More spam.
This post actually follows - for no clear reason - from post 89 of the 'Evil' Hindu practices thread.
independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/healthy-living/this-60-second-breathing-exercise-could-help-you-sleep-and-reduce-anxiety-10220449.html
The above is an example of the sorts of theft the west uses it for.
Other example cases are documented in passing in the comments of one "Raj Singh" at
swarajyamag.com/culture/untangling-the-false-knots-in-rajiv-malhotras-indras-net/
Here's a relevant comment by that person (showing how many others than Malhotra have noticed this problem which itself goes back for quite some time - everyone should have noticed it by now):
Well, it's been readily apparent for quite some time to even the most dense :cough: that from every small to every big thing, the west steals. Then it covers the tracks of its theft. Often it is not the admiring copycats in science - who admire and find 'inspiration' for "their" ideas in Hindoo (or Taoist) heathenism - that cover their own tracks of plagiarism (non-independent thought). It is later scientists who hide the fact that a lot is stolen from heathenism. And part of it is convenient amnesia.
The modern west (unalterably christoconditioned) could never have advanced - to be where it is today - without parasiting illegally on the discoveries of the GrecoRomans first and now on Hindoos. And next on the Chinese Taoists - though the west has for decades already begun poaching on and rebranding Taoism's QiGong/TaiChi and its views of the human (and cosmic) system, Taoist medicine including acupuncture and its Chinese view of the body system, and Taoist "diets" related to Qi too (dubbed alchemy until the west relabels it and brands it a science).
May as well archive some of the relevant comments on the topic of theft.
But I take offence at the implication that Hindoos (or Taoists) do not see the parallels to "western discoveries" or the developments in physics say. I'm sure a *lot* of people have been adding 2 and 2 together since childhood. To be honest, both Taoist and Hindoo cosmologies are better and especially completer fits of the universe than physics, but I won't press the point.
There is an innate ability to understand the universe in Hindoos and to recognise the cosmic significance of our heathen texts (well, they hardly conceal it in analogy, do they: they state most of it literally, much of it unverifiable - ever - by science).
On another matter, something I didn't want to get into, but sooner or later it will spill out anyway. Raj Singh places too much emphasis on science and a scientific approach to the whole of heathenism. The simple example being his implying that Skt's greater purpose would be as an ideal "natural language programming for AI systems". More complicated examples are in how he thinks that the greatest uses - the fullest use - of yoga is psychology, that the fullest use of advaitam is for quantum physics, etc.
The irony is that even with the most sophisticated equipment, science has worked out less about the universe than Hindoos' heathenism (and that of Taoists - the Taoists go into great detail about the universe, none of which I plan to reproduce/C&P to prove my point about their model of the universe being surprisingly accurate too). The means which the Hindoos used and even the ends were much greater than psychology and a mere scientific classification and understanding of the universe or of our brains or even the crude understandings of consciousness that we can perhaps replicate in AI to create artificial forms that can (sometime in the future) think in complex manner like our less artificial selves.
How to say it, the means and the ends of heathen practices ARE more than science. Heathen practices reveal realities that science cannot approach, although said practices also reveal the reality that science is able to reveal.
Yoga is more than the science of psychology. What can be and is meant to accomplished by yoga is much more also.
Let's say this next is but a suspicion, but Samadhi is not a state that once "we figure it out" we can replicate at will under select conditions, such as by making the inner environment of a subject (say via hormonal levels and neuro pathways) identical to one who is actually in samadhi. I think there will always be a difference.
I think Raj Singh places too much emphasis on the scientific uses of heathen ritual practices and derides the fact that they factually have larger uses. And the same: heathen cosmology has factually revealed far more than science can reveal. It has gone to a point beyond which science simply cannot tell us what's there. And I'm not just talking about the moments before the universe's birth (which are at best denied), or the origins of, development of and final evolutes of consciousness - about some of which, theories are emerging in physics (again, by plagiarising on Hindoo and even Tao heathenisms).
And even the west (not talking about new-agey dabblers or reconstructionists), like the digitisation program eagerly backed by a harvard engine, admits that Hindu yoga and tantra manuals are more than for scientific uses of creating altered states and heightened awareness and other scientific ends. They are encroaching on Hindoo (and other heathens') stuffs from more than a mere scientific POV and for more than scientific purposes. That is a part of the theft that Hindoos also need to realise. A part of Hindoos' wealth that they also take from us for themselves, while deriding it in Hindoos' possession.
