The Holy Men of India
realization.org
realization.org
1. 1000+ years of invasions and occupations which deliberately mispotrayed indic philosophy, still has its effect.
2. Earlier academicians took a reductionist view or outright dismissal due to incorrect translation of literature and lack of cultural understanding. The translations were also incorrect as they were retrofitted into then familiar philosophies, religions and terms.
Probably, same argument can be applied to many other ancient cultures too but I think over time native or non-native academicians took genuine interest and brought out the the best. For India, unfortunately, everything got entangled with politics post-independence, including philosophy. Indians themselves either have next to no knowledge of it's philosophical treasures (barring few sayings and quotes) or take very negative view of it's past contributions since that's what they have largely read. The end result is that now traditionalists are very apprehensive of any scrutiny or change as they feel more and more cornered. On the hand, modernists are even more vocally abusive of past, as with flooded with all sort of information (like the one from OP) general audience has started questioning their stance as well. I hope, eventually people will get to see the depth of Indian philosophies and with that start seeing religious text as high philosophies and its "holy-men" as philosophers (what they really are and as Jung sees) and not as godmen who craft miracles and wishes.
His organisation Isha has 2 ashrams, one in Missippi, US and a bigger one in Coimbatore, India.
Seems to have quite the following as well as is evident by some of the discussions from diverse[1] set of people
Ref: https://youtu.be/6C1p4HUHlfE?t=105 (1:45 mark)
What I am doing - starting with Upanishads (aka Vedanta, literally the end part of Vedas, where you get the gist), there are 10 major ones which come with commentary by Adi Shankaracharya. Remaining are not minor in the sense of importance, just that you get to them once you grasp the major ones first as they come without the authoritative commentary. They are overall philosophical in nature.
Next come the Puranas. Again there are about 8-10 of these. These contain most of the stories or the 'mythology' which we heard in our childhood and read in the books.
There are many more but I guess I'll start here and see where it takes me.
Next come the Puranas. Again there are about 8-10 of these. These contain most of the stories or the 'mythology' which we heard in our childhood and read in the books.
Could you please point to the resources and translations you are using?
Otherwise if you can read Hindi and manage to find physical or electronic versions, would recommend Gita Press versions. English ones often come with a multitude of pronunciation symbols (due to the limits of English) which unaccustomed readers may find a bit irritating.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajneesh
Read the part about the number of Rolls Royces of the "holy" man.
Are there no traditionalists, do we still need to depend on a white man to get our own philosophy?
Just evaluate arguments independently of one's color. I am not saying that whatever Pollock says is true; instead, I am bringing in a specific point, for which Pollock adduces evidence.
I am not picking on the English, all empires do really rotten stuff. I can’t think of one exception.
The Indian subcontinent was broken into many small countries engaged in constant battles with each other. Do you mean that?
The Hephthalite invasions came around 3rd, 4th and 5th century A.D. The Rashidun and Umayad (Islamic campaigns) came around late 600 A.D.
I am not going to talk about the Indo-Greeks, the Indo-Scythians and other invasions, but they happened way before.
I don't really see how that's relevant. It doesn't matter where the Bhakti movement started, only that it bolstered the Vedantic school's ideas.
> The Hephthalite invasions came around 3rd, 4th and 5th century A.D.
These only really impacted the Punjab region, while the intellectual centers across the Gangetic Plain remained more or less stable as far as I know.
> The Rashidun and Umayad (Islamic campaigns) came around late 600 A.D.
Again, these only really impacted the Sindh and Punjab regions and widespread Islamic conquest only started in the 1200s with the Ghaznavids.
> I am not going to talk about the Indo-Greeks, the Indo-Scythians and other invasions, but they happened way before.
The Indo-Greeks and Scythians arguably had a positive impact on Indian philosophy, pretty much never destroying items with cultural value. They made major contributions to Buddhism and played a significant role in its spread across Asia.
(b) Bhakti movement did not emerge in the south India. In fact, it is a product of North India in response to Islam. Prof. Jack Hawley made the case for its being North Indian product in his 2015 book.
(c) Prof. SN Balagangadhara in a talk provides another evidence: Bhagavadgita itself notes that gyaana maarga (the research tradition) died out even before the gita time. Upanishads and Brahma sutras were product of this group of researchers (or gyaana maarga).
In fact it was spontaneous:
> July 1896, at age 16, he had a sudden fear of death. He was struck by "a flash of excitement" or "heat", like some avesam, a "current" or "force" that seemed to possess him, while his body became rigid. He initiated a process of self-enquiry, asking himself, "what it is that dies?" He concluded the body dies, but this "current" or "force" remains alive, and recognized this "current" or "force" as his Self, which he later identified with "the personal God, or Iswara".
