Foreword

By Aidan Rankin, Ph.D.

I first became aware of David Frawley’s work earlier this year

when I was at the University bookshop in Bloomsbury, near to my
London home. It used to be called Dillon’s and owned by a long-
established and worthy firm. Now it is Waterstone’s, a thrusting ‘success
story’ of modern entrepreneurship. No longer a traditionally British
bookshop, staffed by friendly amateurs, Waterstone’s has all the
characteristics of a giant American emporium: glossy, squeaky-clean and
staffed by indifferent, overworked students. Like its American
counterparts, it is replete with self-help guides for stressed male
executives and bitter, miserable career women, both products of a
disturbed society. In the basement, a bar serves caffe latte, chocolate
muffins and a bewildering variety of fruit juice. Waterstone’s, in other
words, is a microcosm of the global monoculture, that spiritual and
economic malaise which Frawley so incisively explores. Yet beneath all
the gloss, there persist many of the qualities of a fine English bookshop,
where rich gems of scholarship of scholarship and wisdom come to
unexpected light, just as rich traditions of spiritual insight still withstand
the modern Fetich of the market.
Preface

Hinduism and the Clash of Civilizations continues the line of

thought introduced in my earlier books. Arise Arjuna: Hinduism and the
Modern World (1995) articulated the need for Hindus to stand up and
project their tradition in order to face the current cultural and religious
challenges assaulting them on every side. My subsequent book, Awaken
Bharata: A Call for India’s Rebirth (1998), emphasized the need for a
new intelligentsia, an ‘intellectual kshatriya’ or intellectual warrior class
to handle these challenges in a systematic way.

Over time it became clear that such an intellectual movement

requires a school of thought, a world-view as its proper foundation.
Naturally, an intellectual kshatriya should be trained in a Vedic or
dharmic school of thought. Therefore, the present volume arose to
articulate the greater Hindu world view—the perspective of the Hindu
mind on the current civilizational challenge, which is not only a cultural
assault on India but a churning within all cultures throughout the world.
Today as a species we stand at a critical juncture, before either a new age
of global harmony and world spirituality or a possible global catastrophe
from a voracious materialistic civilization out of harmony with nature.

The wisdom of the Hindu tradition, rooted in universal

consciousness, can be a great aid in helping us move in the right
direction, but it is seldom brought into the picture even in India.
Hinduism is now a global force as the third largest religion in the world,
the largest non-biblical belief, and the largest of the pagan, native or
indigenous religions. Therefore, a Hindu voice not only on spiritual but
also on cultural issues is necessary to provide a balanced view on the
global situation today.

Hindu or Indic ideas are now present in most countries in the world
today, generally in a dynamic way through Yoga, Vedanta or Vedic
sciences like Ayurveda. However, there is little recognition of the overall
civilizational perspective behind them. Most of the focus is on a spiritual
side of these traditions and the broader civilizational concerns are
ignored. While Christian, Islamic and western secular points of view are
readily available on most issues, the Hindu view is seldom recognized
and does not have corresponding spokespersons or information outlets in
the world forum. Hence the need of the present volume to encourage the
projection of such a Hindu perspective.

The current clash of civilizations is not merely a commercial or

religious encounter. It is an encounter between the schools of thought, the
way of thinking that each civilization represents. Each civilization has its
own language, logic and history of ideas that shape and mold its
perceptions and actions. When civilizations clash it is first at this level of
ideas and beliefs. In the present world context, the Hindu or Indian
(Bharatiya) idea of civilization and culture is overlooked. If Hindus enter
into debate, it is in the context of the western school of thought, which is
not sympathetic to or even aware of the logic of Hindu ideas or how the
Hindu mind works. Like players in a game that has rules they don’t
understand, the Hindu cause seldom comes out well.

Therefore, Hinduism must project its entire dharmic view, its

unique vision of the universe, God and humanity, rather than simply
respond to side issues framed by the western mind. It must articulate its
own critique of civilization, including that of western civilization, which
modern Hindu thinkers like Aurobindo or Gandhi so eloquently
expressed. There is also an older, comprehensive and well-articulated
Indian school of thought through the Vedas, Sutras, Puranas, Tantras
and Shastras and a related literature on consciousness and dharma
through Buddhist and Jain traditions as well. But these are often out of
date and don’t consider the changed circumstances of the world today.
Hence my emphasis on the need for a ‘New Indic School of Thought’,
specifically on the need for new ‘Vedic schools’, developing and
articulating the older dharmic traditions of India to meet the new
circumstances today.

A new Western dharmic school of thought is also important, taking

the insights of the Indic school and applying them in the western context.
Ultimately, a new global dharmic school of thought is the goal.
Hopefully, the new Indic School of Thought can provide a model and a
starting point for it.

While Hinduism and the Clash of Civilizations is a sequel my

earlier books, it brings in new themes that neither Awaken Bharata or
Arise Arjuna addressed. It has a more futuristic vision and a constructive
as well as critical side, outlining a Hindu vision for the entire world. It
not only seeks to remove obstacles but also sets forth ideas and models
for a new creation—a new age of consciousness on Earth initiated by a
revival of Vedic wisdom and culture.

Naturally, I was always asked how I, as someone born in the West,

was able to take up this cause or write such books. For this reason, I
wrote How I Became a Hindu: My Discovery of Vedic Dharma (2000).
That recent book is also relevant to the current title. Hinduism and Clash
of Civilizations also supplements my books on ancient India like Gods,
Sages and Kings, the Myth of the Aryan Invasion, Vedic Aryans and the
Origins of Civilization (with N.S. Rajaram), and the recent the Rigveda
and the History of India. However, the present volume focuses on the
background philosophical and cultural issues behind the historical
concerns examined in detail in these other works.

Besides history, the book examines Vedic Science, including its

relationship with modern science, which I have not addressed
significantly in previous titles. It touches the subject Vedanta, which was
explored in my book Vedantic Meditation: Lighting the Flame of
Awareness. Hinduism and the Clash of Civilizations, therefore, has a
broad scope and looks to the future as well as to the past, to spiritual as
well as cultural issues.

The book is divided into three sections. The first surveys the
challenges of India and Hinduism today and its scope for the future. The
second examines the clash between western intellectual culture and the
spiritual and intellectual culture of India. It highlights why an
independent Indic School of Thought is required, not just an Indic
perspective in the current world dominant western school.

The third section suggests principles and main lines for a new
Indic/Vedic school of thought. I have separately discussed in Vedanta,
Yoga, Ayurveda and Vedic astrology in specific books on these topics.
The purpose of their discussion here is relative to their place in a new
school of thought, not to delineate their approaches in detail.

Some chapters have appeared as articles in various publications in

India like the Times of India, Vedanta Kesari, the Advent, the Organizer,
Naimisha Journal etc. I have rewritten these to fit in with the flow of the
book and avoid unnecessary repetition. I would like to thank various
individuals who have stimulated my thought in the book including
Subhash Kak, N.S. Rajaram, Aidan Rankin, Michel Boutet, Ram Swarup,
Swami Dayananda, J.C. Kapur, and many young Hindus, both
individually and in different groups and organizations.

Jai Durga!
Dr. David Frawley (Pandit Vamadeva Shastri)
July 2001
___________________

Back to Home
Back to Foreward
Next – Part I.1
Part I.1
The Goddess Durga, Mother India as the World Mother
_________________________

India as a Sacred and Spiritual Land

Since ancient Vedic times, India has been regarded by its people as a
sacred land, the very land of the Goddess or Divine Mother. The
subcontinent geographically is shaped like a woman with Kashmir as her
head and Sri Lanka at her feet. The region holds the mighty Himalayas,
the world’s highest mountains, in the north, from which flow what is
perhaps of the largest and most fertile group of great rivers in the world.
India is the image of Mother Nature at her grandest from the mountains
to the sea.

India has defined itself historically not in terms of conquests but in

terms of spiritual teachings as a land of Yoga and meditation, which
themes pervade its great national epics, the Mahabharata and Ramayana.
It has produced the world’s greatest abundance of religious and spiritual
paths; form and formless, personal and impersonal, theistic and non-
theistic. India has developed its civilization not out of mere human
invention or according to any special historical revelation, but from the
concept of dharma, a recognition of cosmic law as the prime factor in
life. India has remained a land of both nature and the spirit, a land of the
Gods and the yogis, not simply a place of human habitation or a ground
for worldly progress.

In the Rigveda, the oldest teaching of the region, India is already

lauded the land of the great Goddess Sarasvati, who represents Divine
knowledge, power and beauty. Sarasvati was the name of the great river
in North India, which flowed from beyond the Ambala hills to the Rann
of Kachchh in Gujarat, on which Vedic civilization first emerged after
the end of the last Ice Age. Sarasvati, however, is not simply the outer
river but represents the inner stream of wisdom and inspiration, what was
later called the Sushumna or central channel of the subtle body. After the
Sarasvati River dried up in a series of geological and climate changes
during the third millennium BCE, the civilization of India shifted its
center east to the more certain waters of the Ganga, but it never lost
contact with its Vedic roots.
 In classical India, the Goddess Durga, the martial from of Shiva’s
consort, came to symbolize the country, perhaps owing to the need to
defend the land from the many outside invaders. It was the Goddess
Durga who, in a vision of his, gave the great Hindu King Shivaji his
sword to resist the oppression of the Moguls under Aurangzeb and
restore Hindu rule in the country in the seventeenth century. Durga is the
protective form of the Mother Goddess. She saves her children from
danger, slaying all the demons (negative forces) outwardly and inwardly
that might assail the body and soul. Even today, Hindus worship Mother
India in the form of the Goddess Durga.

Durga is dressed in red, rides a lion and has a majestic form. She is
royal power of the Gods that should be the true ruling power in the
world. She represents the defense of Dharma, not an aggressive force of
worldly expansion. This, particularly during the current information age,
is as much an intellectual and spiritual defense as a military one. For
those who wish to understand India and its characteristic civilization,
they should examine the image of the Goddess Durga. Why has Durga,
the image of feminine and maternal power, come to symbolize India?
Because India is the land of Shakti, the Divine evolutionary and
transformative force, and embodies higher feminine qualities of patience,
tolerance and synthesis. It is because India is ‘karma bhumi’, the land of
spiritual work for the soul, which is also the land of the spiritual battle,
Kurukshetra, where humanity’s spiritual aspiration is both developed and
tested.

Yet Mother India, ‘Bharat Mata’ in Sanskrit, has many names. She
is Bharata Bharati, the solar voice (Bharati) that carries the Divine fire.
She is Bharata Bhavani, Mother India as the source of life, in which form
the great modern rishi, Sri Aurobindo, lauded her. She is Sita, the
Goddess of fertile rivers and fields, humble before the Divine solar light
of Rama. She is Parvati, the daughter of the Himalayas, wedded to Shiva,
the transcendent. She is Lakshmi, the beauty and fertility that is wedded
to Vishnu, the Divine force that sustains life. To understand India, we
must first recognize the Goddess that is her personification in different
forms.
India as the World Mother

India is like Mother Earth, reflecting her in a tropical abundance

and carrying her secret will for the evolution of consciousness. India is
like the Divine Mother incarnate holding the world Shakti in order to
uplift humanity. She is like the caring cow that the culture has always
afforded the highest reverence, providing nourishment for all.

India, in many respects, is the mother of humanity and the mother

of civilization, particularly for the spiritual and yogic life. The great
dharmic traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism arose through the power
of this land, its sages, culture and peoples. These sages have left their
imprint on the country by the power of their tapas, their yogic force
which one can still feel in the many temples and tirthas of the region,
giving the region a palpable spiritual presence.

India has best preserved the type of spiritual civilization that once
dominated the ancient world from Egypt to China, Indochina, Peru and
Mexico. It continues the ancient traditions of temple worship and carries
on the old solar religion of enlightenment and self-realization, linking us
to the ancient spiritual humanity from which we digressed. It is not in the
deserts of the Middle East, with their few or meager rivers that could not
sustain significant populations, where civilization arose but in India, the
world’s most fertile subcontinent.

The greater Himalayan mountains, which ring the plateau of Tibet,

mark the crown chakra of the globe. Not surprisingly, the most lofty
philosophies and meditation traditions have come from this region. While
India has taken the greater portion of the Himalayan rivers, others flow to
Indochina, China and Central Asia carrying the influence of these great
mountains and their sages in different directions.

The Divine Mother is the source all evolutionary transformations,

of all life and creation itself. It is not we human beings who determine or
guide history, progress or evolution. It is not our scientists, politicians,
economists or intellectuals who consciously create our destiny as a
species or as a planet. We are mere pawns in the hands of forces we that
we do not even see. India with its yogic culture holds the key to these
transformations, if we would but recognize and honor her cultural
potential for all humanity and all time.
The Present Crisis

There are not only forces that take the evolution of consciousness
forward into the higher light of consciousness, but also those that take it
backwards into the dark night of materialism and ignorance.
Consciousness, moreover, does not develop in a linear but in a spiral
fashion; sometimes it descends in order to ascend more surely at a later
time.

India today is like the Divine Mother defiled and degraded, both
by the inertia of her own people and by foreign enemies who cannot
appreciate her spiritual beauty. The land of the country is ecologically
devastated and both the common people and the intellectual elite are
unaware of their great heritage and don’t know how to use it.

India over time became rigid in its customs, dominated by

authority and ritual. Creative thinking and original inquiry gave way to
an almost unconscious repetition of the old, a servile adulation of past
achievements, instead of new thinking based upon the insights of earlier
sages. This made the country prey to foreign attack and vulnerable to
foreign rule. The deep devotion of the country became blind. This
resulted in a condition in which the loyalty of the masses could as easily
be given to a Queen Victoria or to a Babar, to any authoritarian ruler, as
to a truly great Raja or king. A force of tamas or inertia settled over the
land that prevents the people of the region from tapping the great reserve
of spiritual power in which they live, removing them from the
lionhearted sense of the Atman or higher Self that is the true force of
Durga.

In this respect of spirituality, the civilization of India remains

central to that of the rest of the world, in which our human spiritual
potential is even yet more obscure. India is the land where the Gods can
descend and where the great yogis can take birth. A resurgent India,
therefore, is crucial for the regeneration of the planet. Yet India is also a
land where the anti-Gods (Asuras) can rule and where hostile forces do
not want a national awakening. The powers of the ignorance would just
as well keep the country down for another thousand years if they can.
 Fortunately, Durga, the Divine Shakti is coming forth again today.
She is already stirring and beginning a new manifestation. She is
preparing the decisive moment for her revelatory action. We must make
ourselves into her vessels in order to aid in her transformations. While
India may be the focus of her awakening, her action is beginning all over
the world. She is the awakened planet that must soon arise to defend
itself from the encroachment of an arrogant humanity that has fallen from
grace. Meanwhile, a new humanity is also taking shape under her benefic
glance. Let us be receptive to her guidance and take up her energy!

Part I.2
India and the Coming Century
______________________________

Indian Civilization in the Modern World

Indian or Bharatiya civilization is, if not the oldest, at least the most
continuous in the world. While ancient Egypt, Greece and Persia fell and
lost their cultures to outside influences thousands of years ago, India
uniquely continued its venerable ancient traditions throughout the
centuries, even under long periods of foreign rule. Those who look upon
India as a defeated land, therefore, are wrong. While India failed to win
all the battles, no other country won so many and refused to give in, even
when defeated. Though battered by time, Indian or Bharatiya civilization
has better survived the onslaughts of time than any other culture. It has
done so not through military force or missionary zeal—like the fierce
opponents it has had to resist—but through the dedication of its people to
the spiritual practices set forth in the region during ancient times. India is
the perennial civilization of the planet, present and conscious in every
age.

In India today one can still observe the same type of temple
worship and fire offerings, with beautiful images and profound rituals,
that once existed throughout the ancient world over two thousand years
ago. One can discover the entire heritage and history of the human race,
particularly on a spiritual level, as a living practice from the aboriginal
worship of stones to the highest philosophy of monism and Self-
realization. The great traditions of Yoga and Vedanta, as well as related
health disciplines of Ayurveda and art forms of Indian music and dance
continue today as in the hoary past. The stories of Rama and Krishna,
who lived long before Buddha or Christ, still inspire the common people
and provide examples of how to live today with joy and integrity.

Yet India is not only a land of the past but also of the future. The
vision of a quantum universe like that of modern science, where space
and time a relative and the universe is linked by wormholes, was foreseen
by the great rishis and yogis of the Himalayas long ago. The idea of
transcending time and space to a universal consciousness is the central
theme of Vedantic philosophy going back to the Vedas and Upanishads
at the dawn of Indian civilization. Yogic texts like the Yoga Vasishta
rival the latest science fiction books, portraying a higher consciousness in
which we can cross time and space in an instant or understand
telepathically the minds and hearts of others. The Hindu Puranas abound
with stories of beings from other worlds, occult powers and many
humanities through different cycles of civilization of which our present
civilization is only one brief episode. The idea of many solar systems,
many universes (Brahmandas) and many cycles of cosmic creation and
destruction lasting billions and billions of years was arrived at by the
Indian mind before European civilization even existed. Such a vast vision
remains the hallmark of Indic thought that has a cosmic, not
anthropocentric view, starting and ending with the universe, not just with
our limited human species.

India’s greatest and most popular export to the modern world is

undoubtedly the guru, the idea of an enlightened master as a living
reality, not just a special prophet or Son of God who lived long ago. This
has added a new dimension to the spiritual life in the West, which is
moving from the pursuit of salvation to the quest for Self-realization as
its determinative factor based upon an Indian influence. Great Hindu
gurus like Ramana Maharshi or Paramahansa Yogananda are lauded by
many in the West as being great as Jesus or St. Francis. Such teachers
have changed the spiritual landscape of the West permanently and
radically.

Yet the Indian genius is not simply limited to spiritual matters. Its
scientific and mathematical skills have made Indians successful in the
computer and software industry, which promises to be the new oil of the
coming century. Indians have also done well in engineering and in
medicine, reflecting their inborn intelligence and practical skills. In
addition, India retains a rich culture in many domains of life from food
and textiles to music and dance that is having an impact all over the
world. Indian culture can compete well in any fair marketplace, once the
people of the country are set free of the oppressive bureaucracy that
limits their development. It is the only culture in the world that maintains
its roots in a yogic vision of totality.

India and the Future

Clearly, the coming global technological age, which is based on

knowledge and information and has a new spiritual and planetary
orientation, is friendlier to India that has always emphasized knowledge
or vidya as the basis of culture. This is quite different than the colonial
and industrial era of past decades that was based on heavy equipment and
military might and was both anti-India and anti-spiritual in nature.
Hindus should recognize the opportunities of the new era. They should
give up the isolated ghetto mentality developed under foreign rule, which
made them mistrust foreigners, and learn once more to share and expand
their culture with joy and confidence. The Hindu tradition is Sanatana
Dharma (the Eternal Dharma) and has a global relevance that the time is
ripe to express and renew.

The new information age is bringing a new global appreciation of

Indian culture and the inevitability of India as a major world power for
the coming century. A diverse subcontinent with a variety of peoples and
traditions held together by a common spiritual vision is a great strength
for the future that no other country can match. While the country of India
still has a negative image in the world mind today for poverty and
overpopulation, being an Indian is a positive appellation in the work field
in the West where Indian scientists and software technicians are highly
regarded. This gap between the reputation of India and that of Indians is
now beginning to be bridged. Soon India as a country will be honored as
much as its spiritual traditions or its people overseas, providing of course
Indians embrace their own deeper tradition and cease to apologetically
imitate inferior cultures.
 Indic civilization is based upon the idea of the Atman or the Self as
the highest truth, our inmost consciousness and true nature beyond God,
scriptures and saviors. Its aim is to set the individual free from all mental
and material limitations, even those of religion. Nor does it see mere
human scientific innovation as the way to real and lasting progress for
humanity. It looks within to find the universe, not through an external
lens but through our own power of concentration, so that we are no
longer dependent upon the outside world for our well-being.

The Self or conscious being exists in all nature, in plants and

animals, the earth and the stars. In the Vedic view, the cosmic person
(Purusha) exists in the Sun, Moon, fire and lightning, as the inner
consciousness inherent in these outer forms of light. We must honor this
Self everywhere to find peace and make our right place in the conscious
universe. Mother India has preserved the knowledge and culture based
upon the Atman and its unfoldment. Now is the time to revitalize and
globalize this for the benefit of all, starting with India itself, which has
not yet embraced its real power or mission as a nation.

____________________

Part I.3
The Re-emergence of the Hindu Mind
___________________________

The Perennial Hindu Mind

The Hindu mind 1[1] represents humanity’s oldest and most

continuous stream of conscious intelligence on the planet. Hindu sages,
seers, saints, yogis and jnanis have maintained an unbroken current of
awareness linking humanity with the Divine since the dawn of history,
and as carried over from earlier cycles of civilization in previous
humanities unknown to our present spiritually limited culture. The Hindu
mind sustains a connection with the cosmic mind and the blueprint of
creation and evolution in this physical world, as well as our connection to
worlds more subtle and spiritual. The Hindu mind has a vision of eternity
and infinity. It is aware of the vast cycles of creation and destruction that
govern the many universes and innumerable creatures within them.

The Hindu mind is not a name and form based intellect, just as the
Hindu tradition is not a name and form based tradition. It is not attached
to a particular name that can be used like a title or slogan to promote an
exclusive or simplistic belief. One can call the Hindu mind the ‘yogic
mind’, ‘Vedic mind’, ‘Dharmic mind’, ‘Atmic mind’, or other terms,
which indicate some aspect of it. The term ‘Hindu’, possessing limited
ethnic connotations in the minds of many, may not be the best, but it is
the one most used today and remains most convenient for purposes of
communication. More accurately, the Hindu mind is the mind of
Sanatana Dharma (Sanatana Dharma Buddhi), the universal or eternal
Dharma that transcends person, history, institution or social identity.

The Hindu mind does not seek to impose itself upon people from
the outside through force or persuasion. It is not interested in a mere
change of names, labels, titles or beliefs. It looks to restoring our linkage
with the higher consciousness behind the world, whatever name or form
we might want to approach it through. The Hindu mind’s wish is that we
reconnect with our true Self and Being that transcends all outer
appearances and religious divisions—and that we honor all the various
expressions that Self takes, which can never be reduced to one religion,
philosophy, language or culture.

The Hindu mind is not simply a religious mind, though it contains

what is probably the world’s most extensive devotional tradition for
worshipping God in all forms whether male or female, personal or
impersonal. The Hindu mind covers all aspects of human life and culture,
linking us to the cosmic mind and the full range of existence in all
worlds, physical, subtle and causal. Hindu texts like Yogic and Vedantic
Shastras address the religious issues of God, creation, the soul, liberation
and immortality. Yet other texts, like the many Dharma Shastras, deal
with the proper social order and how to maintain it. Other texts cover
science from astronomy and meteorology (Jyotish Shastras) to medicine
(Ayurveda Shastras). Art, music, dance, sculpture and architecture are
also discussed in numerous Hindu texts and teachings. The Hindu mind is
a comprehensive and universal mind that has examined in depth all
aspects of existence, whether classifying the myriad types of mantras and
deities, foods and herbs, dance steps or gestures, or stars and universes.
Historical Background

The Hindu mind in ancient times was one of, if not the dominant
force, shaping world civilization, particularly the civilization of Asia,
which dominated the world until recent centuries. Hindu thinkers were
contact with the great thinkers of ancient Egypt, Babylonia, Greece,
Rome, Ireland, Persia and China—perhaps also Mexico and Peru. Hindu
yogis and sages watched the fall of the monumental cultures of the early
ancient world like Egypt and Sumeria. They saw the arising of the
monotheistic cults of Christianity and Islam and how these marginalized,
if not destroyed the older occult and spiritual knowledge of their
countries.

As the western world lost its ancient spiritual traditions, Hindu sages
saw Indic civilization spread east to China, Indochina and Indonesia, with
both Buddhist and Hindu forms spreading in various ways and in
different intermixtures. Later, they saw a slow encroachment of Islam on
the western outposts of Indian civilization in Central Asia, Afghanistan
and Sind. Around 1000 AD, they witnessed the eruption of Islamic
armies into India, that in the thirteenth century ravaged nearly the entire
subcontinent. Many Hindu and Yoga groups and teachers went into
hiding, taking refuge in the Himalayas or the mountains of the south.
They saw many of their ashrams, temples, libraries and universities
destroyed, and many of their teachers killed or imprisoned.

The Hindu mind, under siege during the Islamic invasions, lost its
eminence in the world forum during the colonial era. In the eighteenth
and early nineteenth century great western thinkers like Voltaire and
Goethe praised the Hindu tradition and the Brahmin class that sustained
it. However, those seeking to convert or conquer India tried to turn the
Hindu mind and lofty spirituality and philosophy into mere idolatry,
eroticism and superstition. No doubt Hindus contributed to these
distortions, having lost sight of their real traditions, getting enmeshed in
mere outer ritualistic practices and customs.

Though subject to much denigration, the Hindu mind quickly

reemerged with strength in the late nineteenth century in India through
such figures as Swami Vivekananda, the chief disciple of Ramakrishna,
and Swami Dayananda of the Arya Samaj, who issued a call to return to
the Vedas. Under Vivekananda the neo-Hindu movement went to the
West and spawned the Yoga-Vedanta movement that has become an
important aspect of culture all over the world. Since Vivekananda a
continual stream of Hindu teachers has traveled throughout the world and
impacted western society in a profound way, not trying to impose the
Hindu religion on people but reflecting the concern of the Hindu mind for
Self-realization and the creation of a global spiritual culture.

In India, the Hindu mind started and shaped the Indian independence
movement. The prime figures of this movement in the early twentieth
century were, at least in their private lives, staunch Hindus and
practitioners of Yoga. These included not only Mahatma Gandhi, but also
Tilak, Aurobindo and Subhas Bose, even Savarkar who opposed Gandhi
on most political issues. Hindu religious leaders gave their inner support
to the movement, whether Chandrashekhar Sarasvati, the Shankaracharya
of Kanchipuram, or the great jnani, Ramana Maharshi.

However, after achieving independence instead of taking control of

the country and charting a new course in harmony with its spiritual past,
the Hindu mind, perhaps exhausted by the struggle, lost control of the
intellectual ethos of India. The Hindu worldview of Vivekananda,
Aurobindo or Gandhi was replaced by a leftist-Marxist worldview,
guided by Nehru, who was a Fabian socialist with little regard for
anything Hindu. To shore up their position, the leftists in India created an
alliance of anti-Hindu forces, including even missionaries, which they
did not do in any other country. Post-independent India became
structured by Marxist economic and social policies, creating a
bureaucracy similar to and as rigid as that of the Soviet Union. The
textbooks and media of India, guiding by their English and Marxist elite,
banished Hindu concerns and made them the main target of their abuse
and ridicule. ‘Hindu’ became a dirty word for them and the idea that
there was any Hindu civilization was scorned, just as it was by the
previous colonial masters. The result was that independent India was still
ruled by a foreign and hostile mindset.

Reemergence Today
 Nevertheless, the Hindu mind, being the native intelligence of the
country, could not be suppressed. It continued in India through the
religious and spiritual concerns of the common people. In the late
twentieth century, it gradually emerged again. New groups are arising
today that find great value in the Hindu tradition and look once more to
Vivekananda and Aurobindo. They are adding a Hindu voice to the social
and political concerns of the country, to uphold the traditions and
civilization of the region. They have discovered a pride in being Hindu
that is not sectarian or belief-oriented but based on a recognition of a
great literature, culture and yogic science. They are reexamining history
from a Hindu perspective and exposing the colonial distortion of their
Vedic heritage that fails to recognize the spiritual root of Indic
civilization. They are realizing that appeasing minorities, a prime leftist
policy, is not the way to bring India forward but that what is needed is re-
expressing the country’s dharmic concerns and practices.

Not surprisingly, outside interests are suspicious of any Hindu

awakening in India, though they do not mind the ruder Islamic
awakenings in other countries! It is true that some new Hindus groups
may be tinged with fanaticism and extremism, but to a slight degree. We
should note that when oppressed groups begin to assert themselves, like a
person who has long been beaten down, they can express an anger that is
not always appropriate to the current situation. In addition, most Hindu
groups have not been media savvy. They are often intellectually
unsophisticated or inarticulate in the modern context or in the current
global English idiom. Some naively extol everything Hindu, including
out of date social customs and regressive beliefs.

Yet more commonly, leftists in India have made the allegation of

extremism against Hindu forces that is at best an exaggeration and at
worst a complete invention. This anti-Hindu propaganda has been a ploy
to discredit the Hindu cause and protect their citadels of power that a
Hindu revival would take away from them. The leftists have thrown their
typical denigrating slurs against Hinduism as fascist, Nazi or
fundamentalist, perhaps hoping that these distortions will arouse negative
reactions and keep people from really looking at the Hindu cause.

Yet the Hindu cause is not alone and is discovering new allies. First
is the Western Yoga and New Age movement that honors the spiritual
and ancient culture of India, chants mantras, honors deities and practices
vegetarianism. Many westerners come to India to study with Hindu
gurus, visit temples and ashrams and attend religious festivals like the
Kumbha Mela. A New Age movement has also arisen in India, bringing
in western new age views of healing and spirituality as well as western
versions of Indian teachings. This is very helpful because in India,
intellectuals denigrate Hindu traditions as backward, right wing and
conservative. To have them supported by progressive and futuristic
elements in western society neutralizes these charges.

The second group of new allies is the neopagan movement in the

West and the resurgence in native traditions and ethnic religions all over
the world. Such groups now recognize Hinduism as an important kin and
ally, the main native tradition that has survived the modern world. A new
movement to promote religious diversity and pluralism, including
protecting native cultures from missionary assault, has arisen often led by
Hindu teachers.

Third are allied dharmic traditions in Asia, particularly the Tibetan

Buddhists who have taken refuge in India, largely because of the tolerant
nature of the Hindu mind, not because the socialist government of the
country that was sympathetic to the Chinese. The Dalai Lama himself has
supported India’s nuclear testing, India’s defense in the Kargil War in
Kashmir, and the criticisms of Christian missionary activity by Hindu
gurus. He visited the Kumbha Mela in 2001.

Fourth are new western thinkers in ecology, psychology and

spirituality, who are finding an affinity with the Asian traditions of
honoring nature and respect for the Earth. They are receptive to native
ways of looking at culture and the land, which makes them more
receptive to Hindu Dharma.

Fifth are Hindus overseas who now have a significant and often
affluent presence in the United States, the Caribbean, the UK, Malaysia,
Singapore and Indonesia. They are building temples and schools
worldwide, showing a modern image of Hindu culture that is successful
in the western world, particularly in cutting edge fields of software,
engineering and medicine. The presence of successful Hindus in their
West is a great remedy against stereotypes of Hindus as poor, uneducated
and superstitious.
 As a result of these concurrent factors the Hindu mind is coming
forth again. We can now recognize an emergent Hindu view on religion,
on spirituality, on history, on ecology, on medicine, on the social order
and on science. A comprehensive Hindu view of all aspects of life is
slowly gaining articulation. The coming century, with a probable shift of
civilization once more to Asia, will witness the continuing expansion of
the Hindu mind and its global influence.

The western world will have to face a Hindu critique as well,

questioning the materialism and commercialism of the West that is often
culturally at a juvenile level. Christian missionaries will face Hindu
criticism and debate, questioning their very need to convert, and the basis
of their theology that requires only one Son of God for everyone. The
Islamic world will encounter a dynamic Hindu mind that cannot accept
the rigid Islamic formula of One God, one scripture, a last prophet,
paradise for the believers and hell for the non-believers as an adequate
formulation for a true religion. At the same time, the tolerant and
synthetic Hindu mind will welcome and absorb into itself genuinely
spiritual, mystical and occult knowledge from all traditions, even from
the very groups that have traditionally opposed it.

Naturally, there will continue to be a tremendous civilizational bias

against the reemergence of the Hindu mind because it threatens the
political and culturally hegemony of the other groups that have already
divided the world’s territory among them. In spite of such opposition and
possible deliberate obstruction, the Hindu mind will continue to unfold. It
is quite at home in the planetary age, in tune with cosmic intelligence,
and capable of tremendous transformation and adaptation. The Hindu
mind has the strength and insight of innumerable yogis and seers. Its
links go beyond the earth and the physical plane to the very roots of
creation in the cosmic mind, to the very Self of all beings.

The world need not fear the Hindu mind. The Hindu mind treats all
beings and all cultures as sacred. It works to promote Self-realization on
both individual and societal levels. It has no agenda of conversion or
conquest. It is not seeking to defame or eliminate any genuine impulse to
truth whatever name or form it takes. The Hindu mind is not trying to
impose a single name, savior or institution on the world. It is not rushing
to any historical goal or fearing any Armageddon. All time is with it and
it honors the great civilizations of the ancient as well as of the modern
world. Its purpose is to help us reclaim our true nature and live in
harmony with the nature of all. It is not motivated by money, power, and
territory or by the need to save souls. One could compare the Hindu mind
to the grace of the Divine Mother who is seeking to foster her own
children according to the needs of their nature, with a special regard for
each and favoritism for none. As Sri Krishna states in the Gita IX.29, “I
am the same in all beings. I have no favorite and no enemy. Those who
worship me with love, I am in them and they are in me.”
1[1]
I must thank Bansi Pandit for making this idea popular in his recent book The
Hindu Mind. Koenraad Elst’s recent Decolonizing the Hindu Mind developed the idea
further.

Part I.4
Hinduism and the New Millennium

_______________

Hinduism through History

The world today is looking to a new millennium, with the year 2000
having just arrived (though will little of the fanfare or catastrophes
predicted of it!). As modern culture is dominated by western civilization,
which has a Christian basis, it looks to the Christian calendar as defining
time for humanity. That most of humanity today and most of history has
not been Christian is seldom emphasized.

However, a new millennium is nothing new for Hinduism, which is

now in its sixth millennium of the present Kali age, not to speak of its
recognition of longer ages or yugas before that. The Hindu tradition has
crossed many thousands of years, going back to the very origins of
civilization as we know it some ten thousand years ago at the end of the
last Ice Age. From the early beginnings of civilization in India on the
banks of the now dry Sarasvati River up to the present technological age,
Hinduism has remained as a steady flame of spiritual light in the world. It
is the most enduring religion and culture in the world, continuing
remarkably age after age. Over the course of time Hinduism has seen
numerous civilizations come and go. It witnessed the fall of Egypt,
Babylonia and Rome, as well as the arising of Christianity and Islam, and
the coming of the modern age. What is the secret behind Hinduism's
ability to endure? It has not continued age after age simply because of a
conservative culture that has preserved old customs. It has endured
because of its ability to adapt to time changes and to reinvent itself in a
dynamic way in successive eras.

The Hindu tradition is not based upon any particular historical

revelation that would tie it down to a particular era or cause it to look to
any end of time or end of the world. It accepts the existence of different
ages (yugas) of humanity and different civilizations, of which our current
cycle of civilization is only one. Hindu Dharma sees history according to
the cycles of nature, with the rising and falling of cultures like the
coming and going of plants and animals through the seasons of the year.
Hinduism positions itself above time in the eternal, looking to link
humanity with what transcends time.

The Hindu tradition is not based upon any specific savior or

prophet or historical personality. It recognizes many sages and seers,
known and unknown, both inside its tradition and outside of it. It accepts
many great teachers of the past but also those of the present and of the
future. It has no chosen people but addresses all living beings, not merely
humans but plants and animals as well. Nor is it simply an earth tradition
but looks to beings of all worlds, including the denizens of subtle worlds
beyond the physical.

Hinduism defines itself as Sanatana Dharma, the Eternal or

Universal Dharma. Dharma means universal law, the fundamental
principles behind this marvelous universe like the law of karma. Sanatana
means perennial, referring to eternal truth that manifests in ever new
names and forms. Hinduism is the oldest religion of the world because it
is based on the eternal origins of creation. But it is also the newest
religion in the world because it adjusts its names and forms to every
generation and looks to living teachers, not old books, as its final
authority.

Because of this background, Hinduism views the new millennium

in a different way than most people today. Christians view the new
millennium as either bringing the end of the world along with salvation
for the faithful that they have long prayed for, or as marking a new era to
spread their religion further in the world through renewed evangelical
and missionary efforts. Other people look to a new millennium as defined
by the inventions of science and taking us into a new era of technological
wonders and space travel.

From the Hindu perspective no religion owns time and no

revelation defines history. Each person and each culture has its own time
or duration, which should be used for self-discovery and self-realization.
Hindu sages look at the new era for humanity arising today through
science and globalism as but the dim beginnings of a greater age of
consciousness and spirituality that is as yet only touching the horizon.
They don't see this new era defined by the year 2000 but by the events of
the past few decades and yet many more decades to come. The industrial
revolution gave way to the information revolution but the information
revolution must in turn give way to an age of consciousness that is the
real goal of human striving. Humanity is still in transition between an era
of materialism and one of spirituality and the decisive turn has not yet
been made. The coming century is bound to bring ecological and cultural
crises that will force us to move in a more conscious direction. This will
bring not only great new discoveries and breakthroughs as we advance in
knowledge, but also suffering and karmic reckoning for our immature
and arrogant way of dealing with our environment.

The Hindu Renaissance and Global Hinduism

Hindu Dharma has already undergone a remarkable renaissance in

the modern age. Less than two hundred years ago Hinduism seemed to be
on the verge of complete collapse. It was caught in inertia and under
siege by the missionary and colonial forces that had been ruling India for
centuries. Yet at that extremity it didn’t collapse but renewed itself, going
back to its ancient roots to provide for new and expansive growths.

The result was that in the nineteenth century the modern Hindu
renaissance began from several angles. Swami Dayananda Sarasvati of
the Arya Samaj issued a call to return to the Vedas. Swami Vivekananda
brought forth a new awakening of Hinduism to Yoga and Vedanta. Many
other such leaders arose throughout the country to follow such a vision.
 The Hindu renaissance was not limited to India. Vivekananda spread
his message throughout the entire world, which rediscovered Hinduism
as the deep philosophy of Vedanta and the profound practice of Yoga.
With this Hinduism began to go global. It became the main tradition
pioneering dialogue and synthesis in religion, promoting a recognition
that sages throughout the world have always taught the same message of
oneness. After the counterculture movements of the nineteen sixties,
many other India-based spiritual groups started in the West.

The twentieth century marked a new and independent India in which

Hindus were the majority and no longer had to suffer under the rule of a
religion seeking to convert them. This led to a building of many new
temples throughout the country. Recent decades witnessed a Diaspora of
Hindus throughout the globe, particularly as professionals in new
technology fields. With the many new immigrants from India in the last
two decades, almost every important sect in Hinduism can be found in
the West, with Hindu temples in the main cities of Europe and North
America.

Hinduism under Siege

Yet in spite of this renaissance, Hinduism as a specific religion did

not truly flourish in the twentieth century. It remained under siege by
colonial and missionary forces that remained active even after
colonialism by Christian countries had ended. On top of these, a new
leftist and communist thinking arose that attacked it further by allying
themselves with residual colonial forces and Islam. Many countries of
Asia like China and Indochina became communist and under its rule tried
to destroy their older religious traditions. While India as a whole did not
become communist, several states like Kerala and Bengal did, and the
communists gained a favored position in the media and universities of the
country from which their anti-Hindu message became magnified beyond
their political power. Indian intellectuals embraced Marxism as their new
religion and few remained to articulate a Hindu point of view to the
world.

Free India under Nehru opted for a socialist-communist model that

perpetuated the British system of education and a leftist way of thinking
that was often unabashedly anti-Hindu and sometimes pro-Islamic and
pro-Christian. The economic problems of India, which resulted from the
same socialist economies that failed all over the world, were blamed on
Hinduism. The social and class problems of the country that were based
on medieval customs developed during foreign rule were turned into a
permanent stain on Hinduism itself.

At the same time, their Hindu background was downplayed by the

very global movements that it spawned. Western Hindu-based groups
preferred the names of Yoga, Vedanta or that of their particular guru or
sect and sometimes failed to recognize their Hindu connections at all.
This was because western Yoga students were so taken in by the anti-
Hindu propaganda that they did not want to be associated with such an
apparently regressive religion, no matter how great the spiritual teachings
they found in it!

The result was that, in spite of the global spread of Hindu

teachings and an independent modern India, the world still looked down
upon the Hindu religion as primitive or oppressive. Some scholars were
reluctant even to recognize Hinduism as a world religion, seeing it rather
as a disorganized collection of various cults. The Aryan Invasion theory
was used to assert that India had no indigenous culture but was a
hodgepodge of various invaders, with the original Hindus being pre-
Vedic Dravidians, a very different group from the Vedic sages that the
country had always looked to for the origin of its traditions.

Resurgent Hinduism

This situation has begun to change dramatically during the past few
years. Hindus are finally awakening to the many distortions about their
religion. They are beginning to assert their rights and insist upon a proper
presentation of their tradition in the world forum. More pro-Hindu
political movements in India have gained power on both state and
national levels, and without the anti-minority pogroms that it was insisted
that they intended to do by their opponents. Such Hindu groups are
largely responsible for the economic liberalization of the country, as they
are the main opponents of the socialist economic policies that modern
India under Nehru adopted.
 Hindus, both in India and in the West, are becoming affluent
through modern jobs in science, medicine and software. In the process,
they are realizing that nothing in their religion is out of harmony with
progress and success in the modern world. On the contrary, they have
seen how Hindu family values have granted Hindu children in the West
greater home and emotional stability. They have seen how the traditional
Hindu emphasis on learning, including languages and mathematics, has
given Hindu children an advantage in schools. In recognizing how Hindu
spiritual movements have influenced the world, overseas Hindus are
comfortable maintaining their religion in the countries to which they have
migrated. They are often better educated, more scientific in outlook and
more affluent than their Christian neighbors who would still associate
Hinduism with poverty and superstition.

Hindu groups are challenging media distortions both in India and

in the West and with success; for example, protesting the use of chants
from the Bhagavad Gita in erotic scenes in western movies or beef
flavoring in so-called vegetarian McDonalds French fries. While such
issues may seem minor, it is curious how the world media will respond to
such challenges and now considers the importance of not offending
Hindus because of these. Such protests help counter the sense of moral
offense that westerners like to assert about Hinduism, often because of
misinformed stereotypes about the religion. After a few short years,
people are aware of Hinduism as a religion and must recognize Hindu
activist groups that will no longer tolerate centuries old denigrations or
modern stereotypes.

The Ayodhya movement in India, the effort to restore the Ram

temple or Ramajanma Bhumi alias Babri Masjid—whatever one may
think about it —served to awaken Hindus to their history of oppression
by outside groups. It brought about a new examination of what Hinduism
is and what it means to be a Hindu. While the term Hindu had long
become almost a term of denigration, it is now being rediscovered as a
term of pride (Hindu gaurava).

