HINDU-PAGAN RELATIONS

THE WAY FORWARD

Monotheism taken as norm

Saturates all areas of life

Manichean division between Good and Evil e.g. state versus private control

Artificial Construct

Secular and ‘Religious’

DEMONOTHEISING HUMAN MIND

CULTURE AND RELIGION

• Sacred Text

• Written Word

• Codification

• Reformation

• Enlightenment

• Divine Or Natural Construct

• Tradition and Custom

• Oral Tradition

• Flexible

• Human Construct

TEXT OR TRADITION?Sacred Text codifies ideas at certain point in time

Divine Word is Cultural Hyperbole

Without Text does Religion exist separate from Culture?

Who decides what is Religion, Superstition, Supernatural, Faith?

SECULARISM AS RELIGION

Artificial Division

Same Narrative/Discourse

Behaviour over Theory

Secularism employs Religious Language

BEYOND THE SCIENCE/ATHEIST/RELIGION/HUMANISM NARRATIVE

Secularism, Humanism, Atheism and Economic Ideas are offspring of Monotheism

Secular Faith

Scientific Faith

ORIGINS OF MONOTHEISM

Where did it arise?

Why?

How?

What are the Causal Factors?

COMMON ORIGINS?Xenophanes claimed by Secular Humanists

But Ancient Greek Philosophers were in Pagan environment

No state founded on their ideas

Greek ideas later adopted by the Church

Aristotle spoke of Prime Mover

Galileo attacked Aristotlean Geocentrism

Confucius part of wider Chinese culture including Taoism

Charvak was defeated in India

MENTAL DETOXAs I understand them, religions aren’t composed of beliefs but of practices. Secular rationalists think of religions in creedal terms as sets of propositions, or else as primitive versions of scientific theories, then attack religion on this basis. This is a fundamental error, but quite understandable since under the influence of Greek philosophy sections of western religion have in fact been creedal in form. In this as in many other respects, secular rationalism is a mirror image of the least interesting strands in western monotheism.

DEFINING RELIGIONIn Latin ‘religio’ originally meant an obligation to the gods, something expected by them from human beings or a matter of particular care or concern as related to the gods

Cicero uses cultus deorum, "the proper performance of rites in veneration of the gods.“

Not Faith but Correct Practice

Mos Maiorum: "ancestral custom"[or "way of the elders," plural mores, was the unwritten code from which the ancient Romans derived their social norms

Neglecting the religiones owed to the traditional gods was Atheism

Religion synonomous with custom and therefore culture

BASIS OF TOTALITARIANISMSparta ritually killed off Helots

Pre-Modern Societies were Slave Owning and Hierarchical

Roman Amphitheatre enforced ideas of Order and Chaos

Totalitarian secular ideologies owe much to Plato, Atlantis, Caesar

Athenians warned that Democracy could become Mobocracy and Tyranny

BASIS OF MONOTHEISMReaction to conditions of Roman Empire

Emperor as Divine Embodiment of State

Monotheist trends in Paganism e.g. Sol Invictus, Mithras, Apollo, Isis

Constantine reconstructed basis of Roman Empire

Council of Nicaea codified what became Christianity

Gnosticism deemed Heretic

Julian the Apostate tried to create Pagan Church

Monotheism result of trying to keep Pax Romana

‘WESTERN’ CIVILISATIONRoman Empire became Monotheist Theocracy

Religious Affiliation tied to State Loyalty

Pagan beliefs suppressed or absorbed: Prime Mover of Aristotle

Pagan beliefs survived in Saints

Paganism denounced as Satanic

Monotheism effective Dualism

Gnosticism crushed by Literalists

Gnostic Christianity went East

DUALIST PRECURSORIranian Religion split from Vedic

Role of Demons and Gods reversed

Cosmic Battle between Ahura Mazda and Ahriman

Achaemenids followed Zarathustra but wide latitude

Influence on Judaism?

