Think of religious scriptures as a live thing, a thing with an awareness of its own, of being able to impart knowledge to one who wants it. On its own volition.
What this means is that scriptures have a power of their own – if given the chance by people to allow it to teach them, scriptures will do so without any fuss or prejudice. Unlike religious organisations or gurus or the like, scriptures don’t see class, creed, race or sex – but only the effort of an individual in the journey towards truth/god/absolute.
Let’s not think of scriptures as a collection of books, dusty from non use or falling apart from overuse. Do not think of them as pages containing ideas put together by someone ‘wise’. Or a set of ideas or creeds that one has to follow to ‘attain’ the grace of god.
The scriptures of any ancient religion never started out like this: that is, as a set of beliefs offering salvation to its followers. Initially, scriptures were nothing but sounds. Sounds as similar to the cosmic sounds as humanly possible that seers isolated and identified as conducive to spiritual growth. The scriptural sounds were designed to raise our own vibrations in concert with the vibrations of the universe.
These sounds were voiced (with the proper intonations, nuances and the like), and it was memorised and then it was given a form that today we call mantras or chants. For millennia these chants or mantras remained the basis of spiritual development for mankind. It formed the basis of language and other auditory interaction for mankind also.
Then man developed writing. With this began the dubious work of ‘translating’ sound and giving them arbitrary symbols. The sounds of the universe now could be put down in writing.
Few people know that Sanskrit has never been a ‘written’ language but one that is vocalised only. Only in the past thousand years or so has Sanskrit been encrypted into writing. Sanskrit in India is written in the Devnagri script, the Tamil script, the Telugu script, the Bengali script, the Gujrati script and any other script you can think of. The textual rendering of the sounds of Sanskrit is based on the vocal traditions that India had been passing on through the generational lines – from father to son – for millennia before it being written down.
In the past 100 years of so, it has been written in English as well. Each rendering of the sounds of Sanskrit in a different language loses some of the nuance of the vocalised language in its traslation.
Almost all religions agree that in the beginning was the Sound/Word and everything else emanated from it. Sound and resound, and reflection and vibration intermingling gives rise to this universe. The elements of this sound, its reflection and vibration, make up the universe, as we see it as well as what we can’t see.
For example the true intonation of Om or Aum is very long and drawn out, it is described as an all pervading sound. Science can also confirm that a radiation, called the cosmic background radiation or the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, also pervades the universe as a faint background glow in the darkness of space seen by a radio telescope.
So two things are established – sound vibrations do pervade the universe alongside a cosmic background radiation. We are dealing with sound here presently.
This Universal Sound, and the various forms it has taken over the past four billion years of so, appears to be the basis of almost all religious teaching in this world. As can be seen from the scripture selections below.
In the beginning was the Word, says the Bible. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Islam calls the Universal Sound Nada-e-Asmani, Celestial Sound or Awaz-i-Mustaqim. It is said of Prophet Mohammed that he heard the Eternal Sound, Awaz-i-Mustaqim, for fifteen years before receiving the Koran.
Hindus call it the unstruck, endless sound - Anhat Shabda. Or Naad, the sound which created the entire universe.
Anhat Shabda does not have a cause we humans can think of. Imagine it: a sound that is not produced by hitting something or without any cause behind it. It is impossible to imagine it – any example of a sound we have - whether it is speaking, music, crashing, grinding, anything - has a cause and beginning.
The Universal Sound does not have a beginning, it is endless and knows no limit.
So what does science say about all this? Scientists know that a vibration of sorts permeates the entire universe – a vibration that strums a rhythm through the length and breadth of space, forming a foundation of ‘music’ echoed by all things in the universe. Planets, stars and other celestial bodies emanate notes of music/sound and scientists are using these notes as identifying elements of particular heavenly bodies.
This from www.universetoday.com:
Astronomers have been able to monitor the sound waves of a star 100 light years away and found a magnetic cycle analogous to our Sun‘s solar cycle. “Essentially, the star is ringing like a bell,” says scientist Travis Metcalfe from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a co-author of a new study. “As it moves through its starspot cycle, the tone and volume of the ringing changes in a very specific pattern, moving to higher tones with lower volume at the peak of its magnetic cycle.”
Scientists recently also discovered that black holes emit a strong sound, one that modifies its gigantic appetite for nearby stars by offering a counter force of sound waves. This sound emanation from black holes stops the black hole from swallowing entire galaxies – it puts up a parameter of operations for black holes; to be active enough but not to too active that entire galaxies disappear into it.
How strong is the sound that comes from black holes? Sound waves can travel 100s of thousands of light years from a black hole, and remain constant for 2.5 billion years (see below).
This latest from the NASA website:
Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have found, for the first time, sound waves from a supermassive black hole. The "note" is the deepest ever detected from any object in our Universe. The tremendous amounts of energy carried by these sound waves may solve a longstanding problem in astrophysics.
The black hole resides in the Perseus cluster of galaxies located 250 million light years from Earth. In 2002, astronomers obtained a deep Chandra observation that shows ripples in the gas filling the cluster. These ripples are evidence for sound waves that have travelled hundreds of thousands of light years away from the cluster's central black hole.
In musical terms, the pitch of the sound generated by the black hole translates into the note of B flat. But, a human would have no chance of hearing this cosmic performance because the note is 57 octaves lower than middle-C. For comparison, a typical piano contains only about seven octaves. At a frequency over a million billion times deeper than the limits of human hearing.
If so, the B-flat pitch of the sound wave, 57 octaves below middle-C, would have remained roughly constant for about 2.5 billion years.
Far from being ‘dead’, the space element of the universe that take up 95 percent of the volume of the universe is a throbbing, filled-with-activity entity. It is filled with magnetism, electricity, radiation, sounds beyond our hearing, sights beyond our eyes. Only now is science starting to pick up these sounds while the ancients were aware of it, and its importance, for millennia.