Much has been made in the western media of Hindus resisting

Christian missionary activities in India, with allegations of Hindu
violence against missionaries (though most of these reports were
erroneous or exaggerated). Yet, a few excesses aside, it shows that
Hindus are more confident of their religion than in previous decades
when even devoted Hindus felt a need to invite missionaries in India as if
they alone could uplift the country. Missionaries in India no longer have
a free reign but must face local Hindu challenges to their attempts at
conversion. This is disturbing for them because of the lack of challenge
they had in the past from Hindus. In India, Christian groups still have a
freedom for their activity not found in any nearby Islamic or communist
states.

A New Era of Spirituality and Self-realization

Whatever particular calendar we may employ, humanity is

undergoing a major change of civilization during this period. We are
moving out of the industrial age into the high tech age. We are moving
from nationalist cultures to an international culture. Though western
civilization remains the dominant outer force in the world, we must
recognize other cultural groups of which Hindu-predominant India is one
of the most important.

The problem is that the new global culture is still being defined
according to the same old materialistic values or by religious dogma from
the Middle Ages. This has created a modern commercial culture of
sensation, on one hand, and massive funding for conversion efforts on the
other, mainly through petrodollars. While Christianity has declined in the
West it has become more assertive in its conversion efforts in the non-
Christian world, particularly India, whose traditional tolerance keeps its
doors to other religions open. Even in America, the Southern Baptists, the
largest Protestant sect in the country, continue a conversion effort against
Hindus that labels the Hindu religion as one of the devil, at the same time
promoting the Biblical view of creation in schools in America, fighting
science as well.

However, longer and more powerful forces are arising than current
cultural trends. The destruction of the biosphere and the deforestation of
the planet must eventually force us to enter an age of ecological
responsibility. This is giving birth to a new ecology philosophy,
recognizing the spiritual value of the animal kingdom. Hindu Dharma is
being recognized for its importance as a religion of nature. It honors the
Divine everywhere in the world around us. It finds holy places on every
mountain or where any rivers come together. It honors the Earth as the
Divine Mother incarnate. Such a religion that embraces nature as part of
ourselves is necessary to save the planet in the years to come.

The global encounter between religions is causing people to

recognize that many different religions have their validity and that no
single religion, any more than any single race, can claim truth or
salvation belongs to it. The old exclusive beliefs of the Middle Ages are
falling under the scrutiny of a global reason that must honor all the
spiritual aspirations of humanity and can no longer confine itself to the
beliefs of one community.

This emerging planetary age provides a much different and more

favorable scenario for Hinduism, in which it is bound to spread much
further. Hinduism is the world’s largest pluralistic religious tradition. It is
based upon the view that there is One Truth but many paths. It is not
based on any single savior, church or holy book. There are probably more
religions inside of Hinduism than outside of it. Within its broad embrace
can be found monotheism, polytheism, dualism, monism, pantheism and
even atheism. Hindu temples accommodate many names and forms for
God, many scriptures and many great sages both ancient and modern.
The planetary age is a pluralistic age and must learn to do with the
religions of the world what Hinduism has done with the religions of
South Asia.

The coming age is one of spirituality and Self-realization, not

of formal religion and subservience to God or prophet. It is one of a
spiritual culture such as we see in Hindu Dharma that embraces all life
and nature. The coming planetary age does not belong to conversion-
seeking religions, which divide humanity into the believers and the non-
believers, but to the spirituality of consciousness such as revealed in
yogic traditions, and sought by great mystics everywhere, which unite
humanity into one great family with the entire universe.

Hindus welcome a new era of Self-realization and God-realization

beyond the boundaries of dogma and institution, honoring all individuals,
all cultures and all spiritual aspiration. Let us honor that Self in all beings
regardless of religious affiliation, ethnicity or culture. This will not only
lead us to a truly new millennium but also allow us to transcend time and
karma altogether, which is the real goal of our eternal striving.
 _________________

Part I.5
India at a Crossroads
___________

What is the secret of this great and enduring culture of India? The
unique feature of Indian or Bharatiya culture is unity-in-multiplicity or
what could be called ‘Vedic pluralism.’ The oldest Indian text and
perhaps the oldest book in the world, the Rigveda boldly proclaims:
“That which is the One Truth the seers teach in many different ways
(Rigveda I.164.46),” and “May noble aspirations come to us from every
side (Rigveda I.89.1).”

The Indic view is that though Truth is One the paths are many.
There is no need for any religious exclusivism or cultural uniformity.
Many different religions and philosophies must exist relative to the
different levels and temperaments of individuals. Even atheism has a
place as one possible view of reality for the human mind. A free
discussion and representation of all views is necessary to arrive at truth.
Even errors and mistakes must be allowed in a free inquiry into truth.
Truth can never be destroyed through scrutiny or examination. It is only
behind closed doors or in fixed dogma that truth cannot stand.

Vedic pluralism, however, is not mere polytheism or separatism. It

is a recognition of a unity that transcends name and form. The Hindu
sense of the One is also that of the infinite. Its unity is of the universal,
not of one thing as opposed to another, but as the one thing, like a single
thread, that links all things together. Such a deep inner unity can embrace
a multiple expression, just as the ocean can hold many waves and not get
disturbed by them.

This bedrock of Indic pluralism gave rise to the many different

sects of Hinduism, which remains the most diverse religious tradition in
the world with its Vedic, Tantric, Shaivite, Shakta, Vaishnava and other
sects both ancient and modern. It also provided the ground for Buddhist,
Jain, and Sikh traditions, which themselves have much diversity. It
spawned perhaps the greatest diversity of spiritual teachings in the entire
world. It respects science and art as part of our spiritual quest, building a
great material culture as well as wonderful temples. On its basis people in
India could even come to appreciate the spiritual aspects of less tolerant
religious groups who invaded them from across the border. Though still
largely misunderstood in the West as polytheism or a worship of many
Gods, this Bharatiya (Indic) pluralism reflects an open quest for truth and
a free flowering of all true human potentials such as the world
desperately needs today.

Unfortunately, over the first fifty years since independence India has
not discovered its real roots or reclaimed its true soul as a civilization. Its
intellectuals have mimicked western trends in thought, particularly
Marxism, even after these have been discredited in the West, following
them with an almost uncritical Hindu type of devotion.2[1] In an excessive
pursuit of secularism they found it necessary to denigrate their own
pluralistic traditions and favor foreign ideologies of religious or political
exclusivism. They have forgotten their great modern sages like Swami
Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo who projected futuristic views of the
Indian tradition and instead adulate western thinkers devoid of any
spiritual realization. They look at India with jaded eyes and find its
salvation in foreign lands. While many westerners come to India seeking
spiritual knowledge, Indian intellectuals look to the West with
admiration, pursuing materialistic ideologies that have left them unable to
understand their own more spiritual traditions. The result is that after fifty
years of independence India has not truly awakened; though it may be
stirring in its sleep.

We are now entering into a global age in which pluralism must be

the foundation of world culture. We can no longer pretend that only one
race, one culture or one religion alone is true. The dawning century is no
longer a missionary and colonial era in which one group can be allowed
hegemony in the world. It is a new age of dialogue and respect in which
we learn to honor and cherish all the cultures of the world. This should
start with the honoring of tribal cultures that are the custodians of the
Earth and the wisdom of nature that we so quickly losing in this artificial
age. It must include not just dominant western religions, but the great
traditions of the East, like Hinduism and Buddhism, which have a firm
foundation in tolerance and synthesis. We must learn to embrace all
human beings and their cultures as part of one great family (Vasudhaiva
kutumbakam). We can certainly have our differences but should
respectfully allow others to be different as well. Let our differences be a
cause for admiration and celebration, not for mistrust, hatred and a
seeking to eliminate them.

The dharmic traditions of India emphasize an organic pluralism as

the model for human development. Just as the human body is one but has
different organs that perform various functions for the benefit of the
whole, so human society is one in essence but diverse in function, with
each person like each cell of the body playing a vital role. This is not a
model of democratic uniformity. It recognizes that the male an the
female, the young and the old, the artist, thinker, businessman, politician
and yogi, with all their differences, all have their special place in society,
which is enriched by their diversity.

Yet Bharatiya Pluralism is not a relativism of anything goes. Its

foundation lies in universal values like ahimsa, not wishing harm to any
other creature and not seeking to interfere with the natural order. It is a
pluralism that reflects a respect for the sacred in all things. It is not a
pluralism of hedonism or materialism like that of the West that is
insensitive of the environment or of other cultures. It is a pluralism of the
spirit, not simply of the body; a pluralism of spiritual teachings, not
merely of material choices.

It is time for India once more to be a leader and an innovator in

world culture, rather than a follower and imitator as at present. To
accomplish this, India must discover its own voice and initiate its own
action in the global forum. Sri Aurobindo once remarked that India’s real
role was to be the guru among the nations of the world. At present it can
hardly keep order within its own frontiers. The country is crushed by its
own bureaucracy, though this grip is gradually loosening. Perhaps
because of long foreign rule India developed a sense of apathy and
resignation and a tolerance for oppression and inequality. This must go.

A new vitality and creativity is necessary for India that honors the
spirit of the country’s venerable traditions but does not restrict itself to
previous outdated forms. This requires a new generation of thinkers who
are global in outlook but grounded in the spirituality of Yoga and
Vedanta. Indic thinkers must return to their cultural wellsprings, not to
stop there, but to create a new vision of the future. Out of the old
Upanishads they need to envision new Upanishads.

Such a new India would combine science and spirituality in a global

perspective, combining the wisdom of ancient rishis with that of modern
creative thinkers. It would set forth a new spiritual or yogic science
showing us how to realize the consciousness that is the foundation of the
entire universe and the basis of universal law. It would develop our
material potentials but for the greater glory of the Spirit, the Self of all
beings. It would protect the earth which reaching into outer space. It
would raise the downtrodden, not to convert people to a belief but to help
all people realize their highest potential. Such an awakened India is
crucial for world culture, which presently remains trapped between a
destructive consumerism on one side and a rigid religious exclusivism on
the other.

We can already see how such traditional Indian disciplines as Yoga,

Ayurveda and Vedanta are gaining respect worldwide for their global
vision. Such an Indic or Dharmic perspective should be added to religion,
philosophy, science and medicine all over the world. The new India and
the new generation of Indians should take up this task of world-making
as their goal. The new world order of the computer and the information
revolution gives the country a new chance in the global arena and offers a
situation more favorable to its unique talents. But for this to occur India
must stand up and speak out according to its real essence—which is as a
spiritual superpower—regardless of whether this pleases everyone else in
the world.

Today there is only one superpower in the world, the United

States. But it is a superpower in the outer world only. Its wealth hides a
spiritual poverty and growing psychological and social unrest. No
technological superpower can properly guide the world in the planetary
age. Only a spiritual superpower can do this. India has the potential to be
the world’s spiritual superpower, but it requires a great labor to bring it
forth. The question is whether the country and its leaders are willing to
make the effort. This requires looking back to the inspiration of the great
rishis and yogis of the region, not merely following current political and
economic compulsions—but looking back only to go forward with a
renewed sense of mission and power.
 _____________
1[1]
In fact, the Marxist shrines in Bengal look like Hindu temples and Marxists use
pictures and statues of their leaders just as Hindus do of their Gods and Goddesses.

Part I.6
The Crisis in the Psyche of India
______________
A defeatist tendency exists in the psyche of modern Indians perhaps
unparalleled in any other country today. An inner conflict bordering on a
civil war rages in the minds of the country’s elite. The main effort of its
cultural leaders appears to be to pull the country down or remake it in a
foreign image, as if little Indian and certainly nothing Hindu was worthy of
preserving or even reforming.

The elite of India suffers from a fundamental alienation from the

traditions and culture of the land that would not be less poignant had they
been born and raised in a hostile country. The ruling elite appears to be
little more than a native incarnation of the old colonial rulers who
haughtily lived in their separate cantonments, neither mingling with the
people nor seeking to understand their customs. This new English-
speaking aristocracy prides itself in being disconnected from the very soil
and people that gave it birth.

There is probably no other country in the world where it has become a

national pastime among its educated class to denigrate its own culture and
history, however great that has been over the many millennia of its
existence. When great archaeological discoveries of India’s past are found,
for example, they are not a subject for national pride but are ridiculed as an
exaggeration, if not an invention, as if they represent only the imagination
of backward chauvinistic elements within the culture.

There is probably no other country where the majority religion,

however enlightened, mystical or spiritual, is ridiculed, while minority
religions, however fundamentalist or even militant, are doted upon. The
majority religion and its institutions are taxed and regulated while minority
religions receive tax benefits and have no regulation or even monitoring.
While the majority religion is carefully monitored and limited as to what it
can teach, minority religions can teach what they want, even if anti-
national or backward in nature. Books are banned that offend minority
religious sentiments but praised if they cast insults on majority beliefs.

There is probably no other country where regional, caste and family

loyalties are more important than the national interest, even among those
who claim to be democratic, socialist or caste reformers. Political parties
exist not to promote a national agenda but to sustain one region or group of
people in the country at the expense of the whole. Each group wants as big
a piece of the national pie as it can get, not realizing that the advantages it
gains mean deprivation for other groups. Yet when those who were
previously deprived gain power, they too seek the same unequal
advantages that causes further inequality and discontent.

India’s affirmative action code is by far the most extreme in the

world, trying to raise up certain segments of the population regardless of
merit, and prevent others from gaining positions however qualified they
may be. In the guise of removing caste, a new castism has arisen where
one’s caste is more important than one’s qualifications either in gaining
entrance into a school or in finding a job when one graduates. Anti-
Brahminism has often become the most virulent form of castist thinking.
People view the government not as their own creation but as a welfare state
from they should take the maximum personal benefit, regardless of the
consequences for the country as a whole.

Outside people need not pull Indians down. Indians are already quite
busy keeping any of their people and the country as a whole from rising
up. They would rather see their neighbors or the nation fail if they are not
given the top position. It is only outside of India that Indians succeed, often
remarkably well, because their native talents are not stifled by the
dominant cultural self-negativity and rabid divisiveness that exists in the
country today.

Political parties in India see gaining power as a means of amassing

personal wealth and robbing the nation. Political leaders include gangsters,
charlatans and buffoons who would stop short at nothing to gain power for
themselves and their coteries. Even so-called modern or liberal parties
resemble more the courts of kings, where personal loyalty is more
important than any democratic participation. Once they gain power
politicians routinely do little but cheat the people for their own advantage.
Even honest politicians find that they cannot function without some
deference to the more numerous corrupt leaders who often have a
stranglehold on the bureaucracy.

Politicians divide the country into warring vote banks and place one
community against another. They offer favors to communities like bribes
to make sure that they are elected or stay in power. They campaign on
slogans that appeal to community fears and suspicions rather than create
any national consensus or harmony. They hold power based upon blame
and hatred rather than on any positive programs for social change. They
inflame the uneducated masses with propaganda rather than work to make
people aware of real social problems like overpopulation, poor
infrastructure or lack of education.

Should a decent government come to power, the opposition pursues

pulling it down as its main goal, so that they can gain power for
themselves. The idea of a constructive or supportive opposition is hard to
find. The goal is to gain power for oneself and to not allow anyone else to
succeed.

To further their ambitions Indian politicians will manipulate the

foreign press to denigrate their opponents, even if it means spreading lies
and rumors and making the country an anathema in the eyes of the outside
world. Petty conflicts in India are blown out of proportion in the foreign
media, not by foreign journalists but by Indians seeking to use the media to
score points against their own opponents in the country. The Indians who
are responsible for the news of India in the foreign press spread venom and
distortion about their own country, perhaps better than any foreigner who
dislikes the culture ever could.

The killing of one Christian missionary becomes a national media

event of anti-Christian attacks while the murder of hundreds of Hindus is
taken casually as without any real importance, as if only the deaths of
white-skinned people mattered, not the slaughter of the natives. Missionary
aggression is extolled as social upliftment, while Hindu efforts at self-
defense against the conversion onslaught are portrayed as rabid
fundamentalism. One Indian journalist even lamented that western armies
would not come to India to chastise the political groups he was opposed to,
as if he was still looking for the colonial powers to save him!
 Let us look at the type of leaders that India has had with its Laloo
Prasad Yadav, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Jayalalita or Subrahmanya Swamy
to mention but a few. Such individuals are little more than warlords who
surround themselves with sycophants. Modern Indian politicians appear
more like colonial rulers looting their own country, following a divide and
rule policy, to keep the people so weak that their power cannot be
challenged. Corruption exists almost everywhere and bribery is the main
way to do business in nearly all fields. India has an entrenched bureaucracy
that resists change and stifles development, just out of sheer obstinacy and
not wanting to give up any control.

The Congress Party, the oldest in this predominantly Hindu nation,

has given its leadership to an Italian Catholic woman simply because as the
widow of the last Gandhi prime minister, she carries the family torch, as if
family loyalty were still the main basis of political credibility in the
country. And such a leader and a party are deemed progressive!

The strange thing is that India is not a banana republic of recent

vintage but one of the oldest and most venerable civilizations in the world.
Its culture is not trumpeting a militant and fundamentalist religion trying to
conquer the world for the one true faith but represents a vaster and more
cosmic vision. India has given birth to the main religions that have
dominated East Asia historically, the Hindu, Buddhist, Jain and Sikh,
which are noted for tolerance and spirituality. It has produced Sanskrit,
perhaps the world’s greatest language. It has given us the incredible
spiritual systems of Yoga and its great traditions of meditation and Self-
realization. As the world looks forward to a more universal model of
spirituality and a world view defined by consciousness rather than by
religious dogma these traditions are perhaps the most important legacy to
draw upon for creating a future enlightened civilization.

Yet the irony is that rather than embracing its own great traditions,
the modern Indian psyche prefers to slavishly imitate worn out trends in
western intellectual thought like Marxism or even to write apologetics for
Christian and Islamic missionary aggression. Though living in India, in
proximity to temples, yogis and great festivals, most modern Indian
intellectuals are oblivious to the soul of the land. They might as well be
living in England or China for all they know of their own country. They
are isolated in their own alien ideas as if in a tower of iron. If they choose
to rediscover India it is more likely to occur by reading the books of
western travelers visiting the country, than by their own direct experience
of the people around them.

The dominant Indian intelligentsia cannot appreciate even the

writings of the many great modern Indian sages, like Vivekananda or
Aurobindo, who wrote in good English and understood the national psyche
and how to revive. It is as if they were so successfully brainwashed against
their own culture that they cannot even look at it, even if presented to them
clearly in a modern light!

Given such a twisted and self-negative national psyche, can there be

any hope for the country? At the surface the situation looks quite dismal.
India appears like a nation without nationalism or at least without any
national pride or any real connection to its own history. Self-negativity and
even a cultural self-hatred abound. The elite that dominates the
universities, the media, the government and the business arenas is the
illegitimate child of foreign interests and is often still controlled by foreign
ideas and foreign resources. It cannot resist a bribe and there is much
money from overseas to draw upon. Indian politicians do not hesitate to
sell their country down the river and it does not require a high price.

Fortunately signs of a new awakening can be found. There is a new

interest in the older traditions of the country and many people now visit
temples and tirthas. Many young people now want to follow the older
heritage of the land and revive it in the modern age. The computer
revolution and the new science are reconnecting with the great intelligence
of the Indian psyche that produced the unfathomable mantras of the Vedas.
Slowly but surely a new intelligentsia is arising and now several important
journalists are writing and exposing the hypocrisy of the anti-Hindu Indian
elite. Yet only if this trend grows rapidly can there be a real counter to the
defeatist trend of the country. But it requires great effort, initiative and
creativity, not simply lamenting over the past but envisioning a new future
in harmony with the deeper aspirations of the region.

One must also not forget that the English-educated elite represents
only about three percent of the country, however much power they wield.
The remaining population is much more likely to preserve the older
traditions of the land. Even illiterate villagers often know more of real
Indian culture than do major Indian journalists and writers.
 Meanwhile overseas Hindus have become successful, well educated
and affluent, not by abandoning their culture but by holding to it. They see
Hindu culture not as a weakness but as a strength. Free of the Indian nation
and its fragmented psyche, they can draw upon their cultural resources in a
way that people born in India seldom can. Perhaps they can return to the
country and become its new leaders.

However, first this strange alienated elite has to be removed and

they will not do so without a fight. The sad thing is that they would
probably rather destroy their own country than have it function apart from
their control. The future of India looks like a new Kurukshetra and it
requires a similar miracle for victory. Such a war will be fought not on
some outer battlefield but in the hearts and minds of people, in where they
choose to draw their inspiration and find their connection with life.

Yet regardless of outer appearances, the inner soul of the land

cannot be put down so easily. It has been nourished by many centuries of
tapas by great yogis and sages. This soul of Bharat Mata will rise up again
through Kali (destruction) to Durga (strength). The question is how long
and difficult the process must be.

__________________

Part I.7
Western Monoculture and Indic Pluralism

______________

The Spread of the Monoculture

Western civilization, in spite of claims to support diversity, is

promoting a worldwide monoculture—the same basic values, institutions
and points of view for everyone—which it calls ‘globalization’. Western
commercial culture with its pursuit of markets and commodities
eliminates all true culture, which is based on quality, not quantity. It
creates a culture of money that submerges any true culture of refinement
or spirituality, in which everything can be bought and sold, possessed or
capitalized on.

If we visit shopping malls in America today, for example, it is hard

to tell what state in the country we are located in. The shopping malls in
Florida, California, New York or the Midwest have the same basic stores
and sell the same basic products. The streets look the same, as do the
houses, apartment buildings and office buildings. People eat the same
basic types of food and have the same habits of work, sleep and
relaxation. Almost everything is mass-produced and follows the same
economy driven forces.

These same types of businesses pioneered in America are

spreading worldwide, whether it is Coca Cola, McDonalds, blue jeans or
Barbie dolls. One finds the same multinational corporations operating in
nearly every major city of the world, whether Tokyo, Shanghai, Mumbai
or London. While one finds foreign stores like Chinese restaurants in
shopping malls even in America, which have their niche in the global
scene, these operate according to the same commercial approach as
standard western businesses. They do not represent real globalization but
a co-opting of foreign businesses by the western commercial culture.

The world media is yet more of a monoculture. News services

worldwide provide what are essentially the same stories from the same
cultural slant. They are standardized in a western model and promote a
western point of view with western ideals of free trade, social equality,
democracy and affluence. People all over the world watch Hollywood
movies, listen to the pop music of the US and Europe, and adulate
American athletes.

Similarly, in the universities of the world, it is mainly western

civilization that is taught, even if there is an old and profound
civilization. In a country like India, Shakespeare is a much better known
and quoted poet than Kalidas, the equivalent great Sanskrit poet. The
West honors the Japanese for enthusiastically taking up western culture,
music and entertainment. But it regards as close-minded or communal,
cultures that try to hold their own ground and avoid the consumerist
assimilation.
The Danger of Monoculture

This consumerist monoculture is a great leveler of culture.

Wherever it goes it either destroys or co-opts the local culture. It destroys
local culture by ending native traditions and replacing them with western
business, political, religious or intellectual models. It co-opts them by
turning local arts and crafts into exotic ware for mass marketing, for
example, how Native American culture has been turned into a big
business in the US, though the money seldom goes to the natives!
Monoculture results in ‘deculturalization’ in which entire cultures and
civilizations are subverted or eliminated. Modern commercial culture is
monopolistic and seeks hegemony, though it allows a diversity within its
ranks so long as it doesn’t interfere with its expansionist aims.

We can compare this social monoculture with plant monoculture.

Monoculture in farming occurs when the same crops are planted over and
again in the same soil. The result is that the soil gets exhausted.
Monoculture in nature occurs when the diversity of plant species is
destroyed by deforestation and a few species, often of foreign origin, are
planted instead or simply flourish as weeds. Monoculture in agriculture
and forestry result in the loss of both plant and animal species. Similarly,
monoculture in human culture brings about the loss of cultural and
individual diversity. Today we are witnessing, generally silently, an
appalling and rapid disappearance of traditional cultures. Languages, the
hallmark of culture, are passing away in the world at a rapid rate.
Monoculture with its standardization and uniformity is the rule.
Franchise is the game in businesses of all types. Local and home owned
stores are disappearing, just as the family farm has given way to global
agribusiness run by large oil companies (like Exxon owning vast tracts of
farmland in California)!

We can draw a further analogy between the monoculture and the use
of terminator seeds, which when planted render native seeds sterile. The
real purpose of such seeds is not to increase food production but to make
farmers worldwide dependent on seed banks for further crops that puts
them under control of the global agribusiness. The monoculture tries to
control the rules of debate and the presentation of ideas worldwide,
which all goes back to it for validation. People only gain validity in their
field when famous or recognized by the monoculture and its media.
Representatives of other cultural traditions don’t count for anything. The
result is that people go to monoculture institutions to gain credibility
even in their local cultural disciplines. In the Indian context, Indian
scholars seek their credentials not in their own temples and ashrams of
their own country but in western institutions like Heidelberg, Oxford or
Harvard, or in westernized departments of their own countries like at
JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University), the center of leftist thought in India.
Such scholars become opponents of their own cultural traditions,
supplanting native schools of thought with the cultural seeds of the West,
putting an end to their own independent traditions of thought which they
are supposed to represent!

The destruction of cultural diversity, like that of biodiversity, is

devastating to living systems. The loss of cultural diversity does to
human beings what the destruction of biodiversity does to the world of
nature. Just as we are destroying our outer landscape of forests and
wilderness, so we are destroying our inner landscape of art and
spirituality. Our minds are as polluted as our rivers.

Monoculture and the Quality of Life

Monoculture claims to improve life by raising ‘living standards’.

People all over the world make what is on paper a much higher income
than that of their parents. With this income they can buy computers,
televisions, stereos, or whatever the latest technological equipment
happens to be. They can afford to go to restaurants, watch movies or
travel and stay in expensive hotels. However, this increased ‘paper
wealth’ is deceptive. Their houses, which on paper are worth
phenomenally more than those of their parents, are usually smaller and
much more expensive to maintain. In fact, housing shortages are
everywhere. The beautiful scenery of nature that used to surround human
habitats is replaced by a bleak urban environment of cement, glass and
steel, in which the garden is but a few potted plants on a terrace
overlooking the street!

The quality of air and water has been greatly reduced all over the
world. Our cities have air that is unhealthy to breathe. Most of our water
is unfit to drink. Even fish cannot live in most of our streams. The quality
of food is significantly less in spite of advances in corporate farming.
Fast food and over-spiced restaurant food replace the home grown or
freshly cooked food of previous generations. Good quality fresh fruit and
vegetables, which used to be commonly available, are now only rarely
found in special natural food stores in the West at a special price.

The monoculture person has less real leisure time than previous
generations. We are busy all week long working, using our spare time for
shopping or other chores. There are few local cultural events of music,
plays, festivals and dance and even these have been commercialized and
are spectator events, not the participatory events of earlier times. They
have no aura of the sacred that the rituals of previous generations often
had. The real victim of monoculture, therefore, is the individual who is
deprived of any direct contact with nature, the universe, a community,
himself or herself.

The movement toward monoculture arose through the industrial

revolution and the printing press that could standardize information. It
mushroomed in the twentieth century with global industrialization. Now
with the computer and media age it is far advanced, moving forward at
times almost like a blind steamroller crushing everything in its path.

Monoculture and Monotheism

The roots of monoculture in western civilization can be traced to

monotheism, particularly of a missionary type—the effort to impose a
belief in only One God of a certain type on all people, ignoring all other
spiritual paths, however old or rich in ideas and experiences. This One
God appears as a tyrannical, if not militant being who has a severe set of
rewards and punishments—which necessitates a single savior, bible and
church for the entire world. Whether this was the original intent of the
prophets or a deviation, it has come to represent the dominant trend in
western religious thinking and the orientation of western culture both
religious and secular.

Under early Christianity, monotheism allied itself with Roman

imperialism and an allegiance to the state—which was a political
monoculture—turning a religious rigidity into a military weapon. In the
colonial era, western monoculture became a cult of church and empire as
a means of conquering the world, to make everyone western and
Christian in civilization. Monoculture extends from an expansionist
monotheism, which is monoculture in religion and destroys religious
diversity and individual spiritual experience that is only possible apart
from any church and its dogma. It leads to other forms of monoculture
politically, economically, socially and intellectually.

Western monotheism is essentially an authoritarian tradition and

monotheistic institutions like the Vatican are authoritarian hierarchies to
the present day, with orders being imposed upon the masses from on
above. The dogma of the book, prophet or savior and One God cannot be
questioned. Anti-blasphemy laws remain in effect in so-called Islamic
‘republics’, making it a crime, if not a capital offense, to even question
the book or the prophet. Anti-apostasy laws are also there, making it a
crime for a Muslim to convert to another religion (but allowing members
of other religions to convert to Islam). Such laws were present in
medieval Christianity where they were used to oppress science and stop
any freethinking.

Today, however, Christians have put a new spin on their

monotheism. They would equate monotheism, if not Christianity itself,
with unity, equality and democracy—One God and one humanity.
However, this is done without changing the exclusive and monopolistic
nature of Christian beliefs or institutions, making one doubt its sincerity.
The current pope, for example, though really a conservative figure, has
used this form of propaganda to justify Catholic conversion efforts in the
world. He would have us believe that promoting an authoritarian church
and its antiquated dogma was somehow liberal and would advance
political freedom, particularly in non-Christian countries, where the
church would come in to save people from anti-democratic governments
and social inequalities! He speaks out against the lack of freedom and
democracy in various countries without introducing these into his own
church first!

Monotheism and Christianity are being equated in the West with

democracy and human rights, though this was certainly no part of their
colonial rule. We should look at Central and South America, where an
alliance of the church with dictators and military rulers has been long
standing, and which continue to have a great inequality between the rich
and the poor, those of European blood and the native Indians. We must
remember that the fascist dictators of Europe and America, including
Mussolini, were good Catholics that the church did not seriously oppose.
Yet those who oppose the missionaries today in the third world are called
fascists or communalists, not the missionaries, completely ignoring the
facts of history!

Monoculture, in turn, has no real problem with monotheism,

though western monotheism is largely authoritarian and anti-democratic.
There is no one person, one vote idea in these religions but only fiats and
fatwas from on high. Monoculture treats the monotheistic church with the
same dignity of any country or corporation that has economic or political
clout. This is because western monotheism has adopted the corporate
model and used its numbers and resources to gain political influence and
favors. It has created a global multinational religious business using the
media and the Internet for proselytizing, spreading a religious message
like an advertising campaign. The world media does not challenge such
religious aggression, any more than it does the aggression of the fast food
industry.

Nineteenth century colonial rulers, like the British in India, found

missionaries to be useful, even though Europe at the time had many free
thinkers questioning the church and the Bible. So too, the modern
monoculture finds missionaries to be a helpful tool—even though they
represent a more conservative form of Christianity than practiced by
most people in the West. Such backward religious beliefs appeal to the
poor and uneducated, which is why the most devout Christian countries
like those in South America are among the most backward in the world.
This means that Christianity can be provide a first stage in the
westernization of poorer cultures, particularly those like India that have
deep religious roots.

Monoculture and Democracy

Monoculture has made a home with democracy. This may be

surprising at first because democracy appears as the ultimate form of
pluralism, with each individual a free and equal member of society. After
all, democracy allows each person, even the poor, weak or elderly, the
same one vote. However, current democracies only have the appearance
of pluralism. If we look deeper, only an educated democracy can be truly
pluralistic. An uneducated democracy can create its own form of
totalitarianism or mob rule. The masses are easy to manipulate by money,
the media or an appeal to prejudices and vote banks. Getting elected for a
politician in a modern democracy is not a matter of encouraging
pluralism but of manipulating public opinion with slogans and promises
that are seldom kept. Charismatic movie stars can easily defeat seasoned
diplomats. The modern politician resembles more a Roman emperor
controlling the masses through bread and circuses than any true
representative of the people or of an enlightened culture.

In addition, promoting democracy worldwide is a good tool to

destroy political diversity. No other political systems are allowed today
in the world but democracy of a western-style nature—which means the
rule of business, the media and the monoculture, along with the
promotion of western civilization. Groups agitating for a western style
democracy systematically undermine other governments as if anything
else were immoral, just as monotheistic religions cannot tolerate other
religious views. Modern democracy does not allow for pluralism in
governmental systems but requires that it is the only acceptable form, just
as monotheism claims all morality for itself and equates other forms of
spirituality with the devil.

Modern democracies give the vote to the isolated individual, who

is easy to manipulate. Other power centers of a local kind get
marginalized, just as multinational corporations and their franchises put
an end to local businesses and native crafts under the guise of free trade.
Modern democracies are largely state run governments and have little
place for the local rule found in traditional societies, where the village,
tribe or community had the rights of self-determination over the most
important issues of life, health and work. The state, like the churches
previously, doles out its favors and makes the individuals dependent
upon it for their livelihood. Leaders pretend to be doing the will of the
people when they are only making the people subservient and keeping
them ignorant.

Democracy has created an atomization of society, the reduction of

all social groups to the isolated individual, who removed from more
intimate social support becomes exposed and easy to influence. Without
the social support of family and community, for example, the elderly end
up as wards of the state, on Medicare. Such state care, though deemed
compassionate, is impersonal, often cruel and masks a fundamental
destruction of natural social orders. The social isolation created by
modern democracy is resulting in an epidemic of depression in the West
that is striking all age groups but particularly those in middle age. The
prescription drug industry has become the compassionate savior of
modern society, but is really getting an entire culture addicted to drugs as
the solution to their mounting physical and psychological problems!
Governments debate on how much money to spend on prescription drugs
for the elderly, but they never ask why an entire generation is dependent
upon drugs for its well-being.

Monoculture and Free Trade

Monoculture does quite well with free trade and the spread of
global consumerism, which is monoculture economics. Other economic
systems are not allowed and are systematically undermined. The
economic might of the monoculture levels any economic diversity,
moving towards a single financial standard or currency worldwide. A
uniform world economy destroys local economies and their rich diversity
of expression and interactions based on an organic dependency. The rule
of multinational businesses takes the place of local economies. Global
corporate solutions are applied to local management issues, often with
disastrous results.

Corporate agriculture, the new agricultural monoculture, for

example, is advertising its ability to feed the world and end world
hunger, portraying itself in the benefic aspect of the church or a socialist
government selflessly aiding the poor. What it is really doing is
undermining the most basic of human rights, the right to feed oneself and
to control one’s food sources. What the global agribusiness envisions is
control of the world food market, so that it can force entire countries to
bow down before it, who cannot even eat without its favor. Among its
tools are genetically engineered crops, including terminator seeds that
destroy local plant varieties, fertilizers that weaken the soils and breed
dependency, and patents on plants that afford corporate ownership to
nature’s bounty. Meanwhile, those who oppose the global food business
are deemed backwards, causing hunger and starvation in the world, as if
apart from the agribusiness no one could feed themselves!

Should any group oppose the monoculture, the religious, political,

intellectual and economic forces of monoculture will attack it, often
mercilessly. Monoculture ideas of monotheism, democracy, social
equality and free trade are used as the moral torch to consume all other
cultural views. They are deemed ‘universal’, meaning that no one can
question them or look to what is really working behind them. Such
‘universalism’ is simply a new mask of intolerance. The very forces that
try to resist monoculture are denigrated as communal, undemocratic and
unprogressive, even if they are pluralistic in their approach or reflect a
deep spiritual wisdom or love of nature.

For example, the Hindu effort to resist missionaries in India is

portrayed in the media as a form of religious fundamentalism, while the
Christian missionary aggression and intolerance of Hindu pluralism is
deemed progressive. Similarly, when Hindu economic activists used the
slogan of ‘computer chips yes, potato chips no’, resisting the American
fast food industry, the western media deems the response to be backward
and confused.

The Indic Model of Pluralism

The Indic model of culture is not one of monoculture but of

cultural diversity, like India’s landscape of many wide rivers and
towering mountains. Indic civilization is based upon a pluralistic model
and a synthetic approach to life’s problems. It acknowledges that
different points of view may be valid for different individuals and
communities and encourages these to develop unhindered by any
overriding church, state or business concerns. Its sense of unity arises
through interdependence. We see this in Indic religions that offer many
sages, yogis, teachings, a diversity of Gods and Goddesses, and a
recognition of both the One and the many.

Western civilization as it has developed over the past centuries, on

the other hand, is monolithic and singularistic. It imposes a single point
of view on everyone. Its sense of unity arises from uniformity. We see
this in western religions that require a single God, book, savior, prophet
or church for everyone. The one God of western monotheism reflects this
need for control, uniformity, power, retribution and revenge.

In the colonial era, western powers sought to impose their religion

on Asia using force, intimidation and incentives and denigrating Indic
religions as primitive, promoting conversion as a necessity for civilized
growth. In the post-colonial era, western religions use the guise of
democracy and human rights to continue the same proselytizing efforts.
When Indic religions oppose them, they are labeled communal, intolerant
or anti-democratic.

Democracy itself has become the instrument of a consumerist

totalitarianism. The masses are easily manipulated by the ability to
promote and fulfill their material desires, their needs for greater
entertainment or new conveniences. The Asian view is not one of
democratic uniformity but of an organic order that recognizes different
individual, class and cultural needs. We must look at society like the
human body in which there is a unity of being but a diversity of
functions. For true freedom in the world, there must be both material and
spiritual freedom, which requires freedom from any cultural domination
whether economically, politically or religiously.

However, certain aspects of Hindu thought and culture can become

popular, trendy or commercially viable in the monoculture today. This is
most obvious in the Yoga movement that is already being mass marketed
and turned into franchises. Yet whether this serves to spiritualize western
culture to corrupt the spiritual traditions of the East remains to be seen.

This rising interest in spirituality has occurred because the

materialist monoculture leaves people inwardly empty. Material
affluence has resulted in spiritual poverty and psychological malaise. It is
also because western religions are rather bland affairs compared to exotic
Hinduism and all of its gurus, deities and Yoga practices. Those who
have gone through the monoculture and seen its limitations are more
likely to be attracted to the dharmic traditions of the East.

The question then arises whether Hindu culture is rich and diverse
enough overcome the monoculture or assimilate it over time. No doubt it
can do so eventually. The issue is how much time and effort and
obstructions along the way will be required to change the monoculture.
But for this to occur, Hindu thought and its pluralistic sense of the Divine
must become part of the new paradigm. Over time, the natural human
urge for diversity will also arise to counter monoculture that must lead to
sterility, like monoculture in agriculture.
 The movement toward global uniformity must be abandoned, not
only materially but also spiritually. True globalism is not that of
monoculture consumerism but based on a respect for local environments,
which also means honoring local cultures. True culture is not a
commercial commodity but is priceless. It is rooted in a consciousness, a
state of mind, and harmony with the natural world. Keeping up with the
latest trends in the market place will never take us there. To discover it
we must turn our machines off and look within.

_________________________

Part I.8
Religious Exclusivism, Racism and Colonialism
____________
Recent centuries saw the European domination of the world through
colonialism and imperialism. Colonial ideas were closely connected to
racism and slavery, on one hand, and to religious missionary efforts on
the other. These three ideas or beliefs were intimately related both in
theory and in practice. Missionaries accompanied colonial armies that
enslaved or turned native peoples into bonded laborers.

In the colonial era, many Europeans thought that the white race was
superior to all other races that were savages, particularly dark-skinned
people, whose very skin color indicated something evil. They similarly
thought that Christianity, the religion of the white man, was superior to
all the religions of other races, which were primitive, polytheistic and
unholy. Dark skinned people and devil worship were even equated in the
popular mind. The civilization of white Europe was considered to be true
civilization while civilizations even of venerable ancient cultures like
India and China were deemed barbaric, akin to the superstitions of tribal
peoples.

Today in most of the world, we have discarded colonialism and

recognized its errors at least as an overt policy (often it continues in
subvert economic forms, however). We have even more severely
criticized racism and tried to eliminate it (though it also continues in
various forms). Countries like South Africa that continued racist policies
into the post-war era met with global scorn until they changed. The idea
of the supremacy of the white race that was commonly accepted in
intellectual, cultural and political circles in the West in the last century is
now looked upon as backward and bigoted. However, the third
component of colonial expansion—religious exclusivism—still
flourishes much as it did in the previous centuries, though sometimes
with a tarnished image, and is in many places as aggressive and intolerant
as ever.

While colonial armies no longer go overseas, the missionary

groups that used to accompany them still follow the same old paths and
with the same worn mentality. Missionaries are still trained to infiltrate
and undermine foreign cultures and their different religions. They still
have the same arrogance and sense of superiority over non-Christian
beliefs, which they will not sympathetically examine at all. Evangelic
preachers still preach hellfire and damnation, particularly to Hindus, who
were seen by Christians as the most idolatrous of all religions in the
colonial era and still are today. The missionaries are still living in
previous centuries. While we honor the right of peoples to form their own
governments, the missionaries do not honor the right of peoples to
choose a non-Christian belief, which they deem as a sin against God!

Of course, the missionaries have made some adaptations to the

times, particularly since they no longer have an army or colonial
government to protect them. They speak of human rights and helping
people achieve freedom and economic development. However, they are
quite willing to destroy cultures and will not help a non-Christian culture
to develop itself. They like to blame the non-Christian beliefs of other
cultures for their social and economic problems, even though Christian
countries in Latin and South America are among the most backward in
the world. The missionaries are also quick to use the media, television
and the Internet, but not to improve global communication and respect
for different cultures, only to promote their global conversion agenda like
a steamroller over all other points of view.

Let us be very clear about the dangers of religious exclusivism that

has spawned every sort of crusade, holy war, genocide and hostility
through the centuries. The idea that only one religion is true and all
others are false is akin to the idea that only one race is noble and all other
races are inferior. It is akin to the idea that only one culture is civilized
and all other cultures, even those with great literatures of their own, are
barbaric. This idea of religious exclusivism is another nineteenth century
prejudice, like racism, that is out of date in the planetary age. It reflects
bigotry and narrow mindedness. It promotes communal disharmony and
breeds violence.

In fact, one could argue that religious exclusivism is worse than

racism. Racism says that one race is overall better than the others, which
are inferior or even subhuman. Religious exclusivism states that one
religion alone takes us to God, heaven or paradise while the others take
us to hell or eternal damnation. It makes certain groups unholy, if not
evil.

Racism calls people of other races niggers or savages. Religious

exclusivism calls people of other beliefs heathens, kafirs, or devil
worshippers. Which is worse? For someone to call you a derogatory
racial term like nigger, or to say that you are under the influence of the
devil? Clearly, to be called subhuman is bad enough, but religious
exclusivism can render the others to be non-human or even demonic,
which is worse.