I think to reduce heathen practices and their ends to mere science and scientific ends is to limit them severely, including the original intention behind much of them. The purposes of Ayurveda admittedly is generally more hmmm 'practical' or this-world or this reality or whatever (although it was also for better stamina for Vedic rituals, and Ayurveda is an upaveda of the Rig though other Indic religions started treating it as "secular"). But the objectives of Yoga and Advaitam - and Vedanta in general - is much more than explicating this universe or even the containing multiverse. I think some Indians are so technically minded that they have a one-track mind. I wonder why they are Not like the ancestors they claim to admire and emulate (the Vedic rishis).**
Sure much of Hindoo stuffs are rigorously systematised and documented, there has been a very scientific approach to all this, surely (usually by the very heathen experts prone to the much-derided "rituals"). But the practices themselves achieve more than that and are meant for more too. There are Hindoos who factually walk on water (a side-effect) and I'm not talking about someone on TV, but obviously about someone in my ken. I don't think that a scientific technique to achieve the same result would be the same thing as what the Hindoos have been doing and which manifested such a side-effect, nor ever lead to what the Hindoos have been attempting to achieve or have achieved (the ends).***
And much of the early Hindoo realisations were ... let's call it 'intuited' - there was no other way to discover most of the things they perceived, and still isn't and it's unlikely that science is tomorrow going to start advancing by the same means of perception. Science is defined by observation and empirical evidence, testable and repeatable by all, not by - I really need a better word - intuition, whatever the word to describe much of the Vedic Rishis' grasp on realities, their means for scientists (for science as it is defined and shall be for a long time) still verges on 'magic'. Hindoo heathenism (and Taoist heathenism) = Science + More.* I don't know a word for that "More", but whatever it is is Not science. And standing on one's head won't make it so. Which is why I wished Hindoos would resist every time someone declares they're going to scientifically analyse Vedic rituals etc, in that the results won't be descriptive of all the parts of it. I think a certain type of people's pedantry with science has eclipsed that More. People for whom the more heathen parts don't compute unless understood within a framework they undderstand, even though the framework is limiting of the view it gives and hence limiting of their understanding.
* Specifically, that Hindoos (and Taoists') heathenism = more than science and more than can be approached by science (scientific means).
** The technically - or as they like to consider themselves, scientifically - minded persons championing that heathenism should be dissected into a science dismiss experts in ritual practices as not fully knowing what they're doing/what they're achieving, all because of an (assumed) lack of knowledge on the part of the heathen experts. But it is not the heathen experts who are unaware of the full extent of what they are doing. They know what they're doing, what it means, how to do it, and why they do it, why it must be so.
*** There are Hindoos who can perceive things accurately from a distance of space and/or time. (There are Taoists also who can do all kinds of such things.) And weirder stuff. Some Hindoos and Taoists are *born* with such skills. I think one can fairly guarantee that there is nothing actually scientific about these people's abilities.
There are a lot of things that simply work in heathenism and no amount of strapping expert practitioners to monitoring equipment is going to reveal any more than their bodily (including brainwavey) conditions (and how it's no hoax). But it's still not the sum total of what they undergo. And I think there's a very real danger to lose sight of the much larger/greater totality by reducing it all to fit into science. Since, like I said, heathenism is more than science [what can be explicated by science, both now and -as I still suspect- any time in the future], although science is a natural part of it. I hate wishy-washy nonsense and am sorry to say that I can't sound sensible here and have therefore reduced my argument (non-argument) to handwaving - since I have no evidence to submit (which is not the same as not having evidence, of course) - but I feel it important to say something in defence of that part of heathenism that can (I'm borderline certain) never be explained/revealed by science.
Anyway, people can only go by what they know and experience first-hand, or what makes sense to them and in as far as it makes sense to them. More than that never computes. And in this age where science is - understandably - dominant, there's the need for many that everything must be seen and understood only through the lens of science and not with the fuller original perception employed by the Taoist sages I mean Vedic Rishis and living expert heathens/oddities.
But as a final ... disclaimer almost: whenever I have said "heathenism works", I never meant all what I was alluding to in the sense that this was a scientific process to be emulated by scientific means, by the way.
