Why are Hindus Celebrating the Digestion of Hinduism? - Part 2

This is the latest in our series of blogs dealing with the problem of digestion of Hinduism, which is quite different from both inclusivism and conversion to Abrahamic faiths. For example, in Kerala, the digestion of many aspects of Hinduism in general, and the festival of Onam, in particular have been covered in the last few days. This post is part of the discussion on Phil Goldberg's 'American Veda' has been shown to be an example of this problem. You can find Part-1 of the current discussion here. However, many Hindus live in denial for a variety of reasons. You can find the first set of posts in 2012 on Goldberg's American Veda: Analysis-2 that summarizes the first set of feedback on AV is here, and Analysis-1, is the very first summary, where AV was introduced to the forum, and shows Goldberg's attempted defence of his work.

There are several other dicussions of 'digestion' in the forum that can be accessed by clicking the keyword. Another external blog that was among the very first to comment on AV is the 'Digesting Veda blog'. 

For those who want to get the full details on digestion of Hinduism, the links (total of 9 posts) provided above can be traversed in the following order:
1. Familiarize yourself with digestion activities in Kerala
2. Understand how digestion differs from both inclusivism and conversion  
3. American Veda: start with the DigestingVeda blog 
4. Then read Analysis-1 and Analysis-2
5. Read Part-1 and Part-2 of the current discussion on how American Veda is being supported by Hindu intellectuals (this one and the previous one)
6. Examine other discussions of digestion in the forum. 
7. Don't stop there! Blog, discuss and educate others about this serious problem.


In Part-2 of our current discussion below, we examine the foreword and contents of Phil Goldberg's book 'American Veda' shared in this blog, and then see how Hindu intellectuals respond to it.

Inside the 'American Veda' - celebration of uturners
Subra shares: "...  Just the first 25 pages. We can see the shoddy scholarship, the Sanskrit mistranslations being used to set the stage for digestion, the reductionism, and the justification for digestion. Once this is done, the remaining chapters celebrates one u-turner after another..."

Rajiv responds:
"Thanks for a good analysis. People who are in doubt should read the analysis:

It is sad how many so-called supporters of our cause failed to understand digestion at work, and went around proudly promoting the author. One such man called me... to say: "What if we get him to state he is against the Aryan theory and against missionaries"? I told this man he does not understand digestion. It is not about being against missionaries, being against Aryan theory, and so forth.

If a thief is taking your assets and digesting them by characterizing them as belonging to others, does it help you because he praises your home, expresses anger at some of your opponents, etc and other unrelated things.

THE DIGESTER LOVES WHAT HE IS DIGESTING OTHERWISE HE WONT DIGEST IT. Why am I unable to get this across???

These people among us are so STUPID and ignorant of our own history where we have seen so many westerners support us, praise us, etc precisely to dupe such IDIOTS. By now we ought to have no more fools but sadly we do.

I am confident I can get a statement from Witzel opposing missionaries. In fact he told me as such in person many years ago. But is that the issue???

Can Hinduism be rescued by a bandwagon of fools, who are easily swayed, lazy to read and understand issues, and in awe of someone supporting them with glamor.

I hope people who have promoted his works will now do penance by promoting the link above with greater enthusiasm."
 
Aditya has a useful suggestion:
"... Does anyone want in this group want to write an "alternative" review for AV on Amazon with a mention of "Being Different" as a book to read?

...  for someone who has [read the book], this would be one small step in the right direction."

css shares feedback from another person who disagreed that 'American Veda is digestion'. Please read the details in the forum. We only provide a gist of the arguments here:
1. He acknowledges the impact of Indian spirituality on America
2. He is not working on behalf of missionaries
3. He is not a practitioner in the Ken Wilber mould
4. Sloppy scholarship does not prove digestion

Rajiv comment: The above looks at DIRECT digestion only. Does not understand the subtlety and multi layered processes at work. This simplistic view is quiet common and hence I know my work is cut out for me.

PhilG valorizes digesters - he himself does not have to be one. Every digester has a coterie of cheerleaders supporting him, building is brand value, legitimizing him. These cheerleaders might not be smart enough to do the heavy thinking like a digester. They are his support team. PhilG is such a cheerleader. Wilber and Keating are examples of top tier digesters that PhilG celebrates. Good analogies are:

- most sepoys merely suck up to another thinker and hence build brand credibility for a major thinker and are not capable of doing this thinking themselves.

- People in Indian media are supporting X but not doing the nasty things personally that X does. Yet we oppose such media persons. They are part of the entourage of X that makes X important.

The problem .... is that he has not read Keating or Wilber, for example...What he sees is PhilG praising these folks in ways that seem reasonable. This is why incomplete knowledge is dangerous... I have separate volumes in the pipeline on each of these men, along with many others.

The history of PhilG work with me... (Read the original and complete information in the forum).

...
5) When the book came out I was shocked. He took all my info on the uturners and made them look like heroes. This inverts my thesis. He celebrates the process that I consider a problem...

6) ...PG's book has a couple of pages on me. I am depicted as someone who complains about uturns. He is dismissive of my complaint. He includes me to be able to say "I have already factored what Malhotra has to say". This is a tactic to dispose of a serious issue without properly dealing with it.

