| Chapter 14 |
India, Spiritual Leader of the World |
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Has Western civilisation reached the end of the road ? Each culture has its own uniqueness: the Greeks were great thinkers, the Indians unsurpassed spiritualists, the Egyptians superb occultists. The West's genius is undoubtedly materialism, its immense capacity to achieve material perfection and its great vitality. But materialism has its shortcomings and ultimately, because it blanked out spirituality, except in a superficial and ritual manner, it may bring in the decline of Western civilisation. The first signs of its weaknesses are already there for everyone to see: the collapse of communism, the erosion of capitalism with recession and unemployment and the raging wars in Yugoslavia and the ex-USSR republics; these wars are bound to spill-over in mainstream Europe, even if it is in an indirect manner by an influx of refugees. That the United States still survives as a superpower, should not deceive anybody: often the core is weakened, even if the giant stills carries on with a few steps before collapsing to the ground. History does not happen in a few years. Materialism is doomed. "For my part, wrote Sri Aurobindo in 1910, I see failure written large over all the splendid and ostentatious achievements of Europe. Her costliest experiments, her greatest expenditure of intellectual and moral force have led to the swiftest exhaustion of creative activity, the complete bankruptcy of moral elevation and discouragement of man's once infinite hope...System, organisation, machinery, have attained their perfection. Bondage has been carried to its highest expression, and from a passion to organising external liberty Europe is slaying her spiritual freedom. When the inner freedom is gone, the external liberty will follow it, and a social tyranny more terrible, more inquisitorial, and relentless than any that caste ever organised in India, will take its place. The process has already begun. The shell of external liberty remains, the core is already eaten away. Because he is still free to gratify his senses and enjoy himself, the European thinks himself free. He does not know what teeth are gnawing in to the heart of his liberty"! (India's Reb P. 75) The other reason for the failing civilisation of the West, is that it greatly misused the mastery it had achieved over technology and the material. Instead of putting this mastery to the service of truth, instead of turning it towards the spirit of evolution, it used it for domination and the satisfaction of the Western man's senses. What about Asia then ? In Japan, only codified, externalised forms of the past greatness of Shintoism and Zen Buddhism survive, although it must be said that Japan preserves in its women something of the old spirit. It is hoped that its success as the most powerful industrial nation today will not totally blank whatever remains of old inner genius of Japan (minus the cruelty). But look at China: communism has killed most forms of Buddhism and Confucianism, making of the Chinese one of the most materialistic nations in the world. And behold what the Chinese did to Tibet, eradicating a 2000 year old tradition of tantric Buddhism in a few decades. This is a karma which China will have to repay one day... And what of India? During these twelve chapters, the reader has been taken through all the dangers, threats, aggressions, pitfalls, perils, mistakes, that the land of Bharata went through in the aftermath of the glorious Vedic epoch. From the disdaining of Matter and the physical by her yogis, which triggered the great Tamas; the stiffening of the caste system; the fossilisation of its society; and the first foreign incursion by Alexander. To the successive Muslim invasions, which would have wiped out any culture, any civilisation in 10 centuries of furious onslaughts. Yet India's spirituality survived, it was preserved by its people in their hearts, when their temples were destroyed, in their flesh when it was burnt, in their souls, when they were killed. And they were reborn again and again, to fight for the continuation of true Hinduism. India also survived the immense threat of European colonialism, which has annihilated the souls of so many countries, some more powerful than India. The British came, conquered... understood nothing... left nothing... and India's spirituality remained. It survived the cruel partition of its ancient land, tearing its limbs into Pakistan and Bangladesh; any other nation might never have recovered from such a maiming. It survived the road to socialism charted by Nehru, the stifling oppression of state bureaucracy and corruption. It survived the dangerous politics of non violence, which Mahatma Gandhi propounded for so long and which activated not only the division of India along Hindu-Muslim lines, but also sowed the seeds of inter-caste fighting. It survived the Mahatma's sterile policies of Charkha, Brahmacharya and Khadi. It survived the Chinese onslaught in 1962. It survives today the Hindu-bashing of its westernised elite, which is all set to wipe out whatever is left of Hinduism, to replace it with prototypes that have already shown the world over their total failure. It is also hoped that it is going to survive economic liberalisation, the onslaught of modernity and the egotism of becoming a powerful nation. And finally that it will also survive the ecological holocaust that is taking place in this country. And if it survives all these dangers, as it survived other dangers for 7000 years, then India will enter the 21st century not only as a world power, industrially, socially