Therefore, it is time that the countries of the world to make a call

to discard religious exclusivism just as we have made a similar call to
reject racism and colonialism as morally and culturally wrong. This
means that first of all we must expose and criticize the danger and the
bias of religious exclusivism just as we have done that of racism and
colonialism. As a culture we must also stop praising religious
exclusivism in the media or our educational system, just as we no longer
use these to promote racism. The triumphalism of the One true God,
book, savior or prophet must be set aside just like the triumphalism of the
ruling race, empire or dictator.

This means that we should strive to promote pluralism in religion

as a primary cultural and societal value, as part of real human rights and a
truly culturally sensitive educational system. We must recognize that
spirituality cannot be owned by any belief, church, savior or creed. We
must learn to welcome a diversity in spiritual practices, respecting many
paths to God or truth. In this process we must honor the many non-
Biblical paths that have been trampled upon as unholy, become receptive
to their wisdom and help restore their place in the world. We must realize
 that each individual should be free to find God in his or her own way and
that no institution or belief is required for this.

Naturally, religious groups that have benefited from exclusivism

and promote it for missionary agendas will resist. They will try to hide
the injustice of religious exclusivism under the guise religious freedom,
projecting conversion to exclusive and authoritarian beliefs as a
democratic right. Such diversionary tactics should be exposed. Religious
exclusivism is inherently divisive and, therefore, violent. It is communal,
separating humanity into the warring camps of the true believers and the
non-believers. It is not the Will of God but the assertion of the individual
or collective ego and a drive for domination. Let us allow the same
diversity in religion that we allow in language or art or other cultural
domains.

The human religious potential and experience is so many-sided

and multi-layered that it transcends all names and forms, personalities
and institutions. Our true nature is Divine. It is not something we can be
converted to, but something that we can discover when we set all external
forms of manipulation and control aside.

_______________

Part I.9

The Hindu Response to Globalization

________________
Globalization refers to an expansion beyond national borders that
includes all aspects of human life and culture, but particularly related
spheres of business, science and technology. It is the dominant theme of
multinational corporations and the world media with its worldwide
coverage of the news. We find people of all races, nationalities and
religions participating in a global exchange of information, ideas and
commodities.

Globalization has brought about a migration of many peoples,

including a Hindu Diaspora. There are now significant Hindu minorities
in North America and UK not as old indentured servants but as part of a
new cultural elite of computer programmers, doctors and engineers.
Peoples are mixing all over the world, as the whole planet gradually
becomes a single melting pot.

However, globalization is often projected uncritically as if it

reflected some necessary good for everyone. Certainly the benefits of
globalization are evident in greater affluence, better communication and
advancements in technology that have reached most of the planet. But
globalization has its shadows with a deteriorating effect on the
environment and an alarming persistence of poverty in various nations,
including a few already extensively exposed to globalization. It remains
to be seen whether the benefits of this current globalization will outweigh
its long-term harm to the environment and to cultural diversity.

Planetary Thinking

A related term to globalization is ‘planetary.’ Some thinkers speak

of a new ‘planetary age’, in which we are becoming cognizant of
ourselves as citizens of the entire globe rather than only loyal to a
particular country, culture or religion. Planetary could be called the
positive side of globalization and implies a genuine concern for nature. It
refers to a holistic vision of life and of the earth. It indicates the need to
protect not only the natural environment, but also traditional cultures and
non-western ways of living.

Perhaps the main idealistic pursuit in the West today is ecology,

which flows out of this planetary vision. Ecologists are thinking in
planetary terms, not simply in nationalistic or even human terms.
Because of their planetary perspective, they are opposed to globalization
in which business interests override human and natural needs, like the
cutting down of the rainforests by multinational corporations.

Multiculturalism and the Clash of Cultures

A third related term to consider is ‘multiculturalism’. This implies

that we must consider the needs and values of all cultures throughout the
world—that no single culture should dominate all humanity. It means
that not only European but also African and Asian cultural models have
their importance and their place in the world order.
Yet multiculturalism connects with its opposite, the idea of the
‘clash of cultures’ made famous in the recent works of Samuel
Huntington. In this view the different cultural spheres of the world, like
the western European, Islamic or Hindu are like the hostile nations of
old. We are in an era of cultural warfare, not so much through the
battlefield as through the media and through economics. Cultural spheres
rather than national boundaries are the main lines of division and
confrontation.

Cultural chauvinism and isolationism still continues in the era of

globalization, even among the countries supposed to be the most global
in their views. For example, the average American, from the very country
pioneering globalization, is unlikely to speak any language other than
English and is unable to explain even the basics of foreign cultures or
religions. During the 1991 Gulf War, for example, it was found that over
fifty percent of Americans didn’t even know where the Persian Gulf was
located on the globe. Americans remain apathetic about foreign affairs
even while aggressively spreading their culture worldwide. The
American view of globalization is people all over the world becoming
American or adapting an American consumerist life-style. We must
recognize that this is not true globalization at all and reflects a narrow
point of view, not planetary thinking.

The Down Side of Globalization

The negative side of globalization is a disturbing neo-colonialism—

the continued projection of western and European civilization and its
values for everyone, just as in the colonial era. The new multinational
corporations appear like a continuation of old colonial businesses like the
East India Company. Modern technology allows companies to control
other countries without the need of a military presence, through money,
capital and media alone, which doesn’t necessarily make such control
more just or less obtrusive.

Most of the values behind the current globalization are the same as
those of colonialism, which are those of western culture. The West
considers its culture to be universal, though it is only one of many in the
world. The old colonial rulers had the same view of their culture as the
best for everyone on the planet. The West sees not only its scientific view
of the world as for good for all, but also its intellectual culture and its
religions as the best, if not the only the legitimate ones. While Americans
are proud of Asians wearing blue jeans they are quite suspicious of
Americans wearing turbans or chanting Sanskrit mantras.

Slavery characterized the colonial era, along with a division of

humanity into civilized and primitive nations. Such slavery was
abolished by law but continues in a new form. The modern world has a
corresponding division of rich and poor, developed and developing (or
undeveloped) nations. Poor assembly line workers in Asia are much like
the slaves of the last century and not always much better cared for. This
gap between rich and poor nations is increasing rather than decreasing.
The recent economic crisis in East Asia shows that economic
development in the Third World may not be continuous but may go
through a decline or crash before ever reaching its expected goals.

Materialism for All

Globalization is not so much a respect for cultures all over the world
as it is a case of cultures all over the world following a western,
particularly American life-style and mode of behavior. In the American
model of life, business and money is the main concern, with material
affluence the goal of all striving. The culture is one of entertainment and
recreation, with shopping malls, giant movie screens and huge sports
arenas as the modern temples.

This new multiculturalism expects everyone to pursue wealth and

technology and follow the life-style guidelines of the western media. It
has little concern for religion, which after all in the West, is mainly a
formality that few take seriously. Or it turns religion into a business,
honoring religions that use an aggressive and ruthless marketing of their
products. It has no spiritual concern or regard for Moksha or liberation
from the material world. It is quite happy in the material world and only
seeks to find new ways to enjoy it better.

Yet the very success of this materialism has caused many in the
West to begin to question it and look for a more spiritual way of life.
 This has brought them in the direction of the East and India in particular,
pursuing Yoga and meditation, which are gradually becoming popular in
the West.

Globalization of Hinduism on a Spiritual Level

The globalization of Hindu Dharma on a spiritual level occurred

some time ago, going back at least to Ramakrishna in the last century. In
fact modern Hindu gurus have been the main pioneers of a new universal,
global or planetary spirituality, not limited to any particular church,
savior or belief. They have not spoken or taught merely as Hindus, or as
opposing other religions, but as seeking a spiritual approach that
synthesizes the best in all human striving under the understanding that
humanity is one family and all of the human spiritual heritage belongs to
each of us.

Modern Hindu gurus have tried in a pluralistic, global and

multicultural way to take what is best in all religions and respect the truth
wherever it occurs. They have projected themselves more as universal
teachers and their teaching of Yoga and Vedanta as universal paths,
rather than portraying themselves as sectarian Hindus. Some have been
projected as avataras of new global or planetary religions beyond any
religious affiliation even that of Hinduism or Sanatana Dharma. These
views have given Hindu gurus some popularity in the West and some
following by western students, even by those who have not become
Hindus or who have preserved their own religious beliefs.

Even Hollywood has taken an interest in Yoga and in Buddhism,

showing that media influences are not always against the deeper
knowledge behind the Indic traditions. New Age and counter cultural
trends in the West carry a strong interest in Eastern religions, including
various Hindu teachers and teachings. Hindu bhajans are beginning to
become popular in the pop music circle in America. Ayurvedic medicine
and even Vedic astrology are gaining adherents in the West, and often
among the more educated and affluent members of society.

Misuse of Hindu Tolerance

 Yet there has been a down side to this Hindu universalism as well.
The Hindu recognition of Christ as a great yogi, for example, has been
used as part of missionary propaganda to convert Hindus. Many
Catholics claim to see value in Indian philosophies like Vedanta, but only
like what earlier Christians saw in pagan Greek philosophers, a good
philosophical base on which to build their own conversion efforts, not a
genuine respect for an independent tradition.

Hindu tolerance of Islam has allowed many Hindu girls to marry

Muslims and become Muslims but it has not resulted in Muslims
respecting Hinduism or allowing their girls to convert to Hinduism to
marry Hindu boys. In short this Hindu universalism has seldom been
reciprocated and often been abused.

The multifaith era has some advantage for Hinduism because it

recognizing a pluralism in religion, which is perhaps the essence of
Hinduism, but even here Hinduism has not always done well. The
problem is that multifaith groups tend to interpret religion in a Biblical
sense as one God and one Book or even one prophet or savior, projecting
a monotheistic model as universal for everyone. Western religious
leaders only come to admire Hinduism when it appears like monotheism,
when the Vedas are the Bible, or when Krishna is like the Son of God.
Some Hindus are too quick to make these equations not realizing that
they are not creating an understanding or tolerance of Hinduism but
merely catering to western religious views.

The Challenge to Hinduism from Globalization

Hindu culture and spirituality, though spreading in their influence in

the new global arena, are still being undermined by outside influences.
The global age still poses a major challenge to Hindu spirituality through
missionary efforts, just as in the colonial era. The global media and
global money possess an inherent bias for western cultures and religions.
Christian and Islamic groups have money and media power to target
Hindus and continue to do so on a large scale, not only in the West where
Hindus are recent immigrants but in India itself. For them globalization
still means one religion for everyone and the end of religious traditions
different than their own. While only about a fifth of Americans are
fundamentalist Christians and while the predominant American culture
tends to belittle them as backward, they still can mobilize massive
resources for their overseas conversion efforts, holding a large fraction of
the resources of an enormously rich nation.

Global business presents a challenge to Hindu spirituality because it

projects a materialistic model for the entire world, including for India. It
is hardly a culture of enlightenment that global business is bringing to the
world but junk food like coca cola, movies saturated with sex and
violence, and a naive adulation of athletes and movie stars as the most
desirable human types. Such a commercial culture undermines spiritual
cultures like those in India. It places a strong imprint of enjoyment on the
minds of people so that the pursuit of liberation, which implies simplicity
and asceticism, is forgotten.

Hindu Responses to Globalization

However, there has been little organized Hindu response to

globalization, either to its advantages or disadvantages. Hinduism tends
to be otherworldly and not to react quickly to temporal changes.
Hinduism also is not very well organized socially or intellectually to
tackle such outer issues in a major way. Some Hindus think that they
need not make any response to globalization other than to continue their
spiritual practices. However, when they see their children adopting
western commercial culture or changing to a hostile western religious
belief they often have a rude awakening.

Perhaps the most obvious Hindu response is that to the global

evangelical movement. Movements like Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP),
or its older prototype the Arya Samaj, have arisen to counter this trend,
helping to reconvert Hindus who have joined these other religions. Yet
even in spite of the rapid growth of such organizations, most Hindu
groups make little effort in this regard, still thinking that the religion
people follow doesn’t matter because all religions are good.

Another part is the Hindu response to global business. One effort,

going back to Mahatma Gandhi, is to try to protect the villages of India
from global business and promote a swadeshi movement. Another effort
is to promote technological development but try to avoid western
commercial culture as in the BJPs slogan of “computer chips yes, potato
chips no.” A social and spiritual effort is that of the Swadhyaya
movement of Pandurang Shastri Athavale which aims at creating a more
indigenous Indic model for the spread of spirituality and the protection of
families and villages. This is an important trend that needs more work
and attention.

The Hindu response to environmental and ecological concerns,

though rapidly growing, has also been rather weak. India has already
been devastated in terms of its ecology and this trend is increasing at an
alarming rate. There is little organized Hindu effort to counter this, the
great Hindu tradition of Bhumi Puja and love for Mother Earth
notwithstanding. That Hindus have forgotten their connection with the
Earth is perhaps their greatest falling from their older and deeper
traditions. The Hindu ecological movement needs to get much more
attention and support from Hindu groups throughout the world.

The Hindu use of the global media remains inefficient, where a

positive Hindu view is seldom presented. The notable exception to this is
the Internet where, for example, the Hindu Universe (hindunet.org) is a
well-organized and popular site. India has more software technicians than
any country in the world so it has the capacity to increase its Internet
presence dramatically. Magazines like Hinduism Today have arisen as a
modern voice for the concerns of the Hindu community and to bring it
together on a common platform. Though starting off from a very limited
circulation base, the magazine continues to grow at a rapid rate.
Unfortunately there are few efforts in this direction that do not get
beyond promoting a particular sect.

Groups like VHP, not only in India but also in the West, have
created meetings for Hindu religious leaders or Dharma Sansads in order
to unite Hindus to face the challenges of the current era, as well as to
dialogue with other religious groups. However some Hindus, being
suspicious of any regimentation, have dismissed these efforts not as a
real attempt to unite Hindu society but as having ulterior political
motives. While one may question any such efforts, that a better organized
Hindu response would be helpful I don’t think is really disputable to any
one who really thinks about the dangers of this era.
A Call to Action

The main conclusion here, therefore, is that there should be a

better Hindu response to globalization. While Hindus have the
ideological foundation for this, they are weak in implementation. In
projecting a united front or common cause, different Hindu groups
should work out their responses in a typical pluralistic Hindu manner.
They need all not agree with one another. They can tackle the matter
from different angles and approaches. But action of some sort, wherever
one can start, is necessary. The response should not only be spiritual but
also in the educational, economic, scientific and media realms,
recognizing the special challenges posed by the type of civilization that
we have today.

As this action occurs a new churning will take place within Hindu
Dharma that can revitalize and transform it once more for this planetary
age, in which it can again extend throughout the world and spread its
benefits to all peoples. Hindu Dharma has a cosmic vision that is quite in
harmony with the planetary era and capable of receiving a global regard
and aiding in a new global vision, if it would but communicate itself
better in the global forum.

_________________

Part I.10
The Hindu View of Society and Its Global Relevance
______________________
Hindu Dharma contains a wealth of thought on social issues and a
long tradition of social sciences. These begin with an extensive ancient
literature of Dharma Shastras and Dharma Sutras, of which the well-
known Manu Smriti is not the only one (or the last word for that matter).
Even epics like the Mahabharata have many passages on the social
order. Many modern Indian gurus, like Sri Aurobindo, have written on
social issues. Of course, the role of Mahatma Gandhi in this respect is
well known. Many modern Indian spiritual movements aim at social
upliftment, like the recent Swadhyaya movement of Pandurang Shastri
Athavale. In fact, the term Dharma in Hindu parlance first refers to the
social dharma.

According to Hindu Dharma, Self-knowledge and the yogic

approaches to achieve it are eternal and remain largely the same,
differing in externalities of name, form and approach from age to age.
However, the social dharma is less fixed and subject more to variations
of time, place and culture. Therefore, Hindu Dharma (unlike, for
example, Islam and its Sharia law code) does not have a single social
dharma or social law for all time or for all cultures. It recognizes the need
of different societies to define their social and political orders and is open
to any number of possible social systems. The main issue for Hindu
Dharma is that a social order encourages spiritual development and
grants religious freedom and freedom of inquiry in all areas of life.

Strangely, these traditional social sciences are not well known to

Hindus, much less to those who write about Hinduism. Few people
understand that Hinduism projects both a spiritual and social order aimed
at spiritual freedom and Self-realization. Hindu social thought is not the
rigid authoritarian social order that people usually consider Hinduism to
project through the caste system. It is also very different from Islamic or
Christian views of the world divided between the believers and the non-
believers. Hindu thought does not divide the world on the basis of
religion into those who are saved and those who are not.

Most people look at Hindu social thought in the stereotyped form

of the caste system, not realizing that this does not represent the real
tradition at all. Caste by birth is a distortion of an originally more fluid
system of social division and derives mainly from the medieval period as
a defensive reaction against foreign invasions. The foundation of
classical Hindu society is a recognition of individual needs and
capacities, defined in spiritual as well as material terms.

Hinduism calls itself Sanatana Dharma, a universal or eternal

tradition of dharma or natural law. It seeks both an individual and a
collective order of Dharma harmonizing the human being within the
greater universe of consciousness. The highest Dharma in Hinduism is
Moksha, which means freedom or liberation of consciousness, not simply
of the body. This implies the full development of individual potentials in
order to expand one’s consciousness from the egoic level to a divine and
cosmic realization. To this end all other human pursuits of earning a
livelihood, raising a family, career achievement, and creative and cultural
advancement have their value, but are not in themselves the ultimate.
Without such a transcendent goal to turn these into liberating factors they
lead to bondage and become factors of disintegration. After all, these
factors deal with the transient and outer aspect of our nature. Only Self-
realization has an eternal value.

There are four pillars of the Hindu view of society.

1. 1. Family – Jati
2. 2. Class – Varna
3. 3. Individual Dharma – Svadharma
4. 4. Differing Capacities – Adhikara Bheda

The Role of the Family and Tribe

Much is said in the western world today about the family and its
decline in modern society. All current western politicians speak of
‘family values’ often without making clear what exactly they mean either
by the family or by values. Increasing divorce rates in particular are cited
as a problem, with broken homes and single parents. The old family
model of a two-parent family and a housewife taking care of the children
at home has become the exception rather than the rule in the developed
world.

Yet it is not surprising that the nuclear family is threatened in the

West because the extended family disappeared decades ago. Mobile life-
styles and urban living cut people off from their extended families and
turned the nuclear family into an isolated unit. Without the support of an
extended family of grandparents, aunts and uncles, the nuclear family
cannot sustain itself. It is exposed to social vicissitudes like a person
without the shelter of a house.

In Hinduism the concept of family includes not just the nuclear

family, but also the extended family and community linked by ties of
blood, neighborhood, culture and history. Such greater families are often
referred to as ‘tribes’ in traditional societies. Such larger
family/communities care for their own and it is only in their absence that
require modern socialized and government run care for the sick and the
elderly (which, however, can never provide the same intimacy).

Family ties from the nuclear and extended family give strength to
society. The nuclear and extended families nourish and support one
another. In classical India, different families promoted certain forms of
behavior and culture and preserved various traditions. Family traditions
included forms of art, music science and religion. In this way they
enriched not only the society, but also aided in the growth of the
individuals who could be born into and are nurtured by diverse traditions.

In the West—and as is the trend of modern society everywhere—

people are defined primarily as individuals. Each individual must have
his or her own rights, job and money, which means that each person is on
his or her own and in competition with all other individuals. This is
isolating and frightening and breeds stress and loneliness. The result is
that in the West today people are mainly living alone and looking at life
in terms of their own separate identity. Though there is material affluence
and unprecedented personal rights, there is also tremendous emotional
unhappiness, personal alienation, and little by way of real culture. Most
of the available culture is an entertainment field for individuals, like the
movies, in which there is little real personal interaction.

However, new efforts to create family and community are arising

to fill the void in human identity created by the breakdown of the family
system and resultant social and psychological problems. Even the
tribalism and gangs prevalent among the urban youth are an attempt,
unconscious and confused though it may be, to give meaning to life
through a family or clan identity.

Family ties, however important, of course do have their dangers.

One can have a strong family or community of thieves, as in case of the
Mafia. Family loyalty can turn into a means of exploiting other
individuals or other families. The family good can override that of
society and breed social division and chaos.
 India today still suffers from this negative side of family, which is
responsible for much of the so-called caste problem in the country.
People seek the advancement of their own family or tribe at the expense
of the society as a whole. Once a politician is elected his concern is not
with the social good but with getting money or resources to his own
family, tribe or caste, which is usually defined in terms of blood
relations. He robs the state or society to further the vested interest of his
family or community. His community becomes his vote bank that
supports or elects him to further its separate interests at the expense of
the greater good of the nation.

This family rule is most notable in India in the Congress party that
has dominated the country since independence. Congress has been a
dynasty of one family, the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty through Pandit Nehru
and his daughter Indira Gandhi, in which loyalty to the current family
head outweighs any real political ideology or social concerns. Strangely,
such family and community based parties like Congress or the
Samajwadi Party (SP) of Mulayam Singh Yadav boast a rhetoric of anti-
castism while they themselves are promoting what are mainly only
family, tribal or personal advantages!

Class – Varna

All societies are made up of classes, whether clearly defined as in

traditional societies or loosely as in modern societies. All societies have
their rich and poor, which is the main class division by wealth. But there
are other class divisions as well.

The old Hindu idea was of a four-tiered society. First was an

intellectual or spiritual class, the so-called Brahmins, the educators who
guided the culture and provided its values. Second was the ruling,
political or warrior class, the Kshatriyas who protected society from
hostile forces. Third was the merchant or commercial class, which
included both merchants and farmers, the Vaishyas, who created the
wealth on which the society depended. The Vaishyas were the majority
class in society (note the term ‘vish’ from which vaishya derives means
‘the people’). It served to support society as a whole and create its
resources. Fourth was servant or service oriented groups, the Shudras.
They helped the other groups and in turn were cared for by them.
 Each class had duties as well as rights. The Brahmins had to
practice austerity and poverty, selflessly teaching and guiding the culture.
The Kshatriyas had to be willing to fight and die in battle. The Vaishyas
had to share their wealth with all the classes. Other subclasses existed
like artists, musicians, craftsmen and doctors, which had more specific
roles.

The varna system, in fact, reflects an organic order, like modern

ecology. Human society is a single organism like the human body, but
like the body consists of various limbs and organs that have their special
functions necessary for the well-being of the whole. This is the Hindu
image of the Brahmin as the head, the Kshatriya as the arms, the Vaishya
as the legs and the Shudra as the feet. While this organic model was
eventually applied in a rigid manner, overemphasizing one’s birth family,
the importance of family traditions, which no society can entirely ignore,
should not be forgotten either. The varna system originally emphasized
guna and karma (Gita IV.13), the quality and action of a person, not
simply the social position of the birth family. Individual achievement
could lift one beyond ones class. If an individual exhibited qualities of
another varna, he could with some extra effort join that class. In time,
entire families could rise or fall in class status according to their
behavior. While the family one was born into could be a helpful
indication of one’s probable varna, it was not regarded as final. Note that
even in common parlance in India today the son of a Pandit
(panditaputra) means ‘a fool’, showing that we not only are like our
parents but can become the opposite!

Social duties were shared in unusual circumstances. For example,

if the Kshatriya or noble class was defeated in war, the other classes,
even the Brahmins, took up arms, assuming the Kshatriya role to
compensate. The varna system was an organic social order devised to
support a common social good. It considered individual capacities as well
as family and social background.

In addition, the highest goal of Moksha or liberation of the

individual required going beyond the varna system, which was thought to
be only of a preliminary nature in human development. This created
orders of monks, sadhus, yogis and swamis who devoted themselves to
spiritual practices and were not bound by the duties of any class or caste.
They came from any class but were more commonly from the Brahmins,
who were taught to seek liberation and to renounce personal satisfaction
as part of the duties of their class.

Though people like to emphasize the role of caste in Hinduism,

caste is not all there is to the Hindu view of society. The varna system
broke down in India centuries ago. The majority of Brahmins today do
not practice traditional Brahmin priestly occupations (and those who do
are among the poorest of the poor, like temple priests in South India who
earn only as much as a common street sweeper). They don’t live
according to the rigid rules of piety and penance of medieval Brahmins,
who were little more than monks. Similarly, the majority of Kshatriyas
do not follow Kshatriya occupations. Many Shudras in India have
achieved wealth as in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. In fact, in India
as throughout the modern world is dominated by commercialism and
most people are following Vaishya values and ways of life.

Class and Caste in Other Societies

Similar social orders existed throughout the ancient and medieval

worlds with priestly orders, the nobility, merchants and the common
people. Europe had its aristocracy, which was its Kshatriya class, until
the early twentieth century and remnants of it still remain. While this
aristocracy had its corruption, it did produce a certain refinement and
artistic culture that the West still emulates today. This ancient class
system has survived longer in India, both for good and for ill, which has
preserved an ancient type of culture longer than other countries.

Yet this fourfold class order exists to some extent in modern cultures
as well. All cultures have their educational elite of professors, scientists,
doctors, artists, priests and ministers. They have their political class of
politicians, lawyers, policemen and soldiers. They have their merchant
and farmer classes. They have their servants or service oriented jobs.
Such a division is almost inevitable in society based upon the division of
labor according to social needs and human capacities.

Modern society has removed more obvious class divisions and

inequities. Overt slavery has been abolished, but a clear division of rich
and poor remains and in some countries, like America, is increasing
again. It has reemerged as a division between rich and poor nations, in
which third world countries provide cheap labor and raw material for the
affluent nations of the West, just as servants used to provide this for their
wealthy employers. Affluent cultures also import their servant classes
from poorer countries, like the Mexicans in America, the Turks in
Germany or Philippine maids in Singapore.

Family of birth remains an important index of one’s class. Most

people still tend to follow the class status of their family, though
exceptions are more common than in older cultures. Various wealthy or
educational elites can be found all over the world. Each class also tends
to create its own social group. We can see this in the political circles of
Washington DC, in army barracks everywhere, in artistic countercultures,
or in rural farm settings.

It is natural for people to create communities based upon common

work or vocational interests. It can help enrich society as a whole by
allowing people of common interests to strengthen their particular talents
and resources. Such groups provide a field in which individuals can
grow. For example, an individual of political temperament will do better
if raised or working in a political class environment.

However, class like family, though natural and inevitable, has clear
dangers. Class oppression is a well-known theme of recent centuries all
over the world through the socialist and communist movements. The
division of rich and poor is still perhaps the most cruel and defining
aspect of social identity. Though a greater class equality has been created
in modern times, class divisions have not and perhaps cannot be
eliminated, any more than family divisions can. But they can be made to
correspond better with real individual capacities.

Society cannot be one homogenous or gelatinous mass or it cannot

stand. Like the human body it must have an organic structure and
differentiation, which requires some class divisions. Even communist
countries could not abolish class but instead created new classes of
bureaucrats, policemen and ideologues, which were just their own
modified forms of Vaishya, Kshatriya and Brahmin orders.

At the same time, modern society has no real concept of freedom

that transcends social groups and their mundane goals. Modern society
emphasizes a social dharma of success, affluence and materialism for
everyone. It is a Vaishya dharma, not a Moksha dharma. Modern
freedom is defined mainly in terms of commercial values; freedom to buy
or freedom to do what one wants in the outer world. Modern commercial
or Vaishya-dominated society appears stunted and incomplete, neither
understanding, nor providing for the needs for all the different classes
and temperaments of people. Because of its commercial values the gulf
between the rich and the poor must continue.

Individual Dharma

In Hindu thought, family and class identities are secondary to the

individual and his or her own spiritual capacities. The individual is the
real bearer of consciousness and only the individual can achieve Moksha
or liberation. The social dharma of mutual duties rests upon the
individual dharma of spiritual practice, which it should support and
uphold. Ultimately, the individual must renounce society in order to
achieve liberation. This is the basis of the many monastic and sadhu
orders of Hinduism that require renunciation of all social status in order
to join.

The main principle of individual dharma in Hinduism is Svadharma;

one should follow one’s own dharma in life. The Bhagavad Gita III.35
states: “Better is one’s own dharma though imperfectly done, than the
dharma of another well-performed. Better is death in one’s own dharma.
To pursue the dharma of another carries great fear.”

Yet individual and social dharmas are interrelated. Family and

community exist to provide a foundation for individual development.
They create the field in which the individual can grow. For example, a
person may have a good artistic capacity but if he is born into a family
that dislikes art or into a cultural setting where no artistic training can be
found, that capacity cannot develop.

The modern West emphasizes the material freedom of the individual

to pursue desire, not the spiritual freedom of the individual to transcend
desire. The western idea is of individual fulfillment and self-realization
but only of our outer capacities, not our inner potentials. While this does
provide an external freedom that has aided in advancements in science
and technology, it has not liberated the spirit of man or brought the
growth of a higher consciousness in humanity. Without spiritual freedom
it still leaves humanity in the bondage of desire.

Individual Qualifications

Individual Dharma rests upon the capacities of the individual.

Different people have different capacities and these also grow and
change with time. Svadharma rests upon Adhikara Bheda (different
capacities). We must understand what we are really capable of. Each
creature in the world has its capacities. A squirrel cannot compete with a
horse in running races, for example, but a horse cannot compete with a
squirrel in terms of climbing trees! Yet the main quality or capacity of
the human being is to pursue Self-realization. It is not a mere physical,
biological or intellectual specialty.

We must also understand what is the highest good for a person.

Svadharma means what reflects the dharma or spiritual capacity of a
person. It is not Svakama, doing what we like or what affords us the most
pleasure in the outer world. Such personal inclinations are not dharma.
The West promotes individual freedom and the ability of the person to
become what they want. This is usually defined in terms of gaining fame
or money in the outer world, which are the prime values of modern
commercial culture. These are not dharma or a universal good but merely
a transient or personal pleasure. They neither fulfill the individual, nor
create a caring social order.

In modern society real individual capacity is often lost sight of.

People seek what brings outer achievement and acquisition, not
necessarily what reflects their real capacities or brings inner peace and
happiness. A person becomes a doctor not necessarily out of love of
healing but out of looking for a high paying job. The people who become
prominent are not necessary those who are most capable in their fields
but those best able to manipulate the media and create a good marketing
strategy for their image, which seldom corresponds to who they really
are. Packaging has become the main concern and content continues to
decline.
 Individual Dharma is not a matter of doing what one likes. Often
our likes are mistaken. A person may want to be a great athlete but that
may be a fantasy, not a real possibility. He may be better off in some
other job. And our material capacities and spiritual capacities vary. We
may have a material capacity to make a lot of money but not a spiritual
capacity to achieve a higher state of consciousness. We sometimes have
to choose between one or the other because our time in life is limited. We
are not able to manifest all possibilities for ourselves, just as even a good
musician cannot be good at playing all musical instruments.

As individuals we have several capacities and must understand not

only what we want to do but also what represents our highest good. The
difficulty lies in determining the real capacity of a person. It is much like
a student in school. They require some aptitude testing or job training to
determine this. Merely what they want may not be enough to show their
real place in life.

Most people don’t know their real capacities and generally seek
something imaginary or inflated for themselves. We must remember the
example of the Gita. Krishna urged Arjuna to fight in battle rather than to
renounce the world because Arjuna was a Kshatriya, a warrior, not only
by caste but by individual temperament, not a monk or sadhu. The monk
role was an escape to avoid the difficult duties that his dharma required.

A Hindu View of Society

In the Hindu view a global or enlightened society must consider

these four bases of the social order. Above all a Moksha Dharma or the
seeking of spiritual freedom and self-realization must be present for an
really enlightened social order to emerge.

Family is necessary, not only the nuclear family, but also the
extended family and a greater community or tribe. Class differences are
necessary as they fulfill various social needs. However, both family and
class groups should promote greater social unity and a common welfare.
They should encourage rather than stifle the capacities of individuals
even if these deviate from family or class norms. In short, they must
remain general, flexible and adaptable, with an orientation to a higher
spiritual dharma.
 Most important is a society that recognizes individual dharma and
individual capacities as the highest goal. The individual has to be free to
pursue his or her own dharma according to his or her own capacities.
This is to respect the Self, Atman or Divine presence in everyone.

However, in emphasizing the individual, the dharma of the

individual must be stressed. Dharma is the unifying factor. The dharma
of the individual cannot stand apart from the dharma of the society or the
dharma of the universe and implies not only individual capacities but also
personal duties as well. We all have our part to play in the universal
order, which is an order of giving, sharing and sacrifice (Yajna). That is
our Dharma. Our individual dharma is not intended to obstruct the
dharma of others but to aid in the unfoldment of all life. Fulfillment of
individual dharma and social dharma must go hand in hand. It is the
pursuit of desire that is divisive, which is a deviation from the cosmic
order of sharing (Yajna).

Modern society is a commercial society. It suppresses spiritual or

dharmic capacities in people and instead promotes desire and ego based
urges that lead to adharma. Communist society emphasized ‘to each
according to his needs and from each according to his abilities’. This
principle reflects a consideration of individual capacity. Unfortunately, it
is defined only in material terms and so could never become a reality.

To foster the real individual or the real person (Atman or Purusha)

means to control the desire-based ego. It means to develop the real
capacities of people, not merely to inflate their wants, ambition or
aggression. It means to help people to discover what they really love to
do for its own sake, not to pursue results. Here again the Gita II. 47
teaches us, saying that our adhikara, our right or capacity is only to do
the work, not to seek its results. If you love doing something you are not
counting the rewards. You will do it even if there are no rewards.

This dharmic idea of society preserves individual freedom at the

deepest level while maintaining duty to the world in our outer behavior.
It affords a place for commercial urges without allowing them to
dominate our deeper aspirations. It has a place for family and class but
one that does not serve to stifle the individual or to fragment society.
Religion in Human Society

Religion, or the seeking to align the human being with the cosmic
being, should play a role in creating a proper social order. Religion
establishes the sacraments for keeping together the family and the
community. Religion defines the priestly class that provides the main
educators and value promoters for society. Therefore religion should be
the main source of dharma.

The problem with western religions as they have developed

historically is that they do not have a proper concept of Svadharma or
individual dharma. They have one savior, prophet, book, church or belief
for everyone, as if there were no real individual temperamental
differences. Should anyone seek to follow a different or personal
approach to the spiritual life they are criticized or punished as
unorthodox or heretical.

Such religions try to impose their one belief on all human beings,
destroying any individual and cultural achievements and capacities that
might get in the way. Their effort to convert the world to a single belief
shows their rigidity and their lack of understanding of the diversity of
life. This is like trying to get everyone to dress the same, talk the same or
walk the same. Certainly we need as much freedom and creativity in
praying, meditating and worshipping as we do in other aspects of life.
Otherwise we are not really human beings but only automatons.

On the other hand, Hinduism has many Gods, Goddesses, teachers,

scriptures, and Yoga practices in order to accommodate the different
levels and capacities of individuals. This multiplicity of deities represents
how the higher and universal truth can be approached from the various
angles of the many human types. It reflects not an abstract or exclusive
unity but a creative and flexible unity that moves and changes with life
itself.

A dharmic society should rest upon a dharmic approach to religion.

This implies an approach that is pluralistic, non-dogmatic, creative,
adaptable and alive. Hinduism as Sanatana Dharma, shorn of its
unnecessary accretions, can offer such a dharmic vision. Unfortunately,
most Hindus don’t understand their tradition and are unable to use it in
their own lives, much less share it with others. Some of them are putting
a rigidity into Hinduism that ignores this entire foundation of svadharma
and self-realization. Others are failing to see the universality of dharma
in Hinduism and regarding it as something merely cultural or
ethnocentric.

A New Way of Dharma

We are now entering a global, multicultural and multi-religious

age. We are moving from the technological age to the age of information,
to an eventual age of consciousness. Rigid and exclusive forms can no
longer be justified in our social or religious orders. At the same time, we
cannot ignore the organic base of life in nature, family and community.
The abstract ideological approaches of communism and socialism have
failed. Modern commercialism is reaching its limits in global exploitation
and ecological devastation. The fulfillment of the individual, the society
or the world of nature can no longer be separated from one another. Nor
can we define our fulfillment only in economic terms without causing
harm both to people and to nature.

For this coming new world-age (yuga), we need a new socio-

political-economic order. The models of the past are either erroneous or
out of date. The only real solution is a new culture of dharma, in which
individual, social and planetary dharmas have their place and their
interdependence is clearly recognized as well. New political systems
have to evolve that go beyond the limitations of modern democracy
without bringing back old forms of tyranny. A new economic system is
required that neither suppresses economic freedom, as in communism,
nor makes it the end all of life, as in the current multinational capitalism.
Naturally this will require much thinking, planning and new experiments.

We must return to the dharmic roots of human civilization for a

new dharmic renaissance. A new society of dharma is required for a new
age of dharma. Dharmic thinking must be reintroduced not only in
religion but also in science and culture. Dharmic action must be
emphasized over any seeking of results or gaining of outer powers. This
dharmic approach is not hostile to any truth and can serve to integrate the
skill and wisdom in all our human endeavors. The dharmic approach
loses nothing that is unique but at the same time does not take away from
the totality. A new dharmic inquiry (Dharma Mimamsa) is necessary,
including into the roots of the social order. In the Hindu tradition, this
will require creating new Smritis and Dharma Shastras. There are lasting
solutions to all the problems of life, but these are dharmic solutions. We
must seek such dharmic solutions to our problems and not be content
with mere short term profit.

_______________
Part II.1
The Need for a New Indic School of Thought
___________

Background: The Clash of Civilizations

A clash of civilizations is occurring throughout in the world today,

a war of cultures at various levels in both our personal and in our public
lives. One civilization, the Western-European-American is currently
predominant and is strongly, if not rudely, trying to eliminate or
subordinate the rest. Yet western civilization is spreading itself not so
much by force, as in the colonial era, but by subtle new forms of social
manipulation. These include control of the media and news information
networks, the entertainment industry and commercial markets, by
continued aggressiveness by western religions and—as important but
sometimes overlooked—control of educational institutions and
curriculums worldwide.

This control of education has resulted in a Western-European-

American view of history and culture in textbooks and information
sources in most countries, including India. Naturally, people educated
according to western values will function as part of western culture,
whatever the actual country of their birth. They will experience an
alienation from their native culture that they have not really been raised
in. They easily become a fifth column for the westernization of their
culture, which usually means its denigration or, at best, its
commercialization. For this reason, an authentic Indian or Indic
perspective—a worldview coming out of the culture of India and its
particular values and perceptions—is hardly to be found, even in India.
The western school of thought is taught in India, not any Indic school of
thought.

What is the Indic school of thought, one might ask? Does it exist at
all? It is not at all something new or unknown. It is the great spiritual,
philosophical, scientific, artistic and cultural traditions of the
subcontinent that are among the largest and oldest in the world. The Indic
school of thought is an emphasis on dharma, karma, pluralism and
synthesis, on Yoga sadhana and moksha. It reflects a dharmic worldview,
in which all aspects of human and cosmic life are integrated in a vision of
the conscious and sacred nature of all existence. The Indic school of
thought is not only the tradition of ancient sages from the Vedas and
Upanishads to Buddhist and Yoga traditions but also modern teachers
like Sri Aurobindo and Swami Vivekananda. It is not only the vast
literature of Sanskrit but also that of the many regional languages and
dialects of the subcontinent, most of which have older literary traditions
than the languages of Europe, including English.

All major cultural debates are now framed according to western

values and perceptions, and so they will naturally serve to uphold them.
The important issues of Indic civilization today are examined according
to the principles or biases of the western school of thought. These include
what Indian civilization is, when India as a nation first arose, what the
real history of India is, how to reform Indian society, and how India
should develop in order to have its rightful place in the future world. As
the debate is defined according to the approach and values of western
civilization, India does not always fare well, and India as its own
independent source of civilization is seldom acknowledged. India is
judged as if it should be like another USA, Britain or Germany, which it
can never be, nor should be. This only makes Indians feel inferior or
wrong, like a square peg in a round hole.

The western school of thought has denigrated or overlooked the

Indic school, even in the Indian context. For example, the Indic school
has its own history sources through the Vedas, Puranas and various
historical texts (Itihasas) that are quite massive and detailed, with much
internal consistency, but in writing the history of India, the western
school does not give these any real place at all. They are dismissed as at
best mythology and at worst fraud. Instead, the West defines the history
of India according to outside influences, as a series of invasions and
borrowings mainly from the west—from cultures the West knows better
and has more affinity with. This makes India seem dependent upon the
West in order to advance its civilization again today.

The western school of thought misses the relevance of the

traditions of India, almost as if they were not even there. This is not
simply because the Indic tradition is wrong, unsophisticated or irrelevant.
It is because western civilization is hegemonic, if not predatory in nature,
and such ideas help promote its spread. Its information about India
contains a built in poison. It is meant to undermine the culture of the
region and subordinate it to the West, however objective, scientific or
modern its approach may appear to be.

Western Distortions and the Indian Response

When India as a nation arose is defined by the western school as

1947, the year of modern India’s independence. It founders were Nehru
and Gandhi, who inherited a united region from the British, before which
India was just a confused mass of local kingdoms with no national
consistency. Even today, the western school of thought prefers to call the
subcontinent of India as ‘South Asia’, undermining any idea of cultural
continuity more than a vague geography. On the other hand, according to
the Indic school, India or Bharat as a country arose in the Vedic era as
the type of dharmic/yogic culture that has been the main characteristic of
Indian civilization throughout history. This spiritual or yogic orientation
can be found in all regions of India from Tamil Nadu to the Himalayas,
pervading even the folk art and folksongs.

In the western school of thought, an Aryan invasion or migration is

used to explain how ancient Vedic civilization took root in India, as if it
were an alien force of intruding barbarians with little sophistication,
much less spirituality. In the Indic school of thought, the whole idea of
an Aryan Invasion/Migration doesn’t exist. The Indic tradition arose
from the rishi tradition of the indigenous Vedic-Sarasvati culture and
related cultures, reflected in the continuity of Vedic literature from the
Vedas to the Mahabharata, Buddhist and Jain literature, and the
Puranas, which reflect the same geography, cosmology, peoples and
dynasties of kings.

In these current cultural encounters, therefore, an overriding

greater issue is ignored—the more primary debate between the western
and the Indic schools of thought. The western style media and academia
judges Indic civilization and finds it to be wanting, reducing it to little
more than caste or superstition. This is not surprising as the Indic
tradition has a different focus and different values than the western
tradition. Similarly, from the standpoint of the Indic tradition, we must
question the very basis of western civilization itself. Is the western school
of thought enlightened and reflect higher values beyond purely transient
human desires? Is its idea of civilization appropriate for India, the land of
the great rishis and yogis? Can its outward oriented mindset understand
the unique civilization of the subcontinent?

The Indic school itself can be highly critical of the western school.
For example, when asked what he thought about western civilization,
Mahatma Gandhi replied, “It would be a good idea.” What he meant was
that from the standpoint of the spiritual traditions of India, western
civilization with its materialism, aggression and dogmatism was not
highly evolved. Sri Aurobindo, who himself wrote excellent English
poetry, similarly highlighted the limitations of western civilization and
especially the decline of its culture in the twentieth century commercial
age.