Aside:
There are comments at the swarajyamag link pleading that Buddhism etc must not be regarded as distinct from Hindoo heathenism, because of 'similarities' such as yoga (and later tantra) also being used in Buddhism (and Jainism). But the fact remains that these are originally Hindoo heathen ritual practices (and Buddhism even stole some Taoist ones) and that, although Buddhists admitted using these Hindoo practices in the same means, they insist that the ends achieved by them through these means - and not just the ends aimed for by them - are different. [The end of Advaita is only an 'intermediary stage' and 'the Buddhist goal is the true final one', etc.] Again, utterly incompatible cosmologies. And it is Not because there aren't sufficient experts of Hindoo, Jain and Buddhist practices to come to the realisation that they've all reached the same ends, the very experts insist the ends reached are not the same. (And though lay people will perceive the differences as subtle, the experts in question insist these are not subtle but huge differences.)
Oh and Advaita let alone the rest of heathenism is NOT similar let alone very similar to Buddhism.
At least the comments by Raj Singh underline that Adi Shankara did Not invent Advaita (Advaita like the other two well-known views on the Vedanta - go back to the Vedanta/Vedam.)
One other theft that appears to not be mentioned in the above comments by one Raj Singh (and may perhaps not be mentioned by Malhotra either) is the origins of remote viewing. The Russians IIRC started this and they still credited the origins of their rudimentary knowledge to the Hindoos. The Americans competed with the Russians and obtained what the little they know from the Russians, and by this time there is no credit to the Hindoos. The Americans also have (or had) a very low level but otherwise inconstant and inconsistent success rate, as per books on the subject.
This post actually follows - for no clear reason - from post 89 of the 'Evil' Hindu practices thread.
independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/healthy-living/this-60-second-breathing-exercise-could-help-you-sleep-and-reduce-anxiety-10220449.html
Quote:This 60 second breathing exercise could help you sleep and reduce anxiety
Focusing on your breath can also distract you from stressful thoughts
Sophie McIntyre
Saturday 02 May 2015
Tense at work or struggling to drift off at night? Then maybe Dr Weilââ¬â¢s 4-7-8 breathing technique could help.
Harvard trained Dr Andrew Weil advocates practising the ââ¬Ërelaxing breathââ¬â¢ twice a day in order to reduce tension or help you sleep.
(He's already named the practise, as if he invented it.)
The technique is a ââ¬Ënatural tranquiliser for the nervous systemââ¬â¢; it mimics aspects of yoga and meditation and helps the body unwind.
(Note use of the milder word "mimic" in place of theft.)
According to Dr Weil's YouTube channel: 'The 4-7-8 Breathing Exercise is utterly simple, takes almost no time, requires no equipment and can be done anywhere.'
Sitting up with your back straight, Dr Weil suggests you do the following twice a day, for six to eight weeks until you have mastered the technique.
1) Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound.
2) Close your mouth and inhale quietly through your nose to a mental count of four.
3) Hold your breath for a count of seven.
4) Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound to a count of eight.
5) This is one breath. Now inhale again and repeat the cycle three more times for a total of four breaths.
'Note that you always inhale quietly through your nose and exhale audibly through your mouth. The tip of your tongue stays in position the whole time,' Weil stresses.
Read more: The millions of dust mites and germs living in your bed linen could make you seriously ill, according to experts
'Exhalation takes twice as long as inhalation. The absolute time you spend on each phase is not important; the ratio of 4:7:8 is important,' he continues.
The most important part of the process is holding your breath for eight seconds.
Keeping the breath in allows oxygen to fill your lungs and then circulate effectively around the body.
This extra oxygen can have a relaxing effect.
Focusing on your breath can also distract you from stressful thoughts and allow you to calmly focus.
There are similarities to the practices of mindfulness and yoga which both use breathing techniques to focus the mind.
("Practices of mindfulness" is the relabelled rebranded phrase for Hindoos' dhyana yoga aka meditation.
Notice how the christowest is careful to speak of mere "similarities" instead of outright plagiarism. That's what they do in early stages, since the theft from yoga is too obvious. Tomorrow they will no longer mention yoga - same as how they've stopped introducing pilates as a yoga spin/rip-off and how they've stopped acknowledging Hindoo meditation techniques and speak of "practices of mindfulness" as if it were some knowledge universally known to mankind let alone the christowest or independently derived by the modern west.)
Dr Weil is an author as well as a trained physician and lives in Tucson, Arizona.