Our ancients - Hindus, practitioners of Islam, Zoroastrians, practitioners of Judaism – all knew of this throbbing element of the universe based on sound. Every mystical approach to god is based on this sound – the endless, boundless sound of the universe. Call it what you may – anhat shabda, the Word, Nada-e-Asmani, Awaz-i-Mustaqim, 'Udgeet' (the song of the Heavenly Regions) or Pranav (OM) – it is the sound of the universe that science is now starting to hear.
The ancient Greek philosophers also mention this sound. Socrates states that he heard within him a sound which took him to indescribable spiritual regions. Pythagoras called it the "Music of the Spheres."
Musica universalis (lit. universal music, or music of the spheres) is an ancient philosophical concept that regards proportions in the movements of celestial bodies—the Sun, Moon, and planets—as a form of musica (the Medieval Latin name for music). This 'music' is not usually thought to be literally audible, but a harmonic and/or mathematical and/or religious concept. (Wikipedia)
In Buddhism and Hinduism it is believed that one can literally hear this music when one develops siddhis after extensive meditation practice. This siddhi is sometimes called clairaudience, the talent of receiving messages in thoughtform from another frequency or realm. It is considered a form of channelling.
* Clairaudience or clear hearing, is the psychic ability by which the psychic can hear sounds and voices that are not audible to common people.
All ‘scriptures’ or revelations in all religions are based on this universal sound. Thus, stating again, scriptures are not the books that we consider holy but the set of knowledge based on the Universal Sound. In some religions it may be the basis of all revelations, such as Hinduism and Buddhism; or be the basic process by which God can be reached (Sufism and Sikhism); or play only a part in the overall set-up, as in Christianity.
In Hinduism, the Universal Sound is the basis of every religious process – the pranav (Om recitation), the mantras, the naamasmaran. This sound is the basis of all our original ‘religious’ books, the shrutis. The name for revelation in Sanskrit is Shruti, which means hearing. The revelation of god is ‘heard’ in the sound of the universe.
All else is either cultural or historical or philosophical – a shown by The Laws of Manu, which are not a revelation; they are not Sruti, but only Smriti, which means recollection of tradition. As are the Puranas, the Brahmanas (not to be confused with Brahman, or the Brahmin caste), Agamas, etc.
Only the Vedas are considered shruti – the Vedas are apauruseya "not human compositions", being supposed to have been directly revealed, and thus are called shruti ("what is heard").
Even the Upanishads and Arayanaks (forest books) are considered philosophical speculation, not really revealed scriptures, although they are part of the Vedas.
For the earnest seeker, God provides a personalised Gita as good as what Krishna provided for Arjun. One has to prepare himself/herself for receiving this Gita – this sound of the universe – by recitation of Om, namasmarana, etc.
This personal Geet emanates from the Universal Sound, the Udgeet or Song of the heavenly regions. It another way of saying that a seeker of spirituality has to align or harmonise himself/herself to the Universal Sound first before ‘receiving’ enlightenment.
The Udgeet is divine energy, which regulates the entire functioning of the universe. It is the Pranav, the Om/Aum and, by reciting it with awe and reverence, you link yourself to this energy. Thus are you part of the geet of the universe, a part of the udgeet.
Endnotes
The Shastras (scriptural directives) direct and counsel everyone. People yield to delusion and become one with the darkness caused by false values and attachment to the unreal, the “me” and “mine”. But scripture is the mother; she does not give up. She persists and pursues; she reminds people of their goal in order to ensure that they will be saved. One need not drink the entire ocean to know its taste; placing just one drop on the tongue is enough. Similarly, it is impossible to understand all the contents of the scriptures. It is enough if one grasps the important lesson that is elaborated therein and puts that lesson into practice. The lesson is: Constant thought of God.
- Satya Sai Baba
Sound in general is an integral component of the universe/s – some of it can heard, a whole lot beyond the scope of our instruments of hearing - the ears. A good example is ultrasound, the cyclic sound pressure with a frequency greater than the upper limit of human hearing (which is approximately 20 kilohertz). The production of ultrasound is used in many different fields, typically to penetrate a medium and measure the reflection signature or supply focused energy, for example sonography which produces pictures of fetuses in the womb.
Within everyone there is a subtler force, an inner vibration named Vital Air (Prana). The mind (Manas) within is subtler still, and deeper and subtler than the mind is the intellect (Vijnana). Beyond the intellect, people have in them the subtlest sheath of spiritual bliss (Ananda).
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Stephen Hawking needs to know what God is
Stephen Hawking has declared that God did not create the Universe.
In his latest book, The Grand Design, Professor Hawking said: ''It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going. Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.''
The respected scientist claims that no divine force was needed to explain why the universe was formed. That I cannot agree with.
What Hawking does is take the model of God as shown by the Judeo Christian religions and state that this God cannot have created the universe. And he means create in the sense to come into being, as in an external force moulded the universe into something from some material.
I find Hawking’s statement to be based an assertion that does not take in account the sublime philosophies of Hinduism, or the philosophies of any other religion that has plumbed the depths of the mystery of God. Here is a scientist who dismisses God, maybe based on his experience of religion. Maybe religion did not work for him (as it does not for many, many people) and he found some solace in science - enough solace to come up with the assertion that God does not play a part in the universe.
Here is a scientist making an assertion that people will take as a fact based on the reputation he has. This is highly irresponsible of someone of his standing.
Has Stephen Hawking’s understood God as depicted in religions other than Christianity, or maybe Judaism? Has he spent time trawling the depths of the philosophies that make up the foundation of all religions? He has not. He cannot have for the simple reason the mystical aspects of Islam, Judaism, Christianity and Hinduism has apparently escaped his notice.