....point on PG criticizing missionaries is simply irrelevant. It further shows shallowness of understanding this theater. ...Witzel also opposes proselytizers, and so do most western scholars we fight - Doniger, et al. By the standards of sophisticated western scholars, proselytizing is crude, old fashion, meant for extreme right wing christianity. These folks are liberal left wing and hence anti-proselytizing.

....As I said before: People who digest from the liberal left wing side are not proselytizers or in support of them. For instance, Wilber is too sophisticated to operate at the evangelism level. Nor are any of the neuro-scientists and cognitive scientists appropriating Hindu and Buddhist ideas and practices. ... understand the complexity of liberal/leftist ideas of dharma and not try to collapse all western approaches as proselytizing. (For one thing Jews are not christians or proselytizers and yet many of them are digesters!)

It is sad that while I must invest years of rigor to get one book at a time out, there are "supporters" who cant wait. .... On limited knowledge they align themselves with the very same digesters I spend all my time investigating."

 

Can the Yogic experience be replicated using psychedelics?

Commentators debate this interesting question. The answer is a 'no' from every commentator, but each offers slightly different reasons. What do you think?
 
November 2013
Spiritual experience due to psychedelics
Vijaya comments:
"there was a discussion in this forum (why mantra cannot be performed by a machine) regarding the attempt to replace living pandits with devices like Ipod to chant sanskrit mantras. Similarly, isn't there a possibility to reduce the spiritual experience gained through meditation/Yoga to the experience due to psychedelics and eventually replace meditation/sadhana with psychedelics?
Sam Harris in his Huffpost blog seem to equate the experience due to the ingestion of psychedelics like LSD and spiritual experience gained through meditation, although he is cautious about the former.

(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/drugs-and-the-meaning-of-_b_891014.html)
"...it cannot be denied that psychedelics are a uniquely potent means of altering consciousness. If a person learns to meditate, pray, chant, do yoga, etc., there is no guarantee that anything will happen. Depending on his aptitude, interest, etc., boredom could be the only reward for his efforts. If, however, a person ingests 100 micrograms of LSD, what will happen next will depend on a variety of factors, but there is absolutely no question that something will happen. And boredom is simply not in the cards. ...It is, however, a difference that brings with it certain liabilities."
This approach presupposes the material nature of our consciousness as opposed to the dharmic position of many layers of reality. Also, it separates the metaphysics of objective outer cosmos and the subjective inner consciousness, which is antithetical to integral unity."

Maria responds:
"Very interesting post, specially your conclusion. Many of these western scientifics, whose scientific knowledge I don´t doubt, but have a very limited vision influenced by subtle abrahamic ideas like only one life. Their potential as researchers is very much limited, provided that they cannot help but associating mind to the brain, and the end of everything with the death. If they could go further, see the implications into the world of samskaras and vasanas brought from life to life, how would they explain it? There would be a revolution in their own minds. Like they cannot afford going further, they end up relating every spiritual experience as provided by the brain. As a material effect of a material cause, that´s all. Instead of seeing that the brain could be a material tool in the hands of an spiritual consciousness. I think that is why many western scientific become atheists..."

Prasad responds to the previous two posts:
"... the dharmic position of many layers of reality is nothing more than another "unfalsifiable presupposition" from a scientific point of view. I am not aware of any evidence through neuroscience which requires any neuroscientist to consider a Dharmic view of many layers of reality as a scientific theory or position. Thus, there is no reason also for scientists to presuppose anything of the sort of a divide between what is the cosmos and what is inner consciousness. The duality between mind and body(brain) is not a chief concern for neuroscience as far as I know, since there is no scientific evidence as such for any mind separate from a body.

...Guys like Sam Harris have spent a llllong time trying to study Dharmic positions like those in Buddhism and also Advaita Vedanta. It is not their influence by subtle abrahamic ideas that they stick they to their claims. Please try to understand the methodology of science before commenting on scientists and their "biased" worldviews. Science does not proceed by handwaving or by unfalsifiable theories. It proceeds by rigorous evidence. So in order for a neuroscientist to seriously consider the dualistic claim (i.e. there is a body separate from a mind), an experiment has to be first described which can show whether the claim is true or not. In other words, see what Harris says - 

..

- So I would opine that the scientific community (which now includes almost all of humanity) would not be doing science by assuming a duality between a body and mind and then working from such an assumption to discover truths about the mind.

Now let me come to how a response can still be made in the lines of Rajivji's ideas of "being different".

First of all, it is simply a narrow view to treat mind-altering drugs and meditation (which I will now call dhyAnA, identifying it as a step in Patanjali's ashtAnga yoga scheme) on the same lines, i.e., as a means to effect changes in the mental states (I am purposefully not calling these "states of consciousness" because of my Advaitic leaning that the mind is different from the Atman, which is the Original Consciousness). Sam Harris' claim is that both can effect changes in the mental states. According to my understanding, in Yoga/VedAntA and other indian darshaNAs, the purpose of dhyAnA is not just about altering your mind-states during the time of meditation. Instead, the main purpose of dhyAna is to effect the triumph of one's will over the constantly drifting/changing mind...

