Friday, September 19, 2008
Endangered Mankind
Endangered Mankind
Modern Education: A Threat to Mankind
Study hard, get hold of enviable degree and kick-start the gorgeous career in the field of your choice and make money. The money, your want. By hook or by crook. Certainly, your primary need in life. Use your all wiles how best you can amass and manage it. Well, you are capable of that. Very early you will be flushed with the good amount. No point dillydallying, you may desire the choicest materials of comfort and luxury --------- palatial buildings, swanky cars, computer, ruby, diamond and lot more. You are given the choice of enjoying every moment by drawing the utmost pleasure being in the midst of your possessions; relish them to your heart’s content.
Why worry ? Make the best of your time; you are virtually accentuated with awesome profession. Set your heart on anything your money can purchase. You may drink to death. Visiting the night club and indulging yourself drooling at an enticing girl who unabashedly takes leave of her modesty, could be your new found passion. Yes, you may swing yourself into action by organizing the most sensational beauty contest ever held, that perhaps becomes an exciting event to watch and emulate from. Or, be adventurous and go around the globe to see the things of your interest. Or, take off to marvel at galas in Las Vegas, or scale the Mountain tops, or plod along the icy Antarctica------- these all are jolly fashionable crazes.
Please understand, in this age of sophistication, to make one capable enough to afford any desired stuff of pleasure and conveniences that satisfy his whim is seemingly a one-pointed goal in life. So, don’t hold back, go in with guns blazing to achieve them. Make your affluence as ostentatious as you wish. Yes indeed, it is the much touted education, as normally believed, which promises this glitzy world of opulence, entertainment and name and fame. The targeted aims of any wannabe doctor, engineer, politician, model, film star and so on are to achieve the brilliant profession and occupation and reputation and start quenching the thirst for ever insatiable sense gratification till ones breathe their last. Basic necessities apart, with the success their material wants and desires may swell up that could be in any form depending upon the mind-set. But be sure, there will never be the point of time when they find themselves absolutely content.
The definition of Education in modern day? Very crisp and direct. Be hot at your chosen area of studies available, the rest will unfold for you. No limitation, no restriction, no social stigma nor even inhibition. Darn the consequential chaos and upheaval and subtle loopholes, provided the disciplines chosen are materially roaring and smashing. Damn the ethical norms if they are overwhelmingly endorsed by the so-called modern day elites. No problem, you being bloody cunning, self-centered, uncompassionate, irreligious, undisciplined, violent, licentious if you can handle and elude them artfully.
Dr. X, a widely reputed surgeon of precision, is unkind, ill-tempered and a notorious womanizer. He refuses downright to operate on any underdogs if they cannot make hard payment that is fixed. But, he is a much-sought after Mr. Right who has mastered every part of your anatomy. Significantly, he can neatly deal with any organs of your body, so we have legally no right to question his personal flaws and morals. In his elaborate study of the science there is practically no references and emphasis that he must be morally acceptable before pursuing the profession.
Similar is the case with a lawyer. He can be a dangerously double standard fox. He may cook up crafty schemes for making money out of petty cases. He may make illiterate and poor lots his grazing ground. He can prove a wrong as a right and vice versa. Well, a heinous rapist gets away through his contrived design and skill. A heartless murderer gets acquitted if his only lust for money is fulfilled. Perhaps, to sum up, he is like the only Messiah of all evildoers.
No exaggeration, so is the case with the literate men of any trade and profession. But do not be critical, they are the blessed recognized people of letters and esteemed designation. Please update yourself, there are a colossal number of careers and employments put forth by the education of modern day. Why to waver, be a star on par with Aishwarya, all the splendour will be at your feet. Or, choose to ape the demeanour and sensuality of Britney Spears or Jennifer Lopez to entertain and stir the lust of the global masses. More? You may burn the midnight oil to acquire the exclusive art of Mariah Carey and practice how artfully you can drive the virile hawk into submission.
Why to shrink to do more exciting and impressive if you have gained mastery of the English, one of the most fashionable languages on earth. You can pick up a crap and discuss astutely till you feel jaded. Well, publish hot journals like Cosmopolitan by piecing together all the filths and sleazes which potentially set the reader on sensual fire. Hey think big, produce the movies that liberally and flagrantly shed light on how best one can flirt with the senses, the project will be an instant crowd puller and more gainful.
