Yvette Rosser - Kripal on the couch in Calcutta - chapter 15

Go to Chapter 14

Pdf of the book is available for free download here.

This chapter examines an essay written by Prof. Somnath Bhattacharyya called ‘Kali’s Child: Psychological And Hermeneutical Problems’, Bhattacharyya is emeritus professor and former head of the Psychology Department at Calcutta University. He has also been a practising psychoanalyst in Calcutta for over 30 years. He is uniquely qualified to present a substantial critical analysis of Jeffrey Kripal’s book, Kali’s Child, on at least four grounds: He is (i) personally familiar with the primary sources cited in the text, (ii) a long time student of Indian religion and philosophy, (iii) a professional psychotherapist, and (iv) fluent in Bengali.

While examining Kali’s Child from this vantage, Bhattacharyya was “struck by the numerous irregular and insinuating translations, factual misrepresentations and speculative innuendo”. After reading Vishnu on Freud’s Desk and Kali’s Child, he was asked to write a rejoinder that was published in the subsequent issue of the Harvard Divinity School Bulletin.

In the 12,000-word article that appeared on Sulekha, Bhattacharyya hones in on succinct examples of what he calls Kripal’s ‘catachrestic’ use of words and phrases selectively chosen to substantiate his overriding obsession with Ramakrishna’s hypothetical homosexuality. His detailed critique closely examines and contests several of Kripal’s translations. “The curious twists of translation, the typos, the ‘honest mistakes’ and unconscious errors that litter the text of Kali’s Child would literally force Freud to sit up in his grave and take notice”.

Bhattacharyya cites two examples that ‘clearly don’t require a gloss’. First, in one of Ramakrishna’s parables, a housewife tries to dissuade her husband from taking to the life of an itinerant begging monk saying: “Why should you wander about? If you don’t have to knock at ten doors for your stomach’s sake, go”, Kripal translates the passage as: “Why sleep in seven beds when you can sleep in one”?

Another example is from a line in ‘A song to the Divine Mother’: “Mother hold me to your bosom, covering me with the aanchal of your love”. Here is Kripal’s translation: “Hold me to your breasts. With affectionate love, hide me under your skirt, O Ma”! Bhattacharyya adds parenthetically: “The Western reader may note that aanchal refers to the end of the Indian sari covering the head, shoulders, and upper trunk”. He points out that Kripal’s hermeneutical style perpetuates, “the very patterns of textual misrepresentation and misinterpretation that he wishes to refute”.

Bhattacharyya interrogates the methodologies and motivations guiding Kripal’s radical reinterpretations of the life of Ramakrishna, providing examples of violations of scholarly discretion that have resulted in simplistic, culturally disconnected definitions and overly interpretive, free-association translations—fiction, if you will, but not history or ethnography. His article brings to the fore two essential components of the debate:

First, he identifies several psychoanalytical pathologies at work within the methods Kripal uses to defend himself. For instance, he notes that Kripal continues to brand Ramakrishna a pedophile even as he denies ever having consciously done so.

Kripal explicitly writes about Ramakrishna’s ‘obvious pedophilia’ and then, when things get hot [he] becomes amnesic. How does one explain that? Clearly deeper and more complex unconscious psychological forces are at work here, and any attempt to identify them in this short paper would be too inadequate to be regarded as meaningful.

Second, he demonstrates how Kripal’s understanding of a mystic such as Ramakrishna is not only a mishmash of psychoanalytic apples and oranges, but how Ramakrishna’s messages and symbols are exponentially more evolved—light years beyond Kripal’s cluttered Freudian slips and lower chakra titillations. The two realms hardly intersect. The directions of the gazes are fundamentally and irrevocably opposed. This renders Kripal’s obsessive and exclusive focus on Ramakrishna from the lower chakras irrelevant. It would be amusing if it hadn’t sadly caused so much sorrow and defamation.

Queer Hermeneutics a.k.a. Queermeneutics?

Like many others, Bhattacharyya asks, “Why this bizarre interpretation?” Certainly, it is naïve to solely blame “the author’s homosexual inclinations or gay agenda”. However, when “one puts Kripal’s obsession for ‘sexual abuse’ themes and deviant sexuality . . . alongside the recent spate of pedophilic scandals involving the clergy in the USA [One worries] what Kripal’s experiences at the Seminary were actually like.” In ‘Secret Talk: Sexual Identity and Politics of Scholarship”, Kripal frankly admits: “that his work proceeded from his personal experiences at a Benedictine Seminary and from his personal desire to heterosexually engage a female divinity”. Bhattacharyya notes that even the Projection Defense Mechanism: “with all its complexities, cannot adequately explain . . . the present controversy”.

It is disingenuous on the part of Kripal to issue public disclaimers on his gay or non-gay status in order to divert attention from the basic problems of his approach. This turns the issue of responsibility on its head by accusing the critics of homophobia—a classic case of aufgestellte

Mausdrek—a mouse-turd standing up on end. Consequently, there is a buildup of ‘sinister negative transferences’ on the ‘clean slate that is Jeffery Kripal’. Bhattacharyya’s trained eye saw signs of the reaction formation defense mechanism wherein the opposite impulse or behavior is taken up to hide true feelings by behaving in an exact opposite way.

