No Need for Books

Why Read Books?

In Defense of the Bhagavat

by Michael Dolan/B.V. Mahayogi

[Sorry for the length of these articles but I find it difficult to be concise...]

Back in the 1960s I was different from most of the kids in high school. While they were getting ready to fight the cold war and support the troops in Vietnam, I studied Russian and learned to play the songs of Bob Dylan at the guitar. We all admired our teacher. He had been in World War II and encouraged us to think for ourselves. While nominally we were studying languages, sometimes he let us discuss ideas.

One day we noticed a book by J. Krishnamurti on his desk and asked him about it. After some discussion with our classmates I had some more questions and he let me borrow the book.

Krishnamurti used to teach that meditation is the mind emptying itself of its own content. There is no need for books or teachers, but only to look at ourselves with great attention and care. I found it ironic that Krishnamurti wrote a book to explain that we don’t need books.

Growing up, my generation had a lot of cultural heroes like Krishnamurti. Another one of our heroes was Alduous Huxley who coined the famous phrase “Doors of Perception,” which inspired Jim Morrison and company to form their L.A. rock band, “The Doors.” As good poets steal where bad poets only copy, the expression “Doors of Perception really derives from England’s first Psychedelic poet, William Blake, who in a poem called the “Marriage of Heaven and Hell” once wrote:

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.”

Huxley appropriated Blake’s phrase to describe his experience of taking mescaline in 1953 and how he was able to “break on through to the other side” gaining a heightened awareness of reality and a deeper understanding that was not only artistic but sacramental.

He felt that taking psychedelics not only unleashed a kind of madness, but led to a visionary awareness of the sacred.

As were Annie Besant and the Theosophists before him, Huxley was fascinated with the teachings of Krishnamurti. He wrote the introduction for one of Krishnamurti’s books, “First and Last Freedoms.” Huxley, grandson of famous Darwinian scientist Thomas Huxley and author of Brave New World, was notably erudite.

In 1946 while partially blind from his extensive reading he wrote a book called “The Perennial Wisdom” a comparative study of mysticism and compilation of great quotes he had gathered from books on spiritual traditions from China and India to Christianity. By 1954 his position had evolved to the point where he rejected the need for such books. Here’s a short passage from Huxley’s introduction:

This fundamental theme is developed by Krishnamurti in passage after passage. ''There is hope in men, not in society, not in systems, organized religious systems, but in you and in me." Organized religions, with their mediators, their sacred books, their dogmas, their hierarchies and rituals, offer only a false solution to the basic problem. "When you quote the Bhagavad-Gita, or the Bible, or some Chinese Sacred Book, surely you are merely repeating, are you not? And what you are repeating is not the truth. It is a lie, for truth cannot be repeated." A lie can be extended, propounded and repeated, but not truth; and when you repeat truth, it ceases to be truth, and therefore sacred books are unimportant. It is through self-knowledge, not through belief in somebody else's symbols, that a man comes to the eternal reality, in which his being is grounded. Belief in the complete adequacy and superlative value of any given symbol system leads not to liberation, but to history, to more of the same old disasters. "Belief inevitably separates. If you have a belief, or when you seek security in your particular belief, you become separated from those who seek security in some other form of belief. All organized beliefs are based on separation, though they may preach brotherhood." The man who has successfully solved the problem of his relations with the two worlds of data and symbols, is a man who has no beliefs. With regard to the problems of practical life he entertains a series of working hypotheses, which serve his purposes, but are taken no more seriously than any other kind of tool or instrument. With regard to his fellow beings and to the reality in which they are grounded, he has the direct experiences of love and insight. It is to protect himself from beliefs that Krishnamurti has "not read any sacred literature, neither the Bhagavad-Gita nor the Upanishads". The rest of us do not even read sacred literature; we read our favourite newspapers, magazines and detective stories. This means that we approach the crisis of our times, not with love and insight, but "with formulas, with systems" - and pretty poor formulas and systems at that. But "men of good will should not have formulas; for formulas lead, inevitably, only to "blind thinking". Addiction to formulas is almost universal. Inevitably so; for "our system of upbringing is based upon what to think, not on how to think". We are brought up as believing and practising members of some organization - the Communist or the Christian, the Moslem, the Hindu, the Buddhist, the Freudian. Consequently "you respond to the challenge, which is always new, according to an old pattern; and therefore your response has no corresponding validity, newness, freshness. If you respond as a Catholic or a Communist, you are responding - are you not? - according to a patterned thought. Therefore your response has no significance. And has not the Hindu, the Mussulman, the Buddhist, the Christian created this problem? As the new religion is the worship of the State, so the old religion was the worship of an idea." If you respond to a challenge according to the old conditioning, your response will not enable you to understand the new challenge. Therefore what "one has to do, in order to meet the new challenge, is to strip oneself completely, denude oneself entirely of the background and meet the challenge anew."
Those who would with Krishnamurti reject the wisdom of the ancient traditions in light of the soul’s own personal realization would do well to traverse the path of Huxley and first read them.

