Hinduism

94:4.1With the pass­ing of the cen­turies in In­dia, the pop­u­lace re­turned in mea­sure to the an­cient rit­u­als of the Vedas as they had been mod­i­fied by the teach­ings of the Mel­chiz­e­dek mis­sion­ar­ies and crys­tal­lized by the later Brah­man priest­hood. This, the old­est and most cos­mopoli­tan of the world’s re­li­gions, has un­der­gone fur­ther changes in re­sponse to Bud­dhism and Jain­ism and to the later ap­pear­ing in­flu­ences of Mo­hammedanism and Chris­tian­ity. But by the time the teach­ings of Je­sus ar­rived, they had al­ready be­come so Oc­ci­den­tal­ized as to be a “white man’s re­li­gion,” hence strange and for­eign to the Hindu mind.

94:4.2Hindu the­ol­ogy, at pres­ent, de­picts four de­scend­ing lev­els of de­ity and di­vin­ity:

94:4.31. The Brah­man, the Ab­so­lute, the In­fi­nite One, the IT IS.

94:4.42. The Trimurti, the su­preme trin­ity of Hin­duism. In this as­so­ci­a­tion Brahma, the first mem­ber, is con­ceived as be­ing self-cre­ated out of the Brah­man—in­fin­ity. Were it not for close iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the pan­the­is­tic In­fi­nite One, Brahma could con­sti­tute the foun­da­tion for a con­cept of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. Brahma is also iden­ti­fied with fate.

94:4.5The wor­ship of the sec­ond and third mem­bers, Siva and Vishnu, arose in the first mil­len­nium af­ter Christ. Siva is lord of life and death, god of fer­til­ity, and mas­ter of de­struc­tion. Vishnu is ex­tremely pop­u­lar due to the be­lief that he pe­ri­od­i­cally in­car­nates in hu­man form. In this way, Vishnu be­comes real and liv­ing in the imag­i­na­tions of the In­di­ans. Siva and Vishnu are each re­garded by some as su­preme over all.

94:4.63. Vedic and post-Vedic de­i­ties. Many of the an­cient gods of the Aryans, such as Agni, In­dra, and Soma, have per­sisted as sec­ondary to the three mem­bers of the Trimurti. Nu­mer­ous ad­di­tional gods have arisen since the early days of Vedic In­dia, and these have also been in­cor­po­rated into the Hindu pan­theon.

94:4.74. The demigods: super­men, semigods, heroes, demons, ghosts, evil spir­its, sprites, mon­sters, gob­lins, and saints of the later-day cults.

94:4.8While Hin­duism has long failed to viv­ify the In­dian peo­ple, at the same time it has usu­ally been a tol­er­ant re­li­gion. Its great strength lies in the fact that it has proved to be the most adap­tive, amor­phic re­li­gion to ap­pear on Uran­tia. It is ca­pa­ble of al­most un­lim­ited change and pos­sesses an un­usual range of flex­i­ble ad­just­ment from the high and semi­monothe­is­tic spec­u­la­tions of the in­tel­lec­tual Brah­man to the ar­rant fet­ish­ism and prim­i­tive cult prac­tices of the de­based and de­pressed classes of ig­no­rant be­liev­ers.

94:4.9Hin­duism has sur­vived be­cause it is es­sen­tially an in­te­gral part of the ba­sic so­cial fab­ric of In­dia. It has no great hi­er­ar­chy which can be dis­turbed or de­stroyed; it is in­ter­wo­ven into the life pat­tern of the peo­ple. It has an adapt­abil­ity to chang­ing con­di­tions that ex­cels all other cults, and it dis­plays a tol­er­ant at­ti­tude of adop­tion to­ward many other re­li­gions, Gau­tama Bud­dha and even Christ him­self be­ing claimed as in­car­na­tions of Vishnu.