- Long ago, somewhere on IF, I linked to a German indology site acquiring IIRC Ayurveda and other Hindoo manuals (on chemistry and classifying materials etc, and general Hindoo religious texts) and using the acquisition for data mining these texts for various herbs and what Ayurveda prescribed them as remedies for/what their properties were. Even as the international christomedia - not just the local one - is harnessed to malign Ramdev, Ayurveda and Hindoo heathenism, the west steals the same. It's what the christowest always does. Hindoos need to be aware that the more the west screech at anything Hindoo or heathen, and tries to discourage it in India/among Hindoos, the more you can be sure that the west covets it for itself. With the death of heathenism in the west - murdered by what remains in the modern west (which is christianism and christo-conditioned post-christianism) - the west is now only a thief and murderer. [Western heathens are still too few in numbers to change this.]
- In a somewhat more recent year, linked to how a Harvard engine was the back-end of the manual digitisation work (by Hindoo women in India) of Yoga and tantra manuals still in India and which had thus far not yet fallen into the christoconditioned west's possession.
The above is an example of the sorts of theft the west uses it for.
Other example cases are documented in passing in the comments of one "Raj Singh" at
swarajyamag.com/culture/untangling-the-false-knots-in-rajiv-malhotras-indras-net/
Here's a relevant comment by that person (showing how many others than Malhotra have noticed this problem which itself goes back for quite some time - everyone should have noticed it by now):
Quote: Raj Singh ââ¬Â¢ 3 days ago
I just wanted to offer a defence of Malhotra against some of the criticisms below that he is an activist and that he has unfairly targeted a well-wishing and reputable Hindu scholar like Prof Rambachan, what somebody earlier described as "friendly fire"
I don't know Rambachan personally and hence I have nothing personal against him. To me it does not appear that Malhotra also has a personal objection against Rambachan, his objection is against the activity that Rambachan is involved in, whether intentionally or non-intentionally, he is acting as an instrument in eroding the cultural distinctiveness of India. The more fierce articulation of this, he is acting like a Western sepoy in this war of civilizations.
To many the whole notion that there is some war going on between Western civilization and Indian civilization is ridiculous. What kind of war is this where there is no invasions, no bullets fired, no economic sanctions. In fact we find the opposite conception in the popular psyche, India and West are natural allies, friends, civilizational siblings. The West is putting a lot of direct investment in India's economy and fueling industry and creating jobs for Indians. How the heck then is this a war, surely this is some nationalist hyperparanoia?
The war is a cultural war. It has been going on since the establishment of the East India company. Slowly, but surely India's distinct culture has been eroded by eroding what makes India's culture distinct(See Malhotra's Being Different) by reinterpreting it, repackaging it and rebranding it as something Western.
There are three distinct areas I can identify in which India's cultural knowledge systems have been reinterpreted, repackaged and rebranded
1. Yoga
2. Ayurveda
3. Advaita
1. Yoga has been reinterpreted and repackaged as exercise. In the popular psyche it is no longer a psycho-spiritual discipline to still the mind and unlock our dormant potentials and transform our consciousness, but it seen as an exercise industry. Yoga has become synonymous with stretching, Yoga mats, weight loss. In fact so pervasive is this connotation, that we distinguish Yoga from meditation, as if they are two different things. In the Western popular psyche meditation is associated with Buddhism.
In Western science it has been rebranded in Modern Psychology. It is not known to most people who have not studied the history of Psychology, that most psychotherapy is directed derived from Yoga and Buddhism.
2. Ayurveda has been reinterpreted and repacked as organic food and cosmetics, sustainable living.
In Western science it has been rebranded in Allopathic medicine as Nanomedicine(rasashastra) reconstructive surgery(shalya tantra) body types(dosas) and clinical trials(dravyaguna vigyan)
3. Advaita has been interpreted and repackaged as religous scholaticism, no different in character to Christian scholasticism or Islamic scholasticism.
In Western science it has been rebranded as interpretations of quantum mechanics. Holographic interpretation, observer-collapse-measurement interpretation, thermodynamic interpretation, quantum field interpretation. Again this reveleation is sure to shock, but again those who know the history of quantum physics will know that all the pioneers of quantun physics were deeply involved in the study of Advaita and used Advaita concepts to explain quantum physics. Schrodinger's wave mechanics is attested by his biographer to be a direct result of his reading of Advaita:
The unity and continuity of Vedanta are reflected in the unity and continuity of wave mechanics. In 1925, the world view of physics was a model of a great machine composed of separable interacting material particles. During the next few years, Schrodinger and Heisenberg and their followers created a universe based on super imposed inseparable waves of probability amplitudes. This new view would be entirely consistent with the Vedantic concept of All in One.
