The Logic of Hinduism

1. The Logic of Hinduism Visit www.worldofteaching.com For 100’s of free powerpoints

2. Lecture Outline • 1) Hindu Panentheism and Indian History • 2) Why does God Create? • 3) Meditation • Why? • How? • 4) Argument for Immortality

3. Combine Pantheism and Monotheism: Panentheism “In Me are all existences contained, Not I in them!” (Bhagavad Gita) • Pantheism: God is everything; everything is God • Monotheism: there is one God, separate from the world He/She creates. • Combine: Panentheism: 1) the world is the expression of God in time/space, 2) yet God also remains the conscious Unity in all expressions

4. Emanationism “They comprehend not, the Unheavenly, How Souls go forth from Me; nor how they come Back to Me.” • 1) Soul (Aspect, Part of Brahman) goes forth into forgetfulness (matter) • 2) => Karmic existence in samsara (illusion of time and space) • 3) Return to consciousness of inner divinity (moksha, Nirvana): Sat-Chit-Ananda or bliss consciousness of being)

5. Neo-Kinship and the unity of God and the World • Ancient kinship > animism • =>pantheism • Hinduism absorbs animistic hunter-gatherers • Evolution of polytheism (=> avatars) and monotheism does not reject animism • >Panentheism (“Pan” = all; “hen” = one) • Continuity with early beliefs of kinship society • Contrast with monotheism of the West and Middle East: God is above and outside of nature (separation of God and world)

6. God Becomes Human • God knows Him/Herself, but does not experience what it is to be God. • To experience something requires first not being it. • E.g., to experience joy requires sorrow • Hence, to experience Him/Herself, God must become (pretend to be) not-God: • > the creation of the world

7. Path to True Self • Krishna is an “avatar” because Krishna realizes his true being as Brahman • Ordinary human (Arjuna) fails to understand this • Hence Arjuna is caught up in cycle of birth and death (Samsara) and Illusion (Maya) • To find peace/joy/bliss: find your real Self • This is God’s experience of being God

8. Meditation: Path to the Inner God • The Saint who shuts outside his placid soul • All touch of sense, letting no contact through; • Whose quiet eyes gaze straight from fixed brows, • Whose outward breath and inward breath are drawn • Equal and slow through nostrils still and close; • That one—with organs, heart, and mind constrained, • Bent on deliverance, having put away • Passion, and fear, and rage;--hath, even now, • Obtained deliverance, ever and ever freed.

9. What does meditation do? • We normally identify ourselves with our thinking mind, our desires => Ordinary self, ego. • Concerned with past and future • Not being in the present • We normally don’t control our mind; it controls us. • We need to set aside the mind to discover our real being: the experience of being: I AM

10. You are not your thoughts • = “You” are not your thoughts • Become aware of the Self outside of the thoughts. • That is really the You that is the expression of God: the true Self

11. How to meditate • Sequestered should he sit, • Steadfastly meditating, solitary, • His thoughts controlled, his passions laid away, • Quit of his belongings. . . . • There, setting hard his mind upon The One, • Restraining heart and senses, silent, calm, • Let him accomplish Yoga [=union], and achieve • Pureness of soul [Atman], holding immovable • Body and neck and head, his gaze absorbed • Upon his nose-end . . .

12. Light Meditation • Feel and relax your body completely • Focus your attention on nose-end for a while • Feel disconnected from the body • Ignore your thoughts • Close eyes and observe the darkness, shadows, inner clouds, colors, forms • Keep searching for the light in the center for as long as possible

13. Krishna’s argument for immortality • That which is • Can never cease to be; that which is not • Will not exist. To see this truth of both • Is theirs who part essence from accident, • Substance from shadow. Indestructible, • Learn thou! The Life is, spreading life through all; • It cannot anywhere, by any means, • Be anywise diminished, stayed, or changed.

14. The fleeting frames • But for these fleeting frames which it informs • With spirit deathless, endless, infinite, • They perish. Let them perish, Prince! • And fight!

15. (1) Being • Being cannot come out of non-being • If once there was nothing, now there would be nothing. • Hence being is eternal

16. (2) Non-Being • Things that come into existence and pass away – i.e., change – are a mixture of being and non-being: • Inasmuch as anything is, it cannot not-be. • Inasmuch as anything is not, it cannot be. • So changing things are illusory, “shadows” on the wall – “Maya”

17. (3) Being and Non-Being • Inasmuch as I am a changing being of time (focused on past and future), I am involved in Maya (Illusion) • My true being is in the present moment of Now, the moment of IS/AM • Inasmuch as I AM, I AM Eternal, Divine

18. Plato’s argument for immortality • The human soul can recognize unchangeable truths. • E.g., The Theorem of Pythagoras. • We can recognize unchanging Beauty in itself in the changing beautiful things. • The soul must be like what it knows and loves. • Therefore, the soul must also be unchangeable • Rise to the soul level, above preoccupation with sensory objects (the shadow world)