‘Secular Missionaries’

The West sets forth its values (meaning its political and economic
system) as universal and then tries to police them throughout the world,
rewarding countries that emulate the West and punishing those who go
their own way. It tries to control any debate on cultural ethics or right and
wrong in the world under slogans of democracy and human rights. Yet,
revealing the commercial nature of western civilization, this assertion of
human rights is mainly used to intimidate weak nations and conveniently
ignored relative to stronger or wealthier nations like China or Saudi
Arabia.

Though there are many genuinely idealist groups that use the
protection of human rights and saving the Earth to promote peace and
reduce exploitation in the world, many other groups use the cover of
human rights to interfere with, if not destroy non-western cultures.
Organizations operating under the cover of human rights are among the
most alienating influences in traditional cultures today. They function
like 'secular missionaries', ignoring victims of terrorism like the Hindus,
while defending the 'rights' of terrorist organizations against security
forces that are forced to take action against them.

In spite of its claim to represent human rights, the West is the main
seller of weapons of mass destruction and profits from terrorism and civil
strife throughout the world, which it often ignores, if not promotes. The
global arms business is one of the largest for western economies
including the United States, France and Great Britain. Most of the
terrorist groups operating in Afghanistan—the main terrorist state in the
world today—including the notorious Osama Bin Laden, were originally
trained by the CIA. Without there having already been a decade or more
of US patronage there would probably be no such Afghani state today.
Note also how the West turned its back on the genocide in Rwanda
several years ago, letting a million people die in civil strife. Members of
the Catholic church were involved and convicted in this massacre. So
much for the protective effect of western governments and churches or
their assertion of human rights when it doesn’t suit them!

Western religious groups similarly use the cover of human rights

to promote missionary activities and conversion efforts. They like to
appear to be promoting western secular, social and political values,
uplifting the undeveloped world, while actually continuing the religious
exclusivism, aggression and intolerance of the colonial era. Western-
funded hospitals and schools overseas bring in political, economic or
cultural influences, using charitable institutions for social agendas, just as
western missionaries use them to further conversion efforts.

Western human rights groups highlight social inequalities in non-

western countries like India, while ignoring the colonial history of both
genocide and cultural destruction. The same charges of cultural
backwardness were used throughout the colonial era to undermine the
native traditions of Africa, Asia and America, and justify religious
conversion and political domination, which is probably their real aim.

These secular missionaries promote the new religion of western

secular humanism, which like older exclusivist ideologies of Christianity
or communism is similarly used to destroy other religious and cultural
systems. Their judgement of others as not being ‘politically correct’ is as
damning and judgmental as the Christian charge of heresy or paganism.
Secular missionaries go into traditional cultures with an almost fanatical
zeal to reform them as colonial missionaries, blind to the values of
traditional customs and condescending in their attitudes. They disrupt
traditional family systems, local economies and connections to the
natural environment. What they do is not much different from what
Christian missionaries did to native American and African societies,
leaving them rootless and promoting conflict within them.
 The need for self-determination for religious and ethnic minorities
within different countries has also been used by the West to divide larger
nations into smaller countries that are less threatening politically or
economically. How such tiny states, like those in the Balkans or East
Timor with populations less than a few million people, can function is
ignored. Had such a right of self-determination existed in the nineteenth
century, countries like the United States would have been quickly
fragmented into many small states. The United States does not feel a
need to be divided into black, white and Hispanic nations, or into
Protestant, Catholic, Jewish or Islamic nations, in order to achieve
cultural coherence. Why should it require this of other countries? While
religious and ethnic minorities do sometimes need protection (other times
they can harbor anti-national subversives), this can be done without the
dissolution of the state or no large nation will be able to preserve its
boundaries.

At the same time, certain groups have learned to manipulate the

western demand for human rights and self-determination to their own
advantage. For example, various Islamic groups, whose real purpose is to
create a traditional Islamic religious state, have used the cover of seeking
self-determination and the protection of their human rights to gain
sympathy from the West, even though they would never create a secular
state if they came to power. The Palestinian uprising against Israel is
often portrayed in the western media as an issue of self-determination
and democracy. Really it is a religious war with Palestinians defining
themselves not by nationhood but by religion, and by a religion that is
authoritarian and exclusive in the medieval sense, not democratic or
secular in the modern sense.

Sometimes native intellectuals are taken in by western approaches

to social issues, not realizing that they are promoting the colonial agenda
of world domination in a covert form. Native intellectuals have been
particularly vulnerable to communism, an alternative western ideology,
embracing it to end colonial exploitation while really continuing the
westernization of their cultures through it. Chinese communists, for
example, did more damage to their own culture than did the colonial
powers when they ruled China. Communism was the worst form of
colonialism or western destructive of native cultures. Similarly, leftist
intellectuals in countries like India, though often spouting an anti-western
or anti-American rhetoric, are vociferously working to undermine their
own traditional cultures in favor of what just another form of western
cultural domination. They are rootless and alienated from their own
culture, which they treat with hostility and contempt as much as any
British magistrate would during the colonial era.

New Rules of Debate

Therefore, it is not enough to debate issues of culture, politics, or

history in the existing forums in order to promote an Indian or Hindu
view. We must question the very process itself—the perspective and
values behind the school of thought in which this debate occurs. What
India needs is a new Indic school of thought that is dynamic and assertive
in the modern global context, that can challenge western civilization not
merely in regard to the details of history or culture, but relative to
fundamental principles of life, humanity and consciousness. This requires
a renaissance in the Indic tradition and its great spiritual systems of
Yoga, Vedanta, Buddhism and Jainism, and also in its political, artistic
and scientific approaches. Modern science and technology can arguably
be more humanely employed according to Indic or dharmic values, than
according to western religious exclusivism or commercial greed.

The world needs a critique of civilization from an Indic or dharmic

perspective, a view on capitalism, socialism, communism, Christianity
and Islam from a tradition that is older, deeper and closer to the spirit in
both man and nature. These western ideologies are failing to address the
spiritual needs of humanity and are incapable of creating a world order
that transcends dogmatism or exclusivism.

Those who are part of the Indic school of thought should

emphasize this greater debate and not get caught in the details of issues
already formulated according to the biases of western civilization. This
debate should examine the right structure for society and the real forward
direction for history and evolution. We must raise fundamental questions.
Is the current western materialistic view of history valid at all, or are
there spiritual forces at work in the world that go beyond these? Can we
understand our history through outer approaches like archaeology,
linguistics or genetics, which remain physically based and tied to an
outer view of the world, or is a higher consciousness and spiritual view
required as well? Are the records of the ancient sages to be rejected so
lightly, whenever we think they don’t agree with our views, or do they
contain keys to higher knowledge that we have missed in our arrogance?

The real issue of the Vedas, India’s oldest tradition, is not how
these texts might fit into the current model of history as promoted by the
western school of thought, tracing the development of civilization
through material advances. It is how the existence of such an ancient
tradition of rishis, knowers of cosmic consciousness, shows a higher
spiritual humanity from which we have arisen and whose legacy we can
yet reclaim.

A New Indology

A new Indology is needed rooted in the Indic tradition and in Indic,

that is dharmic values. Such an Indology would honor the spiritual and
yogic roots of Indic culture. It would respect traditional accounts of
history as helpful. It would look to traditional teachers both ancient and
modern as authentic sources. Certainly, it would make adjustments to the
times and not be tied to any dogma from the past, but it would carry the
stream of Indic civilization forward, not look for another stream to take
its place.

Western Indology is rooted in western values and an inherent

Eurocentric cultural view, which is materialistic in orientation and
spiritually naive. It is not possible to appreciate Indic civilization from
such limited values, even though these may be slowly widening. In fact,
to truly widen Western Indology requires exposing its limitations. India
needs a new Indology rooted in an Indic School of thought, not in a
Marxist, Christian, Capitalist or Islamic schools, which have their own
points of view and cannot and will not speak positively of the Indic
tradition.

Western academia is a product of rajoguna, the quality of

aggression, and emphasizes outer values that easily fall into cultural
biases. It promotes the ego of professors over any greater spiritual
tradition. Its motivation is essentially political and still hides an inner
imperialism. It has no real sense of Atman or Brahman or any higher
reality. Indic culture on the other hand promotes sattvaguna or the culture
of peace. It recognizes the value of an enduring spiritual tradition and
many ancient sages over the egos of the latest generation of scholars. It is
the Atman and Brahman that it honors, not the person or the institution.
Its basis is not the current political correctness but Sanatana Dharma.

A New School of Thought

India needs a different type of scholarship, an Indic school of

thought that has its own values, traditions and conclusions. Those who
follow Indian civilization should develop this Indic school in its own
right, and not merely try to justify our views in terms of the current
western or European school of thought, which has a hostile and alien
foundation and history. Presently, the Indic school of thought has been
battered by outside forces and is in disarray. Its institutions were largely
undermined by the nineteenth century. Though it is arising again in
recent years, its forces require integration and a comprehensive
articulation. The Indic tradition needs to reformulate and expand itself in
the global context, as well as reclaiming its place as the dominant
intellectual and spiritual force of South Asia.

I recently raised a call for an intellectual kshatriya in India—a new

class of warrior intellectuals to defend India and its great pluralistic
traditions from the onslaught of western exclusivist approaches, whether
religious, economic or political. 3[1] This call requires the creation of such
a new Indic school of thought. Such a new Indic school of thought would
consist not just of philosophies of Yoga and Vedanta, but also Indic,
Hindu and Dharmic approaches to ecology, the global marketplace,
health, science, the status of women and religious freedom; in short to all
the main issues in society today. But it should also look beyond these
issues—which are often more the issues of the western school—to yet
broader concerns. How can we integrate humanity with nature and its
underlying cosmic intelligence? How can we reclaim our spiritual
heritage as a species that the great yogis have pointed out for us?
New Kinds of Institutions

A new Indic school of thought requires new institutions to embody

it, new Vedic schools of all types. These will arise not through Indology
departments in western styled universities but through a new type of
institution with its own funding and curriculum, free from manipulation
by the vested interested and ideologies of the western school.

The problem is that academic institutions, not only the West but
also in India, were created by the western school and reflect its values. It
is not possible to transform western institutions into the appropriate
forums for the new Indology. They are part of their culture and mindset
and its inherent limitations. Nor is it possible to turn westernized
institutions in India into such forums either. They are largely painful
imitations of their counterparts in the West and have even a more myopic
vision.

To gain credibility for the Indic thought in the context of

European-based institutions, like some Hindus are attempting, has
inherent limitations that must be recognized before committing resources
that could be better used elsewhere. For example, currently overseas
Indians are seeking validity within the western school of thought by
funding Indic studies or chairs in western academia. This can be of value
in getting an Indic point of view across in western institutions and
influencing the western media. However, attempting to give the Indic
school of thought a niche in western academia can only be a sidelight and
should not be a substitute for creating our own institutions. The Indic
school is much vaster than the western school and is based on different
principles. Ultimately, the western school will find a place within the
Indic school, which is better suited to accommodate different cultural
views.

Western universities have their own agendas that they will not
readily give up, particularly in the humanities (they are more open-
minded in the field of science). They will not change simply because a
few well intentioned groups give them money and sponsor positions to
project a more 'sympathetic' picture of India and her civilization. Like a
sea that salts every river that flows into it, existing trends and interests
will force the people coming into them to conform to the dominant
Eurocentric values that pervade these institutions. Otherwise, they cannot
survive academically. This at least is bound to be the case for some years
to come.

For this reason, we need to promote the Indic tradition as a

complete school of thought in itself, not as a mere side subject of
Indology in the current western defined academia. We must look back to
such Indic models of educational institutions like Naimisha, Takshashila,
Nalanda or Mithila, and also to the gurukula approach and its more
intimate and spiritual form of learning. The Indic school emphasizes
teacher to student instruction and dialogue over mass oriented classes
with standardized curriculums. It aims at the development of character
and consciousness over the mere passing on of information and
technique.

New institutions following older Vedic and Sanskritic models are

necessary. These will include ritual, mantra, Yoga and meditation as part
of their training. They will be based on a sense of reverence and
receptivity to the teachings as tools of self-development. Without such a
basis in spiritual practices Vedic teachings cannot be understood. Such
institutions are best founded in India where it is closer to the tradition,
but can also be founded in the West, if the right people are involved.

I urge the young people and the scholars of India to take up this cause.
Do not try to define India in the context of modern civilization as defined
by the West. Look directly to the great traditions of India and use them to
critique western civilization and discover its limitations. Rather than
seeking to define and control India according to western perspectives, the
West should look to India for guidance on the deeper issues of culture
and spirituality. Indians in turn should assert their own great heritage and
not simply imitate the West or seek to justify Indic civilization from a
western perspective.

Solutions to Modern Problems in the Indic School

There are many complex and difficult problems in India today that
urgently need to be addressed, including overpopulation, lack of
education, poverty, caste and social inequality. The western school of
thought likes to blame these on the Indic tradition as a whole.
Meanwhile, it presents itself as the answer to India’s problems, as if these
could all be solved by something from the West, whether economic
liberalization, Marxism, Christianity or whatever branch of the western
school the particular writer may follow.

While the existence of such problems is not disputable, where to find the
answers to them is. It is my contention here that the solutions for India’s
problems today can be found within the Indic tradition itself, and a right
application of its many branches both spiritual and mundane. India needs
to release its native intelligence in order to solve its national problems,
not resort to an alien mindset not rooted in the land, the people or the
culture. In fact, India’s current problems are caused by a decline of the
Indic tradition over the past thousand years, not by fundamental errors
within it. To solve them requires a deeper examination of the Indic
tradition, which includes right social relations, right use of economic
resources, and respect for the natural environment.

If groups or nations sincerely want to help India solve its problems—

rather than profit from them—they would welcome and provide space for
such ‘indigenous solutions’ and not try to use India’s weaknesses to their
advantage. Instead they try to divide Indian society and use the conflict
they create to promote their own agenda of conversion or domination,
overt or covert, blaming the Indic tradition for the very problems that
they are aggravating.

The causes of modern India’s problems cannot simply be blamed on the

Indic tradition or a correct understanding of its teachings. Caste problems
in India are a medieval distortion of the Vedic varna system, not its true
intent which was merely a social division of labor that was quite fluid.
Caste issues have been aggravated by a political emphasis on minority
vote banks, which highlights caste identity as a means of political power
and financial reward. Economic problems in India are the result of the
socialist-Soviet style economy and bureaucracy created by Nehru,
nothing traditionally Hindu. India up to a few years ago was run by
graduates of the London School of Economics and its socialist policies.
There has been little Hindu about modern India’s economic policy, but
the same state socialism that failed in Eastern Europe and Russia, which
in fact failed everywhere it was applied.
Indian intellectuals should embark on a new seeking of indigenous
solutions to modern problems in the country, calling up the national
genius and native Shakti of the region. India need not look to the West
for the keys to revive its civilization, though western ideas can be
helpful, particularly in the context of an Indian vision. Only by
reclaiming its own cultural mentality and spirituality can the country
really go forward. True scholars of the Indic tradition need not go to
Harvard, Oxford or Heidelberg to gain credibility or expertise in their
own traditions. That is little more than seeking to pander to the tastes of
the old colonial masters, which is not about to end servility or restore
one’s pride!

India should once more seek to lead and guide the world from its dharmic
foundations.

Not only the solutions to India’s problems but the solutions to the world’s
problems can be found in the Indic tradition. The problems of religious
violence, consumerist greed, environmental disruption or the decline of
the social order can be found in the Vedic vision of the Self in nature and
the entire universe in the Self. The only lasting solutions to human
problems are dharmic solutions. Hinduism can offer dharmic solutions to
all our personal and social problems from physical and mental disease, to
personal and collective relationship problems, to the right use of
technology.

Such a revival of India, its culture and its dharmic school of thought need
not be feared by anyone. It will enrich the world spiritually, as it has
already done so by the spread of Yoga and Vedanta over the past few
decades. It does not threaten any other culture or seek hegemony, but is
simply trying to link up human civilization with our deepest aspiration to
know the eternal and the infinite. The world should welcome and honor a
revitalized India as a step for restoring humanity to its spiritual roots.
_____________

1[1]
In my book Awaken Bharata.
Part II.2
New Western and Global Dharmic Schools of Thought
_____________
The Western School of Thought in Crisis

The current western school of thought operative behind the spread of

western culture today is actually more a school of non-thinking, not
really a school of thought at all (just as the modern monoculture is no
real culture at all). Its basis is commercialization, standardization, mass
production and media stereotypes. It is mainly a school of advertising
and marketing or of projecting political slogans. Just as the modern
monoculture destroys other cultures, so too the current western school of
thought destroys other schools of thought, which become at most
footnotes within it.

Western culture today contains little deep thinking or seeking to get to

the reality that transcends appearances, except in the counterculture and
alternative thinkers that look to other civilizational models. The prevalent
western school is a practical or business school aimed at getting results,
which means accumulating money and winning the masses to a western
way of life or, at best, improving the world through technology.

The western intellectual culture of Europe that developed from the

Renaissance and flourished through the nineteenth century is almost dead
today. European traditions of classical music, art, literature and
philosophy were the first victims of the commercial monoculture that
arose in the West. Their creative roots dried up. Their productions
became commercialized. They remain more as museum pieces or as
performance extravaganzas to encourage another level of spending.
Classical Indian music and dance on the other hand are more popular
than ever.
 Western academia today similarly lacks deep thinking or spiritual
insight. It falls into several characteristic traps. The first is justifying
western commercial culture because of its technological advances,
particularly in the field of medicine. The second is promoting a simplistic
ideology of political correctness and human rights (often ignoring the
rights of cultures), generally of a leftist nature. The third is developing an
apologetic for western monotheism or trying to reform it in a modern
light, without correcting its fundamental errors or being open to other
religious models. The fourth is following the latest trend in science,
creating an intellectual rationale for it, with philosophy tagging along
behind science with no real vision of its own.

However, we should note that few people in the West directly follow
academia, including relative to eastern traditions. Most westerners that
study eastern traditions follow popular trends of Yoga, meditation and
spirituality. In fact, western academia has little relevance to the West as a
guiding school of thought. The guidance for the western civilization
today comes more from Wall Street or the Pentagon than from Harvard
or Yale (which function not to guide but rather to excuse or apologize for
such military or business groups). Humanities departments in western
universities are disappearing and universities are now mainly schools of
either science or business.

For all the books, computers and universities in the West, there seems to
be little creative thinking or deep spiritual inquiry going on, except
among those who are looking to the East. At present we see few great
thinkers on the horizon in the West, in spite of the flood of new
information technologies. The progress in quantity in the West appears to
have destroyed quality in culture as well. America as the world’s sole
superpower does not reflect any real vision in its intellectual elite relative
to humanity, the future, or a higher age of consciousness. The country
seems more concerned with enjoying and sustaining power for its own
benefit, rather than using it to advance the planet. The American
government has been at the rear, not at the forefront of ecology, pollution
control and arms control, though it likes to use the charge of human
rights violations against its enemies. Similarly, American leaders no
longer lead, but follow the public with the help of opinion polls and other
devices that tell them what the public wants to hear. This is one of the
down sides of Western democracy.

Deeper Currents in Western Civilization

However, deeper currents do exist within western civilization with

affinities to the Indic school of thought and an orientation to Dharma or
cosmic law. Some of these currents are very ancient, like the mystical
impulses of the older Celtic and Greek traditions and their Druidic,
bardic, Orphic and philosophical trends. Others are more recent and
reflect the influence of the East through Theosophy, Vedanta, Yoga,
Buddhism and Taoism, or the influence other native traditions like the
Native American and Shamanism.

Within the European intellectual tradition are dharmic trends, though

these remain generally scattered and broken without a yogic
methodology to develop a higher consciousness. One can cite the
nineteenth century Romantic era, whether mystical German philosophers
or mystical English poets, with their emphasis on nature and a connection
to the East, particularly India. Another example is the Existentialists of
the early twentieth century with their examination of the workings of
consciousness and perception. Recent physics with its search for a
universal field of consciousness is yet another such trend.

In western mysticism has been a kind of hidden Vedanta, which

resurfaced to some degree among European philosophers in the
nineteenth century, and occurred in Greco-Roman thought through
Parmenides, Plato and Plotinus. In Christianity were figures like Meister
Eckhart, who had a Vedantic like philosophy out of place with the
medieval church, or St. Francis, who had an approach of non-violence
quite apart from Christian crusading. Some Sufis, like Rumi, also
reflected Vedantic like ideas. But these were seldom part of orthodox
traditions. We seldom find in them a full articulation of the greater
Vedantic teaching of karma, dharma, Samsara and Nirvana. In the new
era of global communication, people are beginning to discover that such
mysticism is more common in eastern traditions and are no longer
seeking it through western religions, which have been generally hostile to
it anyway.

Behind Christianity itself is also a hidden form of Goddess worship,

carrying on old Pre-Christian ways more in harmony both with nature
and the spirit. Europeans in the Middle Ages worshipped the Virgin
Mary as the great Mother Goddess, though according to the church she
was actually only the ‘mother of Jesus’, not the Divine Mother, and was a
minor figure in the Gospels. It was this devotion to the Divine Mother,
manipulated by the church through the image of Mary, which gave
beauty, depth and compassion to European culture. Now that the rule of
the church is over, people are discovering the Goddess directly apart
from any church control or limitation. It may lead also to a revival of the
ancient Gnostic tradition, which was driven out of early Christianity

Stirrings of a New Western School of Thought

One could argue that a new western school of thought is struggling

to emerge from the current culture, relying on traditional teachings both
eastern and western, as well as cultivating a futuristic planetary vision.
Through the earth wisdom of native traditions and the yogic spirituality
of Asia, the western mind is beginning to undergo a slow metamorphosis.
New ideas and insights, a seeking of consciousness and universality, are
arising, with a turning away from any mere material, personal or outer
definition of reality.

Perhaps the most obvious sing of this is ecological thinking which, since
the collapse of communism, has emerged as perhaps the main idealistic
movement in the West. It is seeking to restore the organic order of unity
and diversity such as is the basis of Hindu thought, emphasizing
consciousness even in animals and plants. This incipient western school
sees a life-force and consciousness behind nature, an intimation of the
Hindu perception of the great Gods and Goddesses of the cosmic mind. It
recognizes a need to reintegrate society into the cosmic order and the
rhythms of the natural world. It regards human beings as stewards of
nature, not owners of capital. Many individuals within it are vegetarians,
practice ahimsa, follow natural forms of healing and meditate regularly.
Some are connected to eastern gurus or enlightenment traditions. Some
are independent and draw on a variety of sources. New Buddhist thinkers
in the West are emphasizing the concept of Dharma, though their
understanding of the term is mainly in terms of Buddha Dharma and its
psychological/humanistic orientation.

The dominant influence from India on western thought over the last
century has been the Western Yoga movement. However, while
beginning with a Vedantic orientation and a seeking of Self-realization
with teachers like Vivekananda and Yogananda, it has moved away from
its spiritual roots, following more popular and commercial physical
trends. The Yoga movement in the West has failed to produce much by
way of deep thinking. It has mainly become a body-based exercise
system that is generally anti-intellectual. As in the case with many
Indians, when there is spirituality, disciples think that it is enough to
imitate the guru and repeat what he has said rather than think for
themselves and produce something original and insightful.

The Western Yoga movement has added new insight in healing and
medicine, including care of the dying (the hospice movement), but has
produced little by way of real philosophy or useful critiques of
knowledge or of civilization. At best, western Yoga students have done
good practices to achieve a higher state of consciousness for themselves
or helped others relieve personal suffering. They have not examined the
issues of culture or sought a broader impact upon society, much less tried
to create models of a new intellectual or cultural order.

A neo-Advaita movement has come up in the West under the influence of

such teachings as Ramana Maharshi or J. Krishnamurti. It can sound
spiritually sophisticated on a verbal level, but lacks the depth of true
realization. Its main concern is individual enlightenment and the
glorification of new guru personalities, not any global thinking or
dharmic orientation to life and society. Such new gurus are often
westerners who, with a quick enlightenment experience, think that they
are ready to enlighten others and cultivate their own followings apart
from any tradition. People in this movement are often anti-intellectual
and seldom understand the Vedantic tradition behind such great sages as
Ramana.
The Western Buddhist movement has created a number of interesting
thinkers and many new books, with Buddhist approaches to ecology,
psychology and feminism that can have some depth. This is largely
owing to the work of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetans. However, the new
Buddhism often falls into the same traps as the Yoga movement of
commercialism, personality worship and a catering to western cultural
values and appearances. Some neo-Buddhist thinkers, like many modern
Yoga teachers are trying to create a politically correct form of Buddhism,
turning it into a form of rational humanism in order to make it more
appealing to the West, losing much of the real tradition along the way.
Such efforts are more like a new American marketing, not the creation of
a real dharmic school of thought in the West. A dichotomy between
traditional and modern western views exists in Buddhism as it does in the
Yoga tradition.

Western Buddhists are seldom aware of or look into the Indic roots of
Buddhism and the greater dharmic tradition that Buddhism is part of.
They don’t emphasize that Buddhism defined itself as an Indian or
Bharatiya tradition, calling itself ‘Arya Dharma’, ‘Sanatana Dharma’,
‘Saddharma’ or other terms shared by the Hindu tradition, as well as
using many common symbols (like the swastika). They forget that the
terminology of Buddhism they admire like karma, dharma, nirvana and
samsara is common to the Indian tradition as whole and not unique to
Buddhism, which only has its spin on a common dharmic heritage. They
could benefit from a broader examination of the Indic tradition and the
place of Buddhism within it. They don’t realize that the Hindu tradition
is a dharmic ally, though there may be philosophical differences between
the two traditions as there are within each.

In addition to these groups are certain independent or synthetic thinkers.

Westerners like to mix and match spiritual teachings until they get a
combination that they find suitable. Generally, westerners like eastern
teachings but don’t want to follow any of these in a strict manner as they
are against authority and don’t like discipline. They try to put together
what they think is the best in eastern traditions or develop their own
system out them, a new western approach. Some of these efforts are a
western intellectualization of eastern traditions, which the western mind,
in its cultural arrogance, can’t quite subordinate itself to, but other times
they produce important new insights. Such trends are useful in a long
term bridging of East and West. They may not have yet produced western
thinkers or traditions of the same stature as those of the East, though they
may do so over time (and if such thinkers do exist, they may not be
known or popular).

Lack of Knowledge about India

It is surprising how uninformed or misinformed the western mind is,

even in its occasional spiritual openness and how little of Asian
traditions, particularly Hinduism, it has understood, examines or even
bothers to read. Living in America and contacting many people in the
Yoga and Buddhists movements, I have met only a few scattered
individuals who possess real knowledge of the social and religious
movements in India over the last century, much less the Vedic
background of Indic civilization. Apart from knowing the names of a few
great Indian gurus like Ramana Maharshi or Sri Aurobindo, they have
little understanding or recognition of the Hindu mind and its concerns.
Few are aware of the broader cultural and intellectual foundation of the
Hindu tradition. Almost none know of the Hindu traditions of Dharma
Shastras and the perennial Hindu urge to create a dharmic society.

Most eastern spiritual movements in the West are concerned mainly with
their own particular following and that of their guru. They want to avoid
anything that might be offensive in the eyes of mainstream American
culture or prevent non-Hindus from joining them. They distance
themselves from Hinduism so as not to have to deal with the distortions
about Hinduism that are still common in the West and might prejudice
people against them. Naturally, this does little to remove such distortions
or to help improve the image of the very tradition that they are benefiting
from! For this reason, some Hindus find the western adaptation of their
teachings to be self-serving and ungrateful.

Whatever knowledge western Yoga teachers have about India is usually

what they have heard from the western media, which they naively accept
as true, though they don’t trust the media in other areas. Those who are
truly knowledgeable are generally only those who have lived and worked
in India for some time, but most of them either haven’t made any effort
or don’t have the means to articulate their knowledge.

In fact, many people in the West who claim to represent or teach

eastern spiritual traditions are not well educated in their own traditions.
They seldom read books, particularly of a traditional nature. They are not
aware of India as a cultural and civilizational entity and its concerns.
Their lack of knowledge of Sanskrit and regional dialects in India
removes most western students from direct contact with the tradition and
limits them to second hand sources that are often incorrect or, at best,
keep them confined to the literature of their own lineage.

The Neopagan Movement

The neo-pagan movement is an important movement within western

culture that contains the basis of a genuinely native western spiritual or
dharmic school. It has two main branches. The first and perhaps largest
consists of pre-Christian Celtic, Greek, Roman, Germanic and Slavic
traditions from Europe—an Indo-European tradition that can easily be
linked by common language and culture to India and to the Vedas. The
second consists of a revival of pre-Christian and pre-Judaic traditions of
Egypt and Mesopotamia, which have a similar temple worship and a long
standing trade with India. Both branches have strong mystical traditions
and a worship of the Goddess, as well as a supreme Deity like Hindu
Shiva, the lord of the Yogis. In fact, it could be argued that unless the
West rediscovers its own native spirituality that its spiritual awakening
will remain incomplete, if not inauthentic.

Several scholars within this movement have studied eastern teachings,

particularly the Hindu tradition as the oldest and best preserved pagan
tradition in the world. Though few in numbers, they provide an excellent
forum for dialogue. In addition there are many teachings and artifacts
from these ancient traditions that remain and can be the basis for new
modern teachings. A new scholarship is needed to handle this East-West
convergence of ancient traditions.
In fact, the western New Age movement, with its embracing of many
Gods and Goddesses, sages, spiritual paths and healing traditions, looks a
lot like a new western Hinduism developing. Hinduism alone of the
world’s major religions has a comparable complexity and diversity that
can really encompass all spiritual teachings without their diminution.

A World School of Dharma

It may be wrong to expect too much of the West, particularly America

which is a young country, in terms of leading the world spiritually,
intellectually or culturally, particularly in its mainstream forces. What
America has to offer that is really transformative is through its
counterculture that is allied to native and eastern traditions. Any real
spiritual awakening in the world is likely to come primarily through Asia,
though it will be felt worldwide. India will likely be the first country to
really manifest this, with a movement in this direction that is already over
a century old and now pushing forward in a dynamic way. China will
probably follow in a few decades, when it adds a resurgent Chinese
Buddhist and Taoist culture to its genuine nationalism that is presently
distorted by the hangover of communism. Eventually, Iran will return to
its pre-Islamic traditions that have been its real strength through the
centuries. Then we will see a new spiritual age for humanity with these
three perennial civilizations active once more on their higher levels. The
nexus of these three countries could create a real new dharmic order for
the world.

Europe will probably be more significant in global spiritual awakening

than America. A Celtic revival in Britain or a reawakening of mystical
traditions in Russia linked to the East may prove important. One should
note that India is a much more important country for Britain or Russia
than for the United States, which for Asia will focus on China.
Awakenings in native traditions in America, Africa and Asia will prove
crucial for a global spiritual rebirth.
 Eventually, a new world or planetary school of thought is required,
seeking to establish a new sacred order for human life, a kind of neo-
Vedanta. It will recognize the higher Self (Atman), the Absolute
(Brahman), the Creator (Ishvara), the cosmic mind (Mahat) and Nature
(Prakriti). It will accept the entire range of spiritual paths, the Yogas of
knowledge, devotion, service and inner practices. At the same time, it
will seek to create new intellectual, social and political orders in harmony
with the inner knowledge, with new communities, tribes and lineages.
This will provide a real foundation for advancing not only human but
cosmic civilization on Earth, linking all time and space, this world and all
the worlds. This is the universal order of Sanatana Dharma.

_______________

Part II.3
The Need for a New Buddhi Shakti (Spiritual Force for the
Intellect)
_________________

The Means of Knowledge and Cultural Biases

What is the nature of the intellect? What is the operation of real

intelligence? What is the proper role of reason? What should we look for
in terms of authority for determining real knowledge, whether in the
fields of science, history or spirituality? What are the principles and
methodologies that can lead us to a direct perception of truth? Certainly
all thinkers, East and West, must grapple with these ideas before coming
to conclusions about anything.

Unless we first know our means of knowledge—unless we

understand the instrumentality with which we seek to know—how can
we be certain of anything that we claim to discover? Therefore, the
inquiry into the means of knowledge must precede any inquiry into the
objects to be known. However, today we have taken for granted that our
present cultural means of knowledge as defined by science, technology
and the media is accurate, unbiased, comprehensive and capable of
yielding the truth—which to a deeper vision is certainly not the case.

Different civilizations possess different ideas about the nature of

the intellect and the role of reason. What is rational according to one
culture may be irrational or biased according to another. Even western
civilization, though largely based on the scientific intellect, still has a
place for faith and some scientists still argue in favor of Biblical
miracles.

Indic civilization has a long tradition of deep philosophical

thinking, in which the role of the intellect is an important topic. Books on
Indian philosophies generally begin with an examination of the
appropriate means of knowledge (pramanas), as well as whether the
student is well enough equipped with it in order to find the truth
(adhikaras). These different means of knowledge include not only
sensory perception and inference, as in the West, but also higher states of
consciousness (Samadhi), not part of western intellectual methods of
knowledge. The student’s equipment to truly learn includes spiritual
practices and ethical disciplines, not just intellectual training.

Nature of Intelligence or Buddhi

According to the Indic tradition, we are all endowed with a faculty

of intelligence called buddhi or prajna (dhi in the Vedas). This faculty
makes us different from animals, which have a sense consciousness, and
the plants, which have a life-force. 4[1] It allows us to determine right and
wrong, truth and false, the real and the unreal, the good and the bad and
enables us to act in a conscious way. Because of this discriminating
intelligence we can achieve enlightenment and Self-realization.

Yet intelligence is a two-edged sword. It has a twofold orientation,

outer and inner. Reason turned outwardly discriminates between the
names and forms of the external world and learns to harness the forces of
nature. This is the basis of modern science and technology. Reason
turned inwardly discriminates the transient names and forms of external
appearance from the eternal inner reality of consciousness and learns to
harness of the powers of consciousness. This is the realm of Yoga and
Vedanta.

From this orientation of the mind, the Vedic tradition has always
recognized two different types or levels of science—the lower or apara
vidya (Mundaka Upanishad I.3-4). Unlike western civilization during the
Christian era, Indic civilization did not see a dichotomy between religion
and science that caused religion to suppress science, though it did afford
priority to the higher knowledge. It did not dismiss the lower knowledge
as useless but only as secondary.

At the same time, India developed methods of turning the lower

knowledge into the higher, as the division between the two was more one
of attitude than of form. Indian thinkers realized that if one approached
even mundane subjects with a spiritual intent, these could reveal a higher
truth. By seeing the entire universe as sacred, it regarded even mundane
knowledge as a kind of sacred knowledge. For this reason, mathematics
and grammar as well as art, music and literature of all types could be
turned into a Yoga or way of spiritual practice. A yogic methodology
could render the lower knowledge into a form of the higher. The Indic
tradition promotes both the outer and the inner, the lower and the higher
aspects of the intellect. But it aims at directing the lower aspects of the
mind to unfold the higher.

The Indic tradition, therefore, has the means of turning modern

science into a means of spiritual knowledge, just as it has done with
traditional arts and sciences. This requires not negating science but
subordinating the outer science to an inner science of consciousness. In
the case of physics, for example, it means not only recognizing
consciousness as the basis of the material world but also adopting yogic
methods to realize that consciousness in ones own mind.

In the Indic view, human intelligence is a manifestation of

universal intelligence. It is not a product of mere social conditioning or
physical evolution. The goal of Indic systems of knowledge is the
reintegration of human and cosmic intelligence. For it, the cosmic mind
is the repository of all true knowledge and power and the linking of the
human mind with the cosmic mind is the way to achieve these. Even the
discoveries of great scientists usually occur in inspirational moments in
which the cosmic mind touches them. It is not enough for us to develop
intellectual cunning, huge computers or large data banks. Unless we can
give up our human ego and open to this higher cosmic intelligence our
knowledge will remain biased, incomplete and potentially destructive.
Yet if we make this shift of orientation, accepting both the lower and
higher forms of knowledge and giving each its appropriate place, all the
secrets of the universe and the mind will be opened to us.

The Need for a New Buddhi Shakti

From this Indic understanding came the idea of the spiritualized

mind, the mind of truth, the dharmic intellect, or the Self-mind as the true
goal of mental culture—not merely intellectual genius in the sense of the
western school but a higher consciousness beyond the ordinary mind and
ego. Such a yogic mind cannot be produced through mere academic
education, training in reason or performing experiments in laboratories.
Outwardly, it requires a certain life-style or discipline to render the mind
sensitive and alert, with certain physical disciplines because the tradition
recognized the interrelationship of the mind and body.

The foundation of mental discipline in India was the practice of

ahimsa or non-violence and other mental virtues of patience, detachment,
compassion and devotion. This was allied with a vegetarian diet and
control of the senses to eliminate external factors that disturb and weigh
down the mind. The mind was trained through exercises in concentration,
mantra and meditation to develop an inner and unmediated perception.
Pranayama was used to give more energy to the mind and aid in its
introversion. Such an intelligence was trained to be non-egoistic in
nature, transcending body consciousness. There was little emphasis on
the personality or name of the teacher, the teaching and tradition was the
main thing. The culture so created is inner based and does not look at the
external world or to external goals of personal or social achievement as
the true reality. It seeks liberation from the material world or
enlightenment as its highest goal.

The West, on the other hand, has emphasized the outward

training of the intellect through mathematical, technical and verbal skills.
It puts little emphasis on any spiritual or ethical discipline for the mind. It
has no organized system of yogic practices to systematically develop a
higher awareness (though great thinkers may discover some of these).
The type of mentality so developed is usually egoistic in nature and
conditioned to a certain cultural and anthropocentric bias. This is why
western culture glorifies the names and personalities of its scientists,
designating even natural laws after them. Such an egoistic intellect easily
gets caught in the outer world and its materialistic values. The culture
such an outwardly direct mind creates easily becomes commercial and
conquest oriented, viewing the external world as the true reality and
wanting to possess it at all costs.

Each culture, therefore, has an intellectual power or power of

intelligence (Buddhi Shakti) which it develops, that guides it and

represents its characteristic nature. The Buddhi Shakti of the West,

reflecting a materialist orientation, has embodied itself in matter and

energy based technologies. The Buddhi Shakti of the East, reflecting a

spiritual orientation, has embodied itself in consciousness and Yoga

based technologies. Both these mental powers, though having a different

orientation, can be integrated, but the higher power or Shakti of nature

towards the evolution of consciousness must become the guiding force. It

is the basis for any real civilization to link us up with the cosmos or take

us to the eternal.

There needs to be a new Buddhi Shakti in order to energize a

genuine Indic School of Thought. Such a power is generated not by mere
words but by a power of consciousness and a connection to the cosmic
mind. Only through the flow of this power of consciousness into the
mind can the appropriate dharmic institutions be built. It requires not
simply developing an intellectual culture but a new spiritual culture that
includes and transcends the mind. May such a new Buddhi Shakti, which
also represents the energy of the Goddess Durga, arise worldwide! May
we once more seek the cosmic mind and not rest content with the merely
human!
___________
1[1]
This is idea is as old as the Aitareya Aranyaka II.3.2.

Part II.4
Indic Civilization: A Light for the World
_________________
What is the civilization of the subcontinent of India? Does it have a
place among the great civilizations of the world like Europe or China? Or
is it some cultural backwater with little to offer but regressive social
customs, overpopulation and disease? Does India have a great history and
important traditions for the entire world to study and emulate, or is it
merely a way station for different invaders whose culture came mainly
from the outside and who left mainly trails of destruction? Was the
movement of civilization always west to east, with India merely imitating
trends from the Middle East and Europe, or was there an east to west
movement of culture from India enriching or even molding that of the
West? And was there any significant civilization east of India into
southeast Asia in ancient times that was not simply a product of western
influences? After all, India is geographically more connected and
culturally has had more ties to the east and the south than the west and
the north during the historical period.

Let us examine these questions because they are crucial to

understanding the place of India in world civilization. However, if we

look at the history of India as defined in modern European developed

textbooks, there is really not much to tell. India does not count for much

in the history of the world, which appears would have been about the
same without it. Indic civilization in importance in world civilization

ranks far behind not only Europe but also those of the Middle East and

China. However, is this the real truth of the matter, or simply the legacy

of colonial thinking that has left a strong mark upon current views of the

world?

Historically, India is examined only relative to a few connections

to the West; notably to classical Greece, the most honored ancient
civilization for western historians. India’s own local connections in the
subcontinent and to regions south and east are not given any weight.
India is interpreted through the West, not in its own right. This suggests
the need for a new examination of Indic civilization as we move out of
the era of western dominated culture.

The Development of Civilization in India: Mysteries or

Misinterpretations?

The history of the subcontinent of India begins with the mysterious

Harappan culture, which was certainly one of the great wonders of the
ancient world. Harappan culture, as revealed by hundreds of
archaeological sites, was the largest and most sophisticated urban
civilization of the world at its time, the third millennium BCE (c. 3100 -
1900 BCE). It occupied a vast geographical region from the Amu Darya
River in Afghanistan in the northwest across the Ganga in the east. In the
southwest it stretched to the coast of Iran and down nearly as far as
Mumbai, with important coastal sites in Gujarat and Kachchh. It
contained not only the two large cities of Mohenjodaro and Harappa but
nearly a dozen comparable large urban sites. While Harappa and
Mohenjodaro are about 100 hectares in size, Lakhmirwala and
Rakhigarhi are about 225 hectares, Gurnikalan is about 145, Hasanpur is
about 100 and Ganweriwala is about 80. All these sites are in the
Sarasvati heartland with Rakhigari in the Kurukshetra region itself,
northwest of Delhi.
 Harappa and Mohenjodaro are certainly not the largest, though
they remain better excavated because of the longer period of work on
them. Yet still textbooks talk of Harappa and Mohenjodaro, as if these
remain the most important. They still refer to the culture as the ‘Indus
Valley’, though the great majority of the sites on the dried banks of the
Sarasvati. In short, there has been an attempt to freeze the archaeological
picture to Harappa and Mohenjodaro in spite of new evidence that these
were more peripheral than central to the greater Sarasvati civilization.

These Harappan, or better called ‘Sarasvati’ cities, were better

planned, organized and interconnected than those of Egypt or
Mesopotamia of the time, both of which regions could have fit
comfortably in the boundaries of Harappan India. Writing also arose in
India before 3000 BCE or by the same time as in the Middle East. All the
antecedents of Harappan civilization have been traced in the Indian
subcontinent through various pre-Harappan sites back to the great village
complex of Mehrgarh, which was the largest of its time c. 7000 BCE. In
other words, ancient civilization in India was advanced and indigenous,
comparable to anything in the Middle East at the same time.