Perhaps erudite scholars like Huxley have a certain right to cast their books aside in old age and attempt a more direct approach. Krishnamurti’s rejection of books strikes me as too facile a paean to dyslexia. To boast that one has "not read any sacred literature, neither the Bhagavad-Gita nor the Upanishads", is not a qualification. Even dogs and cats could make the same boast if they could talk. The idea, I suppose, is that the truths about life are available to anyone upon introspection. And yet there are many truths that escape us even upon great self-reflection. And self-reflection in our age of distraction is often uncomfortable and sometimes impossible.

Science builds on the achievements of past scientists. The primitive batteries of Volta were the forerunners for the battery in your cell-phone; without access to the accomplishments of past generations of scientists we would be lost. Huxley would never have accepted that modern scientists ridicule and reject the scientific discoveries of his grandfather; why then ridicule and reject the spiritual discoveries of our ancestors?

It may be true that “religion” conditions people socially and that such “conditioning” may have negative effects. But this is not a good reason to reject centuries of research work done by saints and savants who dedicated themselves to self-reflection and spiritual discovery. If generations of scientific discovery are worth preserving that we might better exploit this material world, why not preserve the spiritual discoveries of antiquity to better understand the human spirit?

Krishnamurti wished to discard all the old books. Conveniently, he had not taken the trouble to read them. Are the old books merely sham and mystery? There is paradox in reading the book of a man who did not read books and concluding with him that books are not worth reading or writing.

But are the old spiritual books merely a convenient fraud perpretrated by fools who wish to defy the laws of nature; idiots who scorn science and promote dogma? Are the traditions of the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavad-Gita merely the lies and riddles of the weak-minded? Are we to believe that the perennial wisdom of self-realization that flows from ancient times to the present is no more than dogma and eyewash for the general public? Is it really true that these so called “religious” texts are no more than fables and legends to control women and children while the strong devour the weak?

If modern atheists are right and death is final, then it is more courageous to say with Sartre and Camus that life is meaningless and absurd. According to Ann Douglas’ introduction to The Dharma Bums, when Jack Kerouac finally left the road in 1956, he claimed, 'The only thing to do now is to sit alone in a room and get drunk.” Kerouac famously drank himself to death at the age of 47 in 1969. Are we to conclude that the most courageous answer to the paradox of time is to end life with a shotgun blast as did Hemingway? Or with a sword to the entrails as did the fearless Samurai?

Or shall we rather conclude with Tertullian who wrote in 203 AD, “Credo quia absurdum” I believe because it is absurd. Or with Carl Jung who said, “The heavy-handed pedagogic approach that attempts to fit irrational phenomena into a preconceived rational pattern is anathema to me.”

The strident reaction of anti-theists is as harmful to human freedom as the dogma they pretend to oppose. And antitheism with its opposition to certain books often serves a more political end.

People forget, for example, that the post-revolution Soviet communist state carried out a comprehensive “war on religion,” and that even after the revolution the Bolsheviks continued to tear down churches, arrest clergymen, and destroy them in the name of destroying dogma. Atheism took rather savage forms in the Soviet Union in its reaction to the church. While such repression might be unthinkable against the orthodox church today, repression against minority religions is carried out as a consequence of “terrorism laws.”

While “scientists” like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris rail against religion and its books, it is worthwhile to remember how such campaigns end when taken up by governments.

Communist regimes throughout the 20th century used “scientific” justifications to repress religious faith wherever it became a prominent social force.

And this armed assault on religious faith was aimed not just at Christians—Protestants, Catholics, Eastern Orthodox—but against Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and other faiths. 

In Easter Europe, social movements connected with religious faiths were systematically repressed as “dogmatic.” And For every Cardinal Mindszenty in Hungary, there was a Cardinal Wyszynski in Poland, a Richard Wurmbrand in Romania, a Natan Sharansky or Walter Ciszek in Russia, a Vasyl Velychkovsky or Severian Baranyk or Zenobius Kovalyk in the Ukraine.