94:4.10To­day, in In­dia, the great need is for the por­trayal of the Je­su­so­nian gospel—the Fa­ther­hood of God and the son­ship and con­se­quent broth­er­hood of all men, which is per­son­ally re­al­ized in lov­ing min­istry and so­cial ser­vice. In In­dia the phil­o­soph­i­cal frame­work is ex­is­tent, the cult struc­ture is pres­ent; all that is needed is the vi­tal­iz­ing spark of the dy­namic love por­trayed in the orig­i­nal gospel of the Son of Man, di­vested of the Oc­ci­den­tal dog­mas and doc­trines which have tended to make Mi­chael’s life be­stowal a white man’s re­li­gion.

94:9.3Bud­dhism, later on, was much af­fected by Tao­ism in China, Shinto in Japan, and Chris­tian­ity in Ti­bet. Af­ter a thou­sand years, in In­dia Bud­dhism sim­ply with­ered and ex­pired. It be­came Brah­man­ized and later ab­jectly sur­ren­dered to Is­lam, while through­out much of the rest of the Ori­ent it de­gen­er­ated into a rit­ual which Gau­tama Sid­dhartha would never have rec­og­nized.

92:2.2Re­li­gion clings to the mores; that which was is an­cient and sup­pos­edly sa­cred. For this rea­son and no other, stone im­ple­ments per­sisted long into the age of bronze and iron. This state­ment is of rec­ord: “And if you will make me an al­tar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stone, for, if you use your tools in mak­ing it, you have pol­luted it.” Even to­day, the Hin­dus kin­dle their al­tar fires by us­ing a prim­i­tive fire drill. In the course of evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion, nov­elty has al­ways been re­garded as sac­ri­lege. The sacra­ment must con­sist, not of new and man­u­fac­tured food, but of the most prim­i­tive of viands: “The flesh roasted with fire and un­leav­ened bread served with bit­ter herbs.” All types of so­cial us­age and even le­gal pro­ce­dures cling to the old forms.

• cow sacred

89:1.5The early food taboos orig­i­nated in fet­ish­ism and to­tem­ism. The swine was sa­cred to the Phoeni­cians, the cow to the Hin­dus. The Egyp­tian taboo on pork has been per­pet­u­ated by the He­braic and Is­lamic faiths. A vari­ant of the food taboo was the be­lief that a preg­nant woman could think so much about a cer­tain food that the child, when born, would be the echo of that food. Such viands would be taboo to the child.

• benefit of physical humiliation

89:3.4These olden ideas of self-dis­ci­pline em­braced flog­ging and all sorts of phys­i­cal tor­ture. The priests of the mother cult were es­pe­cially ac­tive in teach­ing the virtue of phys­i­cal suf­fer­ing, set­ting the ex­am­ple by sub­mit­ting them­selves to cas­tra­tion. The He­brews, Hin­dus, and Bud­dhists were earnest devo­tees of this doc­trine of phys­i­cal hu­mil­i­a­tion.

• triad gods

104:0.3As a con­se­quence of these nat­u­ral as­so­ci­a­tions in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, the triad made its ap­pear­ance in re­li­gion, and this long be­fore the Par­a­dise Trin­ity of De­i­ties, or even any of their rep­re­sen­ta­tives, had been re­vealed to man­kind. Later on, the Per­sians, Hin­dus, Greeks, Egyp­tians, Baby­lo­ni­ans, Ro­mans, and Scan­di­na­vians all had triad gods, but these were still not true trin­i­ties. Triad de­i­ties all had a nat­u­ral ori­gin and have ap­peared at one time or an­other among most of the in­tel­li­gent peo­ples of Uran­tia. Some­times the con­cept of an evo­lu­tion­ary triad has be­come mixed with that of a re­vealed Trin­ity; in these in­stances it is of­ten im­pos­si­ble to dis­tin­guish one from the other.