Walter J. Moore in Schrödinger: Life and Thought (1989) ISBN 0521437679
It is obvious that Schrödinger changed his mind about a wave aspect to electrons between 1923 and 1926. There is some controversy about how Schrödinger actually arrived at Wave Mechanics, but in the Fall of 1925, presumably as he was building his theory, he wrote an essay, Seek for the Road, which may provide some clues. (Reference: My View of the World, (Cambridge, 1964).
You may recall the Schrödinger's Cat paradox, which was first published in its "scientific form" in 1935 in Zeitschrift der Physick. However in his 1925 essay he recounts an ancient Sankhya Hindu paradox that, jazzed up with some technology, became the cat paradox. In that original form the paradox was cast in the form of two people, one looking at a garden, the other in a dark room. The modern equivalent would be one person looking in the box to see if the cat is alive or dead, while a second person waits out in the hall. As we discussed, in this modern form the state "collapses" for the first person while it does not collapse for the second person.
In 1925 Schrõdinger resolved that paradox the way the Vedantists did: he asserted that all consciousness is one. As he wrote:
"But it is quite easy to express the solution in words, thus: the plurality [of viewpoints] that we perceive is only "an appearance; it is not real. Vedantic philosophy, in which this is a fundamental dogma, has sought to clarify it by a number of analogies, one of the most attractive being the many-faceted crystal which, while showing hundreds of little pictures of what is in reality a single existent object, does not really multiply the object."
The plurality that we perceive is only an appearance; it is not real. Vedantic philosophy... has sought to clarify it by a number of analogies, one of the most attractive being the many-faceted crystal which, while showing hundreds of little pictures of what is in reality a single existent object, does not really multiply that object...
"The Mystic Vision" as translated in Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists (1984) edited by Ken Wilber
In itself, the insight is not new. The earliest records, to my knowledge, date back some 2500 years or more... the recognition ATMAN = BRAHMAN (the personal self equals the omnipresent, all-comprehending eternal self) was in Indian thought considered, far from being blasphemous, to represent the quintessence of deepest insight into the happenings of the world. The striving of all the scholars of Vedanta was after having learnt to pronounce with their lips, really assimilate in their minds this grandest of all thoughts.
David Bohm: Holographic interpretation:
Deep down the consciousness of mankind is one. This is a virtual certainty because even in the vacuum matter is one; and if we don't see this, it's because we are blinding ourselves to it.
Statement of 1986, as quoted in Towards a Theory of Transpersonal Decision-Making in Human-Systems (2007) by Joseph Riggio, p. 66
Consciousness is much more of the implicate order than is matter . . . Yet at a deeper level [matter and consciousness] are actually inseparable and interwoven , just as in the computer game the player and the screen are united by participation.
Statement of 1987, as quoted in Towards a Theory of Transpersonal Decision-Making in Human-Systems (2007) by Joseph Riggio, p. 66
There are several dozen other pioneers of quantum physics who freely drew from Advaita.
It is interesting to note that while in the popular Western culture Yoga is an exercise program; Ayurveda organic food and cosmetics, and Advaita religious scholasticism, in the Western scientific world Yoga is treated as Psychology, Ayurveda as Medicine and Advaita as Physics, and theories from them are taken and rebranded as Western scientific concepts and techniques e.g. Yoga techniques like Yoga Nidra is rebranded "progressive relaxation" Yogic mind-control techniques of pratipaksha bhavana is rebranded as "Cognitive Behavioural therapy" Buddhist four noble truths is rebranded as "Existentialist therapy" Prakriti/Maya/Akasha is rebranded "quantum field"
When we hear this our first reaction is to dismiss them because of the popular connotations we have associated with Yoga, Ayurveda and Advaita, it simply sounds absurd that Advaita could be compared to quantum physics or Yoga to Psychology or Ayurveda to Allopathy. On the other hand, when the Indic derived concept is rebranded as Western science then suddenly it becomes acceptable, credible and reputable e.g. Maya sounds like mysticism or religion, but when it becomes the "quantum" it becomes physics. People who would otherwise stay away from Yoga seeing it as some mystical and Eastern woo, would happily undergo CBT, psychodynamic, humanistic and mindfulness therapy.
Now ask yourself if you take absolutely everything from India, reinterpret it and repackage it and rebrand it as Western, then what distinctiveness is left of Indian culture? This is what Malhotra refers to as "cultural genocide" I hope you can see there is merit in his so-called activism. He is empirically documenting what many of us Indians already known and feel. "The West stole all our knowledge and then used it to further their science"
This is a kind of civilizational war, that many of us don't actually know is happening. So Malhotra should be commended for being one of the very few Hindu scholars in the world to actually fight back using the critical analysis techniques of Western academia itself. I hope he exposes them some more.