Discussing the manner in which Kripal contradicts himself and appears to be in denial, Bhattacharyya writes:

The real key to this issue lies in what psychoanalysts call ‘selfanalysis’—a discipline that one has to rigorously undergo before one can start psychoanalyzing others. This practice was initiated by Freud himself and remains a desideratum for all analysts to this day.

Erik Erickson, in many ways the father of psychohistory, himself warns about the dangers of projections to which the psycho-historian is always prone. He pointed out that any psycho-historian ‘projects on the men and the times he studies some unlived portions and often

the unrealized selves of his own life.’ [Emphasis added]

Bhattacharyya suggests that the way out of this dilemma is through honest self-analysis. Bhattacharyya quotes from Roland’s critique of Kali’s Child:

Kripal [has a] penchant for facile speculative decoding and turning these into adamant conviction. He thus persists in insisting that Ramakrishna 1. ‘was very likely sexually abused by any number of actors who had power over him’, that his trance states were related to such abuse, that the direction of  2. the ‘saint’s desire [was] always directed towards males (deities or male disciples)’, [and] 3. ‘when a text uses sexual language it often, if not always, reflects real physiological and psychological analogues’ and that the materials of his thesis are 4. ‘by their very nature offensive.

Bhattacharyya examines the psychoanalytic considerations of several issues found in Kripal’s analysis, including sexual abuse, feminine identity, homoeroticism and misogyny. Under the subtitle Sexual Abuse, he writes:

Kripal insists that village people must have abused Ramakrishna presumably because he had states of absorption right from his childhood. But Ramakrishna’s own descriptions of his childhood suggest quite the contrary, e.g. ‘During my younger days the men and women of Kamarpukur were equally fond of me. No one distrusted me. Everybody took me in as one of the family.’

Under the subtitle, Feminine Identity? several loopholes in Kripal are pointed out:

It is easy to talk loosely with Masson about Ramakrishna’s transvestite activities, but dressing up in a feminine dress as a part of a legitimate and culturally accepted sadhana for a short period

of time does not amount to transvestism. Ramakrishna after all also dressed like a Shakta and a Vaishnava during his Shakti and Vaishnava sadhana days and like a Muslim during his Islam

sadhana—and these were male attires—only to try and make his identification with these cults complete. Moreover, contrary to Kripal’s thesis, most transvestites are heterosexual. [Emphasis

added]

He further suggests that Kripal’s claims about Ramakrishna’s ‘secondary trans-sexuality’ are also all too facile. He explains:

The American Psychiatric Association (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV) defines trans-sexuality as strong and persistent crossgender identification, and not merely a desire for any perceived cultural advantages of being the other sex. It is a disorder always involving distress to the person, with a feeling of estrangement from the body and a felt need to alter the appearance of the body. If Ramakrishna sometimes talked about his femininity he was also clear about what he meant by it—‘Formerly I too used to see many visions, but now in my ecstatic state I don’t see so many. I am gradually getting over my feminine nature; I feel nowadays more like a man. Therefore I control my emotions; I don’t manifest it outwardly so much’. (For more on this, please read page 156 and 157, chapter 15)

To carry through his thesis of Ramakrishna’s feminine identification, Kripal resorts to erroneous documentation. Thus a whole section is devoted to bhagavatir tanu or goddess body that Ramakrishna is supposed to have possessed. The actual Kathamrita term however is bhaagavati tanu, which simply means divine body, and has no engendered connotation. (The term is actually a Sanskrit term, and grammatical and physiological genders don’t always go together in Sanskrit. E.g., the term daara, meaning wife, is masculine) Bhagavatir and Bhaagavati are two different words, and a person who reads the one for the other only reveals his lack of knowledge for that language. To assign a physical or even psychological sex to this category [Bhaagavati tanu which is identified as causal body by Ramakrishna] then is a reductive strategy, which robs the analyst of the possibility of deeper insight into human nature and its possibilities. Similarly, Ramakrishna’s wearing silken clothes (garader kapar) during puja is taken to mean feminine dress simply because Kripal doesn’t know that male priests in Bengal routinely wear silken clothes.

Bhattacharyya’s footnote is telling of Kripal’s cultural biases:

“And why should [Kripal] not know? Don’t the Roman Catholic clergy use silken apparel during mass”? He refutes Kripal’s conclusions that tenderness between father and son is homoerotic, citing Bengali and Indian cultural nuances. He also shows numerous other records of Ramakrishna’s interactions with his women disciples of all ages and classes. These records were all studiously ignored by Kripal. (For more on this, please read page 157 and 158, chapter 15)

From the perspective of an elder scholar, he [Prof. Bhattacharyya] cautions Kripal that

he “would also do well to remember that the female is not a castrated male.”[Emphasis added]. As a trained professional, he finds Kripal’s amateurish speculations laughable: “Equally comical are [Kripal’s] attempts to weave in anal themes”. He observes: “Unfortunately, [Kripal] claims to be a historian of religion . . . not a novelist. If he got angry responses he surely has invited them”.