• trinitarian concept of Being, Intelligence, and Joy

104:1.5Among the Hin­dus the trini­tar­ian con­cept took root as Be­ing, In­tel­li­gence, and Joy. (A later In­dian con­cep­tion was Brahma, Siva, and Vishnu.) While the ear­lier Trin­ity por­tray­als were brought to In­dia by the Sethite priests, the later ideas of the Trin­ity were im­ported by the Salem mis­sion­ar­ies and were de­vel­oped by the na­tive in­tel­lects of In­dia through a com­pound­ing of these doc­trines with the evo­lu­tion­ary triad con­cep­tions.

• atman conception of Adjuster

111:0.4In the con­cep­tion of the at­man the Hindu teach­ers re­ally ap­prox­i­mated an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the na­ture and pres­ence of the Ad­juster, but they failed to dis­tin­guish the co­p­res­ence of the evolv­ing and po­ten­tially im­mor­tal soul. The Chi­nese, how­ever, rec­og­nized two as­pects of a hu­man be­ing, the yang and the yin, the soul and the spirit. The Egyp­tians and many African tribes also be­lieved in two fac­tors, the ka and the ba; the soul was not usu­ally be­lieved to be pre-ex­is­tent, only the spirit.

96:0.1In con­ceiv­ing of De­ity, man first in­cludes all gods, then sub­or­di­nates all for­eign gods to his tribal de­ity, and fi­nally ex­cludes all but the one God of fi­nal and su­preme value. The Jews syn­the­sized all gods into their more sub­lime con­cept of the Lord God of Is­rael. The Hin­dus like­wise com­bined their mul­ti­far­i­ous de­i­ties into the “one spir­i­tu­al­ity of the gods” por­trayed in the Rig-Veda, while the Mes­o­po­ta­mi­ans re­duced their gods to the more cen­tral­ized con­cept of Bel-Mar­duk. These ideas of mono­the­ism ma­tured all over the world not long af­ter the ap­pear­ance of Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek at Salem in Pales­tine. But the Mel­chiz­e­dek con­cept of De­ity was un­like that of the evo­lu­tion­ary phi­los­o­phy of in­clu­sion, sub­or­di­na­tion, and ex­clu­sion; it was based ex­clu­sively on cre­ative power and very soon in­flu­enced the high­est de­ity con­cepts of Mes­o­po­ta­mia, In­dia, and Egypt.

85:3.3The He­brews wor­shiped ser­pents down to the days of King Hezekiah, and the Hin­dus still main­tain friendly re­la­tions with their house snakes. The Chi­nese wor­ship of the dragon is a sur­vival of the snake cults. The wis­dom of the ser­pent was a sym­bol of Greek med­i­cine and is still em­ployed as an em­blem by mod­ern physi­cians. The art of snake charm­ing has been handed down from the days of the fe­male shamans of the snake love cult, who, as the re­sult of daily snake bites, be­came im­mune, in fact, be­came gen­uine venom ad­dicts and could not get along with­out this poi­son.

131:4.1The mis­sion­ar­ies of Mel­chiz­e­dek car­ried the teach­ings of the one God with them wher­ever they jour­neyed. Much of this mono­the­is­tic doc­trine, to­gether with other and pre­vi­ous con­cepts, be­came em­bod­ied in the sub­se­quent teach­ings of Hin­duism. Je­sus and Ga­nid made the fol­low­ing ex­cerpts:

131:4.2“He is the great God, in ev­ery way su­preme. He is the Lord who en­com­passes all things. He is the cre­ator and con­trol­ler of the uni­verse of uni­verses. God is one God; he is alone and by him­self; he is the only one. And this one God is our Maker and the last des­tiny of the soul. The Su­preme One is bril­liant be­yond de­scrip­tion; he is the Light of Lights. Ev­ery heart and ev­ery world is il­lu­mi­nated by this di­vine light. God is our pro­tec­tor—he stands by the side of his crea­tures—and those who learn to know him be­come im­mor­tal. God is the great source of en­ergy; he is the Great Soul. He ex­er­cises uni­ver­sal lord­ship over all. This one God is lov­ing, glo­ri­ous, and adorable. Our God is su­preme in power and abides in the su­preme abode. This true Per­son is eter­nal and di­vine; he is the pri­mal Lord of heaven. All the proph­ets have hailed him, and he has re­vealed him­self to us. We wor­ship him. O Su­preme Per­son, source of be­ings, Lord of cre­ation, and ruler of the uni­verse, re­veal to us, your crea­tures, the power whereby you abide im­ma­nent! God has made the sun and the stars; he is bright, pure, and self-ex­is­tent. His eter­nal knowl­edge is di­vinely wise. The Eter­nal is un­pen­e­trated by evil. Inas­much as the uni­verse sprang from God, he does rule it ap­pro­pri­ately. He is the cause of cre­ation, and hence are all things es­tab­lished in him.