Yet in the study of ancient history we read little about

Harappan/Sarasvati India and much more about the much smaller
cultures of Sumeria and Egypt. The contribution of Harappan India to
world civilization is generally ignored or simply missed altogether by a
lack of any real looking for it. It is as if nothing significant in terms of
urban planning, agriculture, trade, science, literature or religion survived
from the culture, which was an historical dead end. By such views,
Harappa disappeared without a trace, leaving little influence on the
subcontinent, much less on the world outside. There is no other ancient
culture of its size and sophistication that has been ascribed such little
effect on civilization.

In addition, there has been little effort to connect Harappan culture

south and east from India. Western Indologists have created a divide in
their minds, as if the India of Harappan times was an island that ended at
the Ganga, which was an impenetrable ocean. Though there are many
interesting archaeological sites to the east, these have been ignored on
principle, as if Indic civilization had to be connected only to the
northwest.
 According to what is now an old perspective—though it still
dominates history books today—this mysterious Harappan culture was
terminated by the ubiquitous Vedic Aryans who came pouring in from
Central Asia. Originally, the Vedic Aryans were blamed as the destroyers
of Harappa, thundering out of Afghanistan into the plains of India like
Attila, the Hun into the Roman world. This view has been highlighted in
textbooks and depictions for several decades, since Wheeler, an
important early Harappan archaeologist, proposed it, though his scanty
skeletal evidence for it was eventually proved to be entirely faulty.

Now that recent archaeology has proved that Harappan culture

ended because of the drying up and changing courses of rivers in the
region, notably the Sarasvati River of Vedic fame, not owing to any
outside invasion. Because of this current Western Indologists have turned
the Vedic Aryans into small groups of intruders into India in the post-
Harappan era. They have given up the Aryan invasion of Harappa and
replaced it with an Aryan migration in the post-Harappan era. The
Aryans are no longer styled the destroyers of Harappa but are still given
an ignoble status as outside barbarians, who through some trick or
cunning managed to impose their language on the older cultures of the
region by a means yet to be discovered.

Though this earlier view of the Vedic Aryans as the destroyers of

Harappa has been exposed as a great blunder—one of the greatest errors
by modern historians—scholars have still not been willing to give credit
to the maligned Vedic people. Nor have they bothered to remove the old
wrong view from history books, which still usually contain it. Even when
their ideas have been proven erroneous, they have yet to question their
methodology or prime beliefs—their fixation on Vedic culture as
deriving from outside India, with no real indigenous Indic culture
surviving on its own.

Let us be clear about this—so far there is no civilization, ruins,

artifacts, or skeletal remains, much less cities that have been proven to be
those of the Vedic Aryans apart from the Harappan or other indigenous
cultures of the region. The cultural identity of the Vedic Aryans remains
as mysterious as the disappearance of the Harappans by such views.
There is no separate identity for the Vedic Aryans that has ever been
shown apart from the Harappans and pre-Harappans.
Vedic Literature

The Vedas remain the largest literature from the pre-Buddha era in
the world (before 500 BCE). They dwarf the Bible, the Iliad, and the
Egyptian Book of the Dead or any other such ancient records. Yet in spite
of their extent, they are not counted for much in western accounts of
civilization. Western Indologists doubt whether the Vedas were even
composed in India or represented the indigenous traditions of the region
in the first place. The Vedas have been reduced to primitive nature poetry
that later generations unwisely attributed to a divine or seer vision.

Though Vedic literature has continued to inspire spiritual and

social movements on the subcontinent to the present day, it is looked
upon by modern scholars as little more than a ruin or fossil. As the record
of an intrusive nomadic culture, rather than a stable civilization, it is a
literature that probably shouldn’t even exist. That Indians are inspired by
the Vedas becomes only another sign of their lack of discrimination for
the western mind. Why such a primitive literature would be faithfully
preserved for millennia is something they have no reason for apart from
the cultural backwardness of the Hindus.

Nor surprisingly, western Vedic scholars have done little more

than catalogue Vedic grammar, which though quite sophisticated even by

their accounts doesn’t cause them to look for something deeper. They

know little of any spiritual secrets of the Vedas that traditional scholars

have indicated are in the texts, which everywhere speak of what is

hidden, secret, or only for the initiated. Such Indologists don’t see any

deeper meaning in the Vedas. Though modern scholars, both Christian

and non-Christian, look at the Bible in terms of many layers of

symbolism, probing behind the strange metaphors and events found

within it, they ignore deeper levels in Vedic literature, even though the

Vedic tradition describes these. The Vedas speak of special mantras,

Divine names, and higher states of consciousness much like later

Hinduism, with a sevenfold symbolism much like the seven chakras of

Yogic thought.

Yet just as Western Indology has erected an artificial geographical

border on ancient Indian civilization, refusing to allow it to go beyond
the Ganga, they have created a similar dividing line on Indic or yogic
spirituality, refusing to see it in any texts before the Upanishads. They
look at the Vedas from a point of view apart from the Indic tradition.
Whatever typically Indian or Hindu occurs in the Vedas, they ascribe to
an influence of the indigenous people on the Aryan intruders, not to
anything that really belonged to the Vedic mind.

Such scholars have their own rigid time line on Vedic culture.
They refuse to connect it to anything before 1500 BCE, as if Vedic
culture had no roots before that period and certainly no prior connection
with India, in spite of it becoming the representative ancient literature of
the entire area, emulated throughout the region ever since. As part of this,
they have erected a semantic divide as well. They rigidly separate Vedic
deities like Indra from later Hindu deities like Shiva, even though these
have similar characteristics. They ignore the role of Vedic deities like
Agni, Vayu and Surya in later internal Yoga practices as the powers of
inner transformation, though they are clearly there.

Western Indologists have created a linguistic divide that follows

their proposed temporal and geographical borders. They will connect the
Indo-European languages of India to cultures of Europe and Central Asia.
But they fail to take linguistic and cultural connections south and east in
India itself, particularly before the time of the Buddha. They have tried to
erect certain language families as absolute boundaries, when these are
simply convenient categories with much overlap and many variations.
They emphasize the existence of Indo-European and non-Indo-European
language groups in India to make the former into intruders, ignoring the
fact that Indo-European and non-Indo-European linguistic groups occur
together everywhere in the ancient world, including Europe, the Middle
East and Central Asia. In fact, Central Asia and the Eastern European
plain— the main proposed homeland for the Indo-Europeans—has
always been a highway occupied by shifting populations differing in
language and ethnicity including Slavic, Germanic, Celtic, Hungarian,
Bulgarian, Slavic, Iranian, Scythian, Turkic, Mongolian and other very
different groups. That it could preserve any pure linguistic or ethnic
homeland is almost absurd.

Such scholars highlight place and river names connecting the

Vedas to Afghanistan but ignore the many Vedic/Sanskrit place and river
names to the south and east of India as well. Though the river names of
north India are Sanskritic as far back as can be traced, they still portray
the Vedic people as intruders into the region.

Modern linguists have also failed to understand the nature of the

Vedic language, which was not a common spoken tongue that can be
reduced to some historical sound changes. Vedic Sanskrit was called
‘Chandas’ or poetry and was a highly refined elite language of the higher
classes. Just as later Sanskrit, it could be continued for many centuries
with little change owing to its elite and sacred status. Sanskrit remains
one of the world’s most sophisticated and scientific languages. This
suggests that it was the product of a great civilization, not the
development of nomadic peoples. Indeed, the Rigveda itself, as great
modern teachers like Sri Aurobindo proclaim, has a sophistication of
language on par with anything produced in the history of the world, with
profound plays on symbolism, sound and meaning. It requires a great
civilization to explain its sophistication. It is not the primitive literature
Western Indologists require in order to justify their theories.

Western scholars have looked at Harappan civilization as a great

set of urban ruins from a culture that had little effect on history. They
have similarly looked at the vast extent of Vedic literature as a collection
of texts that had no real culture to support it. This means that the
archaeological remains of ancient India, however extensive, are
dissociated from any continuity of civilization in the region. Similarly,
the existent literature from ancient India has been removed from the
ancient civilizations of the region—and from any real civilization at all.
We are left with mute Harappan ruins on one hand, and a Vedic literature
from a strange nomadic world that no one has ever found on the other.

Yet the historical texts of the region—whether Hindu, Buddhist or

Jain—do not speak of such a discontinuity. They are unaware of these
invaders and all proudly call themselves Arya, not as an ethnic term but
as a term of refinement, nobility and respect. Arya Dharma is another
early name for Buddhism and can be applied to Hindu and Jain traditions
as well. It is perhaps the only term that can include all the dharmic
traditions of the region.

Indic Civilization

The Indic record of history is first of an ancient Vedic civilization

centered on the Sarasvati river that relocated to the Ganga and Yamuna
area after the drying up of the Sarasvati and the shifting of its
headwaters. The Indic record is second of a Puranic Hindu and Buddhist
tradition on the Ganga that arose as an adaptation or reform of the
Sarasvati tradition. This agrees with the archaeological record today that
the Harappan culture was centered on the Sarasvati river and the end of
this civilization occurred because of the drying up of the river. In other
words, the Sarasvati to Ganga shift of civilization in ancient India is
reflected in Vedic and post-Vedic literature. Still, western scholars
remain reluctant to connect the two, in part because few of them keep up
with archaeological findings that show the Sarasvati-Harappa connection,
but also because the implications are too upsetting to western paradigms
of history that support the supremacy of western civilization.

If we look at the culture and literature of the subcontinent of India,

it is clear that India has a civilization older, more complex and
continuous than perhaps any other culture in the world. English literature,
for example, mainly goes back to the sixteenth century or to Chaucer a
few centuries before. Almost every region of India has an older regional
literature than the English, whether it is Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra,
Kashmir or Bengal, which in turn look back to much older Sanskrit
models.

European civilization goes back to ancient Greece and Rome,

about two thousand years ago. Yet at the time of ancient Greece and
Rome there was no European civilization per se. The Greeks or Romans
had no concept of themselves as Europeans. The idea of Europe as a
cultural entity is no older than Charlemagne, who in the ninth century
started the Holy Roman Empire. Greece and Rome were integral parts of
the Mediterranean sphere of culture that included North Africa, Anatolia
and Mesopotamia. Central and Eastern Europe were hardly populated at
the time and mainly consisted of marshland. The literature of ancient
Greece and Rome was destroyed or marginalized by the Christianization
of the region, breaking the continuity of culture in the region.

On the other hand, in India today, Sanskrit literature like the

Mahabharata, which dates back to the Greco-Roman period, if not much
before, is still alive and part of the culture, including that of the common
people in India today. No such Greek or Roman texts have this living
status in western culture and have not had for nearly two thousand years.
Sanskrit literature not only dwarfs that of Greece and Rome, it is both
older and more continuous. All of classical Sanskrit literature was quite
old by the time Europe emerged from the dark ages, and slowly began to
form its modern civilization and its proud nation states.

Western Misinterpretation of Indic Civilization

The problem is that the West has defined civilization in its own
image, disregarding other civilizations and their different approaches and
values. First, it has defined civilization in terms of science and
technology, as a largely materialistic development. Clearly, the West did
pioneer most of modern science and technology during the period from
1500-2000 AD. However, prior to that Europe was no more advanced
scientifically than the rest of the world, and often behind it. India and
China were equal or ahead of Europe in science and technology
throughout the medieval period and in the ancient era as well. Today we
see scientists from Asia making their mark on modern science, which is
no longer an affair that belongs to Europe or America. Indeed, there are
more trained scientists in India than in America today. If we define
civilization as science and technology, clearly the era of European
predominance is coming to an end. It was more an historical phase than
any lasting domination of world civilization, which historically has been
more dominated by larger and older cultures in Asia.
 Second, and more importantly, the West has defined culture in
terms of its own approaches to religion, art and philosophy, even though
these are rather recent, fragmentary or at odds with each other. It is not
that India does not have religion, art or philosophy. In fact, India has had
probably more of these than the West, but that the Indic approach to
these aspects of culture, being different, causes them to be ignored or
denigrated on principle.

In terms of religion and spirituality, India has offered the world a

much greater literature, older and larger traditions, and a deeper cosmic
knowledge than the West has ever produced. Look at the Vedas,
Upanishads, Epics, Puranas, Tantras and Yoga Shastras in the Hindu
tradition, and the many Buddhist, Jain, Sikh and other teachings as well.
In the modern world, if people are looking to spiritual practices, they
employ mainly Indic terms of dharma, karma, dhyana, prana, shakti,
kundalini, and chakras. Most of these terms can be found in the Rigveda
itself! If we are looking for practical way to develop a higher
consciousness and connection with the universal mind, it is in the Indic
Yoga tradition that we can find the way, not in the mainstream of western
civilization which has not been concerned with such higher realities.

In terms of philosophy, the Indic tradition is similarly older, more

continuous and more diverse than that of the West. From the six systems

of Vedic philosophy, the Nyaya-Vaisheshika, the Samkhya-Yoga and

Purva and Uttara Mimamsa, to the four schools of classical Buddhist

philosophy, the Tantric schools like Kashmiri Shaivism, or the

materialistic Charavaka school, it has an extraordinary sweep of the

human mind and the universe itself. And there is in all of this no mention

of the Greek philosophers that the West has emulated as the greatest in

this field, who clearly came later than the main traditions of India. As the

work of modern philosophers like Sri Aurobindo indicates, it is a living

tradition. India maintains a tradition of spiritual, ontological and

meditational philosophies that have not yet succumbed to the materialist

and scientific paradigms of the West that more or less put an end to such

an independent philosophical tradition in the West over a hundred years

ago.

One could argue, therefore, that India is not a backwater of

civilization but rather that Western Indologists represent a backwater of
scholarship. They have so far failed to really study or get to know their
subject. They are content with secondhand views, stereotypes, or
speculation based upon their Eurocentric mindset. Their knowledge of
Sanskrit is often poor. Their direct examination of Vedic texts is limited.
In short, their proposed history of India is not deeply researched and has
not yet changed from the original colonial views in the nineteenth
century. In fact, Western Indology has contributed almost nothing, and
certainly nothing significant in recent decades, to the understanding of
India or to the unique nature of its civilization.

A more progressive western scholarship exists relative to Africa

than to India. What few Indology departments exist in the West are being
downsized and are generally dominated by scholars who do not feel any
real affinity to the Indic tradition. They use Indology to promote their
own political or intellectual views that are often anti-Hindu, if not anti-
India. Western Indology remains more defined by Marx, Freud or the
Bible than anything authentically Indic. This is very different from
departments on China, the Middle East or Christianity and Islam that are
dominated by scholars who have a real appreciation of these traditions.
With representatives like these, India does not need enemies in the
academic world.

Today, the West, except for spiritual seekers, has yet to really
confront, much less understand the civilization of India. The civilization
of India has different values and different goals. It cannot fit into western
models of culture, whether monotheistic religion, western intellectual
culture or materialistic science. It is not that the civilization of India is
wanting but that the standard used to judge it is insufficient. Its traditions
go deep and remain alive, in spite efforts to denigrate them. Note the
recent Kumbha Mela in which over thirty million people took a sacred
dip in the Ganga on one day. There is no gathering comparable to this in
western civilization. Yet while this was the largest gathering in world
history and the largest religious and spiritual event, the American media
scarcely noticed it (though that in UK did give it some attention).

The West has defined India according to its own vision and an
external contact with the region that has seldom been deep or even open-
minded. The West defines India according to its contact with the West,
which according to its own image. It ignores that the subcontinent of
India is a well-defined cultural and geographic sphere, whose main
associations historically have been to the east and the south. Its reduction
of Indic civilization has caused a similar reduction of the related
civilizations of Southeast Asia, Indochina and Indonesia, which are not
given much place in world culture either.

Today there needs to be a new examination and definition of Indic

civilization, what is traditionally called Bharatiya Samskriti. It must be
judged by its own standard, not that of an alien tradition. Indic
civilization must be redefined not only for the past, but also for the
present and the future. It has a great history and the world’s most ancient
and sophisticated literature that the world has preserved. It has not been a
borrower of culture but an originator of culture. If we look to Asia, Indic
culture and religions have created the dominant tone for the entire region
from China to Indonesia to India, and to Central Asia in the pre-Islamic
period.

The coming century will see an awakening in Asia on all levels, just
as Asiatic religions are spreading to the West. Even Catholicism is
seeking to enrich itself spiritually through its encounter with Buddhism
and Vedanta. For this a reexamination of Indic civilization is crucial. It is
time for the West to give up its cultural arrogance and look to Mother
India anew. It is time for Indian intellectuals to give up their cultural
alienation and drink deep from the well of their own traditions. While
certainly there are superstitions and backward customs in the country that
need correction, the core of civilization that has persisted since Vedic
times, remains pure. It can generate a new and higher culture if its own if
given the chance. May that Rishi culture again come forth for the benefit
of all!

__________________

Part II.5
Multinational Corporations and Global Education
________________

The Multinational Control of Education and the Media Worldwide

Schools in America are more and more coming under the funding
of multinational corporations. This is true not only of universities, where
corporate influence is long standing, but even the case with public
schools. Children not only grow up but also receive their education under
the gaze of corporate America. For example, companies like Coca Cola
sponsor computers for public schools in exchange for advertising, coke
machines in the halls and other favors. Young children come under the
influence of corporate America when they start school, which is
supposed to be free of commercial influences and propaganda. Naturally,
this gets them into the commercial model of living before they are able to
exercise any discrimination about it. It insures that they will be compliant
consumers for the rest of their lives, programmed by corporate America
to do its bidding and fit into its system.

Of course, universities have long been funded by big business,

particularly by the weapons industry and the pharmaceutical drug
companies, which are among the largest and most profitable businesses
in the world. This is because universities require endowments and
departments need outside funding which is not easily available
elsewhere, particularly in the era of university downsizing in which
public funding for schools is getting progressively reduced. Multinational
corporations are increasingly setting the agenda for education in the
West, which is losing any appearance of objectivity and increasing
promoting commercial interests and values.

The same patronage has always extended to the global media,

which is commercially sponsored by multinational corporations and
naturally upholds their interests. Even public television programs in
America like the MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour rely on funding by
multinational corporations like Exxon Oil who air short mini-
commercials before the programs begin. One wonders how objective and
unbiased the reporting in such programs can be.

This corporate influence on education is not limited to the western

world. The western model of education has been adopted throughout the
world, including most of Asia, Africa and South America. Educational
institutions worldwide generally follow the western model and often
uncritically fall into a multinational agenda, following programs, ideas
and teachers who are proponents of the multinational consumerist
approach. Not surprisingly, local, traditional and native cultures
throughout the world are being eliminated in favor of the global
consumer culture of the West, which, not surprisingly, is deemed
progressive in the schools.

Just as colonial interests suppressed traditional and native systems

of education during the colonial era, western influenced academia and its
multinational support groups continue to do so today. Traditional cultures
are viewed as politically incorrect, economically backward, and having
an inaccurate sense of their own history. The multinationals are simply
the old colonial interests in a new form, reducing culture to a consumerist
model that can be easily manipulated at a global level and which destroys
or subordinates any local culture.

During their colonial rule the British banned Ayurveda in India,

closed down Sanskrit schools and denigrated the Hindu religion and

Indian culture in the programs that they set up in the country.

Independent India continued uncritically the British model of education

and has made few changes in the textbooks since the end of colonial rule.
The result is that westernized schools and teachers in India today

continue to attack their own cultural traditions just as the British did,

quoting western educational authorities, which they see as universal,

rational, scientific or objective, calling their own culture, which they

seldom bother to study, communal, irrational or superstitious. This

westernized education in India has been against the traditional

educational models of the country and does not want such subjects as

Ayurveda, astrology, Yoga or Vedanta taught in the schools. Any effort

to reintroduce such local cultural traditions is deemed regressive, biased

and dangerous.

Indology and Multinationalism

Indological studies is another field of western academia continuing

the old colonial model under the guise of globalism or science. It also has
changed little since the end of the colonial era, still promoting the Aryan
Invasion theory and the idea that Indian civilization is mainly a
borrowing from the West. Western Indologists follow a western cultural
agenda and interpret India and its history according to the values of
western civilization, global capitalism or, alternatively, global socialism.
Like many western scholars, they focus on western ideals of free trade,
democracy and religious conversion as the solution to India’s problems.
They denigrate Asian traditions of as inhumane, ignoring the ethical and
dharmic foundation of these cultures that is much more spiritual than
what the West is promoting instead.

Western Indologists control the discourse on the Vedas, writing the

textbooks and pronouncing certain speculations as facts, though they may
consist of no hard data at all, but only speculations agreeable to the
western mind. They reject any traditional scholarship as fantasy, error or
fraud. They would interpret the history of India as if no traditional Indian
ever knew anything about it, and as if Indians before the European era
had no real knowledge of their own culture or its origins.

Any practicing Hindu or anyone honoring Hindu spiritual

teachings is almost automatically disbarred from Indology in the West
and academic institutions based upon the western model. That is why one
finds so few Indians in these fields, unless they are leftists who have
proved their worth to western academia by fervently denouncing their
own culture. Western Indology is often borderline racist, taking in only
Uncle Toms who kowtow to its models of thought. Even in Hindu
religious studies in the West few if any of the texts used will be written
by practicing Hindus or reflecting the views of any contemporary Hindu
teachers. The textbooks and translations on Hinduism will come from
Marxists, Christians or anyone who is not a Hindu.

Not surprisingly, in Western Indology, the Vedas, which are

essentially spiritual documents, are not looked upon in any spiritual light
but dissected according to outer views only. Indologists think that that
materialistic-intellectual-political angle of western ideas can unravel the
secrets of the ancient mantras that traditionally required initiation and
asceticism in order to penetrate. Such an Indology is generally anti-India
and cannot be looked at as representing of Indic civilization or any Indic
school of thought. Such scholars are not working to understand Hinduism
in a sympathetic way in the modern world; they are working to suppress
it.

Today in India, like in many countries in the world, there is the

arising of a post-independence nationalism. In some countries, this
occurred shortly after independence. In India it was delayed by fifty
years, largely because the country was ruled by an intellectual elite
educated in England whose cultural sympathies resided overseas. This is
also resulting in more independent thinkers arising, who are questioning,
though belatedly, the western model. The result is the revival of a Vedic
and Hindu school of thought. One can see this in the many new books on
ancient India, generally by non-academics, which have been recently
printed and are widely read in India today. A new focus on the secrets of
the ancient world is becoming popular in India as it remains in the West
(witness the many television and movie programs on such topics both
documentary and fictional).

Naturally, western academia, its colonial legacy and its new

corporate sponsorship will try to resist the Hindu movement, not out of
any necessary spite but simply to preserve their position of power.
Western Indologists will want to keep the arguments within the western
school of thought because they control the rules of the game. They will
see their control of Indology not as a colonial legacy but as a means of
protecting the field of study from Hindu distortions. Not surprisingly, we
already find Western Indology and its Indian proponents condemning the
new Indic scholarship on principle and even having courses on it as a
form of communalism or religious fundamentalism. What they are really
afraid of is that Indians will reclaim Indology and then reclaim their own
culture. This will cause them to lose control over the institutions and the
debate about India, losing their niche in the academic world.

A New Hindu Vaishya Dharma

Hindus should be aware of the multinational influence on

education, and not be naïve about western corporate, political and
religious agendas. Anyone who controls the financial purse strings of
education will naturally want education to represent views that they
follow or at least respect. It is only to be expected. Those who control the
money in education unfortunately usually control what is being taught,
whether directly or indirectly.

Wealthy Hindus should seek to fund proper education, not only in

scientific fields but also about India and its civilization. This requires not
merely funding Indological departments in the West—where their money
has little accountability—but also their own institutions outside of
western culture. They must take financial responsibility for their own
tradition if they expect it to endure and not expect western institutions to
create a view of India, particularly of ancient India and its spiritual
traditions, that will be favorable and will sustain it in the modern world.

Wealthy Hindus or those in the corporate world should also seek to

bring a greater dharmic perspective into business activities. They should
promote a new globally sensitive and ecologically aware Vaishya
Dharma, following Vedic and yogic values of unity, interdependence and
a recognition of the sacred nature of all life. India’s own Vaishya Dharma
or dharmic values for business include respect for nature, human
diversity and cultural and religious pluralism that the West is also
looking toward for the future. Certainly, a new spiritually aware business
class and global business consciousness is required to get us out of the
current crisis and to build an educational system that goes beyond
corporate greed or the seeking of cultural hegemony. For this, such a
resurgent Vaishya Dharma is the key.

Yoga, Ayurveda and Hindu principles of management can help

transform the current destructive multinational scene into something
more enlightened, showing how spiritual principles can make for a better
management of our human and natural resources, putting material
development in the context of the evolution of consciousness. We must
move from multinational capitalism to a global culture of Dharma, not
only in spirituality but also in the economic sphere, which is where our
cultural spirituality is really put into practice or simply remains a mere
slogan.

_________________

Part II.6
The Spiritual Divide in Vedic Scholarship
_____________
The Vedas are part of a great spiritual-religious tradition that
includes many great saints, sages, yogis, rishis, swamis and sadhus from
ancient to modern times. Naturally, those who follow the Vedic tradition
will interpret the Vedas very differently than those who don’t. Vedic
texts are mainly concerned with spiritual issues; the relationship of
human beings with the cosmic powers and the higher Self (Paramatman).
Historical, economic and cultural factors are incidental, as much as they
would be in any religious or poetic texts. The greater Vedic concerns are
karma, rebirth, liberation, ritual worship of the Gods and Goddesses, self-
purification, mantra, pranayama and Yoga practices of various types.
 Most of the terms that came to characterize Indian civilization and
yogic spirituality can be found in the Rigveda itself. These include
dharma (natural law), karma (ritualistic or repeated action), dhyana
(meditation), mantra, satyam (truth), Yoga and even Atman (the Self).
Special Vedic terms for higher principles also exist like ritam (cosmic
law) and brihat (the vast). Many spiritual and psychological terms exist
as manas (mind), dhi (intelligence or buddhi), chitta (heart), kratu (will),
daksha (skill), manisha (inspiration) and medha (wisdom). Such
terminology indicates more spiritually to the Vedas than nomads, rituals
or primitive poetry.

Most Western Indologists, not having a connection to the Vedic

spiritual tradition or its terminology, cannot appreciate the spiritual-
religious views of the Vedas. They have a different view of the world,
history and progress—that of western civilization and its values—which
colors their perception in another direction. They do not practice the
mantras and meditations of the Vedic tradition so that they can know
these at an intimate level. They are at best detached observers from the
outside, at worst hostile critics with an agenda to denigrate or eliminate
the Vedic tradition that they see as wrong or obsolete according to their
own values. The result is that Western Indologists look at the Rigveda on
an outer level only, not as a sophisticated system devised to develop a
higher consciousness that transcends time and space but as primitive
poetry or crude philosophy of unsophisticated tribes that should has little
real value.

There are some exceptions to this rule. A few western scholars do

have a background in various yogic paths and the teachings of different
Hindu gurus. They have a deeper view, more sympathetic to the tradition.
Unfortunately, they remain a minority and often keep their views hidden
in order to protect their positions or because there is no real forum to air
them.

Not surprisingly, most current Indologists reject the scholarship of

spiritual Hindus on principle as being irrational, unscientific or politically
incorrect. They give little credence to the Vedic scholarship on a spiritual
level like that of Sri Aurobindo or Swami Dayananda of the Arya Samaj,
even when such figures had a high level of Sanskrit training.
 Older western Indologists like Max Muller followed a western view
of religion evolving from primitive polytheism to monotheism, which
was applied to India, with Vedic polytheism giving rise to Vedantic
monism. However, this has little to do with the Vedic, Puranic and
Tantric view in which monism and pluralism exist together in harmony,
which idea we find from the Rigveda itself, with the One manifesting
itself through the Many. Similarly, Marxist scholars look at the Vedic
tradition in terms of a caste struggle that is simply a modification of the
class struggle of Marxist theories. The Marxist view of history as moving
towards a classless society and materialistic utopia is also quite foreign to
Vedic thought that is trying to take us beyond our human limitations,
organizing society toward the goal of Moksha or spiritual liberation.

Therefore, spiritual and religious Hindus must be careful in

accepting interpretations of the Vedic tradition put forth by those who do
not honor Hindu spirituality. Those who are not spiritual Hindus can
perhaps offer something of value about the outer dimension of Vedic
texts through historical studies or archaeology, but are likely to miss the
main thing, the spiritual dimension. Even when they comment on outer
political or historical dimensions of the Vedic tradition they are prone to
misinterpretation, being unable to perceive the sophistication of Vedic
civilization through its spiritual roots.

There are many examples of this problem. The Vedic war between
the powers of light and darkness gets turned by modern scholars into a
war between light and dark-skinned people. Vedic rishis like Vasishta
and Vamadeva, regarded as Self-realized yogis, get turned into primitive
shamans. The Vedic view of the universe as a series of oceans gets
turned into the imaginings of nomads in Central Asia who never saw the
sea! Soma, which is a symbol for Ananda or bliss in the highest spiritual
sense, gets reduced to some primitive intoxicant.

The Example of Ramakrishna in Western Indology

There is a very glaring example of the scholarly divide about the

Hindu tradition relative to modern teachers. Paramahansa Ramakrishna is
regarded in India as a God-realized yogi, who mastered all religions and
all Yoga paths, a saint and a bhakta almost without peer. Recently, a
western Indologist, Jeffrey Kripal, came out with a study of Ramakrishna
called Kali’s Child. The book tries to expose Ramakrishna as a repressed
homosexual who indulged in child abuse, with all of his spiritual
experiences being little more than neurotic fantasies. Ramakrishna’s
entire practice of the many paths of Yoga and perhaps the entire tradition
itself are reduced to little more than a delusion! In one fell swoop all the
yogic knowledge and experience of Ramakrishna gets dismissed as
fraudulent. The Hindu view of a many levels of consciousness from the
human ego to the Absolute gets reduced to a sexual neurosis and
compulsion. Ramakrishna’s experience of all the seven chakras gets all
kept below the belt!

Such a Freudian interpretation of great personalities is, of course,

nothing new or surprising, since Freud himself, though a Jew, identified
Oedipus with Moses and turned one of the founders of his own religious
tradition into a sexual neurotic! It is almost embarrassing that western
scholars have not gotten beyond such sexual obsessions. This reduction
of a person or a subject to a sexual deviation is another form of
negationism and stereotyping. It is a form of intellectual weakness and
character assassination for those who cannot debate the deeper
philosophical and spiritual issues that a figure like Ramakrishna evokes.
The magic of the Goddess Kali, the beauty of temple worship, and the
vision of the Atman are all effaced by a cynical pop psychology.
Kundalini and the chakras, samadhi and Self-realization, which Kripal
probably thinks is all neurosis of one form or another, is all forgotten.

Such sexual charges are nothing new for westerners that

compulsively read sexuality into the Hindu tradition or any other native,
indigenous or pagan groups. Anything foreign, exotic or beyond ordinary
western culture becomes sex, largely because of the sexually saturated
nature of western civilization. Islam similarly, which is hardly an ascetic
religion with its polygamy, also imagined eroticism in Hindu temples and
needed to destroy them accordingly. I recall recently hearing a western
Christian speak of the eroticism of the Bhagavad Gita. That the Gita is
an ascetic text with no eroticism was lost on the person, whose mind was
still working on the Hindu equals pagan equals erotic equation regardless
of the Hindu tradition of yogic detachment and withdrawal from the
senses.
Hindu Avoidance of the Historical Debate

Some Hindu scholars have ignored the outer dimension of the Vedas
and focused on the spiritual meaning only. Some traditionalists have
insisted that there is no historical dimension to the Vedas at all. They use
the Vedas being eternal and apaurusheya (impersonal) to reject any
historical interpretation of Vedic texts, though Itihasa-Purana (history)
was one of the main traditional methods of interpreting Vedic mantras.
When spiritual or religious Hindus do make a contribution on the
historical side, it is often rejected out of hand because of their religious
background and so they are reluctant to continue in the debate.

In this regard, we should recognize that spiritual and religious

Hindus can add much to the historical study of Vedic and Indic
traditions, whatever background we may have. There are obviously many
Christian, Jewish and Islamic scholars, who are quite staunch or even
conservative in their beliefs, active in the scholarship in their fields. To
reject spiritual and religious Hindus on any issues of history is a religious
prejudice. To quote their spiritual views of higher consciousness (or their
belief in astrology) as proof of their poor scholarship on historical
matters is also inappropriate.

Other Hindus have ignored the historical debate and emphasize

promoting spiritual Hinduism through Yoga and Vedanta instead. They
have found that the western mind is more open to these spiritual
teachings and will accept them, even when holding to the western view
of history or various anti-Hindu stereotypes. These teachers may not call
themselves Hindus and emphasis a universal path uniting all religions.
They consider that in the long term people will change their views on
outer cultural issues, once they have adopted a Hindu-based spiritual way
of life and values. For this reason many Hindu gurus shun social or
political issues, even if they may inwardly sympathize with Hindu
causes.

While such an approach can be helpful, we cannot ignore cultural

and historical issues in the long run. There are ways of dealing with these
without abandoning a spiritual view or without unnecessarily offending
seekers in the West. In fact, such Hindu cultural critiques may appeal to
seekers in the West, affording the Yoga tradition a greater intellectual
sophistication and social relevance, and draw in those who otherwise
would not be attracted to it.

Two Levels of Vedic Scholarship

We must recognize two levels of Vedic scholarship. The first is a

spiritual level, which will be honored more by those who practice the
Vedic teachings. The second is an historical level. This is what modern
academia honors—particularly when it follows a standard of political
correctness that it can agree with. We are faced with a contradiction
between these two views, a gulf that is wide, though not entirely
irreconcilable.

Individuals regarded as true Vedic scholars and pandits in India

will not be accepted as true scholars by western academics because they
don’t follow the rational and materialistic methodologies that the West
honors. This is why figures like Sri Aurobindo will not be read relative to
ancient India. Similarly, those regarded as important Vedic scholars by
western academia will be not be honored by spiritual Hindus because
they are not inwardly connected to the Vedic tradition. No Hindu will
look up to western academicians since Max Muller as spiritual gurus in
the Vedic tradition! We should remember Upanishadic injunctions about
who can really learn the inner truth of the teachings and the dangers of
giving it to those who are not really qualified. “This Vedantic teaching
should not be given to one who is not peaceful, who is not a son or a
disciple. Who has the highest devotion to God and guru, these spoken
truths become clear to that great soul (Svetasvatara Upanishad VI.21-
22).” Clearly no good western academician would accept these values.
Their path is not discipleship in the tradition but a view from the outside
that is often misinformed.

However, it is possible to balance the spiritual and historical

interpretations of the Vedic tradition. Spiritual scholars can acknowledge
the historical dimension and seek to bring clarity to it. Historical scholars
can acknowledge the spiritual dimension as being there, even if they are
in no position to really comment on it. However, while students of Hindu
spirituality can acknowledge history, academics that deny spirituality will
be less likely to bring it into their discussions.
 Certainly spiritual Hindus must address historical issues. To do this
they must create a new Vedic historical methodology. They need not
ignore Hindu historical sources but must combine these with a
multidisciplinary approach linking literature, astronomy, archaeology,
geology and other factors. They should also aim at a scientific approach
to communicate to a modern audience. On the other hand, scholars who
are not Hindus must recognize that much of the Vedic teaching will be
lost on them as they are unfamiliar with the religious and spiritual factors
involved. The key is for Hindus to take the lead in interpreting their
tradition. Indology must return to India and encounter the full force of the
Bharatiya tradition. This will occur when the Indian homeland of the
Vedas is once more honored.

Devic and Asuric Civilizations and Scholarship

All ancient mythologies speak of the war between the Devas and the
Asuras, the Gods and the anti-gods or titans, which is also the battle
between the forces of light and darkness. This is the dominant image of
the Rigveda and the Zend Avesta, but has traces everywhere in ancient
thought, whether in the Greek, Egyptian, Jewish, Babylonian or Native
American traditions. Following this model, we can postulate two types of
civilization in the world as the ‘Devic’ or spiritual and the ‘Asuric’ or
materialistic. In the Upanishads (Chandogya VIII.7), the main difference
between the two groups is that the Asuras believe that the body is the
Self or the true reality, while the Devas look beyond the body to pure
consciousness.

Clearly, modern civilization, which is primarily western in origin

and leadership, whether of the political left or right, is Asuric or bodily-
based. Obviously modern commercialism is sensate and bodily-based and
modern communism projects an entirely materialistic utopia. The
dominant view of western religions is of heaven or paradise as a glorified
physical realm, which requires the resurrection of the physical body to
achieve. This means that both the religious and secular sides of western
culture are bodily-based. Western civilization reflects the outer values of
the ego, with its emphasis on famous personalities in all domains of life
(including those of scientists and scholars). It is assertive, militant and
greedy, not only in the political and economic spheres, but also in
religion.

The western obsession with physical history as the real truth is

another bodily-based compulsion that is arguably Asuric in nature. Its
emphasis on physical remains for interpreting history, as with
archaeological ruins or skeletons, demonstrates a bias for physical reality.
It has no spiritual, dharmic or Devic view to balance this out. Western
Indologists believe that their physical/outward-based view has given
them the real keys to ancient India and Vedic civilization. They are like
the Asura Virochana in the Upanishads who is content with the idea that
the body is the Self. Their main concern in Vedic texts is dissecting the
grammar, which is an emphasis on the outer aspect of language that
misses the spirit or meaning encased within it.

Western linguistics has a similar physical bias that ignores the

spiritual basis of language. Their prime focus is physical indicators in
some proposed Proto-Indo-European language, which they are
constructing as if ancient languages were physically based forms of
speech. They forget the obvious fact that ancient languages and cultures
were ritualistic in nature, with a primary concern for the sacred, not our
modern obsession with physical reality! Following this materialistic line,
linguists have tried to determine common geographical and animal terms
in Indo-European languages in order to identify the original homeland of
the Indo-Europeans, oblivious to the spiritual focus of ancient Arya
culture which was never geographically limited. This reflects the same
concern for form over content that characterizes modern commercial
culture. They glorify the husk and lose the edible fruit within it!

However, there have been Devic or spiritual elements hidden in

western culture, whether in the Celts, Greeks, Christian mystics, or New
Age aspiration. Similarly, there are Asuric forces in India that are quite
powerful today, like its leftist intelligentsia that has dominated the
country since independence. Even in the Devic or yogic field are gurus
that are Asuric in nature, seeking to accumulate wealth and power for
themselves. Today the Asuric forces are on the ascendancy all over the
world, unleashing powerful technological and mechanical forces
threatening the very life on the planet. Therefore, Devic forces must unite
and cross over any geographical barriers in order to once more defeat the
Asuras.
 The Devas are slowly awakening again. Reclaiming the Vedas—
which preserve better than any text the spiritual heritage of humanity—is
the key to bringing the Gods back. This means reclaiming the Vedas from
Asuric (physical or body-based) scholarship back to a spiritual and yogic
view. The Asuras always try to destroy or capture the Vedas in order to
keep humanity spiritually in the dark. Just as the Asuras stole the Vedas
in previous Yugas and the Gods had to win them back, Western
Indologists are the modern Asuras who have tried to capture the Vedas in
the contemporary world. It is time for a new group of Devas to win them
back. This requires a spiritual and intellectual battle, for which a new
power of Vishnu or higher consciousness is necessary. The Vedas contain
the keys of mastery for humanity and the essence of our global spiritual
heritage. Like the secrets of science they need to kept in good hands and
used for our higher evolution.

_______________

Part II.7
Western Indology versus the Indic Tradition:

The Intellectual Clash of Cultures

____________

The sad fact is that after nearly two hundred years Western
Indology has still failed to understand India, her culture, her soul or her
history. It has progressed little beyond Eurocentric and missionary
stereotypes, only adding Marxist, Freudian and other modern stereotypes
to these, naively believing that these western ideologies are somehow
dramatically enlightening to India and its profound spiritual culture,
when they are usually irrelevant or inferior and have already failed in the
West. Meanwhile it has discovered little more in the vast treasures of
Vedic culture than any primitive culture.

Western Indology does not understand the philosophy of India, its

emphasis on dharma and karma, liberation and enlightenment, or its great
traditions of Yoga and meditation. It does not acknowledge the value of
its rishi/yogi culture and its Vedic origin. Nor does it recognize any such
higher yogic spiritual tradition as behind any ancient civilizations or
behind humanity as a whole. From its perspective, Indian spirituality is a
self-serving fantasy hiding what is unscientific, inhumane or archaic.

Yet even more sadly Western Indology does not want to recognize
that India as a unique civilization really exists. It fails to see any real
identity to Indic civilization prior to British rule or any real continuity to
it from ancient times. Rather it views India as a melting pot of invading
cultures with no overriding political or cultural background or unity. It
was Karl Marx who said that India has no history, and what is called
history “is the record of successive intruders.” This is the position still
taken by Western Indologists and their counterparts in India, particularly
Indian leftists who treat the words of Marx almost like a scripture. They
fiercely resist the suggestion of any advanced indigenous civilization in
India.

Western thought reads the same type of political and psychological

motives into the Indic school of thought that it does for the history of
Europe. It tries to understand the Indic tradition according to Marxism,
Freud, Deconstructionism, or whatever may be the latest trend in western
thought, as if these characteristic preoccupations of the outward looking
western mind could unlock the keys to a very different yogic culture. In
fact, these usually tell us more about the western mind than about India’s
traditions. Generally, the current western scholarship about India or about
the ancient world as a whole naively follows the shifts of political and
social correctness in western thought, as if all of history was to change
retrospectively along with the fluctuations of ideology in the West! In
short, the West has not adequately questioned its approach for
understanding Indic civilization or created a consistent model for viewing
it at a spiritual or philosophical level. Not surprisingly, Indic civilization
remains a mystery and the West does not appreciate the riches of the
higher mind behind it.

Western intellectual culture is quite critical of the Indic tradition

and rejects most of it as unscientific or erroneous. It styles Indic thought
as mystical, irrational, superstitious or even absurd. We could, therefore,
easily describe the main approach of Western Indology as one of
negationism, denying something outright in order dispose of it altogether.
This failure of Western Indology is nowhere more evident as in its
treatment of the Vedas. The monumental literature of the Vedas—the
largest of the ancient world and given a spiritual and cultural reverence
throughout India throughout its history—is reduced to the record of
illiterate invading hordes or pastoral nomads which really didn’t deserve
to be preserved. Vedic literature is not examined in depth but simply
explained away by such negationist theories, as something of no
consequence that need not be taken seriously.

