Hindu Scriptures Quotes

We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.

The dog is a loyal, lovable animal but Hindu scriptures do not treat it as an auspicious creature perhaps because loyalty feeds on fear and the purpose of Vedic scriptures is to outgrow fear by expanding the mind.

Krishna taught in the Bhadavad Gita: ‘karmanyeva-adhikaraste ma phalesu kadachana’, which means, ‘Be active, never be inactive, and don’t react to the outcome of the work.

Even amongst fierce flames/ The golden lotus can be planted.

Trinity’s witnesses responded just as those to Apollo 11 would, as J. Robert Oppenheimer remembered: "We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent." Oppenheimer later said the he beheld his radiant blooming cloud and thought of Hindu scripture: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." Aloud, however, the physicist made the ultimate engineer comment: "It worked.

A saying from the Hindu scriptures is: “In shallow men the fish of little thoughts cause much commotion. In oceanic minds the whales of inspiration make hardly a ruffle.

According to Vedic scriptures, God does not ‘create’ this world. He simply made all creatures aware of it. Awareness leads to discovery. Discovery is creation.

Christ is God’s Infinite Intelligence that is present in all creation. The Infinite Christ is the “only begotten son” of God the Father, the only pure Reflection of Spirit in the created realm. That Universal Intelligence, the Kutastha Chaitanya or Krishna Consciousness of the Hindu scriptures, was fully manifested in the incarnation of Jesus, Krishna, and other divine ones; and it can be manifested also in your consciousness.

A saying from the Hindu scriptures is: “In shallow men the fish of little thoughts cause much commotion. In oceanic minds the whales of inspiration make hardly a ruffle.” Because

Arjuna quotes old scriptures to support his conclusions and his “I’. Krishna had to say Geeta to dissolve his “I” so that he could just be an instrument. Now people quote Geeta to support their conclusions and their “I”.

In the Hindu scripture, in the Bhagavad Gita, it says ‘Man is a creature whose substance is faith. What his faith is, he is.

As we discard a limited mind and a life of limitation to step into the grandness of vastness, we realize infinity itself to be the Guru and all that we do as grace. As we traverse through consciousness that is the Guru, we become the Guru and each thought of ours is perfect in the now, as scriptures. Consciousness is the Guru, the wisdom.

forgiveness always heals; it does not matter whether you are Hindu, Buddhist, Catholic or Jewish. Forgiveness is one of the patterns that is always true, it is part of The Story. There is no specifically Catholic way to feed the hungry or to steward the earth.

The Self is one, the same in every creature. This is not some peculiar tenet of the Hindu scriptures; it is the testimony of everyone who has undergone these experiments in the depths of consciousness and followed them through to the end. Here is Ruysbroeck, a great mystic of medieval Europe; every word is most carefully chosen: The image of God is found essentially and personally in all mankind. Each possesses it whole, entire and undivided, and all together not more than one alone. In this way we are all one, intimately united in our eternal image, which is the image of God and the source in us of all our life. Maya In the unitive experience, every trace of separateness disappears; life is a seamless whole. But the body cannot remain in this state for long. After a while, awareness of mind and body returns, and then the conventional world of multiplicity rushes in again with such vigor and vividness that the memory of unity, though stamped with reality, seems as distant as a dream. The unitive state has to be entered over and over until a person is established in it. But once established, even in the midst of ordinary life, one sees the One underlying the many, the Eternal beneath the ephemeral.

We knew the world would not be the same, a few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.

Therefore the whole apparatus of piety, Hindu and Moslem alike—the temple and mosque, idol and holy water, scriptures and priests—were denounced by this inconveniently clear-sighted poet as mere substitutes for reality; dead things intervening between the soul and its love—

I cannot let a scriptural text supersede my reason. Whilst I believe that the principal books are inspired, they suffer from a process of double distillation. Firstly, they come through a human prophet, and then through the commentaries of interpreters. Nothing in them comes from God directly.

It is properly said that the Devil can “quote Scripture to his purpose.” The Bible is full of so many stories of contradictory moral purpose that every generation can find scriptural justification for nearly any action it proposes—from incest, slavery, and mass murder to the most refined love, courage, and self-sacrifice. And this moral multiple personality disorder is hardly restricted to Judaism and Christianity. You can find it deep within Islam, the Hindu tradition, indeed nearly all the world’s religions. Perhaps then it is not so much scientists as people who are morally ambiguous. It

Oppenheimer later said that at the sight of the unearthly mushroom cloud soaring into the heavens above Point Zero, he recalled lines from the Gita. In a 1965 NBC television documentary, he remembered: “We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, ‘Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.