131:4.3“God is the sure refuge of ev­ery good man when in need; the Im­mor­tal One cares for all man­kind. God’s sal­va­tion is strong and his kind­ness is gra­cious. He is a lov­ing pro­tec­tor, a blessed de­fender. Says the Lord: ‘I dwell within their own souls as a lamp of wis­dom. I am the splen­dor of the splen­did and the good­ness of the good. Where two or three gather to­gether, there am I also.’ The crea­ture can­not es­cape the pres­ence of the Cre­ator. The Lord even counts the cease­less wink­ing of ev­ery mor­tal’s eyes; and we wor­ship this di­vine Be­ing as our in­sep­a­ra­ble com­pan­ion. He is all-pre­vail­ing, boun­ti­ful, om­ni­pres­ent, and in­finitely kind. The Lord is our ruler, shel­ter, and su­preme con­trol­ler, and his primeval spirit dwells within the mor­tal soul. The Eter­nal Wit­ness to vice and virtue dwells within man’s heart. Let us long med­i­tate on the adorable and di­vine Viv­i­fier; let his spirit fully di­rect our thoughts. From this un­real world lead us to the real! From dark­ness lead us to the light! From death guide us to im­mor­tal­ity!

131:4.4“With our hearts purged of all hate, let us wor­ship the Eter­nal. Our God is the Lord of prayer; he hears the cry of his chil­dren. Let all men sub­mit their wills to him, the Res­o­lute. Let us de­light in the lib­er­al­ity of the Lord of prayer. Make prayer your in­most friend and wor­ship your soul’s sup­port. ‘If you will but wor­ship me in love,’ says the Eter­nal, ‘I will give you the wis­dom to at­tain me, for my wor­ship is the virtue com­mon to all crea­tures.’ God is the il­lu­mi­na­tor of the gloomy and the power of those who are faint. Since God is our strong friend, we have no more fear. We praise the name of the never-con­quered Con­queror. We wor­ship him be­cause he is man’s faith­ful and eter­nal helper. God is our sure leader and un­fail­ing guide. He is the great par­ent of heaven and earth, pos­sessed of un­lim­ited en­ergy and in­fi­nite wis­dom. His splen­dor is sub­lime and his beauty di­vine. He is the su­preme refuge of the uni­verse and the change­less guard­ian of ev­er­last­ing law. Our God is the Lord of life and the Com­forter of all men; he is the lover of man­kind and the helper of those who are dis­tressed. He is our life giver and the Good Shep­herd of the hu­man flocks. God is our fa­ther, brother, and friend. And we long to know this God in our in­ner be­ing.

131:4.5“We have learned to win faith by the yearn­ing of our hearts. We have at­tained wis­dom by the re­straint of our senses, and by wis­dom we have ex­pe­ri­enced peace in the Su­preme. He who is full of faith wor­ships truly when his in­ner self is in­tent upon God. Our God wears the heav­ens as a man­tle; he also in­hab­its the other six wide-spread­ing uni­verses. He is su­preme over all and in all. We crave for­give­ness from the Lord for all of our tres­passes against our fel­lows; and we would re­lease our friend from the wrong he has done us. Our spirit loathes all evil; there­fore, O Lord, free us from all taint of sin. We pray to God as a com­forter, pro­tec­tor, and sav­ior—one who loves us.