Negation of Vedic Literature

According to Western Indology the Vedic is a literature that should

not exist, that if it does exist is primitive, distorted or deceptive.
Whatever appears sophisticated in the Vedas becomes an interpolation or
a cynical borrowing from indigenous people that the Vedic people
supplanted and denigrated (in other words, blaming the negationism on
the Vedic people themselves!). Western Indology first viewed Vedic
literature as the record of invading/militant Aryan hordes from Central
Asia as they destroyed the sophisticated Dravidian urban culture of
Mohenjodaro and Harappa. Now that the Harappan culture has been
shown to have not ended in violence but in geological and river changes,
they haven’t given up their old views but simply modified them, without
even acknowledging their previous distortions. They now see the Vedas
as the record of a pastoral culture that gradually infiltrated its way into
India after 1500 BCE and, in some unknown way, subverted the language
and literature of the land, though no real evidence for this or record of it
has remained.

Such views do not explain the Vedic literature, its extent,

sophistication or continuity. Ruthless hordes would not produce such a
literature or be able to continue it through the centuries. Pastoral
infiltrators would be less able to do so. No subcontinent would carry on
such a vast literature as a great spiritual legacy that represents small
groups of intrusive peoples that had no real civilization! To carry on such
a vast literature, particularly one that requires very elaborate and
expensive rituals, would require a royal patronage and from an early
period.
 There is a similar negationism about Harappan civilization, which is
also left in the dark. Harappan civilization is viewed as a mysterious
civilization that came and went leaving no real trace in the later culture.
That it was the largest and most sophisticated urban culture of the ancient
world at the time is similarly downplayed. Rather the impression is given
that it was only a sidelight to smaller Near Eastern cultures that were the
real center of civilization at the time. Its obvious connections to Vedic
thought found in artifacts and symbols like the swastika, the Om symbol
and fire altars are stubbornly ignored. In making the Harappan a so-
called Dravidian culture, the fact that there is no archaeological record,
history or trace of a movement of Dravidians south to confirm this
change is similarly ignored.

Vedic literature does represent the Indic tradition from ancient

times. It is the most ancient literature that India as a culture chose to
perpetuate and which nearly all later literatures in the country refer to,
including non-Vedic groups or thinkers. We cannot ignore Vedic
literature or place it in Central Asia. We cannot pretend that it has no
connection or origin in India by ignoring references to Indian geography
flora and fauna in the Rigveda itself. Even today many great Indian
thinkers draw inspiration from the Rigveda itself, including such great
figures as Sri Aurobindo, who established an entire new modern school
of Vedic interpretation.

Harappan urban culture similarly represents the urban aspect of

Indic civilization since ancient time. We cannot pretend that it had no
literature and no continuity of its culture and peoples in the region. Nor
can we pretend that it could have been entirely forgotten by the existent
Vedic literature. The literature record and urban ruins—though very
different sources of information that will give different points of view—
cannot be kept apart. The continuity of Indic civilization and its literature
cannot be negated away. We cannot place the ancient literature of India
outside of India and understand the development of Indian civilization.

The other aspect of Western Indology that is yet more questionable

is its holding on to wrong views even after they have been disproved. To
date the most common impression people have about ancient India—
from textbooks and depictions all over the world—is Wheeler’s massacre
at Mohenjodaro and the image of the invading Aryan hordes like the later
Huns and Mongols. See for example the entry on Mohenjodaro in the
Encyclopedia Britannica for the perpetuation of this distortion, which no
Western Indologist has complained about. Though Western Indologists if
pressed acknowledge that this view is wrong and that Harappan culture
declined and fell without such outside invasion and violence, they have
done nothing significant to change these distortions. They seem to
absolve themselves of any responsibility for them or the political and
social problems that their misinterpretations have caused or aggravated.
However, they are outraged if Hindus should question their record or
their motives.

Wholesale Negation of Indic Civilization

This negationism of Indian civilization is not just a matter of the

Vedas or the Aryan Invasion Theory. That merely sets the precedent for a
negation of the India’s civilization as a whole. The same predictable
pattern repeats itself in other areas of culture. It is not only ancient India
but all aspects of Indic civilization that are questionable. The logic is
simple. Everything in Indian civilization came from migrants from the
West (like the Aryan Invasion), borrowings from the West (like from the
Greeks in ancient times), is inferior to that of the West (Hindu monism
being at best a crude approach to Christian monotheism), or is simply not
of any value at all (Indic spirituality or Puranic occultism as fantasy,
mythology, error or superstition). Whatever limited indigenous tradition
there might have been gets reduced to some mysterious Harappan,
Dravidian culture that was erased by the intrusive Aryans or taken over
by them without affording the natives any credit in the process. This
means that Indic civilization if it is indigenous to any significant degree
remains fraudulent!

Puranic records of a hundred kings before the time of Buddha are

dismissed as fanciful, even though names for one major dynasty, that of
the Ikshvakus, and years of reign going back well over a thousand years
prior to the Buddha, are recorded. For reconstructing any authentic
history of India, Western Indologists rely on happenstance Greek,
Chinese and Islamic travelers (who had their own religious and political
motives), refusing to accept anything from Indians themselves. That such
visitors are often quite unreliable is ignored (like trusting Spanish
accounts of New World cultures). And when the records of these
travelers do support the antiquity or sophistication of Indian civilization,
they are ignored, like failing to give any credibility to Megasthenes’s
statement that India had a tradition that went back many thousands of
years before Alexander.

Relative to the culture of ancient India, its negation by Western

Indologists is almost total. For sculpture, which was particularly
important for the iconic temple worship in India, we are told that what
was of any value in it came from the Greeks after the time of Alexander.
That Harappan statues are quite sophisticated and realistic and could
represent indigenous influences is ignored. Later sculpture like that of
South Indian temples is dismissed as inferior to that of Europe or as
unrealistic in its depictions.

Relative to the tradition of drama, which was quite important in

India, we are told that it derives from a Greek influence because the
Greeks had great dramas (though lacking in the spiritual and yogic style
of the Indians), again though there is no Indian recollection of such a
Greek influence. For poetry, we are told that the classical Sanskrit poetry
of such as Kalidasa is artificial, sterile and unrealistic, though it is highly
spiritual, very musical and quite sophisticated. We are told that it can’t
compare with that of the Greeks and Romans, much less Shakespeare!
Great Indian traditions of music and dance, said to go back to the Sama
Veda, are generally ignored as not of much value in world music and as
probably an invention of recent centuries, at most meriting a short
footnote!

Relative to science, most of Indian science, particularly astronomy,

is reduced to borrowings from the Greeks, though Indian astronomy and
mathematics follow different lines. Indians did not need the Greeks to
bring them Babylonian astronomy, as such scholars state. They had
contact with that region long before Alexander and generally influenced
the Middle East more than it did India. Ayurvedic medicine is similarly
thought to owe a lot to the Greeks, though Ayurveda has clear Vedic
roots.

We must remember that India archaeologically speaking has a

history of a great civilizations going back three thousand years before the
time of Alexander. Alexander’s so-called conquest of India, which was
more of a raid, was not even mentioned in historical records of India.
Greek rulers in the third and second century BC were mentioned, but not
considered extraordinary. Clearly, Alexander’s supposed influence on
India is exaggerated out of proportion to reality. There was certainly no
great adulation of Greek culture as better than that of India, though Greek
contributions in the field of astronomy were recognized. On the contrary,
the Greeks spoke highly of the civilization of India. Megasthenes, who
came to India about the time of Alexander, in the fragments of his Indika
that remain records and Indian tradition of 153 kings going back over
6400 years. Clearly, India had a sense of tremendous antiquity for its
civilization when the Greeks came. They didn’t see the Greeks as their
superiors, as we do, nor did the Greeks themselves.

Relative to religious literature, we are told that Vedic prayers and

metaphors cannot compare with the psalms of the Bible in terms of
sensitivity or sophistication. For philosophy, there has been a desire to
reduce Upanishadic thought to a Greek influence, even though history
does not support that. Still a Greek borrowing is suspected. For
spirituality, we are told that Yoga, Vedanta and Buddhism are inferior to
western monotheism and its greater sense of compassion and that their
claims of spiritual realization are either religiously or psychologically
suspect. This is in spite of the fact that western mystics like Meister
Eckhart sound more like Hindu Vedantists than like Catholics, and
though the ancient Greeks looked up to the Indians for their spiritual
wisdom. Though devotion is emphasized in Vedic texts and in the Gita
itself, we are told that the Hindu devotional tradition (Bhakti Yoga) owes
a lot to Christians and Muslims, though these religions do not have such
yogic paths, understand yogic states of consciousness, or practice a
similar temple worship as in India! Similarly, we are told that Hatha
Yoga postures are an invention of at most a thousand years in India,
though the same postures are clearly depicted on Harappan seals!

What we are dealing with, therefore, is an unprecedented and total

negation of an entire civilization. Western Indology does not present
India as having an indigenous civilization comparable to that of China,
Europe or the Middle East, but as having little cultural, religious,
historical or political unity of its own. This is in spite of the fact that the
vast Sanskrit literature contains extensive related systems of religion,
spirituality, philosophy, medicine, art and literature going back to the
Roman era, if not long before—something that no other civilization has
been able to maintain. India is put on par with Africa or America by way
of civilization and religion, as a half tribal culture. It is not regarded as
having an equivalent, though different civilization in terms of art, science
or religion to the West.

However, there is another view of India that has honored its great
and spiritual civilization. Western intellectuals of the eighteenth and
nineteenth century—including great thinkers like Voltaire, Goethe,
Schopenhauer, Emerson and Thoreau—waxed eloquently about the
spiritual philosophies and traditions of India, even the greatness of the
Brahmin class. They were followed the Theosophists in the later
nineteenth century, with leaders like Annie Besant in the early twentieth
century who was an important leader in the independence movement in
India itself. Today the large New Age movement in the West has an
important, if not central place for Indian gurus, Yoga traditions and
healing practices. Indeed, the western popular mind has always been
enamoured of the image of mystical India, the land of Gods and sages. In
addition, many modern scientists like Oppenheimer and Einstein have
noted their philosophical affinity with India and the East for their new
models of unity and consciousness behind the universe. Historians like
Toynbee had similar views. The problem is that such groups have been a
minority and have not determined the manner in which India and its
civilization are usually viewed today.

So clearly, the problem is not a deficiency or prejudice of the

western mind as a whole, but one in certain parts of academia and
various vested interests. There is a common ground for a new view of
India and an integration between East and West, once we move beyond
such biases and recognize these other East-West connections that have
existed throughout history.

Incapacity of Western Indology

The real question, therefore, is—why is Western Indology, with all

its supposed academic rigor, is so inherently incapable of understanding
India or its traditions? I think that the answer is simple. Western
Indologists have not confronted the Indic tradition directly. They look at
Indic traditions as fossils or museum pieces and haven’t entered into
Indian thoughts and practices, though these are available to them if they
wish. Their very academic rigor, which trains them only in an external
view of the world, becomes a barrier to the type of interior civilization
which India represents. They lack the necessary spiritual and yogic vision
to make sense of Indic civilization. They lack the mindset and the tools
for the job, which requires spiritual insight and not mere logic or pottery
gathering. Worse yet, they are not even aware of their limitations in this
respect.

The reasons for this incapacity to understand India are reflected in a

general incapacity to understand non-western cultures. Western
Indologists still see western civilization as world civilization. They do
not recognize any real independent Indic civilization apart from that of
the West. As in their eyes, civilization per se comes from the West, any
civilization in India must have western roots or otherwise be
questionable.

We note that textbooks of world history to the present day are

mainly textbooks of western history, with a few footnotes thrown in to
represent the rest of the world. Textbooks of world art are mainly
textbooks of western art; textbooks of world philosophy are mainly
textbooks of western philosophy, and so on with all the different fields of
knowledge and culture. Non-western cultures are recognized in world
civilization to the extent that they represent western type cultural
aspirations towards science, democracy (self-determination), economic
development or monotheism, the characteristics of western civilizations,
not for any unique cultures of their own. Because western historians
believe that western history represents the main trend in world history,
they are naturally inclined to see the origins of world history and that of
western history as the same. Not surprisingly, they compulsive reduce or
modify historical data to fit into this preconceived mold.

There is no doubt that Greco-Roman culture is the origin of most

western philosophical, political and scientific thought. There is similarly
no doubt that the Near East is the origin of most western religious
thought through the Judeo-Christian tradition and its Egyptian and
Mesopotamian connections. But Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian or
Mesopotamian origins cannot be ascribed to the civilizations of South
and East Asia, Africa and America or that of world civilization as a
whole. Western civilization may in fact represent a sidelight, not the
main stream of world civilization that is more spiritual in nature.
 That Western Indologists may be offended if their methodology or
qualifications to judge the Indic tradition are questioned only highlights
their inability to approach it in an objective manner. They can negate an
entire civilization but are intolerant of accepting any fundamental
criticism of their approach in turn. That Western Indology might be
questioned is only natural in the post-colonial age, which has exposed
many Eurocentric/materialist models as biased. Presently, western
scholars are resisting the new Hindu historical scholarship, though it has
much hard data behind it, because it questions their views on a political
and philosophical level. This is contrary to how they have handled the
challenge of other regions of former colonial rule.

Black Africans and other indigenous groups have questioned and

thrown off such nineteenth century based interpretations of their history.
While initially western scholars denigrated these new indigenous views
of Black History, they have now come to accept them or at least afford
them a place, including creating their own departments in western
universities. The difference is that anti-African and anti-Black views
have been thrown out as politically incorrect, while anti-Hindu views are
still regarded as politically correct and largely unquestioned. While
western scholars are sensitive to the charge of racism and critical of
colonial views of history in regards to Africa, they are still perpetuating
the colonial view of India.

Indic View of Western Civilization

Meanwhile, western thinkers don’t understand the very different

view of civilization found inside the Indic tradition. Indic thinkers are not
so impressed by western civilization and its supposed greatness, though
they might admire the West on some points. Modern Indian sages have
been equally hard on western civilization. Vivekananda, Rama Tirtha,
Aurobindo, Mahatma Gandhi and Tagore—in fact, most modern Indian
gurus criticize the West for a lack of true spirituality and any real yogic
path to develop higher consciousness. Almost every Indian spiritual
teacher who has addressed western civilization has expressed misgivings
about the underlying values or lack of values behind it. Certainly, no
great spiritual teachers of modern India would equate western civilization
with world civilization. On the contrary, they usually find it to be a
deviation, perhaps necessary, from the longer and more enduring spiritual
occupations of humanity that were common not only to India but to all
ancient cultures. They look back to the Upanishadic vision that long ago
showed the limitations of materialistic culture. “Living in the midst of
ignorance, considering themselves to be wise and learned, they wander
like the blind led by the blind. The goal does not appear to these heedless
children, deluded by the lure of wealth. Thinking there is nothing beyond
this world, they fall again and again into the power of Death (Katha
Upanishad II.5-6).”

Indic thinkers find the sages in their own tradition—Vedic rishis,

Vedantic sages or great yogis—to be deeper and more profound than the
Greek philosophers, modern scientists or monotheistic theologians. From
them a Vasishta, Yajnavalkya, Shankara or Patanjali represents a higher
mind than an Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas or Kant. Indic thinkers aren’t
overwhelmed by the greatness of modern science and technology, which
they see as limited outer preoccupations, but look to a greater science of
consciousness that does not rely on instruments. They don’t find western
art, which has an ego base and sensate approach, to be superior to Indian
art and its spiritual/religious orientation. They don’t find western
consumerism to be an enlightened economy but to only hide a deeper
spiritual poverty. They don’t find modern democracies and their human
rights orientation to be really cognizant of the rights and duties of soul or
our rights and duties to the universe.

Indic thinkers aren’t impressed by the ability of western scholars to

grasp the Indic tradition, or all the gyrations they do to keep the origin of
the Vedas out of India. And such thinkers are not bigoted or unintelligent
for doing so, nor have they failed to seriously examine western
civilization. They simply have different values and a different sense of
culture, consciousness and reality than mainstream western culture. Yet
they are not alone in their views, many western mystics have expressed
similar critiques of western civilization, and much of the western
counterculture has as well.

Intellectual Clash of Cultures

This entire issue reflects a clash of civilizations. Western Indology

is part of western civilization, shares its values and naturally works to
expand its frontiers on an intellectual level. Western Indology is an
attempt to mold and fit Indic civilization into the terms and values of
western civilization. Western Indology has yet to accept Indic civilization
as a spiritual, philosophical and historical tradition of its own value and
independence, with its own authenticity. It has not really confronted the
Indic tradition, much less acknowledged it as an equal. Western Indology
looks down upon the Indic tradition from on high, from its ivory tower,
dissecting, fragmenting and denigrating the civilization of India
according to its own alien values and views.

The best thing for Western Indologists to do would be to start over

afresh. They should first recognize that Indic civilization is a tradition
much older, broader and more spiritual than the western tradition and
independent from it as well. Indic civilization is not necessarily hostile to
western civilization but it does proceed by different values and according
to a different perception of humanity, nature and the universe, apart
which we cannot make sense of it.

The best thing for Indians and those who follow Indic traditions is to
go directly to their own traditions not only on a spiritual level but also
relative to culture and history and not give much credence to Western
Indology as it is today. We see a renaissance of the Indic tradition in the
world today on a spiritual, yogic, philosophical and culture levels. The
popularity of Yoga, Vedanta, Buddhism, Ayurveda and Indian music all
over the world shows this. This in the long run is a more important event
with a longer lasting influence than Western Indology that has so far
failed to enter the courtyard, much less the sanctuary of the great temple
of Indic civilization. Unfortunately, the views of Indologists still
determine textbook accounts in schools, even in India, and influence the
global media. Otherwise one could just as well ignore them as irrelevant.

Indic Effort to Spiritualize Western Civilization

The Indic tradition divides up western civilization into different

areas, to which it ascribes different degrees of validity. It largely accepts
western science as valid within its own sphere but regards that sphere as
limited. For example, it accepts the findings of physics, particularly the
discoveries of the relativity of time and space and the underlying reality
of energy behind matter. However, it considers that these discoveries
should be pursued further to get at the reality behind the universe, which
is one of intelligence and consciousness.

The Indic tradition accepts western political ideals of democracy

and equality as good ideas but undermined by a materialistic formulation.
Our first need as human beings is a spiritual self-determination—the
freedom to know ourselves and discover our true nature beyond the body
and mind, free from political, commercial or economic constraints.
Spiritual self-determination provides us the ability to stand above
external manipulation, to go beyond desire, greed and ego. Modern
democracy allows mainly for a material self-determination. This does not
bring true freedom but makes the masses vulnerable to manipulation by
commercial, political and religious forces, which cater to their fears and
desires. This is what we are seeing in the democratic West, which has
almost a dictatorship of the media and the corporate world and very little
individual or creative thinking about ultimate reality.

The Indic tradition does not accept that western views of history,
society and spirituality are valid or complete. These are the main areas
that it finds western civilization to be lacking. Above all, it cannot accept
the equation of these western disciplines with science in terms of
objectivity, finality or proof. Western social sciences, for example,
remain culturally bound and cannot be given the finality of the physical
sciences, which are also undergoing many changes. Western religions are
still mired in medieval and regressive concepts of exclusive truth and the
need to convert the world and are yet more questionable.

The Indic tradition is aiming at spiritualizing western civilization,

which means accepting its validity particularly in the realm of science,
but integrating that into a deeper spiritual view which accepts the
spiritual sciences of Yoga and Vedanta as well. It can also honor the
genuinely creative and spiritual aspects of western civilization and
various individual western thinkers, artists and mystics. The main
conflict between the Indic and the western is their respective approaches
to the humanities (history, social sciences and religion). The Indic
tradition sees nothing of lasting value to be gained by subordinating itself
to current western civilization or allowing that to define and delimit it,
reducing it to a mere sidelight to western culture. The Indic tradition sees
itself as closer to true world civilization, which is also cosmic
civilization, and is one of spirituality and Self-realization, not of mere
mastery of the external world.

_________________
Part II.8
The Need to Rewrite Indian History
___________
History is Always Being Rewritten

In recent years, the government of India and several state

governments have decided to revise history books, particularly relative to
the ancient period, bringing up recent data that calls into question the
Aryan invasion and the many theories that have arisen from it. Over the
past few decades numerous archaeological finds have been made
throughout North India, considerably widening the civilization of the
region and uncovering its continuity through time, rendering the Aryan
Invasion idea obsolete.

Quite predictably, leftists in India raised a cry of tampering with

history, as if history is a fixed science that cannot be adjusted. The fact is
that history books in India still largely teach the British view of India
from the colonial era and have not changed much since the independence
of the country over fifty years ago. The only exception is history books in
Marxist states like Bengal that have been rewritten in a communist slant,
which is even more against the traditions of the country than the British
view.

History books are always being rewritten and they should be, as
new information comes in and our understanding of culture widens. This
does not mean that history should carelessly be rewritten to suit an
ideology, as in communist Russia or in Nazi Germany, but that we must
not turn old accounts of history into an unalterable dogma. History is not
a material science like physics that deals with hard facts and even physics
textbooks are continually being updated. The West has often tried to give
its version of history the finality of science, but political changes since
the end of the colonial era have revealed the biases behind its accounts,
particularly of Africa and Asia. The western account of history cannot be
given the finality of the physical sciences and should be expected to
change radically over time.
Colonial Distortions of History East and West

Up to two decades ago, the history of America was taught as the

wanton aggression of the Native Americans, the so-called Red Indians,
on the gentle white settlers who simply wanted to farm and raise their
families in a wide land that had room for many people. This was the
predominant view of Christians and of educated Europeans in America.
The real history was one of the genocide of native peoples and their
cultures in a greed for land and power. The so-called savages honored all
treaties. The so-called civilized white man didn’t honor any.

The European history of Africa followed similar prejudices, with

the native blacks as uncivilized barbarians that had to be civilized by the
white Europeans. That the blacks did have venerable and rich old
cultures and were really the target of exploitation and genocide was
covered over. The same phenomenon occurred throughout the colonial
world, including Asia, where native peoples were subjugated and their
cultures denigrated. Like the blacks, some Asians were turned into slaves
or serfs, uprooted from their land and taken to foreign countries and
commercially exploited. This was also done in the name of civilizational
advancement through Christianity and European culture. That is how
over a million Indians ended up in the Caribbean in Trinidad and
Guyana.

The European treatment of India was the same as that of America

and Africa, starting with the Portuguese in the sixteenth century, who
brought the cruel ways of the Inquisition to India. The Indian mutiny of
1857 occurred because the British brought in aggressive and intolerant
missionaries and had the country in the grip of a cruel economic
exploitation. Yet such oppression has been left out of the history of India
as told by the Europeans and independent India has not rewritten the
record adequately. Similarly, the destruction wrought during the Islamic
period, which was worse than the British period in terms of religious and
economic exploitation as well as genocide, has been similarly ignored or
downplayed so as not to offend minority communities.

Yet can one seriously imagine—given all the colonial distortions

of history worldwide which are only slowly being removed today—that
no real revision of the history of India needs to be made? Can we believe
that somehow by luck, in spite of their prejudices, that colonial and
European scholars got the history of India right and wrote it without any
distortion or bias in their favor, though they failed everywhere else?

Liberals and leftists in America sympathize with the native

cultures of Africa and America and their need not only for correcting
historical accounts but also for restoration for historical wrongs. But,
strangely, leftists in India still vaunt the colonial view that India was
uncivilized before the British and denigrate their own native traditions!

When ancient historical finds are made in China, as with the

uncovering of the tomb of the first emperor dating to the third century
BCE, there is great national pride even among the communists. But all
the massive finds of the Harappan/Sarasvati culture, as well as the
retracing of the once great Sarasvati River, bring no pride to the leftist-
secular intellectuals of India. They would ignore these, dismiss them as
an invention of Hindu communalists, or imagine that they represent an
unknown civilization that vanished mysteriously with no real connection
to the later traditions of the region! Though the Vedic literature is the
largest of the ancient world by all accounts, Indian leftists will have no
pride in it and seek to denigrate it as best they can. Though the
Mahabharata at over two thousand years old is the world’s oldest and
longest national epic, Indian leftists don’t even want it taught in the
schools (even when the common people find great pride in watching the
Mahabharata on television).

In this regard, we should remember that Marxism and communism

in India are largely anti-national movements. Marxists in India sided with
China against India during the Indo-Chinese war of 1962 and raised no
criticism of China for its attack. They sided with the British during the
independence movement. This is a stark contrast to communism in
Russia, China and Vietnam in which were part of larger nationalistic
movements. This is because Indian Marxists came mainly from a British
Marxist background and did not participate in anti-colonial struggles, as
did the followers of Mao and Ho-chi-minh. They were largely
intellectuals from wealthy families, educated in England, not workers in
the field, much less freedom fighters.

Actually the distortion of history has been done intentionally by

many modern Indian historians, particularly covering over historical
wrongs against Hindus. They believe that by correcting history that the
present can be changed. They pretend that the generally cruel Muslim
rule in India was benign and secular so that this account will serve to
make modern Hindus and Muslims more benign and secular and help
them bury the past. But the opposite is true. If a nation does not face its
true history, it has no future and its present remains confused. This would
be like American historians pretending that Native Americans (Red
Indians) were treated well through history and that accounts of their
oppression and genocide were false or exaggerated, so as to bring
harmony to the two communities today. This would only allow old
prejudices to continue.

India has not faced its past in order not to offend certain minorities
in the country who may still harbor anti-nationalist sentiments. It has also
been intentionally done in order to prevent the majority community from
awakening to its colonial and religious oppression, fearing this would
increase communal disharmony, even though distortions caused by this,
like the image of Hindus as barbaric idolaters, continue in the world
media today. The result is that the country lacks a genuine national pride
and a sense of its continuity to ancient times.

History and Nationalism

One of the main purposes of history books, as taught in different

countries in the world, is to instill a sense of national pride and honor—in
short to inculcate a sense of patriotism and nationalism. Whether it is the
United States, Great Britain, Russia, Germany or China, this is certainly
the case today and has been so as long as these countries have existed as
modern nations. The lives of great leaders, particularly the founders of
the country are highlighted, the continuity of the nation’s history is
emphasized, and the importance of the nation in the history of the world
and the greatness of the national culture are stressed. Students are
expected to come away from reading accounts of their history with a
sense of national greatness and purpose, not only for the past but also for
the future.

However, India is a strange and unique country in which history

books are often anti-national in nature. India has largely kept in tact the
British approach to Indian history devised in the colonial era. Students of
such textbooks come away apologetic or confused about their country
and its traditions. Textbooks in Marxist ruled states of India like Bengal
and Kerala leave their students with a sense of the greatness of
communism and communist countries like China or even Russia which is
no longer communist, rather than any real regard for India and its great
traditions.

History books in India try to ignore the dominant Hindu ethos of

the country and its history before the Islamic period. India’s greatest
historical and cultural document, the Mahabharata, is hardly given any
attention in the schools. So too, the Vedas, Ramayana, Puranas,
Buddhist Jatakas and other prime historical and cultural documents of
the country are ignored because of their religious overtones. If they do
address India as a nation, it is only India of the independence movement
that they acknowledge, as if prior to 1947 India did not really exist.
While Nehru is made important, older kings from the Rig Vedic Bharatas
to Yudishthira of the Mahabharata period to the Marathas of the
eighteenth century are hardly mentioned. There is no real sense of any
historical continuity to the culture, much less to the country. While
Mahatma Gandhi is emphasized, the greater spiritual traditions of India
and its great teachers from the Vedic rishis, Vedantic, Buddhist and Jain
sages to modern savants like Sri Aurobindo and Ramana Maharshi is not
given much attention.

It is true that history should not be a mere instrument of a

destructive nationalism and should avoid instilling aggression against
other lands and peoples, even when upholding what is valuable in a
nation’s history. But this does not require that the national value of
historical studies is negated altogether.

The question, therefore, is how the history accounts in India can be

made to reflect and instill a genuine nationalism and sense of the
country’s history and destiny. India, after all, is one of the great
civilizations of the world, with cultural traditions that have much value
for humanity. Such historical accounts must reflect the richness and
diversity of Indic civilization, but they cannot ignore its unity and
continuity either.
 The fact is that you cannot build a nation without creating history
books that instill a positive nationalism, particularly in the youth. The
real danger in India is not the arising of a chauvinistic nationalism like
that of Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy—which are foreign to the mentality
and ethos of the country—but a lack of national spirit and historical
consciousness that keeps people alienated from their roots and the
country divided.

India needs a real nationalism and for this a national sense of

history, pride and purpose is required. A true Indian nationalism will be
rooted in an Indian ethos of dharma, spirituality and pluralism, but this
does not mean there can be no national or historical pride without
encouraging communalism in the country. On the contrary, a greater
sense of national identity would be the best thing to counter the
disintegrating influence of religious, castist and regional interests that are
bringing the country down.

Therefore we must ask: Why can't Indians connect India's

traditional ancient literature, the Vedas, with its archaeology through
Harappa and the many Sarasvati river sites? Why can't Indians find
national pride in their own history both on literary and archaeological
levels? Why should history in India be used for national shame, rather
than national pride? Why should the history of India place Indic
civilization out of India? These are questions that must be answered.

Western and Indic Views of History

The subject of history in the western context is a very different

than in the Indian context. In the western view, history is mainly an
account of political events and economic progress, a purely outward
affair. In the Hindu view, history is a means of teaching detachment,
showing how great kings and kingdoms come and go in the course of
time. It has an inner value as a spiritual teaching about the nature of
human life and the need for liberation from worldly concerns. In the
western view, history is progressive from the crude beginnings of
agriculture and village life moving forward to the present day urban
culture. In the Hindu view, history is cyclical, with various cultures
coming and going over time as the soul seeks liberation from the
phenomenal world.
 The western progressive account of history is quite flawed. For
example, the first civilizations of the ancient world that we can
document—including Egypt, Sumeria, India and China—did not regard
themselves as the first but were aware of many cultures and kingdoms
before them, particularly prior to a great flood. The civilizations that we
regard as the first saw themselves as very old with many antecedents!
Yet we pretend that there was nothing before them! In addition, the
civilizations of the Third Millennium BCE, like those of Egypt and
Harappan/Sarasvati India, had better urban and architectural
achievements than those that followed for many centuries. Even Europe
had its Dark Ages after the Roman period in which much knowledge was
lost. This idea of history as linear progress is clearly not the case. While
humanity has progressed scientifically, this is mainly over the past five
hundred years. On the other hand, we see a spiritual decline since ancient
times, and over the last century we can note a decline in culture, art,
music and philosophy in Europe itself, coinciding or even caused by
great advances in science.

As India is the only civilization of antiquity to survive the onslaught

of time, it is the special responsibility of Indians to discover not only
their history but also that of the entire ancient world. Just as there are
unquestioned distortions of ancient India, similar distortions of other
ancient cultures also exist. For example, the religion of ancient Egypt,
which like that of the Vedas demonstrates much occult and spiritual
significance, is similarly dismissed as polytheism, idolatry or henotheism
(worshipping different Gods as the supreme God), exactly like the Vedas.
Revamping the way history is taught in Indian schools would be a major
step in the direction of a more authentic and spiritual sensitive history of
the world. It is a scientific and spiritual imperative, not only for India but
for all countries.

____________

Part II.9
The Indian or Bharatiya Ideal of Education
___________________________
To people all over the world India reflects an image of Yoga,
spirituality and mysticism as the main characteristics of its culture.
Strangely, these are precisely the aspects of Indian culture that are not
adequately taught in public education in India because of the western
model of education that the country follows. For this reason Indians
educated in India, especially at western oriented institutions, are
becoming ignorant of their own historical culture and its great spiritual
wisdom. There is sometimes more of this taught in American universities
than in at universities in India.

Modern Education

Modern educational systems derive from western culture and reflect

the dichotomy between science and religion that has arisen historically
within it. Science is viewed as a secular pursuit that should be part of
education for everyone. Religion is looked upon as a special belief or
dogma that is a private or personal matter, outside the scope of secular
education.

While science is regarded as a way of knowledge, religion is

regarded as a way of faith, including faith in things that are unscientific
or irrational like the Virgin birth of Jesus Christ. While efforts to
reconcile science and religion have been attempted, most scientists tend
to agnosticism or atheism, or to forms of mysticism that are unorthodox.
Fundamentalist religious groups, on the other hand, commonly oppose
science or would at least like to see it restricted.

Even in America today, thought to be a progressive country,

fundamentalist Christians continue to protest against teaching the theory
of evolution in the schools because it is not in harmony with the Bible
and its six thousand-year scheme of creation. While we may laugh at
such groups as a minority or an anachronism, they are large in numbers
in many places and hold considerable financial resources. They are also
spearheading powerful missionary movements throughout the world,
including into India.

For science to emerge in the West it had to endure for centuries the
wrath of the church and the Inquisition. Many scientists were suppressed,
tortured or even killed before science could free itself from the rule of
religious dogma. This conflict left its mark on the western psyche.
Meanwhile western religion has viewed science and secular education as
promoting an anti-religious, if not immoral way of life. Many western
religious groups blame secular education for all the social problems in
the West from crime and abortion to drugs and homosexuality. Many
fundamentalists put their own children in special religious schools to
avoid exposure to these secular dangers. This often leads to confusion
and personality problems when these children grow up and are faced with
the real world.

Therefore, western education places a distinction if not conflict

between science and religion. If it teaches about religion it is mainly
relative to its political, cultural or historical implications. The dichotomy
of liberal science versus dogmatic religion, or between moral religion and
immoral or unspiritual science has yet to be resolved in the western mind.

Religion and Science in Classical India

Classical India never had this dichotomy between science and

religion. First of all it looked upon religion mainly as a way of
knowledge, a vidya or veda, a way of seeing, a philosophy or darshana.
Educated people in the Indic tradition look at religion as a pursuit of self-
knowledge and self-realization as in the philosophies of Yoga, Vedanta
and Buddhism. They classified knowledge into para and apara—inner
and outer. They saw no conflict between the two, only their scope was
different.

Many western thinkers have debated whether Indic religions are

really religions at all for this very reason. The answer is both yes and no.
They are religions in that they teach us about the immortal and eternal
aspect of reality. They are not religions in the sense that they are not
based upon dogma, faith or the need to convert. The western mind
conditioned either to science as not spiritual, or religion as dogmatic has
been unable to understand the Indian mind, which sees the highest
science and the highest spirituality as the same. This approach, which
shows us how to bring science and spirituality together, is perhaps the
greatest gift that the Indian mind can offer to the West.

Indic religion has always been pluralistic. It recognizes that many

paths must exist relative to the different levels and temperaments of
individuals. It never had the idea of only one true faith for all, but rather
as many paths as there are individuals. An all-knowing or all-powerful
church and its infallible pronouncements never dominated it. Its religions
never had a political machinery that enforced their beliefs through
intimidation and torture. It never had a pope, a caliph, an inquisition or
holy wars, though certainly episodes of intolerance did exist in the
country.

The Indic mind, going back to the Upanishads of the pre-Buddhist

era, recognizes two types of knowledge. The first or lower knowledge is
that which deals with the outer world of name, form, and causation and is
necessary for our practical functioning in life. The second or higher
knowledge is that dealing with consciousness, the nameless, formless and
transcendent, which reveals our ultimate or eternal reality. The Indic
mind regarded the second or higher knowledge as more important, but it
didn’t regard the first or outer knowledge as wrong, to be suppressed, or
incapable of harmonization with the higher knowledge. In fact, the great
rishis saw even the lower knowledge as sacred and as following similar
laws and principles as the higher knowledge. For this reason a text like
the Vedas could be used as the basis for medicine or astronomy as well as
for Yoga and meditation. Art was also regarded as sacred, including in its
portrayal of the human body and the world of nature.

However, the Indic mind did not regard these different darshanas,
religions or ways of knowledge as necessarily the same or without
contradiction. They were viewed like different scientific theories that
could be proved or disproved or, like the difference between Newtonian
and Quantum physics, which might be true on one level but not on
another. They were not looked upon as religious dogmas that were
beyond question. The different systems could be debated rationally or
explored through meditation. They did not require wars or conversion
efforts to resolve their differences, nor a doctrine of faith to circumvent
any need for proof. And their texts could be revised in the light of new
knowledge.

The coexistence of several different systems was considered

helpful, a richness of various points of view that elevated the culture and
stimulated the intelligence of individuals. After all, life itself is filled
with diversity, if not contradiction. There is no one food for everyone, no
only one tree that can provide wood, no only one mountain to climb, and
even the ocean though one has innumerable waves and diverse coastlines.
Western Education in India

Western education was introduced into India through foreign

rulers. Islamic education emphasizing the Koran brought in the idea of
only one scripture and of a last prophet who possessed the final word of
God. European missionaries brought in the idea of Christ and the Bible as
supreme. The British brought in modern western education, with its
science versus religion dichotomy that became dominant after Darwin in
the nineteenth century. After independence public schools in India
continued the modern western model, while Islamic institutions
(madrasahs) were allowed to keep teaching the way they had been doing,
sometimes going back to the seventeenth century.

Followers of western religions in India obviously cannot easily

reconcile themselves to the Indic view of religions as different ways of
knowledge as part of a pluralistic approach to reality. This goes against
the currents of exclusivism and supremacy in their faiths.

Those who follow a modern scientific approach also have

problems with the Indic view of spiritual sciences like astrology because
these are not easily verifiable like the physical sciences. Spiritual
sciences can be verified, but require a different angle of approach in
which consciousness comes into the picture, just as modern physics now
requires it of physical laws. As science begins to look for consciousness
as the ultimate ground of the universe, it is moving toward a greater
spiritual science with an affinity to the Indic view of science. Modern
science is also creating two levels of knowledge, mundane (in which the
ordinary laws of physics work) and transcendent (in which these laws no
longer apply).

Those who value the classical Indian model of education, which

includes spiritual knowledge like Yoga and Vedanta, feel that the western
educational model destroys much of what is truly significant in their
traditions. The western educational model is not appropriate for India and
cannot serve the spiritual and cultural heritage that is India’s real gift to
the world. India does not need to follow the western educational model
any more than it should follow western models of economics or dress. In
fact as long as it does the country is likely to drift in uncertainty, like a
person who has forgotten who he really is.

Even the West is moving away from institutional models of

education towards a more intimate instruction that resembles the
gurukula system. Real education depends upon personal instruction, not
state run schools that mass-produce students like industrial products with
nationally uniform curriculums and government dispensed funding.
Private and New Age schools in the West look for a reintegration of
consciousness and spirituality into education, as was the basis of the old
Indic system.

The Challenge for the Future

The challenge for the coming century—for India to revive itself as

a nation and a culture—is to recreate the Indic model of education in
which the dichotomy between science and religion is resolved. The West
must also do this or be condemned to a dichotomy of an immoral science
versus irrational religion that will keep its culture imbalanced. We must
move beyond not only dogmatic and exclusive religions on one hand, but
also materialistic science on the other. Belief in materialism is also a
form of dogma. We must recreate religion as a form of science and
science as a form of spirituality.

The key to this is to place both science and religion as part of a

pursuit of consciousness, not the imposition of external ideas, attitudes or
beliefs. It is to promote a new critical thinking and creative intelligence
that is not bound to religious revelation, on one hand, or to a naïve belief
in physical reality, on the other. On a practical level this means that the
spiritual heritage of India—the Vedas, Upanishads, Yoga, and
Buddhism—must be taught in the schools as an integral part not only of
Indian culture but of the global heritage of spiritual sciences. Sanskrit,
the language that is the vehicle for most of these great teachings, must
also be given emphasis.

Just as Europe honors its scientists, intellectual and artists, so India

must honor its great thinkers in the spiritual realm. The insights of Indian
sages from Vedic rishis to modern sages like Sri Aurobindo and Ramana

Maharshi are among the greatest achievements of humanity that the

western world, with its more outward based mentality, has yet to reach.

But it is not enough to impose an Indic form of education from

above, by government decree. The intelligentsia of the country must see
the need and rally behind it. This requires a new intelligentsia in India
that goes back to Indic models and ceases to imitate western models of
thinking. It also requires that the religious institutions, temples and
ashrams offer classes on Vedic science, Hindu culture and their modern
adaptation. Even overseas Hindus are quick to build temples but slow to
start schools, though their main complaint is that their children are losing
their culture! They should not forget the educational heritage that is more
important to the vitality of the Indic tradition than any God or guru.

________________________________

Part II.10
The Myth of the Hindu Right
___________________
In media accounts today, any group that identifies itself as Hindu or
tries to promote any Hindu cause is immediately and uncritically defined
as ‘right-winged’. In the leftist accounts that commonly come from the
Indian press, Hindu organizations are also routinely called militants and
fascists. However, if we look at their actual views, Hindu groups have a
very different ideology and practices than the political right in other
countries. In fact many Hindu causes are more at home in the left in the
West than in the right.

The whole idea of the ‘Hindu right’ is a ploy to discredit the Hindu
movement as backward and prevent people from really examining it. The
truth is that the Hindu movement is a revival of a native spiritual tradition
that has nothing to do with the political right-wing of any western
country. Its ideas are spiritually evolutionary, not politically regressive,
though such revivals do have a few extremists. Let us examine the
different aspects of the Hindu movement and where they would fall in
the political spectrum of left and right as usually defined in the West.

Hinduism and Native Traditions

The Hindu cause is similar to the causes of native and tribal

peoples all over the world, like native American and African groups.
Even Hindu concerns about cultural encroachment by western religious
and commercial interests mirrors those of other traditional peoples who
want to preserve their cultures. Yet while the left has taken up the
concerns of native peoples worldwide, the same concerns of Hindus are
styled right-wing or communal, particularly in India!

When native Americans ask for a return of their sacred sites, the
left in America supports them. When Hindus ask for a similar return of
their sacred sites, the left in India opposes them and brands them as
intolerant for their actions! When native peoples in America or Africa
protest against the missionaries for interfering with their culture, the left
supports them. Yet when Hindus express the same sentiments, the left
attacks them. Even the Hindu demand for rewriting the history of India to
better express the value of their indigenous traditions is the same as what
native Africans and Americans are asking for. Yet the left opposes this
Hindu effort, while supporting African and American efforts of a similar
nature.

In countries like America, native traditions are minorities and

thereby afforded a special sympathy. Leftists in general tend to support
minority causes and often lump together black African and native
American causes as examples of the damage caused by racism and
colonialism. In India, a native tradition has survived the colonial period
but as the tradition of the majority of the people. Unfortunately, the
intellectual elite of India, though following largely a leftist orientation,
has no sympathy for the country’s own native tradition. They identify it
as right-wing in order to express their hostility towards it. They try to
portray it as a majority oppression of minorities, when it is the movement
of a suppressed majority to regain its dignity.
 Not surprisingly, the same leftists in India, who have long been
allied to communist China, similarly style the Dalai Lama and the
Tibetan cause as right-wing and regressive, though the Dalai Lama is
honored by the American left. This should tell the reader about the
meaning of right and left as political terms in India. When one looks at
the Hindu movement as the assertion of a native tradition with a
profound spiritual heritage, the whole perspective on it changes.