> In one of his rare written comments on this process Ramana Maharshi wrote, "inquiring within Who is the seer? I saw the seer disappear leaving That alone which stands forever. No thought arose to say I saw. How then could the thought arise to say I did not see."
> Later in life, he called his death experience akrama mukti, "sudden liberation", as opposed to the krama mukti, "gradual liberation"
~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramana_Maharshi
Ramana Maharshi taught the simple, direct method of enlightenment.
FWIW I recently found this manual for "The Most Rapid and Direct Means to Eternal Bliss"
Self-Enquiry is like a ROP exploit for hacking consciousness.
Can someone explain why I should want "enlightenment"?
For example, I'd rather study mathematics than meditate or seek enlightenment. I'm not sure why I should spend time pursing that over other things I enjoy.
As to why others choose to seek the said "enlightenment" varies from person to person. Sometimes its hard to find meaning in your everyday life and you get stuck in existential angst and it is not easy to go on. There one find comfort in seeking the answers and meaning through western or eastern philosophies , through meditation, through religion, through community or whatever fits well to their sense of the world.
As the Easter Indic philosophy points out that the optimal and yet hardest path to "enlightenment" is not in abandonment of your responsibilites and an ascetic way of life but in the "middle" i.e. where you do your duty towards others in your everyday life while being aware of the the highest moral standards and doing your best to adhere to them (reflection of Stoicism here). I would assume this is something you believe you are already doing so cheers to that!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippasus#Irrational_numbers
Jacobs, B. J. (2020). Getting off the Wheel: A Conceptual History of the New Age Concept of Enlightenment. Numen, 67(4), 373-401.
Similarly among humans, some live lives not that different from a frog, when they reach the limit they may pursue progress - wealth, education or fame. Some like yourself who value knowledge for the sake of it like mathematics or physics pursue that.
However, there are people who either reach the limitation of knowledge and logic. For some this longing comes naturally at a young age, and for others when they have lived through much of their lives and others when they meet extraordinary people or experiences.
You do not need it, it is not a race. The self or aathman takes a new identity/body in the next cycle of life.
Plenty of people live rewarding lives without any explicit quest.
Plenty of people accidentally live in alignment with what is often understood to be the ground of Being, and in this alignment, avoid causing unnecessary suffering.
I'm just going to spitball, as this exercise feels useful for me to clarify my own thoughts:
One beautiful thing is that the truths pointed to by what is called enlightenment provide clues as to why the work of Godel, Turing, and Wittgenstein all seem to point to inherent limitations in conceptual frameworks.
One "benefit" is that it dissolves intractable epistemic problems.
It dissolves the problem of morality and ethics, without devolving to nihilism or depending on some particular ideological framework. It provides a basis for Being which goes beyond ideology.
Actions to take around questions of justice and equality become much more obvious (from a personal POV)
I offer this lightly: the questions raised by the possibility of enlightenment are at the foundation of all existence, and in a sense of sub-specie aeternitatis, it is of little use to understand facts about the World without a sound metaphysical basis.
Enlightenment reveals the ways in which one's beliefs are limiting. Through particular conceptual lenses, many things seem like unqualified goods. Yet, wisdom reveals that any such position is inherently limited.
The concepts of good and evil dissolve.
Compassion is awakened.
The enlightened one brings an end to the cycles of unconscious suffering in the world that they inadvertently cause through their mistaken beliefs.
"For the fact is, I doubt his uniqueness; he is of a type which always was and will be. Therefore it was not necessary to seek him out. I saw him all over India, in the pictures of Ramakrishna, in Ramakrishna’s disciples, in Buddhist monks, in innumerable other figures of the daily Indian scene, and the words of his wisdom are the sous-entendu of India’s spiritual life. Shri Ramana is, in a sense, a hominum homo, a true “son of man” of the Indian earth. He is “genuine,” and on top of that he is a “phenomenon” which, seen through European eyes, has claims to uniqueness. But in India he is merely the whitest spot on a white surface..."
The article is guilty of the same fault it attributes to others - namely looking at Indian philosophy and its theory of self from a Western lens and missing the vast majority of literature.
In the Buddhist system, they first start by dismantling the idea of a fixed unchanging self by various. This is accomplished in progressively sophisticated arguments - self is just an aggregation of parts, to self is just that which functions to self is a transient changing phenomenon we construct on a moment-by-moment basis.
Then there are extremely sophisticated divisions of the function of the (so-called) mind. See Plato (https://stanford.io/2UFYPZW) for a comphrensive overview and this one for good readable (https://evanthompsondotme.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/indian...) intro.
There are many schools of thought in ancient India like the Carvaka, who were rational/materialist, which no longer exist. Then there are traditions like Mahanyana and Theravada Buddhism that were destroyed after the Islamic conquest from 1100~1400 AD. No survey is complete without considering these traditions.
However, they are voluminous, in order to be adapted to the level of development of every seeker.