While science has been around in its present form for about two centuries, a science of another kind that looks into the mysteries that surround us has been around for millennia.
This science tells of the immanence of God in the universe, of a power indescribable, almost unknowable, of a universe guided and guarded by a supreme intelligence. This Absolute Entity is the material that shapes the universes, in which the universes exist, in which takes place the so-called creation of universes.
It is a designer of such unsurpassed intelligence that the full brunt of human reasoning makes nary a dent in the knowing of it.
In declaring that God has no place in the creation of the Universe, Hawking goes a step further than that great scientist Albert Einstein who also did not believe in the Judeo Christian religious concept of God creating the universe, or anything that sits on high passing judgement on mankind. Yet Einstein believed in a power that governed the workings of the universe. Einstein’s quote is below:
• I believe in Spinoza's God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.
o In response the telegrammed question of New York's Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein in (24 April 1929): "Do you believe in God? Stop. Answer paid 50 words." Einstein replied in only 25 (German) words. Spinoza's ideas of God are often characterized as being pantheistic.
o Expanding on this he later wrote: "I can understand your aversion to the use of the term 'religion' to describe an emotional and psychological attitude which shows itself most clearly in Spinoza... I have not found a better expression than 'religious' for the trust in the rational nature of reality that is, at least to a certain extent, accessible to human reason."
As quoted in Einstein : Science and Religion by Arnold V. Lesikar
Einstein posited a governing power that ‘did not play dice with the cosmos’. To him God was the underlying order of the universe, something that is demonstrated ably in the Vedantic philosophies of Hinduism. And Einstein trusted in the rational nature of this reality.
Spinoza equated God (infinite substance) with Nature, consistent with Einstein's belief in an impersonal deity. (See notes below on what Spinoza thought of God)
Hawking, on the other hand, seeks to isolate the universe into a thing of spontaneity, where things happen because some elements or aspect come together, governed by laws of science. There is no design as such, just the universe coming together haphazardly and blurting out new substances according to ‘scientific’ rules of engagement.
Hawking makes the mistake of taking ‘God’ at face value of the religions, if any, he has ‘studied’. Here is a man blinkered by his intellect to the extent he is unable to see an alternative. He believes the universe is governed by the laws of science, clearly forgetting the so-called science is an evolving thing and laws keep changing.
Findings in quantum mechanics in recent times show a different view of the universe than what classical physics has been offering us for the past 150 years.
In their quest of a theory for everything, science has been going through theory after theory to explain the universe: string theory, brane theory and quantum foam theory being some of the takes on how the universe works.
While these problems remain unsolved, even with giant strides in quantum mechanics/physics:
Is there a preferred interpretation of quantum mechanics? How does the quantum description of reality, which includes elements such as the "superposition of states" and "wavefunction collapse", give rise to the reality we perceive?(Wikipedia)
But not for Vedanta. The jnana yoga aspect of Hinduism has been mulling the question of the universe, the reality of it, and the part we play in it since time immemorial. The answers found in this yoga has been accepted as supreme even by some Western scientists.
The universe originally is a singularity, a point: as depicted in the bindu of the Om . While science is debating the wave function collapse, Hindu seers have been accepting it as a fact, on a very large scale. The universe expands out of the singularity and then collapses back into it periodically. The time frames here are massive but this function can also be seen in its minute form when a wave function is reduced to a single point after interaction with an observer.
What we see at quantum level is a replication of how the universe works (according to Vedanta) in which all the possibilities of an event is encompassed into a singularity upon observation.
The universe operates, according to Vedanta, a like the obverse and reverse (head and tail) of a coin, the flip of which decided whether the Absolute Entity is in action or in abeyance. Comes the flip when the Absolute Entity is at rest and the active element of the Absolute Entity, what Hindus call Maya, comes into play. Maya has two aspects: first of veiling the Absolute and then superimposing something ethereal onto it. This veiling projection is the universe as we see it.
Thus starts the day of Brahma, a colossal 4 plus billion years in which Maya manifests as the tangible and expanding universe. The collapse of this, the laya, results in everything enfolding on itself as the night of Brahma starts.
This time span is told of in our shastras as a night and day of Brahma, equating to some 8.6 billion years in total. And science says the universe started about 4.3 billion years ago, which makes it a day of Brahma?
The reality that quantum mechanics is striving towards is explained by Vendanta as the mind and senses working together to ‘make sense of the superimposition that shrouds the Absolute Entity. As Swami Vivekananda pointed out, if humans had a sixth sense - maybe an electrical sense - they would see the world totally differently from what we perceive it with our present five senses and the analysis of the sense perceptions by the brain.
The concept of the universe as a hologram, rather than a substantial thing of matter, does a better job of explaining the universe than many of the scientific theories around.
‘This superimposition of states’ equates to the lokas that even we as Hindus have trouble getting our heads around. The Brane theory talks of dimensions and the Hindu loka is a dimension that actually exists within another dimension.
This Absolute Entity is known by many names and yet is unknowable. For Maya shrouds its reality and only through understanding Maya can one know of this Entity. All of the forms and names associated with ‘knowledge’ that we know stops short and within this field of Maya.
This sublime thought that everything is God comes the ‘fact’ that the material of the universe is the Supreme Entity in its active mode. This is what Hawking should have looked at in understanding God before he made his statement.
Spinoza’s God
For Spinoza, our universe (cosmos) is a mode under two attributes of Thought and Extension. God has infinitely many other attributes which are not present in our world. According to German philosopher Karl Jaspers, when Spinoza wrote "Deus sive Natura" (God or Nature) Spinoza meant God was Natura naturans not Natura naturata, and Jaspers believed that Spinoza, in his philosophical system, did not mean to say that God and Nature are interchangeable terms, but rather that God's transcendence was attested by his infinitely many attributes, and that two attributes known by humans, namely Thought and Extension, signified God's immanence.
