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The Hindu mind[1]
represents humanity’s oldest and most continuous stream of conscious intelligence
on the planet. Hindu sages, seers, saints, yogis and jnanis have maintained an
unbroken current of awareness linking humanity with the Divine since the dawn
of history, and as carried over from earlier cycles of civilization in previous
humanities unknown to our present spiritually limited culture. The Hindu mind
sustains a connection with the cosmic mind and the blueprint of creation and
evolution in this physical world, as well as our connection to worlds more
subtle and spiritual. The Hindu mind has a vision of eternity and infinity. It
is aware of the vast cycles of creation and destruction that govern the many
universes and innumerable creatures within them.
The Hindu mind is not a name and form based intellect, just as
the Hindu tradition is not a name and form based tradition. It is not attached
to a particular name that can be used like a title or slogan to promote an
exclusive or simplistic belief. One can call the Hindu mind the ‘yogic mind’,
‘Vedic mind’, ‘Dharmic mind’, ‘Atmic
mind’, or other terms, which indicate some aspect of it. The term ‘Hindu’,
possessing limited ethnic connotations in the minds of many, may not be the
best, but it is the one most used today and remains most convenient for
purposes of communication. More accurately, the Hindu mind is the mind of
Sanatana Dharma (Sanatana Dharma Buddhi), the universal or eternal Dharma that
transcends person, history, institution or social identity.
The Hindu mind does not seek
to impose itself upon people from the outside through force or persuasion. It
is not interested in a mere change of names, labels, titles or beliefs. It
looks to restoring our linkage with the higher consciousness behind the world,
whatever name or form we might want to approach it through. The Hindu mind’s
wish is that we reconnect with our true Self and Being that transcends all
outer appearances and religious divisions—and that we honor all the various
expressions that Self takes, which can never be reduced to one religion,
philosophy, language or culture.
The Hindu mind is not simply a religious mind, though it
contains what is probably the world’s most extensive devotional tradition for
worshipping God in all forms whether male or female, personal or impersonal.
The Hindu mind covers all aspects of human life and culture, linking us to the
cosmic mind and the full range of existence in all worlds, physical, subtle and
causal. Hindu texts like Yogic and Vedantic Shastras address the religious
issues of God, creation, the soul, liberation and immortality. Yet other texts,
like the many Dharma Shastras, deal with the proper social order and how to
maintain it. Other texts cover science from astronomy and meteorology (Jyotish
Shastras) to medicine (Ayurveda Shastras). Art, music, dance, sculpture and
architecture are also discussed in numerous Hindu texts and teachings. The
Hindu mind is a comprehensive and universal mind that has examined in depth all
aspects of existence, whether classifying the myriad types of mantras and
deities, foods and herbs, dance steps or gestures, or stars and universes.
The Hindu mind in ancient times was one of, if not the
dominant force, shaping world civilization, particularly the civilization of
Asia, which dominated the world until recent centuries. Hindu thinkers were
contact with the great thinkers of ancient Egypt, Babylonia, Greece, Rome,
Ireland, Persia and China—perhaps also Mexico and Peru. Hindu yogis and sages
watched the fall of the monumental cultures of the early ancient world like
Egypt and Sumeria. They saw the arising of the monotheistic cults of
Christianity and Islam and how these marginalized, if not destroyed the older
occult and spiritual knowledge of their countries.
As the western world lost its ancient spiritual traditions,
Hindu sages saw Indic civilization spread east to China, Indochina and
Indonesia, with both Buddhist and Hindu forms spreading in various ways and in
different intermixtures. Later, they saw a slow encroachment of Islam on the
western outposts of Indian civilization in Central Asia, Afghanistan and Sind.
Around 1000 AD, they witnessed the eruption of Islamic armies into India, that
in the thirteenth century ravaged nearly the entire subcontinent. Many Hindu
and Yoga groups and teachers went into hiding, taking refuge in the Himalayas
or the mountains of the south. They saw many of their ashrams, temples,
libraries and universities destroyed, and many of their teachers killed or
imprisoned.
The Hindu mind, under siege during the Islamic invasions, lost
its eminence in the world forum during the colonial era. In the eighteenth and
early nineteenth century great western thinkers like Voltaire and Goethe
praised the Hindu tradition and the Brahmin class that sustained it. However,
those seeking to convert or conquer India tried to turn the Hindu mind and
lofty spirituality and philosophy into mere idolatry, eroticism and
superstition. No doubt Hindus contributed to these distortions, having lost
sight of their real traditions, getting enmeshed in mere outer ritualistic
practices and customs.