As a person rises in the scale he finds the stages already attained to be only stepping stones to higher stages, until finally the goal is reached. When that happens, the goal alone remains and everything else, including the scriptures, become useless.
The intricate maze of philosophy of the various schools is said to clarify matters and to reveal the Truth, but in fact it creates confusion where none need exist. To understand anything there must be the Self. The Self is obvious, so why not remain as the Self? What need to explain the non-self?
Why prove that the self is a delusion and it does not exist. First lets try a simple example of refutation of the self - I am putting a car together part by part, first the chassis, then the engine block, then the tires. At each point I turn to ask you "is it a car yet". You say no but at some point, you say "its a car now". The notion of "this is a car now" is created in your mind the moment the last part was added. The last part by itself does not contain "car" any more than other parts. Similarly, we can explain the notion of self. It is an illusion formed in the mind. Once we understand that it does not exist but is simply a collection of physical and mental phenomena - we have reached no-self.
Why bother with this? The realization of no-self creates the space to understand that we can be anything because we lack a fixed nature (self).
Of course, this leads to many apparent contradictions. Why should the present me bother to help the future me if the self is illusory and changing (i.e. not fixed) ;)
"why should..."
all these... also thoughts...
questions like these... undecidable...
* thoughts are the words of your language in your mind.
* The ego is thought.
* The ego is the I-thought.
* "I am happy", "I am sad", "I did this", "I did that". There are so many sentences that are thought of with the word I in them. That thought "I" in each of those sentences is the ego.
* The root of thought is the I thought.
* Disconnected the I-thought from the external sense objects to which it attaches, and all other thoughts will fall away.
* Follow the I-thought to its source.
* To turn the attention that normally goes out to the world around 180 degrees and to look inward, towards awareness watching awareness.
* Disconnected from external sense objects, the I-thought becomes unstable and retreats to the source and disappears.
* What remains is the Self!
what are his books if not non-dual pointings?
Carl Jung had very strange inner life. He could create hallucinatory beings to talk and interact with, while still fully understanding that they were inside his mind. Very atypical mind. Interesting person to read about and influenced western thinking about psychology.
As a scientist and psychologist he gave new ideas, not better scientific understanding. Probably because his unique psyche. His ideas are too much influenced by what is to be Carl Jung.
Ramana Maharshi was another atypical person, probably had some neurologically interesting going on in his mind. As a young boy he could sleep so deep that his friends could drag him outside and beat him without waking him up.
One Buddhist teacher described Maharshi as the most realized person he ever met, but his method of teaching was not as good as what other meditation practices can achieve. He gave some rudimentary instructions, but if you are not a worshipper type there was no reason to stick around him. Mostly people just gathered around to worship and hear him talk.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Tulpas/
edit: I'm browsing that place again and am still not sure what to make of it. It's.. weird. (The link was not a recommendation to try btw, just have a look.)
The feel like that because they look as simple thoughts.
But those simple thoughts are enough to attain realization of the self, according to hindu philosophy.
However, they are not suited for the normal layman, because realization through Ramana Maharshis teachings involves a certain level of knowledge and thought.
I highly encourage you to read "Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi" by his disciple.
In those talks, maharshi breaks down how the elaborate hindu cultural and vedic literature ultimately boils down to utter simplicity.
Buddhist teacher was someone who had meditated and studied decades. He recognized Maharshis was very realized. His point was that Maharshis was not able to teach more than that was in his talks in personal contact.
Well known fact in these circles is that medicore person who has struggled his whole life can teach his way to other in personal contact much better than someone who is just amazing.
Also had a Hindu guru (and many other religions) phase in my mid 20s. I loved Vivekananda, but Maharshi was the most impressive. I read the Gospel of Ramana Maharshi again 20 years later..and 90%+ of it still seemed true, because he mostly taught from his direct experience, not what he'd heard or read in books. What he knew to be true.
More immediately accessible for westerners might be Gangaji, an American woman, who has videos (some on youtube) and books out, who is in Maharshi's lineage, and has that same quality of speaking from direct experience. She's great.
Also I got a lot from Ram Dass's books and tapes. Yes, the guy who was a Harvard psychology professor until he had LSD. Super-articulate and I love his attitude, full of love and joy.
People often confuse Indian philosophy with Hinduism. That's usually not the case. The western equivalents would be Neo-Platonism and Stoicism, which have little to do with Greek Paganism or Christianity. It seems cultures all across the world come up with similar ideas.
People should be vary of fraudsters and cults. There are plenty of holy men who run a shady business and use magic tricks to deceive others for personal benefit.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grDKdmUcGig [Documentary Holy Men and Fools]
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcPuRaSEq1I [James Randi]
I also remember watching documentaries about Osho and Bikram yoga on Netflix, which highlight spiritual narcissism.