In the same way, a yogi who practises dhyAna according to the Indian traditional darshana's need not have all the kinds of experiences or mental states that Harris is talking about. However, over time, he/she will gain the strength of mental will to concentrate on any particular object. This one-pointedness of mind which one gains is called "chitta-ekAgrata" in some traditions. The supporting factors to doing proper dhyAna and achieving its intended results include living a life of ethical and moral values and having devotional mindset (roughly, yamA and niyamA - the first two steps of ashtAnga yogA), sitting for dhyAna in correct physical posture (Asana - 3rd stage), prANAyamA (the 4th stage, learning to breathe properly prior to dhyAnA), restricting one's diet to saatvic food and restricting one's mental diet to saatvic imagery/sounds/ etc (pratyAhArA). Only after all these stages can dhyAnA be done properly and will bear the appropriate fruit. This is what the Indian Yogic traditions say, as far as I know. This is why the so-called meditation does NOT work for everyone and anyone. It is like taking a medicine without observing the appropriate dietary restrictions for it to work, and then claiming that the medicine doesn't work!..."

 

Vijaya responds:

"...My point is that science has a reductive approach to consciousness as BD explains (Page 104),

"...the Western scientific tradition has been reductionist rather than integral. Reductionism attempts to explain wholes in terms of their parts. This works, to a large extent, in ways that are practical, and hence modern science has made major contribtions to our lives using this principle.

The unity assumed in most of the dharmic traditions is a unity of consciousness. Western scientists and philosophers often ask how consciousness can arise from the chemistry of the brain. In the Indian tradition, we find the reverse problem. Absolute consciousness is understood to be the source of everything. The challenge is to understand the ordinary world of multiplicity."
Even your definition of dhyana "to effect the triumph of one's will over the constantly drifting/changing mind",  is also another mental state with a different/dynamic biochemical composition, according to neuroscience. So why to do all the tough sadhanas? We can put our efforts in producing drugs that will give an 'enlightened state' and distribute them to all?
This is not philosophically possible from the viewpoint of vedanta. The 'turiya' state which is the self and the pure consciousness is not a state of mind but is the whole essence of other three states, waking (jågrat), dream (svapna) and deep sleep (susupti). So the self transcends the other three states. The knowledge of neuroscience(and even the world) which is in realm of the waking state is limited and it cant find ways to reach a state that transcends it.

Another important point neuroscientists like Sam Harris make is that such altered mental states of mind do not represents reality by any means. This is in line with the basic axiom of science, the objective existence of the universe.
A Sadhaka in dharma religions does not need to start with such an axiom. That's why realised sages from Ashtavakra to Ramana maharishi describe enlightenment with analogy of 'waking up from the dream'. So a sage indeed perceives a different reality. That's why I mentioned different layers of reality.
Finally, there is more to dharma than the reductionist scientific methods. Dharma traditions take a nuanced approach to one of the pramana (epistemic tool), Sabda, the verbal testimony. The words of a realised Yogi which becomes smriti, is accepted and followed if it agrees with Sruti. This is why we have guru sishya traditions which help seekers in their spiritual quest. "  

 

This discussion is not over. If you have addition insights on this topic to share, please join the discussion group and contribute.

 

 

 

