Fundamental Principles of Vedanta R K Mutt
Belief and symbiotic relevancesd are easily tagged by the writer Sri
Ymji; however, belief as denoted in english is not the same as that denoted
in samskritham and vedantha. To believe is not madly attached to; to
believe is noy a blind faith’ to believe is not a ritual; to believe is not
the brilliant pesrpectives to find justice to the actions. Without the
reason The Rig vedam says, DO NOT ACCEPT IT. So, belief in sanatana dharma,
is basic faith, in something, which is in awareness in the blood of the
genes of every individual born with the princuple, and tryhing to realise
by self alone is the ultimatuym. Where tied through the ope of a religion
is a jail term; sanatana dharma is thus universal since anyone born is free
to see though ot; or go to anywhere; and come back also; the ingress and
the exit are so frequently adoptible, one has to run, his/her school to
understand. So, faith is a part of the action where some basic questions
and answers are obtained and then alone decided to adopt it. Sanatana
dharma is only a SUN; casting light all over; heat and night are self
awareness of the adoptions waiting for the light to come-back.
“Consciousness of the Beyond is the raw material of all religion.”
Religion is singular in essence and diverse in manifestation. Every
religion may be likened to one pearl strung with others on a necklace whose
common cord is the universal soul of each of those religions. Vedanta is
concerned with timeless truth and upholds the view that no religion has a
monopoly on truth or revelation. Its fundamental teachings include: (1) the
impersonality and universality of Supreme Truth; (2) the divinity of the
soul; (3) the unity of existence, or the oneness of matter and energy, or
the ultimate oneness of God, man and nature; (4) the harmony of religions;
(5) the immanence and transcendence of God who is both the material and the
efficient cause of the universe; and (6) Mukti or total freedom from
bondage, i.e., spiritual union with the divine during one’s lifetime.
Because these are the eternal teachings of Vedanta, Vedanta is also
referred to as the “Eternal Religion” or Sanatana Dharma.
That omniscient and omnipotent source must be Brahman from which occur
the birth, continuance and dissolution of this universe that is manifested
through name and form, that is associated with diverse agents and
experiences, that provides the support for actions and results, having
well-regulated space, time and causation, and that deifies all thoughts
about the real nature of its creation. (Brahma Sutra, I. 1 2) (ADISHANKARA)
. . . the fact is that Brahman is consciousness, and not that it has
consciousness. It is pure, undifferentiated consciousness or mere
awareness, the supreme principle in which there is no differentiation of
knower, knowledge, and known. It is absolute intelligence whose essential
nature is self-luminosity. As Shankara says, “The Atman is throughout
nothing but intelligence. Intelligence is its essential nature, as the
salt-taste is of the lump of salt.” (Ibid, p. 166)
No one can ever understand maya, the inscrutable creative power of
Brahman. Maya is part of the essence of Brahman—Brahman and Its creative
power are one. Brahman without Its power of maya is static; Brahman with
Its power of maya is dynamic. Both aspects constitute the totality of
Brahman. Brahman as pure intelligence is the efficient cause of the
universe; Its maya is the material cause. Brahman alone is real; the world
is empirical. Professor M. Hiriyanna expresses it beautifully: . . . the
unity of the Absolute of Brahman may be compared to the unity of a
painting, say, of a landscape. Looked at as a landscape, it is a plurality:
hill, valley, lake and streams. But its ground, the substance of which it
is constituted is one, viz., the canvas. It is rare that analogies in
philosophy admit of extension, but this one does, in one particular. The
canvas appears not only as a hill, a valley and a stream but also as the
garment of the shepherd that may be figured upon it. Similarly, the
Absolute which is of the essence of sentience, manifests itself not only as
insentient objects but also as sentient subjects. (Quote from Intro. to
Vedanta, p. 129)
Even Western scholars are extremely puzzled by this mysterious
element of life. Alfred North Whitehead observed, “All effort of human
thought only dimly perceives, misdescribed [sic] and wrongly associates
things.” Bertrand Russell concluded his book, Human Knowledge: Its Scope
and Its Limits with a similar idea: “All human knowledge is uncertain,
inexact and partial. To this doctrine we have not found any limitation
whatsoever. It is only an examined life that leaves no wonder to us. A
completely rational explanation of the world is not within the scope of
man’s intellect.” Whitehead additionally observed, “It is no doubt true
that curiosity is the craving of reason that the facts discriminated
against in experience be understood. It means the refusal to be satisfied
with the bare welter of facts.”