Even God under the attributes of thought and extension cannot be identified strictly with our world. That world is of course "divisible"; it has parts. But Spinoza insists that "no attribute of a substance can be truly conceived from which it follows that the substance can be divided" (Which means that one cannot conceive an attribute in a way that leads to division of substance), and that "a substance which is absolutely infinite is indivisible" (Ethics, Part I, Propositions 12 and 13). Following this logic, our world should be considered as a mode under two attributes of thought and extension. Therefore the pantheist formula "One and All" would apply to Spinoza only if the "One" preserves its transcendence and the "All" were not interpreted as the totality of finite things.
In his latest book, The Grand Design, Professor Hawking said: ''It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going. Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.''
The respected scientist claims that no divine force was needed to explain why the universe was formed. That I cannot agree with.
What Hawking does is take the model of God as shown by the Judeo Christian religions and state that this God cannot have created the universe. And he means create in the sense to come into being, as in an external force moulded the universe into something from some material.
I find Hawking’s statement to be based an assertion that does not take in account the sublime philosophies of Hinduism, or the philosophies of any other religion that has plumbed the depths of the mystery of God. Here is a scientist who dismisses God, maybe based on his experience of religion. Maybe religion did not work for him (as it does not for many, many people) and he found some solace in science - enough solace to come up with the assertion that God does not play a part in the universe.
Here is a scientist making an assertion that people will take as a fact based on the reputation he has. This is highly irresponsible of someone of his standing.
Has Stephen Hawking’s understood God as depicted in religions other than Christianity, or maybe Judaism? Has he spent time trawling the depths of the philosophies that make up the foundation of all religions? He has not. He cannot have for the simple reason the mystical aspects of Islam, Judaism, Christianity and Hinduism has apparently escaped his notice.
While science has been around in its present form for about two centuries, a science of another kind that looks into the mysteries that surround us has been around for millennia.
This science tells of the immanence of God in the universe, of a power indescribable, almost unknowable, of a universe guided and guarded by a supreme intelligence. This Absolute Entity is the material that shapes the universes, in which the universes exist, in which takes place the so-called creation of universes.
It is a designer of such unsurpassed intelligence that the full brunt of human reasoning makes nary a dent in the knowing of it.
In declaring that God has no place in the creation of the Universe, Hawking goes a step further than that great scientist Albert Einstein who also did not believe in the Judeo Christian religious concept of God creating the universe, or anything that sits on high passing judgement on mankind. Yet Einstein believed in a power that governed the workings of the universe. Einstein’s quote is below:
• I believe in Spinoza's God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.
o In response the telegrammed question of New York's Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein in (24 April 1929): "Do you believe in God? Stop. Answer paid 50 words." Einstein replied in only 25 (German) words. Spinoza's ideas of God are often characterized as being pantheistic.
o Expanding on this he later wrote: "I can understand your aversion to the use of the term 'religion' to describe an emotional and psychological attitude which shows itself most clearly in Spinoza... I have not found a better expression than 'religious' for the trust in the rational nature of reality that is, at least to a certain extent, accessible to human reason."
As quoted in Einstein : Science and Religion by Arnold V. Lesikar
Einstein posited a governing power that ‘did not play dice with the cosmos’. To him God was the underlying order of the universe, something that is demonstrated ably in the Vedantic philosophies of Hinduism. And Einstein trusted in the rational nature of this reality.
Spinoza equated God (infinite substance) with Nature, consistent with Einstein's belief in an impersonal deity. (See notes below on what Spinoza thought of God)
Hawking, on the other hand, seeks to isolate the universe into a thing of spontaneity, where things happen because some elements or aspect come together, governed by laws of science. There is no design as such, just the universe coming together haphazardly and blurting out new substances according to ‘scientific’ rules of engagement.
Hawking makes the mistake of taking ‘God’ at face value of the religions, if any, he has ‘studied’. Here is a man blinkered by his intellect to the extent he is unable to see an alternative. He believes the universe is governed by the laws of science, clearly forgetting the so-called science is an evolving thing and laws keep changing.
Findings in quantum mechanics in recent times show a different view of the universe than what classical physics has been offering us for the past 150 years.
In their quest of a theory for everything, science has been going through theory after theory to explain the universe: string theory, brane theory and quantum foam theory being some of the takes on how the universe works.
While these problems remain unsolved, even with giant strides in quantum mechanics/physics:
Is there a preferred interpretation of quantum mechanics? How does the quantum description of reality, which includes elements such as the "superposition of states" and "wavefunction collapse", give rise to the reality we perceive?(Wikipedia)
But not for Vedanta. The jnana yoga aspect of Hinduism has been mulling the question of the universe, the reality of it, and the part we play in it since time immemorial. The answers found in this yoga has been accepted as supreme even by some Western scientists.
The universe originally is a singularity, a point: as depicted in the bindu of the Om . While science is debating the wave function collapse, Hindu seers have been accepting it as a fact, on a very large scale. The universe expands out of the singularity and then collapses back into it periodically. The time frames here are massive but this function can also be seen in its minute form when a wave function is reduced to a single point after interaction with an observer.
What we see at quantum level is a replication of how the universe works (according to Vedanta) in which all the possibilities of an event is encompassed into a singularity upon observation.
The universe operates, according to Vedanta, a like the obverse and reverse (head and tail) of a coin, the flip of which decided whether the Absolute Entity is in action or in abeyance. Comes the flip when the Absolute Entity is at rest and the active element of the Absolute Entity, what Hindus call Maya, comes into play. Maya has two aspects: first of veiling the Absolute and then superimposing something ethereal onto it. This veiling projection is the universe as we see it.
