The Value of Hindu Culture for the Modern Age
To find truth, all the great sages have told us that one must go beyond all outer divisions of race, creed, caste, nationality or culture. Only those who can step beyond the outer identities that divide human beings can arrive at the one source of all things– the true Self of all beyond time, space and circumstance.
This, however, does not mean that culture has no purpose or value in the spiritual life. Many of the same sages were also great founders, upholders or reformers of culture. Many left not only works on spiritual knowledge but those on the arts and sciences, and social and political issues. This in fact was the tradition of the Vedic seers, who first established Hindu culture in ancient times. They were said to be “bhutakrit,” world-makers or establishers of culture and custom. If we look at humanity through history we can observe that men and women of spiritual realization have not come equally from all cultures, which would be the case if culture were merely a neutral factor in the spiritual life.
Some cultures, particularly India, have created an environment that has better allowed for great spiritual personages to arise. There has been an ongoing stream of great spiritual figures in India since……
August 20th, 2007 at 5:25 am
Very relevant and thought-provoking piece on this same topic from The Globalist:
http://www.theglobalist.com/storyid.aspx?StoryId=5211
August 23rd, 2007 at 11:01 pm
Dear Sir, I have initiated some important debate on the website http://www.sciy.org on two subjects “Hindutva” and “Untold Potentialities”.I suggest you may have alook at these and select some portion to put it on your site ,if in order and intimate me and if any clarification is required.Two subjects need to be highlighted in Hindu Voice.The specificity of this culture with unique spiritual potentialities.The immedite danger threatened to its existence by political and cultural conspiracies in the current Global Enviornment. Yeshwant Sane
Some recent extract
Re: Re: untold potentialities: I am glad for what Debashish wrote,
“The Infrarational Age of the Cycle,” he (Aurobindo) says about the stages in an anthropological progression: “…we must not suppose that they are naturally exclusive and absolute in their nature, or complete in their tendency or fulfilment when they come, or rigidly marked off from each other in their action or their time…
“The coming to the front of the age of reason in the mass as in the present, due to the universalization of the Enlightenment project - what Heidegger called “the Europeanization of the World” - is seen by him as a necessary stage of world culture developing its own futures, which for him hold the potential (not necessity) of a subjective leading to a spiritual age.”
I feel that the evolutionary growth of spirituality in the masses cannot be perceived in segments and in the reductionist ways. The eternal ripening and sweetening of a fruit on a tree has its secret equation in the programme in the roots. The individual, who is supposed to contribute to the social spiritual evolution, is himself a product of the culture and environment, which has its continuous history, nurture and occupation. Can this Culture be wished away or denigrated on some shady counts? We have to compare here, in social evolution and context, the Cultures and not the singular Individuals. What is the History card/Sheet of each culture? We cannot afford to loose ourselves in the so-called mechanical Universalization and integration.
But, comrade Mao Tse Tung conceived in his ‘cultural Revolution’ of a violent separation and delinking of the culture of the Chinese from their past. The present day American and European cultures, which are predominantly materialistic in orientation, have similar notions of superiority of ethically unpurified intellect over the natural cultural growth of the other cultures and especially to the exception of all, that of the Hindu society. Can these be the guides for the “Europeanization of the World”?
Hindus is at once a Religionism and European is obviously seculararism .Is that the argument? Does it not indicate an age-old imperialistic bias?
“It has been observed,” the cultured peoples can never be safe against the onslaught of barbarian hordes until they armed themselves with developed scientific weapons of self-defense and aggression.” There is a modern version of this. Who is the ‘Modern Barbaric’ Human? Today, India, who supports the age-old spirituality including the divine Auroville and Pondicherry’s spiritual Laboratory, faces such an imminent prospect. This aggression is not only physical from the neighboring countries and their cultures, but also from the so-called secular Global Governance and so-called Secular intellectuals within and outside.
In fact, the evolution from the infra rational to Rational and spiritual, requires the continuity of human existence on Earth, both physically and culturally. But this is under direct threat. What are our means of defense? The wisdom of Bhagvad gita as interpreted and disclosed by Mahayogi Aurobindo is needed here.
(Yeshwant Sane)
E-Mail:yrsane@eth.net
August 6, 2007
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