The Avatara or incarnation of God is a unique manifestation
of the conditioned Brahman. The Avatara is the living tangible form of
universal Supreme Truth—God in human form. Although Christianity and
Hinduism both recognize the Avatara, in Christianity the Avatara is limited
to the historical Christ. In Hinduism, the incarnation appears whenever a
cosmic need requires its redeeming appearance in the world. Lord Krishna
says: Though I am unborn and eternal by nature, and though I am the Lord
of all beings, yet, subjugating My Prakriti, I accept birth through my own
Maya. Wherever there is a decline of dharma, O Bharata, and a rise of
adharma, I incarnate Myself. For the protection of the good, for the
destruction of the wicked, and for the establishment of dharma, I am born
in every age. (B. Gita (IV: 6-8)
Whole Vedanta doctrine, Tat Twam Asi, “Thou art That,” that is to
say, “Thou, who for a time didst seem to be something by thyself, art that,
art really nothing apart from the divine essence.” Secondly, as Brahman has
to be conceived as perfect, and therefore as unchangeable, the soul cannot
be conceived as a real modification or deterioration of Brahman. Thirdly,
as Brahman has neither beginning nor end, neither can it have any parts;
therefore, the soul cannot be a part of Brahman, but the whole of Brahman
must be present in every individual soul.
Every theory of the creation of the soul from nothing inevitably
leads to fatalism and preordination, and instead of a Merciful Father,
places before us a hideous, cruel, and an ever-angry God to worship. And so
far as the power of religion for good or evil is concerned, this theory of
a created soul leading to its corollaries of fatalism and predestination,
is responsible for the horrible idea prevailing among some Christians and
Mohammedans that the heathens are the lawful victims of their swords and
all the horrors that have followed and are following it still. (C. W., IV:
270)
The foulest water can be purified by removing its impurities
through distillation or filtering—the innate purity of the water is always
there. The most immoral individual gradually becomes moral through
spiritual living. When impurity is removed, the bliss of the immortal Self
is spontaneously, intuitively experienced. “If the doors of perception are
cleansed,” Blake wrote, “everything will appear as it, infinite.” Vedanta
alone developed this doctrine of the eternal, pure, self-luminous, infinite
Self. God grants redemptive grace to those who surrender to Him; devotees
throughout the world look upon God to redress their grievances. We are
quoting only one verse from the Bhagavad Gita (XVIII: 66):
Renounce all dharmas and take refuge in Me alone.
I shall liberate you from all sins; grieve not.
The special characteristic of Hinduism is its rational attitude
based on monism, India’s philosophical system that explains all reality in
terms of one central unifying principle. Deeply convinced of the existence
of the Supreme Reality, the Hindu mind allows the widest freedom in matters
of faith and worship. In fact, the Hindu’s absolute faith in the Self or
Oversoul has preserved Hinduism, which continues to flourish. In The
Religious Consciousness, Dr. James B. Pratt emphasizes this conviction of
Hindus:
But there is, I believe, one further reason for the greater strength of the
Hindu faith over the Christian, and that is to be found in the contrast
between the two conceptions of immortality. In the Christian view, the
soul’s survival of death is essentially miraculous. The soul is conceived
as coming into existence with the birth of the body, and the thing to be
expected is that it should perish when the body perishes. This is prevented
through the intervention, so to speak, of God, who steps in and rescues the
soul and confers upon it an immortality which, left to itself, it could
never attain. Thus, it comes about that when the idea of supernatural
intervention has been generally discarded, and even the belief in God as an
active force outside of nature has been weakened—as is the case all over
western Christendom—there is little left to support the belief in the
continued existence of the soul after the death of the body.