RMF Summary: Week of April 2 - 8, 2012 - Part 2

Here is part-1 of the summary for the week. April 5 Christian and Hindu Good News - Original Sin and satchitananda Vinod posts: "While discussing Being Different with a Hindu friend of mine who is interested in both Indian and foreign knowledge systems, he pointed out that in his understanding, Original Sin and the concept of satchitananda are one and the same. The former is only a pessimistic view of looking at the cup as being half empty rather than half full. The latter is a more optimistic view of looking at the same glass as being half full. Is such an argument tenable?" Rajiv comment: Its stupid to equate self as original sinner with self as originally divine. Thats the whole point of making history centrism the central piece of my argument. Many evangelical scholars in the 1800s started this idea of equating. Then many foolish Hindu scholars started to promote this type of sameness. The consequence is that well meaning persons like you are confused today. I cannot afford the time to summary BD here. I did enough work writing it. Now you must do some work reading it. If you have not read it then its unfair to ask me such a question." Renu adds: "....Original Sin is very well entrenched in the Christian minds and so is the existence of Hell; scares them a lot! ...Very few are free of guilt in this system. In fact many conditions like dysfunctional relationships, broken families, children out of wedlock are a result of these ideas that are drummed thru classes into innocent heads from an early age. So is the idea of achieving Heaven by converting other persons; it does not occur to them that if the Almighty wanted someone to be a Christian then their help would not be needed by the Super power! The understanding of Christianity in India is very faulty --we have been told to see good [and same in all] so we do just that-- need to live in a Christian country to see the reality." Venkat posts: "Equating original sin with satchitananda is untenable. They are exactly antithetical. What exactly is original sin? As Nietzsche correctly stated, Christianity regards the acquisition of knowledge as the original sin of man (Genesis 2:17, 1 Corinthians 20-21, 26-29) thereby making any reasonable exploration of natural phenomena that characterize human existence impossible. In other words, the Christian position is one against acquisition of knowledge. One becomes a Christian by denying knowledge, admitting that any pursuit of knowledge is terrible, and then getting oneself redeemed if one had indulged in such a pursuit inadvertently. Most Christians, liberal or otherwise, educated or not, are ignorant of what original sin actually means. Your friend is no different as far as his understanding of this foundational belief of Christianity is concerned. Malhotra does an outstanding job of articulating what original sin is and how that foundational premise is incompatible with the dharmic approach to moksha etc. He specifically underlines the fact that in Christianity redemption from original sin is always a gift from above and is not an outcome of individual endeavor. In dharmic traditions it is exactly the opposite: one does not attain moksha either by denying knowledge or by exclusively receiving it as an accidental gift from above. For example, Sankara, in his Vivekachudamani (verses 13-15) emphatically asserts that knowledge (the pre-requisite to moksha) can only be obtained through atma-vichara and not as a gift...." April 6  Indian Christian working on misappropriating yoga into Christianity A news item relevant to Rajiv'ji writings: ************************ This monk gives yoga a Christian makeoverPaul Aims At Union Of Soul & God With Jesus In... April 6 On PBS - Asian and Abhramic religion Sourabh shares: This was on at our local PBS yesterday. I missed it as it played late at night. It followed NOVA. Has anyone seen it? Any opinion on the show? The website... [Link to a related video] Rajiv comment: Would like to know what it says (probably about sameness, exotic faith, etc.) and also who contributed to the content and story line. Ravi responds: "This made a decently big splash in the Indian e-community last year. If I recall, it had a better-than-usual portrayal of the distinctiveness of Hindu & other Dharmic faiths, and had a "much talked about" segment when the camera took viewers on a tour of a major temple in Washington DC area, and did some Q&A. Rajiv comment: I wonder if the "distinctiveness" was from the dharma lens and whether it pointed out Abrahamic "issues" - like history centrism. Otherwise, its just the fashionable distinctiveness as in pop culture where one music genre or cuisine differs from another, but its all "relative" and no logic to either."  Partha says: "The story-line of the program is presented here: Some excerpts - the attempts to show the sameness (comparing belief systems/ practices in Dharmic faiths with the Abrahamic faiths) can be seen here. Some of the statements (Gandhi's philosophy of non-violence based on the Jain religion) are inaccurate as well: Sameness: We also explore the Buddhist and Sikh practices and rituals, finding differences yet discovering surprising similarities with the Abrahamic religions...... Diana Eck comments voice-over: “It’s interesting having Hindu immigrants in America today because they bring something with them that’s distinctively American, a theology of religious pluralism.” Simply inaccurate (Ahimsa Paramo Dharmaha/ Dharma Himsa Thathaiva Cha referenced in the Mahabharatha)..." April 6 My blog: The tiger and the deer This is a new web site that caters to world affairs focusing on the BRICS countries' differences with the West. shivadeepa posts: ".... interesting article on 'Yoga and Judaism' that seeks to find 'deep ties between Yoga and Judaism'. This has some positive and respectful ideas about Yoga, but the equivalencies don't seem to be clear. e.g. the idea of replacing the sacred vibrations of Sanskrit with Torah reading, and the last couple of paras indicate a possible attempt at digesting Yoga into Judaism. Rajiv comment: There is a Hindu-Jewish group in AAR that champions this kind of equivalence. Many Jews entered ISKCON from the 1960s on, but most have uturned later. While Hindus are gradually becoming aware of Christians digesting hinduism, the trend is at least as aggressive with Judaism. Their favorite method is to use Hinduism to revive and reinterpret Kaballah and attribute all sorts of new meanings to it. They even claim non-translatable sounds in Hebrew