girilal Jain p- 35-36).
Equally interesting are his poems. A Hymn to Narayana, in which he describes the Hindu theory of creation. A Hymn to Lakshmi and A Hymn to Ganga are equally fine.
A Hymn to Ganga
"How sweetly Ganga smiles, and glides,
Luxuriant o'er her broad autumnal bed!
Her waves perpetual verdure spread;
Whilst health and plenty deck her golden sides."
(source: Eminent Orientalists: Indian European American - Asian Educational Services. p.13-18).
"The analogies between Greek and Pythagorean philosophy and the Sankhya school are very obvious."
" I can venture to affirm, without meaning to pluck a leaf from the never-fading laurels of our immortal Newton, that the whole of his theology, and part of his philosophy, may be found in the Vedas".
"The six philosophical schools, whose principles are explained in the Darsana Sastra, comprise all the metaphysics of the old Academy, the Stoa, the Lyceum; nor is it possible to read the Vedanta, or the many fine compositions in illustration of it, without believing that Pythagoras and Plato derived their sublime theories from the same fountain with the Sages of India."
"We are told by the Greek writers that the Indians were the wisest of nations, and in moral wisdom, they were certainly eminent."
(source: Eminent Orientalists: Indian European American - Asian Educational Services. p.11).
Of Sankara's commentary upon the Vedanta, Sir Jones says that "it is not possible to speak with too much applause of so excellent a work."
Sir Jones says of Vedanta:
"The fundamental tenet of the Vedantic school consisted not in denying the existence of matter, that is, of solidity, impenetrability and extended figure (to deny would be lunacy), but in correcting the popular notion of it, and in contending that it has no essence independent of mental perception, that existence and perceptibility are convertible terms, that external appearances and sensations are illusory and would vanish into nothing if the divine energy, which alone sustains them were suspended but for a moment: an opinion which Epicharmus and Plato seem to have adopted, and which has been maintained in the present century with great elegance, but with little applause, partly because it has been misunderstood, and partly because it has been misapplied by the false reasoning of some popular writers, who are said to have disbelieved in the moral attributes of God, whose omnipresence, wisdom, and goodness are the basis of the Indian philosophy."
He adds: "The system is built on the purest devotion."
"Human life would not be sufficient to make oneself acquainted with any considerable part of Hindu literature."
(source: Hindu Superiority - by Har Bilas Sarda p. 203 and 296 -297).
61. Mihai Eminescu (1850-1889), the
greatest poet of Rumania, learnt of Indian philosophy through Schopenhauer. The
Hindu approach to reality and beauty is found in his verses.
The title of
his poem "Tattwamasi," indicates his
familiarity with Upanishadic
thought, but the content deals with the identity of Atman and Brahman. Hindu
Monoism is reflected in his poem: " So it is that bird and man,
Sun and moon
Are born and die in Brahma
the Sacred -
Where all things become one."
Eminescu's poetry also contains many erotic themes, such as Kamadeva, after the Hindu god of love, the spark of creation. That Eminescu chose an Indian symbol to express one of his intimate sentiments is held as " yet another proof of the deep and wide contact he had with the ancient literature of India."
(source: India and World Civilization - By D. P. Singhal p. 252)
He was greatly
influenced by the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Tamil Tirukkural and the
modern Indian spiritual literature of his time. Milan Markovitch, author of Tolstoi et Gandhi, wrote that:
"there is not one of Tolstoy's works written after this period"
of his life referred to in the Confessions "which is not inspired, in
part, by Hindu thought . . . His was a Christianity underpinned by the great
Hindu doctrines."
He further adds that
Tolstoy also "remains the most
striking example, among a great many , of these who sought a cure for the
western spirit in India."
(source: The Oriental Renaissance - By Raymond Schwab
p. 451. and On Hinduism Reviews and Reflections - By Ram Swarup p.
105).Tolstoy the famous Russian author of 'War and Peace', responded to India with sensitivity. Ancient Indian literature and the writings of Swami Vivekanada made a deep impression on him. In a letter to Gandhi in 1909, he quoted from the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Tamil Kural, and Vivekananda.
His philosophy contradicted official church doctrine and was deemed heretical. Tolstoy is only one of the many Western writers and thinkers to find much of illumination within Hinduism's pages.
He urged Indians to adopt what he called :
"The Law of Love," and not to give up their ancient religious culture for the materialism of the West."
(source: India and World Civilization - By D. P. Singhal p. 252 and infidels.org)..
Mr. Alexander Shifman Research scholar of Tolstoy Museum in Moscow wrote in his article entitled A Leo Tolstoy and the Indian Epics' published in several papers during Tolstoy centenary celebrations in 1963.
"Leo Tolstoy was deeply interested in ancient Indian literature and its great epics. The themes of the Vedas were the first to attract his attention. Appreciating the profundity of the Vedas, Tolstoy gave a particular attention to those cantos which deal with the problem of ethics, a subject in which interested him deeply."
Tolstoy not only read the Vedas, but also spread their teachings in Russia. He included many of the sayings of the Vedas and Upanishads (Vedic expositions) in his collections "Range of Reading", "Thoughts of wise men" and others. It would have been an ideal time to introduce this great learning with the birth of Marxism where all dogmas were outlawed. The intellects were freer of perversion and could have been easily found acceptance by a great many young Russians.
(source: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Ithaca/3440/revelation.html).
In India he learned Persian, Sanskrit, Zend, Avestan, and Pahlavi. He also translated the Upanishads into Latin (1804) and wrote several works on India.
He spent seven year in India, had recorded in his moving testimony in 1778:
"Peaceful Indians,... did the rumor of your riches have to penetrate a clime in which artificial needs know no bounds? Soon, new foreigners reached your shores; inconvenient guests, everything they touched belonged to them....