In Afghanistan repression led to dire consequences for the Moaddedi. And internationally for followers of the Dalai Lama in China, or for the jailed nun in Cuba who spoke against the Castro regime. During the time of the Khmer Rouge of Pol Pot in Cambodia, Buddhist monks were repressed, forced to renounce their vows, and worked to death in the flooded rice paddies of the Tonle Sap.

The so-called “dogmas” of religion have been repressed by anti-theists wherever free thought and conscience threatened the new regime; whether the despot was Fidel Castro or Pol Pot or Stalin, the sentiment was the same: “Religion is poison,” as Mao Tse-Tung was said to have stated.

From East to West, from Africa to Asia, from Phnom Penh to St. Petersburg, repressive anti-theistic regimes have pursued an all-out assault on religion.

In the 20th century, the Communists may have quibbled over the details of how to implement Marx’s vision, but they were unanimous in one thing: religion was the enemy, a rival to Marxist mind control, and it had to be vanquished regardless of costs and difficulties.

British author Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory documents the post-revolutionary repression practiced against the Catholics in Mexico in the 1930. That repression resulted in the Cristero War, so named for its Catholic combatants' slogan Viva Cristo Rey (long live Christ the King).

The message of the old books is so powerful that whenever it is taken to heart, whenever a social movement grows in strength based on the ancient wisdom it must be repressed, brutally if necessary. I have often heard the meme that “religion is the root of all evil,” or that “religion causes all wars,” but a good case may be made that it is materialism that is the root of all evil. The determination to force people to conform to a materialist way of life has caused much evil in the world as has been seen in the failed systems of communism and the regimes of Mao and of Stalin, of Pol Pot and Fidel Castro. Those revolutionary regimes held science to be the new god as did the bloody followers of Robespierre and Danton during the French Revolution and the age of Terror that followed.

Krishnamurti and company would do away with the old books and their superstitions, having never read them. Modern anti-theists cite the absurdities of the Book of Genesis: “How could the world have been created in seven days?” they say. “The fables of Noah and the Ark or Jonah and the Whale are patently ridiculous. Why not believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy or unicorns and the Great Spaghetti Monster?”

But the old books with all their absurdities and exaggerations help us see through the madness of daily life and the meaninglessness of death. They reveal the experience of spiritual reality that has colored human life since the time of Noah and Jonah and Abraham. They faced great trials and were guided by their faith as were the Rishis of the Bhagavat who penned their visions of divine wisdom on palm leaves thousands of years ago.

How do we confront the mystery of death if not with the mystery of faith? Without faith there is only paralysis. Without faith there is only hopelessness. We need the anaesthesia of the bottle or the needle to help us make it through another day.

The mythic stories of the Bible and Puranas are not mere lies and riddles. They help us strike deep at higher truths; they strike a harmonic chord deep in the human soul that understands intuitively the nature of the eternal soul and the power of divinity. The sound of that chord cannot be silenced or stopped. The old creed has survived the whips and scorns of anti-theistic critics over generations because it reveals the self-reflection and realization of thousands of advanced sages over milennia.

The ancient wisdom of the Puranic and Upanishadic wisdom has survived the onslaught of Muslim conquest and British colonization in India and has spread to the west through the teachings of Thoreau and Emerson, of Schopenhauer and Schlegel, and even the quantum realities of Schrodinger and Oppenheimer. While these books were ridiculed by Christian missionaries as the crude fables of black Hindooo tribesmen, the old books survived on the basis not only of their deep wisdom and insight but their supple and flexible handling of the problem of human mortality, the transcendental reality of time, and the eternal relationship between soul and Deity.

While Krishnamurti and his fans offer us nothing more than empty introspection in the face of an absurd and meaningless reality, the ancient Bhagavat has the nature of an Oracle. The Oracle reveals truth; but the truth has many meanings and interpretations. Every time we consult the Oracle we find a new idea, a new sense. The text remains the same, but oddly reveals new light every time it is consulted. Self-reflection is often a stagnant, futile exercise. Every time I look into myself I find the same qualities of fear, selfishness, lust, anger and greed.

But the Oracle reveals other qualities: faith, surrender, devotion, toleration, and selflessness. Where self-reflection is often opaque and reveals nothing more than my own limitations; The Oracle teaches there is something higher. In a world of infinite gradations, where is the infinite? The Oracle gives us a hint. The Bhagavat is an oracular text spoken by oracles like Suta, Shukadev, Vyasa and Narada. It is filled with revelations from Kapila, from Maitryea, from Vidura and Uddhava. The stories of the Bhagavat give us insight into the character and vision of these great saints and oracles. Each time we read the Bhagavat we find a newer and deeper meaning. This is why the old books are there. They respond to our questions. They are living texts, unlike the book of our own life which is limited and marked by our own limited memories and imagination.