that can replace as mantras. .... why is there a need of a separate Jewish identity based on birth, i.e. bloodline? Answer is history centrism. Judaism started the history centrism which Christianity and Islam took further. .... A good example of the popular use of Kaballah for digesting Hinduism into Judaism: April 6  Digestion via Self-Realization Fellowship This book purports to be written by Parmahansa Yogananda, but published long after his death. (Surpicious?) I tried unsuccessfully to gain access to the original manuscript. Another spinoff from Parmahansa Yogananda is the famous Swami Kriyananda, highly celebrated in India as a great guru. he, too, espouses sameness using the teachings of Parmahansa Yogananda. I practiced the kriya yoga system of SRF when I lived in San Diego in the 1970s. So I know them and do appreciate many things I benefited for my sadhana. But just as post-Vivekananda the RK Mission and its affiliates (unintentionally) facilitated the digestion of Vedanta (first into generic perennialism, then into "western" thought...) so also Parmahansa Yogananda's teachings have accelerated the fashion of digestion into "new, liberal Christianity". Hence the attacks by various folks like we saw at Patheos.com who feel that the differences I discuss deny that the same things already existed in Christianity. People, please decide: If you dont mind Hindus getting digested into Christianity (conversion being one of the many methods), then stop complaining at what is going on. Let it just happen. In fact, join in to facilitate the inevitable. You might even make some money, fame, prestige along the way like many others have. But if you find it important that dharma's distinctiveness is important to retain, then dont get mixed up with the lure of being digested. This involves a lot of study and understanding first. Only what you embody yourself can be projected externally into whatever your calling is. April 6 BI thesis and interventions via the UN After Sri Lanka now India in trouble,UN asks to repeal AFSPA   Rajiv: In BI I discuss the role of western churches like Lutherans, etc. in grooming and appointing people like Christof Heyns in posts where such decisions get made. April 6 Peter Heehs (American Historian in Auroville): Another U-Turner? Karthik posts: "One Peter Heehs, an American historian who has apparently spent the last 41 years in Pondicherry, was denied a visa extension by the GOI this year. Apparently this followed his publication of a controversial book containing speculations about the relationship between Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Now it looks like the "usual suspects": Ramachandra Guha, Romila Thapar etc. are ganging up to pressure the government against revoking his visa, in the name of "freedom of expression" and other high-minded ideals...." Rajiv comment: I met him a few times since the 1990s. Had a big fight the very first time we met, when i explained the appropriations and biases. But then we both moved on... Lately he got into trouble with certain people over his book (by Columbia U P) which I have read. This matter has polarized the Sri Aurobindo followers into 2 fighting camps. I no longer want to get "used" in this fight... Been there, done it...." Manas asks: "Speaking of double standards, some years back, communist terrorists in Nepal burnt down an entire Sanskrit university. How many Thapars, Guhas, Pollocks, etc, then raised voices of protest? How many petitions did these eminences take out?..." April 6 Re: Wall Street Journal Article on Swami Vivekananda's Influence.. Karthik posts: A very flattering article, but it may be interesting to trace the incidence of U-Turns among the various figures cited here as influenced by SV. ...  ....Re-reading it again, I am reminded of how the American academe (and popular culture) have consistently portrayed the life of J.D. Salinger. They cite him as a genius, a literary icon who changed the face of American writing. Yet, all the biographies I have come across refer to a period in his life when, after 1965, Salinger became "reclusive, anti-social, and hermetic." The implication is that he had psychological issues that made him a misanthropist, and caused him to shut himself away from the society that once celebrated him in New York. April 6 Digestion of Advaita, Shaivism Surya posts: See below how "Christian Advaita" is presented .  See the contortions of language to squeeze these incompatible ideas together.  "Christian experiences God not only through Jesus but in the human face of God."   "Advaita has a place in Christian experience via Jesus' awareness of his Advaita with the father." As BD points out, unbridgeable gap between God and human is bridged only through the Prophet.  Allowing direct experience would undermine primacy of prophet and the scriptures.  Once you allow direct experience, thus bypassing essentiality of Jesus and the scriptures, what is the need for Christianity?   Thus, Christian experience of God is ONLY "via Jesus' awareness of his Advaita with the father." Taking Advaita as is from Dharmic knowledge obviates the need for Christian alternative.  Hence the need for the tiger to digest the deer. That explains why "Liberal Christians" and "Emergent church" are desperately after absorbing Dharmic knowledge.... The recognition of limitations of language and the need to import Sanskrit words is also proposed below.  Purpose, as is made clear below, is not a better understanding of Dharmic knowledge and its acceptance, but to facilitate presenting Christ-consciousness as Christian Shaivism.  Thus, keeping Sanskrit words intact but not the context of Dharmic knowledge from which they are extracted, still facilitates digestion. ------------------------------------------ Christian Advaita: ----------------------- "Drop all ideas -- especially all Christian ideas (and before you respond, please just read/listen ... I'm here to help enhance faith/relationship/knowing truth .... not to diminish or challenge or debate). ... http://peterspearls.com.au/radical.htm The Christ and Advaitic Experience:  ------------------------------------------------ "The Christian experiences God not only through but in the human countenance of Jesus whose face is the human face of God....  ... advaita has a place in the Christian experience as in that of Jesus himself: the Christian shares in Jesus’ awareness of his advaita with the Father. This is Christian advaita." http://peterspearls.com.au/ccadvaita.htm The Shaivic Christian: ----------------------------- "Can the Christian experience be expounded – not falsely – in these terms, given, as we know, that Christian vocabulary cannot adequately express Christian experience? Can these Sanskrit terms become the vehicle for a theology which leads to the knowledge of the Christ who exceeds all that can be said of him? (or, the Christ-consciousness that exceeds all that can be said of it?) This attempt will be the beginnings of a Shaiva Christianity or a Christian Shaivism." http://peterspearls.com.au/shaivism.htm" Rajiv responds: The site referenced below is illustrative of hundreds of such movements run by Westerners who started their stage-1 journey with teachings of Ramana Maharshi, which they learned (already in diluted form) second to fourth hand via Nisargatta Maharaj, Papaji, Ramesh Baleskar and an assortment of other instant Indian gurus and pseudo-gurus. Later they mapped these ideas on the new frameworks by western uturners like: Eckhart Tolle (who I met in the 1990s), Adyashanti (via Zen), Adi Da (follower of Swami Muktananda who initiated the young Ken Wilber and later there was a big clash of Adi Da/Wilber super-egos), among others. The digestive tract is very long, with many such enzymes along the way helping to 'break down' the source till it disappears into the new DNA. April 7 Indian archeology. Chocka asks: ..... Where will you put this in your classifications of digestion? Rajiv comment: An interesting documentary on archeological findings. I am troubled that they cannot take Hindu claims (not myths are referred to but itihas) at face value even as claims. Because such claims definitely topple Biblical history claims or at least exclusivity, the archeological findings are being interpreted as some sort of extra-terrestrial work. The result is that either (1) it gets mixed up with all other UFO nonsense and sidelined to the margins, or (2) credited to aliens rather than Hindus. In the latter case, this alien origin of Hindu 'myths' is similar to the foreign origin of Aryans - in both cases Hinduism's own accounts of the past are seen as really the work of outsiders be they foreign aryans or aliens from outer space. We should utilize the hard facts of archeology and develop our own interpretations rather than getting sucked into others' interpretations..." Kundan shares: "I have read Graham Hancock's "Underworld: The Mysterious origins of Civilizations." He is shown at the beginning of this documentary. I will not be too surprised if he is at the man behind the documentary. As it is, the mainstream historians and archaeologists were going after him for contending the dates of the archaeological remains off the coast of Poompuhur and Dwarka to 9600 BCE and 6000 BCE respectively; now that his work is being linked with aliens and ETs, it will get further discredited in the academic community. It is quite possible that he himself is linking it. In the "Underworld," he came up with these dates by corresponding the depth at which these ruins were found with inundation maps that have been prepared for the world through complex computer calculations at various stages during the Post Glacial floods (the contention of Geologists is that after the Last Glacial Maximum, ice caps and glaciers around the world melted at a rapid pace leading to massive floods that inundated coasts around the world). If the post glacial flooding is true, then the inundation of  "Kumari Kandam" as described in Sangam literature is a distinct possibility--Sangam says that the first meeting was held in a city called Tenmadurai and the second at Kavatapuram, both of which have gone under water. The geologists contend that there were massive flooding that took place between 10,400 BCE and 8,600 BCE and many Tamil scholars say that first gathering of Sangam took place around 9600 BCE. The last of the post glacial floods took place between 5700 BCE and 4900 BCE and Sangam scholars say that the second Sangam took place 3700 years after the first one. There is a close correspondence between when Tenmadurai and Kavatpuram would have gone under water and occurrences of post glacial flooding. Graham Hancock took the help of local fisherman in the exploration off the coats of Tamil Nadu. His wife, Santha, is conversant in Tamil--she is of Tamil origin raised in Malaysia. The local fisherman speak of many ruins along the coast of Tamil Nadu. The fisherman know about this because they find schools of fish around these ruins--the fish need protected area to rest. The seabed off the coast otherwise is quite flat. The marine wing of the Archaeological Survey of India need to take these local folklore seriously and explore the coast. Graham Hancock says that the local fisherman were able to take him to the exact spot of the ruins. Emboldened by finding ruins in correspondence with the local itihasa, I think he has come up with the alien theory because the Tamil story is that Shiva and other gods were present at the first Sangam. Instead of using their names, he is saying that in those days the humans were in contact with the aliens. Unfortunately it does not help the dharma cause. ..." April 7 Do mappings with good intentions lead to digestion? Swami Vivekananda mapped akasha as ether at a time when ether was well-established in physics. Later physics rejected the notion of ether altogether. Where did that leave Hindu cosmology and the notion of ether? In hindsight it would have been better to leave akasha untranslated - as something that is not only physical, anyway, and hence cannot be mapped to a purely physical model. But when SV did this, the intention was to make Hindu cosmology more mainstream, more popular, more credible. But such a mapping meant that there was no longer any need to investigate into akasha, once ir was rendered redundant and replaced by ether that mainstream people already knew. This trend is very popular among scholars of dharma who are genuinely trying to show how "scientific" their tradition is. .... mapping of Sri Aurobindo's taxonomy to modern neuroscience - done with utmost respect: ....side effect is that once enough such mappings get perfected, he becomes redundant - a museum piece. On the other hand, neuroscience is very powerful and one must utilize it. So what can one do to have the benefits without this pitfall? Possible approach: How about doing neurological research actively using Sri Aurobindo's taxonomy directly? Keep his terms alive. Let researchers have to re-read what he said and try to figure it out better and better over time - just like we did not put the term yoga in a museum by substituting something like exercise, prayer, gymnastics, etc. I am illustrating my point using Sri A as one example. The same ought to be done to utilize the taxonomies of Kashmir Shaivism, Sankhya, and various other systems. Also: Do not try to collapse them into one another - that too is a reductionism which causes potential loss of experience contained in those terms. Sanjos responds: "Since I am the author of the blog article  you posted below, I'd like to clarify that the intent of the article was actually the opposite.  