"If the British ...neglect any longer to enrich Europe's scholars with the Sanskrit scriptures...they will bear the shame of having sacrificed honor, probity, and humanity to the vile love for gold and money, without human knowledge having derived the least lustre, the least growth from their conquests."
(source: The Invasion That Never Was - By Michel Danino and Sujata Nahar p. 14-15).
His masterpiece, La Bible dans l'Inde, stirred a storm of controversy.
He praised the Vedas in his Sons of God, and said:
"The Hindu revelation, which proclaims the slow and gradual formation of worlds, is of all revelations the only one whose ideas are in complete harmony with modern science. "
(source: India and World Civilization - By D. P. Singhal - Pan Macmillan Limited. 1993 part II p. 241 - 242).
Jacolliot feels India has given to the West much more than she is credited with when he says:
"Besides the discoverers of geometry and algebra, the constructors of human speech, the parents of philosophy, the primal expounders of religion, the adepts in psychological and physical science, how even the greatest of our biological and theologians seem dwarfed! Name of us any modern discovery, and we venture to say that Indian history need not long be searched before the prototype will be found on record. Here we are with the transit of science half accomplished, and all our Vedic ideas in process of readjustment to the theories of force correlation, natural selection, atomic polarity and evolution. And here, to mock our conceit, our apprehension, and our despair, we may read what Manu said, perhaps 10,000 years before the birth of Christ:
The first germ of life was developed by water and heat.' (Book I, sloka 8,9 )
'Water ascends towards the sky in vapors; from the sun it descends in rain, from the rains are born the plants, and from the plants, animals.' (Book III, sloka 76)
(source: Krishna and Christ - By Louis Jacolliot p. 15).
"Aware of the
resentment I am provoking, I yet shrink not from the encounter. We are no
longer burnt at the stake, as in the times of Michael Servetus, Savanarola, and
of Philip II, of Spain, and free thought may be freely proclaimed in an
atmosphere of freedom.
Soil of Ancient India, cradle of humanity, hail! Hail, venerable and
efficient nurse whom centuries of brutal invasions have not yet burned under
the dust of oblivion! Hail, farther land of faith, of love, of poetry and of
science! May we hail a revival of thy past in our West in future!
"I have dwelt
midst the depths of your mysterious forests, seeking to comprehend the language
of your lofty nature, and the evening airs that murmured midst the foliage of
banyans and tamarinds whispered to my spirit these three magic
words: Zeus, Jehova, Brahma."
" How glorious
the epoch that then presented itself to my study and comprehension! I made
tradition speak from the temple’s recess. I enquired of monuments and ruins, I questioned the Vedas whose pages count
their existence by thousands of years and whence enquiring youth imbibed the
science of life long before Thebes of the hundred gates or Babylon the great
had traced our their foundations.”
“And then India appears to me in all the living power
of her originality – I traced her progress in the expansion of her
enlightenment over the world – I saw her giving her laws, her customs, her
morale, her religion to Egypt, to Persia, to Greece and Rome – I saw Jaiminy
and Veda Vyasa precede Socrates and Plato, and Krishna, the son of the Virgin
Devajani (in Sanskrit, created by God) precede the son of the Virgin of
Bethelehem.
" Very few
travelers have sought to understand India, very few have submitted to the labor
necessary to a knowledge of her past splendor, looking only at the surface they
have ever denied them and with an unreasoning confidence of criticism that made
them the easy victims of ignorance.”
(source: La Bible dans l'Inde - By Louis Jacolliot p 1 -
16).He has said in his book, Bible in India: Hindoo origin of Hebrew and Christian revelation
"India of the Vedas entertained a respect for women amounting to worship; a fact which we seem little to suspect in Europe when we accuse the extreme East of having denied the dignity of woman, and of having only made her an instrument of pleasure and of passive obedience." He also said: "What! here is a civilization, which you cannot deny to be older than your own, which places the woman on a level with the man and gives her an equal place in the family and in society."
(source: India And Her People - By Swami Abhedananda - p. 253).
Regarding the branching out of the primeval human family, he confirmed his views in his book Bible in India:
"In returning to the fountainhead do we find in India all the poetic and religious traditions of ancient and modern peoples. India is the world's cradle. Thence it is that the Common Mother in sending forth her children even to the remotest West has in an unfading testimony of our original, bequeathed us the legacy of her language, her laws, her morals, her literature, her religion."
(source: Hinduism in The Space Age - By E. Vedavyas p. 87).
“In point of
authenticity, the Vedas have incontestable precedence over the most ancient
records. These holy books which, according to the Brahmins, contains the
revealed word of God were honored in India long before Persia, Asia Minor,
Egypt, and Europe, were colonized or inhabited.”
“Of the Sastras and
the Mahabharata, which profess the same doctrines, the dates are lost in the
night of time. If we accept the chronology of the Brahmins, as calculated by
the learned Orientalist, Halhed, they must possess, the first an antiquity of
Seven and the second of four million years – a chronology which strikes point
blank at all our European ideas or matter. Such things easily excite laughter,
especially in France, the country of superficial spirits and of inconsiderate
affirmation. We have made a little world for ourselves, dating from scarce
6,000 years, and created in 6 days, that satisfies all, and needs no
thought.”
(source: Bible in India: Hindoo origin of Hebrew and Christian
revelation - By Louis Jacolliot p 53 – 57). For more on Louis Jacolliot
refer to chapter - Women in Hinduism).
65. Novalis ( 1772-1801) was the pseudonym of the young Baron Friedrich von Hardenberg. He was a pioneer of the early German Romantics, one of Germany's greatest Romantic poets.
Novalis wrote in his essay, "Christendom in Europe," in 1799, that poetry, pure and colorful like a beautiful India, stood opposed to the cold and deadening mountains of philistine reason.
For him Sanskrit was the most mysterious linguistic symbol of any human expression: Sanskrit took him back to the "original people" who had been forgotten.