and militarily, but also as the only nation in the world where true spirituality will still be alive. For we have lost the truth. we have lost the great sense, the meaning of our evolution, the meaning of why so much suffering, why dying, why getting born, why this earth, who are we, what is the soul, what is reincarnation, where is the ultimate truth about the world, the universe... But India has kept this truth. India has preserved it through seven millennium of pitfalls, of genocides and attempts at killing her santanam dharma. And this will be India's gift to this planet during the next century: to restore to the world its true sense. to recharge humanity with the real meaning and spirit of life. India will become the spiritual leader of the world : "It is this religion that I am raising-up before the world, it is this that I have perfected and developed through the Rishis, saints, and Avatars, and now it is going forth to do my work among the nations. I am raising forth this nation to send forth my word...When therefore it is said that India shall rise, it is the Santana Dharma that shall rise, it is the Santana Dharma that shall be great. When it is said that India shall expand and extend herself, it is the Santana Dharma that shall expand and extend itself over the world. It is for the Dharma and by the Dharma that India exists". (India's Reb. p. 46 -Uttara speech) Rise up, O India of the Vedic ages. Thou livest in the hearts of all thy people. Rise up O Westernised "secular" India, because thou art also the true India. Realise in your hearts the genius of the country which is yours. Stop comparing it to a civilisation, which is crumbling and cease equating it with parameters that are not hers. Wake up to the greatness of thy country. Not only the past greatness, which thou seekest to repossess in its music or in its temples, but the greatness that IS, there, waiting to be grasped again, waiting to be brought down concretely. Rise up O India, to the greatness that IS in you. Rise up O true India. Ah, we are coming back again full circle to the wonder that WAS India, the India of the Vedas and the Upanishad, which our dear friend A.L. Basham criticised as being militant and politically disunited. But the truth was that they were united in their diversity, that it was much more democratic and allowed much more freeplay and freedom, individually and collectively, than the India of today allows. Let us again reread history, let us look at India, not through the Western prism, but with the ancient wisdom that She has bestowed upon us. For indeed, this is one of the most amazing paradoxes of today's world: here you have a country, India, which rates today as one of the poorest on this planet, which is disregarded by most Western nations (and many of its own people), as irrelevant, backward, too bureaucratic - and lately, as a hotbed of Hindu fundamentalism. Yet, India holds the key to the world's future. For India is the only nation which still preserves in the darkness of Her Himalayan caves, on the luminous ghats of Benares, in the hearts of her countless yogis, or even in the minds of her ordinary folk, the key to the planetary evolution, its future and its hope. This knowledge which once roamed the shores of the world from Egypt to China, is today lost everywhere. Europe has now entered a turbulent Age; it will take a long time before it unites in spite of the near uniformity of its races and religions. The West, in its thirst for materialism, does not know anymore where it stands and has lost this precious knowledge, which India still holds, alone in the world. The 21st century then, will be the era of the East; this is where the sun is going to rise again, after centuries of decadence and submission to Western colonialism; this is where the focus of the world is going to shift. And as when India used to shine and send forth Her Dharma all over the Orient: Japan, Thailand, China, Burma, or Cambodia and influence their civilisations and religions for centuries to come, once more She will emit Her light and radiate, Queen among nations: "India of the ages is not dead nor has She spoken Her last creative word; She lives and has still something to do for Herself and the human peoples. And that which She must seek now to awake, is not an anglicised oriental people, docile pupil of the West and doomed to repeat the cycle of the Occident's success and failure, but still the ancient immemorial Shakti recovering Her deepest self, lifting Her head higher towards the supreme source of light and strength and turning to discover the complete meaning and vaster form of Her Dharma. (Sri Aurobindo) But what will be that true India? A) THE TRUE INDIA WITHIN The political problems which India has faced since Independence are either intense regionalist cravings in her different states; or covert - and sometimes open separatisms. This is due to a too strong centralised and heavy-handed Government at the Centre, who not only wants to know everything, control everything, but whose bureaucracy is so pervasive, so omnipresent everywhere, that it stifles all attempts at trying something new, fresh, out of the old patterns. Today, nothing is decided without the Prime Minister, no major decision such as the naming of a Congress Chief Minister, is made except by him, the result of which is that everything comes to a standstill, because nobody dares to take any initiative and everyone always refers to one's immediate superior and so on till it reaches the top. The Prime Minister also often holds too many portfolios; and one wonders how he has time to rule the country. This old Congress policy of centralising