Bhattacharyya analyzes the manner in which Kripal selected the passages from the Kathamrita and concluded that Kripal’s critical selectivity “amply illustrates the basic problem in his handling of texts. Virtually any selected portion of his book is not just a matter of a few

dozen, easily correctable translation errors neither is it simply a question of textual relativism based on multivalent use of language.” [Emphasis added]

Some Empirical Issues

Bhattacharyya offers many arguments that refute Kripal’s thesis. The first study area that he investigates is the psychological impact of meditation and mystical experiences:

In Kripal’s own backyard, sociologist Andrew Greely of University of Chicago’s National Opinions Research Council (NORC) tested people who had profoundly mystical experiences, such as being bathed in white light. When these persons were subjected to standard tests measuring psychological well-being, the mystics scored at the top. University of Chicago psychologist Norman Bradburn, who developed the test, said that no other factor had ever been found to correlate so highly with psychological balance, as did mystical experience. (For more on this, please read page 159, chapter 15)

Bhattacharyya adds:

Ramakrishna’s samadhi states were accompanied by very profound inward withdrawal of consciousness, and remarkable physiological changes, consistent with the highest stages of meditative absorption as documented in Hindu Tantra and Yoga as well as Buddhist literature. Thus the famous physician Mahendarlal Sarkar himself examined and found Ramakrishna without heartbeat and corneal reflexes during samadhi. These physiological changes (clinically

taken as signs of death) . . . were not metaphorical changes [and] are not known to occur in a dissociative trance. Medard Boss—an influential Swiss existential psychotherapist had this to say

about the holy men he met on his lecture-visit to India:

[T]here were the exalted figures of the sages and holy men themselves, each one of them a living example of the possibility of human growth and maturity and of the attainment of an imperturbable inner peace, a joyous freedom from guilt, and a purified, selfless goodness and calmness.... No matter how carefully I observe the waking lives of the holy men, no matter how ready they were to tell me about their dreams, I could not detect in the best of them a trace of a selfish action or any kind of a repressed or consciously concealed shadow life. (Boss 187–88)

Bhattacharyya discusses the dharmic perspectives of sex. He writes: “It is worth noting that although we commonly speak of a sex drive, sex does not fit the usual conception of drive, as a felt need that gets stronger and stronger, until it is satisfied”. He explains, referring to Masters and Johnson: “Indeed, sexual abstinence probably decreases sexual motivation over the long run. There is no evidence, despite myths to the contrary, [that] abstinence from sexual activity is detrimental to a person’s health”.

Hyper-Textual Sexualization

Bhattacharyya carefully investigates several instances where Kripal has homo-eroticized the heterosexual, hyper-sexualized the child, and ‘masculated’ the genderless. Through this methodology, she becomes he, and all signs point to penis envy or some equally loaded jargon.

Indeed, the female is not a castrated male.

Kripal often feels that a passage is ‘hyper-sexualized’ and demands a sexual reading. ‘Hypersexualization’ is not a term that is found in the standard corpus of psychoanalytic literature [unlike] ‘sexualization’, which is defined as “endowing an object or function with a sexual significance that it did not previously have . . . in order to ward-off anxieties associated with prohibited impulses”. Bhattacharyya examines several of Kripal’s writings and also looks at the articles written by Kripal’s critics, such as Tyagananda. As a result, he writes lucidly across numerous theoretical subheadings. (For more on this, please read page 161 and 162, chapter 15)

Kripal and Bhattacharyya are culturally miles apart regarding the manner in which each of them viewed Ramakrishna’s use of the terms yoni and lingam. Bhattacharyya observed that Kripal is troubled by the use of yoni and lingam and, perhaps, because of shame or shock, he sexualizes, sensationalizes, eroticizes. In contrast, Bhattacharyya sees worshipping a lingam or yoni as a cosmic symbol. Ramakrishna said they are symbols of fatherhood and motherhood so that one may not be born into the world again. Bhattacharyya advises: “If Kripal is bothered about the moral implications of such worship then he clearly needs to associate with the traditions that place a high moral value on this ritual”. Kripal takes the easy road—first by discovering a new twist on the exotic Other, then asserting absolute authority to theoretically describe that entity. Bhattacharyya is a bit dismayed:

Incidentally, when citing texts and arguments in support of his own claims, Kripal insists that things are ‘crystal clear’, while the other texts are all ambiguous (‘simultaneously concealing and revealing’). Well! This is hermeneutics of convenience for sure!

Catachresis and the Hermeneutics of Convenience

Kripal’s textual mishandling is particularly grave because his primary claim is that he is a historian of religions. Professionally, Bhattacharyya cautioned: “Large scale distortions of source material in an ill attempted effort at establishing a thesis, is certainly not academically acceptable”. He compared this tactic to what is known in scientific research as ‘the sharp-shooter’s fallacy’—analogous to the way a gunslinger might empty his six-shooter into the side of a barn and then draw the bull’s eye around the bullet holes. He warned: “Citing fringe works and material of equally dubious value doesn’t help in salvaging the case”.

Throughout this debate, Kripal has tried to place his critics in the Hindu obscurantist camp, and he is keen on playing identity politics as well. Bhattacharyya reminds him:

[C]ritics of his methodology include noted academics like Huston Smith, Alan Roland and Gerald Larson among others; and they are neither Hindus nor Indians.

