No surprises.
Goldberg's "American Veda" was not merely an attempt at universalising away Hindoo religion and to stop there - turning it into a pick-and-choose buffet dubbed "universal spirituality": turns out Goldberg is just another christian inculturationist in specific, like Frank Morales. As is usual with modern inculturationists of this particular type, they initially start off trying to get into the good books of Hindus, then from there they lead their readers/fans/beliebers to "jesus was a Hindu guru" and "the vedas are saying the same as the bible/the brahman of the vedas is the biblical gawd" (aka the old attempt to subsume Hindoo religion into christianism).
Haindava Keralam unwittingly published an interview with Goldberg submitted by a person familiar to them, without critically examining the contents.
HK took the interview off the main page, but it is for now still at HK with no *visible* objection:
[INSERT (a couple of days later): HK has removed the contents - sorry, not comments - of the page when I just checked.]
haindavakeralam.com/HKPage.aspx?PageID=19379
* "SWAHA" -> More christian inculturation. Then again, Elst did say that Buddhism etc is "Vedic" for having also encroached on Swaha, therefore, as soon as christianism encroaches on the Vedam and vedamantras, christianism will be Vedic too, nah? By the same logic.
One type of Buddhism in Japan copied homa rites but replaced the Vedic Gods at the centre of the rite with a fictional Buddha instead. So if christianism were to copy homa rites and replace the central entity with jeebus - even if they kept a mandala of a clone of Hindoo deities around it - these would have to be called "Vedic rites" too, nah? Going by the type of arguments that modern Hindus like to make, where they look at exterior similarities (i.e. inculturations) and draw conclusions of relatedness and identity from there.
Anyway, Goldberg's agenda to christianise Hindu religion becomes clearer - in case the tell-tale phrase "interfaith minister" wasn't clear and further clarity was needed - in the link he himself provides to his Huff Post article in his interview:
huffingtonpost.com/philip-goldberg/how-hinduism-gave-us-a-ne_b_797861.html
By new age sleight of hand - like in his phrase 'NT term for the "Ground of Being"' - Goldberg turns the biblical gawd into the Brahman and the "Self" that the Vedic "seers" spoke of.
The kind of morons who like neo-vedanta/pseudo-vedanta and new age yoga* may well fall for the above.
(* Thanks Paramahamsa! <- He - like countless other Indian peddlers of just this kind - was so *totally* asking to be inculturated upon. Just desserts really. But to think people called him an authentic yogi. I remember coming across a book of his/attributed to him on 'how to talk to gawd' or something in the early 2000s. Pass.
And BTW, which real=authentic yogi do people know who would write a book about being a yogi, let alone an "autobiography of a yogi". Geez. That is a hobby of modern subverted, new-agey entities. Usually the kind who seek others' approval/admiration and alien followers. People who want to "convert" the west - into new ageism.)
Below is Thamizhchelvan warning against Frank Morales - who predictably fooled some new agey Indians desperate for alien converts into elevating him to a swami too, so that he got imposed on the rest of Hindus to dupe them. Morales also eventually revealed that his goal was to bring back/re-introduce jeebus and declare that jeebus was a great "Hindu Yogi" (you know, how Buddha is advertised as a "Hindu" Yogi only to Hindus, so that Hindus will keep repeating that "Buddha taught Hinduism onlee", except for the small detail that Buddha subverted Vedic religion as per traditional Hindoos, a.o.t. Elstian type/new-agey Hindus):
vijayvaani.com/FrmPublicDisplayArticle.aspx?id=2086
Goldberg roped in that other foreign "convert" - David Frawley, who got Hindus to crown him as "Vamadeva Shastri" - to endorse his book "AmriKKKan Veda":
haindavakeralam.com/HKPage.aspx?PageID=19379
Frawley is a "Pandit"? A "Vedic scholar"? Who died?
And Frawley's dabbling can hereby also be dismissed.
The oxymoronic title of "AmriKKKan Veda" is just laughable too. Then again, modern Hindus do keep universalising the Vedas saying it is "universal, universal". And these are the logical fruits of such thoughtless statements.
Goldberg's "American Veda" was not merely an attempt at universalising away Hindoo religion and to stop there - turning it into a pick-and-choose buffet dubbed "universal spirituality": turns out Goldberg is just another christian inculturationist in specific, like Frank Morales. As is usual with modern inculturationists of this particular type, they initially start off trying to get into the good books of Hindus, then from there they lead their readers/fans/beliebers to "jesus was a Hindu guru" and "the vedas are saying the same as the bible/the brahman of the vedas is the biblical gawd" (aka the old attempt to subsume Hindoo religion into christianism).
Haindava Keralam unwittingly published an interview with Goldberg submitted by a person familiar to them, without critically examining the contents.
HK took the interview off the main page, but it is for now still at HK with no *visible* objection:
[INSERT (a couple of days later): HK has removed the contents - sorry, not comments - of the page when I just checked.]
haindavakeralam.com/HKPage.aspx?PageID=19379
Quote:In 2002, he [Goldberg] became an ordained Interfaith Minister through the Interfaith Seminaries. He began offering spiritual counseling professionally, and occasionally performing weddings. Recently, with his wife, acupuncturist Lori Deutsch, he started Spiritual Wellness and Healing Associates (SWAHA).* He published Making Peace with God and Roadsigns on the Spiritual Path: Living at the Heart of Paradox. His column, ââ¬ÅSpiritual Wellnessââ¬Â appears regularly on Healthworld Online and also blogs on www.Intent.com.