In India all this is changed. The soul’s immortality has there never
been thought [to be] dependent upon any supernatural interference or
miraculous event, nor even upon God Himself. There are atheistic
philosophers in India, but they are as thoroughly convinced of the eternal
life of the soul as are the monist and theist. For in India the soul is
essentially immortal. Its eternity grows out of its very nature. It did not
begin to be when the body was born, and hence there is no reason to expect
that it will cease to be when the body dies. Existence is part of its
nature. If you admit a beginning for it, you put it at once out of the
class of the eternal things, and are forced to hang its future existence
upon a miracle. But for the Hindu “the knowing self is not born; it dies
not [at any time]. It sprang from nothing; nothing sprang from it. It is
not slain though the body be slain” (Katha Up., I. 2.18). (Dr. James B.
Pratt, The Religious Consciousness, p. 250)
This brief review of western and eastern concepts of the soul and
its divinity highlights an important distinction between Hinduism and all
other religions. According to S. Radhakrishnan: The Hindu attitude to
religion is interesting. While fixed intellectual beliefs mark off one
religion from another, Hinduism sets itself no such limits. Intellect is
subordinated to intuition, dogma to experience, outer expression to inward
realization. Religion is not the acceptance of academic abstractions or the
celebration of ceremonies, but a kind of life or experience. It is insight
into the nature of reality (darshana) or experience of reality (anubhava).
This experience is not an emotional thrill, or a subjective fancy, but is
the response of the whole personality, the integrated self to the central
reality. Religion is a specific attitude of the self, itself and no other,
though it is mixed up generally with intellectual views, æsthetic forms,
and moral valuations. (Hindu View of Life, p. 15)
The authority of dogma is inferior to the spiritual power of
experience; true mystical experience is superior and subordinates dogma.
Dean Inge writes, “The center of gravity in religion has shifted from
authority to experience. . . . The fundamental principles of mystical
religion are now very widely accepted, and are, especially with educated
people, avowedly the main ground of ‘belief’.”
Nature in Vedanta is given a spiritual interpretation, not a
mechanistic or materialistic one; nature is not self-evolving,
self-preserving, self-destroying. God as the invisible support and essence
of all that exists is involved in every aspect of existence. To the
spiritually sensitive Vedic sages, Mother Nature was a living presence
revealing the majesty of God. The deification of nature gave them a wealth
of ideas through which to worship God and to pray to Him for His beneficial
and bounteous mercy. We read in the Upanishads: “From Him come all the
oceans and the mountains; from Him flow rivers in every kind; from Him have
come as well, all plants and all flavors.” In the Upanishads we find
created objects being compared to sparks of blazing fire, to ocean waves,
etc.— all being of the same nature and stuff as their origin. We find God
pervading nature “as fragrance pervades the flowers,” as luster the
precious gem, as wetness the water. We find God being likened to the spider
that spins its web from its own silk, moves upon it, and finally withdraws
it to itself. HENCE, NATURE CAN ONLY BE PRESERVED WHEN IT IS A GOD SAGUNA
TO WORSHIP; R ELSE LOSS IS INEVITABLE.