(source: India and World Civilization By D. P. Singhal - Pan Macmillan Limited. 1993 part II p. 233).
66. Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) was also attracted by Indian thought, as it is clearly attested by numerous passages and notes referring to Indian ideas and texts found in the Beethoven papers. He was first introduced to Indian literature by the Austrian Orientalist, Hammer-Purgstal, who founded a periodical for the dissemination of Eastern knowledge in Europe as early as January 1809.
Beethoven had a deep interest in Indian knowledge long before Indological studies began in Germany.
The fragments of Indian religious texts that have been discovered in the Beethoven manuscripts are partly translations and partly adaptations of the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita.
(source: India and World Civilization By D. P. Singhal - Pan Macmillan Limited. 1993 part II p. 233)
67. Friedrich Ruckert (1788-1866), Professor of Oriental Languages at the University of Erlangen from 1827 to 1841, produced, under the inspiration of August Wilhelm von Schlegel, numerous skilful translations from Sanskrit. His published translations from Indian classical poetry made Indian lyrics and poems widely popular in Germany.
Amongst Ruckert's translations are Nalopakhyana, the Amarusataka, the Raghuvamsa, and the Gita Govinda, which lost nothing of its beauty, color and atmosphere in Ruckert's German version. The Indian poem is such a complex work from the viewpoint of rhyme, alliteration, and allusion that Ruckert's version represents a brilliant accomplishment. Of all the German poets, it was he who best understood the character of Indian poetry.
Ruckert's translation of the Gitagovinda, Bonn 1836, is a work of art. Written in beautiful language, it comes very close to the original in spirit and form. In his Brahmanische Erzaehlungen ('Brahmin stories'), Leipzig 1836, he brought out free renderings of Hindu legends from the epics. His translation of the Savitri episode is particularly noteworthy.
(source: German Indologists: Biographies of Scholars in Indian Studies writing in German - By Valentine Stache-Rosen. p.11-12).
68. Henrich Heine (1797-1856), a late German Romantic lyric poet, whose influence was enormous not only in Germany but in most countries of the Western world, describes the India of his imagination:
" ...in the glass I saw the dear motherland, the blue and sacred Ganga, the eternally shining Himalayas, the gigantic forests of Banyan trees on whose wide shadowy paths quietly walk wise elephants and while pilgrims ...
Heine's poem, "Auf Flugeln des Gesanges,"
"Am Ganga duftet's und leuchtet's
Und Riesenbaume bluhn,
Und schone, stille Menschen
Vor Lotosblumen knien. "
An English rendering of this verse would be:
At the Ganga the air is filled
with scent and light
And giant trees are flowering
And beautiful, quiet people
Kneel before lotus flowers.
This created a picture of India widely familiar in Germany.
Heine's acquaintance with Indian thought, acquired in Bonn under Schlegel and Bopp, remained important to him throughout his life. He had a particular feeling for Indian scenery, as is revealed by his verses in his famous Buch der Lieder (Book of Songs).
He remarked:
“The Portuguese, Dutch
and English have been for a long time year after year, shipping home the
treasures of India in their big vessels. We Germans have been all along been
left to watch it. Germany would do
likewise, but hers would be treasures of spiritual knowledge.”
(source: India and World Civilization By D. P. Singhal - Pan Macmillan
Limited. 1993 part II p. 234 and 327)69. Paul Verlaine (1844-1896), The French lyric poet known for the musical quality of his verse, wrote the French poem, "Savitri."
Verlaine became keenly interested in Hindu mythology during his high school days. His enthusiasm was such that he said:
"Par Indra! que c'est beau, et comme ca vous degotte la Bible, l'Evangile et toute la degueulade des Peres de l'Eglise."
"By Indra! how beautiful this is and how much better than the Bible, the Gospel and all the words of the Fathers of the Church."
(source: India and World Civilization - By D. P. Singhal Pan Macmillan Limited. 1993 part II p. 241)
70. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), German Poet, Dramatist, Novelist, Natural Scientist. His own enthusiasm for Shakuntala was no less exuberant than Herder's.
He wrote in 1792:
"Wouldst thou the young year's blossoms and the fruits
of its decline
And all by which the soul is charmed, enraptured.
feasted, fed,
Wouldst thou the earth and heaven itself in one sole name
combine?
I name thee, O Sakuntala! and all at once is said. "
Goethe expressed this admiration for Kalidasa's Shakuntala more than once. nearly 40 years later, in 1830 when de Chenzy sent him his edition of the original with his French translation, he wrote to the Frenchman expressing his gratitude:
"The first time I came across this inexhaustible work it aroused such enthusiasm in me and so held me that I could not stop studying it. I even felt impelled to make the impossible attempt to bring it in some form to the German stage. These efforts were fruitless but they made me so thoroughly acquainted with this most valuable work, it represented such an epoch in my life, I so absorbed it, that for thirty years I did not look at either the English or the German version....It is only now that I understand the enormous impression that work made on me at an earlier age."
(source: Letters from Goethe - By Marianne Von Herzfeld and c. Melvil Sym. (trans). p. 514).
No wonder he modeled the prologue of his Faust (1797) on the prologue to Sakuntala. The jester in the prologue of Faust is reminiscent of one of the vidusaka in the Indian drama, a parallel first noticed by Heinrich Heine. Goethe friend Schiller, was moved to enthusiastic praise of Sakuntala, he wrote, "in the whole world of Greek antiquity there is no poetical representation of beautiful love which approaches even afar."
He also admired other Indian poems such as Jayadeva's Gita Govinda and Kalidasa's Meghduta (Cloud Messenger) which he read in Wilson's English translation in 1817 and welcomed as "a great treasure."