This poem declares the absence of a Hindu canon. This poem declares itself the Hindu canon. This poem follows the monkey. This poem worships the horse. This poem supersedes the Vedas and the supreme scriptures. This poem does not culture the jungle. This poem jungles the culture. This poem storms into temples with tanks. This poem stands corrected: the RSS is BJP’s mother. This poem is not vulnerable. This poem is Section 153-A proof. This poem is also idiot-proof. This poem quotes Dr.Ambedkar. This poem considers Ramayana a hetero-normative novel. This poem breaches Section 295A of the Indian Penile Code. This poem is pure and total blasphemy.

The qualities of a rebel are multidimensional. The first thing: The rebel does not believe in anything except his own experience. His truth is his only truth; no prophet, no messiah, no savior, no holy scripture, no ancient tradition can give him his truth. They can talk about truth, they can make much ado about truth, but to know about truth is not to know truth. The word about means around—to know about truth means to go around and around it. But by going around and around you never reach to the center. The rebel has no belief system—theist or atheist, Hindu or Christian, he is an inquirer, a seeker. But a very subtle thing has to be understood: That is, the rebel is not an egoist. The egoist also does not want to belong to any church, to any ideology, to any belief system, but his reason for not belonging is totally different from that of the rebel. He does not want to belong because he thinks too much of himself. He is too much of an egoist; he can only stand alone. The rebel is not an egoist; he is utterly innocent. His nonbelieving is not an arrogant attitude but a humble approach. He is simply saying, “Unless I find my own truth, all borrowed truths are only burdening me; they are not going to unburden me. I can become knowledgeable, but I will not be knowing anything with my own being; I will not be an eyewitness to any experience.” The

Most energy moves through space in a spiral form—a ubiquitous motif in the macrocosmic and microscopic architecture of the universe. Beginning with galactic nebulae—the cosmic birth-cradle of all matter—energy flows in coiled or circular or vortex-like patterns. The theme is repeated in the orbital dance of electrons around their atomic nucleus, and (as cited in Hindu scriptures of ancient origin) of planets and suns and stellar systems spinning through space around a grand center of the universe. Many galaxies are spiral-shaped; and countless other phenomena in nature—plants, animals, the winds and storms—similarly evidence the invisible whorls of energy underlying their shape and structure.

Meanwhile in India, Dayananda Saraswati headed a Hindu revival movement, whose basic principle was that the Vedic scriptures are never wrong. In 1875 he founded the Arya Samaj (Noble Society), dedicated to the spreading of Vedic knowledge – though truth be told, Dayananda often interpreted the Vedas in a surprisingly liberal way, supporting for example equal rights for women long before the idea became popular in the West.

Although Krishna in his distinct personality does not appear in the earliest Hindu texts, the Vedas, the term "Krishna," meaning "black" or "darkness," is found numerous times in those scriptures, dating to more than a millennium and a half before the Christian era. At Rig Veda 7.63.1, for example, the sun is the god "who has rolled up his darkness like a skin." "His darkness" and "skin" go hand in hand with the depictions of Krishna, who is portrayed with blue or navy skin, the color of the evening and night skies.

External worship, material worship," say the scriptures, "is the lowest stage; struggling to rise high, mental prayer is the next stage, but the highest stage is when the Lord has been realised." Mark, the same earnest man who is kneeling before the idol tells you, "Him the Sun cannot express, nor the moon, nor the stars, the lightning cannot express Him, nor what we speak of as fire; through Him they shine." But he does not abuse any one's idol or call its worship sin. He recognises in it a necessary stage of life. "The child is father of the man." Would it be right for an old man to say that childhood is a sin or youth a sin? If a man can realise his divine nature with the help of an image, would it be right to call that a sin? Nor even when he has passed that stage, should he call it an error. To the Hindu, man is not travelling from error to truth, but from truth to truth, from lower to higher truth. To him all the religions, from the lowest fetishism to the highest absolutism, mean so many attempts of the human soul to grasp and realise the Infinite, each determined by the conditions of its birth and association, and each of these marks a stage of progress; and every soul is a young eagle soaring higher and higher, gathering more and more strength, till it reaches the Glorious Sun.