The Greek Heraclitus pointed that it is impossible to set foot in the same river twice. The current has changed. The water has changed. Even the river bed itself has subtly shifted. We ourselves are changed from the version of self we knew only a few moments ago, for now we have the memory of the river and its water. Now it is slightly colder or warmer. The same river is never the same river twice. In this way the text of the Holy Bhagavat reveals something new every time we approach it, for we have changed, our world has changed, our body has changed.

It has been said that mythology is really someone else’s religion. But mythological texts survive, not because of their fables and tales but because of their universal truths. As young men we read the Iliad and thrill to the heroism of the Greeks and Trojans. As mature men we find the angry pouting of Achilles repellant. He seems to be more of a cry-baby than a hero. Why not confront the challenge? He is a coward who refuses the call of adventure with tragic results. As older men we understand the anger and reluctance of Achilles and pity him his shortcomings while recognizing his true heroism. He overcomes his petty sentiments and gives his life while submitting to his karma.

In the same way, we first read the happy stories of Krishna as children and find entertaining bed-time stories. We read the Bhagavat in the full bloom of youth and look for a message about love. Later we read the Bhagavat in our maturity and consult the Oracle for news of what happens beyond our death and discover our real eternal prospect through faith.

Our understanding changes as we grow and develop Our penetration in to such deep works of faith--our capacity to interpret their meaning-- is always tempered by our own expectations, regrets and short-comings as we approach the text. So it is that the text itself never changes--its meaning is always literal--but our own version and interpretation must change even as we change. It is for this reason that the old texts, the ancient Puranas, and especially the Bhagavat continue to have a living meaning--even for a highly technological society with a deep dependence on technology and the logic-driven algorithms that drive our daily life.

But even personal consultation with the oracular literature of the Bhagavat may not provide us with the peace that surpasses understanding. In the end, we must consult an adept whose faith is deeper than our own. Our own personal understanding of the book Bhagavat is enhanced by the person Bhagavat who explains with both precept and example the inner sense of the oracle.

Srimad Bhagavatm III: Vision Global

Visión Global del Bhāgavat

Los 10 Temas del Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam

Por Michael Dolan/ B.V, Mahāyogi

traducido por Teresa Loret de Mola/Tapanandini DD

El Bhāgavat es una literatura vasta y arcana. No entregará sus secretos al lector casual. Los lectores casuales del Bhāgavat caen en diferentes categorías. La mayoría de ellos brincan los primeros 9 Cantos de la obra y brincan de inmediato hacia el 10º Canto el cual describe a detalle los pasatiempos y cualidades del Señor.

Dado que estas descripciones tienen encanto y cualidades íntimas, el lector frecuentemente confundirá los pasatiempos de Śrī Kṛṣṇa con historias de hadas entretenidas, útiles para tranquilizar a los niños a la hora de dormir. Las damas en India reconocen la virtud de darles a sus hijos una educación temprana y así exponen a sus hijos a las encantadoras historias de Kṛṣṇa.

Desafortunadamente, esta aproximación tiene el efecto negativo de convencer al público de que las historias de Kṛṣṇa son solamente unos cuentos encantadores para niños. Los adultos deben superar los cuentos de hadas de la infancia. Y entonces, las teorías impersonalitas de Buda y Śaṅkara son tomadas con más seriedad que las fantasías salvajes promovidas en el Bhāgavat. Dado que estos lectores superficiales han saltado encima de toda la ontología y la reflexión filosófica contenida en los nueve Cantos previos de la obra, está desconcertados por el 10º Canto y son incapaces de penetrar en sus misterios.

Otros intentos sinceros de atravesar los primeros 9 Cantos y quedan perplejos con su naturaleza esotérica. Los no iniciados estarán confundidos y perdidos en el bosque de las referencias mitológicas arcanas de los Puranas previos. Otros se obsesionaran  con la minucia del Bhagavat y sus descripciones del tiempo del átomo y de la cosmología del universo. Por esta razón es indispensable seguir la guía de un experto en la materia del Bhāgavat, Tal persona es también llamada Bhāgavat ya que encarna las enseñanzas del gran libro trascendental.

Uno que intenta la aproximación a los pasatiempos divinos en el 10º canto sin reflexionar acerca de la ontología de la conciencia y los avatares de Dios esbozados en los otros cantos está condenado al fracaso.