In other words, I was hoping that the digestion goes the other way - that modern neuroscience discoveries can be explained through the Integral Psychology of Sri Aurobindo.    In order for Sri Aurobindo's model to be accepted, one would have to be able to explain every possible neuroscience discovery using the extensive psychological insights given by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother in their works and that is what I am attempting. Rajiv comment: Thanks for writing that your goal is digestion in the reverse direction. That is also the goal of most advocates of dharma. But they end up dishing out the dharma into small bits that are digestible, quite the opposite of their noble intentions. ....the problem may be formulated as follows: X gets mapped to Y hoping that X will prevail over Y, i.e. it will digest Y. Under what circumstances will that happen, and what factors will make the opposite happen? One taxonomy/paradigm will prevail and digest the other, so the question is what determines which one will prevail. Like any other systematic inquiry, you cannot 'imagine' the answer or base it on wishful thinking. You must gather data on similar situations and see what happens and why. This is what I have been doing for 20 years. Why did RK Mission (following a similar strategy to yours) end up on the sidelines while its treasure trove of dharmic ideas got digested for a century? It was not lack of good intentions. It was a lack of purva paksha of the other party in the intellectual encounter, especially a lack of understanding the mechanisms of digestion One simple principle is: In cases where the other party is a religion (not neuroscience), the one that retains its history centrism (always exclusive by definition) prevails unless unless the other side has something non digestible into the history centrism. This is logical and also supported by evidence of what has actually happened. This is how inculturation works across the heathen world: bring Jesus' history centrism together with village deities and symbols into 'sameness' perception; but gradually you get the village symbols and rituals digested into the HISTORY CENTRISM OF JESUS. What if the other party is science and not anything to do with history centric religion? Here a key factor is that westerners are stronger than us by 50 to 1 in their scholars' quantity, quality, persistence, availability of funding and institutional apparatus for dissemination. In stage-2 of uturn they use folks like you to remove the context of the source tradition - what I have termed 'de-contextualization'. Much of Auroville and Pondy have been doing this for the past 40 years.....Again many of our folks are great facilitators and get rewarded by arriving on the world stage.....(Auroville's own Aster Patel being a prominent person.) In parallel there are those working on stage-4 which is to denigrate the source as inferior, the "caste, cows, dowry, sati, Godhra violence" variety of stereotypes that are all over the place, like carpet bombing in the media. All this culminates in stage-5 where the "new" discoveries by the west are re-exported back to India. Hence we see Andrew Cohan, Harold [Howard?] Gardener, Stephen LaBerge, many of Templeton Foundation's researchers... Since you are interested in Sri Aurobindo's works: You must understand how he is already getting digested into Wilber and through that into Integral Christianity led by Father Keating in collaboration with Wilber and Cohen. .... Hint: What you need to develop is: The non-digestible core of Sri Aurobindo, i.e. that which causes the reductionist western paradigm to crash when Sri A is ingested.  April 7 Blog: Dharmic Gaze Rohit's blog. Here is the link. Blog is dedicated to Being Different. April 7 Another digestion Dhiru posts: Another 'Digestion of Dharmic' idea has come from Ms. T. M. Luthermann (author of "When God talks back:Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God") who has written a piece in the Opinion page of WSJ April 6, 2012 under the heading: "when the Almighty Talks Back". He writes: "And yet people also report that when they pray in this way, they begin to experience God's presence in a personal way, something that is comforting and  empowering..." Rajiv responds: "Rajiv comment: Feeling God's immediate presence is something many Christians claim to be part of Christianity since very long. Many early Christians did express such feelings. So if you go too far and deny any such presence, you will not be taken seriously by Christian scholars. God is intimately felt in many Christian writings. That is not the point of difference. The point is that one can be intimate but in a dualistic sense. God "responds directly" fine, but its two distinct persons interacting - man and God. What is lacking is "aham Brahamasmi" and "tat tvam asi" type of integral unity. In synthetic unity there can certainly be close communication among the parties. The second difference is that history centrism makes God change the rules (called covenants) through some historically unique event, making that event NECESSARY to believe in. This event is the basis of exclusivity claims. So maybe God talks to a person directly, but even so his conversation does NOT allow the person to bypass Jesus as the exclusive mediator in history.."  