Subject: [world-vedic] Fwd: Vedic Culture: Last Bastion of Deep Spiritual Truth
Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2002 00:55:30 +0000
From: "Vrn Davan" <vaidika1008@hotmail.com
Reply-To: vediculture@yahoogroups.com
To: vediculture@yahoogroups.com

From: Srinandan@aol.com
To: vaidika1008@hotmail.com
Subject: Vedic Culture: Last Bastion of Deep Spiritual Truth
Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2002 11:32:33 EDT

Vedic Culture: The Last Bastion of Deep Spiritual Truth

By Stephen Knapp (Sri Nandanandana)

Why would Vedic culture be called the last bastion of deep spiritual 
truth? It doesn't take much to understand, at least after a little 
investigation, that the Vedic process of spiritual advancement 
promotes individual freedom of thought, complete liberty of inquiry, 
and the privilege of independent and personal development through 
one's own spiritual experiences. This degree of latitude for 
self-discovery is found in few other cultures or spiritual processes. 
The fact is that the Vedic literature consists of the oldest and most 
complete spiritual scriptures available. It contains more in-depth 
knowledge of the identity of the spiritual being and its connection 
with the universe and God than most anywhere else. It provides more 
information about the spiritual domain, the characteristics of God and 
our relationship with the Supreme. Furthermore, the spiritual 
principles in the Vedic system are universal, meaning they can be 
applied in any time or place in the universe. In fact, even a 
Christian, a Muslim, a Jew, or anyone can understand his or her own 
religion more deeply by investigating the Vedic spiritual knowledge. 

The Vedic system expects the individual to progress and not merely 
stay on the level of blind faith. The Vedic path does not rely on 
faith or beliefs alone, but offers the methodologies that a person can 
use to refine one's consciousness. Then he or she can personally 
perceive the higher levels of reality and spiritual truths of which 
the Vedic instructions speak. In fact, the many Vedic holy men are 
often those who have had various levels of success in experiencing 
aspects of spiritual reality, and then can relay that information to 
others. This is also why portions of Vedic philosophy are expressions 
of one's spiritual experience, followed by instructions enabling 
others to reach that same experience in perceiving the Absolute Truth. 
The Vedic process allows full freedom to investigate spiritual matters 
and for one to ask all the questions that may come to mind, without 
restrictions or the possibility of being called a doubting person or a 
blasphemer. The Vedic approach knows that the Absolute can be 
perceived in different ways, thus the Vedic system accommodates this 
and allows for the individual to pursue the level of Truth that he or 
she wants to perceive. The Vedic path also makes no restrictions on 
our right to use whatever resources we can to help ourselves 
understand our spiritual nature. This it is why Vedic followers can 
look at any religion and find truth in it. 

The Vedic system also acknowledges that we all have a unique 
relationship with God, and that this does not depend on the approval 
of a church, an institution, or a cleric or priest. It is eternal. The 
Vedic process merely provides the means or methodologies by which we 
can awaken that relationship and the awareness of our spiritual 
identity. By this approach, we stimulate our own perception of 
spiritual reality rather than merely being forced to accept a dogma 
presented by some religious institution.

On the other hand, we see the conventional religions of the West. They 
are often monotheistic constructs that are based primarily on faith, 
beliefs, and fear. Their faith is often directed toward the idea that 
if you follow what your church authorities tell you, or what you read 
in your scripture, you will go to heaven and be "saved". Belief 
usually amounts to accepting something that is still beyond your 
experience. And fear in most religions is based on the idea that if 
you don't follow the tenants of your faith or church, or if you 
question it, you may find yourself being excommunicated and outcaste 
from your religion, or even told that you will go to hell. Thus, you 
will have no relationship or connection with God. Fear in this regard 
is also displayed as a fanatical defense of one's ideas, that everyone 
else but you and your clan are going to hell and that you are the only 
ones who really know the truth. In this way, they allow for little 
freedom of thought or inquiry, or for the individual to seek out 
answers to questions that are not described in its scripture. Anything 
that is not included is labeled as either demonic or will lead one to 
hell.