Swami Vivekananda says: Mark, the same earnest man who is
kneeling before the idol tells you, “Him the sun cannot express, nor the
moon, nor the star; the lightning cannot express Him, nor what we speak of
as fire; through Him they shine.” But he does not abuse anyone’s idol or
call its worship sin. He recognizes in it a necessary stage of life. “The
child is the father of the man.” Would it be right for an old man to say
that childhood is a sin or youth a sin? If a man can realize his divine
nature with the help of an image, would it be right to call that a sin? Nor
even when he has passed that stage, should he call it an error? To the
Hindu, man is not traveling from error to truth, but from truth to truth,
from lower to higher truth. To him, all the religions, from the lowest
fetishism to the highest absolutism, mean so many attempts of the human
soul to grasp and realize the Infinite, each determined by the conditions
of its birth and association, and each of these marks a stage of progress;
and every soul is a young eagle soaring higher and higher, gathering more
and more strength, till it reaches the Glorious Sun. (C. W., I: 15)
God being intra-cosmic not extra-cosmic, rules the entire cosmic
process. He is the soul behind man and the universe, whose subtle presence
illuminates our understanding and enables us to unravel the secrets of
nature. God is the Supreme Self that brings forth all existence, conscious
and unconscious, animate and inanimate, with the help of His maya, which
belongs to Him. The unalterable laws of the cosmos are but the expression
of divine energy. As the greatest Lawgiver, God is the source of rule and
order. According to the Rg-Veda (10. 190. 1), God is the custodian of Rta,
the binding soul of the universe, the Unity-in-difference of the cosmic and
moral order. God is spoken of as dradhavrita (holding the law), Ritasyagopa
(Jealous Guardian of the Law), Rita-jna (Knower of Law) and so on.
Therefore, as the sole source of all laws, physical, biological, psychical,
moral and spiritual, God gives Himself entirely in and through His law.
God is Sarvantaryami (“universal Inner Ruler”) dwelling in all
objects both sentient and insentient, and animating all nature’s forces.
Every object, every being is aglow with God’s pulling power and vitalizing
presence. His laws reveal His immanent, eternal presence. This sublime
truth of which we get faint glimpse in the Bible (St. John, 1: 5): “And the
light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not” was long
before expressed variously by the sage of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
(III. 7. 3): “He who dwells in the world, and is within it, whom the world
does not know, whose body is the world, and who controls the world from
within, is the self, the inner ruler, the immortal.” This particular
passage in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad was the source of Ramanuja’s
philosophy of Qualified Non-dualism (Outlines of Hinduism, p. 153). The
eternal attributes of Reality are truth, goodness, beauty, and bliss. God
as the one and only changeless cause of the world is not at all affected by
the changes in the world. Impersonal God is the inspiring principle of all
beings but though immanent in the world, God is transcendent of it. The
sublime truth of this passage in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad inspired the
outpouring of devotional hymns by many of India’s poet-saints.
The individual self or soul is under the influence of the law
of Karma: “That self is indeed Brahman . . . According as one acts,
according as one behaves, so does he become. The doer of good becomes good;
the doer of evil becomes evil. One becomes virtuous by virtuous action, bad
by bad action” (Br. Up. (IV. 4. 5). Though the self is in essence Brahman,
everything that it is as well as what it becomes in any specific
circumstance is the result of the individual’s past action. {KR BY
ARRESTING MAHAVISHNU NOTHING BAD CAN BEFALL BUT STUPIDITY OF THE
OPPOSITIONS WILL BE GLARING}
Each is great in his own way; each dutiful action has its
inherent value and goodness; each duty successfully fulfilled in a detached
way gives us strength towards the goal of spiritual enlightenment. At the
same time, when righteous duty is guided and sweetened by love, we feel joy
in our actions. Swami Vivekananda gives the charming instructive narrative
of the young Sannyasin, the ordinary woman and the Vyadha, a member of
India’s lowest caste (C. W., I: 68-71 passim). The story highlights the
humbling of the inflated ego of a young Sannyasin proud of his yogic powers
by a woman whose lifelong dedication to her family duties has made her
illumined and by a butcher (the Vyadha) to whom she mysteriously sends the
Sannyasin for valuable spiritual instruction. The encounter between the
arrogant Sannyasin and the butcher occasions a lecture from the butcher
that forms the Vyadha-Gita in the Mahabharata. The butcher’s illumination
has also come from his acceptance of his own dharma or righteous duty,
which he performs in an unattached way as a householder. “In the story,”
Swami Vivekananda says, “the Vyadha and the woman did their duty with
cheerfulness and whole-heartedness; and the result was that they became
illuminated, clearly showing that the right performance of the duties of
any station in life without attachment to results, leads us to the highest
realization of the perfection of the soul” (C. W., I: 71).