131:4.6“The spirit of the Uni­verse Keeper en­ters the soul of the sim­ple crea­ture. That man is wise who wor­ships the One God. Those who strive for per­fec­tion must in­deed know the Lord Su­preme. He never fears who knows the bliss­ful se­cu­rity of the Su­preme, for the Su­preme says to those who serve him, ‘Fear not, for I am with you.’ The God of prov­i­dence is our Fa­ther. God is truth. And it is the de­sire of God that his crea­tures should un­der­stand him—come fully to know the truth. Truth is eter­nal; it sus­tains the uni­verse. Our su­preme de­sire shall be union with the Su­preme. The Great Con­trol­ler is the gen­er­a­tor of all things—all evolves from him. And this is the sum of duty: Let no man do to an­other what would be re­pug­nant to him­self; cher­ish no mal­ice, smite not him who smites you, con­quer anger with mercy, and van­quish hate by benev­o­lence. And all this we should do be­cause God is a kind friend and a gra­cious fa­ther who re­mits all our earthly of­fenses.

131:4.7“God is our Fa­ther, the earth our mother, and the uni­verse our birth­place. With­out God the soul is a pris­oner; to know God re­leases the soul. By med­i­ta­tion on God, by union with him, there comes de­liv­er­ance from the il­lu­sions of evil and ul­ti­mate sal­va­tion from all ma­te­rial fet­ters. When man shall roll up space as a piece of leather, then will come the end of evil be­cause man has found God. O God, save us from the three­fold ruin of hell—lust, wrath, and avarice! O soul, gird your­self for the spirit strug­gle of im­mor­tal­ity! When the end of mor­tal life comes, hes­i­tate not to for­sake this body for a more fit and beau­ti­ful form and to awake in the realms of the Su­preme and Im­mor­tal, where there is no fear, sor­row, hunger, thirst, or death. To know God is to cut the cords of death. The God-know­ing soul rises in the uni­verse like the cream ap­pears on top of the milk. We wor­ship God, the all-worker, the Great Soul, who is ever seated in the heart of his crea­tures. And they who know that God is en­throned in the hu­man heart are des­tined to be­come like him—im­mor­tal. Evil must be left be­hind in this world, but virtue fol­lows the soul to heaven.

131:4.8“It is only the wicked who say: The uni­verse has nei­ther truth nor a ruler; it was only de­signed for our lusts. Such souls are de­luded by the small­ness of their in­tel­lects. They thus aban­don them­selves to the en­joy­ment of their lusts and de­prive their souls of the joys of virtue and the plea­sures of righ­teous­ness. What can be greater than to ex­pe­ri­ence sal­va­tion from sin? The man who has seen the Su­preme is im­mor­tal. Man’s friends of the flesh can­not sur­vive death; virtue alone walks by man’s side as he jour­neys ever on­ward to­ward the glad­some and sun­lit fields of Par­a­dise.”

92:6.31. Hin­duism—the most an­cient.

92:6.14The most ad­vanced re­li­gions of an­cient times were Hin­duism and Ju­daism, and each re­spec­tively has greatly in­flu­enced the course of re­li­gious de­vel­op­ment in Ori­ent and Oc­ci­dent. Both Hin­dus and He­brews be­lieved that their re­li­gions were in­spired and re­vealed, and they be­lieved all oth­ers to be deca­dent forms of the one true faith.

92:6.15In­dia is di­vided among Hindu, Sikh, Mo­hammedan, and Jain, each pic­tur­ing God, man, and the uni­verse as these are var­i­ously con­ceived. China fol­lows the Taoist and the Con­fu­cian teach­ings; Shinto is revered in Japan.