* "SWAHA" -> More christian inculturation. Then again, Elst did say that Buddhism etc is "Vedic" for having also encroached on Swaha, therefore, as soon as christianism encroaches on the Vedam and vedamantras, christianism will be Vedic too, nah? By the same logic.
One type of Buddhism in Japan copied homa rites but replaced the Vedic Gods at the centre of the rite with a fictional Buddha instead. So if christianism were to copy homa rites and replace the central entity with jeebus - even if they kept a mandala of a clone of Hindoo deities around it - these would have to be called "Vedic rites" too, nah? Going by the type of arguments that modern Hindus like to make, where they look at exterior similarities (i.e. inculturations) and draw conclusions of relatedness and identity from there.
Anyway, Goldberg's agenda to christianise Hindu religion becomes clearer - in case the tell-tale phrase "interfaith minister" wasn't clear and further clarity was needed - in the link he himself provides to his Huff Post article in his interview:
huffingtonpost.com/philip-goldberg/how-hinduism-gave-us-a-ne_b_797861.html
Quote:Philip Goldberg Become a fan
Interfaith Minister, author of 'American Veda: How Indian Spirituality Changed the West'
Hindu Jesus: A Different Kind of Christianity
Posted: 12/19/2010 8:19 pm EST Updated: 06/19/2013 4:33 pm EDT
Then came the 60s, and I was introduced to a different Jesus, by way of India. Like millions of my contemporaries, my hot pursuit of truth and personal fulfillment led me to the spiritual teachings of the East. I read the sacred texts of Hinduism and Buddhism as well as modern interpreters such as Aldous Huxley, Alan Watts and Huston Smith. It was called mysticism, but I found it, ironically, non-mysterious and eminently rational. I tracked down a yoga class -- not easy to do back then, believe it or not -- and learned to meditate. Throughout my explorations, the name of Jesus cropped up surprisingly often, and always with respect. In Paramahansa Yogananda's seminal memoir, Autobiography of a Yogi, the rabbi of Nazareth is treated with such reverence that I thought I must be missing something.
So I bought a New Testament, and it blew my mind. Because my spiritual reference point was more Hindu than Judeo-Christian, the Gospels seemed more like the Upanishads or the Bhagavad Gita than the churchy dogma I expected to find. The main character was a master teacher, a guru who prodded his disciples not just to better behavior but to union with the divine. (=popular dictionary translation of "yoga", i.e. inculturationist Goldberg is saying that the fictional jeebus was a "yoga guru") His term for the Ground of Being was "Father," but it was easy to evoke the language of the Vedic seers and substitute Brahman or Self.
By new age sleight of hand - like in his phrase 'NT term for the "Ground of Being"' - Goldberg turns the biblical gawd into the Brahman and the "Self" that the Vedic "seers" spoke of.
The kind of morons who like neo-vedanta/pseudo-vedanta and new age yoga* may well fall for the above.
(* Thanks Paramahamsa! <- He - like countless other Indian peddlers of just this kind - was so *totally* asking to be inculturated upon. Just desserts really. But to think people called him an authentic yogi. I remember coming across a book of his/attributed to him on 'how to talk to gawd' or something in the early 2000s. Pass.
And BTW, which real=authentic yogi do people know who would write a book about being a yogi, let alone an "autobiography of a yogi". Geez. That is a hobby of modern subverted, new-agey entities. Usually the kind who seek others' approval/admiration and alien followers. People who want to "convert" the west - into new ageism.)
Below is Thamizhchelvan warning against Frank Morales - who predictably fooled some new agey Indians desperate for alien converts into elevating him to a swami too, so that he got imposed on the rest of Hindus to dupe them. Morales also eventually revealed that his goal was to bring back/re-introduce jeebus and declare that jeebus was a great "Hindu Yogi" (you know, how Buddha is advertised as a "Hindu" Yogi only to Hindus, so that Hindus will keep repeating that "Buddha taught Hinduism onlee", except for the small detail that Buddha subverted Vedic religion as per traditional Hindoos, a.o.t. Elstian type/new-agey Hindus):
vijayvaani.com/FrmPublicDisplayArticle.aspx?id=2086
Quote:Interfaith dialogues and Inculturation: The Pune Dialogue - by Thamizhchelvan 09 Dec 2011Goldberg sounds exactly like Morales, so can put them both in the same box.
...
The ââ¬ÅInternational Sanatana Dharma Societyââ¬Â run by one Frank Morales masquerading as ââ¬ÅSri Dharma Pravartaka Acharyaââ¬Â targets US-born and bred Hindu youths who are distanced from their native culture by two to three generations. His seeks to establish Jesus as ââ¬ÅDharma Masterââ¬Â through the Hindu scriptures, like the local fraudsters like Sadhu Chellappa and Vedanayagam Sastri. (14)
Goldberg roped in that other foreign "convert" - David Frawley, who got Hindus to crown him as "Vamadeva Shastri" - to endorse his book "AmriKKKan Veda":
haindavakeralam.com/HKPage.aspx?PageID=19379
Quote:About the book [Goldberg's "American Veda"], Pandit Vamadeva Sastri (David Frawley), Vedic scholar says, ââ¬ÅThrough his stimulating and thoughtful book, Indian readers can share in the great adventure in global consciousness that he documents in detail. They can learn how spiritually aware Americans have long been looking to India for guidance, not just Indians looking to the West.ââ¬Â
Frawley is a "Pandit"? A "Vedic scholar"? Who died?
And Frawley's dabbling can hereby also be dismissed.
The oxymoronic title of "AmriKKKan Veda" is just laughable too. Then again, modern Hindus do keep universalising the Vedas saying it is "universal, universal". And these are the logical fruits of such thoughtless statements.