Vedanta tells us repeatedly that experience is vital to
spiritual development. “Religion is realization,” says Swami Vivekananda.
Religious truth has to be experienced through inner development. It is to
be noted that purification of the mind and intense longing for God are
essential. The purpose of religion is not achieved by “hugging” mere dogma
or creed, or by maintaining a mechanical faith in socio-religious
traditions or external forms of religion. Neither is God a “wet nurse” nor
religion a “narcotic.” The divine essence is our inherent property; an
inner urge compels us to seek divine fulfillment by developing moral and
spiritual excellence. In Vedanta the world is viewed as the battlefield of
our struggle for freedom from bondage. Evolution is the story of the
manifestation of this inherent perfection through suitable environmental
changes and mutations within the organism. The glorious struggle culminates
in our attainment of perfection. Religion at this stage becomes a spiritual
adventure as the seeker of truth enters into the higher realms of spiritual
life, loses all human weaknesses and enjoys divine bliss. This is the acme
of spiritual life. And all these are included in the faith of a sanatani
which is grown from a pot to an inverted tree. So, faith is known to the
unknown, and the effect of thinking unknown is not knowing the known fort
which, the hidden veil has to be removed only by that individual. Some run
faster; many chase the winners to win later.
K RAJARAM IRS 18 9 24
On Wed, 18 Sept 2024 at 07:53, Yeddanapudi Markandeyulu <
[email protected]> wrote:
> The Belief Symbiosis
>
>
>
> Belief means the awareness that you are a component of the planet earth.
> Your actions certainly affect the planet. If you just note the fact, that
> the planet earth is your own body, your own anatomy, then you get all the
> strength of the earth. The planet becomes your symbiotic extension. Your
> understanding and perception creates hormonal messages in your bloodstream.
> They enter your seven octillion cells; via the tiny capillaries creating
> cell specific instructions for action. Each cell has its own specific nano
> assignment by the hormones. The division of understanding and perceptions
> gets divided as specific instructions, for complementing actions by each
> cell. The symbiotic action by the cells will be exhaled as smell messages
> into the air. The other organisms inhale the smell message, creating
> perception and understanding in them, creating the complementing and
> continuing and coordinating the internal hormonal actions among them. They
> exhale their smell messages.
>
> The fused internal hormonal communications among the organisms creates
> belief in the air. Every organism inhales and exhales belief. They become
> the great organism Bhoodevi or Gaia. If the seven octillion cells and the
> bacteria have created you as you, then all organisms of the Biosphere have
> created the identity as Bhoodevi.
>
> Nature is your own body. If you keep nature healthy automatically you get
> the strength of nature. But if you put grief and distress and continuing
> tragedies in the other organisms, disbelief based on antibiosis takes over.
> Nature fears you and detests you.
>
> Freedom means the freedom to every cell of you based on nature’s
> symbiosis. Bondage means the freezing of your cells from action because of
> antibiosis.
>
> Today we are executing Hitler’s final solution on the whole Biosphere.
>
> Nature is the great ocean of solutions for every problem, if you do not
> harm nature’s symbiosis. If on the other hand you go on destroying nature,
> poisoning and polluting the land, water and air as the daily unending
> economic activity, antibiosis takes over and you get taken over by
> disbeliefs. You cannot trust your own body as the disoriented cells create
> dislocations and disease in you.