Según el análisis, el Bhāgavat despliega sus argumentos en 18 mil veros en Sánscrito, pero se enfoca en 10 temas importantes.

1.     sarga o la evolución subjetiva primaria de la conciencia como fundamento de la existencia.

2.     visarga o los aspectos secundarios de la evolución, como por ejemplo los orígenes de la materia y la energía, el tiempo espacio continuo y la estructura del universo fenomenológico

3.     sthanam o la cosmología de la realidad física y metafísica

4.     poshanam (la relación entre la conciencia individual y la conciencia suprema y cómo las almas individuales a fin de cuentas están bajo la protección de la Divinidad).

5.     utayah (los ímpetus kármicos del ego y sus consecuencias, tanto en la causa como en el efecto),

6.     manvantara (las distintas eras de la civilización humana y las antiguas dinastías de los reyes),

7.     isha-anukatha (la ontología de la divinidad),

8.     nirodha ( lo temporal, la naturaleza cíclica de la realidad universal tal como es vista en su disolución última),

9.     mukti (liberación del ciclo temporal del mundo de materia, tiempo, y espacio),

10.  ashraya (La Personalidad de Dios original, Bhāgavān, como el refugio supremo de todas las entidades vivientes).

Mientras que a lo largo de 18 mil versos el Bhāgavat se concentra en estos 10 temas importantes y entra hacia un gran número de asuntos auxiliares, uno ha de mantener la mente en que el propósito del Bhāgavat es Krishna-bhakti. En este contexto tal consideración como la naturaleza material del universo y sus orígenes toma una importancia secundaria. Estos temas se abordan en su contexto. La práctica espiritual sin un respaldo filosófico frecuentemente no es más que fanatismo. Un sistema filosófico bien considerado provee un marco apropiado para la práctica espiritual. El Bhāgavat se concentra en estos asuntos para demostrar su dominio sobre todas las variedades de reinos de la filosofía incluyendo la cosmología, epistemología, ontología, ética y metafísica. El Bhāgavat es, por ello, no un mero compendio de cuentos mitológicos fantásticos. Es una tesis teológica bien considerada acerca de la divinidad. El Bhāgavat afirma que la divinidad es personal. Promueve la dedicación a una divinidad monoteísta quien es reconocida en sus páginas como Bhāgavān, Śrī Kṛṣṇa. Si hay otros avatares o personalidades quienes derivan del Dios Supremo, Kṛṣṇa es la Suprema Personalidad de Dios.

Las visiones del Bhāgavat son sutiles. El Bhāgavat no describe la creación como un acto singular creativo de una deidad todopoderosa que crea el universo de la nada, ex nihilio y que luego permite que las leyes de la física gobiernen todo. La creación no procede del dedo de Dios, sino como un proceso evolutivo que envuelve a Su Mente Universal. El durmiente Mahavisnu sueña el mundo, proyectando su mirada a través de sus ojos medio cerrados hacia la realidad material potencial. 

Evoluciona como una Gestalt de capullos anidados con diferentes capas de energía consciente e inconsciente desarrollando sus propias capas de materia oscura, energía oscura, ego sutil y la mente desde la energía sutil indiferenciada de conciencia pura. Cómo la energía etérea del Brahmán no diferenciado se une a los aspectos burdos del ego sutil y la mente, está reflejado en las páginas del Bhāgavat mientras nos informa acerca de la estancia del alma en el mundo material.  Una evolución hacia atrás desde lo sutil hacia lo burdo, la conciencia gira en el mundo del ego, el intelecto y la mente, creando la fenomenología objetiva a partir de la existencia subjetiva. Las enseñanzas del Bhagavat se reflecan en cómo toda la existencia material al igual que el universo fenomenal se concretizan como una hipnosis masiva. La visión de la divinidad como Mahavishnu refuerza la experiencia cuántica de la inconciencia colectiva de infinitas jivas almas, supervisadas por la percepción de Paramātmā o Súperalma. 

Ya sea que estés de acuerdo completamente con la tesis del Bhāgavat o que halles sus explicaciones inadecuadas para enfrentar los desafíos de la ciencia moderna, primero debes entrar a las sutilezas de su argumento. Y, si eres capaz de hacerlo, hallarás un método maleable y flexible para, como lo pone Milton, “Justificar los caminos de Dios al Hombre”. El Bhāgavat, por ello, responde a la divinidad personal. La cristiandad moderna ha tomado prestadas estas ideas a través de la teología del pensador alemán Rudolf Otto quien era un teólogo luterano y un erudito en el estudio comparativo de las religiones. 