Guénon and Evola, consistently with most other modern spiritual figures, identified the age we are living in now as the final age, or Kali Yuga, as it is called in both Hinduism and Buddhism. In the ancient Scandinavian religion, the equivalent age was the Wolf Age. Lest this seems like just some metaphysical mumbo-jumbo, let me quote a few examples from the Hindu scriptures that describe the characteristics of Kali Yuga: In Kali Yuga, wealth alone will be considered the sign of a man’s good birth, proper behavior, and fine qualities. And law and justice will be applied only on the basis of one’s power. Men and women will live together merely because of superficial attraction, and success in business will depend on deceit. Womanliness and manliness will be judged according to one’s expertise in sex. A person’s propriety will be seriously questioned if he does not earn a good living. And one who is very clever at juggling words will be considered a learned scholar. He who can maintain a family will be regarded as an expert man, and the principles of religion will be observed only for the sake of reputation. Cities will be dominated by thieves, the Vedas will be contaminated by speculative interpretations of atheists, political leaders will virtually consume the citizens, and the so-called priests and intellectuals will be devotees of their bellies and genitals. When irreligion becomes prominent in the family, the women of the family become corrupt, and from the degradation of womanhood comes unwanted population. These are just a few of many such examples. Whatever one thinks of Hinduism as a religion, this description certainly seems uncannily accurate in our present world.

One good way to listen is to listen with a sacred text: a psalm or a prayer, for instance. The Hindu spiritual writer Eknath Easwaran showed me the great value of learning a sacred text by heart and repeating it slowly in the mind, word by word, sentence by sentence. In this way, listening to the voice of love becomes not just a passive waiting, but an active attentiveness to the voice that speaks to us through the words of the Scriptures.

The Hindu scriptures place the present world-age as occurring within the Kali Yuga of a much longer universal cycle than the simple 24,000-year equinoctial cycle with which Sri Yukteswar was concerned. The universal cycle of the scriptures is 4,300,560,000 years in extent, and measures out a Day of Creation. This vast figure is based on the relationship between the length of the solar year and a multiple of pi (3.1416, the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle). The life span for a whole universe, according to the ancient seers, is 314,159,000,000,000 solar years, or “One Age of Brahma.” The Hindu scriptures declare that an earth such as ours is dissolved for one of two reasons: the inhabitants as a whole become either completely good or completely evil. The world mind thus generates a power that releases the captive atoms held together as an earth. Dire pronouncements are occasionally published regarding an imminent “end of the world.” Planetary cycles, however, proceed according to an orderly divine plan. No earthly dissolution is in sight; many ascending and descending equinoctial cycles are yet in store for our planet in its present form. 6

a faith that I have tried to absorb through beliefs and practices handed down to me by my father and others, my own observations, as well as an extensive reading of the scriptures in translation and numerous scholarly treatises. The

The Hindu scriptures declare that those who habitually speak the truth will develop the power of materializing their words. What commands they utter from the heart will come true in life.

According to Indian tradition, fundamental truth cannot be attained through daily, busy life, but only by the concentrated mind. The concentration of mind is variously called yoga, samādhi, or dhyāna. Yoga (etymologically the same as the English yoke) means "attaching the mind to one object," "concentrating the mind on one thing." Samādhi means "putting together (the mind which always tends to disperse)." The Hindu yoga school probably started before the common era, but its most important scripture, the Yoga-sūtra, was composed by Patañjali around the fifth century C.E. Many new yogic sects subsequently developed. One of them, Haṭhayoga (haṭha, "force, pertinacity") which developed after the twelfth century C.E., specializes in bodily training, in the belief that the body's function and the spirit's function are inseparable.

His monotheism left no place for apparent polytheism. We know that a fundamental Hindu teaching is that God is one: Truth is One; sages call it by many names such as Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Yama, Garutman, or Matarishvan. (Rig Veda: 1:164:46) The Yajur Veda, another important scripture, expresses the same truth as follows: For an awakened soul, Indra, Varuna, Agni, Yama, Aditya, Chandra – all these names represent only One spiritual being. (32:1) These words lie at the heart of the religion but for many devotees and non-Hindu observers the reality seems to be polytheistic. The pictures and images which may be seen in a mandir, ranging from Rama and Hanuman, to Jesus, the Virgin Mary, Guru Nanak and Gandhi, might convey this message to the uninformed, rather than one of diversity within unity which is at the heart of Hinduism. Certainly that seems to have been true of the village Hinduism that Guru Nanak experienced.

The fact that no material from brahminical Hindu scriptures or the Qur’an is included is easily explained. Either it could result in the charge that the Gurus were merely plagiarists or to the assertion that they did accept the authority of these scriptures. What they certainly were is eclectic in their view of scripture, refusing to claim that God spoke only through the revelation that was given to them.