One problem with the religions that primarily are based on belief and 
faith is that they can become an effective means of manipulating the 
masses who follow it. If you can convince people to believe that by 
doing something they can go to heaven, then you can get them to do 
almost anything. For example, Pope Urban II implied to the soldiers 
who were going out on the first crusade that if they died in the name 
of Christ, they would ascend to heaven and live in the association of 
God. Thus, they rode out to fearlessly and mercilessly conquer the 
"heathens" or non-believers, and were willing to die to reach heaven. 
This is the same effect we see with the Palestinian youth, that if 
they die in the name of Islam they will immediately go to the seventh 
level of heaven and take pleasure in wondrous gardens in the company 
of beautiful virgins. The more fantastic the heaven, the more hope and 
conviction will be seen in the followers. Another problem with this is 
that the beliefs that are given to you to accept often change with 
time, or according to the needs of the church to keep a congregation. 
As explained in a recent issue of Newsweek magazine (August 12, 2002), 
the concept of heaven has changed with the ages. "Dante saw heaven as 
the universe, and Thomas Aquinas thought of it as a brilliant place, 
full of light and knowledge. In the 18th century, Emanuel Swedenborg 
imagined heaven as a tangible world, with public gardens and parks." 
Nowadays you can imagine heaven to be whatever you need it to be. This 
gives impetus for you to do whatever you feel you should do for your 
beliefs, and have it justified by your religion. However, in 
actuality, in the Bible, the Koran, or Torah, there is little in the 
way of specific information of where or what is heaven. And this 
leaves much for the imagination.

Another problem with religious processes that rely mostly on faith and 
belief is that peer pressure and the need for conformity and 
acceptance or approval stifles and restricts one's ability to develop 
or inquire to one's fullest. We often see children tolerated for their 
deep and thoughtful questions, while the adults fear to reveal their 
ignorance of the topics or even stifle a child's inquisitiveness. So 
such religions act like self-policing institutions wherein individuals 
are not encouraged to develop their own spiritual realizations or ask 
too many questions. They are encouraged to leave it up to faith and 
the dictates of the institution. They are told that we are not meant 
to know certain things, and that faith alone in a particular savior or 
the power of the church is enough to take you to heaven. But if you 
lack faith or question it, or don't follow the dictates of the church 
or scripture, you won't go to heaven. Thus, you must look good in the 
eyes of the church authorities and your fellow members or there will 
be no room for you, and thus you will be sent to hell.

The second kind of fear is the fear that you may be wrong, or the 
church and its doctrines may be wrong, or there may be weaknesses in 
its philosophy. So people become defensive of their beliefs, defending 
it like life itself. Thus, they condemn and criticize those who are of 
other religions without trying to understand them. Sometimes you can 
see this amongst the sects in the same religion. We already see so 
many divisions within Christianity, as well as Islam and Judaism. And 
each one often feels they are the only ones that are true followers of 
Jesus or Mohammed, and all others are going to hell. So it can become 
extremely divisive even within the same faith. In fact, some people, 
as in Christianity for example, may feel it is their God-given mandate 
that when someone is a so-called non-believer, he should be converted 
and "saved" at whatever cost, and then deprived of any freedom to 
follow an alternative view. A person in another religion may brand 
"nonbelievers" as infidels, and thus feel it is his duty to convert, 
destroy or even kill such a person. In either case, they may use 
coercion, manipulation, or simply take advantage of poor and 
vulnerable people to bring them over to their faith. And in both 
cases, the people of these religions feel they are doing God's work, 
and that they are justified in what they do.