Él sentía que a pesar del hecho de que uno pueda hablar de funciones o niveles de conciencia, la propia conciencia está más allá de la clasificación, irracional, “completamente extraña”, “un otro completo”, no deducible, irreductible e inclasificable. Otto estaba intricado por el misticismo que hallo en India como estudiante del sánscrito y del Viṣṇu-bhakti de la escuela Śrī- Vaiṣṇava. 

Otto estudió el sistema del dualismo calificado promovido por Ramanuja, un gran estudiante del Bhāgavat. 

Otto incluso llegó tan lejos como para traducir ciertos extractos del Bhāgavat y del Visnú Purana al alemán. El libro de Otto, La Idea de lo Sagrado, es una importante obra teológica, leída tanto por católicos como por protestantes. Desde su publicación en 1917 ha seguido siendo popular como una respuesta sentida poderosamente a la crítica de Kant. La Idea de lo Sagrado promueve la idea de “sagrado” como el la llama “numinoso”. 

En su intento por explicar la experiencia mística auto-evidente, emplea un vocabulario filosófico especial. El numinoso de Otto es una “experiencia no-racional, no-sensorial o sentimiento cuyo objeto primario e inmediato se halla fuera del ser”. Su término deriva del latín numen que significa “poder divino”. Curiosamente escoge un término con ecos del noumenon de Kant, un término griego que se refiere a la realidad incognoscible. Para Otto, el numinoso o “experiencia intuitiva mística divina” se caracteriza por el temor y la reverencia. Basado en la visión del Bhakti del Sur de India, este extraño maestro de filosofía alemán halla que una experiencia de Dios se caracteriza por una sensación de misterio que él llama mysterium, temor y reverencia o fascinación tremenda asombrosa todo al unísono. Otto señala que el estado de conciencia de temor y reverencia que se alcanza a través de la comunión místico con lo divino está más allá de la clasificación y no puede entenderse racionalmente. Lo numinoso por lo tanto, , tal como el lo llama no puede ser conocido. 

Muchos teólogos del Siglo XX tales como Otto hicieron lo posible para revivir el Cristianismo refiriéndose a los argumentos esotéricos hallados en las tradiciones del Kṛṣṇa bhakti, puesto que las tradiciones  bhakti ofrecen los argumentos más sólidos para la devoción monoteísta personal. Por supuesto, incluso mientras obtenía ayuda de las escrituras indias muchos pensadores son cuidadosos para ocultar sus huellas y oscurecer los orígenes de su pensamiento. Simplemente no se justificaría el cristianismo con los argumentos del Bhagavat. Los cristianos frecuentemente demonizan las creencias y tradiciones de India llamándolas “paganas”. La fantástica mitología de miles de dioses es evidencia de una sociedad atrasada, explican. 

Qué curioso que esas tradiciones sabias de India no sólo hayan resistido el ataque de cientos de años de actividad misionera, sino que han sido absorbidas secretamente por el cristianismo como bases de su doctrina por teólogos como Rudolph Otto.

El Bhāgavat no es una colección heterogénea de mitos extraños: ofrece un marco metafísico para entender las sutilezas del cosmos material.  Escrito media centura antes del nacimiento de Cristo, el gran  orador Romano Cicerón comentaba, “¿Por qué insisten que el universo no es una inteligencia consciente cuando da nacimiento a la conciencia inteligente?” Podemos criticar al escritor o escritores del Bhāgavat por no usar la ciencia más moderna en sus cálculos acerca del Universo. Pero las grandes preguntas acerca de la conciencia y la realidad permanecen inmutables desde tiempos de Cicerón. Los físicos modernos tales como Stephen Hawking tal vez nos digan mucho acerca del tiempo-espacio continuum, pros siguen careciendo de las herramientas para explicar cómo es espacio y el tiempo anida dentro del capullo de la conciencia. Recientemente hemos descubierto que casi el 90 % del Universo está compuesto de “materia oscura”. “La Materia oscura” tal vez se convierta en un factor para nuestro entendimiento del Universo. Y sin embargo sabemos tan poco acerca de la conciencia y su relación con la realidad. Pero un entendimiento de la vida y la conciencia es fundamental para el entendimiento del universo y nuestro sitio dentro del cosmos. Tal como es imposible usar la geometría euclidiana para analizar el universo cuántico, es imposible usar las herramientas de los físicos modernos para investigar el reino metafísico. El Bhāgavat, sin embargo ofrece una visión a este importante asunto ¿Por qué no leerlo?

