Monday, June 30, 2008
Spirituality - 3
It is claimed that the soul is subtle in nature therefore the modern science is not able to find its existence. However, it is not known that what the subtlety means in this context.
The soul is indestructible in nature. The indestructibility of soul is axiomatic in nature. So far nobody has explained that why it is indestructible. It cannot be born. It cannot die. It cannot be burnt. It cannot be cut. On death it leaves one body and acquires a new body. The soul cannot be disintegrated further. The fire cannot burn it. The sword cannot cut it. It is never born because it never dies. It is neither organic and nor inorganic because in both the cases it would be destructible. It is always preexisting to a body and also postexisting. It has a separate existence than a body. The real thing is soul and not body because body is temporary in nature. It exists as long as soul exists in it. The moment, a soul lives the body, it is dead. The body is only a temporary abode for the soul. However, it is not known that why should the heart stop beating when the soul leaves the body. A soul may change an infinite number of bodies during Karmic cycle on its way to merger with Bruhm. The soul cannot be divided because in such case it has to be degraded to biological level. Only higher level things are considered here; not biological or materialstical. It is Hindu spiritual world. However, the soul can be hurt as is clear from the statement “I am hurt”. It can die also as is clear from the statement “I am dying”. It can be hungry also as is clear from the statement “I am hungry”. And so on. In short it can have all the biological properties as “I” can feel or desire or complain about etc. The description of soul in Gita seems to be a bundle of contradictory wrongs. For the soul to be indestructible; it necessary to show that “I” in “Who am I?” is different than “I” in “I am dying”. However, a soul being a higher level entity cannot have lower level biological functions and processes allotted to it. It is getting convoluted; the logic may stand on its head but the spiritualists are not bothered about it; you see these are higher level things and normal logic cannot be applied to it. It is convoluted means it is convoluted. Nobody should expect to find an iota of logic in Hindu spiritual logic. It is a logicless spirituality. The existence of a soul and Bruhm can only be realized or felt through higher level unknown faculties of higher level people not amenable to the laws of science. Of course if somebody is under peer pressure or social pressure then one can just nod, nod and nod - and long live the non-understandable and unidentifiable Bruhm......
Friday, June 20, 2008
Spirituality - 2
Now we are told that the Bruhm is superior to gods and they are its manifestations only; so we discuss the things which belong to higher level then the gods; still raising the level higher. However there are said to be two kinds of Bruhms. One Bruhm is called Saguna Bruhm, which has physical form and this entire world is his body. The representative of Saguna Bruhm is Lord Vishnu in this universe. The soul is small and subtle but different than Bruhm. This is also known as dualism or Dvaitvad. The soul or jiva ultimately gets merged with the Ultimate, the Bruhm. This also connects Bruhm with gods and idol worship and temples. This can convert polytheism in Hindu religion into monotheism. There is another Bruhm known as Nirguna Bruhm. This is formless and indefinable God in any sense of dimensions or power or anything else; it is truly indefinable. It is attributeless Absolute. It is all pervading; nothing pervades it. However most of the experts agree that the Nirguna Bruhm is the final thing and Saguna Bruhm is to enable layman to worship it. The soul and Nirguna Bruhm are not different from each other. This is known as non-dualism or Advaitvad.
The quest for soul is the quest for “I”. This “I” is not considered as pronoun but an entity in itself; like in the sentence “Who am I?” This soul (Aatmaa or Jiva) is separate from body and is indestructible. The life in a body exists because of existence of soul in it. The life is not the basic property of live bodies. The life is due to soul. When this soul is combined with the permanent absolute soul (the Bruhm) then the Hindu spiritual theory is complete; salvation or Moksha is achieved. One may add Karma theory to explain the sufferings in this world.
However, it would be difficult to quest for the identity of “my” in “my soul” and for the identity of “you” in “your soul”. These pronouns can acquire entirely new meanings in Hindu spiritual discourse. It may be akin to saying that you are not you but something else. Or your soul is not your soul but something else. However, this kind of supposedly higher level logic helps in maintaining the supremacy of Brahmans and who destroyed the life of the fifth stratum
However, this sense of spirituality never gets offended by the inhuman practice of untouchability of thousands of years. The overwhelming pride in the purity of Varnas enforces the separation between society and the people doing unclean jobs. These untouchables would like to have a society of their own but they are not traditionally and dharmically permitted to have any means of sustenance. Thus they have to live insulted lives at the bottom of the heap of the society and live through their hard labor doing despicable jobs...
