[QUOTE=Awwware;44901]Namaste Surya,
Please note I liked your purist type of reasoning in the other thread on the inquiry of the soul. This is why I am so surprised with the present thread, where subjective feelings have an overtone over objective factual observations.[/quote]
I try to maintain the same objective and factual outlook on everything, and if I find myself fall short, I indentify the bias and rectify it. So please tell me where I being subjective and emotional, and I will investigate to see how valid your statements are.
Please note I have nothing against Hindus. My wife is a Hindu and so are my children. There is not the slightest form of racism in me - a thing Nietzsche accused me of.
I never claimed you were racist Awaare.
I had no clue that Indian people deny the Arya invasion doctrine- I was not even aware of the fact that this theory was under dispute. You know I am a biochemistry scientist, not an archeologist.
It is also disputed by non-Indian academics. The classical invasionist theory is dismissed by the majority of modern scholarship. Now there are two competing theories that have been suggested: Out of India theory and Aryan Migration theory. The former is supported by the preponderence of archeological evidence, suggesting that the Aryan travelled from outside of India and colonized various parts of the world, including Europe. The latter theory is a weaker varient of AIT propounded by Western scholars(main proponent is Michael Witzel, who is an ivy league academic) It is accepted by Witzel that there was no invasion, but his theory is the Aryans originated in Iran and then the Indo-Aryans split off from the Iranian-Aryans, and migrated gradually into India and peacefully joined the Indian natives.
I recently had a discussion with a colleague of mine who is a convinced christian. As you know I am a renegade with regard to christianity and have embraced Vedanta. A point of view I was trying to convince him of, and which I?d also like to convince everybody of- is that there is no people of chosen-ones. The Jews may think they were elected by God, that Israel is the sacred country; The Hindus may think they were elected by God, that India is the sacred country etc. in fact all religions and people claim such a notion. All religions claim to be the sole and only truth.
I never said that Hindus are the chosen ones. I said that the land of India is regarded as sacred by Hindus because it is in this land the Vedic civilisation flourished. The name “Hinduim” refers to the way of life, philosophy and spirituality of India, which originates in the Vedas. The title we have in India for a special class of human being who are enlightened is “Aryan” it basically means the noble people. It just happens to be that India was the Aryan homeland and the Aryans are the forefathers of much of world civilisation. This is why we rever this land.
But if you look close enough, you’ll find that enlightened people have appeared in different cultures. Even among the pagan people of Romans, (who had a very barabaric and violent culture) Plotinus describes an experience, which is in no way different from what enlightened yogis etc. have revealed.
Yes, there is no dispute from me that enlightened people have appeared in all cultures. The reason there are similarities between Plotoninus and Yoga, is because Platonius and other Neo-platonists were influenced by Yoga. It is not known how Yogic philosophy and practice travelled into Greece, but it is very clear it was present in Greece as far back as the pre-socratic philosophers. This period of history has been lost. Some say that it was through exchange of ideas through persia(Indians and Greeks were in contact via the Persians) Others say that the Aryans brought it into Greece directly(Greeks and Indians are both Indo-European cultures)
I do not believe that enlightenment or access to God is restricted by your geographical or cultural origin. If your inquiry and inetntions are pure, you’re bound to get there.
Yes, absolutely. Enlightenment is not just restricted to people in India.
That you have a strong affiliation with your culture is a normal behaviour. There is almost no human being who does not have such feelings. Strangely enough I am also dissapointed when the Dutch soccer team loses. Yet I do consider this type of my affiliation therewith a stupid mindf***. An investment of energy in something, which is not going to bring me anything. One of impediments on our road to freeing ourselves is our Ego and are our attachments. Attachments to people, attachments to culture, attachments to mental concepts.
But it is all an identification which something we are not! It is all an identification with the good old prakrti.
You of all people must know about the granthis. Cut them through.
This type of thinking is actually dangerous. Just because it is all just prakriti and ultimately illusion(maya) does not mean that we stop caring about the world and history. Okay, I accept my house does not actually belong to me, but it belongs to nature and I have staked a false claim of ownership on it. Likewise, countries do not really exist, but are just human claims of ownership on something which belongs to nature. In that case is it alright me to allow the stranger of the street to invade my house and take whatever they want. Is it okay to allow invaders to enter your country and redefine the borders of your country? No, of course not. It may well not belong to us, but temporarily we have ownership of that and we are using it.
I am not just going to sit idle and let an invader enter my country and not fight. Similarly, I am not going to just idle and let somebody take our intellectual property. Yoga, Vedanta, Samkhya, Ayurveda are the intellectual property of India and the Hindu civilisation. Yes, these are sciences that anybody can discover and rediscover, but it does not change the fact that it is the Hindu civilisation that discovered it first in human history. The credit goes to us and nobody else.
Now you are most probably right that many things which originated from Indian soil have not gotten the credit they are entitled to. I that the western judeao-christian culture has for too long a period been the ruling paradigm. It has gotten us in a dark world indeed.
But to fight for a Hinduism as the only paradigm gets you exactly in their camp of intolerance as regards other cultures. Worse, it gets you in the world of fanatism -so well known from Islam.
What we are fighting for is the truth and nothing but the truth. We are completely convinced that Hinduism is the true religion, and we want to spread this religion far and wide in order to make this world prosperous. We are convinced this world needs Hinduism to be saved and are convinced every person needs this religion in order to get the true teachings and true methods of salvation.
Conflict cannot be avoided. The very fact that there are religions staking the same claim that Hindusim does, means that there is going to be doubt as to which religion is the real true one. However, Hindus are not afraid of this doubt, because in the end what matters is what is true. If Hinduism is not true a Hindu will gladly reject Hinduism and adopt the true religion. However, we Hindus are so utterly confident that our religion is true, that we can deal with every single doubt, objection, argument against our religion. We are so convinced other religions are false, that we are willing to demonstrate it.
It is clear to me for example that the cause of mental suffering is as Hinduism says it is: attachment to sensory objects. If I am attached to something only then will I worry about losing that object. I will not worry about losing something I am not attached to. The anxiety and fear of loss becomes mental suffering. This is a scientific explanation which can easily be demonstrated to be true through reasoning and empirical evidence.
On the other hand, in Christianity the cause of suffering is explained as a mythical adam and eve, eating a mythical apple from a mythical tree tempted by a mythical talking snake getting punished by a mythical god. It is clear to see the Hindu explanation is true, and the Christian explanation is bogus.
When you say Om, Bhur, bhuva, svah, you humbly turn to [B]All[/B] living beings on all planes of existence to ask them to shine their light on you. There is no election or preference at that moment. Sometimes we must learn from painful, hard and difficult experiences. I am grateful for the mistakes I make, because by becoming aware of them I can transcend them. I have no preference for my encounters - not even with my enemies. They are a source of knowledge as well.
Yes, I want all beings to be happy and enlightened. This is why I expose them to Hinduism so they can get happiness and enlightenment, and expose the absurdities in other relgions to show them they will not get happiness and enlightenment there.