Srimad Bhagavatam III

Overview of the Bhagavat:

The 10 Subjects of the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam

by Michael Dolan/B.V. Mahāyogi

The Bhagavat is a vast and arcane literature. It will not yield up its secrets to a casual reader. The casual readers of the Bhagavat fall into different categories. Most of them will skip the first 9 Cantos of the work altogether and jump immediately to the 10th Canto which describes in detail the pastimes and qualities of the Lord.

Since these descriptions have a charming and intimate quality, the reader will often mistake the pastimes of Śrī Kṛṣṇa for entertaining fairy stories, useful for lulling children to sleep at bedtime. Ladies in India recognize the virtue of giving their children an early education and so expose their children to the delightful stories of Kṛṣṇa.

Unfortunately, this approach has the negative effect of convincing the public that Krishna stories are just that: charming tales for children. Adults must outgrow the fairy-tales of childhood. And so, the impersonal theories of Buddha and Shankar are taken more seriously than the wild fantasies promoted in the Bhagavat. Since these superficial readers have skipped over all the ontology and philosophical reflection contained in the previous nine Cantos of the work, they are bewildered by the 10th Canto and are unable to penetrate its mysteries.

Others sincerely attempt to go through the first 9 Cantos and are baffled by its esoteric nature. The uninitiated will be confused and lost in the forest of arcane mythological references to previous Puranas. Still others become obsessed with the minutia of the Bhagavat and its descriptions of time from the atom and the cosmology of the universe.

For this reason it is indispensable to follow the guidance of an expert in the matter of the Bhagavat. Such a person is also called Bhagavat since he embodies the teachings of that great and transcendental book.

One who attempts to approach the pastimes of divinity in the 10th Canto without reflecting on the ontology of consciousness and the avatars of God outlined in the other Cantos is doomed to failure.

According to analysis, Bhagavat unwinds its argument in 18,000 Sanskrit verses, but focuses on 10 important subjects:

1. sarga or the primary subjective evolution of consciousness as the foundation of existence,

2. visarga or secondary aspects of this evolution, as for example the origins of matter and energy, the time-space continuum, and the structure of the phenomenological universe,

3. sthanam or the cosmology of physical and metaphysical reality,

4. poshanam (the relationship between individual consciousness and the supreme consciousness and how the individual souls are ultimately under the protection of Divinity),

5. utayah (the karmic impetus of ego and its consequences, both in cause and effect),

6. manvantara (different eras of human civilization and the ancient dynasties of kings),

7. isha-anukatha (the ontology of divinity),

8. nirodha (the temporal, cyclical nature of universal reality as seen in its ultimate dissolution),

9. mukti (liberation from the temporal cyclical world of matter, time, and space),

10. ashraya (The Personality of Godhead, Bhagava, as the supreme shelter of all living entities).

While throughout the duration of its 18,000 verses the Bhagavat concentrates on these 10 important subjects and enters into a great number of ancillary matters, one must keep in mind that the purpose of the Bhagavat is Krishna-bhakti. In this context such considerations as the nature of the material universe and its origin takes secondary importance. These subjects are touched upon in their context. Spiritual practice without philosophical backing is often no more than fanaticism. A well-considered philosophical system provides a proper framework for spiritual practice. The Bhagavat concentrates on these matters to demonstrate its dominion over all the various realms of philosophy including cosmology, epistemology, ontology, ethics, and metaphysics. The Bhagavat is, therefore, not a mere compendium of fantastic mythological tales. It is a well-considered theological thesis about the nature of divinity. The Bhagavat claims that divinity is personal. It promotes dedication to a monotheistic divinity who is recognized in its pages as Bhagavan Śrī Kṛṣṇa. If there are other avatars or personalities who derive from Godhead, Kṛṣṇa is the Supreme Personality of Godhead.

The Bhagavat’s views on creation are subtle. The Bhagavat does not describe creation as the singular creative act of an all-powerful Deity who creates the universe out of nothing ex nihilo and then allows the laws of physics to govern everything. The creation does not proceed from the finger of God, but as an evolutionary process involving His Universal Mind. The sleeping Mahavishnu dreams the world, casting his vision through half-closed eyes towards the potential of material reality. It evolves as a gestalt of nested cocoons with different layers of conscious and sub-conscious energy developing their own layers of dark matter, dark energy, subtle ego and mind from the most subtle undifferentiated energy of pure consciousness. How the ethereal energy of undifferentiated Brahman binds to the grosser aspects of subtle ego and mind is reflected upon in the pages of the Bhagavat as it informs us of the soul’s sojourn in the material world.