Since Kripal states that his ‘hermeneutical’ strategy is inspired by Hans-Georg Gadamer’s work Truth and Method, Bhattacharyya quotes from the noted Indologist Fritz Staal whose lengthy analysis of Gadamer’s internally contradictory methodology, explained that, ultimately:

Either one disagrees with what Gadamer says, in which case one must agree with what he means; or one agrees with what he says by disagreeing with its meaning. One must in all cases agree and

disagree, and Gadamer’s originality lies in this combination. He has adopted from the positivist-empiricist tradition its most monumental error—the caricature of the scientific method—and

failed to heed its most valuable contribution—the critique of meaninglessness. (For more on this and Bhattacharyya’s critique of Kripal’s methodology of advanced historio-critical studies, please read page 163 and 164, chapter 15)

Bhattacharyya points out that Kripal also violates rules of Bengali grammar, by confusing the gender structure of character, and linguistic genders with sexual function. Agreeing with Tyagananda, Bhattacharyya writes:

The vocabulary of Kripal’s desire is also very problematic [because] Kripal wishes to have his readers believe that anxious longing (vyakulata), charismatic attraction (tana), and associative reminder (uddipana) among other terms, and also of course Ramakrishna’s love for his male disciples, all carry sexual meanings, the contextual structure not withstanding. Now, besides the textual problems documented by Tyagananda, some very real psychological issues are also at stake here . . . Freud’s conception of love as ‘aim-inhibited sex’ stands repudiated at present on empirical grounds. Love and sex are not synonymous. There can be love without sex and vice versa . . . Thus, when Kripal summarily characterizes all these different shades of love as erotic he commits what may be termed a ‘category error’. (For more on this and Kripal’s tendency to sexualize the sacred, please read page 165 and 166, chapter 15)

Bhattacharyya sees Kripal’s manuscript as irreparably tainted by predetermined motivations: “His invariable need to distort texts is proof enough against his agenda”.

‘State of the Child’ and the ‘Psychology of Being’

While defending his controversial thesis, Kripal has shown a certain proprietorship—claiming that: “psychoanalytic paradigms are his cultural inheritance”. Sudhir Kakar has said that, “Psychoanalysis occupies an ill-defined zone between the arts and the objective sciences.”

Bhattacharyya further explains, “Kripal claims his work to be in line with the writings of Sudhir Kakkar [whose own work on Ramakrishna] though avowedly Freudian and reductionist in nature, is much more sophisticated. Kakkar is careful to suggest that the feminine identification of mystics is best interpreted as circumvention of drives and instincts, or in other words as an ‘experience of being’.” (For more on this, please read page 166 and 167, chapter 15)

Bhattacharyya explains:

Ramakrishna’s characterization of this ‘state of the child’ remarkably anticipates the findings of the classic studies on ‘peak experiences’ (which included mystic experiences) of ‘self actualizing’ people by Abraham Maslow, nearly four decades ago. Maslow noted selfactualizing

subjects, picked because they were very mature, were at the same time, also childish. [He] called it ‘healthy childishness’, a ‘second naiveté’. He considered a god-like gaiety (humor, fun, foolishness, silliness, play, laughter) to be one of the highest . . . values of the state of Being . . . i.e. ‘being one’s real Self’.

Bhattacharyya notes that it is specifically Ramakrishna’s ‘state of the child’ (matribhava, antanabhava), which is the very psychological state that Kripal studiously avoids or distorts into amorphous or polymorphous sexuality. Bhattacharyya finds this especially ironical because this book bears the title Kali’s Child. He laments:

If only Kripal had not ignored this central theme of Ramakrishna’s personality—‘the state of the child’—he could have made much better sense of Ramakrishna’s samadhi, his uninhibited dealings with his devotees, his love and concern for his disciples and their reciprocation of the same . . .

The practices of Tantras are informed by deep psychological insights into the workings of the human nature. Bhattacharyya notes:

If these basic psychological principles underlying the tantric practices are not ignored it becomes much easier to make sense of Ramakrishna’s own eminently successful tantric practices and experiences, his criticism of some of the tantric sects and their practices, as well as his open-hearted espousal of many tantric techniques . . . without having to pigeon-hole the tantras into the ‘sexy, seedy and strange’, and paint a conflicted, ambivalent Ramakrishna through extended skewed and speculative glosses.

To Bhattacharyya, Kripal’s iconography of Kali bears a striking resemblance to the New Age and feminist appropriations of Hindu goddesses in the USA. This is in stark contrast to Ramakrishna’s own perceptions of Kali. Bhattacharyya sees Kripal as an ingénue, who catches a phrase or two, then based on erroneous knowledge of India and Hinduism creates a static essentialized icon of goddess worship. Bhattacharyya concludes, “This says more about the fertile and wounded imagination of its Western authors than it does about deity veneration

in India.”

Read entire chapter 15 from page 152 to 168

Pdf of the book is available for free download here.