April 8 in India Greek philosophers Maria posts: .... an interview with the Woodstock School Principal Dr. Jonathan Long about education in the Pioneer. He talks about the philosophical dimension, but mentions only Greeks. Unfortunately the interviewer did not draw out more from him. April 8 Is Jesus a mythical figure- Nice debate in CNN.com today. http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/04/07/the-jesus-debate-man-vs-myth/ Rajiv comment: It is irrelevant to my work whether Jesus existed historically. I am concerned with Christianity as a belief system promulgated and controlled by a powerful institution. As long as there is (1) a powerful church, which (2) demands the absolute belief in the historical Jesus as part of its overall Nicene Creed (i.e. the canon of history centrism), and (3) a large portion of powerful people adopt this as their worldview, that is the working definition of Christianity on which I am reversing my gaze. .... A big deal would be if the beliefs of a large majority of Christians changed such that they no longer regarded Jesus' historicity as real, or at least they considered it as unimportant. That would be a revolutionary mind shift. The domino effect would be: (a) No historical savior. (b) Hence no such thing as Original Sin. The Nicene Creed would unravel instantly. (c) Hence the old myths comprising the gnostics, pagans, gospels (those included and those left out by the Council of Nicea) would become free from the bondage of history centrism. (d) Then there would emerge the possibility of a different kind of universalism in which what BD describes as the desert civilization would not be the foundation. (e) Using the rishis' paradigm of the forest civilization, one would then be able to reinterpret the old stories of mystical experiences in the biblical lands, including allowing a place for Jesus as an archetype (NOT historical and certainly not exclusive). (f) This would be Christianity digested into Sanatana Dharma, with various people having their own mythic figures to imagine as deities and as their ishta-devatas. (g) Devatas are not historical persons, but intelligences-divinities to whom we humans give concrete images for our convenience of access. If we can imagine a given intelligence-divinity in form-x then it is equally valid (and equally relative) for someone else to imagine it as form-y. This is why Hinduism accepts village deities that are local and distinct forms, because such a local form of deity is the collective imagination and itihas of that community. Jesus would similarly be the local deity of certain people, respected as such, but not the Son of God or exclusive intermediary, or grantor of the church's franchise. Bottom line: It is dangerous to jump ahead directly to 'g' based on wishful thinking, ..." Ram argues: "...I see no reason to accept non Christian elements in this formula. The Christianity we are dealing with is mostly a creation of the last 2,000 years by western Europeans (Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Holland, Spain, Scandinavia etc) and to some extent the United States and Canada. Therefore I would advise rejection of any pre-Christian philosophy, writings, theology, legal systems, theology, culture on the part of Christians. Specifically, I see they have no claim to the stories and theology of the Old Testament, which are really Jewish mythology and scriptures. I would advise rejection of Christian claims to the heritage and achievements of the pre-Christian Greeks. Plato, Aristotle, the Greek idea of democracy, Greek thought, are NOT for Christians to colonize as their own. I would advise rejection of Christain claims to the heritage and achievement of the Romans, who were nearly all non Christian and before the supposed coming of Jesus. I would advise rejection of Christian claims to the heritage of the Mesopotomia early civilizations of Ur, of later civilizations of Babylon, the Persians, Crete, the north African cities, and the entire Mediterranean area before the Christian era. I would advise rejection of the Christian claims to the heritage of Egypt, claims to the heritage of the Scandinavian nations of Sweden, Norway etc. Strip these away from the western Christians and they are left with very little. The bulk of the Nicene Creed (creation story, Adam and Eve, Garden of Eden, talking snake, original sin, coming of the messiah are all Jewish) is gone, all the thoughts of the  Romans and Greeks and their institutions have to fall away..." April 8  Digestion - The pagan roots of Easter (Guardian) Venkat shares: "The pagan roots of Easter By: Heather McDougall, Guardian, UK, From Ishtar to Eostre, the roots of the resurrection story go deep. We should embrace the pagan symbolism of Easter. Easter is a pagan festival. If Easter isn't really about Jesus, then what is it about? Today, we see a secular culture celebrating the spring equinox, whilst religious culture celebrates the resurrection. However, early Christianity made a pragmatic acceptance of ancient pagan practises, most of which we enjoy today at Easter. The general symbolic story of the death of the son (sun) on a cross (the constellation of the Southern Cross) and his rebirth, overcoming the powers of darkness, was a well worn story in the ancient world. There were plenty of parallel, rival resurrected saviours too. The Sumerian goddess Inanna, or Ishtar, was hung naked on a stake, and was subsequently resurrected and ascended from the underworld. One of the oldest resurrection myths is Egyptian Horus. Born on 25 December, Horus and his damaged eye became symbols of life and rebirth. Mithras was born on what we now call Christmas day, and his followers celebrated the spring equinox. Even as late as the 4th century AD, the sol invictus, associated with Mithras, was the last great pagan cult the church had to overcome. Dionysus was a divine child, resurrected by his grandmother. Dionysus also brought his mum, Semele, back to life...."   Rajiv comments: "This is well known: many pre-Christian elements including symbols, rituals, ideas and even philosophies got digested into Christianity. At the same time the source cultures suffered what amounts to cultural genocide. I point this out to audiences where they wonder, "whats wrong with getting digested?" One day, if the fashin of digestion continues, it is entirely plausible that Divali will be celebrated as a Christian "festival of lights" with sermons about bringing the light of Jesus into your life to dispel the darkness of Satan"  Manas adds: "...This is already happening in many Christian institutions in India. And it applies not only to Diwali but also to various other Hindu festivals, cultural mores, performing arts, dharmic literature, etc. One example: The dharmaram college, a Christian seminary based in Bangalore is very active in devising methods for digesting Hinduism into Christianity... Incidentally, Indian media reports this sort of blatant chicanery in positive light, as if, to use Rajiv'ji analogy, the deer getting eaten by the tiger is a good thing." April 8 Indian Gov's Documentary about Jesus in India Bluecupid shares: This is the GoI's official documentary about Jesus in India; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9w-xJfSOyc&feature=related...