everything in its hands has to go. One has to trust the Indian people, their courage and spirit of initiative. It may be because of this constant heavy-hand since independence, that so many separatisms have sprung-up. Let Punjab manage its own affairs alone, it is truly the granary of this country and it deserves the right to utilise the funds it generates for the welfare of its own people. Let Tamil Nadu give a free rein to its Dravidian culture; why should Delhi decide that Hindi be the language spoken in Tamil Nadu? And the Congress' opportunistic alliances with regional parties in Tamil Nadu, once the DMK, next the ADMK, does not make sense; it just breeds small dictators who exploit the people's natural gentleness and their tendency to worship. Let Assam assert its own traditions, even if it looks like drifting away from India. The key to India's oneness is DIVERSITY and the unifying element is found in its ancient Hindu culture -'Indu'- culture which has influence so much all Indians, be they Hindu, Christians, or even Muslims, witness Bangladesh and Pakistan who have women heads of state. India's Dharma is not Hinduism, it is the knowledge preserved throughout the ages of a Higher plane than surface life, of states of being which superimpose our ordinary mind and lead like a pyramid, towards the highest Reality, Sat-Chit, Truth- Existence. In the words of Sri Aurobindo: "A wider spiritual culture must recognise that the Spirit is not only the highest and inmost thing, but all is manifestation and creation of the Spirit. Its aim must be not only to raise to inaccessible heights a few elect, but to draw all man and all life and the whole human being upward, to spiritual life and in the end to deify human nature". (India's Rebirth). But you have to give breathing spaces to the vast mosaic which is India. Let Indian Muslims rule their own communities, as long as they recognise India's sovereignty and keep within the framework of the Constitution. Let the Christians worship in peace in their cathedrals, so long as they do not try to go on converting more Hindus. Once again let us listen to the wisdom of Sri Aurobindo: "India, shut into a separate existence by the Himalayas and the ocean, has always been the home of a peculiar people with characteristics of its own, with its own distinct civilisation, way of life, way of the spirit, a separate culture, arts, building of society. it has absorbed all that has entered into it, put upon all the Indian stamp, welded the most diverse elements into its fundamental unity. but it has also been throughout, a congeries of diverse people, lands, kingdoms and in earlier times republics also, diverse races, sub-nations, with a marked character of their own, developing different brands or forms of civilisation and culture...India's history throughout has been marked by a tendency, a constant effort to unite all this diversity of elements into a single political whole under a central imperial rule, so that India might be politically as well as culturally one... the ancient diversities of the country carried in them great advantages as well as drawbacks. by these differences the country was made the home of many living and pulsating centres of life, culture, a richly and brilliantly coloured diversity in unity; all was not drawn up into a few provincial capitals, or an imperial metropolis, other towns and regions remaining subordinated and indistinct or even culturally asleep. the whole nation lived with a full life in its many parts and this increased enormously the creative energy of the whole. there is no possibility any longer that this diversity will endanger or diminish the unity of India. those vast spaces which kept her people from closeness and a full interplay have been abolished in their separating effect by the march of science and the swiftness of the means of communication. the idea of a federation and a complete machinery for its perfect working have been discovered and will be at full work. above all, the spirit of patriotic unity has been too firmly established in the people to be easily effaced or diminished and it would be more endangered by refusing to allow the natural play of life of the sub-nations than by satisfying their natural aspirations... India's national life will then be founded on her natural strength and the principle of unity in diversity which has always been normal to her and its fulfilment the fundamental course of her being and its very nature the many in one would place her on the sure foundation of her swabhava and swadharma...a union of states and regional people would again be the form of a united India" (India's reb. p. 240-241) B) THE TRUE INDIA WITHOUT But for this purpose, a new Constitution has to be rewritten. We have said it again and again through these chapters: India has blindly borrowed her Constitution and her democratic institutions from the West. Nehru did not bother to adapt them to India's own particular needs, to the immense diversity of her people, who have shown throughout the ages that they are bound to India by something else, than mere petty nationalism. India's civilisation is at least 7000 years old and should have a Constitution framed after her own history. Not only that, but the whole democratic system of India has to be reshaped to suit that new, that true nation, which will manifest the wonder that IS India. And what is true democracy for India, but the law of Dharma. It is this law that has to be revived, it is this law that must be the foundation of a true democratic India: "It has been said that democracy is based on the rights of man; it has been replied that it should rather