Go to Chapter 16

RMF Summary: Week of February 27 - March 4, 2012

February 29

NG (March 2012): The Journey of the Apostles Vishal comments: I am forwarding this note of protest that I sent to the National Geographic magazine today immediately upon seeing their issue.  The article starts with a picture of Christian tribals in Odisha with an inflammatory caption. Thereafter too, there is another picture of an Indian Christian who 'suffered for Christ', and usual nonsense on Christianity saving low caste people in India... February 29 Develop a strategy to answer back Arun asks: The New York Times has published several articles based on a new book, The Science of Yoga: The Risks and the Rewards," by William J Broad. The latest is here:...  ... "Yoga teachers and how-to books seldom mention that the discipline began as a sex cult — an omission that leaves many practitioners open to libidinal surprise. " -- I don't want to promote Broad's book, or help him sell more by stirring up a controversy. However, some critical analysis will be needed, I think. I'm going to assume that his book will contain all kinds of errors and misinterpretations (e.g., sutras don't name any specific asanas, so those asanas didn't exist, e.g., yoga was stripped of its sexual baggage and republished by Indian nationalists, and so on). -- So what is the way to make sure (assuming there are such mistakes) that such a book does not become general wisdom?.." Ram responds: "Rajiv has given an excellent clue about handling western style descriptions of dharmic/Indian events and activities which give only a part of the meaning of these untranslatable words. I have been using this methods to good effect recently, by pointing out that in our tradition some words have several meanings at different levels, and choosing just one meaning is wrong. For example, my friend who is of Indian descent, has been saying that the Shiva lingam in the Hindu mandirs is a phallus, and that Hindus are worshipping.... I found this to be a gross misrepresentation, and told him that ... they went up to the murtis to do arti, but were seeing it as a symbol of Shiva, or a symbol of the manifest universe etc. He was not convinced until I showed him the Wikipedia entry (below) which showed 16 meanings for the word lingam, only one of which was phallus ....He now understands that Hindus can see the lingam in many ways, ... My friend, who claims to be a Hindu himself, has now stopped with his favourite story..... Nagaraja recounts a story of Adi Sankara and Mandana Misra: "...Adi Shankara stands in front of Mandana Misra's house and says Bhikshan dehi. But, Mandana Mishra wants to taunt Adi Shankara and the conversation goes like this. MM - Kuthaha Mundi (From Where? Shaven (Implying Where are you coming from oh shaven one? - shaven used in a derogatory sense)) AS - Agalath Mundi (Shaven from Chin and above, twists the question to mean From where onwards are you shaven and answers) MM - Kim Sura Peethaha (What? you want to drink liquor?) AS - Sura Shwethaha (Liquor is white, twists the question Kim Sura Peethaha to mean What? is liquor yellow?, based on a different meaning of the word peethaha) The conversation continues like this and Mandana Mishra cannot continue his satire and comes to the point. Once they sit for a proper argument Adi Shankara then provides straight arguments to the point based on his knowledge of Tatva. What Rajiv ji is set out to do is similar to a part of what Adi Shankaracharya has done (objective, calm arguments to establish certain truths) and Adi Shankaracharya's heroics offer many lessons to do this." bluecupid shares a link: "A good [rebuttal] to Broad's sweeping generalization can be found here; Raj says: I guess this confirms that yoga has entered stage 4 of the u-turn. Rajiv's comment: Yoga like most other dharmic items has been simultaneously in stages 2, 3 and 4 for many decades. Each stage has its own champions, and they perform like good cops versus bad cops in mutual tension. This is how enzymes operate in mutual tension to end up digesting the food. Most folks cannot see this big picture and hence run around glorifying the good cops. BD defines specific boundaries which anyone wanting to be a good cop must be asked to cross explicitly and publicly. It forces a hard test, so the person cannot vacillate or pretend there is no difference. It clarifies why he cannot have it both ways. Naturally, this is very discomforting to those who have become settled in sameness. I have many angry critics attacking me for disrupting their sameness comfort zone. Karthik responds to Arun: "I had emailed Rajiv about this book a few weeks ago, on the evening I heard William Broad being interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR's "Fresh Air". As far as developing a strategy goes: could we write en masse to NPR (specifically, Terry Gross)? We would need to outline what, specifically, we found objectionable about the views aired in that interview and why, in the interest of fairness, "Fresh Air" ought to feature a balancing viewpoint. The transcript of the Broad interview is available here:.." February 29 Chance for philosophers of dharma ethics to interact with western sc A scholar named Chris[] is doing his philosophy dissertation on comparative ethics. He is a sophisticated philosopher but weak in dharma. He read BD... March 1 Why Digestion is different than Assimilation Rajiv Malhotra writes a blog to respond to critics who say that: everyone has been always borrowing from other cultures, so "whats the problem". We carry this with very little editing, but register [it's free] and read the original post in the e-group to fully understand the context and complete message. As always, the highlighting, emphasis, etc have been added in this (HHG) blog. "There are several other examples of civilizations becoming digested by some other civilization. Many symbols, rituals and ideas came to Christianity from the so-called pagans (pre-Christian Europeans), but these pagan faiths were demonized and destroyed in the process. Native Americans gave numerous riches to the European colonizers - including potatoes, tomatoes, material wealth, fertile lands - but these original discoverers and citizens of the Americas lost their way of life, and have ended up in museums as exotic artifacts, or as drunken people living on isolated reservations. Egyptian civilization was digested into Greece, and before that some of the African civilizations had been digested into Egypt. In each case, the side getting digested was compromised, marginalized and eventually ceased to be a living, thriving civilization. Today, before our very eyes, Tibetan civilization is being digested into China....  