(source: India and World Civilization - By D. P. Singhal Pan Macmillan Limited. 1993. Pg 230)
The Sakuntala furor has lasted till almost today. One of the noblest "overtures" in European music is the Sakuntala overture of the Hungarian composer Carl Goldmark (1830-1915).
(source: Creative India - By Benoy Kumar Sarkar published Motilal Banarsi Dass, Lahore 1937. p. 110).
71. Louis Revel - French author of The Fragrance of India : landmarks for the world of tomorrow and Les Routes Ardentes de L'Inde. He went a long step further when he remarked that if Greek culture had influenced Western civilization, the ancient Greeks themselves were the "sons of Hindu thought."
"If Greek culture has influenced Western civilization, we must not forget that, in spite of the inestimable benefits of Greece to India, the ancient Greeks themselves were also sons of Hindu thought. As has already been mentioned, Pythagoras went to India in order to draw from the very source the principles which constituted the foundation of his doctrine and which in its turn influenced Plato, Socrates and even Aristotle to a certain degree. Apollonius of Tyanae, Plotin, did they not follow in the footprints of their predecessors, in directing themselves towards far-off India? China, Persia, Islam – the three-fourths of Asia – these civilizations which had already been influenced by the missions of Asoka, were they not attracted by India’s wisdom? That is the reason why ancient India is our Mother. In the measure that we Westerners make our intellectual and spiritual genealogy reach back to India shall we learn to love her and to consider in its true light her wisdom, the patrimony of every man."
(source: India and World Civilization - By D. P. Singhal Pan Macmillan Limited. 1993. Pg 241 and The Fragrance of India : landmarks for the world of tomorrow - By Louis Revel p 232- 238 Kitabistan Allahabad 1946).
He has dedicated his book The Fragrance of India : landmarks for the world of tomorrow to the Great rishis of India:
“These pages are a humble offering,
To the Great rishis of India,
Those wise men who loved the people,
lived for the people,
and who taught the brotherhood of peoples.
The soul of the world
is in danger. It is a banal truth to write but, nevertheless, it ought to be
ceaselessly repeated. When we seek in the buried centuries for vestiges of
these columns of glory, a name, among others, emerges: INDIA.
It is a fact, whether we wish to accept it or not, that India is
the Mother of all of us. She has given
us everything: religion, philosophy, science, art. All that has been
truly great, noble, and generous, throughout the ages has come from India. At
this moment when a hurricane of violence and hate is raging across the world,
and will rage still more through the world of the future, making the very
frame-work of our civilization crack, at this moment when intellectual and
moral values are being trampled upon by the hordes of egotism, brutality, and
lying, let us go together, towards India from whom we can learn so much.
Ramayana is one of the greatest epic poems of the world and that,
correctly understood, it leads us, scholars tell us to an understanding of the
evolution of humanity:
The Ramayana shows us also, in the story
of Rama and Sita, the ideal of human love, love which is inspired by the
noblest of ideas. The Illiad and Odyssey have touched many Western hearts;
nevertheless, those epic poems which contain so much truths, when translated
into our modern languages, fail unfortunately, to influence intimately the
lives of people. In India, on the other hand, there is scarcely a Hindu family
or dwelling where the divinity of Rama and of Krishna are not adored; where the
chastity of Sita or of Draupadi is not extolled; or where the courage of
Hanuman – the monkey god who aided Rama to vanquish his enemies – is not a
subject of conversation. These heroes for Hindus, are living personages, as are
those of the Gospel for Christians, modeling, kneading India’s thought, even in
our modern times of upheavals and violence, and it is they, these heroes, who
preserve perhaps, or who help to preserve the glory of ancient Aryavarta in the
India of today.
Every civilization
which is not based on the culture of the spirit is doomed to perish in
brutality and blood. Oh! Rama and Sita, noble human heroes, you who give the
example of a sublime spiritual ideal, in your atmosphere of peace and infinite
tenderness there reigns a hope, the hope of the regeneration of humanity
through the understanding of these ancient symbols and by their realization in
the inner lives of men.
(source: The Fragrance of India : landmarks for the
world of tomorrow - By Louis Revel p 83-86 Kitabistan Allahabad
1946).
"The Bhagavad Gita is par excellence the Book of Democracy;
that is what gives it its peculiar radiance. It is not necessary to be a great
scholar on the subject to perceive this. It unites all men in the same
Principle which “resides in all hearts.” If Krishna makes no distinction
between races, castes, sects, he also shows us how men, nations, can sink in
the typhoon of unchained passions. The message of the Gita is a universal call
to Democracy, liberty for the peoples, liberty for each individual. The great
affirmation of the Bhagavad Gita is that every individual, whatever he may be,
rich or poor, can and must raise himself on life’s path and that he has a right
to his emancipation, social, intellectual, and spiritual."
“Even if thou were the
greatest of all sinners, thou shalt be able to cross over all sins in the bark
of spiritual knowledge.” (BG iv).
….in the temple of
Somanthpur, the stone figure looms out from the shadows. A ray of light rests
on the face of Krishna. Above the wind of the plains swirling under the vaults,
it seems to me that the flute of Shri Krishna sings melodies on this day of
fete, the glory of life, the dawn of a new world, in the eternal verses:
“Know, son of Pritha,
that I am the pure fragrance of the earth, sound in the air; in the fire, its
splendor; life in all beings; continence in ascetics.
Oh! Govinda. The Friend! May we find, we also, the resting-place, the
refuge, the friend who guides and inspires our life!
(source: The Fragrance of India: landmarks for the
world of tomorrow - By Louis Revel p.158 -167 Kitabistan Allahabad
1946)
72. Herman Hesse (1877-1962) German poet and novelist, awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1946, found in Indian thought an answer to his yearning for deliverance from "ego" and from the tyrannical dictates of temporality. Indian thought offered the most radical possibility of undoing the curse of individuation, of annihilating the "idiotic one-after-the-other" by the postulation of the eternal simultaneity of nirvana.