take its stand on the duties of man; but both rights and duties are European ideas. Dharma is the Indian conception in which rights and duties lose the artificial antagonism created by a view of the world which makes selfishness the root of action and regain their deep and eternal unity. Dharma is the basis of democracy which Asia must recognise, for in this lies the distinction between the soul of Asia and the soul of Europe." (India's Reb p.37- March 16th 1908) And the most wonderful thing is that, practically, we have in India the seed of a new form of democracy. One should begin with the old Panchayat system in the villages and then work up to the top. The Panchayat system and the guilds are more representative and they have a living contact with the people; they are part of the people's ideas. On the contrary, the parliamentary system with local bodies- the municipal councils- is not workable: these councils have no living contacts with the people. " We had a spontaneous and a free growth of communities developing on their own lines...Each such communal form of life -the village, the town, etc., which formed the unit of national life, was left free in its own internal management. The central authority never interfered with it... because its function was not so much to legislate as to harmonise and see that everything was going all right... (India's Rebirth 172) The Judiciary would have to be revised also. It would be absurd to put back the Manu law into practice; but certainly the law of Dharma, of Truth, should be translated into a new Judicial system. Not to judge according to Western standards, its secular values, which have no relevance to India. " The work of the legislators attempted to take up the ordinary life of man and of the community and the life of human desire and aim and interest and ordered rule and custom and to interpret and formulate it in the same complete and decisive manner and at the same time to throw the whole in to an ordered relation to the ruling ideas of the national culture and frame and perpetuate a social system and perpetuate a social system intelligently fashioned so as to provide a basis, a structure, a gradation by which there could be a secure evolution of the life from the vita and mental, to the spiritual motive.. " (Found of Indian Culture p. 283) There is another problem which India has faced since independence, which is that of a unified language. The Central Government has tried to impose Hindi upon the rest the country, which is typical of the arrogance of too centralised a power. Why should they seek to impose on the whole of India a language which is spoken neither in the East, nor in the West, nor in the South ? But then, what could be the unifying language of India, bare English, which is spoken only by a tiny minority, as it has no roots here? The answer is here, so simple and luminous: "Sanskrit ought still to have a future as the language of the learned and it will not be a good day for India when the ancient tongues cease entirely to be written or spoken", admonishes Sri Aurobindo (India's Reb 113). Yes, Sanskrit! Sanskrit the Mother of all tongues, one of the richest languages in the world. A dead language, you say! Impossible to revive? But that's what they argued about Hebrew. And did not the Jewish people, when they got back their land in 1948, revive their "dead" language, so that it is spoken today by ALL Jewish people and has become alive again?... The same thing ought to be done with Sanskrit, but as Sri Aurobindo points out: "it must get rid of the curse of the heavy pedantic style contracted by it in its decline, with the lumbering impossible compounds and the overweight of hair-splitting erudition". Let the scholars begin now to revive and modernise the Sanskrit language, it would be a sure sign of the dawning of the Renaissance of India. In a few years it should be taught as the second language in schools throughout the country, with the regional language as the first and English as the third. Then will India again have its own unifying language. Education of course has to be totally revamped. The kind of Westernised education which is standard in India, does have its place, because India wants to be on par with the rest of the world, and Indian youth should be able to deal confidently with the West: do business, talk, and relate to a universal world culture. But nevertheless, the first thing that Indian children should be taught is the greatness of their own culture. They should learn to revere the Vedas, they should be taught the greatness of the Mahabharata and the Ramanayana; they should be told that in this country everything has been done, that it was an unsurpassed civilisation, when the West was still mumbling its first words, that Indian civilisation reached dizzying heights, which have been since unsurpassed. But overall they should be taught early that India's greatness is her spirituality her world-wide wisdom. INDIA'S NEW EDUCATION HAS TO BE SPIRITUALISED IT HAS TO BE AN INNER EDUCATION WHICH TEACHES TO LOOK AT THINGS FROM THE INNER PRISM, NOT THROUGH THE WESTERN ARTIFICIAL LOOKING GLASS. India's Dharma, her eternal quest for truth should be drilled in the child from an early age. And from this firm base, everything then can be taught -from the most modern forms of mathematics, to the latest technologies. "National education...may be described as the education which starting with the past and making full use of the present, builds up a great nation. Whoever wishes to cut of the nation from its past, is no friend of our national growth. Whoever fails to take advantage of the present, is losing us the battle of life. We must therefore save for India all that she has stored up of knowledge, character and noble thoughts in her immemorial past. We must acquire for her the best knowledge that Europe can give her and assimilate it to her own peculiar type of national temperament. We must introduce the best methods of teaching humanity has developed, whether modern or ancient. And all these we must harmonise into a system which will be impregnated with the spirit of self-reliance, so as to build up men and not machines". (India's Reb 36) It should also be made clear that Indian history will have to be rewritten. Certainly if not only the Jews, but also the whole world is constantly drilled into the history of the holocaust, so as to remember and not repeat the same mistakes, definitely Indian children should be taught about the rape of their country by successive Muslim invaders and the incredible harm done to India. They should know the truth about Aurangzeb, Babar and Mahmud of Ghazni, instead of the present semi-glorifying of the great Mughal culture and period. They should not be taught to hate of their fellow Muslims in India, but to only know them in their real historical perspective. The Independence story should be also rewritten and true nationalists given their right place. The Congress should be granted its just share of the movement, but not sanctified as it is now. All Marxist denigration of India should also be banned from the books. Indian students should be taught to look at the world through the Indian prism and see historical events, such as the rape of the Third World by Spanish conquistadors or the colonising and impoverishment of Africa, in their factual colours. Another symbol of the emergence of a new India will be the universal acceptance of Vande Mataram as the national anthem. In 1939, a disciple had said to Sri Aurobindo that: "there are some people who object to the singing of Vande Mataram as a national song; Sri Aurobindo had replied: "in that case Hindus should give up their culture". But the disciple had continued: "the argument is that the song speaks of Hindu gods, like Durga and that it is offensive to Muslims". Said Sri Aurobindo: "but it is not a religious song, it is a national song and the Durga spoken of is India as the Mother. Why should not the Muslims accept it? In the Indian concept of nationality, the Hindu view should be naturally there. if it cannot find a place, the Hindus may as well be asked to give-up their culture. The Hindus don't object to "Allah-Ho-Akbar". On a national level, there should be a revival of authentic Indian traditional forms of genius, such as ancient medical systems, like Ayurveda, or Siddha, instead of the total dependence on Western antibiotics and their terrible proliferation. Today, these alleopathic medecines are found even in India's remotest villages, making people dependant on harmful drugs which are expensive and only serve to enrich the big foreign multinationals. It takes a Deepak Chopra, an Indian doctor exiled in the United States, to remind the world that Ayurveda is one of the greatest medical systems ever devised; that 5000 years ago, when the rest of the planet lived in total medical ignorance, Indian doctors were already performing plastic surgery, knew that the origin of many diseases were psychosomatic, had found in Mother nature the cure for most of man's ailments and realised that the five natural elements have to be made balanced in the human body for a perfect harmonious life. Not only that, but Indian doctors were also yogis. They perceived that beyond the human body was another divine reality, of which the soul was the vehicle on earth. Today, Western doctors (and many Indian ones) are totally ignorant of the different planes of consciousness which superimpose our terrestrial life. Hence these doctors and the psychiatrists of the West are, as Sri Aurobindo pointed out, " searching with a torch light in the dark caverns of man's Unconscious ". India is also full of marvellous indigenous arts which are ignored by the officialdom, but actually are at the source of many of the world's wonders. Such is Kerala's kalaripayat, the most extraordinary martial art on this earth, not only because it is the ancestor of all great Asian martial arts, such as judo or karate, because it was taken by Buddhist monks and the famous Boddidharma (founder of Zen Buddhism) to China and Japan, but also because it is the only martial art in the world which regroups all kinds of fighting techniques under one umbrella: sword, knife, spears, bare handed techniques, flexible swords. It is also a great medical knowledge, its masters are yogis and practise a unique form of massage. Unfortunately it is dying because India ignores that she possesses such a wonderful art. And what about Indian yogic sciences ? Pranayama for instance is the most exacting, precise, mathematical, powerful breathing discipline one can dream of. Its effects and results have been observed and categorised by Indian yogis for millenniums. This extraordinary knowledge, brings in very quickly wonderful results in both the well being of the body and the quietude of the mind. Pushed to its extreme, it gives to the disciple deep spiritual experiences and a true inner perception of the world. And what about Hata-yoga, also a 5000 year old technique, which has inspired today all kind of aerobic, of so-called yoga techniques and gymnastic drills around the world ? Practised properly it brings health, strength and endurance to the body. It is the secret of Indian Yogis' incredible longevity. It may be too, a help to a once and future immortality. And like in Pranayama, its exercises, results and particularities are so well categorised that there is a solution for each problem of the human body, an application for each part of the human anatomy. And what about meditation, queen of all the yogic sciences ? That which is above everything, that without which any yogic discipline is impossible. That which interiorizes us, carries us within ourselves, to the discovery of our true soul and nature. There are hundreds of different mediation techniques, simple, cartesian, easy to experience, which have been devised by Indian sages since the dawn of Bharat. Each one has its own characteristics, each one gives particular results, which has been experienced by the billions of aspirants who have practised them since the dawn of Vedic times. But are all these yogic sciences dead, disappeared from India, gone for ever from the earth consciousness ? Not at all. India is full of ashrams, of yogis, of masters, who are still keeping alive all those wonderful sciences. From the tip of cape Comorin to Kashmir, you cannot go to a place in this country without finding some spiritual place, some sadhu practising a particular tapasaya, some course in meditation for householders. You have just to step out of the big cities, its five star hotels, its mad traffic, its hurried businessmen with their ties and briefcases and enter India's country side, and you step again in India's immortal Dharma, you can still feel the line of continuity of 7000 years of sages. This is the Wonder that IS India. And what do you think would happen if these ancient arts still alive in India were officially recognised by the Indian Government, by Indian themselves and UTILISED in every day life. What do you think would happen for instance if pranayama was systematically taught to sportsmen from the beginning of their training ? It would produce supermen; it would be difficult to beat Indian athletes, because through this marvellous technique they would have achieved perfect concentration. What would happen if Indian businessmen used too Pranayama ? It would double their capacity of work and endow them with enthusiasm for their task. Or if school children were taught at a very early age the combined techniques of pranayama, hata-yoga, meditation and Ayurveda ? It would maybe produce the next human species of our era, a race which is spiritualised in both mind and body. Unfortunately, for the moment, not only the Indian government does not recognise the Wonder that Was India, but it constantly denigrates these great techniques which are part of India's heritage; the Christian and Muslim minorities reject them outright as part of the Hindu culture. And also modern Indians, whether businessmen, intellectuals, or bureaucrats, disdain this golden treasure of India. But fortunately for the planetary evolution, India's yogis, gurus, teachers are going all around the world to spread this wonderful knowledge. Some are genuine ones, some are semi-fakes, some are total fakes. But it does not matter, because almost all of them carry abroad the message of yoga. Among these messengers of truth, one could mention the remarkable Vipassana mediation technique of Shri Goenka, which has centres all around the world. Or the prayanama, courses of the Art Of Living of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, which is fast spreading around the world. Or Krishna Iyengars' wonderful hata-yoga techniques. All these yogis are propagating India's eternal dharma around the world slowly but surely and thanks to them, there are more and more people in the West who are interested in Indian sciences (*), who practise pranayama, hata-yoga, or meditation. It maybe even that India will have to realise its Wonder when the West will point its finger at it, as happened in a lesser way in Japan with its martial art techniques, Zen Buddhism, rock gardens and Bonzai art, when America took hold of them. Let us hope though, that the true India will emerge soon. For the India of tomorrow, the spiritual leader of the world, Mother India, Durga: " is not a piece of earth; she is a Power, a Godhead, for all nations have such a Devi supporting this separate existence and keeping it in being..." (Sri Aurobindo, India's Rebirth, p. 235) "Mother Durga ! Rider on the lion, giver of all strength, we are seated in thy temple. Listen, O Mother, descend upon earth, make thyself manifest in this land of India"... (*) The West often labels as " sects ", whatever spiritual movements they cannot understand and which do not belong to the family of Christianity. This hostility to everything which has a Hindu flavour, stems both from an ignorance of what exists beyond the small reality of their own culture and religion and from an unconscious asuric antagonism to what they dimly perceive as a threat to their secure, walled-up world of certitudes. The best example of this phenomenon is the assault on Rajneesh by the West, (which was also unfortunately taken-up by Indian intellectuals and " secularists "), a man who, whichever were his faults and the excesses of his followers, was an exceptional human being. Europe always treats Indian spiritual movements such as Hare Krishna, (again whatever its excesses and negative sides) or the Transcendental Meditation of Shri Maharishi, as sectarian, non-Cartesian movements. But India should receive no lessons in cartesianism from a people who believe that Christ was born of a virgin, that he was resurrected from the dead and then ascended to heaven... |
To continue with Chapter 15.... |
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Introduction Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 |