Thus starts the day of Brahma, a colossal 4 plus billion years in which Maya manifests as the tangible and expanding universe. The collapse of this, the laya, results in everything enfolding on itself as the night of Brahma starts.
This time span is told of in our shastras as a night and day of Brahma, equating to some 8.6 billion years in total. And science says the universe started about 4.3 billion years ago, which makes it a day of Brahma?
The reality that quantum mechanics is striving towards is explained by Vendanta as the mind and senses working together to ‘make sense of the superimposition that shrouds the Absolute Entity. As Swami Vivekananda pointed out, if humans had a sixth sense - maybe an electrical sense - they would see the world totally differently from what we perceive it with our present five senses and the analysis of the sense perceptions by the brain.
The concept of the universe as a hologram, rather than a substantial thing of matter, does a better job of explaining the universe than many of the scientific theories around.
‘This superimposition of states’ equates to the lokas that even we as Hindus have trouble getting our heads around. The Brane theory talks of dimensions and the Hindu loka is a dimension that actually exists within another dimension.
This Absolute Entity is known by many names and yet is unknowable. For Maya shrouds its reality and only through understanding Maya can one know of this Entity. All of the forms and names associated with ‘knowledge’ that we know stops short and within this field of Maya.
This sublime thought that everything is God comes the ‘fact’ that the material of the universe is the Supreme Entity in its active mode. This is what Hawking should have looked at in understanding God before he made his statement.
Spinoza’s God
For Spinoza, our universe (cosmos) is a mode under two attributes of Thought and Extension. God has infinitely many other attributes which are not present in our world. According to German philosopher Karl Jaspers, when Spinoza wrote "Deus sive Natura" (God or Nature) Spinoza meant God was Natura naturans not Natura naturata, and Jaspers believed that Spinoza, in his philosophical system, did not mean to say that God and Nature are interchangeable terms, but rather that God's transcendence was attested by his infinitely many attributes, and that two attributes known by humans, namely Thought and Extension, signified God's immanence.
Even God under the attributes of thought and extension cannot be identified strictly with our world. That world is of course "divisible"; it has parts. But Spinoza insists that "no attribute of a substance can be truly conceived from which it follows that the substance can be divided" (Which means that one cannot conceive an attribute in a way that leads to division of substance), and that "a substance which is absolutely infinite is indivisible" (Ethics, Part I, Propositions 12 and 13). Following this logic, our world should be considered as a mode under two attributes of thought and extension. Therefore the pantheist formula "One and All" would apply to Spinoza only if the "One" preserves its transcendence and the "All" were not interpreted as the totality of finite things.
What I like about Hinduism
What sets Hinduism apart is its all-encompassing nature: there is every kind of name for God and verily every kind of form of God. Everything is God.
Hindus don’t joke when they say they have something like 33 million Gods. That is like a God for every person in small country of 33 million, like Uganda.
And our practices are catholic. Catholic here means: broad or wide-ranging in tastes, interests, or the like; having sympathies with all; broad-minded; liberal; universal in extent; involving all; of interest to all; universal; relating to all men; all-inclusive.
And because of this, Hinduism does have its mystifying habits, practices and forms. This is largely due to the millennia we have spent looking at the idea of God and contended on how we are to work towards understanding our relationship with this entity. This search for the proper approach to God has seen seekers throughout the ages put forward any and every way of realising God.
In allowing millions of seekers to have had their say on God for over 20,000 years does have an effect on our understanding of the nature of God. Apart from the seers, there have been so many realised souls that no-one actually knows how many there have been. Hinduism is virtually sprouting with realisations of God. Some of the realisations are generic and work across the board. Some don’t.
The most common one is the efficacy of the name of God. There is a potency associated with the name of God, a potency verified and accepted by the ranks and file of Hinduism. For almost all Hindus, the name of God is a mantra in itself. And it can be any one of the millions of name for God. There are also many sayings on this adage: God’s name is more powerful than God himself/herself/itself. The most common of this is “Raam se bada Raam ka naam” (the name of Rama is more potent than Rama himself).
Hindus continually add to their ever-growing pool of names for God. We even have special bhajans (religious songs) called naam sankirtan in which the various names of God are interlaced together to invoke the power of the deity.
The most basic form of worship, in fact, is the chanting of God’s name, not in vain but with a desired purpose behind it. Kids are named after gods, just another way of recalling God when the name is called by anybody. It may seem like a dying trend nowadays but naming children after God is still prevalent in India and among orthodox Hindus all over the world.
The name of God is sacred, yes, but also ubiquitous. It infiltrates every aspect of a Hindu’s life, or should. Hindus find, or nowadays try to find, every opportunity to take God’s name. This includes the basic greetings like Ram Ram, Sita Ram, Hari Om, Om, etc. It is like a worship in progress.
Then there is praying. We pray in temples, out of temples, in shrines, on the roadside, on the road itself, anywhere and everywhere. It does not matter where one prays, God is everywhere, we say. We see God in rocks, in trees, in the waterways, in the very wind itself.
And prayers can be in any format, including not having a format. You can have formalised prayer session through an intermediary (namely a priest or a sadhu), a congregational prayer session with peers, an individual session or a cry from the heart. In most cases we just get down to it and pray, and hope it is heard.
We also don’t have any problem (well, some of us don’t) in praying to gods of other religions. You want us to pray to Jesus? – no problem. To Buddha? to Allah? no problem. They are but just names of the One.
We can take any religion in this world and find a complementary and corresponding element in Hinduism. The Buddhist element is very well represented in the monastic (sanyasi) traditions and in the raaj yoga traditions. The love for Jesus/God that Christians have is shown in our bhakti movements. The formless Allah equates to the formless Brahman of the Vedantic tradition. For Hindus, at least. Others may have a different and maybe even a violent reaction to such assumptions.