Well, it's been readily apparent for quite some time to even the most dense :cough: that from every small to every big thing, the west steals. Then it covers the tracks of its theft. Often it is not the admiring copycats in science - who admire and find 'inspiration' for "their" ideas in Hindoo (or Taoist) heathenism - that cover their own tracks of plagiarism (non-independent thought). It is later scientists who hide the fact that a lot is stolen from heathenism. And part of it is convenient amnesia.
The modern west (unalterably christoconditioned) could never have advanced - to be where it is today - without parasiting illegally on the discoveries of the GrecoRomans first and now on Hindoos. And next on the Chinese Taoists - though the west has for decades already begun poaching on and rebranding Taoism's QiGong/TaiChi and its views of the human (and cosmic) system, Taoist medicine including acupuncture and its Chinese view of the body system, and Taoist "diets" related to Qi too (dubbed alchemy until the west relabels it and brands it a science).
May as well archive some of the relevant comments on the topic of theft.
Quote:Raj Singh [replies to] VeVePe ââ¬Â¢ 3 days ago
For sure it is a deviation from our Dharmic tradition.
If you read my latest post I show that in fact the true import of our Dharmic systems is being understood and applied in Western science, but when Dharmic systems are juxtaposed into Western science, they are rebranded and the Dharmic connections erased. It is like committing plagiarism, when one plagiarises they rebrand somebody else's ideas as their own and then erase the connections to the original source.
The West extracts all the essence or juice from the Dharmic systems to use for its own purposes, and then leaves the carcass behind for the Indians e.g. They derive all the psychological science from Yoga to develop new therapies, and then leave behind exercise for the Indians. In the same way they derive from Advaita theoretical physics, and leave behind for the Indians scholasticism.
Malhotra discusses this as a part of the steps in the process in his U-turn theory. The first step is some Westerner will go to India and learn one of India's traditional knowledge systems. The second step is they will bring it back to the West and then rebrand it, remove the links to the original source, and may even go further and denigrate the original source as primitive, to make it look like the West merely took basic ideas or inspirations and turned them into something advanced and scientific.
But at the same time you cannot blame the Western scientists for taking traditional Indian systems of knowledge and creating new technologies and new fields of science out of them, because we need them to progress. The tragedy in this affair is, it should be Modern Indians who should be doing this and not the West.
Sadly, as I said earlier Indians think of their Yoga as exercise and not Psychology; their Ayurveda as nothing more than herbal complimentary medicine and not as a fully fledged scientific medical system on par with Allopathy and their Advaita as scholasticism and not as theoretical physics.
There is another area I have not mentioned; Indians think of their Sanskrit language as a religious Aryan supremacist language, while the West see it as Natural language programming for AI systems.
(Actually, not quite. Few Indians see it as the former. But some Indians see it as the latter too, not just the west and the west is later in the game than Hindoos have been. But a certain segment of the west most definitely sees Skt as the pinnacle of *their* development in linguistic communication. And humans are defined - distinguished - by language, w.r.t. other species are they not? And with this claim on Skt by the west, they are essentially declaring they are the pinnacle of humanity for having come up with the language they covet the most and which they pompously feel must be theirs and "therefore" is theirs.
In any case, neither of Raj Singh's descriptions is how traditional Hindoos view Skt, although such features as the fact that it is a highly inflected language - conveying meaning with less chance of ambiguity - make it certainly more appropriate for scientific uses and rationalising thought than English, something for which Skt is naturally appreciated by its natural=native speakers. To the native traditional heathens, it is not just a living language, it is the language that allows them to think and reach the sorts of conclusions - besides attaining to the sorts of accomplishments - as their heathen ancestors. And it is very much the language of Hindoos' heathen religious terminology - samadhi etc are a Hindoo experience and concept and only the Hindoos' speech have words for it. No different from how Taoist concepts have no equivalent in tongues foreign to them. Taoists even borrow the word Mantra from Hindoos because English has no equivalent by far. Which, btw, is more proof that Taoists consider Hindoo heathenism closer to their religion than most other stuff out there.)
It is almost as if Indians are being fooled by the West into thinking the gems they have are worthless. It is like fooling somebody into giving away their gold by convincing them it is worthless.
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VeVePe Raj Singh ââ¬Â¢ 2 days ago
>>"It is almost as if Indians are being fooled by the West into thinking the gems they have are worthless. It is like fooling somebody into giving away their gold by convincing them it is worthless."
