His writing is the most intellectually compelling on the topic and all based on his first hand experiences

Kumar BRFite Joined: 13 Feb 1999 Posts: 754 Posted: 14 Mar 2007 09:30 pm

There is too much simplistic argumentation about religion by self professed atheists in this thread. It is like hearing Mullah Jamaluddin at the local Madarssa speaking his mind on the virtues of idolatorous hinduism.

You can't judge something properly unless you have lived it, according to its own methods. It is easy to pass judgements on something alien by one's own set of rules of judgement. Even amongst the religious, definitive comments are made by people of one religion about another without actually having spent enough effort in understanding the other religion from its own viewpoint. Such "polarised" views are utterly uselss if the goal is to evolve an integral understanding. Unless of course, the Ayatollahs of a certain polarised nook, "believe" that there is nothing to adhere to but their own pet version.

As Sri Aurobindo said, there are two kinds of denials, the denial of the materialist that denies anything spiritual, and the denial of ascetic that denies anything material, and both hardly ever meet. He also said that there is a middle ground between these two denials.

If this continues, then this thread will stay at one extreme of atheism/rationalism/science judging religion from outside and not from inside. Incidentally the dynamics of religion is about how the insiders of the religion view themselves and their religion. The view of the outsiders is only peripheral to this dynamics...

If people want to study "experiential" side of hinduism through an intellectal perspective, I would ask them to devote some time to study a fellow Jingo, Sri Aurobindo He had demanded total independence, suggested passive resistance as a means to fight the British long before Gandhi came on the scene, and was wrongfully jailed in a bombing case, although he was involved with the revolutionaries. But he was also a yogi (besides a scholar of sanskrit, latin, greek, french, english...), and during his solitary confinement he had a Krishna-experience" lasting several days, which turned him completely towards yoga, and rest of his life he spent on that. His writing is the most "intellectually compelling" I have seen on the topic and all based on his first hand experiences...

There is a somewhat "experimental" body of evidence available from yogis etc. Then there are theoreticians that try to fill in the gaps and try to organize everything in one theory. And just as any theory in physics, these theories have messy regions, even more so, since they are not based on as clean a method as the scientific method. But just because some of the theories sound bizarre when taken in all their ramifications, doesn't necessarily negate the supposedly experiential truths experienced repeatedly by the yogis.

Thats why I suggested the name of Sri Aurobindo. He has gone through many of such objections (and hundreds more) with unprecedented intellectual clarity. It is not science though...and it becomes pseudo-science only when someone claims it to be a science. I am making no such claims. For a good synopsis of Sri Aurobindo: Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness To dive right in: Life Divine[/quote] Posted: 14 Mar 2007 10:59 pm Bharat Rakshak Forum Index