I want to differentiate between this kind of digestion and the way Greek civilization has been assimilated into "Western" classics without losing track of the sources. While many Indian thinkers, texts and ideas got digested into so-called "European Enlightenment", and the Indian sources replaced with Western ones, the same is not true of Greek civilization. It is fashionable in intellectual circles and in the academy to study and cite Plato, Socrates, Aristotle and numerous other great classical thinkers of Greece, who are now regarded as a part and parcel of the "West". But in classical times, the Greeks did not see themselves as a part of Northern European culture and referred to the northerners as the Occidental "other", while Europeans referred to the Greeks as part of the "Orient". Here lies the difference between Indian and Greek civilizations relationship with the West: When the modern West was formulated, Greece was included as a part of it. Hence, there has been no need to replace Greek sources with other substitutes. But when India was mined for source materials, it remained in Western eyes the non-Western other. India was too different, too far and too massive to be included within the West. Hence, Indian sources of interest were mapped on to Western substitutes. This is why the academy today does not teach Kapil, Bharat, Kautilya, Bharthrhari, Panini, Patanjali, Nagarjuna, Shankara, Abhinavagupta, and dozens of other greats on par with Greek thinkers. The Greeks are part of the West's imagined selfhood while the Indians are not. Therefore, I use the term "assimilation" to describe the experience of Greece, contrasted with digestion. The book explains this distinction further.  I also want to explain that Indian civilization spread across much of Asia, but in a manner that is different than imperialism, colonialism or conquest. While many Asian nations sent their brightest students to places like Nalanda university in India to bring back knowledge, this was never imposed from the Indian side. At a time when India had the material resources and power to do so, it never tried to appoint governors or tax collectors in another country, or replace their names, language and identity with its own. In other words, there was no digestion of others that would cause them harm.  I return to the issue commonly raised that every culture has borrowed from others, and hence the same kind of digestion is being done by everyone. Why am I making a case out of the digestion of Indian civilization into the West, some people ask? My response is that there is a difference between digestion and assimilation. Most examples people cite are about assimilation, not digestion, because the source tradition does not get destroyed during the process. When there is an asymmetry of power between the parties involved in the exchange, the implications of exchange depend on this power equation. For instance: Native Americans also borrowed many things from the white settlers - horses, liquor, guns, for instance. But the natives lacked the power to destroy the white culture. The borrowings in the reverse direction had an entirely different implication. One can cite examples of Indians learning from Westerners and assimilating these ideas as part of Indian ways. However, India did not take over the global language, institutional apparatus, discourse and grand narrative of history. Indian siddhantas (philosophical theories) did not assume the status of universalism in the same manner as European thought did. Hence the implications of Indian assimilations are not the same as those of digestion by the West. When women entered the American workforce in the 1960s, men had the power and the women's imitation of men at work was not because women were digesting men. Women did not have the power to do so. Hence, while there was women's mimicry of men, it was assimilation and not digestion.  Secondly, who says that I oppose all those other kinds of assimilation from being the subject of scholarship? The fact is that the history of ideas as written by Western historians is filled with how the West influenced others, rarely the other way around. In fact, even since Hegel, world history has largely been depicted as the story of what the West did to itself and to others, as though the non-West lacked agency. Therefore, it should not be seen as a problem if some works like mine focus on the flow of influence in the opposite direction. I do not oppose works that bring out assimilations (and even digestions) in which the West is not the predator. Let many directions of research flourish and interact. I do not wish to monopolize the discourse on the history of ideas, but merely wish to add one more dimension to it, ....  In Being Different, I discuss that large aspects of today's global culture are in fact founded on the values and beliefs that emerged under Western domination of the world in the past 500 years, and these in turn are founded on the values and beliefs that emerged from the unique historical and religious experience of the peoples of European origin. When all collective identities are discarded and all boundaries challenged, the result is not a world free from dominance but one in which the strongest and most aggressive identities along with their versions of history and values prevail....." Ellen looks at 'the human tendency to recognize sameness'. This is an interesting perspective, and we carry this in some depth with limited editing: "By way of introduction, I teach Hinduism and Buddhism ... ...although I have not read Rajiv Malhotra's text yet, I am in agreement (to some extent) with the essence of his basic thesis on difference. Having said that, I want to introduce yet another way of looking at 'religion'. Bear in mind that scholars of 'religion' are really not concerned with the same issues that practitioners are and this is why 'insiders' often have debates with or have taken objection to their work. But, I need not go into detail here, this discussion has raised so many issues with academia on its own that it is not necessary to rehash the objections and central points again and again. What is important to point out, I think, is that within the scholarly study of religion  -- as the saying goes -- we teach 'about' religion, we don't actually teach religion -- and this might be the crux or source of the central objection. In order to do this we attempt to explain and interpret 'religion' as a phenomenon using the methods of the social sciences (and most insiders don't always agree with this approach). But, please bear in mind, this is true equally for all religions, not just Hinduism. Having said that, I want to introduce a new way of understanding religion, but certainly not the only way. That is to say, through the lens of cognitive science or the study of the mind/brain. It seems to me, that when we look at the human mind/brain we see more 'similarities' than 'differences'.  ... This is true not only for neuroscience but also for cognitive linguistic theorists who debate Noam Chomsky's notion of a universal grammar that is triggered by linguistic environments at birth. In other words, we (i.e., humans) don't arrive in this world at birth as a tabula rasa. ... Cognitive theorists are looking at religion as a deeply human phenomenon that expresses itself, like language, in myriad ways. To this end, cognitive scientists are generating a wealth of empirical data based on analytical and applied research, and their efforts lend a new and vital theoretical approach to the field of religious studies. It is my view that the cognitive science of religion has several critical areas of mutual (and beneficial) intersection with Hindu and Buddhist religion (particularly the teachings of the great yogis and mahasiddhas) including critical discussions on the nature of consciousness, the role of the nervous system in religious experience and claims of non-duality (advaita). In this way, science and religion have a role to play in levelling the playing field where religions are concerned, at least in my view. The question is not, as I see it, one of difference per se, but rather how does the mind/brain generate religious experience and why? In the case of the great yogis, this is an exceedingly important question given the embodied nature of religious experience and the role that mind plays, for example, in meditation (including such states as turiya, samprajnata and asamprajnata samadhi, etc.). I once asked a great yogi the central question raised by cognitive philosophers. That is to say, 'how does matter become conscious?" In turn, he looked at me and did what any great yogi would, he turned my question on its head (into a headstand of sorts!) and said, "no, Ellen, the question is, how does consciousness become matter?" Either way, it is clear that for both sides consciousness is the key. And it is clear, at least to me, that on this subject humans are more alike than we are different. There is an excellent and what I consider to be a beautiful quote from an amazing scholar of psychology named Merlin Donald who writes:  .... ....why humans aspire for a sense of unity and cognitive integrity in the first place. ... it is intrinsic to our evolutionary, biological self.  It is written in to our genetic structure. The explanation is that simple. It is human to do so! I have added this simple thread for your consideration. I realize you will have to debate and tear it apart. But I do think it is worth considering seriously. Let me end with a scene from the vastly successful Bollywood film 'Dulwale Dulhania Le Jayenge' to make my point using a different approach. Baldev's pigeons, as it turns out, were the same everywhere -- in Traflagar Square and in the Punjab. It was his 'mind' (or his culture) that created the differences. Nature is One. So, too, Simran (the lead female character) prays both at a her family altar as well as in a church. Why? The pure mind sees no difference. And I think this is why we cry at the end of the film -- Baldev realizes advaita through love -- through prem -- when he opens his heart."  struth91 responds: "... For the sake of clarity, lets use the term 'spiritual experience' or 'mystical experience' as opposed to 'religious experience' for the sense of cognitive integrity or larger consiousness, as described by Ellen.... While Ellen is correct in stressing on the commonality of humans striving towards this 'spiritual experience' - religions are certainly not all 'equal' or the same in their support for such activity. In fact, BD repeatedly brings up the point that Christianity and 'history-centric' religions in general have historically been antogonistic towards this 'mysticism' and there is the well-known history of mystics being marginalized and persecuted in the Abrahamic tradition. In contrast - Dharmic religions view spiritual experience as an inner science and the the entire goal of religion is to facilitate such a state. By providing scientific validation to the thesis that striving towards cognitive unity is a fundamentally human need and goal - Ellen provides support to the conclusion that this individual striving should be recognized as a basic human right. There is a need to debate whether religions that impose dogmatic, exclusivistic or history-centric restrictions on a basic human right can be allowed to propagate and destroy the more individualistic and inner-science oriented faiths through 'push' sales techniques."  Nagaraja adds: "....The underlying voice in your conclusion seems to be that the 'difference consciousness' creates a divide, an unpleasant and uncomfortable feeling which can be overcome by a 'sameness consciousness' or a 'consciousness that overlooks differences" creating unity which is a pleasant and comfortable feeling. Please correct me if I am wrong. My contention is that while this aspiration for unity and pleasantness is good, there is another way of achieving it which the Rishis have shown and our previous generations had mastered. That of acknowledging the differences and respecting them... "  Rajiv adds a moderating comment here: "I started a new thread [this is carried in a separate post, see the egroup link at the bottom of this post] because this misunderstanding by Ellen also explained below is a very common one and a very serious one. It inflicts many well intended and supposedly well informed dharmic people including many acharyas and swamis who teach Vedanta = escapism. Lets migrate to that thread so its not personal about Ellen. But I do thank her for opening this up here." Desh comments: Honestly, I find Ellen's arguments completely jumbled up - ...Here is why: For one thing, she takes the One-ness of consciousness and extrapolates it to one-ness of mind. There is no one-ness of mind or thought. That is purely individual. Consciousness is NOT the mind. Let us not be IRRESPONSIBLE about using the buzzwords as we like. Mind/Belief/Religion are NOT the same as Consciousness/Experience/Spiritual.. and you cannot use the concepts from one context interchangeably. Religion is of the mind, not consciousness. Its god is a defined god (deliberately in lower case) - with specific characteristic... and therefore limited and restricted - it has NOTHING to do with Infinite.. All the talk of One-ness, Infinite in Religious or Theology is schizophrenic nonsense.  