(Methinks everyone has said that at least once by now - practically the same words too, IIRC - after having noticed the problem. We're all just repeating each others' experiences.)
Very nice, I think there is a Panchatantra fable that illustrates this point :-)
But I take offence at the implication that Hindoos (or Taoists) do not see the parallels to "western discoveries" or the developments in physics say. I'm sure a *lot* of people have been adding 2 and 2 together since childhood. To be honest, both Taoist and Hindoo cosmologies are better and especially completer fits of the universe than physics, but I won't press the point.
There is an innate ability to understand the universe in Hindoos and to recognise the cosmic significance of our heathen texts (well, they hardly conceal it in analogy, do they: they state most of it literally, much of it unverifiable - ever - by science).
On another matter, something I didn't want to get into, but sooner or later it will spill out anyway. Raj Singh places too much emphasis on science and a scientific approach to the whole of heathenism. The simple example being his implying that Skt's greater purpose would be as an ideal "natural language programming for AI systems". More complicated examples are in how he thinks that the greatest uses - the fullest use - of yoga is psychology, that the fullest use of advaitam is for quantum physics, etc.
The irony is that even with the most sophisticated equipment, science has worked out less about the universe than Hindoos' heathenism (and that of Taoists - the Taoists go into great detail about the universe, none of which I plan to reproduce/C&P to prove my point about their model of the universe being surprisingly accurate too). The means which the Hindoos used and even the ends were much greater than psychology and a mere scientific classification and understanding of the universe or of our brains or even the crude understandings of consciousness that we can perhaps replicate in AI to create artificial forms that can (sometime in the future) think in complex manner like our less artificial selves.
How to say it, the means and the ends of heathen practices ARE more than science. Heathen practices reveal realities that science cannot approach, although said practices also reveal the reality that science is able to reveal.
Yoga is more than the science of psychology. What can be and is meant to accomplished by yoga is much more also.
Let's say this next is but a suspicion, but Samadhi is not a state that once "we figure it out" we can replicate at will under select conditions, such as by making the inner environment of a subject (say via hormonal levels and neuro pathways) identical to one who is actually in samadhi. I think there will always be a difference.
I think Raj Singh places too much emphasis on the scientific uses of heathen ritual practices and derides the fact that they factually have larger uses. And the same: heathen cosmology has factually revealed far more than science can reveal. It has gone to a point beyond which science simply cannot tell us what's there. And I'm not just talking about the moments before the universe's birth (which are at best denied), or the origins of, development of and final evolutes of consciousness - about some of which, theories are emerging in physics (again, by plagiarising on Hindoo and even Tao heathenisms).
And even the west (not talking about new-agey dabblers or reconstructionists), like the digitisation program eagerly backed by a harvard engine, admits that Hindu yoga and tantra manuals are more than for scientific uses of creating altered states and heightened awareness and other scientific ends. They are encroaching on Hindoo (and other heathens') stuffs from more than a mere scientific POV and for more than scientific purposes. That is a part of the theft that Hindoos also need to realise. A part of Hindoos' wealth that they also take from us for themselves, while deriding it in Hindoos' possession.
I think to reduce heathen practices and their ends to mere science and scientific ends is to limit them severely, including the original intention behind much of them. The purposes of Ayurveda admittedly is generally more hmmm 'practical' or this-world or this reality or whatever (although it was also for better stamina for Vedic rituals, and Ayurveda is an upaveda of the Rig though other Indic religions started treating it as "secular"). But the objectives of Yoga and Advaitam - and Vedanta in general - is much more than explicating this universe or even the containing multiverse. I think some Indians are so technically minded that they have a one-track mind. I wonder why they are Not like the ancestors they claim to admire and emulate (the Vedic rishis).**
Sure much of Hindoo stuffs are rigorously systematised and documented, there has been a very scientific approach to all this, surely (usually by the very heathen experts prone to the much-derided "rituals"). But the practices themselves achieve more than that and are meant for more too. There are Hindoos who factually walk on water (a side-effect) and I'm not talking about someone on TV, but obviously about someone in my ken. I don't think that a scientific technique to achieve the same result would be the same thing as what the Hindoos have been doing and which manifested such a side-effect, nor ever lead to what the Hindoos have been attempting to achieve or have achieved (the ends).***
And much of the early Hindoo realisations were ... let's call it 'intuited' - there was no other way to discover most of the things they perceived, and still isn't and it's unlikely that science is tomorrow going to start advancing by the same means of perception. Science is defined by observation and empirical evidence, testable and repeatable by all, not by - I really need a better word - intuition, whatever the word to describe much of the Vedic Rishis' grasp on realities, their means for scientists (for science as it is defined and shall be for a long time) still verges on 'magic'. Hindoo heathenism (and Taoist heathenism) = Science + More.* I don't know a word for that "More", but whatever it is is Not science. And standing on one's head won't make it so. Which is why I wished Hindoos would resist every time someone declares they're going to scientifically analyse Vedic rituals etc, in that the results won't be descriptive of all the parts of it. I think a certain type of people's pedantry with science has eclipsed that More. People for whom the more heathen parts don't compute unless understood within a framework they undderstand, even though the framework is limiting of the view it gives and hence limiting of their understanding.