Sassanids promoted aggressive intolerant state Zurvanism

ORIENTAL DIMENSIONS

Arab Empire built upon Hellenic, Gnostic, Christian, Zarathustrian, Hindu, Buddhist and assorted Pagan precedents

Sufism absorbed Pagan practices

New Religion formulated on Monotheist template as Foundation of imperial conquests

Result not Reason behind Arab Conquests

PROGRESS?Reformation resulted in suppression of Pagan Vestiges

Modern Europe heralded by Witch Burnings, Pogroms, Genocide, Warfare

Secularism was compromise between Catholics and Protestants in Thirty Years War

MONOTHEISM MODERNISEDEnlightenment built upon Protestant Reformation

Natural Philosophers moved from Christianity to Deism

Science took up the Monotheist Mantle

Outside Science it was Superstition

Science brought Results in Industrial Revolution

God became Irrelevant Hypothesis in favour of The THEORY

Social Change through Urbanisation, Finance, Technology

Emergence of Mass Politics

SMOKE AND MIRRORS AND POLLUTIONIdealisation of Pre-Industrial Past

Gothic, Romanticist, Classicist, Slavophile Trends

Reconstructing the Pagan Past through Monotheistic Paradigm

Imperialist expansion used Classical Civilisation as Template

ECONOMONOTHEISMTHEORY is euphemism for GOD

Adam Smith believed God controlled the Free Market

Economic Theories are based on Faith

Neoconservatism and Neoliberalism are Utopian Myths

Duality of Secular Functions: Capitalism/Communism, State/Corporate, Keynes/Hayek, Religion/Laicism, Left/Right

Developed and Developing World

Faith of Mass Consumption

FAILED UTOPIAAtheists, Secularists, Humanists blame Religion for human rights abuses and oppression

French Revolution descended into TerrorTwentieth centuries witnessed worst crimes against humanityNazi Germany and USSR were ‘Scientific’Class and Race replaced any god in human centred ideologies Loyalty to Proletariat/Nation/Volk/Race/ClassNon–existent or ambiguous moralityIdealism and Sincerity severely warpedCommunism and National Socialism secular and anti-religious in creating the “New Man”No god to restrain excessesDisillusionment with heaven on earth revolution meant retreat into lowest common denominator, that of race, ethnicity, and volk

DYSTOPIAN VISIONSHuman Sacrifice as Demographic Control

Climatic Impact on Civilisation: Mayans, Indus-Saraswati, Mini Ice Age

Black Death, Plague, Ebola

Materialist Roman rapaciousness

Science Fiction warns that Progress can become Nightmare

Social Breakdown will Reform the Tribe

Dharma and Rta are ‘Religious’ tools of making sense of Chaos and Complexity

MONOTHEIST INFECTIONHindus felt inferior under British Rule

Orientalists used modernist paradigm to create ‘Hinduism’

Internalisation of Modernist Discourse led to Abberrations

Neat Categories of ‘isms’ which did not reflect reality

Monotheism held to be superior narrative

WHICH IS THE VALID PATH?

SURVIVAL AGAINST ALL THE ODDS

• Why did Ancient Indian Civilisation survive?

• Hinduism exists while parallels are Museum Exhibits

• Marginalised, Threatened and Maligned

• Muzzled, Gagged, Censored

• Misunderstood and Crushed under Monotheistic Boot

BACKWARD? SUPERSTITIOUS/? IGNORANT?Origin of Zero

Basis of Western Science is Zero

Irrational Concept

Zero spiritual concept

Decimal Numbers

Technological and Scientific Advances

SRINIVAS RAMANUJAN (1887-1920)"While asleep, I had an unusual experience. There was a red screen formed by flowing blood, as it were. I was observing it. Suddenly a hand began to write on the screen. I became all attention. That hand wrote a number of elliptic integrals. They stuck to my mind. As soon as I woke up, I committed them to writing.“

Goddess Namagiri whispered equations into his ear

.

ERWIN SCHRÖDINGER (1187-1961)1933 Nobel Prize for Quantum Mechanics

“Nirvana is a state of pure blissful knowledge… It has nothing to do with the individual. The ego or its separation is an illusion. Indeed in a certain sense two “I”‘s are identical namely when one disregards all special contents — their Karma. The goal of man is to preserve his Karma and to develop it further… when man dies his Karma lives and creates for itself another carrier.”

““There is no kind of framework within which we can find consciousness in the plural; this is simply something we construct because of the temporal plurality of individuals, but it is a false construction… The only solution to this conflict insofar as any is available to us at all lies in the ancient wisdom of the Upanishad.”

JULIUS ROBERT OPPENHEIMER (1904-1967)Supervising Scientist for the Manhattan Project

Learnt Sanskrit

Quoted Bhagavad Gita

“I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

BASIS OF CIVILISATIONHinduism is largest surviving Pagan Body

Paganism formed basis of Modern Civilisation

Deconstructing Monotheism to unlock Pagan Past

Death of Utopia