The positive attitude of the Bhagavad Gita also appealed to Hesse.
"The marvel of the Bhagavad-Gita is its truly beautiful revelation of life's wisdom which enables philosophy to blossom into religion."
Hesse claimed that Yoga had an invaluable effect upon him as a means of improving his powers of concentration. Yoga and Maya are the background to the events portrayed in The Glass Beads Game.
He visited India in 1911 and the study of ancient Hindu texts affected Hesse deeply and had great influence on his works. The threefold sequence of sensual love, wisdom, and self-denial experienced by the poet Bhartrihari is interpreted by Hesse as the result of humble and wise humanity. In the Journey to the Orient, Hesse says about India:
"It is not only a country and something geographical, but the home and the youth of the soul, the everywhere and nowhere, the oneness of all times."
It is significant that Hesse, although a Christian, repeatedly substituted the upanishadic tat tvamasi, literally "love your neighbor for he is yourself. In Siddhartha which is subtitled "Indic Poetic Work (1922) he tried to reconcile Christian and Indian piety. There are many parallels in Siddhartha and Bhagavad Gita.
(source: India and World Civilization - By D. P. Singhal Pan Macmillan Limited. 1993. Pg 240)
73. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) the great German Philosopher, poet, classical philologist, who became one of the most provocative and influential thinkers of the 19th century. He was deeply influenced by Schopenhauer in his youth. Deeply disillusioned by his native faith Christianity, he called it the immortal blemish of mankind. One of the great European philosophers, Friedrich Nietzsche's beliefs were best expressed in his Thus Spake Zarathustra, in which his teachings are put into the mouth of the wandering prophet Zarathustra.
He was very appreciative of the Upanishads and, indeed, contemptuous of those Europeans who, devoid of intellectual discernment, wanted to convert and "civilize" the Brahmans.
When Paul Deussen told him his plan of translating ancient Hindu texts and expounding their wisdom, he expressed great enthusiasm saying that Indian philosophy was the one parallel to their own European philosophy.
He found in the Manusmriti one of the source of his own philosophy of superman. The Laws of Manu have been hailed by Friedrich Nietzsche, as ' a work which is spirited and superior by comparision."
(source: Advanced History of India - By Nilakanta Sastri and G. Srinivasachari p. 10).
Nietzsche so highly esteemed the Hindu text that he declared all other ethical codes to be imitations and even caricatures of this.
(source: India and World Civilization - By D. P. Singhal p. 237-238).
"One draws a breath of relief when coming out of the Christian sick-house and dungeon atmosphere into this healthier, higher wider world. How paltry the 'New Testament' is compared with Manu, how ill it smells! One sees immediately that it has a real philosophy behind it, in it, not merely an ill-smelling Jewish acidity compounded of rabbinisim and superstition.......All the things upon which Christianity vents its abysmal vulgarity, procreation, for example, woman, marriage, are here treated seriously, with reverence, with love and trust."
"Christianity has been up till now mankind's greatest misfortune." Nietzsche angrily denounced Christianity as a "slave morality," created by the weak as a means of checking the strong."
(source: The Twilight of the Idols - By Friedrich Nietzsche (1889) p. 57. The Antichrist - By Friedrich Nietzsche p. 176).
"One breathes more freely, after stepping out of the Christian atmosphere of hospitals and poisons into this more salubrious, loftier and more spacious world. "
In Nietzsche's estimation Manu is also better because more frank teacher of political science than the philosophers, insincere as they are, of the Western world.
(source: Creative India - By Benoy Kumar Sarkar p. 112-115).
Nietzsche himself had read the Vedas, which he admired profoundly, could quote from the Laws of Manu and thought that "Buddhism and Brahmanism are a hundred times deeper and more objective than Christianity."
(source: Arise O' India! - By Francois Gautier ISBN 81-241-0518-9 Har-Anand Publication p. 25)
74. Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) born in Bucharest, Romania and was educated as a philosopher lectured in the Ecole des Hautes-Etudes of the Sorbonne. He is author of Yoga: Immortality and Freedom
"Yoga, as a 'science' of achieving this transformation of finite man into the infinite One, has to be recognized as something intrinsically Indian or, as 'a specific dimension of the Indian mind."
"Yoga constitutes
a characteristic dimension of the Indian mind, to such a point that whatever
Indian religion and culture have made their way, we also find a more or less
pure form of Yoga. In India, Yoga was adopted and valorized by all religious
movements, whether Hinduist or 'heretical.' The various Christian or
syncretistic Yogas of modern India constitutes another proof that Indian
religious experience finds the yogic methods of "meditation" and
"concentration" a necessity.
"Yoga had to meet all the deepest needs of the Indian soul. In the universal
history of mysticism, Yoga occupies a place of its own, and one that is
difficult to define. It represents a living fossil, a modality of archaic
spirituality that has survived nowhere else. Yoga takes over and continues the
immemorial symbolism of initiation; in other words, it finds its place in a
universal tradition of the religious history of mankind." "From the
Upanishads onward, India has been seriously preoccupied with but one great
problem - the structure of the human condition. With a rigor unknown elsewhere, India has applied itself to analyzing the
various conditionings of the human being."
"The conquest of
this absolute freedom, or perfect spontaneity, is the goal of all Indian
philosophies and mystical techniques; but it is above all through Yoga, through
one of the many forms of Yoga, that India has held that it can be
assured."
"Yoga is present
everywhere - no less in the oral tradition of India than in the Sanskrit and
vernacular literature....To such a degree is this true that Yoga has ended by
becoming a characteristic dimension of Indian spirituality."
(source: Yoga: Immortality and Freedom - by Mircea Eliade p. xvi
- xx and 101 and 359-364).