Even the atheist can feel at home in Hinduism. Generally, atheism is valid in Hinduism, but the path of the atheist is viewed as very difficult to follow in matters of spirituality (Wikipedia).
The Indian Nobel Prize-winner Amartya Sen in an interview with Pranab Bardhan for the California Magazine published in the July-August 2006 edition by the University of California, Berkeley states:
In some ways people had got used to the idea that India was spiritual and religion-oriented. That gave a leg up to the religious interpretation of India, despite the fact that Sanskrit had a larger atheistic literature than what exists in any other classical language. Madhava Acharya, the remarkable 14th century philosopher, wrote this rather great book called Sarvadarshansamgraha, which discussed all the religious schools of thought within the Hindu structure. The first chapter is "Atheism" - a very strong presentation of the argument in favour of atheism and materialism. (Wikipedia).
The word Sarvadharshansamgraha means the compendium of every type of path towards God, and every path is considered valid. A path is made valid not only by its practitioner but is made valid through acceptance by practitioners of other paths, who must (and the emphasis is on must) respect the path of every other practitioner.
This, in effect, makes Hinduism a religion that is very much misunderstood and, sometimes, much maligned. This is largely due to the fact that Hinduism has it all: the sublime, the ridiculous and the profane and they can be found together and mostly in harmony with each other in almost all levels of any belief system. All of these levels, by the way, are to be considered valid.
Sublime aspects of Hinduism: the highest philosophies of science, arts and cosmology is available to us. Hinduism guides us to the highest levels of logic, reasoning and intellectual powers by its processes. Only by using the thinking process can one actually think beyond the process. This is a task of such magnitude that few indeed have accomplished it. Hinduism does this daringly by asking one to remove oneself from the equation when considering the equation.
Ridiculous aspects of Hinduism: some of practices and philosophies are ‘easily disproved’, some even considered childish, especially by outsiders. These are the perplexing stories of the Gods; their families; their apparently ‘human’ weaknesses; the forms of some God (the most lovable being Ganesha, the most respected probably Hanuman); the materialistic elements (offerings and worship for a better job, children, money, etc); the superstitions and the downright contrary (some Tantrik paths which have anti-conventional practices). But all are valid at some level of development, however foolish they may appear to outsiders.
Profane aspects of Hinduism: Hinduism also has its ‘left hand’ path, also considered valid. Aghora elements of incorporating sex, meat-eating, intoxication and other ‘undesirable’ elements are recognised as valid, even if they are looked down upon by the majority. These practices are generally judged for what they deliver to their practitioners and not how they fit in our understanding of what is the right way to worship God. Most Hindus cannot fault the reasoning behind Aghora practices though they may not agree with the actual practice itself: If everything is created by God, then everything that exists must be perfect, and to deny the perfection of anything would be to deny the sacredness of all life in its full manifestation, as well as deny God/Goddess and the demiGods' perfection. (Wikipedia)
Why is this all possible in Hinduism?
It is simply because the endgame in Hinduism is this: You are God. You may not know it, or know of it, or are unwilling to accept it but you are God.
It is very hard to bring to mind any religion that makes such bold statements with such force. The mahavakayas are given below:
Sanskrit: English:
1. Brahma satyam jagath mithya
Brahman is real; the world is unreal (though mithya is more a mixture of real and unreal rather than just unreal)
2. Ekam evadvitiyam Brahma
Brahman is one, without a second/i.e. without conditioning
3. Prajnanam Brahman
Brahman is the supreme/absolute knowledge
4. Tat Tvam Asi
That is what you are, That thou Art (also interpreted sometimes as you are the base (tat))
5. Ayam Atma Brahma
Atman and brahman are the same
6. Aham Brahmasmi
I am Brahman (the Absolute)
7. Sarvam Khalvidam Brahma
All of this is (verily) Brahman
These are statements of power, to be assimilated and then owned by those using it as mantras. Here you are urged to believe that you are God, and by believing, to become God.
For many this will border on blasphemy, yet for the Hindu it is a fact. Hinduism posits a heaven but only as an interim measure where your good deeds pay some dividends for some time. Its hell is purgatory – a time of removing the dross of materialism and wickedness from you, and not an eternal pit of fire. You have to come back to mrityu loka (Earth known by its name ‘the world of the dead’) again from heaven or hell to continue on your bid to understand and accept that you are God.
Hindus call this yoga (yoking) with God moksha (liberation), and it equates to Nirvana. It is this yoga with God that we strive for through our numerous lives in all our incarnations. Some are closer to it, others bringing up the rear.
It is also known as Samadhi (equanimity, or equal mindedness).At the first level Samadhi makes you like God (Savikalpa Samadhi) and at a the highest level you become God (Nirvikalpa Samadhi).
This moksha or Samadhi is a realization of the self's identity with the Absolute or Brahman. It is not becoming God as depicted in the cultural art of India – of ending up looking like Vishnu or Shiva or Ganesha. It is finding the true ‘form’ of God, or, as it is said, the ‘form’ of the formless God (Nirakaar roopa). It does get a bit ambiguous here: how do you realise the form of the formless? It is a journey one has to take to understand it for what it really is.
The journey begins with the realisation of the duality of life, that every element of life is made of a thing and its opposite. Day must have night, good must have bad, up must have down for one or the other to operate. Then it is a matter of making this duality disappear into the awareness of the One. It becomes a matter of realising that everything is but sat chit ananda: being (reality), awareness (consciousness ) and bliss (pure joy).
It is a journey few choose to take. For it also means death: the death of the ego, the little self, the duality of existence. Your existence is wiped out in the yoga with God. The individual personality is dissolved, made redundant, dies because the little self cannot endure the power and the force of the big Self (Atman).
As stated above, to realise the duality of the universe, one has to divorce oneself from that pervasive duality to understand it properly. This is called taking yourself out of the equation to understand the equation.