Hindu Economics

The Hindu movement in India in its most typical form follows a

Swadeshi (own-country) movement like the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch. It
emphasizes protecting the villages and local economies, building
economic independence and self-reliance for the country. It resists
corporate interference and challenges multinational interests, whether the
bringing of fast food chains to India, western pharmaceuticals or
terminator seeds.

Such an economic policy was supported by Mahatma Gandhi with

his emphasis on the villages, reflected in his characteristic usage of the
spinning wheel. Its counterparts in the West are the groups that protest
the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund (IMF). However, these protest groups are
generally classified as ‘left-wing’ by the international press.

The international press considers the economic right-wing to be the

powers of the multinational corporations, particularly, the oil industry,
which certainly are not the allies of Hindu economics. Clearly Hindu
economics is more connected with the New Left in the West and has little
in common with the right. The Republican right in America, with its
corporate interests, would hardly take up the cause of Hindu economics
either.

Meanwhile the BJP, the so-called Hindu nationalist party in India,

has been responsible for much the economic liberalization if the country,
sometimes even to the dismay of some votaries of Hindu economics. It
has been the main opponent of the socialist policies of the previous
Congress and left governments that had communist leanings. While such
a movement is to the right in the political spectrum, the policies of the
BJP are a movement towards western capitalism from the left, they are
not a movement from it to the right. At most they emulate a more open
capitalist society as in the West but one that retains a dharmic
background.

Hindu Ecology and Nature Concerns

Hindu groups are well known for promoting vegetarianism and

animal rights, particularly the protection of cows. The Hindu religion as a
whole honors the Divine in animals and recognizes that animals have a
soul and will eventually achieve liberation. Hindu groups have tried to
keep fast food franchises, which emphasize meat consumption, out of
India. Such a movement would be part of consumer advocacy
movements that are generally leftist or liberal causes in the West. Again
it is hardly an agenda of the right-wing in America, which has a special
connection to the beef industry; or to the right-wing worldwide, which
has no real concern for animal rights and is certainly not interesting in
spreading vegetarianism.

Hindus look upon nature as sacred, honoring the rivers and

mountains as homes of deities. They stress the protection of Mother
Earth, which they worship in the form of the cow. They have a natural
affinity with the western ecology movement and efforts to protect
animals, forests and wilderness areas. This is also hardly a right-wing
agenda.

Hindu Religious Pluralism

The Hindu religion is a pluralistic tradition that accepts many paths,

teachers, scriptures and teachings. One cannot be a Christian without
accepting Christ or a Buddhist without accepting Buddha, but one can be
a Hindu without accepting any single figure. In fact there are Hindus who
may not follow Krishna, Rama, Shiva, Vishnu or other Hindu sages or
deities and still count as Hindu.

Hindus have been at the forefront in arguing for the cause of

religious diversity and the acceptance of pluralism in religion, rejecting
the idea that any single religion alone can be true. This Hindu idea of
religion—which is also subscribed to by so-called right wing Hindu
groups like RSS—is obviously not part of the agenda of the religious
right in the West. The American Christian right is still sending
missionaries to the entire world in order to convert all people to
Christianity, the only true religion. It is firmly fixed on one savior, one
scripture and a rather literal interpretation of these. Yet when Hindus ask
the pope to make a statement that truth can be found outside of any
particular church or religion they are called right-wing and backwards,
while the pope, who refuses to acknowledge the validity of Hindu,
Buddhist or other Indic traditions, is regarded as liberal! Such pluralism
in religious views is hardly a cause for any right-wing movement in the
world, but is also considered progressive, liberal, if not leftist (except in
India).

Hinduism and Science

Unlike the religious right in the West, the Hindu movement is not
against science or opposed to teaching evolution in the schools.
Hinduism does promote occult and spiritual subjects like astrology,
Ayurvedic medicine, Yoga or Vedanta, but these are the same basic
teachings found in the New Age in the West, generally regarded as a
liberal or leftist movement, not those of the religious right in the West.
Many leaders of the Hindu movement are in fact scientists. For example,
RSS leaders like former chief Rajinder Singh, or BJP leaders like Murli
Manohar Joshi have also been professors of modern physics.

In fact we could compare Hinduism as a whole with the case of

Ayurveda. Ayurveda as a form of mind-body medicine emphasizing the
role of consciousness in health and disease is part of the alternative
medicine movement in the West and considered to be progressive, while
the medical establishment that emphasizes allopathy is regarded as
conservative, if not right-wing. However, in India it is Ayurveda, because
it is a tradition of the country, which is regarded as backwards, while
modern medicine is regarded as progressive.

The Hindu Movement and Caste

 The Hindu right is often defined in the media in terms of caste, as
favoring the upper castes over the lower castes. This is another distortion
that is often intentional. Modern Hindu teachers have been at the
forefront of removing caste. This includes great figures like
Vivekananda, Mahatma Gandhi and Aurobindo. It includes major Hindu
movements like the Arya Samaj, the largest Vedic movement in modern
India, and the Swadhyaya movement.

The RSS, the largest so-called Hindu right wing group, rejects
caste and works to remove it from Hindu society, giving prominence to
leaders from lower classes and working to open the Hindu priesthood to
members of all castes. While caste continues to be a problem in certain
segments of Hindu society, it is generally not because of these current
Hindu social, religious and political movements, but because their reform
efforts are resisted.

The Hindu Movement and Women’s Rights

Generally, the right wing in the West is defined as opposed to

women’s rights. However, there are many women’s groups and active
women leaders in the Hindu movement and in the Hindu religion. Being
a woman is no bar for being a political or religious leader in India as it
often is in the West. Hinduism has the worlds’ largest and oldest tradition
of the worship of the Divine as Mother, including as India itself. Great
female Hindu gurus like Ammachi (Mata Amritanandamayi) travel and
teach all over the world. The Hindu movement worships India on a
spiritual level as a manifestation of the Divine Mother (Shakti).

Hindus were very protective of their women during the period

foreign and kept them sequestered, which was often for their own safety.
Unfortunately, this trend has continued among some Hindus in the
modern world when it is no longer necessary. So while there is poor
treatment of women in some parts of Hindu society, this has not been by
modern Hindu teachers or movements that have tried to raise the status of
women as Shakti.

The Hindu Bomb

 Perhaps the main thing in recent years used to define Hindus in India
as right-winged is India’s testing of the nuclear bomb in 1998. Yet
India’s concern for its military welfare and need for a nuclear deterrent is
certainly no more than what the democratic party in the United States has
asked for. The Indian government has at the same time argued for
complete nuclear disarmament, which it would be happy to comply with.
Note that the Dalai Lama supported India’s nuclear testing. He can
hardly regarded as a right-wing leader (except by the Chinese
communists and their Indian counterparts).

The Indian Left: The Old Left

In India, the political terminology of right and left is defined by

Marxists, who like to call anyone that opposes them right-wing or
fascists, which they used to do even with socialists. In their view
anything traditionally Hindu would have to be right-wing on principle,
just as their views are always deemed progressive, even if supporting
Stalinist tactics. This means that in India such subjects as Yoga, natural
healing, vegetarianism and animal rights are all automatically right-wing
because they are causes of the Hindu mind, with antecedents in ancient
Indian culture. Great Hindu yogis and sages from Shankaracharya to Sri
Aurobindo are classified by modern Marxists as right-wing, if not
fascist. 5[1]

However, the Indian left is mainly the Old Left, emphasizing a

failed communist ideology and state economic planning such as
dominated Eastern Europe in the decades following World War II and
took it nowhere. It wreaked the same havoc with the economy and
educational systems of India and kept the country backward. Indian
communists are among the few in the world that still proudly honor
Stalin and Mao (while warning of the danger of Hindu fundamentalism)!
Communist ruled Bengal still teaches the glory of the Russian revolution
for all humanity, though Russia gave up communism ten years ago! The
Old Left was itself intolerant, oppressive and dictatorial, sponsoring state
terrorism and genocide wherever it came to power. Indian leftists have
never rejected these policies and look back with nostalgia on the Soviet
Union!

Therefore, we must remember that the leftist criticism of Hinduism

coming from the Indian left is that of the Old Left. This old left in India
does not take up many of the causes of the new left like ecology or native
rights. It even sides with the policies of the political right-wing in
western cultures upholding the rights of missionaries to convert native
peoples and continuing colonial accounts of Indic civilization.

The communist inspired left in India has tried to demonize the

Hindu movement as a right-wing phenomenon in order to discredit its
spiritual orientation. The aim of the Indian left is to keep the Hindu
movement isolated from any potential allies. After all, no one likes
fascists, which is a good term of denigration that evokes negative
emotions for both communists and capitalists.

Hinduism and the Left

The causes taken up by the Hindu movement are more at home in

the New Left than in right wing parties of the West. Some of these
resemble the concerns of the Green Party. The Hindu movement offers a
long-standing tradition of environmental protection, economic simplicity,
and protection of religious and cultural diversity. There is little in the so-
called Hindu right that is shared by the religious or political right-wing in
western countries, which reflect military, corporate and missionary
concerns. The Hindu movement has much in common with the New Age
movement in the West and its seeking of occult and spiritual knowledge,
not with the right wing in the West, which rejects these things. Clearly,
the western right would never embrace the Hindu movement as its ally.
Right-winged labels have been cast on the Hindu movement in an
uncritical way. Usually it has been little more than a casting of labels or
stereotypes.

To counter this distortion, some Hindus are now arguing for a new
‘Hindu Left’ to better express the concerns of Hindu Dharma in modern
terms. They would see the New Left as more in harmony with Hindu
concerns and a possible ally. Hindu thought has always been progressive
and evolutionary, seeking to aid in the unfoldment of consciousness in
humanity and not resting content with material or political gains as
sufficient. Hindu Dharma should be reexamined by the New Left and the
distortions of by the Old Left discarded. The New Left will find much in
Hindu Dharma that is relevant to its concerns.

The Hindu movement can be a great ally to many social movements

throughout the world. It has a base of nearly a billion people and the
world’s largest non-biblical religious tradition, with a long tradition of
spiritual thought and practice. The Hindu movement can be an ally for
any native causes, environmental concerns, women’s spiritual issues and
movements toward economic simplicity and global responsibility, to
mention but a few.

Groups espousing such causes may have looked upon Hinduism as

an enemy, being taken in by leftist propaganda. They must question these
distortions of the Old Left. They should look to the Hindu view for
insight, even if they may not agree with it on all points. They should not
trust the anti-Hindu stereotypes of the Old Left, any more than they trust
the views of the now defunct Soviet Union.

Towards a Non-Political Social Order

However, the entire right-left division reflects the conditions of

western politics and is inaccurate in the Indian context. We must give up
such concepts in examining Indic civilization, which in its core is
spiritually based, not politically driven. It reflects older and deeper
concerns that precede and transcend the West’s outer vision. As long as
we define ourselves through politics our social order will contain conflict
and confusion. Democracy may be the more benign face of a political
order, but it still hides the lack of any true spiritual order. We must
employ the vision of dharma and subordinate politics to it, which should
be a form of Karma Yoga.

The New Left also contains various distortions from a Hindu

perspective. True liberalism requires a responsibility to the entire
universe, not just an assertion of individual human rights, which can be
to the detriment of larger social groups or to the natural environment. It
looks to the spiritual human being, our immortal consciousness, and not
to the bodily-based ego as the real human being. It helps preserve organic
social orders and avoids interference with natural cultural development.

We cannot look to politics to change the world, but to spirituality

to change politics. Hindus should not try to remake Hinduism according
to current images of political correctness, but should connect the world to
a greater idea of humanity than political concerns. These follow the
vision of the great yogis and sages who have stood outside of western
political concerns and viewpoints.

What is said to be ‘politically correct’ is often ‘spiritually

incorrect’. It consists of simplistic outer solutions that do not go to the
root of the human problem, which is one of consciousness, not only
social or material equality. We must look back to an organic and spiritual
order to society that cannot be defined by either the left or the right of
western politics, and which will hopefully set both aside. This is what
Hindu Dharma can offer.

________________________________
1[1]
For example, in the United States where I live, I have supported ecology, animal rights
and the cause of pluralism in religion, which the right wing here opposes. But in the Indian context I
am labeled right wing or even fascist for raising the same issues.
 Part III
A New Model of Vedic Science
****

Part III.1

Vedic Knowledge and the Coming Planetary Age

_______________________
The Vedas are the oldest literature of India, preserved by the people
of the region for thousand of years to represent their unbroken culture.
The Vedas have survived the vicissitudes of time better than any ancient
literature in the world. They became honored throughout the entire
subcontinent over two thousand years ago, where Vedic verses and
mantras resound in homes and temples to the present day. They are not
simply a relic of the past but have inspired modern teachers like Sri
Aurobindo to a new vision of humanity and the future of the planet.

The Vedas reflect a continuity of teachings, a rishi vision and an

emphasis on Dharma that has characterized the culture of India in its
many forms. The traditional name of India, Bharat, derives from the
name of a famous Vedic king and the Bharata dynasty kings were the
dominant kings in the Rigveda itself.

The Vedas are usually looked upon as religious documents, but this
can be misleading. The Vedas deal not only with ritual but also with
mantra, Yoga and meditation or the deeper spiritual and mystical
practices that transcend outer religious formalities. They extend to all
domains of culture and knowledge, with branches of the Vedas dealing
with music, architecture, astronomy and medicine.

The term ‘Veda’ itself means knowledge, wisdom or vision, from

the root ‘vid’ meaning to see or to know. This knowledge is defined
twofold in the Upanishads as a higher, internal or Self-knowledge,
through which immortality can be gained, and a lower or external
knowledge, through which we can understand the external world. The
lower knowledge includes what the modern world refers to as science
and technology. This division is reflected in the Brahmanas as an
adhyatmic or inner/spiritual knowledge and an adhibhutic or
elemental/material knowledge.

The Vedas are not books of faith or revelations of prophets and do

not rest upon a person, institution or belief. They teach a way of
knowledge that is open, diverse and pluralistic. They realize that there is
One great truth behind the universe, a universal being and consciousness,
but that it can be approached from many different levels and angles. They
honor the Divine Self as the supreme principle, not an external authority
of person, book or institution.

Starting with the Rigveda, meditation is regarded as the way to true

knowledge. The Rigveda recognizes a higher or meditative aspect of the
mind, called ‘dhi’ (later referred to as ‘buddhi’) as our main faculty of
true perception. From this same root ‘dhi’, the term ‘dhyana’ for
meditation arises. Dhi is the higher and interior portion of the mind
(manas), which enables us to perceive the eternal truth. This cultivation
of dhi or buddhi is the main characteristic of Yoga, Vedanta and
Buddhism.

The Rigveda mentions other meditational powers as ‘kratu’ or

right intention, ‘daksha’ or skill in action, ‘medha’ or higher perception,
‘manisha’ or intuition, and ‘chetana’ or consciousness. Its deities like
Agni are not simply outer powers or nature forces but possessed of a wise
consciousness (pracetas) or discriminating awareness (vicetas). The
Vedas emphasize mantra or energized speech for developing the mind,
particularly satya mantra or the Divine word of truth. They are aware of a
cosmic order of Satyam Ritam Brihat, the Reality, Truth and Vastness,
showing an intelligible universe that is benefic in nature and pervaded by
consciousness.

The Vedic Yajna

The Vedas have a ritualistic basis as a means of harmonization with

Dharma, not as an enforcement of dogma. Our life consists of what could
call be called ‘ritual offerings’ of food, breath, thought, and
consciousness. The universe is an interdependent organic field that has its
own rhythm and harmony undergoing a constant dynamic interchange.
Attuning our lives to the universal harmony, in which each being is an
offering to the whole and in which the entire universe is reflected in each
being, is the Vedic ritual or Yajna. This Yajna occurs on many levels
inwardly and outwardly. Outwardly, the Vedic rituals consist of various
tangible offerings, like wood or ghee, to the sacred fire, to generate a
positive energy for the world. Inwardly, Vedic rituals consists of
offerings of breath, speech and mind to the Divine or our higher Self to
raise us to a higher consciousness and ultimate realization of our true
nature.

Vedic Deities

The Rigveda consists of a thousand mantric hymns of various rishis

with the purpose of promoting the inner and outer Yajna, to harmonize
humanity with the universal order of life and consciousness. In this
process various deities are worshipped, of which three are most
important.

First is Agni, the deity of the Earth, which relates to the sacred fire,
and refers to the higher Self within our embodiment. Agni, which means
‘the inner guide (agra ni)’, is the Divine being immanent within us as our
own individual soul or jiva. He is called Vaishvanara (the universal
person), Jatavedas (the knower of all births) and Kumara (the Divine
Child). Agni is the Divine force behind the material world, the spirit
hidden in nature and in the body, that we must bring forth in order to set
our spiritual quest in motion. Just as fire can be brought forth from wood
through friction, so this inner fire can come forth from the mind through
meditative inquiry.

Second is Indra or Vayu, which relates to wind or spirit, the deity

of the Atmosphere. Inwardly it refers to Prana, the cosmic energy or life-
force that is the ruler (Indra) of the entire universe. Indra specifically is
the perceiver, representing the lightning force of inner perception that
opens up our higher consciousness. Indra relates to the transcendent
aspect of the Self (Paramatman) and the cosmic lord (Ishvara). The union
of Agni and Indra or fire and air is the union of the individual soul with
the cosmic being.
 Third is Surya or the Sun, the deity of Heaven, meaning not the
outer luminary but the principle of light and consciousness, which is the
knowledge aspect of our higher intelligence or dhi. Surya as wisdom
complements the Indra principle as will power and also relates to
Paramatman on a transcendent level and Ishvara or the cosmic lord on a
manifest level. These two great deities of Indra and Surya are the basis
for later Shiva and Vishnu, which like Indra and Surya, represent
respectively Prana and the Sun. Agni, our inner flame, when enkindled,
grows and becomes the Sun or the full light of truth and unity.

The goal of the Vedic Rishi is to become one with the deity as a
part of the process of Self-realization. The seer Vishvamitra proclaims, “I
am Agni, from birth the knower of all beings” (Rig Veda III.26.7).
Similarly, Vamadeva proclaims, “I was Manu and I became the Sun”
(Rig Veda IV.26.1). The Vedic Rishi himself is Agni, the Divine Fire on
Earth.

Such Vedic insights gave birth to the Upanishadic tradition and

their more evident teachings about the Atman. However, this teaching is
also found in the Rig Vedic mantras hidden in a veil of mantra and
symbolism. The Vedas often state, “Paroksha priya hi deva, pratyaksha
dvishah,” meaning “the Gods prefer what is secret and dislike the
obvious.” Few scholars West or East have been able to penetrate this veil
of secrecy to discover the spiritual core of the Vedic teaching.

Vedanta and the Vedas

According a number of teachers both Indian and western, Vedanta

is the main teaching that derived from the Vedas and the Vedas in
themselves are not important. They regard the Vedas as obscure
ritualistic texts from which Vedanta gradually emerged as way of Self-
knowledge. Yet Vedanta is not simply the end (anta) of the Vedas. More
appropriately speaking, it is the essence (rasa) of the Vedas. The Vedas
begin and end with Vedanta, which is the very theme, harmony or
concurrence behind all Vedic texts. We cannot claim to have the entire
Vedantic tradition until we understand its Vedic foundation in the
Rigveda itself.
 Though all the specific terminology of Vedantic philosophy cannot
be found in old texts like the Rigveda, a Vedantic meaning can be
ascertained behind the Vedic mantras if one knows how to discern their
essence. 6[1] Even the Vedic ritual is a means of connecting the individual
to the universal, through the great elements of nature or the deities that
govern the universe. The outer Vedic ritual is an inner Vedantic thought
exercise, gradually equating the factors of world experience (the deities)
with factors of internal experience (the mind, prana and senses. The outer
Vedic ritual leads to an inner Vedic ritual of offering speech, prana and
mind to the higher Self, which takes us to Vedanta. A right understanding
of the Vedas, therefore, connects us with the Vedantic roots of humanity
and helps us connect with the Self of all beings.

Vedanta and the Gods of the Vedas

The Vedas begin characteristically with a prayer to Agni or the

sacred fire. This Agni is no ordinary fire but represents the inner flame of
awareness, the practice of mindfulness that is the very foundation of
Vedanta. Agni is the light of reason that we must enkindle within
ourselves in order the find truth. It is the hidden light of the Self, which
gives life the individual soul and holds its aspiration to Divinity that
follows our every birth into this mortal realm.

The most commonly lauded deity of the Vedas is Indra, who

represents energy, vitality, and shakti, particularly the power to break
through ignorance and reveal the light of truth. Indra represents the
Divine will within us, the seeking of self-expression and self-realization
that is the very motive power within all creatures and the evolutionary
force of life itself. Vedanta is the unfoldment of the Indra energy seeking
supremacy over the entire universe, as life’s seeking of transcendence in
Self-realization.

The Vedic Sun or Surya is the light of truth that illuminates reality.
The Divine Self is the internal Sun that reveals all the functions of nature
as well as all the faculties of the mind. Vedanta is about the rising of that
Sun of truth and its ending of the dark night of Samsara, ignorance and
rebirth. The Atman is the true light behind all.
 Meditation takes us to Samadhi in which there is an experience of
bliss. The Vedic God Soma represents the stream of spiritual delight
from the inner perception of the unity of all. It is the understanding of the
Self in all beings and all beings in the Self that frees us from all sorrow.
The flowing Soma that the Vedas seek is the flow of bliss from the
Absolute (Sacchidananda) into the human mind. Vedanta culminates in
that Somic bliss born of Self-realization.

Just as Vedanta is reflected in these four major Vedic deities, it is

reflected in the minor deities as well. The deities of the earth sphere are
forms of Agni as the flame of awareness hidden in the material world.
Those of the atmospheric sphere are forms of Indra as the power of truth
perception hidden in our pranic movements. Those of heaven are forms
of Surya and Soma or Sun and Moon as the wisdom and bliss of spiritual
experience. The Sun as the light of consciousness is the Supreme Deity
of the Vedas, the One God of all the Gods, the One Self of all the souls.
All Vedic deities reflect its powers and qualities on various levels or to
different degrees.

Relevance of Vedic Knowledge Today

What is the current relevance of Vedic knowledge and of the

existent Vedic texts that we have? The Vedas show us the existence of a
spiritual humanity from which we have perhaps not so much evolved as
fallen. Modern man looks upon progress through science and technology
as the real measure of progress and enlightenment. Yet, if we look
deeply, we see that spiritual insight has not developed along with
civilization and was actually higher in ancient times than today. The yogi
in a cave is certainly at a higher level of consciousness than most
scientists or technocrats today.

As a species, we have not just simply evolved out of a material basis

in order to gain mastery of the external world. We have a deeper spiritual
heritage, an ancestry of great rishis and yogis, that we must also
recognize to truly find our place in the cosmic order. The Vedas pass on
the legacy of this earlier spiritual humanity in the best preserved ancient
texts that we have. But this emphasis on rishis, sages and seers as behind
human culture can be found in all ancient civilizations whether those of
China, India, Egypt, Babylonia, South Asia, the Middle East, Europe or
the Americas.

In the last few centuries, our civilization has developed greatly in

terms of science, technology and the commercial world. However, we
have not had a corresponding spiritual unfoldment. In fact, during this
period many of our greatest spiritual traditions have been, if not lost, at
least diminished. The earth wisdom of native peoples of Asia, Africa and
America has often perished along with their cultures, facing the onset of
modern civilization. The yogic wisdom of India and Tibet has been
marginalized by western political and religious influences. The Vedas, as
the older tradition of India, contain both this earth wisdom, such as
revealed in the Bhumi Sukta of the Atharvaveda, and the great yogic
tradition as well.

At the same time, we do see a renewed interest in the Indian spiritual

tradition worldwide, with the growing popularity of Yoga, Vedanta and
Buddhism, along with related artistic, medical and astrological teachings.
These Indic traditions have become linked with other spiritual traditions
of Asia, America, Africa and Europe, including those outside of the field
of the present dominant religions of Christianity and Islam. We can find
the essence of all these ancient and modern spiritual paths in the Vedas.
Through the Vedas we can reclaim our spiritual heritage as a species and
use that as a foundation on which to build a new age of consciousness,
universality and global responsibility.

________________________
1[1]
Note my book Wisdom of the Ancient Seers for such an explication of Rigveda
mantras. Also note the works of Sri Aurobindo and Kapali Shastri in this regard.
 Part III.2
Consciousness and Mind in the Vedic Tradition
___________________

Brain, Mind and Consciousness

Three interrelated aspects of intelligence exist that we can examine

as human beings. The first is the brain, the physical organ of intelligence
subject to outer surgical and biochemical forms of examination. Such
brain research has allowed scientists to map out the brain and its various
functions with great precision and great curative or corrective powers for
mental dysfunctions.

The second is the mind, the conditioned awareness that operates

through the brain as its instrumentality. The mind is subtler than the brain
and can access higher levels of awareness beyond the physical. Actually,
we all primarily experience the mind, not the brain. We live in the realm
of our senses with little feeling of our internal bodily organs. The mind
has various functions like thought, emotion, ego, sensation and memory.
It can not only reflect physical realities but can infer the laws behind
physical appearances and speculate about what transcends physical
reality.

The third factor of intelligence is consciousness or an

unconditioned awareness beyond both body and mind. Yogis claim to
experience this and most people can sense or infer it through the mind as
our inherent intuition of the eternal. Consciousness is usually defined as
immortal and infinite, not limited to any organ or instrument, physical or
subtle. It is a universal principle pervading the entire world of nature, not
as simply expressed in embodied creatures.

I would also introduce a fourth factor, prana or the life-force, both

as an individual and as a cosmic principle. If there is a universal
consciousness there must also be a universal life-force for its
manifestation. I have avoided using the term ‘God’ for consciousness as
a universal principle because the term is often defined in terms of faith or
emotion and is commonly confused with personal experience or
historical revelation.
 In addition, apart from pure consciousness can be inferred a
‘cosmic intelligence’ or cosmic mind as the ground of the laws of the
universe, whereas consciousness itself transcends time and space. We
could call consciousness and cosmic intelligence the ‘immanent’ and
‘transcendent’ aspects of consciousness, with the mind as the
‘individualized’ aspect of consciousness.

Modern science focuses on the brain and has tried, though

unsuccessfully, to define the mind in terms of brain function, as if the
mind did not exist before birth or persist after death, and its functions
were identical with that of the brain. The mind, being the subtlest and
most inward part of our embodied nature, is not easy to examine on an
outer level, any more than inner concerns like art, philosophy or religion
can be reduced to a scientific formula or experiment.

The Vedic tradition defines the mind as having four functions as

reason (buddhi), sensation-emotion (manas), ego (ahamkara), and
memory-feeling (chitta), and as connected to prana, which in turn is
connected to the physical body. These functions have been described in
great detail in traditional texts and it is possible to see how they are
functioning in each person.

Vedic science calls the mind the ‘subtle body’ (sukshma or linga
sharira) and considers it capable of surviving death and reincarnating into
a new body, along with a subliminal core of memories and tendencies
(karmas and samskaras). These samskaras make up the karmic code of
the individual, which is more important than the outer physical genetic
code in determining individual behavior and destiny. Vedic practices,
like Yoga and rituals, aim at changing this karmic code from something
restrictive to something enlightening, and ultimately freeing us from it
altogether so that we can reclaim our original nature as pure
consciousness.

Vedic science regards the deepest core of the mind, what could be
called the soul (jiva) as the entity that reincarnates as part of a higher
evolution of consciousness. However, it holds that this jiva and the
universal consciousness are not accessible to the ordinary human mind
but require rigorous spiritual and meditation practices (sadhana) that can
take many years in order to really experience. Such sadhana requires
purifying the mind and putting it in a silent, calm or one-pointed focus,
which eventually allows it to perceive the underlying universal
consciousness. For this purpose it requires an energization of prana to
raise the mind to a higher level of functioning.

Questions

Relative to modern science this view raises some questions. A

number of physicists have speculated about consciousness as the ground
of all physical laws and as necessary to explain the workings of the
universe, which depends upon and is altered by its observer. However, if
a universal consciousness exists, there must be a universal life-force as
well. This would mean that the mind, sense organs and sensory capacities
are universal factors like light or sound and would, in various forms, be
found in different creatures throughout the universe, as well as being
generally available, like interstellar dust, in cosmic space. Similarly,
there would be a cosmic intelligence as a ground of the laws of nature, as
its causal principle. It would not be a question merely of consciousness
and physical reality but of various intermediate principles between the
two such as the tattvas of Vedic thought (as in the Samkhya system of
philosophy). Clearly there is much more in the universe that modern
science is only suspecting but that Vedic science has long known and
explored.

Relative to the relationship between the brain and the mind, there
are distinctions between the impairment of the brain and the impairment
of intelligence that we can easily observe. When a genius has a stroke,
the brain is damaged but their intelligence is not always reduced, only the
ability to communicate it. Similarly, there are people with well physically
developed or large brains that are not particularly intelligent. When a
great yogi meditates there would be changes in the brain chemistry that
should be to some extent measurable, but his does not mean his
experience is measured, any more than the movement of a man is
understood by the movement of his shadow.

On a deeper level, the question arises whether the approach of

modern science is appropriate to consciousness or whether an alternative
approach is required, that of the inner science of Yoga. Science
approaches the mind through measurement and technology, through
extending the range of our sensory instruments. Yogic science regards
this outer approach as inherently limited and ultimately illusory (Maya)
because each system of measurement (Maya also means measurement)
creates its own bias, measuring some aspects but not the whole, which in
its totality and essence must remain immeasurable. Yoga uses the
methods of meditation to turn the mind itself into an instrument to
perceive consciousness directly, which it holds can occur once the mind
is detached from the field of the senses (nirvishaya manas). This inward
turning of the mind is the essence of the yogic spiritual quest. It has its
logic, rationality and experiments but in the mind itself, not externally.

Vedic Science Revalidated

In the Vedic view, we live in a conscious universe. Consciousness

exists not only as an individual factor in living beings, but also as a
cosmic factor in the forces and objects of nature, including the planets
and stars. Through our individual consciousness we can access this
universal consciousness and its wisdom, grace and power, just as a child
can call on and gain the help of its parents. This understanding affords us
an entirely different relationship with the universe, not as an external
object but as part of oneself. Such a vision can totally transform our
culture and our species and bring about a new interaction between our
species and the greater world.

There is much ground for a new dialogue between Vedic (yogic)

Science and modern science as between the inner and outer aspects of
science. Vedic science holds that our intelligence (buddhi) can not only
discriminate the names, forms and numbers of external reality, but,
turned within, can discriminate the eternal aspect of consciousness from
these outer factors. This internal discrimination, viveka, is said to be the
means of liberation and transcendence.

If this yogic approach is valid, then Vedic sciences including

Vedanta (the way of Self-realization), Ayurveda (pranic or energetic
medicine), Jyotish (Vedic astronomy and astrology) and Vastu (Vedic
science of architecture and directional influences) can have a scientific
basis through such factors as universal consciousness, cosmic
intelligence and the universal life-force. The Vedas offer us a science and
technology to access this universal consciousness and life-force, just as
we can use electricity or solar power with the help of modern science.
These are important concerns for determining the real meaning of our
 existence. We can no longer define life in terms of chemical forces alone.
We must recognize subtler levels of reality than matter or energy up to
pure consciousness itself.

Spiritual and Material Sciences

India has developed and preserved this science of consciousness

since times immemorial as its great heritage, with living traditions and
great modern teachers like Ramana Maharshi, Swami Vivekananda and
Sri Aurobindo. Though India has been slower than the West to develop
science and technology, this has been more a circumstance of political
instability owing to foreign invasions, not any religious hostility to the
open pursuit of knowledge which has always been honored in the
country.

As India has probably more scientists than any other country in the
world today, it has the best position among countries to integrate the
spiritual and material sciences. This will probably be its most important
contribution to humanity in the coming decades. To this end, its scientists
need to be willing to engage in the disciplines of yogic science and the
practice of meditation so that they can really contact the consciousness
behind the universe. Similarly, its yogis need to reformulate their
teachings in clear, modern and experimental terms so that the yogic way
of knowledge can gain credibility as a scientific, not simply religious
pursuit.

Humanity needs to develop its heritage both of spiritual and

material sciences. The spiritual sciences provide the view of
consciousness that enable us to use the material sciences—and the
awesome forces they can release—in a truly humane and sensitive way
for the entire world. We must once more recognize the consciousness at
the ground of all being and all existence everywhere, in the animate and
the inanimate. This is not a matter of more information, but a different
view of life in which we learn the art of looking within.

____________________________
Part III.3
Vedanta, the Foundation of the Indic School of Thought
___________________________
The most characteristic system of thought coming out of India has
always been Vedanta, the philosophy of Self-realization rooted in the
Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. The Vedantic message of the unity
of Atman and Brahman, the individual and the universal, is the prime
message of all Indic thought. The great sages behind the modern Hindu
renaissance and the independence of modern India since Vivekananda
were all inspired primarily by Vedanta and looked back to Vedantic texts
for their guidance. The prevalence of the Gita as one of humanity’s
greatest and most popular books is owing to its profound Vedantic
message. India in its essence is the land of Vedanta, which is the land of
the Atman, the Supreme Self, symbolized by its towering Himalayan
peaks.

Why has Vedanta been so important and central to the Indic

tradition? It is because Vedanta is the science of Self-realization, the way
of Self-knowledge through which we can transcend the external world
and realize the One Being-Consciousness-Bliss that is the foundation and
goal of all life. Vedanta provides us with the wisdom and the skill to
realize the absolute, in which we can go beyond all churches,
governments and social institutions. Because of this background
Vedantic view of universality and transcendence no single organized
religion or belief, even Buddhism, could come to dominate India and
why spiritual experience was always placed above outer religious forms.
Because of Vedanta living gurus were always made more important than
old books or even than the sages of old.

Vedanta and Science

According to Vedanta, the real goal of science, which seeks to

know reality, is knowledge of the Self. If we learn all about the outer
world but fail to understand ourselves we will remain not only ignorant
but also miserable. Unfortunately, modern science has not yet recognized
the Self and so is still wandering in outer cosmic laws and forces that
miss the real purpose of human life. Modern science is not yet
enlightened or spiritually aware but is still groping in the dark night of
matter.
For modern science to develop at a deeper level, it should learn to
ask fundamental Vedantic questions. Such are “What is the one thing,
knowing which everything can be known? By what can the knower be
known? What is the eye of the eye, the ear of the ear, the mind of the
mind? Or the great inquiry ‘Who am I’” Such questions do not simply
deal with learning about some external object or phenomenon in the
universe, but are about the very nature of knowledge and consciousness
itself. We must question not only the external world but the very inner
ground of our own consciousness.

Vedanta and Religion

In the Vedantic view, the true goal of religion, which

seeks to establish our proper relationship with God, is
knowledge of the Self. If we pray and do service and offer
everything to God but fail to know ourselves, our God is just
a mental illusion that obstructs any higher consciousness
from developing within us.

In the Vedantic view, the Self is greater than God and

dwarfs all religious institutions and teachings. To become
truly spiritual we should seek to know ourselves, even if this
requires setting formal religion aside. In the Vedantic
view, the goal of religion is to take us to the point that we
seek Self-knowledge, that we begin the earnest quest for the
true Self. At that point, we transcend all religious institutions,
edicts and dogmas and can happily dispense with them as no
longer necessary.

Unfortunately, the predominant western religions do not

recognize any goal of Self- realization and have no real
concept of the Atman. They have no organized teaching or
sadhana in order to achieve it. For them, the institution,
church, bible, prophet or savior is final and sufficient.
Salvation consists of going to some heavenly world after
death, in which some bodily identity often physical persists.
This is the most we can realize as a soul who ever remains a
servant, if not a slave of God. The idea of becoming or
transcending God is a heresy in such traditions.

In the Vedantic view the Self is greater than any church, scripture
or savior, and in our true nature we need none of these. To make human
beings slave to a religion is to deny their true Self and turn religion,
which should be an aid in liberation, into one of the worst factors of
bondage. We should use religion as a positive tool in whatever manner or
form it truly helps us become wiser and more compassionate, but we
should not let ourselves become reduced to it, or it is not a truly spiritual
pursuit and cannot develop a higher consciousness within us.

Vedanta and Independence

In spite of, or perhaps because of, all our modern progress we still
live in a world of servility and bondage. I am not speaking of political
servility, such as not having the right to vote, or economic servility, not
being able to feed oneself, though these problems still exist for many
people. I am speaking of the servility of the mind and heart, the
dependence upon an external reality and an external sense of identity for
our happiness in life.

America, in its own Declaration of Independence, recognizes life,

liberty and the pursuit of happiness as the God given rights of man.
While life and liberty may be self-evident, the pursuit of happiness is not.
The pursuit of happiness is the pursuit of desire and outer happiness,
which is why America developed primarily as a commercial culture. The
pursuit of happiness leads to bondage and servility to the outer things that
promise happiness for us. Really, happiness like life and liberty should
be given and need not be pursued.

The Vedantic declaration of independence is of being,

consciousness, bliss and freedom absolute as our very nature, not a right
given to us but as the very core of our being that we only need
rediscover. This rests not an outer achievement and acquisition but an
inner search with an empty mind and receptive heart. With a Vedantic
view we can explore the entire universe in our own minds, connecting to
the universal life-force as our unlimited source of energy. We don’t
require technology and what we achieve will not be lost at death.
Vedanta sets us free not from outer servitude but from all external
limitations by connecting us to the infinite and the eternal.

False Compassion

Various religions teach that we are sinners and without the church
we cannot be saved. Believing this dogma we become dependent on the
church for its favors and rewards, including heaven itself. Our religious
teachers tell us that we are weak and that we must be saved, or that if we
are strong, we must devote ourselves to saving others. We set up charities
to help the poor, teaching them the greatness of the savior as means of
improving their lives not only religiously but economically.

We should note very clearly—the very thought of another as weak

and needing to be saved is itself a sin against the Self, the Atman of that
person. That thought renders the person weak and, if the person believes
in it, we have only created a permanent ward of our charity. This may
make us feel good, like the pleasure a mother has in feeding her children,
but in this case the children cannot grow up. Their growth will remain
stunted.

Even the need to enlighten others can be a form of false compassion.

We look at others as ignorant, suffering sentient beings and think that
without our help they are condemned to bad karma and futile rebirth for
perpetuity. Instead of awakening them to their own strength, we make
them dependent upon a teaching, guru, tradition or technique. The very
thought of others as ignorant is itself the mistake. Everyone is the Atman.
We must awaken everyone to their true nature, which is free, full and
unlimited, not in need of any comfort or security.

Similarly, modern socialism teaches us that we are weak, whether

because we are minorities who are victims of past discrimination, or
because of normal human problems of disability, disease or aging, and
that we cannot survive without the favors of the state and its social
welfare system. The same phenomenon occurs as in religion. The
individual does become weak and obsequiously curries the favor of the
state. The modern welfare state resembles a gigantic religious charity and
takes over the lives of people. What is really aggrandized in most such
charities is the church or the state, while the people remain trapped in
bondage, living on the meager handouts of institutions, which drain
public resources.

Multinational corporations, though they are earning high profits and

taking money away from the undeveloped world, also like to portray
themselves as global charities concerned about the welfare of the people
and countries that they are really exploiting. They create schools,
hospitals or insurance programs for the benefit of those working under
them. Once in harness by the corporation ones entire life can go to them
and, as a reward, the corporation might help us in old age.

Today’s humanity, from different angles, has succeeded in creating

religious, economic and political servility for the glorification of
churches, states and multinational corporations. The Vedantic way is
quite different. It is to give real spiritual and psychological power back to
the individual. You are not a sinner. You don’t need anyone to take care
of you. You are not weak. You don’t even need the world to be happy. In
your true Self you are above material needs, beyond physical desires, not
even in need of any entertainment.

Don’t throw yourself away on any belief, institution as greater than

yourself. No one can save you and you cannot save another. There is no
one who is weak. Do not grovel but assert your higher Self. If you really
want to help others, first given them back themselves. Help them to help
themselves. If you look upon others as dependent upon you for their
well-being, you are just glorifying your own ego as the provider. You are
not doing anyone a real favor.

Vedanta may be criticized for lack of compassion because it does

not emphasis that we are poor, sinners or ignorant. It does not say that we
need to be saved, put on welfare or enlightened by another. But what
Vedanta teaches is true compassion and true self-determination. It gives
us back our own Self and our own ability to create our own destiny and
transcend the entire universe of matter and mind.

For India to rise up it must reclaim this Vedantic lion-hearted spirit

and throw off the darkness of servility, not only in social and political
behavior but also in spiritual practices. Vedanta should become the
national ethos. India is not a poor and undeveloped nation needing to be
saved and uplifted from the outside. It is the land of Vedanta, the realm
of the Atman, that once more needs to assert its spiritual glory for the
entire world. Such a Vedantic land will be the true teacher of the world
and all material problems will be easily mastered from the Self-mastery
that unlocks all powers. This is the real path to progress in India, not
groveling after foreign favors or resting in the shadow of alien creeds.

_____________________________

Part III.4
Vedic Yoga, the Oldest Form of Yoga
_________________
Yoga in various forms is popular throughout the world today.
However, few Yoga teachers, much less Yoga students, understand the
Vedic roots of Yoga. They are rarely aware of Yoga’s integral
relationship with Hindu culture, which it pervades on all levels including
music, dance, medicine, astrology and spirituality. Yoga is the inner
technology that goes along with Vedic wisdom, which is the inner
knowledge that enables us to understand the conscious universe and
utilize its forces for ultimate well-being and liberation.

Yoga is a comprehensive set of spiritual practices designed to enable

us to realize the greater universe of consciousness that is our true nature.
The term Yoga means to unite, coordinate, harmonize, work, or
transform. It refers to the linking all aspects of our being, from the
physical body to our highest intelligence, with the true or universal Self.
This process occurs in different forms and stages relative to the condition
of the individual and variations of time, place and culture. Vedic
 knowledge is that knowledge of the Divine or higher Self that the
practice of Yoga is seeking to realize. Veda is spiritual wisdom and Yoga
is its application. Yoga has developed over many thousands of years and
evolved into many branches and types, making it easy to lose sight of its
origins. Today Yoga has been reduced, particularly in the West, to its
physical or asana side, and little of the greater Yoga tradition is seriously
studied. Even in India the Vedic basis of the tradition is seldom given
proper attention.

Yet as we move into a new planetary age, the older spiritual

traditions are beginning to resurface in the collective mind. As we move
forward we must comprehend our origins and reclaim our ancient
spiritual heritage. The Vedas contain the keys to the perennial wisdom of
humanity. The Vedas proclaim that we are all children of light, the
progeny of the great seers (Maharshis), who have wandered far. In order
for us to evolve in consciousness we must revitalize the seeds of higher
evolution that the ancient sages planted within us millennia ago. The
revival of the Vedas is crucial to the emergence of a new spiritual global
culture.