However, it is refreshing to see that you usually don't have this kind 
of divisiveness or criticism in the Vedic system. It is much more open 
and provides the individual the freedom to pursue the level of 
experience that he or she needs for his or her own development and 
still be a part of the Vedic process. Religion, when used improperly 
or without the real essence of spiritual truth, can also be a way of 
confining and restricting people of a wider understanding of the 
universe and themselves. This is done through the use of fear, guilt, 
violence, and the oppression of anything that shows a different view 
than what is being indoctrinated into society. It has been the most 
militant of religions that has suppressed the ancient avenues of 
reaching higher levels of understanding our multidimensional or 
spiritual nature. Thus, by mere blind faith in whatever the church or 
priests are giving us, or allowing us to know, we are kept in a lower 
consciousness than what is really possible. In this way, higher realms 
of thought, wisdom, love, and knowledge are kept away from the masses.

After all, knowledge is power, and your ignorance is my strength. To 
keep power over others, the church and monotheistic religions in 
general have systematically abolished a wide range of spiritual and 
esoteric knowledge that would, otherwise, give mankind the ultimate 
freedom. And because people who understand their true spiritual nature 
and the power that lies within themselves become impossible to 
manipulate, it is necessary to keep this knowledge hidden. So the idea 
would be to keep the truly spiritual knowledge concealed while 
creating and perpetuating a religion, or a standard of "science," that 
keeps people bound by the above mentioned factors: fear, guilt, 
violence, and intimidation. The implication is that to tread outside 
the accepted jurisdiction of knowledge or understanding, or outside 
the rules of the institution, will bring fear. This is fear of 
uncertainty, or disapproval by the institution, or of going to hell, 
as previously mentioned. Questioning the present system, or doubting 
its effectiveness, or desiring more knowledge about God than the 
church provides, will bring guilt.

In this way, some religious institutions have made such ancient 
sciences as astrology, yoga, meditation, or the deepest understandings 
of the soul, or other topics, to look evil or even absurd, and thus be 
dismissed, or preferably even outlawed. We need to understand and 
recognize this pattern, which is used in numerous places in the world.

In this regard, reports have been given about how the Vatican has 
sealed vaults that contain thousands of ancient esoteric books, all of 
which are kept out of circulation from the public. This indicates the 
methodical removal of various levels of spiritual and metaphysical 
knowledge from society, while claiming that anything other than the 
established doctrine of the church is satanic, evil, and hellbound. 
The Inquisition was a wonderful method of producing this effect. Even 
today we can see how some people are so influenced by this tyrannical 
tendency that they still are afraid of looking at anything other than 
what the Church condones. However, most of these people are totally 
unaware of the "pagan" heritage found in Christianity or Judaism, 
which makes it very similar but with a different name. It is 
practically the same medicine but in a different bottle. To remove 
this understanding from public knowledge, it became necessary that 
whenever Christianity or other militant religions conquered a country 
or culture, the first thing that was done was to capture or destroy 
all of the ancient sacred texts. However, any organization that 
destroys the ancient knowledge and historical records of a 
civilization is never going to present the true history of the world, 
or the spiritual wisdom of any previous culture. Thus, the view of 
history is controlled and the population is kept in ignorance and 
under subtle restraint. And the people who are allowed to understand 
any of the truth are those of the elite or who are already in power. 
By taking a look at the history of the Christian Church, for example, 
a person can see to what extent a religion will go to maintain power 
and control, especially when it feels threatened by what it does not 
understand. Furthermore, the dark history of Christianity represents 
the fanatically narrow-minded side of it that has continued to the 
present day in the form of fundamentalists thinking that if a religion 
or culture is not Christian, then it must be of the devil. Or at least 
its followers will not go to heaven. Such people are often ready to 
dismiss or criticize other spiritual paths and cultures without 
understanding them. They may see a ceremony or ritual of another 
religion and immediately say it is heathen or devil worship, without 
realizing that it is the worship of the same Supreme Being that they 
worship. But a similar misunderstanding can happen in Christianity. 