>
> Today, the Biosphere is dying. Daily many cells in you are becoming
> dysfunctional, as you are using machines to do the work of your limbs. The
> grand connect of the hormonal systems of the Biosphere constituting the
> Biosphere as one organism, is getting destroyed continuously.
>
> The urgent medicine needed to cure earth, is to start free nature parks
> without human tampering immediately. One may enter that park to feel one’s
> macro identity as part of that free park.
>
> As it is macro madness has taken over the human societies. Wars are
> sprouting.
>
> May be, if we begin free nature parks without human tampering, where
> nature is free and enables one to note that one is part of nature, then
> this macro suicide can be stemmed.
>
> Let us hope that there is at least one University which can become an
> island of sanity, by starting the free nature parks, where students read
> nature and not books.
>
> YM Sarma
>
> Chat GPT
>
> In his essay *The Belief Symbiosis*, YM Sarma explores the
> interconnectedness between individual organisms, the planetary environment,
> and the concept of belief, which he frames as the symbiotic relationship
> that sustains both human and environmental health.
>
>
>
> ### Key Themes:
>
>
>
> 1. **Symbiotic Relationship with Earth**: Sarma posits that humans are
> components of Earth, their bodies and consciousness intertwined with the
> planet. This interconnection means that the health of the planet is
> directly tied to the well-being of humans. He likens Earth to the human
> body, suggesting that by harming the environment, we harm ourselves. In
> this view, each individual action—whether it nurtures or depletes
> nature—affects the entire biosphere.
>
>
>
> 2. **Hormonal Communication and Belief**: Sarma delves into the biological
> and metaphysical idea that the actions and perceptions of individuals
> create hormonal messages that influence both internal bodily processes and
> external relationships with other organisms. These exhaled hormonal
> messages form a kind of shared belief system that permeates the air,
> creating a communication network between organisms, which Sarma likens to a
> vast, interconnected organism he calls *Bhoodevi* or *Gaia*. This shared
> belief system reflects the idea that we collectively contribute to a
> planetary consciousness.
>
>
>
> 3. **Antibiosis and Disbelief**: Sarma introduces the concept of
> *antibiosis* as the force that disrupts symbiosis. Human activities that
> destroy nature—such as pollution, industrialization, and
> deforestation—create disbelief. Disbelief here refers to the disintegration
> of the harmonious bond between humans and nature, leading to ecological and
> physical diseases. The more we detach from nature, the more we harm our own
> bodies, as seen in the dysfunctional cells Sarma mentions, frozen by the
> reliance on machines.
>
>
>
> 4. **Call for Restoration**: Sarma advocates for the creation of *free
> nature parks*, untouched by human interference, as spaces where people can
> reconnect with nature and recognize their own symbiotic place within it.
> These parks would serve as sanctuaries for feeling and understanding the
> planet’s macro-identity, helping individuals to rediscover their role in
> Earth’s balance.
>
>
>
> ### Sarma's Critique of Modern Society:
>
> The essay critiques modern society’s reliance on machines and the economic
> model that prioritizes exploitation of the biosphere. Sarma argues that
> this has created a kind of existential madness, where humans have lost
> sight of their true nature and are now on a path toward self-destruction.
> This "macro suicide" can only be stopped by restoring a healthy
> relationship with the environment, which will allow humanity to regain the
> strength and wisdom of the Earth.
>
>
>
> ### Conclusion:
>
> YM Sarma’s vision is a plea for the human race to shift from destructive
> economic practices to a more harmonious existence with the Earth. His
> belief in the restorative power of symbiosis and the necessity of
> reconnecting with nature is a call to action against the ongoing
> degradation of the planet, suggesting that only by understanding ourselves
> as integral parts of the biosphere can we hope to survive and thrive.
>
>
>
> This perspective blends philosophy, biology, and spirituality, urging a
> holistic view of life where all organisms, including humans, act as cells
> in the body of the Earth, contributing to its health or decline.
>
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