92:5.157. The fif­teenth cen­tury af­ter Christ. This pe­riod wit­nessed two re­li­gious move­ments: the dis­rup­tion of the unity of Chris­tian­ity in the Oc­ci­dent and the syn­the­sis of a new re­li­gion in the Ori­ent. In Eu­rope in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized Chris­tian­ity had at­tained that de­gree of in­elas­tic­ity which ren­dered fur­ther growth in­com­pat­i­ble with unity. In the Ori­ent the com­bined teach­ings of Is­lam, Hin­duism, and Bud­dhism were syn­the­sized by Nanak and his fol­low­ers into Sikhism, one of the most ad­vanced re­li­gions of Asia.

92:7.2New re­li­gions can­not be in­vented; they are ei­ther evolved, or else they are sud­denly re­vealed. All new evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gions are merely ad­vanc­ing ex­pres­sions of the old be­liefs, new adap­ta­tions and ad­just­ments. The old does not cease to ex­ist; it is merged with the new, even as Sikhism bud­ded and blos­somed out of the soil and forms of Hin­duism, Bud­dhism, Is­lam, and other con­tem­po­rary cults. Prim­i­tive re­li­gion was very demo­cratic; the sav­age was quick to bor­row or lend. Only with re­vealed re­li­gion did au­to­cratic and in­tol­er­ant the­o­logic ego­tism ap­pear.

191:5.3“Peace be upon you. For a full week have I tar­ried that I might ap­pear again when you were all pres­ent to hear once more the com­mis­sion to go into all the world and preach this gospel of the king­dom. Again I tell you: As the Fa­ther sent me into the world, so send I you. As I have re­vealed the Fa­ther, so shall you re­veal the di­vine love, not merely with words, but in your daily liv­ing. I send you forth, not to love the souls of men, but rather to love men. You are not merely to pro­claim the joys of heaven but also to ex­hibit in your daily ex­pe­ri­ence these spirit re­al­i­ties of the di­vine life since you al­ready have eter­nal life, as the gift of God, through faith. When you have faith, when power from on high, the Spirit of Truth, has come upon you, you will not hide your light here be­hind closed doors; you will make known the love and the mercy of God to all man­kind. Through fear you now flee from the facts of a dis­agree­able ex­pe­ri­ence, but when you shall have been bap­tized with the Spirit of Truth, you will bravely and joy­ously go forth to meet the new ex­pe­ri­ences of pro­claim­ing the good news of eter­nal life in the king­dom of God. You may tarry here and in Gal­i­lee for a short sea­son while you re­cover from the shock of the tran­si­tion from the false se­cu­rity of the au­thor­ity of tra­di­tion­al­ism to the new or­der of the au­thor­ity of facts, truth, and faith in the su­preme re­al­i­ties of liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. Your mis­sion to the world is founded on the fact that I lived a God-re­veal­ing life among you; on the truth that you and all other men are the sons of God; and it shall con­sist in the life which you will live among men—the ac­tual and liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of lov­ing men and serv­ing them, even as I have loved and served you. Let faith re­veal your light to the world; let the rev­e­la­tion of truth open the eyes blinded by tra­di­tion; let your lov­ing ser­vice ef­fec­tu­ally de­stroy the prej­u­dice en­gen­dered by ig­no­rance. By so draw­ing close to your fel­low men in un­der­stand­ing sym­pa­thy and with un­selfish de­vo­tion, you will lead them into a sav­ing knowl­edge of the Fa­ther’s love. The Jews have ex­tolled good­ness; the Greeks have ex­alted beauty; the Hin­dus preach de­vo­tion; the far­away as­cetics teach rev­er­ence; the Ro­mans de­mand loy­alty; but I re­quire of my dis­ci­ples life, even a life of lov­ing ser­vice for your broth­ers in the flesh.”

5:4.7The Zoroas­tri­ans had a re­li­gion of morals; the Hin­dus a re­li­gion of meta­physics; the Con­fu­cian­ists a re­li­gion of ethics. Je­sus lived a re­li­gion of ser­vice. All these re­li­gions are of value in that they are valid ap­proaches to the re­li­gion of Je­sus. Re­li­gion is des­tined to be­come the re­al­ity of the spir­i­tual uni­fi­ca­tion of all that is good, beau­ti­ful, and true in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence.