This is something that I have noticed quite often these days: we Indians love to keep our backs bent. There are cornerside "temples" that spring up everywhere in Bombay, since every street corner is home to some devi or the other. Everyone who claims to know something even remotely mystical immediately gets a huge following. We need no reason to follow, we believe that everyone who claims that he is a mystic must be one. Travel to the banks of the Ganges and you will come across thousands of sadhus (holy people) who all claim to know everything. Even in a fairly educated city like Bombay there are tons of faith healers, fortune tellers, roadside sadhus. Every Indian family has some sort of family sadhu, much like their family doctor. Do the names Satya Sai Baba, Sri Sri Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Gorakh baba, sound familiar? Look around at your house: if you have a picture of a non-ancestral human decked in flowers: that's your family sadhu. (Ancestors are usually decked in flowers and for good reason: they worked quite hard to get us where we are. I might not worship them but I have a great amount of respect for them, and their hard work.)
When will we grow a respectable degree of skepticism? Following anyone with a beard and a saffron cloth makes us supremely gullible. It is not just the Hindu charlatans that I loath. On reading The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa In Theory And Practice, by Christopher Hitchens , I was amazed at how little I knew about the woman. I have heard countless school and college kids say that Mother Teresa is their role model. It is amazing how a little PR can turn a person into a saint.
Ultimately it costs us dearly: pointless trips to view holy people from far away, to be given the honor of sweeping their estates, pointless hours wasted in listening to charlatans talk of how they could recite the Gita when they were two years old, and of course, large amounts of money handed over to these crooks.
Considering that I am doing research into a fairly narrow field, I could think of a hundred questions to ask to a person who claims to know everything. The questions themselves are immaterial since even understanding the question would take quite some knowledge which I know these crooks don't have. And answering them would take wisdom which they surely lack. But that is not important: what is important is to have the skepticism to say, "I will not believe you are a wise man till you prove it to me."
Holding someone at the same level as God is a fairly large move. Don't you think the person needs to pass some sort of tests? If you cannot trust this person with all your money, your children (and especially your daughters, this is India after all!), your spouse, then perhaps you shouldn't be worshipping them.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
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7 comments:
Tch... Tch...
My dear, dont trust don't trust any of these whom you call "charlatans", You want proof is it ? it is the silence within you, your own experience. You then have the right to even comment anything about your "charlatans".
Tommorrow if I start talking and making judgements about particle physics with my partial knowledge calling it quack knowledge...how foolish would that be...isn't it ?
Dear, you just have to experience something beautiful in you to talk anything about Spirituality. Information will only take you a forward a little, half-baked information backwards, but your experience itself will be your proof.
Then you will simply respect everybody naturally without the immaturity of the mind :)
While particle physics or any modern sciences are knowledge of the object, Spirituality is the knowledge of the Subject. What is the difficulty in that?
If you need to measure one centimeter using a scale, you cannot ignore the knowledge of using the scale, can you?
If after a certain amount of education and realisation in modern sciences we start calling people PhD or Dr. so and so then so is the case with the Sri Sri Sri Sri...
Your effort at waking the people of India is worth applauding and India certainly needs more people like you. However beware of the pitfalls of being young and enthusiastic. If a car beside you at a red light doesn't move even after the light turns green you would probably think that the other person is seeing something that you are not seeing. You just don't jump out of the there only to find that there is some speeding drunk driver out to hit someone and it happens to be you!
If all the modern scientists of the world agreed with you then it was something else but it is not true. You will find a significant number of elite scientists pursuing the Spiritual paths also. You are a learned person and have some credibility in the world due to which people can and will follow your thoughts also. But be sure that you are not leading them in harms way just like the people who follow you on the traffic light and become party to the accident.
The ultimate measuring instrument is you yourself. Till the time you don't find an absolute answer to the question "Who Am I?" you won't have complete knowledge of the Subject and hence all your observation in particle physics also would be seriously flawed. It is only due to mental conditioning that you see some fancy university building as a true abode of science and not some simple ashram in the woods.
If you want to study yourself you don't need big apparatus; you only need youself! Hence the simplicity (beard! :) ) of the scientists of the Subject and their universities!
Anyways. Goodluck in your foray for the Ultimate Truth!
Jeetendra
Yes truely today bombay is in hand of baba's and pseudo guru's, each one claiming of being a Lord Ram or shirdi's sai baba. U can even find ads in newspapers of baba's claiming of being "all india king" and having solution to every problem and that nobody can destroy there work. Regular customers r politicains, business men and even highly educated persons.
My personal experience is that these baba's r using hypnotism, black magic, psycology and fooling people. All of them have strong backing of hindu chauvinist politicians mainly
BJP, Shiv Sena who r making hurdles in making a law to ban them.
Hi Vikram,
You might just want to read this. Also I guess t would help in deepen your roots quiet a bit by delving a bit deeper into the vast repository of knowledge that the Indian sub-continent has given to the world over the ages.
http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=155216
The previous poster pointed to the article by Sri Sri Sri... I've copied it here in case it is take off.
-- article begins here --
Science of spirituality: Experience first and then believe
Science, spirituality and self have often triggered several debates, but thrown up few conclusions. Discover for yourself
SRI SRI RAVI SHANKAR
Posted online: Sunday, February 18, 2007 at 0149 hours IST
Send Feedback E-mail this story Print this story
Science and spirituality are two sides of the same coin. Science relies on the questions—how, what, why? Spirituality, on the other had, is wonder. Simply put, “Just wow”! Deepening the mystery of creation is science and deepening the mystery of the Self is spirituality. Every scientific discovery leads to the realm of spirituality. If neither science nor spirituality can create wonder and devotion in you, then you ought to be in deep slumber.
In this part of the world, there has never been a conflict between science and spirituality. Unlike in the West, not even a single scientist was prosecuted. In the Occidental way of thinking, belief comes first, and then experience follows. The Oriental philosophy and science have the same parameter. They both say experience first, and then believe.
You have the knowledge first, and then the faith follows. For example, the knowledge that pesticides and chemical fertilisers are good for plants came through science and people developed faith in it and all over the world, people started using them. Then the knowledge that they are not healthy came, and the faith shifted to organic farming. Knowledge brings faith and when knowledge changes, faith also shifts.
Science and spirituality are like two ways of looking at the creation. Science regards life as matter and spirituality regards matter as life. Spirituality elevates matter to the level of life, level of divinity and adds a sense of honour. While science brings us material and physical comfort, spirituality gives comfort to our souls. Science cultivates logic and spirituality develops intuition, another faculty of enquiry. Ancient rishis recognised this interplay between science and spirituality and said true fulfilment in life can come only through gyana (spirituality) and vigyana (science).
There is a saying in the Upanishads that reads “padarth, gyanaat, moksha”. It means that if one understands even one particle in the creation thoroughly, he or she will be liberated. One doesn’t even need to believe in God’s existence. Ancient rishis knew that the entire creation is reflected in each particle as consciousness. Today scientists are saying the same thing. The DNA of all the creatures can be created from one human DNA chain. It’s further said that whatever is there in the universe is present in the body of human existence.
The entire creation is one organism— there is life in every particle of this universe. Divinity, one consciousness, permeates the entire creation. God is present in every single atom of this planet and universe.
This establishes that science and spirituality are two ways of looking at the same truth—the objective and the subjective. Through spirituality, India knew from ages that the Earth and other planets are moving round the Sun. Ages before Galileo discovered that the earth is round, India had the concept of the Earth being spherical.
Here, the earth was always considered spherical. Likewise, even 15,000 years ago, people knew that Jupiter has got 12 moons. From the times of Vedic age itself, people understood the arrangement of the sun and the planets in the solar system. So India was never ignorant about science; instead it was very advanced from ancient time.
Science is the systematic understanding of what this is. Spirituality is systematic understanding of who am I. We are all made up of spirit and matter. The body is made up of amino acids, proteins, minerals, etc. The spirit is made up of beauty, love, joy, enthusiasm and comfort, all that values that enhance life.
These values come only through spirit and as we live the values of the spirit, life attains its richest form. Without them, life becomes very shallow and we are dependent and unhappy. The spiritual dimension of life in the truest form promotes scientific temper. It smashes the narrow boundaries of caste, creed, religion and nationality and gives one a broader awareness of life present everywhere.
When the mind relaxes, the intellect becomes sharp. When the mind is loaded with small things such as ambition, feverishness and desire, then the intellect loses its keenness. And when intellect and observation are not sharp, life does not express itself fully. Ideas don’t flow properly and abilities diminish. The possibilities of scientific enquiry get clouded.
To nurture the spirit of scientific enquiry, it is very important for us to probe into the source of thought. Often we are called great thinkers, but what is a thought? Where does it originate? Is there any way that we can improve the thought process? What are the mechanics to make people creative?
Thought is nothing but an impulse of energy and intelligence. That impulse of energy and intelligence, for it to arise and a correct thought to come, you need 16 impulses to meet at a point in the cerebral cortex at the speed of 10 to the power of minus 30 cycles per second. In that short interval of time, all the 16 impulses in the cerebral cortex, when they meet, is what we call a correct thought. What do we do about it? We need to train our brain, our mind. And that’s the purpose of spiritual practices.
Spiritual life enhances imagination, which is the basis of many scientific discoveries. When an imagination comes up, the person will not think whether it is real or not. What appears to be unreal and a pure imagination can bring creativity. Thomas Edison, once upon a time, dreamt of how to create light. It was purely an imagination. Many inventions trace its roots in the realm of imagination and through linking that imagination to the ground reality.
If you are thinking only of the ground reality, then no creativity can emerge. Also, if you base yourself purely on imagination. A balance between your intellect and your heart is ineeded desirable. Listening to your heart is spirituality and developing that sharp and intuitive intellect is science.
People may say that spiritualism begins where science ends, but I do not agree with that. Science and spirituality are not separate, they go together. And there can be no dispute about it after the theory of relativity which proved the interconnection between matter and energy. Life is like a tree. Its branches and leaves are science and the roots are spirituality. A scientific spirituality and a spiritual scientist is the need of the day.
—Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is the founder of the Art of Living Foundation and the International Association for Human Values
I just had an interesting experience with a hindu guru in UK. I blogged it here
http://kaetiekalfou.eponym.com/blog/_archives/2007/5/24/2972963.html
You are welcome
Vikram,
Great one, your observation is cool. We Indians need these sadhus and saints and preachers because we all live with fear.
We are scared of our own insanity, we are greedy. We need more and more money, happiness and luxuries of life.
In the oath of these sadhus and babas we feel secure, we think preaching them or giving them money will be make us free from our sins.
Other factor is age old traditions and culture. We never think beyond them. Whatever our ancestors did was always right and correct, and we must continue to follow them.
We also see educated class in the followers of Shri Shri Ravi Shankar or Satya Sai Baba becuase this class has somewhere failed to understand their purpose, illusion that education will bring all the success and happiness is broken now.
In Spiderman 2, Peter's aunty told him, "We all need heros in life, heros we can look forward to, who can inspire us and give us inner strength to move on with all the odds of life." With deep rooted religious culture, these saints and baba tend to become our easiest choice of heros.
Thx & Rgds,
Ken
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