Commenting on
history which has no metaphysical significance for either Hinduism or Buddhism,
he states that: "Profane time must be abolished, at least symbolically, so that man forgets his "historical situation". The highest human ideal is the jivamukta - one who is liberated from Time. Man, according to the Indian view, 'must, at all costs, find in his world a road that issues upon a tran-historical and atemporal plane.'
(source: The Speaking Tree: A Study of Indian Culture and Society - By Richard Lannoy p. 292). For more on Mircea Eliade refer to chapter on Yoga and Hindu Philosophy)
75. Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (1836-1886) the surreal Hindu Bengali Saint spent a lifetime seeking spiritual enlightenment, beginning in his childhood with a mystical encounter he experienced at the age of six. A temple priest at Dakshinesvar and a mystical devotee of Kali, became a source of religious renewal for a large number of Bengalis who met him during his lifetime.
Mahatma Gandhi said: "The story of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa's life is a story of religion in practice. His life enables us to see God face to face."
Romain Rolland wrote "Ramakrishna was a rare combination of individuality and universality, personality and impersonality. His word and example have been echoed in the hearts of Western men and women. His soul animates modern India." His influence was felt throughout the social life of Bengal, where he passed his life in continuation of the bhakti tradition so deeply rooted in that region. ...Among the crowds that went to see Sri Ramakrishna were Keshub Chunder Sen.
He experimented with the truths of Vedanta. He attained God-realization through four different religions (Tantrism, Hinduism, Islam and Christianity), each time meeting the same Absolute God--which prompted him to declare that all religions lead to the same God.
Ramakrishna said,
" In Hinduism, there can be as many spiritual paths as there are spiritual aspirants & similarly there can really be as many Gods as there are devotees to suit the moods, feelings, emotions & social background of the devotees."
" The Eternal Religion, the religion of the rishis, has been in existence from time immemorial and will exist eternally. There exists in this Sanatana Dharma (Hinduism) all forms of worship -- worship of God with form and worship of the impersonal Deity as well. It contains all paths--the path of knowledge, the path of devotion and so on. Other forms of religion, the modern cults, will remain for a few days and then disappear."
(source: - unknown)
He was addressed as Master by his disciples. Once one of his disciples asked him: "Do you believe in God, sir?" "Yes," the Master replied. "Can you prove it, sir?" "Yes," "How?" "Because I see Him just as I see you here, and rather more intensely." The Master said: "So long as God seems to be outside and far away, so long there is ignorance. But where God is realized within, that is true knowledge."
"In the kingdom of God, reason, intellect and learning are of no avail. There the dumb speaks, the blind sees, and deaf hears."
Years of aspiration, meditation and adoration in silence ripened into Ramakrishna's realization of the Divine Mother. The great disciple of Ramakrishna was Swami Vivekananda whose message has inspired, influenced and transformed thousands of lives around the world. Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Vivekananda started the renaissance of Hinduism at this time.
(source: Great Indian Saints - By Pranab Bandyopadhyaya p. 277 - 285).
76. Abraham Seidenberg an American historian of mathematics, has said:
" Ancient Egyptian, Babylonian and Greek geometries derive from the mathematics recorded in the Sulbasutras.
(source: The Invasion That Never Was - By Michel Danino and Sujata Nahar p. 79).
77. Severus Sebokbt, Bishop of Kenneserin, a Syrain astronomer wrote the following in A.D. 662:
"I shall now speak of the knowledge of the Hindus...of their subtle discoveries even more ingenious than those of the Greeks and Babylonians - of their rational system of mathematics or of their method of calculation which no word can praise strongly enough - I mean the system using the nine symbols. If these things were known by the people who think that they alone have mastered the sciences because they speak Greek, they would perhaps be convinced that every folk, not only Greeks, but men of a different tongues, know something as well as they."
(source: The Wonder That Was India - By A. L. Basham p. vi).
78. Barend Van Nooten author of Rig Veda, a metrically restored text with an introduction and notes, and The Mahabharata; Attributed to Krsna Dvaipayana Vyasa, writes:
"Borrowings by western scholars in the sphere of literature and philosophy are obvious and well-known. There are near virtual; copies of plots, characters, episodes, situations and time duration from the Mahabharata in Homer and Virgil."
(source: Philosophy of Hinduism - An Introduction - By T. C. Galav p. 18)
79. Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) studied Indic traditions, taught summer institutes on yoga philosophy and kundalini in Zurich for a few years. A student of Sigmund Freud, psychiatrist, interpreted Hinduism in terms of his psychological system, and pointed out the great significance of Indian thought for the modern West:
"We do not yet realize that while we are turning upside down the material world of the East with our technical proficiency, the East with its psychic proficiency, is throwing our spiritual world into confusion. We have never yet hit upon the thought that while we are overpowering the Orient from without, it may be fastening its hold upon us from within."
Jung found out in 1909 that myth and dream were linked, but it had been well known in India forever. It is implicit in the syllable OM, or A-U-M according to Mandukya Upanishad.
(source: A Joseph Campbell Companion - Selected and edited by Diane K. Osborn p. 122)
No system of thought or body control is more widely known today than Yoga. "When a religious method recommends itself as 'scientific', it can be certain of its public in the West. Yoga fulfills this expectation. "Quite apart from the charm of the new and the fascination of the half-understood, there is good cause for Yoga to have many adherents. It offers the possibility of controllable experience and thus satisfies the scientific need for 'facts'; and, besides this, by reason of its breadth and depth, its venerable age, its doctrine and method which include every phase of life, it promises undreamed of possibilities."
(source: Let's regain our lost soul - By Nani A Palkhivala - Tapovan Prasad - Chinmaya Mission vol. 39 #2 February 2001p 29-30).
Jung says: "The Christian West considers man to be wholly dependent upon the grace of God, or at least upon the Church as the exclusive and divinely sanctioned earthly instrument of man's redemption. The East (India), however, insists that man is the sole cause of his higher development, for it believes in "self- liberation."