And on top of it all, the whole caboodle above puts the Hindu in a unique self-effacing position (he has to work towards becoming God but without treading on anyone else’s toes for they are also God). He has to accept that every other path to God is valid, that any other name or form of God is as valid as his own. What he does with his name and form of God is his business. What others do with their names and forms of God is their business.
Being a Hindu is a solo act, then. An act of personal effort through a self-defined path to a personal goal. For all alone a Hindu has to forge out a form of God, and name it. He then makes a lonely and personal effort to accept it by worshipping it. Finally, he makes the final leap, all alone, in becoming it. All else is of little matter.
Notes
Please note that He/he is generically used here because of convenience. In no way it is insinuated that only men can tread the path to God. Women, it is said, are better equipped to tread the spiritual path because of their innate nature comprising of stoic forbearance, compassion and maternal instincts.
In ancient India, the women enjoyed equal status with men in all fields of life, this status only deteriorating in medieval times.
Hinduism is replete with great names of women like Gargi, Maitreyi, Aditi, Indrani, Savitri, Andal and Meera and the recently by women of such status as Shantala Devi, the beautiful queen of Vishnuvardhana, Ahalyabai Holkar, the Rani of Indore, [1735-1795], Ananda MoyiMa [1896-1982], and the Holy Mother, Sarada Devi.
Hindus don’t joke when they say they have something like 33 million Gods. That is like a God for every person in small country of 33 million, like Uganda.
And our practices are catholic. Catholic here means: broad or wide-ranging in tastes, interests, or the like; having sympathies with all; broad-minded; liberal; universal in extent; involving all; of interest to all; universal; relating to all men; all-inclusive.
And because of this, Hinduism does have its mystifying habits, practices and forms. This is largely due to the millennia we have spent looking at the idea of God and contended on how we are to work towards understanding our relationship with this entity. This search for the proper approach to God has seen seekers throughout the ages put forward any and every way of realising God.
In allowing millions of seekers to have had their say on God for over 20,000 years does have an effect on our understanding of the nature of God. Apart from the seers, there have been so many realised souls that no-one actually knows how many there have been. Hinduism is virtually sprouting with realisations of God. Some of the realisations are generic and work across the board. Some don’t.
The most common one is the efficacy of the name of God. There is a potency associated with the name of God, a potency verified and accepted by the ranks and file of Hinduism. For almost all Hindus, the name of God is a mantra in itself. And it can be any one of the millions of name for God. There are also many sayings on this adage: God’s name is more powerful than God himself/herself/itself. The most common of this is “Raam se bada Raam ka naam” (the name of Rama is more potent than Rama himself).
Hindus continually add to their ever-growing pool of names for God. We even have special bhajans (religious songs) called naam sankirtan in which the various names of God are interlaced together to invoke the power of the deity.
The most basic form of worship, in fact, is the chanting of God’s name, not in vain but with a desired purpose behind it. Kids are named after gods, just another way of recalling God when the name is called by anybody. It may seem like a dying trend nowadays but naming children after God is still prevalent in India and among orthodox Hindus all over the world.
The name of God is sacred, yes, but also ubiquitous. It infiltrates every aspect of a Hindu’s life, or should. Hindus find, or nowadays try to find, every opportunity to take God’s name. This includes the basic greetings like Ram Ram, Sita Ram, Hari Om, Om, etc. It is like a worship in progress.
Then there is praying. We pray in temples, out of temples, in shrines, on the roadside, on the road itself, anywhere and everywhere. It does not matter where one prays, God is everywhere, we say. We see God in rocks, in trees, in the waterways, in the very wind itself.
And prayers can be in any format, including not having a format. You can have formalised prayer session through an intermediary (namely a priest or a sadhu), a congregational prayer session with peers, an individual session or a cry from the heart. In most cases we just get down to it and pray, and hope it is heard.
We also don’t have any problem (well, some of us don’t) in praying to gods of other religions. You want us to pray to Jesus? – no problem. To Buddha? to Allah? no problem. They are but just names of the One.
We can take any religion in this world and find a complementary and corresponding element in Hinduism. The Buddhist element is very well represented in the monastic (sanyasi) traditions and in the raaj yoga traditions. The love for Jesus/God that Christians have is shown in our bhakti movements. The formless Allah equates to the formless Brahman of the Vedantic tradition. For Hindus, at least. Others may have a different and maybe even a violent reaction to such assumptions.
Even the atheist can feel at home in Hinduism. Generally, atheism is valid in Hinduism, but the path of the atheist is viewed as very difficult to follow in matters of spirituality (Wikipedia).
The Indian Nobel Prize-winner Amartya Sen in an interview with Pranab Bardhan for the California Magazine published in the July-August 2006 edition by the University of California, Berkeley states:
In some ways people had got used to the idea that India was spiritual and religion-oriented. That gave a leg up to the religious interpretation of India, despite the fact that Sanskrit had a larger atheistic literature than what exists in any other classical language. Madhava Acharya, the remarkable 14th century philosopher, wrote this rather great book called Sarvadarshansamgraha, which discussed all the religious schools of thought within the Hindu structure. The first chapter is "Atheism" - a very strong presentation of the argument in favour of atheism and materialism. (Wikipedia).
The word Sarvadharshansamgraha means the compendium of every type of path towards God, and every path is considered valid. A path is made valid not only by its practitioner but is made valid through acceptance by practitioners of other paths, who must (and the emphasis is on must) respect the path of every other practitioner.
This, in effect, makes Hinduism a religion that is very much misunderstood and, sometimes, much maligned. This is largely due to the fact that Hinduism has it all: the sublime, the ridiculous and the profane and they can be found together and mostly in harmony with each other in almost all levels of any belief system. All of these levels, by the way, are to be considered valid.