Oppenheimer himself later recalled the moment. “We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita . . . ‘Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.

This is not the only surviving clue that the Khmers were in close intellectual touch with the kings and scholars of southern India. Indravarman I’s chief Brahmin, Sivasoma, claimed to have studied under ‘Shankara, the nectar of whose lotus feet is lapped by the bee-like tongues of all scholars’, possibly a reference to the great eighth-century south Indian Hindu revivalist, Adi Shankara. This would seem to indicate that Khmer scholars were travelling to study Hindu scriptures and Indic philosophy in India itself.82

wise man is he who is always satisfied because he wants nothing. He is happy by himself, inside himself within his soul.

The Hindu scriptures actually fall into two broad categories—the Smriti and the Sruti. Smriti means, “That which is remembered.” The authors are many and the assertions they make are diametrically different. In this corpus lie the speculations of Indian sages, ranging from the profound to the utterly bizarre, by their own admission. Sruti, on the other hand, means, “That which was revealed.” This is the eternally true revelation of the devout Hindu. If this revelation is eternally true, then the religion cannot claim that all ways are true for the simple reason that some religions deny the eternal veracity of the Vedas. Muslims, Buddhists, and Christians would deny such a claim. As a matter of fact, even some Hindu scholars would deny that claim. Either their denial is true, or the claim of the Hindu is true. But,

Buddha's goal was to help people avoid suffering by teaching them to live according to four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. The truths are that the world is full of suffering; that desire and attachment are the causes ofworldly life; that worldly life can be stopped if we destroy desire and attachment; and that to do this we must learn the way. The way is the Eightfold Path: right speech, right action; right living; right effort; right thinking; right meditation; right hopes; and right view. The Eightfold Path leads us to "Nirvana," a state of eternal bliss and peace.

Do not plan for things to turn out the way you want them to, but simply do your best. Do your best and don't think about what will happen next.

It goes without saying that it is the traditionally minded Hindu we have in view, and not one whose hereditary dispositions have deviated in an anti-traditional direction, to the point of proving that "corruptio optimi pessima." Hinduism, strictly speaking, has no "dogmas" in the sense that every concept may be denied, on condition that the argument used is intrinsically true; which amounts to saying that concepts can be denied from the standpoint of a higher level of truth, metaphysics standing above cosmology and realization above theory as such. However, on their own level, the scriptural symbols of Hinduism are just as immovable as the Semitic dogmas, and this excludes any fallacious comparison of Hindu doctrine with the opinions of philosophers. No orthodox Hindu can maintain that the Veda has been mistaken on any point whatsoever.

The scythe or sickle of Perseus was made from a hard stone and most Sumerian tools were made of flint; [some, like the sickles for cutting the barley were made simply of hard clay]. However, the sickle has a Khopesh-like shape and was referenced in the Rosetta Stone as the "sword". [The earliest known depiction of a Khopesh is from the Stele of Vultures, depicting King Eannatum of Lagash wielding the weapon]. And this very word means in the Semitic language, 'Lamb of Sacrifice'. So, not only were the sickle a pure Semitic tool for slaughtering the Aryan demons (e.g., Jewish Menorah, Hindu Manasa & Buddhist Mucalinda), it also symbolized the cleansing and purification of the Semitic heritage from the Aryan infiltration. That was not all what I have discovered so far; it turns out that the very etymological root of the word 'Gospel' in the Semitic tongue is derived from the word 'Naga' with the prefix of 'An-' added to it - signaling the opposing meaning therewith to undo the Aryan reversed Symbolism. Although the original Semitic word of 'Naga' means 'to save/deliver', the Aryan plagiarism and belligerent Symbolism against the Semitic tongue annexed the word to the point were the very same expression needed modification; this time real salvation was delivered from none other but God Himself through Scripture (i.e., The Gospel) and through delivering the blessed baby from the hands of satan - ushering thereby a new era of Prophecy.

This is perfect. This is perfect. From the perfect springs the perfect. If the perfect is taken from the perfect, only the perfect remains. —ANCIENT HINDU SCRIPTURE

In the years leading up to Hitler, many völkisch groups appeared in Germany; the English equivalent “folk” doesn’t quite convey the blend of mythology, folklore, legend, and nationalism that the German term suggests. Jung’s emphasis on history and myth, as well as his rejection of scientific materialism, made these groups sympathetic to his work, as opposed to Freud’s which, along with being Jewish, was reductionist. Although much has been made of it,29 Jung’s own connection, if any,30 to the völkisch movement is unclear. The only strong link is his friendship with the German indologist J. W. Hauer, who founded the German Faith Movement in 1932, a religious society aimed at replacing Christianity in German-speaking countries with an anti-Christian and anti-Semitic modern paganism based on German literature and Hindu scripture. Hauer, an ardent Nazi, hoped his movement would become the official religion of the Reich. Hitler, however, thought little of Hauer and laughed at his followers who “made asses of themselves by worshipping Wotan and Odin and the ancient, but now obsolete, German mythology,”31 a remark that says much about Hitler’s cynicism toward the völkisch ideology he nevertheless exploited to gain power.

What made travel possible was that he knew how neither self nor wealth can be measured in terms of what you consume or own. Even the downtrodden souls on the fringes of society, he observed, had something the rich didn’t: time. This notion—the notion that “riches” don’t necessarily make you wealthy—is as old as society itself. The ancient Hindu Upanishads refer disdainfully to “that chain of possessions wherewith men bind themselves, and beneath which they sink”; ancient Hebrew scriptures declare that “whoever loves money never has money enough.” Jesus noted that it’s pointless for a man to “gain the whole world, yet lose his very self,” and the Buddha whimsically pointed out that seeking happiness in one’s material desires is as absurd as “suffering because a banana tree will not bear mangoes.

Now, we become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” He said it was a quote from a Hindu scripture. Anyway, Bob Miller said we didn’t have to provide the Russians with every detail, only such things as our capacity for U-235 production on a monthly basis, plutonium levels and so on. We could give them just enough to let their scientists figure it out, thought it was a fair way to usher in this very dangerous new weaponry. We didn’t want

In May 1945, some Gujarati colleagues decided to reprint an old pamphlet of Gandhi’s on the caste system. They asked him for a fresh foreword, which he disarmingly began by saying: ‘I do not have the time to read this book again. I do not even wish to.’ He then outlined his current thinking on caste. While the Hindu scriptures spoke of four varnas, in his view ‘there prevails only one varna today, that of Shudras’, or, you may call it, Ati-Shudras’, or Harijans’ or untouchables.... Just as it is not dharma but adharma to believe in the distinctions of high and low, so also colour prejudice is adharma. If a scripture is found to sanction distinctions of high and low, or distinctions of colour, it does not deserve the name of scripture.’ Given how far he had moved on in this regard, Gandhi requested the reader ‘to discard anything in this [older] book which may appear to him incompatible with my views given above’.

once heard a short saying about Jesus, comparing him to the other religious leaders. It stuck in my head and goes something like this: “Founders of other religions claim they are a prophet to help you find God. Jesus came to say, ‘I am God come to find you.’ ” The Hindu Vedas say, “Truth is one, but the sages speak of it in many different ways.” Buddha said, “My teachings point the way to attainment of the truth.” Muhammad said, “The truth has been revealed to me.” Jesus said,“I am the truth.

This time, among the letters waiting for Gandhi on his return from his travels was one from a Muslim friend. This man, a liberal and sceptic, wondered why, when referring to the Prophet Muhammad or the Koran, Gandhi never analysed them critically. ‘I am at a loss to understand how a person like you,’ this correspondent told Gandhi, ‘with all your passion for truth and justice, who has never failed to gloss over a single fault in Hinduism or to repudiate as unauthentic the numerous corruptions that masquerade under it, can.... accept all that is in the Koran. I am not aware of your ever having called into question or denounced any iniquitous injunction of Islam. Against some of these I learned to revolt when I was scarcely 18 or 20 years old and time has since only strengthened that first feeling.’ Reproducing and then answering this letter in Harijan, Gandhi remarked that ‘I have nowhere said that I believe literally in every word of the Koran, or for that matter of any scripture in the world. But it is no business of mine to criticize the scriptures of other faiths or to point out their defects. It should be, however, my privilege to proclaim and practise the truths that there may be in them.’ Gandhi held the view that only adherents of a particular faith had the right to criticize its precepts or sanctions. By that token, it was both his ‘right and duty to point out the defects in Hinduism in order to purify it and to keep it pure. But when non-Hindu critics set about criticizing Hinduism and cataloguing its faults they can only blazon their own ignorance of Hinduism and their incapacity to regard it from the Hindu viewpoint... Thus my own experience of the non-Hindu critics of Hinduism brings home to me my limitations and teaches me to be wary of launching on a criticism of Islam or Christianity and their founders'.

THREE SCRIPTURAL REFERENCES FOR THE WORD ‘HINDU’ AND ‘HINDUSTANA’ FROM MERU TANTRA -SHAIVA AGAMA: हीनं च दूष्यत्येव हिन्दुरित्युच्चते प्रिये ‘HĪNAṂ CA DŪṢYATYEVA HINDURITYUCCATE PRIYE’ TRANSLATION: O MY DEAR! ONE WHO RENOUNCED IGNORANCE AND INFERIORITY IS CALLED A HINDU!

THREE SCRIPTURAL REFERENCES FOR THE WORD ‘HINDU’ AND ‘HINDUSTANA’FROM SHABDHA KALPA DRUMA: हीनं दूषयति इति हिन्दू HĪNAṂ DŪṢAYATI ITI HINDŪ TRANSLATION: ONE WHO RENOUNCED IGNORANCE AND INFERIORITY IS CALLED A HINDU.

THREE SCRIPTURAL REFERENCES FOR THE WORD ‘HINDU’ AND ‘HINDUSTANA’FROM BRIHASPATI AGAMA: हिमालयं समारभ्य यावत इन्दु सरोवरं। तं देवनिर्मितं देशं हिन्दुस्थानं प्रचक्षते।। HIMĀLAYAṂ SAMĀRABHYA YĀVATA INDU SAROVARAṂ। TAṂ DEVANIRMITAṂ DEŚAṂ HINDUSTHĀNAṂ PRACAKṢATE।। TRANSLATION: STARTING FROM THE HIMALAYAN MOUNTAINS AND EXTENDING TO THE INDIAN OCEAN, GOD-CREATED COUNTRY IS CALLED ‘HINDUSTHANA’.

Hindu scriptures teach that an imperative duty of man is to keep his body in good condition; otherwise his mind is unable to remain fixed in devotional concentration.

Sonnet of A Religious Person I spent years as a Christian, I didn't find God. I spent years as a Muslim, I didn't find God. I spent years as Hindu and Sikh, Still there was no inkling. I spent years as Buddhist and Atheist, Still I understood nothing. I did it all, prayers, rituals, meditation, None of it brought me serenity. For serenity has been all along, At the feet of the ailing humanity. I shelved all scriptures and stood as human. Kindness alone is the sign of a religious person.

Dating of Hindu history is always approximate and speculative, and often a range, as orally transmitted scriptures precede the written works by several centuries, and parts of the written work were composed by various scribes over several generations, in different geographies.

Many of the early Upanishads are in dialogue form, which gives us a sense of participating in the disclosure of the Upanishadic secrets. We encounter such charismatic wisdom teachers as Yājnavalkya, King Ajātashatru, and Uddālaka, who were once surely inaccessible to all but the most serious seekers after wisdom. It is quite amazing that today we can obtain inexpensive paperbacks that reveal what was once the most concealed esoteric teaching and the price of which was certainly much higher than a few dollars: it called for obedience and submission to a teacher, often for many long, trying years, before anything at all was disclosed to the student. Perhaps because we think we can come by this wisdom so easily and cheaply, we generally do not really value it. For instance, how many of us have actually changed our lives significantly after delving into these esoteric scriptures? The transmission of the Upanishadic teachings was not merely a matter of passing on theories. Rather it involved the transmission of the spiritual force or presence of the teacher, who had at least glimpsed the Self, if not fully realized it. Hence the qualified aspirant was expected to be like an empty vessel into which the guru’s grace and wisdom could be poured. The Upanishadic sages showed little concern about justifying any of their teachings philosophically, precisely because their verity could be demonstrated to the initiate through direct transmission. Only as other metaphysical traditions—both Hindu and non-Hindu—started to rival Advaita Vedānta, did the Vedānta teachers have to become more sophisticated philosophers and defenders of their faith.

Yoga, whether dualist or nondualist, is concerned with the elimination of suffering (duhkha). Here suffering does not mean the pain resulting from a cut or the emotional torment experienced through political oppression. These are simply manifestations of a deeper existential suffering. That suffering is the direct outcome of our habitual sense of being locked into a body-mind that is separate from all others. Yoga seeks to prevent future suffering of this kind by pointing the way to the unitary consciousness that is disclosed in ego-transcending ecstatic states. From the viewpoint of traditional Yoga, even the pleasure or well-being (sukha) experienced as a result of the regular performance of yogic postures, breath control, or meditation is suffused with suffering. First of all, the pleasure is bound to be only temporary, whereas the innate bliss (ānanda) of the Self is permanent. Second, pleasure is relative: We can compare our present sense of enjoyment with similar experiences at different times or by different people. Thus, our experience contains an element of envy. Third, there is always the hidden fear that a pleasurable state will come to an end, which is a reasonable assumption. Yoga is a systematic attempt to step out of this whole cycle of gain and loss. When the yogin or yoginī is in touch with the Reality beyond the bodymind, and when he or she has a taste of the unalloyed delight of the Self, all possible pleasures that derive from objects (rather than the Self) come to lose their fascination. The mind begins to be more equanimous. As the Bhagavad-Gītā (2.48), the most popular Hindu Yoga scripture, puts it: “Yoga is balance (samatva).” This notion of balance is intrinsic to Yoga and occurs on many levels of the yogic work. Its culmination is in the “vision of sameness” (sama-darshana), which is the graceful state in which we see everything in the same light. Everything stands revealed as the great Reality, and nothing excites us as being more valuable than anything else. We regard a piece of gold and a clump of clay or a beautiful person and an unattractive individual with the same even-temperedness. Nor are we puffed up by praise or deflated by blame. This condition, which is one of utter lucidity and serenity, must not be confused with one of the many types of ecstasy (samādhi) known to yogins. Ecstasies, visions, and psychic (paranormal) phenomena are not at all the point of spiritual life. They can and do occur when we earnestly devote ourselves to higher values, but they are by-products rather than the goal of authentic spirituality. They should certainly not be made the focus of our aspiration. Thus, Yoga is a comprehensive way of life in which the ultimate Reality, or Spirit, is given precedence over other concerns. It is a sacred path that conducts us, in the words of an ancient Upanishad, from the unreal to the Real, from falsehood to Truth, from the temporal to the Eternal.

The best estimates of Trinity’s power put the figure somewhere between 20,000 and 22,000 tons. Oppenheimer reached for poetry, recalling a verse from ancient Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, which he had read in the original Sanskrit. ‘Now I am become Death,’ he said, ‘the destroyer of worlds.’ Bainbridge was pithier. ‘Now we are all sons of bitches,’ he told Oppenheimer.

yoga: the Hindu practice of bowing to pagan deities through poses called 'asanas', a practice made popular in the West by New Agers. Even if a Christian were to use Scripture or hymns, each of these postures is still designed to worship pagan deities. Many yoga studios are filled with pagan statues and the use of blasphemous Sanskrit chanting.

But not every threat is like that. There’s a small category (a list with three items) of physical threats so different in quantity that they become different in quality, their effects so far-reaching that we can’t be confident of surviving them with our civilizations more or less intact. One is large-scale nuclear war; it’s always worth recalling J. Robert Oppenheimer’s words as he watched the first bomb test, quoting from Hindu scripture: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” So far, the cobbled-together and jury-rigged international efforts to forestall an atomic war have worked, and indeed, for much of the last fifty years those safeguards, formal and informal, have seemed to be strengthening.

Savarkar went a step yet further than Golwalkar. He brazenly supported the Manusmriti, which said that a Shudra who insults a high-caste man with gross invectives should have his tongue cut out, for the former was of low origin; that if he arrogantly taught Brahmins their duty, the king should cause hot oil to be poured into his mouth and into his ears; that a low-caste man who tried to place himself on the same seat with a man of high caste should be branded on his hips and be banished or the king should cause his buttocks to be gashed.38 Of this same text, Savarkar said, ‘Manusmriti is that scripture which is most worshipable after Vedas for our Hindu nation.

Very early on, the Hungryalists had announced, rather brashly, their lack of faith and what they thought of god. To them religion was an utter waste of time, and they made no bones about this. In fact, in one of their bulletins, they had openly denounced god and called organized religion nonsense. Many of the Hungryalists, with their sharp knowledge of Hindu scriptures, had been challenging temple elders on the different rituals and modes of worship. This came as a shock to many, in a country where religion was very much a part of everyday life—a matter of pride and culture even. On the other hand, Ginsberg was evidently quite taken with religion in India and sought out sadhus and holy men wherever he went in the country. While this might have been because he was in search of a guru, he seemed to be fascinated, in equal measure, by the sheer variety that religion opened for him in India—from Kali worship to Buddhism. But like the Beats, the Hungryalists came together in denouncing the politics of war, which merged with their larger world view.

Krishna, an enlightened master from ancient India, beautifully says in the ancient Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, ‘The person who does not expect gain or loss from anything works happily with no need even for motivation.

I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” —J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb upon seeing the first test detonation (quoting from Hindu scripture)

In India, music as well as painting and the drama is considered a divine art. Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva—the Eternal Trinity—were the first musicians. The Divine Dancer Shiva is scripturally represented as having worked out the infinite modes of rhythm in His cosmic dance of universal creation, preservation and dissolution, while Brahma accentuated the time-beat with the clanging cymbals and Vishnu sounded the holy mridanga or drum. Krishna, an incarnation of Vishnu, is always shown in Hindu art with a flute, on which he plays the enrapturing song that recalls to their true home the human souls wandering in maya delusion. Saraswati, Goddess of Wisdom, is symbolised as performing on the vina, mother of all stringed instruments. The Sama Veda of India contains the world’s earliest writings on musical science. The foundation stone of Hindu music is the ragas or fixed melodic scales. The six basic ragas branch out into 126 derivative raginis (wives) and putras (sons). Each raga has a minimum of five notes: a leading note (vadi or king), a secondary note (samavadi or prime minister), helping notes (anuvadi, attendants) and a dissonant note (vivadi, the enemy). Each one of the six basic ragas has a natural correspondence with a certain hour of the day, season of the year and a presiding deity who bestows a particular potency. Thus (1) the Hindole Raga is heard only at dawn in the spring, to evoke the mood of universal love; (2) Deepaka Raga is played during the evening in summer, to arouse compassion; (3) Megha Raga is a melody for midday in the rainy season, to summon courage; (4) Bhairava Raga is played in the mornings of August, September, October, to achieve tranquillity; (5) Sri Raga is reserved for autumn twilights, to attain pure love; (6) Malkounsa Raga is heard at midnights in winter, for valour. The ancient rishis discovered these laws of sound alliance between nature and man. Because nature is an objectification of Aum, the Primal Sound or Vibratory Word, man can obtain control over all natural manifestations through the use of certain mantras or chants.

Bhakti Spurana Programs (BSP) Supreme Pontiff of Hinduism HDH Nithyananda Paramashivam has conducted many Bhakti Spurana Programs (BSP), where the participants experience the flowering of the sacred sentiments of devotion central to the Guru-disciple relationship, as per Hindu scriptures.

Where there is joy, there is Creation.

Glossary Agni: God of fire Agnipariksha: A trial by fire Angaharas: Movement of limbs or steps in a dance Ankush: Hook-shaped prods used to control elephants Annapurna: The Hindu Goddess of food, nourishment and plenty; also believed to be a form of Goddess Parvati Anshan: Hunger. It also denotes voluntary fasting. In this book, Anshan is the capital of the kingdom of Elam Apsara: Celestial maidens from the court of the Lord of the Heavens – Indra; akin to Zeus/Jupiter Arya: Sir Ashwamedh yagna: Literally, the Horse sacrifice. In ancient times, an ambitious ruler, who wished to expand his territories and display his military prowess, would release a sacrificial horse to roam freely through the length and breadth of any kingdom in India. If any king stopped/captured the horse, the ruler’s army would declare war against the challenger, defeat the king and annexe that territory. If an opposing king did not stop the horse, the kingdom would become a vassal of the former Asura: Demon Ayuralay: Hospital Ayurvedic: Derived from Ayurved, an ancient Indian form of medicine Ayushman bhav: May you have a long life Baba: Father Bhang: Traditional intoxicant in India; milk mixed with marijuana Bhiksha: Alms or donations Bhojan graham: Dining room Brahmacharya: The vow of celibacy Brahmastra: Literally, the weapon of Brahma; spoken of in ancient Hindu scriptures. Many experts claim that the description of a Brahmastra and its effects are eerily similar to that of a nuclear weapon. I have assumed this to be true in the context of my book Branga: The ancient name for modern West Bengal, Assam and Bangladesh. Term coined from the conjoint of the two rivers of this land: Brahmaputra and Ganga Brangaridai: Literally, the heart of Branga. The capital of the kingdom of Branga Chandravanshi: Descendants of the moon Chaturanga: Ancient Indian game that evolved into the modern game of chess Chillum: Clay pipe, usually used to smoke marijuana Choti: Braid Construction of Devagiri royal court platform: The description in the book of the court platform is a possible explanation for the mysterious multiple-column buildings made of baked brick discovered at Indus Valley sites, usually next to the public baths, which many historians suppose could have been granaries Dada: Elder brother

All these features were described and documented more than 2,000 years ago, mainly in the Hindu and Chinese acupuncture literature, but also alluded to in the Buddhist and Christian scriptures and literature—long before the age of electricity and magnetism, which was only sparked off in the 18th century.