"While we are overpowering the Orient from without, it may be fastening its hold upon us from within."
(source: In Search Of The Cradle of Civilization: New Light on Ancient India - By Georg Feurerstein, Subhash Kak & David Frawley p. 267).
"The idea that man is like unto an inverted tree seems to have been current in by gone ages. The link with Vedic conceptions is provided by Plato in his Timaeus in which it states..." behold we are not an earthly but a heavenly plant."
What is of special
interest to us is the surprising affinity between Jung’s conclusions and Hindu
thought. He himself was aware of it. He thought that it was no mere accident
that soon after the French Revolution the Frenchman Anquetil du Perron brought to Europe a translation of the Upanishads
“which gave the Western world its first deep insight into the baffling mind of
the East.”
He says, “To the
historian this is mere chance without any factors of cause and effect. But in
view of my medical experience I cannot take it as an accident…In the crowds
that poured into the Notre Dame, bent on destruction, dark and nameless forces
were at work that swept the individual off his feet; these forces worked also
upon Anquetil du Perron and provoked an answer which has come down in history.
For he brought the Eastern mind to the West, and its influence upon us we
cannot measure. Let us beware of under-estimating it!” He had a great respect for the Eastern
civilizations which had discovered and learnt to use the resources of the
subliminal mind. In his own words, “Great and enduring civilizations like those of the Hindus and the Chinese
were built upon this foundation and developed from it a discipline of
self-knowledge which they brought to a high pitch of refinement both in
philosophy and practice.”
As the Upanishad describes it, the Self is
that which being known all else becomes known.
(source: Hindu Culture - By K. Guru Dutt - With
a foreword by Sir C.Ramaswami Aiyar p. 227-228).
He admired Hinduism. He said if Rama can cry in the forest when he lost
Sita and if still Rama could be an altar of worship, that is why Hindu society
is a sane society. He said the Hindu society legitimised sorrow, while other
religions do not do that.
(source: 'There is reverse
discrimination against Hindus' - T R Jawahar -
newstodaynet.com).
Jung says: “We have
not yet clearly grasped the fact that Western Theosophy is an amateurish
imitation of the East.” Our studies of sexual life, originating in Vienna and
England, are matched or surpassed by Hindu teachings on the subject, Oriental
texts ten centuries introduce us to philosophical relativism."
(source: The Wisdom of China and India - By Lin Yutang p. 118).
Jung in Psychological Types
examines Indian Philosophy from a psychological perspective in glowing terms.
His theories have some intuitively and aesthetically resonant qualities. Simple
but precise and partially derived from Indian Thought:
"If the attainment of the middle path consisted in a mere surrender
to instinct, as the bewailers of “naturalism” suppose, the profoundest philosophical
speculation that the human mind has ever known would have no raison d’être. But, as we study the philosophy of the Upanishads, the impression grows
on us that the attainment of this path is not exactly the simplest of tasks.
Our Western superciliousness in the
face of these Indian insights is a mark of our barbarian nature, which has not
the remotest inkling of their extraordinary depth and astonishing psychological
accuracy. We are still so uneducated that we actually need laws from without,
and a task-master or Father above, to show us what is good and the right thing
to do. And because we are still such barbarians, any trust in human nature
seems to us a dangerous and unethical naturalism. Why is this? Because under
the barbarian’s thin veneer of culture the wild beast lurks in readiness, amply
justifying his fear. But the beast is not tamed by locking it up in
cage. There is no morality without freedom. When the barbarian lets loose the
beast within him, that is not freedom but bondage. Barbarism must first be
vanquished before freedom can be won. This happens, in principle, when the
basic root and driving force of morality are felt by the individual as
constituents of his own nature and not as external restrictions. How else is
man to attain this realization but through the conflicts of opposites?"
(source: Psychological Types – By C G Jung p. 213 – Routledge 1971 Reprinted
1999. This quote has been contributed to this site by a visitor).
80. Walt
Whitman (1813-1892), who championed American intellectual
independence, was amongst those who came under the influence of the American
Transcendentalists. He wrote his famous poem Leaves Of Grass in 1855. The continuing success of of his Leaves
of Grass led to the publication of its fifth edition which included his poem
entitled Passage to India.
According to some
Whitman is claimed to have read ancient Hindu
poems before writing his Leaves of Grass. There is a reference to Brahma
and the following verse in his Salut Au
Monde:
"I hear
the Hindoo teaching his favorite pupil he loves, wars, adages, transmitted
safely to this day from poets who wrote three thousand years ago."(source: India in the American Mind - By B. G. Gokhale p.29).
Whitman turned to the East in his anxiety to escape from the complexities of civilization and the bewilderments of a baffled intellectualism.
In "Passage to India" he wrote:
Passage O Soul to India!
Passage, immediate passage! the blood burns in my veins!
Away O soul! hoist instantly the anchor!
Cut the hawsers - haul out - shake out every sail!
Have we not stood here like trees in the ground long enough?
Have we not grovel'd here long enough, eating and drinking like mere brutes?
Have we not darken'd and dazed ourselves with books long enough?
Sail forth -steer for the deep waters only,
Reckless O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me,
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.
O brave soul!
O farther farther, sail!
O daring joy, but safe! are they not all the seas to God?
O farther, farther, farther, sail!
O Thou transcendent,
Nameless, the fibre and the breath,
Light of the light, shedding forth universe, thou centre of them...
Athwart the shapeless vastness of space,
How should I think, how breathe a single breath, how speak, if out of myself,
I could not launch, to those, superior universes?