Various scholars and yogis have aimed at researching and

rediscovering the original Vedic Yoga. Ganapati Muni, the chief disciple
of the great South Indian sage Ramana Maharshi, did notable work in this
respect. So did Ganapati's disciple, Daivarata Vaishvamitra, whom
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi once brought to the West and called a great
modern Rishi. The Vedic Yoga was central to the work of the great
modern seer-poet Sri Aurobindo, who based his integral Yoga on a Vedic
model, and Kapali Shastri, an important disciple not only of Aurobindo
but also of Ganapati Muni. Several other modern Vedic teachers have
contributed to the revival of Vedic knowledge including Swami
Dayananda Sarasvati of the Arya Samaj, Swami Gangeshwarananda and
Pandit Satvalekar. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has been its most notable
popularizer in recent years, promoting the idea of Vedic science,
including Ayurveda and Jyotish worldwide.

Vedic Yoga

Vedic Yoga is the oldest form of Yoga dating back to the Rigveda,
which is perhaps the oldest book in the world and the legacy of the
 ancient Sarasvati civilization of India. The original Vedic Yoga was
envisioned by numerous Vedic seers of the Angirasa and Bhrigu families,
of which the most important are the seven great seers Vasishta,
Vamadeva, Bharadvaja, Gritsamada, Vishvamitra, Kanwa and Atri, the
main seers of the Rig Vedic hymns. Through the vision of the Rishis, the
Vedas set forth the main possible spiritual paths for humanity. The Vedas
contain a comprehensive key to cosmic evolution as well as to human
spiritual unfoldment, unlocking all the laws of the universe.

Vedic language employs powerful mantras to set forth this

teaching with several levels of meaning and application. In this regard,
the Vedic language has a depth and dimension that modern languages,
products of the outer mind and ego, cannot approach. Vedic mantras
reflect the blueprint of cosmic intelligence through which all that exists
can be comprehended in pure consciousness. Vedic mantras contain the
prototypes of all knowledge and the keys to all powers of creation. Yet to
understand and use them correctly requires a special insight. Vedic
mantras cannot be grasped by the ordinary intellect, which is why
academic renderings of the Vedas are almost useless and breed many
distortions.

Three Types of Vedic Yoga

The basic Vedic Yoga is threefold, reflecting the tripartite

universe, and has several important correspondences:

Yoga Faculty Veda Loka Deity State

Mantra Speech Rigveda Earth Agni/ Waking
Yoga Vak Mantra Prithivi Brahma State
Creator
Prana Prana Yajurveda Atmosphere, Indra/Shiva Deep
Yoga Energy Ritual Antariksha Transformer Sleep
or the
Waters,
Apas
Dhyana Mind Sama Heaven Sun/ Vishnu Dream
Yoga Manas/ Dyaus Preserver
Buddhi Veda
Ecstasy

Mantra Yoga involves developing Mantra Shakti, the power of

mantra, through which the mantra becomes alive as a tool of
transformation in the mind. From this arises Mantra Sphota, mantric
insight, through which the inner meaning of the mantra can be grasped,
linking us up with Divine laws. This allows us to understand all forms in
the universe as manifestations of the Divine Word, the creative vibration
OM. This mantric force sets in motion all other inner energies, not only
on an inner level but can also provide mastery over all the forces of
nature.

Prana Yoga involves developing Prana or Vidyut Shakti (lightning

or electrical force), and Pranic insight (lightning perception). This allows
us to work with our vital energy as a manifestation of the energy of
consciousness. Mantra becomes Prana, as Prana (breath) itself is
unmanifest sound. This Prana provides the impetus and vitality for inner
transformations.

Dhyana Yoga, or the Yoga of meditation, involves developing

Buddhi or awakened intelligence, called Dhi in the Vedas, and its power
of truth perception. It allows us to understand the universe and the human
being as unfoldments of Cosmic Intelligence. This higher intelligence
arises through the energization of speech and Prana and brings an
extraordinary transformative power into the deepest level of the mind. In
Dhyana Yoga the light of truth floods the mind and we come to know the
unitary nature of all reality.

The Three Vedas correspond to these three Yogas. The Rigveda,

the Veda of mantra, sets forth the basic mantras or seeds of cosmic
knowledge on all levels. The Yajur Veda, the Veda of sacrifice, shows
their application through ritual, which is both external and internal
(yogic), individual and cosmic. The main internal ritual is Pranayama.
The Sama Veda, the Veda of unification, shows the realization of the
mantras through ecstasy and insight. These three forces operate in our
three states of waking, dream and deep sleep, and can transform them
into states of Divine waking or perception, Divine dream or creation, and
Divine rest or peace. These are the three worlds of Earth, Atmosphere
and Heaven, not as external but as internal realities, through which we
can grasp all the worlds as formations of our own mind.

Indra and Surya, Shiva and Vishnu

 The three main Vedic Deities or Devatas correspond to the three
types of light. Agni is fire, which is heat or thermogenic light that burns
up all negativity and reformulates our nature on a higher level. It also
represents the Atmic light that is hidden in darkness, the Self as the
witness of all the movements of the mind. Indra is lightning, which is
light energy or electrical force through which we can ascend and move
on a higher level of being. It represents the Atmic light of perception that
destroys the illusions (Maya) and limitations of ignorance symbolized by
Vritra, the serpent or dragon that is Indra’s enemy. Surya is the Sun,
which is pure light or magnetic force that draws us into the omnipresent
infinite. It is the Atmic light of truth that illuminates Brahman or the
supreme reality in the entire universe.

These three Vedic deities are the basis of the three main deities of
later Hinduism. Vedic Indra is the prototype of Shiva, who like Indra is a
deity of Prana (the life-force), Shakti (power) and transcendence. Vedic
Surya becomes Vishnu, who is also a Sun God or form of Surya in the
Rigveda. Vedic Agni becomes the basis of Hindu Skanda, born of Agni,
the Divine Child1. The two dominant deity orders of Hinduism—the
Shaiva and Vaishnava—reflect the Aindra (Indra) and Saura (Surya)
lines of the Rigveda, which makes the supreme deity alternatively that of
Heaven (Vishnu or Surya) or the Atmosphere (Indra or Shiva).

The Vedic atmosphere sometimes becomes the realm of the

Waters that transcend Heaven and Earth, not merely the intermediate
world placed between Heaven and Earth.2 The second world becomes
linked to the fourth or the realm beyond manifestation. The Atmosphere
becomes the all world or the Cosmic Ocean, the ocean of the heart, which
spreads Heaven and Earth apart, bringing the infinite into realization. Its
deity, Indra or Shiva, as the Supreme will and power becomes the highest
deity. This ocean is space and its waves are the worlds. In the space
within the heart is contained all the universe and the Supreme Self
beyond manifestation. Other times, Heaven or the realm of light is the
supreme world and the Atmosphere is below, with Surya or Vishnu, the
Sun God as Supreme.3

These two deities also reflect the order of the elements. Shiva or
Indra is Vayu or wind, which is the elements of air and ether. These are
the two formless elements that transcend the formed elements of earth,
water and fire that dominate on Earth and in the manifest world. Air and
ether represent the Spirit that transcends the material forms of earth,
water and fire. Surya or Vishnu is light that takes the forms of all the
elements and is not simply limited to the element of fire. Ultimately, light
and energy or Sun and Wind are the same. That is why in the Rigveda the
term Atman is applied either to the Sun, Surya, or to the Wind, Vayu.4

The Shaivite and Vaishnava lines, therefore, reflect the

atmospheric and heavenly orders and their deities of Wind/lightning and
Sun. Such a twofold division of supreme deities was common throughout
the ancient world from India to America, where either the Atmospheric
God of lightning and wind is supreme (which includes the Jewish
Jehovah) or the Heavenly Sun God. The two are ultimately identified as
the One Deity, the Supreme Self as either light or energy, consciousness
or Prana.

The integral Vedic Yoga combines these three Yogas. It has its
special form, which is meditation on the heart, tracing the origins of
speech, prana and mind back to the Self in the heart. This is the practice
of Self-inquiry. It is not done simply by repeating ‘Who am I?’ but
requires a mantric and meditational control of speech, Prana and mind. It
examines all the movements of speech, prana and mind in all states of
consciousness as powers of the Atman. It is particularly connected to
Agni Vaishvanara, the fire as the universal person, who is also called
Kumar, the child, and Guha, the secret space within the heart. This form
of Agni, as Ganapati Muni notes, represents the liberated soul (mukta
purusha). However, the Vedic Yoga is vast and many sided. We have
only outlined a few of its characteristic features here, like trying to
reduce the Puranic Hindu pantheon to a few key ideas or formulations.
_______________
1[1]
Aspects of Vedic Agni also appear as Hindu Ganesha (Agni as the priest worshipped first) and
Brahma, the Creator who works through the Vedas and the Vedic fire.
2
When Vishnu or Surya is the supreme deity, then heaven is the highest world, and the atmosphere is
only the intermediate world. When Shiva or Indra is the supreme deity, then the atmosphere gets
connected to the formless realm of air and space beyond heaven and earth (fire and earth).
3
The connection of Shiva/Indra and Prana, with Vishnu/Surya as the Sun explains why Shiva is the
predominant deity of Ayurveda that is connected to the life-force, while Vishnu dominates Jyotisha or
astrology, connected to the Sun.
4
Prana, similarly, can be identified with either Vayu or Surya.
Part III.5
Ayurveda, the World’s Medicine for the Next Millennium
____________________

Ayurveda Today

In 1989 I attended a conference on medical applications of Yoga in

Mumbai. There were a number of Indian medical doctors on the panel
but, strangely as a westerner, I was the only Ayurvedic speaker. After my
talk promoting Ayurveda, someone in the audience remarked, “We in
India believe in something only once it has been reimported.” While
most Indian medical minds are busy pursuing modern medicine,
Americans are increasingly looking into alternative medicine including
Ayurveda, and see India as the homeland of Ayurveda and yogic
spirituality.

India’s cultural medical genius has recently gone into modern

medicine. Families traditionally devoted to Ayurveda have switched over
to modern medicine and forgotten their roots. Indian allopathic doctors
are often opposed to Ayurveda which, with their western education, they
consider to be primitive. I have found doctors in America to be more
interested in Ayurveda than doctors in India who have a naïve faith in
modern medicine such as was typical during the fifties and sixties in the
West.

Unfortunately, Ayurveda is not adequately funded in India today,

receiving only a small percentage of the medical budget. This amount is
only enough to pay a low wage for Ayurvedic teachers. While the
government funds allopathic treatment, people generally have to pay out
of their own pockets for Ayurveda. This poor funding of Ayurveda is
responsible for the backward state that occurs for Ayurvedic schools and
hospitals, not anything necessarily inferior about the medicine itself.

Today there are several hundred Ayurvedic schools in India and

thousands of practitioners. Ayurveda remains popular in the villages and
has its place in urban life as well. Ayurvedic herb stores can be found in
most communities, offering a wide variety of health care products from
soaps to special formulas for boosting the immune system or improving
memory and concentration. Modern Ayurvedic schools teach Ayurveda
along with allopathy and the average Ayurvedic doctor knows a lot about
modern medicine, including many of its diagnostic methods. Ayurveda is
recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO) and is the subject
of much modern medical research. Therefore, in spite of poor funding,
Ayurveda is still flourishing and spreading anew.

A new modern Ayurveda is starting in India and in the West with

Ayurvedic health spas that can be quite upscale in terms of facilities and
treatment. This is not confined to the TM (Transcendental Meditation)
movement, which first emphasized it, but includes hotels in South India
and other Ayurvedic centers throughout the world sponsored by various
groups and organizations. There is nothing necessarily archaic or
poverty-based about Ayurveda. The new Ayurveda, like Yoga, is
attended by those in pursuit of the spiritual life and many affluent people
from the West. The western interest in Ayurveda is helping to revive
Ayurveda in India and makes it more respectable, showing it as an
important medical system in its own right, not just a poor alternative for
those who do not have access to modern medicine.

History of Ayurveda

Ayurveda has a long and glorious history in India, going back to

Vedic or Indus-Sarasvati times over five thousand years ago. The Vedas
mention the healing, rejuvenative and consciousness-boosting power of
special plant preparations called Somas that were made from a variety of
mountain plants prepared in ghee, milk, yogurt and other natural
substances. Classical Ayurveda includes the three great classics of
Charaka Samhita, Sushruta Samhita and Ashtanga Hridaya. No other
culture in the world, not Europe or China has preserved such extensive
medical texts of great antiquity that are still used today. They cover all
aspects of health and life-style including foods, herbs, mantra, massage,
meditation, daily and seasonal health regimens and clinical methods like
Pancha Karma and surgery.
 Ayurveda is mentioned in the Vedas, Upanishads, Mahabharata,
Puranas, Tantras and Yoga Shastras, sometimes in great detail as the
complementary medical system to Hindu culture and yogic spirituality.
It was used by the Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs as well as Hindus, and
forms the basis of Tibetan medicine. For example, the great Buddhist
teacher Nagarjuna, to whom was attributed the Shunyavada or Voidness
school of Buddhist philosophy, was also a great Ayurvedic teacher.
Many great modern Yogis like Sri Aurobindo, Swami Shivananda of
Rishikesh and Paramahansa Yogananda spoke highly of Ayurveda and
used it with their students. Most Yoga centers in India and the West now
offer Ayurvedic classes or treatments.

Ayurveda and Modern Medicine

Modern medicine is recognizing that we must consider the nature of

the individual in health and disease. It is not enough to give the same
treatment to everyone suffering from the same disease. Their individual
makeup should be considered because it causes the symptoms and
development of the disease to vary considerably.

Ayurveda contains perhaps the world’s best system of constitutional

types that helps us treat each individual appropriately. It classifies people
according to the three doshas or biological humors of Vata, Pitta and
Kapha, (which correspond roughly to the air, fire and water elements
energized by the life-force). From these three main types derive many
subtypes and conditions, resulting in a unique analysis of each
individual’s specific health condition. This typology is not the product of
any single factor like the current popular blood types in naturopathic
medicine, but reflects the whole range of biological manifestations
including body frame and weight, facial features, digestive tendencies,
disease tendencies and psychological indications of emotional
temperament and mental acuity. Ayurvedic books contain such typology
tests and Ayurvedic doctors spend much time determining the individual
nature and needs of each patient based upon these considerations.

Ayurveda treats the individual more so than the disease, which it

sees as a by product of imbalances within the person. It makes the
individual important and strengthening his or her vitality the goal,
regarding the disease manifestation as secondary and derivative. It says
that the same individual will be prone to various diseases that reflect their
individual make-up and energies. Therefore, Ayurveda can provide
treatment that covers not only a specific illness but all the potential
diseases that the individual is likely to fall prey to over time.

Modern medicine is realizing the importance of disease prevention.

It is not enough to treat diseases after they arise. This is like trying to put
out a fire after it has already started and done some damage. Real
treatment consists of preventing the disease from arising in the first
place. And many diseases that are difficult to treat once they are fully
developed can be prevented, if caught early enough.

Ayurveda is based upon a firm foundation of disease prevention,

which is not simply a matter of regular medical check-ups but requires a
healthy lifestyle in harmony with one’s own individual constitution and
unique life-circumstances. Disease arises mainly from a breakdown of
the balance of internal energies in a person, not merely from external
pathogens, however powerful these may be. Ayurveda’s main method of
long term treatment is to strengthen our internal energy (ojas). This is
similar to modern medicine’s effort to strengthen the immune system,
which is the energy of our body to defend itself from outside attacks. But
Ayurveda has a better understanding of this internal energy and its
connections with mind and consciousness. It views our vital energy not
merely as a biochemical phenomenon but as a product of the mind and
prana and includes how we think, breathe and use our senses in its
methods of healing.

Ayurveda and Consciousness

In the modern world we are gradually discovering the importance of

the mind and emotions in the disease process. Ayurveda is inherently a
mind-body medicine. Its doshas or biological humors are not simply
physical pathogens, elemental imbalances or dietary indiscretions but
include the effects of impressions, emotions and thoughts. The doshas
reflect the consequences of emotional toxins like anxiety, anger and
attachment on our physiology.

What junk food does to the body, junk impressions, such as our
mental diet of violent movies, does to the mind, rendering it dull and
heavy. Negative emotions impact our health by adversely disturbing our
internal organs, weakening the liver and heart which carry emotions.
Disturbed thoughts impact our health through unbalancing the flow of
energy through the nervous system. Disease always has a psychological
component, and psychological disorders impact our vitality in a negative
way.

Ayurveda emphasizes the role of consciousness in health and

disease. It understands the workings of the mind on an organic and
energetic basis just as it does the workings of the body, so that we can
provide proper nutrition and exercise for the mind as well. It teaches us
to be conscious how we live, what we eat, how we move and how we
think so that we can bring the healing power and insight of consciousness
into our existence. Whatever we give consciousness to, we help improve,
just as exposure to sunlight helps plants grow. This spiritual side of
Ayurveda is not a matter of religious dogma, occult hocus pocus or New
Age fantasy but part of the sophisticated spiritual sciences of Yoga and
Vedanta, with which Ayurveda is intimately connected.

Ayurvedic Treatment Methods

Ayurveda prescribes individual life-style health regimens designed

with regard to age, sex, climate, vocation and other factors. We cannot
expect to be healthy if we don’t have a good diet, if we lack proper
exercise or if we are filling our minds with disturbing influences. We
create our own health or disease by our daily actions. So too, without
changing these habitual activities, we cannot improve our health in a
lasting manner.

Ayurveda shows the health benefits of the Indian style of cooking,

like how the right spices can help us digest food. It teaches us the
dynamic effects of each food article for health and disease. While
modern medicine is only now beginning to accept the role of food and
disease through an examination of phytochemicals, Ayurveda has long
regarded diet as the basis of health. We are not only what we eat but also
how we eat and with whom we eat. Food preparation is as important as
food types.
 Food is the first form of God, the Anna Brahma of the Upanishads.
Without honoring this form of divinity, the other forms may not be able
to manifest in our lives. In this regard Ayurveda recommends vegetarian
foods to promote higher (sattvic) qualities of compassion and
understanding, under the idea that food not only nourishes the body but
also the mind and emotions.

Ayurveda contains many important herb and mineral preparations

that reflect the botanical wealth of the Indian subcontinent and thousands
of years of experience with plants. It has what is perhaps the most
complex and intricate herbal pharmaceutical industry in the world with
pills, powders, resins, extracts, confections, and oils not to mention
Ayurvedic cosmetics, toothpastes and soaps. Such Ayurvedic products
can improve our lives in many ways.

Ayurveda works along with Yoga to prescribe helpful asana,

pranayama, mantra and meditation methods for optimal health and
spiritual development. The asanas that are good for one person or good
for one season, just like the food articles, may not be good for another.
Pranayama has its energetic effects. By strengthening Prana or the life-
force we can improve perception and circulation and add more energy to
counter all diseases. Indeed Prana is the second form of God, the Prana
Brahma of the Upanishads.

Mantra and meditation practices have their energetics that should

be adjusted according to individual needs and capacities. Mantra helps us
energize the mind and clear the subconscious. Meditation helps us open
our higher awareness potentials so that we can deal with our lives with
more insight and detachment.

Ayurveda has an extensive system of detoxification called Pancha

Karma. Pancha Karma includes a system of oil massage, sweating
therapy, and various internal cleansing processes to remove the doshas
from the tissues, which can effectively eliminate disease-causing toxins
from the body so that they can no longer promote the disease process. A
number of Pancha Karma centers are now functioning in the West and
most Ayurvedic clinics in India offer this service.

Ayurveda has a special science of rejuvenation or rasayana. It

recognizes that the body contains a secret potential to renew itself in old
 age, just it does daily in the state of deep sleep. Ayurveda contains
specific exercise, diet, and meditation regimens to facilitate the
rejuvenation of body and mind. As the baby boomer generation gets
older, which has been very active physically and has pioneered the new
interest in alternative medicine, this rejuvenation approach is bound to
become much more sought after.

Perhaps most importantly, with its broad basis, Ayurveda provides

a good model for integrating all the worlds different medical systems in a
harmonious manner. It recognizes the importance of surgery, particularly
for larger tumors, but also its limitations, its weakening of our internal
energy. It recognizes the importance of drugs, particularly for acute pain
relief, but also their limitations, their tendency to dull the mind and
depress our energy. It accepts the healing power of food, herbs, massage
and other natural healing methods and shows their applicability and long
term healing power.

Yet while respecting all healing modalities Ayurveda also shows

us how we can heal ourselves. What we do for ourselves on a regular
basis, through the food, thoughts and lifestyle we choose creates who we
are and shapes where we are going in life. To think that an outside force,
person or treatment can suddenly heal what has taken perhaps years to
create, is a delusion. It is an abdication of responsibility for our choices
moment by moment. In Ayurveda, the practitioner can make
recommendations, but it is up to the client to implement them on a
regular basis.

The Future of Ayurveda

Ayurveda is one of the main world systems of natural healing and mind-
body medicine, with a popularity spreading to America, Europe and East
Asia, a trend that has been steadily developing over the last fifteen years.
However, in America Ayurveda is mainly being taken up by the general
population. Few Indians, particularly the many medical doctors, are
supporting it or even adequately informed about it.

The current Prime Minister of India, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, has

mentioned the importance of Ayurveda for proper medical care in India,
particularly for disease prevention. The same comments extend to the
West where acute disease is no longer the main issue but rather how to
improve our vitality and awareness for more creative and fulfilling lives.

As we move into a new millennium and a global age, Vedic

knowledge of all types, with its universal vision, is becoming
increasingly important. This includes Ayurveda, Yoga, Vedic Astrology,
Vedanta and Sanskrit. But as we are first of all physical creatures and as
our health needs are radically changing in the computer world, Ayurveda
may be the main vehicle through which Vedic knowledge expands again
today. Through the Vedic approaches of Ayurveda, Yoga and Jyotish
(Vedic Astrology) we have an elaborate system for self-healing, self-
understanding, and self-realization. This marvelous heritage should not
be forgotten, particularly in India.
________________

Part III.6
Vedic Astrology: Space Age Science or Outdated Superstition
_________________
The government of India recently (2001) decided to reintroduce the
subject of Vedic astrology into the schools and to teach it at a university
level in non-Sanskrit courses. Naturally, this movement has met with
tremendous opposition by a number of so-called modern or secular
thinkers. They see the introduction of astrology as returning India to the
dark ages and the harbinger of creating a Hindu religious state in the
country. They would equate astrology with all the social evils and
superstitions that the West associates with India.

However, astrology remains popular worldwide and is not limited

to religiously conservative people (most orthodox Christians and
Muslims have always been against it). In the West, it is common among
the New Age and futuristic groups, though most scientists are opposed to
it. In England, however, there is also a move to teach astrology in the
schools and do scientific research on it.
 The question arises: What is Vedic astrology and how important is it
to understand India and its venerable traditions? The answer is simple:
Vedic astrology is an integral part of Indian culture, as commonly used
today as thousand years ago in the country. In fact, the computer
revolution has made Vedic astrology, which requires detailed
calculations, more accessible. Schools of Vedic astrology can be found in
the major cities of India, offering in depth two year courses on the
subject. Regular new books on Vedic astrology are coming out every
year through the main publishing houses in the country and these
continue to sell well. There is no region of India where astrology in one
form or another is not popular or not part of older traditions.

Astrology is an integral part of the Hindu tradition, which most

Hindus still use on a regular basis. Buddhists and Jains also have their
traditions of Vedic astrology, which is the basis of Tibetan astrology and
the Tibetan calendar. A number of scientists in India follow Vedic
astrology and find it to be scientific. This includes physicists, medical
doctors and engineers, several of whom are well known writers and
teachers of Vedic astrology. Of course, all Indian politicians use Vedic
astrology, so deep seated is its usage, even the ones that publicly deny it,
including Pandit Nehru.

We should note that traditional Vedic astrology includes

astronomy (its mathematical side), meteorology, and astrology per se (its
predictive and interpretative side). It reflects a yogic or integrative
approach to the universe that studies how the individual and the cosmos
are related, and how biological forces and celestial phenomena mirror
each other. It fits in well with the other yogic sciences and spiritual
pursuits that have long characterized Indic civilization.

Great yogis and sages of India up to modern times have followed

Vedic astrology or written about it. These include Sri Aurobindo,
Paramahansa Yogananda and his guru Sri Yukteswar (who was an
astrologer), and Ganapati Muni (chief disciple of Ramana Maharshi).
Astrological works have been ascribed to great Hindu sages like
Vasishta, Parashara, Bhishma, Kalidasa and Madhvacharaya. Great
astrological thinkers like Varaha Mihira have been placed among the
great sages and poets of India. Indian philosophy, literature and religion
commonly use astrology and refer to it.
The Value of Vedic Astrology

What is the value of Vedic astrology that has kept it alive for so
many centuries? First of all, Vedic astrology is the basis of the Hindu
calendar that is still followed throughout the country and used for
determining national holidays like Ram Navami, Krishna Janmashtami,
Shivarati, Navaratri and Diwali. From it arises the designation of the
Hindu months as Chaitra, Vaishakha and so on. To understand this
calendar requires a knowledge of Vedic astrology. Such dates are not
arbitrary but reflect the celestial influences in operation on them.

Second, Vedic astrology is a limb or branch of the Vedas, a

Vedanga. It is said to represent the eye of the Veda. After all, everything
in life depends upon timing. In the Vedic view, timing is not simply a
matter of keeping in harmony with business and political trends but
requires attunement to the celestial influences that create time and
dispense the forces of karma. Vedic astrology is used for determining the
right timing of Vedic rituals and for the right timing of all events,
spiritual and mundane, including Vedic sacraments and Yoga practices. It
is also used for naming of children in India, using sounds that reflect the
moon’s constellation at the time of birth.

Third and most importantly, the Vedic astrological birth chart is a

crucial document for understanding our karma. It is like a road map for
our entire nature and life experience. Interpreted properly it provides
keys to our unfoldment on all levels from physical and mental health, to
education, career, relationship, family and the spiritual path. In this
regard the Vedic astrologer is like a scientist or a doctor, uncovering the
deep currents of our destiny.

In such interpretative usages, we must note that Vedic astrology is

not a kind of fatalism. Vedic science is first of all the science of karma,
which means action. It teaches us that we create our own destiny in life
by the nature of our actions. But there are two qualifiers with this
process. First, our action occurs over time. This means that who we are
today is a result of what we did yesterday, including our actions in
previous lives. In order to change what we are now takes time. Previous
wrong actions can still affect us today, though we can alter our future.
Second, our action occurs in the field of cosmic law, which is connected
to cosmic forces of time through the stars and planets. We must consider
the forces of the world and the laws of nature in which we act, whether
those of health and disease or ignorance and enlightenment. We can’t
change our destiny in such a way that requires altering the laws of the
universe or the functioning of the cosmic mind!

Vedic astrology shows us the basic karmic pattern that we have to

work with in life. But it also shows us how to modify and optimize our
karma both for the present and for the future. Towards this end it uses
various remedial measures like gemstones, mantras and yajnas (rituals).
These help us draw in the benefic energies of the cosmos and ward off
those that are destructive. A good understanding of ones birthchart and
how to rectify the planetary influences within it is a great aid to help us
get a handle on our karma in life. This means that Vedic astrology has a
practical relevance for improving our lives. It helps us optimize our life-
potential, not reduce it to some preconceived pattern.

Vedic Astrology and Science

Vedic astrology is a system of great complexity and intricacy that

few that criticize astrology are aware of. A well-trained Vedic astrologer
must examine the planets, signs, houses and nakshatras (constellations),
along with their permutations and combinations (aspects and yogas), as
well as means of various means of determining their strengths and
weakness (shadbala). A Vedic astrologer takes into account sixteen
divisional (amsha) charts, ashtakavarga (benefic planetary points),
several dasha (planetary period) systems, the annual chart or solar return
(varshaphal) and transits, if not additional factors. The Vedic chart
requires a very multilayered and comprehensive approach that
necessitates deep thinking and patient analysis. When examining group
or national events, rather than just individual charts, the considerations
must be yet more detailed, plotting national currents and sub-currents.

Just as a scientist must conduct many experiments before coming

to a conclusion about the laws of nature, or as a medical doctor must do
special testing before confirming a diagnosis, the Vedic astrologer must
examine a good deal of information in the birth chart, subcharts and
current planetary influences before arriving at a solid determination of
what is likely to transpire. This type of astrological research, like that of
science, takes time and is not a simple matter of quick predictions.

Such a vast system of astrological examination is very different

than the common stereotype of astrology as reflecting twelve sun signs
(which Vedic astrology does not follow at all). Reducing astrology to it
would be like reducing science to what is taught in a child’s first grade
class. Vedic astrology also remains based on the fixed stars unlike
western astrology that follows the equinoxes, and so the charge of no
longer accurately mirroring stellar positions, which scientists raise
against western astrology, cannot be lodged against the Vedic system.
Unfortunately, most people condemning Vedic astrology have never
really studied the system and are unaware of its complexity (seldom have
they read even one serious book on the subject!). They judge it by
stereotypes or by its popular appearances, reducing astrology to what is
found in the newspapers. We must look beyond popular distortions in the
field of astrology, just as in other fields.

Of course, bad astrologers are partly responsible for the disrepute

that astrology is often held in worldwide. Astrology, particularly when
not honored as a science or philosophy, can easily get confused with
crude fortune-telling. Yet just as traditional medicine is being vindicated
today, so too traditional astronomy (which includes astrology) may
regain its place in the world mind. In fact, traditional medicine and
astrology always went together, not only in India but also in Europe.
Both were linked to spirituality and mysticism and gained the attention of
great minds.

The Universe in Science and in Vedic Astrology

In the Vedic view the universe is the very breath or prana of the
Absolute (Brahman). The breath of God creates the force of time on a
cosmic level, just as our inhalations and exhalation create the experience
of time on an individual level. Time, therefore, is not a mere material
force but is a manifestation of Divine will and energy.

The universe of Vedic astrology and that of modern science are no

longer far apart and are getting closer every day. Both have a vision of a
vast universe of space and time that is part of a greater infinite and
eternal reality. Both recognize the existence of many universes and many
cycles of creation. Both recognize subtle forces connecting all objects in
the universe in various energy fields. Both regard each atom in its
movement as affecting the entire universe. Both are trying to unlock the
consciousness that such a magical universe must depend upon for its
mind-baffling workings.

Vedic astrology teaches that we live in a conscious universe

interconnected by mind, life and energy on gross and subtle, inner and
outer, individual and cosmic levels. The individual human being or
Purusha has his counterpart in the universal being or Purusha, of which
the outer world is his body. This universal Purusha is time (Kala
Purusha) which works through the Sun and the stars. The basis of
astrological thinking consists of drawing connections or inferences
(bandhus) between the individual (adhyatmic) and the cosmic
(adhidaivic). In this regard, astrology is part of the science of Yoga. It
reflects the same understanding of the unity of the individual and the
cosmos.

We should note that teaching Vedic astrology in schools in India is

not like the insistence of Christian fundamentalist groups in America that
evolution be banned and the Biblical account of creation taught instead.
Teaching Vedic astrology does not require that modern science is not
taught, nor does it necessarily go against the findings of modern science.
It adds an Indic perspective to science. It also opens the door for greater
scientific study to validate this ancient wisdom. There was a time when
Yoga was dismissed as superstition just as astrology is today. Some
medical doctors are taking up natural forms of healing that the previous
generation of doctors dismissed and backward or superstitious. Clearly,
astrology is not far behind in this new adaptation of ancient wisdom.

Astrology and Civilization

One can understand a civilization by the form of astrology it

employs, which reflects its cosmology and its understanding of time and
eternity. In the modern world, our time is told by clocks and our
calendars have no spiritual meaning. They are just a convenient system
of enumeration that has no real connection to the living universe. Nor
surprisingly, our time has little meaning for us, unless we are sick or
 dying. We usually count our time in dollars and are otherwise bored if we
are not either making or spending money. Our lives are not connected to
the greater universe or even the local field of nature. We are not part of
the rhythm of the cosmos or connected to great cosmic cycles. We have
often lost track even of the seasons, the phases of the moon or the rhythm
of the day.

Astrology teaches us that time is part of the sacred movement of

the cosmos, linked with eternity, and reflects a cosmic intelligence
present in the stars. The movement of time is a progressive manifestation
of the Divine, an evolution of consciousness on both individual and
world levels. Our current civilization has banished the sacred from time
and has no sense of the eternal. Even western religions are mainly
historically based, not extratemporarily aware, which is why they have
largely remained extroverted and aggressive, rather than introverted and
meditative like their eastern counterparts. They too have had little place
for astrology, which in the West has been mainly a legacy of classical
Greek and pagan culture.

Clearly, modern civilization can be enriched by ancient spiritual

sciences, just as these spiritual and occult disciplines can be made more
dynamic through a modern and global application and proved with
scientific research. During this age when we are looking to travel to the
stars, we should not forget that the stars, like the entire universe, dwell
within us. The universe is not apart from us or alien to us but is
fundamentally part of our own nature.
______________________

Part III.7
Solar Power and the Gayatri Mantra
___________________
Solar Energy Within and Without

The Vedas worship the Sun, Surya, as the source of light for the
entire world. But for the Vedic people, light is not a material force but a
power of life, love and intelligence. Nor is the Sun a distant entity
unrelated to us. It has a presence on Earth through the power of its rays,
which not only pervade our environment but also touch our very hearts.
By the Sun the Vedas don’t simply refer to the outer luminary, the central
star of our solar system. They mean the principle of light and
consciousness on a universal level, of which the Sun is our local
representative.

One of the main problems in the world today is the energy crisis,
which is endangering the very roots of life on the planet. Where can we
get the power to run all our new technology, industry, transportation and
media? Our energy needs are increasing daily with the growth in
population and the increasing affluence of the third world that is now
demanding the same conveniences that the western world has enjoyed for
decades. Where do we get this additional energy? And how can we create
it without destroying the planet by pollution that is the by product of
most of our energy sources? Solar power is the ultimate answer for the
energy crisis because it is a clean source of energy that is unlimited,
though the technology for it may take a few decades more to develop
fully. We must make solar power the priority in energy research. We
must return to the Sun to save the Earth.

The Vedas are said to reside in the rays of the Sun, which hold the
Vedic mantras. The Vedas are the manifestation of solar intelligence, the
light of consciousness on Earth. The sacred syllable OM itself is the
sound of the Sun and the essence of the Vedas. The Vedic mantras carry
light and power both for the body and the mind. India, therefore, should
be at the forefront of solar research in order to keep up with its ancient
Vedic heritage.

Our society is also complaining about low energy on a personal

level. Particularly, in the developed world low energy diseases like
chronic fatigue, depression and weak immune conditions are almost
epidemic. Many people find that they lack the vitality to do what they
want to do. Even if we try to meditate in order to contact a higher power,
we often end up falling to sleep in the process and get nowhere owing to
a lack of mental energy.

According to the Vedas, the inner Sun is Prana or vital energy,

which manifests through the breath. To increase our personal energy,
both for physical health and for mental acuity, the best practice is
 Pranayama or breath control. Breath carries the subtle essence of speech,
which is mantra. The inbreath carries the sound ‘so’ and the outbreath
carries the sound ‘ha’. The natural mantra “So’ham” in Sanskrit means,
“He am I,” referring to the Purusha or consciousness in the Sun, as the
Isha Upanishad (v. 6) so eloquently proclaims. Our very breath is based
upon unity with the solar creator and source of life and can be used to
connect with its power.

We all want to increase our intelligence, concentration, memory and

capacity for information. This is the key to strength and success in the
information age. The best way to do this is to harness the power of the
inner Sun, which is to connect with cosmic intelligence through mantra
and meditation. Each one of us possesses a portion of the light of
consciousness, a ray of the solar creator that endows us with
understanding. This faculty is called ‘dhi’ in Vedic thought refers to the
meditative aspect of the mind (dhyana manas) and ‘buddhi’ in later
Indian thought, referring to awakened intelligence.

The best mantra for awakening the higher mind is the Gayatri
mantra, which is a mantra to the solar light of consciousness to awaken
our meditative mind (dhi). It brings us the Divine solar power of
consciousness, love and prana—the supreme light of truth.

Vishvamitra and the Gayatri Mantra

The Gayatri mantra was the gift to the world of the great Rishi
Vishvamitra, seer of the third book of the Rigveda. Vishvamitra was one
of the greatest Vedic Rishis but also the most controversial. He began as
a great king and warrior who wanted to add spiritual power to his worldly
conquests. This brought him in contact and in conflict with Vasishtha,
the greatest and purest of the Rishis. Vishvamitra persisted through all
difficulties, including those created by his own ambition, until after a
long period of struggle through his will power and tapas he ultimately
achieved Self-realization. Vishvamitra’s path, therefore, was more of
human effort than Divine grace. His was the path of the warrior, of
discipline and struggle, defeat and victory. He shows the development of
an indomitable will that can overcome all obstacles and even challenge
the Gods.
 Vishvamitra by his tapas eventually created such an internal fire that
it began to threaten the Gods in heaven by its heat. For this the Gods sent
the celestial nymph (apsara) Menaka to seduce him and take him off his
path. The strategy succeeded, but not for long, and to fulfill another
purpose that perhaps the Gods had not planned. From his union with
Menaka, Vishvamitra begat a daughter, Shakuntala, who eventually
became the wife of King Dushyanta. From the union of Dushyanta and
Shakuntala was born King Bharata, from whom the name of India as
Bharat arose. The whole country of India, through its determinative
dynasty carries the blood and spirit of Vishvamitra, which is closely
connected to that of the warrior Goddess Durga.

Vishvamitra’s Gayatri mantra is the most important mantra of

the Hindus, probably still recited by half the people in India today. It is
the most sacred Vedic mantra, reciting at sunrise, noon and sunset. We
can literally translate it as:

We meditate upon the supreme effulgence of the Divine Solar Creator that he
may inspire our intelligence!

The Gayatri mantra encourages creative thinking, not as mere

human invention but as our portion of cosmic intelligence. It exhorts us
to attune ourselves to the cosmic mind and its laws of dharma. This chant
is as valuable and appropriate in the modern world as it was in ancient
times. We can use it whenever we wish to gain new insight and
inspiration or to increase memory and concentration, even for mundane
tasks.

Vishvamitra in the Rigveda states that his prayer or Brahma protects

the Bharata people:

(visvamitrasya raksati brahmedam bharatam janam, Rig Veda III.53.12).

His prayer of course is the Gayatri mantra. As long as that mantra is

recited in India, its ancient spiritual heritage will be preserved. India
should not forget the Gayatri mantra, Vishvamitra or its connection to the
Sun. That is the key to its destiny as a nation. Humanity also must
remember the Divine Self in the Sun, the Prana that is the universal
energy, and our role in the cosmos to bring the Divine light of knowledge
 into the darkness of physical matter. This is not an issue of mere science
and technology. It requires an inner science of Yoga and the
enlightenment of the mind.

_______________________

Part III.8
Outline of a New Vedic School
_____________________________
The outlines of a new Vedic school are not hard to determine
because the older Vedic school simply needs to be redesigned in a
modern context. Naturally, each of these subjects is a field in itself. Here
I will only aim at showing the basic structure. It includes the main topics
covered in the Six Vedangas, Four Upavedas and the Six systems of
Vedic philosophy and their offshoots

Vedic Philosophy

Shad Darshanas (Six Schools of Vedic Philosophy) and Modern Applications

1. 1. Nyaya – logic
2. 2. Vaisheshika – categorization
3. 3. Samkhya – cosmic principles
4. 4. Yoga – methods of reintegration
5. 5. Mimamsa – ritual
6. 6. Vedanta – theology and ontology
Modern Vedanta
1. 1. Neo-Advaita Vedanta
2. 2. Neo-Yoga Vedanta
3. 3. Neo-Bhakti Vedanta
Vedic Spiritual Practices (Yoga)

Yoga, traditional and modern

1. 1. Jnana Yoga – Yoga of Knowledge
2. 2. Bhakti Yoga – Yoga of Devotion
3. 3. Karma Yoga – Yoga of Service
4. 4. Raja Yoga – The eightfold Yoga of Patanjali
5. 5. Hatha Yoga – Yoga of the Physical Body
 6. 6. Tantric Yoga – Sciences of Mantra, Yantra and Tantra

Vedic Science of Ritual

Yajna
Daily, Monthly, Seasonal and Yearly Rituals and their effect on the
individual, society and nature

Puja
Devata Puja and its usages for Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha

Samskaras
The usage of sacraments on personal and collective levels

Vedic Medicine, Ayurveda

Ayurvedic Life-Style Recommendations
Clinical Ayurveda
Ayurvedic Psychology

Vedic Physics (Jyotish – Adhidaiva Vidya)

Vedic Cosmology, the fourteen worlds (Loka Vidya)
Astronomy (physical influences)
Astrology (spiritual influences), Karma Vidya and Kala Vidya
Natal Chart
Mundane Astrology
Muhurta
Meteorology

Vedic Earth Sciences (Adhibhuta Vidya)

Hindu Ecology
Vedic Geology
Vedic Botany
Vastu (Sthapatya Veda)
Vedic Social Science (Varnashrama Dharma)
Social Stratification: Vedic view of family, tribe and community (Varna, Jati,
Samaj)
Stages of Life (Ashrama)
Vedic Women’s Studies, the Goddess and the Role of Shakti

Vedic History
Itihasa-Purana – Traditional Accounts of History
Modern Vedic School of History
History of India, History of Native Cultures, World History
History of Science from Vedic perspective

Vedic Arts
Representational Art and Iconography (Murti Vidya)
Music and Dance (Gandharva Veda)
Poetry, Literature and Drama

Vedic Language Science

Linguistic Theory
Sanskrit
Mantra

Towards a Greater Indic or Bharatiya School

An Indic (Bharatiya) School of Thought would predominantly

follow a Vedic model but also have a place for non-Vedic Schools. It
would include the five non-Vedic philosophies (four classical Buddhist
school and Jainism), Buddhist and Jain Yoga schools, and Buddhist and
Jain accounts of history (Jatakas). It would include the non-Vedic
applications of Vedic sciences like the traditional Buddhist and Jain
applications of Ayurvedic medicine and Vedic astrology as well as
Buddhist and Jain forms of art and temple construction. Buddhist and
Jain Sanskrit works and literature would be afforded a great importance.
 Broader dharmic approaches to society, ecology and science should
also be developed, using Indic systems in harmony with other spiritual,
scientific and naturalistic approaches from throughout the world. Clearly,
much work is to be done but there is an excellent structure from the past
to build upon—a magnificent temple whose interior is in tact though
whose outer walls need strengthening.
May such new Vedic and Dharmic schools arise all over the world!
_______________________