Spirituality starts where physicality and finite ends. Spirituality is not a "mind-game", it is an experiential process. Religion is belief-centric, Spirituality is experience-centric. Lets understand it from Gita's example - in the second chapter, Krishna asks Arjun to go fight. He refuses point blank. Instead in third chapter beginning he complains about he is confused between Jnana and Karma. And in the 4th chap beginning he asks directly "How do I know what you are saying is Truth?" Not once in entire Gita does Arjun say even ONCE that "I believe you". Instead when he sees the Universal self of Krishna he finally says "I KNOW this to be the Truth". Knowing via experience VS Believing someone. We have confused our limited "love" for Spiritual Love. The DDLJ Baldev's example to speak about Spirituality looks cute, but is nonsensical...When the Quality of one's love for her Beloved transform to become hopeless yet unrelenting, then it begins to get into a position to take her beyond the physical. ...." Sandeep responds to Ellen: " > The question is not, as I see it, one of difference per se, but rather how does the mind/brain generate religious experience and why? < I think this question has already been answered in Yoga texts.  Spiritual experience occurs due to suspension of thought.  The energy (Prana) which was occupied in thinking is first recovered in order to transfer consciousness into the subtle body. There are three energy channels Ida, Pingala and Sushumna collocated with the spinal cord.  In normal circumstances, the breath moves through left and right channels - Ida and Pingala.  All methods of Yoga aim to divert the breath from the side channels into the central channel so that it connects with the universal energy (Mukhya Prana) which can be contacted through the Sahasradala Chakra at the top of the head. Cognitive theorists are too pre-occupied with the brain. They should pay attention to the spinal cord as well. "  Srini comments: "...This is a comment on the argument used for justification of a certain way of studying religion/philosophy and not on the intentions of the person. ...."we teach 'about' religion, we don't actually teach religion" Does that mean non-belief and/or non-experience in a topic gives a person the right teach "about" it? Or is it like Deepak Chopra saying I teach "about" Quantum physics not actually quantum physics. I don't have to point out what true quantum physicists think about such people. ....I do think the contributions of such "scholars" is valuable ..." Rajiv's response:  I must clarify what Ellen meant, I think. Teaching "about" something is a third-person view, whereas practicing it is a first-person view. Both are valid and complement each other.The important point is that religions defined by a text rather than by embodied experience can be and usually are interpreted using third-person techniques known as hermeneutics. An expert need not be a practitioner because its a matter of interpreting what the text means. This is like a lawyer interpreting what a contract says. (These texts are seen as covenants or contracts given by God.) Indians must understand that this is the result of history-centrism and shortfall in embodied knowing in those traditions. So if that text (a historical record) were lost, man would be doomed as there would be no way even in principle to recover it again. Not so in the case of embodied knowing - thats the whole point of chapter 2." Kundan adds: "To add my two cents to this post, I would say that the West has been in a parasitic instead of symbiotic relationship with Indian Thought. It has enriched itself by appropriating the thought while simultaneously destroying it in India and suppressing the influence in its home soil. We are opposing a parasitic relationship that the West has forged and we do not have anything against a symbiotic relationship. True to the Indian principle, we will encourage a symbiotic scholarly exchange that is based on mutuality and parity of power. "  March 1  comment on Being Different Rajiv: This comment posted on Patheos.com where my book is being discussed at their Book Club. I enourage others to participate. Indrani comments "... As someone born into the Dharmic Traditions in the Caribbean where my ancestors have lived hundreds of years and where my internal and external space was bombarded by the oppressive presence of persons and institutions that were forcibly, selfishly, and exclusively promoting their Judeo-Christian ideology, I have spent all of my years in a constant struggle to BE myself  and to SEE myself in the world around me. I have struggled with the issues that BD so brilliantly articulates for people like us who are born into and live most of our lives almost in a Twilight Zone of sorts.  This text bridges the gap between the academy and the masses. It brings the distillation of ideas from a hardcore scholarly level down to one that most ordinary folks can understand. The text should be prescribed reading for people trying to understand why they find it difficult to "belong" in hegemonic societies, and for those who exercise the hegemony so they can appreciate the violence that they are perpetuating and perhaps do something about it. People like me are better able to find our bearings in a Judeo-Christian and western world, when we read BD. This text, in a way, sets up important navigation directions for the interface between  Dharmic and Abrahmic traditions. It is a jewel in the Samudra Manthan." March 4 Please Post : Re: Mutual Respect... Pankaj posts: On Mutual Respect As the term implies, there has to be both reciprocity and respect.... please note that the Jews do not convert and it may be possible to take a  Position of mutual respect with them, provided they accept. Also note that in India we have not had problems between Hindus and Jews because of religious injunctions or basis in society, strongly supported by the fact that both the sides do not seek to convert each other." [we will carry the discussion in this thread below in a separate post because of the many comments posted] March 4 A common misinterpretation of Unity Consciousness Ellen's recent thread illustrates the common notion that non-duality is escapist from the mundane world on multiplicity. This became the handle with which...