(source: Yoga and the Quest for the True Self - By Stephen Cope p. 17 and Hinduism - By Linda Johnsen p. 367)
Whitman had poetically expressed a philosophy which some had said was similar to Krishana's teachings in the Bhagavad Gita. The relationship of Walt Whitman to Vedic thought is considerably complex.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once described Whitman's Leaves of Grass
as a blending of Gita and the New York Tribune Herald. In
his reminiscing essay, "A Backward Glance O'er Travel'd Roads" (1889)
Whitman claims to have read "the ancient Hindu poems" and there is
enough evidence to show that in 1875 he had received a copy of the Gita as a Christmas present from and
English friend, Thomas Dixon. Edward Carpenter (1844-1929) English poet, indicated parallels between Whitman's Leaves of Grass and the Upanishads.
(source: The Soul of India - By Satyavrata R Patel p. 74).
The nest of languages, the bequeather of poems
The race of old
Florid with blood, pensive, rapt with musings, hot with passion,
Sultry with perfume,
with ample and flowering garments,
With sunburnt visage,
with intense soul and glittering eyes
The Race of Brahma Comes!
81. Ramanuja (1017-1137) was, like Sankara, a great exponent of Visistadvaita Vedanta, was concerned with the same problems, and adopted the same assumptions and texts. But they came to entirely different conclusions because while Sankara was intellectual, Ramanujan was devotional. Sankara's cold and relentless logic made him identify the soul with Nirguna Brahman while Ramanuja's devotional spirit led him along the Bhakti Marga.
Ramanjua's teachings were based on the Vaishnava mystical Tamil poems, the Upanishads, theBrahma Sutras and the Puranas. He regarded the Brahman as the Supreme Reality, free from imperfections and possessing innumerable auspicious qualities of unparalleled excellence. He is the Lord or Ishvara and the highest person or Purushottama.
" The Bhagavad-Gita was spoken by Lord Krishna to reveal the science of devotion to God which is the essence of all spiritual knowledge."
The Supreme Lord Krishna's primary purpose for descending and incarnating is relieve the world of any demoniac and negative, undesirable influences that are opposed to spiritual development, yet simultaneously it is His incomparable intention to be perpetually within reach of all humanity. "
(source: Main Currents in India Culture - By S. Natarajan p. 37-39 Indo-Middle East Cultural Studies Hyderabad 1960).
82. Serge Elisseev - Asian scholar, author of several books, Etudes D'Orientalisme, Publiees Par Le Musee Guimet a La Memoire De Raymonde Linossier: Notes Sur Le Portrait En Extreme-Orient and Peinture Contemporaine au Japon says:
" The East is impenetrable to the West only for the man who deliberately refuses to get rid of certain ideas which, like armor, prevent him from bending . . . The teaching of the great Indian thinkers could spiritually enrich the European soul. In the course of its history, the European civilization has lost most of its spiritual values. It can no longer recover them though it still realizes their necessity. For the best of men cannot exist simply on the ideal of "efficiency of work" in the American way. In the condition in which the West finds itself, it is easier for us to go and search for truths in the India, than to come back to the few values we have left in the course of the development of our civilization."
83. Dr. Albert Schweizer (1875-1965) humanitarian, theologian, missionary, organist, and medical doctor.
"The Bhagavad-Gita has a profound influence on the spirit of mankind by its devotion to God which is manifested by actions."
84. Richard Waterstone ( ? ) studied Sanskrit at the University of Edinburgh, journalist, creator of BBC documentary, author, comments in his book on India: Living Wisdom
"Shiva's dance is a symbol of the unity and rhythm of existence. The unending dynamic process of creation and destruction is expressed in the energetic posture of the god. Shiva dances in a ring of fire that refers to the life-death process of the universe."
"There is a striking resemblance between the equivalence of mass and energy symbolized by Shiva's cosmic dance and the Western theory, first expounded by Einstein, which calculates the amount of energy contained in a subatomic particle by multiplying its mass by the square of the speed of light : E=mc2. "
"Well before 700 BC. Hindu sages were chanting neti neti (not that, not that), denying the ultimate reality of an external world in which they saw little more than illusion, and searching instead for the eternal spark of Brahman in the soul within all beings.
(source: India: Living Wisdom - By Richard Waterstone p. 134-135 and 22)
85. Roger Housden ( ? ) author of Travels Through Sacred India and a student of the spiritual traditions of India for over 20 years, concurs in his book:
"Time, for example, is intimately connected with the goddess Kali, which partly accounts for her destructive nature. Energy - in Einstein's equation, E=MC2 - is personified in India as Shakti in her various guises."
"...The magnificent portrayal of Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, when he appears to Arjuna and gives him the most profound of spiritual teaching."
"India is a vast network of sacred places. The entire country is a sacred land. The sacrality of the land of India, is what, still today, gives a sense of unity to this country of so many religions, cultures, races and factions."
"The Ganga is a living presence, a protector, a healer of ills. The Ganga is as alive as it ever was with the hopes and dreams of an entire culture. Countless flowers are strewn across her body daily; millions of lights set sail every evening upon her waters. While stories of gods and goddesses come and go with the ages, while one myth replaces or rivals another, the organic presence of Ganga continues as ever, absorbing her devotees' offerings and ashes in the same way she has done since time immemorial."
"Christian missionaries, and Muslim invaders even more so, were naturally shocked at the profusion of ‘idols’ they found in every town and village in the country. Their distaste, however, was caused more by their own literalist manner of thinking than by any intrinsic inadequacy in the Hindu religion. The three religions of the Near East are all religions of the book. The word, which they all depend on, tends inevitably towards concretization: this is the truth, so that must be false. Once cast in stone, the truth has no freedom of movement. It becomes linear, set down for all time, and casts a shadow as dark as its words are bright. Hinduism had no founder, and no single book, foundation or organization to set uniform standards and rules. As in life, all the subtle variations of light and dark thrive there, and are indeed encouraged to do so.”
(source: Travels Through Sacred India - By Roger Housden p. 56-57, 73, and 2 -23)..
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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