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Spirituality - 1
What is soul is to body the Bruhm is to universe and more than that. Anybody talking about Bruhm with authority surely qualifies to be a Guru. Of course, the lower strata are not supposed to talk about these higher level things and especially not about the Bruhm which is the sole prerogative of Brahmans. As soul is preexisting to a body the Bruhm is always preexisting to any universe. There might have been many universes and Bruhm is always preexisting to them. As soul is always post-existing to a body, the Bruhm is always post-existing to any universe. A soul sees the birth and death of many bodies; the Bruhm also sees birth and death of many universes. All the gods are physical manifestation of the Bruhm including famous trinity of Hindu pantheon, Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh. However, there are many souls but only one and only one Bruhm. A soul is never born and never dies; the Bruhm is also never born and never dies. Both of them have permanent existences. The ultimate aim of a soul is to unite or merge with Bruhm. That is Moksha or salvation. The Bruhm is the substratum of this entire world, solar system and galaxies, past, future and present. Everything has come out of Bruhm and will finally merge into it. Anything, which exists, is due to Bruhm. Anything that existed in the past existed due to Bruhm. Anything, which will exist in future, will exist due to Bruhm. The Bruhm is eternal like eternal Sanatana dharma. However, it is not clear that how the Bruhm manifests itself as this world. There is an utter silence about this process. There is a creation. There is creator. But there is no process of creation. Anyway, it is all fantasy in the air. It explains nothing.
In Hindu spirituality the truth is defined by the permanency of an object. So falsity is defined by impermanency of an object. Here the talker can claim to be talking about still higher level thing or things at a still subtler level. And has better knowledge about the truth or permanent things. The sun will not exist forever therefore it is false. So is this earth. The life is not permanent so it is also false. The word “Sat” gets translated into English as “really real” but the true meaning is truth. So the only thing which is “Sat” or really real or permanent is Bruhm. Everything else is impermanent or a mirage or temporary. If one can claim to understand this concept based on the permanency of an object then one can claim to be real knower of truth; the knower of the Ultimate; the Bruhm. Thus the talker belongs to highest level of higher things. That is the way it works out to be. In this way all the scientists will never catch up with the level attained by the ancient Rishis who possessed the knowledge about the Ultimate. However if the truth cannot be identified with the permanency then the claim about Rishis falls flat on its face...
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Caste mobility - 7
...However, in relation to upward mobility, the downward mobility of individual was the norm. All the outcastes descended to fifth stratum so that purity of society could be maintained; the dastardly caste Panchayat was the tool for this. The Hindu society contains an inordinately large numbers of untouchables. Every fifth Hindu is untouchable. All the untouchables are supposed to provide unclean goods and services to rest of the society. This means that 20 percent of Hindu population or labor force is meant to provide these unclean goods and services. By no measurement or by no stretch of imagination any society needs 20 percent of its strength for such purposes. These so many untouchables are not needed though some people call caste system a specialization of labor. Then what explains their numbers? In ancient times nearly 10 percent of population was employed in the army. So all of them had to be Kshatriyas. With an average family of five, the fifty percent of population had to be Kshatriya. Now they are barely 5 percent. Where have they gone? The Vaisyas of ancient Hindu society were engaged in agriculture and cattle rearing. These formed about 90 percent of the total productive activities. There should have been about 40 percent Vaisyas but they are barely 5 percent. For Shudras there was no proper occupation; they were not connected with agriculture and cattle rearing which was then the work of the Vaisyas. Thus they were insignificant in numbers where as they are now about 60 percent of Hindu population. Where have they come from? This means that there have been large scale but slow degradations in the Hindu society. One of the degradation was the degradation of the occupations of agriculture and cattle rearing. These occupations were degraded from Vaisya level to Shudra level thus degrading a very large number of people. Or the Shudras in new Vedic areas engaged in these jobs were not upgraded...