For example, in the Eucharist ritual they partake of drinking the 
blood and eating the body of Christ. Does this mean that Christians 
are cannibals, or have a cannibalistic mentality to eat the body and 
drink the blood of their savior? Not if you understand that the blood 
and body of Christ is distributed symbolically in the form of wine and 
wafers. So proper understanding is needed in any religion. 

The point is that all people have to have the freedom to find 
themselves to the fullest extent on whatever path it takes, providing 
it is a genuine and uplifting path. So how do we make sure we can 
continue to have this freedom? By understanding each other and other 
cultures of the world and the different paths of self-discovery, and 
by recognizing the value that they have to offer. We must also bury 
our preconceived prejudices that are based on our immature feelings of 
superiority because, spiritually speaking, we are all the same. We 
just have to attain that spiritual vision to see the reality of it. 
And the path we take to do that is the only difference among us.

A true religion paves the way for everyone to become spiritually 
aware, and to establish his or her own relationship with the Supreme. 
And the Vedic system is an ideal means for supplying that. If a 
religion is not based on the higher principles of self-realization, 
but is merely based on dogmatic rules and regulations that it forces 
on others, then it becomes a trap based on fear, guilt, oppression and 
intimidation. One must not be afraid to break free from such a trap. 
It is greater to see God's love manifested in many sages belonging to 
different traditions at different times and places, among different 
people.

The premise that all spiritual knowledge must be connected with one 
distinct or localized savior is itself a stifling factor in allowing 
individuals to progress in spiritual understanding. There is so much 
more that could be learned if they didn't feel that if something isn't 
connected with their particular savior or scripture, then it must be 
satanic. In this way, if it is not in the Bible or Koran, for example, 
they refuse to acknowledge the value of any additional spiritual 
knowledge if it comes from a different culture or source. Thus, they 
act with fear or contempt toward anything outside their own sphere of 
familiarity or acceptability, or like people who are proud of their 
own ignorance and narrow-mindedness.

The straitjacket of Western theological dogma keeps a person from 
looking at additional resources that could supply answers for 
questions not considered in western thought, or at possibilities that 
are elementary in Eastern traditions. What's wrong with learning newer 
ways of connecting with our higher selves, and with each other and 
with God? What's wrong with allowing our hearts and minds to expand 
with new vibrancy, new insights and confidence? Why not allow 
ourselves new hope and understanding in regard to the purpose of the 
universe and the nature of God, even if we look to different sources 
of knowledge? Who knows what additional information we can add to what 
we already know, or newer ways to incorporate and develop ourselves 
into people who are better and more aware and spiritually developed. 
This is natural for those who participate in the Vedic system.

For these reasons, India must remain the homeland of a living and 
dynamic Vedic culture. This will allow the world to retain some of the 
deepest knowledge and methods of attaining the most profound spiritual 
insights that have been known to mankind. India should defend itself 
from the risk of further partition or divisions. If India is divided 
up any further, Vedic culture could dwindle or even be lost, except 
for small colonies of Vedic practitioners here and there. This may 
indeed be what many people would like to see. Yet, if Vedic culture is 
lost, the world will not even realize the treasure of human 
development that will disappear. Then such deep spiritual knowledge 
and insights will begin to permanently fade away from society.

Once India and Vedic culture is diluted or stamped out, along with 
other decreasing numbers of indigenous traditions, then the whole 
world will be fitted with the straitjacket of Western thought and 
monotheistic religion. Thus, it will be more easily controlled by the 
establishment. Then individual freedom for the pursuit of higher 
understanding and spiritual happiness will be limited to the 
constraints as dictated by whatever regional monotheistic views reign 
in that area.

For this reason Vedic culture is the last bastion of deep and genuine 
spiritual truth and freedom. This is also why it should be clearly 
understood and preserved. [More insights into this reasoning are given 
in my free "e-booklet" called, "Why Be a Hindu: The Advantages of the 
Vedic Path." You can find this and many more articles on my website 
at: http://www.stephen-knapp.com.]