Though subject to much denigration, the Hindu mind quickly
reemerged with strength in the late nineteenth century in India through such
figures as Swami Vivekananda, the chief disciple of Ramakrishna, and Swami
Dayananda of the Arya Samaj, who issued a call to return to the Vedas. Under Vivekananda the neo-Hindu
movement went to the West and spawned the Yoga-Vedanta movement that has become
an important aspect of culture all over the world. Since Vivekananda a
continual stream of Hindu teachers has traveled throughout the world and
impacted western society in a profound way, not trying to impose the Hindu
religion on people but reflecting the concern of the Hindu mind for
Self-realization and the creation of a global spiritual culture.
In India, the Hindu mind started and shaped the Indian
independence movement. The prime figures of this movement in the early
twentieth century were, at least in their private lives, staunch Hindus and
practitioners of Yoga. These included not only Mahatma Gandhi, but also Tilak,
Aurobindo and Subhas Bose, even Savarkar who opposed Gandhi on most political
issues. Hindu religious leaders gave their inner support to the movement,
whether Chandrashekhar Sarasvati, the Shankaracharya of Kanchipuram, or the
great jnani, Ramana Maharshi.
However, after achieving independence instead of taking
control of the country and charting a new course in harmony with its spiritual
past, the Hindu mind, perhaps exhausted by the struggle, lost control of the
intellectual ethos of India. The Hindu worldview of Vivekananda, Aurobindo or
Gandhi was replaced by a leftist-Marxist worldview, guided by Nehru, who was a
Fabian socialist with little regard for anything Hindu. To shore up their
position, the leftists in India created an alliance of anti-Hindu forces,
including even missionaries, which they did not do in any other country.
Post-independent India became structured by Marxist economic and social
policies, creating a bureaucracy similar to and as rigid as that of the Soviet
Union. The textbooks and media of India, guiding by their English and Marxist
elite, banished Hindu concerns and made them the main target of their abuse and
ridicule. ‘Hindu’ became a dirty word for them and the idea that there was any
Hindu civilization was scorned, just as it was by the previous colonial
masters. The result was that independent India was still ruled by a foreign and
hostile mindset.
Nevertheless, the Hindu mind, being the native intelligence of
the country, could not be suppressed. It continued in India through the
religious and spiritual concerns of the common people. In the late twentieth
century, it gradually emerged again. New groups are arising today that find
great value in the Hindu tradition and look once more to Vivekananda and
Aurobindo. They are adding a Hindu voice to the social and political concerns
of the country, to uphold the traditions and civilization of the region. They
have discovered a pride in being Hindu that is not sectarian or belief-oriented
but based on a recognition of a great literature, culture and yogic science.
They are reexamining history from a Hindu perspective and exposing the colonial
distortion of their Vedic heritage that fails to recognize the spiritual root
of Indic civilization. They are realizing that appeasing minorities, a prime
leftist policy, is not the way to bring India forward but that what is needed
is re-expressing the country’s dharmic concerns and practices.
Not surprisingly, outside interests are suspicious of any
Hindu awakening in India, though they do not mind the ruder Islamic awakenings
in other countries! It is true that some new Hindus groups may be tinged with
fanaticism and extremism, but to a slight degree. We should note that when
oppressed groups begin to assert themselves, like a person who has long been
beaten down, they can express an anger that is not always appropriate to the
current situation. In addition, most Hindu groups have not been media savvy.
They are often intellectually unsophisticated or inarticulate in the modern
context or in the current global English idiom. Some naively extol everything
Hindu, including out of date social customs and regressive beliefs.
Yet more commonly, leftists
in India have made the allegation of extremism against Hindu forces that is at
best an exaggeration and at worst a complete invention. This anti-Hindu
propaganda has been a ploy to discredit the Hindu cause and protect their
citadels of power that a Hindu revival would take away from them. The leftists
have thrown their typical denigrating slurs against Hinduism as fascist, Nazi
or fundamentalist, perhaps hoping that these distortions will arouse negative
reactions and keep people from really looking at the Hindu cause.
Yet the Hindu cause is not alone and is discovering new
allies. First is the Western Yoga and New Age movement that honors the
spiritual and ancient culture of India, chants mantras, honors deities and
practices vegetarianism. Many westerners come to India to study with Hindu
gurus, visit temples and ashrams and attend religious festivals like the Kumbha
Mela. A New Age movement has also arisen in India, bringing in western new age
views of healing and spirituality as well as western versions of Indian
teachings. This is very helpful because in India, intellectuals denigrate Hindu
traditions as backward, right wing and conservative. To have them supported by
progressive and futuristic elements in western society neutralizes these charges.