* Specifically, that Hindoos (and Taoists') heathenism = more than science and more than can be approached by science (scientific means).
** The technically - or as they like to consider themselves, scientifically - minded persons championing that heathenism should be dissected into a science dismiss experts in ritual practices as not fully knowing what they're doing/what they're achieving, all because of an (assumed) lack of knowledge on the part of the heathen experts. But it is not the heathen experts who are unaware of the full extent of what they are doing. They know what they're doing, what it means, how to do it, and why they do it, why it must be so.
*** There are Hindoos who can perceive things accurately from a distance of space and/or time. (There are Taoists also who can do all kinds of such things.) And weirder stuff. Some Hindoos and Taoists are *born* with such skills. I think one can fairly guarantee that there is nothing actually scientific about these people's abilities.
There are a lot of things that simply work in heathenism and no amount of strapping expert practitioners to monitoring equipment is going to reveal any more than their bodily (including brainwavey) conditions (and how it's no hoax). But it's still not the sum total of what they undergo. And I think there's a very real danger to lose sight of the much larger/greater totality by reducing it all to fit into science. Since, like I said, heathenism is more than science [what can be explicated by science, both now and -as I still suspect- any time in the future], although science is a natural part of it. I hate wishy-washy nonsense and am sorry to say that I can't sound sensible here and have therefore reduced my argument (non-argument) to handwaving - since I have no evidence to submit (which is not the same as not having evidence, of course) - but I feel it important to say something in defence of that part of heathenism that can (I'm borderline certain) never be explained/revealed by science.
Anyway, people can only go by what they know and experience first-hand, or what makes sense to them and in as far as it makes sense to them. More than that never computes. And in this age where science is - understandably - dominant, there's the need for many that everything must be seen and understood only through the lens of science and not with the fuller original perception employed by the Taoist sages I mean Vedic Rishis and living expert heathens/oddities.
But as a final ... disclaimer almost: whenever I have said "heathenism works", I never meant all what I was alluding to in the sense that this was a scientific process to be emulated by scientific means, by the way.
Aside:
There are comments at the swarajyamag link pleading that Buddhism etc must not be regarded as distinct from Hindoo heathenism, because of 'similarities' such as yoga (and later tantra) also being used in Buddhism (and Jainism). But the fact remains that these are originally Hindoo heathen ritual practices (and Buddhism even stole some Taoist ones) and that, although Buddhists admitted using these Hindoo practices in the same means, they insist that the ends achieved by them through these means - and not just the ends aimed for by them - are different. [The end of Advaita is only an 'intermediary stage' and 'the Buddhist goal is the true final one', etc.] Again, utterly incompatible cosmologies. And it is Not because there aren't sufficient experts of Hindoo, Jain and Buddhist practices to come to the realisation that they've all reached the same ends, the very experts insist the ends reached are not the same. (And though lay people will perceive the differences as subtle, the experts in question insist these are not subtle but huge differences.)
Oh and Advaita let alone the rest of heathenism is NOT similar let alone very similar to Buddhism.
At least the comments by Raj Singh underline that Adi Shankara did Not invent Advaita (Advaita like the other two well-known views on the Vedanta - go back to the Vedanta/Vedam.)
One other theft that appears to not be mentioned in the above comments by one Raj Singh (and may perhaps not be mentioned by Malhotra either) is the origins of remote viewing. The Russians IIRC started this and they still credited the origins of their rudimentary knowledge to the Hindoos. The Americans competed with the Russians and obtained what the little they know from the Russians, and by this time there is no credit to the Hindoos. The Americans also have (or had) a very low level but otherwise inconstant and inconsistent success rate, as per books on the subject.