In a backwards-evolution of subtle to gross, consciousness spins the world out of ego, intellect and mind, creating objective phenomenology out of subjective existence. The teaching of the Bhagavat reflects on how all material existence as the phenomenal universe is concretized as mass hypnosis. The vision of divinity as Mahavishnu reinforces the quantum experience of the collective unconsciousness of infinite jiva souls, overseen by the perception of the Paramatma or Supersoul. Whether you agree entirely with the thesis of the Bhagavat or find its explanation inadequate to face the challenge of modern science, you must first enter into the subtlety of its argument. And, if you are capable of doing so, you will find a supple and flexible means to, as Milton put it, “justify the ways of God to Man.”

The Bhagavat, therefore, responds to the arguments of Vedanta--that all is one--by giving us insight into the nature of the personal divinity. Modern Christianity has borrowed these ideas through the theology of German thinker Rudolf Otto. Otto was a Lutheran theologian and scholar of comparative religion. He felt that despite the fact that one may speak of the functions or levels of consciousness, consciousness itself is beyond classification, irrational, “plainly strange,” “wholly other,” non-deducible, irreductable, and unclassifiable. Otto was intrigued by the mysticism he found in India as a student of Sanskrit and the Vishnu-bhakti of the Śrī-Vaiṣṇava school. He studied the system of qualified dualism promoted by Ramanuja, a great student of the Bhagavat. Otto even went so far as to translate certain excerpts from the Bhagavat and Vishnu Purana into German.

Otto's book The Idea of the Holy, is an important theological work, read by Catholics and Protestants alike. Since its publication in 1917 it has remained popular as a powerfully felt answer to Kant’s Critique.

Idea of the Holy promotes the idea of the “holy” as what he calls, “numinous.” In his attempt at explaining a self-evident mystical experience, he employs a special philosophical vocabulary. Otto’s numinous is a "non-rational, non-sensory experience or feeling whose primary and immediate object is outside the self".

His term derives from the Latin numen which means “divine power”. Oddly, he picks a term with echoes of Kant's noumenon, a Greek term referring to unknowable reality. For Otto, the numinous or “intuitive divine mystic experience” is characterized by awe and reverence. Based on his insight into South Indian bhakti, this strange German philosophy teacher finds that an experience of God is characterized by a sense of mystery which he calls mysterium, awe and reverence or tremendumand fascination fascinans all at once.

Otto points out that the conscious state of awe and reverence achieved through mystic communion with the divine is beyond classification and cannot be understand rationally. The numinous, therefore, as he calls it cannot be cognized.

Many 20th Century theologians such as Otto did their best to revive Christianity by referring to the esoterica arguments found in the traditions of Krishna-bhakti, since the bhakti tradition offers the strongest arguments for personal monotheistic devotion. Of course, even while getting help from the Indian scriptures many thinkers are careful to hide their tracks and obscure the origins of their thought. It simply would not do to justify Christianity with the arguments taken from the Bhagavat.

Christians often demonize the beliefs and traditions of India by calling them “pagan.” The fantastic mythology of thousands of gods is evidence of a backwards society, they explain. How curious that the wisdom traditions of India have not only withstood the onslaught of hundreds of years of missionary activity, but are secretly absorbed into Christianity as the basis of their doctrine by Theologians like Rudolph Otto.

The Bhagavat is not a motley collection of weird mythologies; it offers a metaphysical framework for understanding the subtleties of the material cosmos.

Writing half a century before the birth of Christ, the great Roman orator Cicero remarked, “Why do you insist the universe is not a conscious intelligence when it gives birth to conscious intelligence?”

We may fault the writer or writers of the Bhagavat for not using the most modern of science in their calculations about the universe. But the big questions about consciousness and reality remain unchanged even since the time of Cicero. Modern physicists such as Stephen Hawking may tell us much about the space-time continuum, but still lack the tools to explain how space and time is nested within the cocoon of consciousness. Lately we have discovered that something like 90 percent of the universe may be composed of “dark matter.” “Dark energy” may become a factor in our understanding of the universe. And yet we know so little about concsiousness and its relationship to reality. But an understanding of life and consciousness are fundamental to understanding the universe and our place within the cosmos. Just as it is impossible to use Euclidean geometry to analyse the quantum universe, it is impossible to use the tools of modern physics to investigate the metaphysical realm. The Bhagavat, however, offers us insight into these important issues. Why not read it?