The second group of new
allies is the neopagan movement in the West and the resurgence in native
traditions and ethnic religions all over the world. Such groups now recognize
Hinduism as an important kin and ally, the main native tradition that has survived
the modern world. A new movement to promote religious diversity and pluralism,
including protecting native cultures from missionary assault, has arisen often
led by Hindu teachers.
Third are allied dharmic
traditions in Asia, particularly the Tibetan Buddhists who have taken refuge in
India, largely because of the tolerant nature of the Hindu mind, not because
the socialist government of the country that was sympathetic to the Chinese.
The Dalai Lama himself has supported India’s nuclear testing, India’s defense
in the Kargil War in Kashmir, and the criticisms of Christian missionary
activity by Hindu gurus. He visited the Kumbha Mela in 2001.
Fourth are new western
thinkers in ecology, psychology and spirituality, who are finding an affinity
with the Asian traditions of honoring nature and respect for the Earth. They
are receptive to native ways of looking at culture and the land, which makes
them more receptive to Hindu Dharma.
Fifth are Hindus overseas
who now have a significant and often affluent presence in the United States,
the Caribbean, the UK, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. They are building
temples and schools worldwide, showing a modern image of Hindu culture that is
successful in the western world, particularly in cutting edge fields of
software, engineering and medicine. The presence of successful Hindus in their
West is a great remedy against stereotypes of Hindus as poor, uneducated and
superstitious.
As a result of these concurrent factors the Hindu mind is
coming forth again. We can now recognize an emergent Hindu view on religion, on
spirituality, on history, on ecology, on medicine, on the social order and on
science. A comprehensive Hindu view of all aspects of life is slowly gaining
articulation. The coming century, with a probable shift of civilization once
more to Asia, will witness the continuing expansion of the Hindu mind and its
global influence.
The western world will have
to face a Hindu critique as well, questioning the materialism and commercialism
of the West that is often culturally at a juvenile level. Christian
missionaries will face Hindu criticism and debate, questioning their very need
to convert, and the basis of their theology that requires only one Son of God
for everyone. The Islamic world will encounter a dynamic Hindu mind that cannot
accept the rigid Islamic formula of One God, one scripture, a last prophet,
paradise for the believers and hell for the non-believers as an adequate
formulation for a true religion. At the same time, the tolerant and synthetic
Hindu mind will welcome and absorb into itself genuinely spiritual, mystical
and occult knowledge from all traditions, even from the very groups that have
traditionally opposed it.
Naturally, there will continue to be a tremendous
civilizational bias against the reemergence of the Hindu mind because it
threatens the political and culturally hegemony of the other groups that have
already divided the world’s territory among them. In spite of such opposition
and possible deliberate obstruction, the Hindu mind will continue to unfold. It
is quite at home in the planetary age, in tune with cosmic intelligence, and
capable of tremendous transformation and adaptation. The Hindu mind has the
strength and insight of innumerable yogis and seers. Its links go beyond the
earth and the physical plane to the very roots of creation in the cosmic mind,
to the very Self of all beings.
The world need not fear the
Hindu mind. The Hindu mind treats all beings and all cultures as sacred. It
works to promote Self-realization on both individual and societal levels. It
has no agenda of conversion or conquest. It is not seeking to defame or
eliminate any genuine impulse to truth whatever name or form it takes. The
Hindu mind is not trying to impose a single name, savior or institution on the
world. It is not rushing to any historical goal or fearing any Armageddon. All
time is with it and it honors the great civilizations of the ancient as well as
of the modern world. Its purpose is to
help us reclaim our true nature and live in harmony with the nature of all. It
is not motivated by money, power, and territory or by the need to save souls.
One could compare the Hindu mind to the grace of the Divine Mother who is
seeking to foster her own children according to the needs of their nature, with
a special regard for each and favoritism for none. As Sri Krishna states in the
Gita IX.29, “I am the same in all
beings. I have no favorite and no enemy. Those who worship me with love, I am
in them and they are in me.”
[1] I must thank Bansi Pandit for making this idea popular in his recent book The Hindu Mind. Koenraad Elst’s recent Decolonizing the Hindu Mind developed the idea further.
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