Sublime aspects of Hinduism: the highest philosophies of science, arts and cosmology is available to us. Hinduism guides us to the highest levels of logic, reasoning and intellectual powers by its processes. Only by using the thinking process can one actually think beyond the process. This is a task of such magnitude that few indeed have accomplished it. Hinduism does this daringly by asking one to remove oneself from the equation when considering the equation.
Ridiculous aspects of Hinduism: some of practices and philosophies are ‘easily disproved’, some even considered childish, especially by outsiders. These are the perplexing stories of the Gods; their families; their apparently ‘human’ weaknesses; the forms of some God (the most lovable being Ganesha, the most respected probably Hanuman); the materialistic elements (offerings and worship for a better job, children, money, etc); the superstitions and the downright contrary (some Tantrik paths which have anti-conventional practices). But all are valid at some level of development, however foolish they may appear to outsiders.
Profane aspects of Hinduism: Hinduism also has its ‘left hand’ path, also considered valid. Aghora elements of incorporating sex, meat-eating, intoxication and other ‘undesirable’ elements are recognised as valid, even if they are looked down upon by the majority. These practices are generally judged for what they deliver to their practitioners and not how they fit in our understanding of what is the right way to worship God. Most Hindus cannot fault the reasoning behind Aghora practices though they may not agree with the actual practice itself: If everything is created by God, then everything that exists must be perfect, and to deny the perfection of anything would be to deny the sacredness of all life in its full manifestation, as well as deny God/Goddess and the demiGods' perfection. (Wikipedia)
Why is this all possible in Hinduism?
It is simply because the endgame in Hinduism is this: You are God. You may not know it, or know of it, or are unwilling to accept it but you are God.
It is very hard to bring to mind any religion that makes such bold statements with such force. The mahavakayas are given below:
Sanskrit: English:
1. Brahma satyam jagath mithya
Brahman is real; the world is unreal (though mithya is more a mixture of real and unreal rather than just unreal)
2. Ekam evadvitiyam Brahma
Brahman is one, without a second/i.e. without conditioning
3. Prajnanam Brahman
Brahman is the supreme/absolute knowledge
4. Tat Tvam Asi
That is what you are, That thou Art (also interpreted sometimes as you are the base (tat))
5. Ayam Atma Brahma
Atman and brahman are the same
6. Aham Brahmasmi
I am Brahman (the Absolute)
7. Sarvam Khalvidam Brahma
All of this is (verily) Brahman
These are statements of power, to be assimilated and then owned by those using it as mantras. Here you are urged to believe that you are God, and by believing, to become God.
For many this will border on blasphemy, yet for the Hindu it is a fact. Hinduism posits a heaven but only as an interim measure where your good deeds pay some dividends for some time. Its hell is purgatory – a time of removing the dross of materialism and wickedness from you, and not an eternal pit of fire. You have to come back to mrityu loka (Earth known by its name ‘the world of the dead’) again from heaven or hell to continue on your bid to understand and accept that you are God.
Hindus call this yoga (yoking) with God moksha (liberation), and it equates to Nirvana. It is this yoga with God that we strive for through our numerous lives in all our incarnations. Some are closer to it, others bringing up the rear.
It is also known as Samadhi (equanimity, or equal mindedness).At the first level Samadhi makes you like God (Savikalpa Samadhi) and at a the highest level you become God (Nirvikalpa Samadhi).
This moksha or Samadhi is a realization of the self's identity with the Absolute or Brahman. It is not becoming God as depicted in the cultural art of India – of ending up looking like Vishnu or Shiva or Ganesha. It is finding the true ‘form’ of God, or, as it is said, the ‘form’ of the formless God (Nirakaar roopa). It does get a bit ambiguous here: how do you realise the form of the formless? It is a journey one has to take to understand it for what it really is.
The journey begins with the realisation of the duality of life, that every element of life is made of a thing and its opposite. Day must have night, good must have bad, up must have down for one or the other to operate. Then it is a matter of making this duality disappear into the awareness of the One. It becomes a matter of realising that everything is but sat chit ananda: being (reality), awareness (consciousness ) and bliss (pure joy).
It is a journey few choose to take. For it also means death: the death of the ego, the little self, the duality of existence. Your existence is wiped out in the yoga with God. The individual personality is dissolved, made redundant, dies because the little self cannot endure the power and the force of the big Self (Atman).
As stated above, to realise the duality of the universe, one has to divorce oneself from that pervasive duality to understand it properly. This is called taking yourself out of the equation to understand the equation.
And on top of it all, the whole caboodle above puts the Hindu in a unique self-effacing position (he has to work towards becoming God but without treading on anyone else’s toes for they are also God). He has to accept that every other path to God is valid, that any other name or form of God is as valid as his own. What he does with his name and form of God is his business. What others do with their names and forms of God is their business.
Being a Hindu is a solo act, then. An act of personal effort through a self-defined path to a personal goal. For all alone a Hindu has to forge out a form of God, and name it. He then makes a lonely and personal effort to accept it by worshipping it. Finally, he makes the final leap, all alone, in becoming it. All else is of little matter.
Notes
Please note that He/he is generically used here because of convenience. In no way it is insinuated that only men can tread the path to God. Women, it is said, are better equipped to tread the spiritual path because of their innate nature comprising of stoic forbearance, compassion and maternal instincts.
In ancient India, the women enjoyed equal status with men in all fields of life, this status only deteriorating in medieval times.
Hinduism is replete with great names of women like Gargi, Maitreyi, Aditi, Indrani, Savitri, Andal and Meera and the recently by women of such status as Shantala Devi, the beautiful queen of Vishnuvardhana, Ahalyabai Holkar, the Rani of Indore, [1735-1795], Ananda MoyiMa [1896-1982], and the Holy Mother, Sarada Devi.
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