No worry about the sleaze factor at this cutting age of development, if you can competently defend yourself. Immodest Madonna has attended icon status, eccentric Michele Jackson has a great number of die-hard fans. Marilyn Monroe and Helen are legendary figures and a source of inspiration for the present world that swears by fashion and modernity. The leaders who are ruling us are not men of rectitude and scruples but devils of hell. They have no qualms about indulging in any sorts of immoral activities -------- kidnapping, murder, corruption, sex are some vile ornaments adorning their haughty souls.
Yes, succumbing to the devilish heat of lust, anger, greed, desire and ego, thus perspires and stinks the rumpus world of decadence and illusion. The cloud of illusion seems so thick that the mankind has almost lost the sight of immutable truths. Further, in pursuance of exploring the ways and means for better and easier life it has merrily gone blind to the most subtle facts about human psychology, function and behaviour of the bossy five senses. To make the matter worse, perhaps being overwhelmed by the startling ambience of advanced conveniences and luxury, the so-called academic pundits in delusion have virtually omitted the moral values from the recipe of education. Needless to say, the mother Nature sternly requires a man to live within the periphery of morality and sensibly control his senses in order to lead a sane and peaceful life or else they (the senses) will drive his mind turbulent rendering him physically and mentally feeble and stressful that may, in course of time, culminates in complete degeneration of the self.
But regrettably, the mainstream education has apparently never taught us to regulate the senses for self purification and realization of inner joyfulness. No strange, we normally find ourselves ceaselessly engrossed and obsessed with the thought of short-living sense gratification and desire fulfilment or anxiety, fear, envy and anger. I am afraid, while having been unable to control the nagging mind, we have increasingly become a mere meek slave to it being ever preoccupied in the task of supplying more tempting sense objects to the senses as dictated by the former. Please note, gradual weakening of the faculty of intellect, memory and creativity is because of one being engulfed by mental agony caused by excessive indulgence in sense pleasure and high expectations from the things pertaining. Therefore, here it seems the modern education has been obviously working as a catalyst in the laboratory of the glossy world where evils alone are precipitating. Maybe, being intensely apprehensive of the impending nightmarish situation, the great thinker Albert Einstein had also warned us as saying ------ ‘Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind’, ------here the religion means that which teaches us, besides about the existence of the omnipresent Almighty, moral values and significance of humanity. And therefore I firmly believe, the true education is that which teaches first the ways and skills how best one to control those bullying five senses and mind with a sole aim to enable the inherent divine virtues to be blossomed . Once that is achieved the enlightenment and inner joyfulness come on its on accord, as teaches the Gita. In essence of this long discussion let me conclude thus------ Education is the vehicle for self-development, righteous action its fuel, intelligence the driver, must ply on the road of morality to reach the light of eternal knowledge that opens up the landscape of blissfulness and divinity.
Salil Gewali
email :sgewali2000@yahoo.co.in
Modern Education: A Threat to Mankind
Study hard, get hold of enviable degree and kick-start the gorgeous career in the field of your choice and make money. The money, your want. By hook or by crook. Certainly, your primary need in life. Use your all wiles how best you can amass and manage it. Well, you are capable of that. Very early you will be flushed with the good amount. No point dillydallying, you may desire the choicest materials of comfort and luxury --------- palatial buildings, swanky cars, computer, ruby, diamond and lot more. You are given the choice of enjoying every moment by drawing the utmost pleasure being in the midst of your possessions; relish them to your heart’s content.
Why worry ? Make the best of your time; you are virtually accentuated with awesome profession. Set your heart on anything your money can purchase. You may drink to death. Visiting the night club and indulging yourself drooling at an enticing girl who unabashedly takes leave of her modesty, could be your new found passion. Yes, you may swing yourself into action by organizing the most sensational beauty contest ever held, that perhaps becomes an exciting event to watch and emulate from. Or, be adventurous and go around the globe to see the things of your interest. Or, take off to marvel at galas in Las Vegas, or scale the Mountain tops, or plod along the icy Antarctica------- these all are jolly fashionable crazes.
Please understand, in this age of sophistication, to make one capable enough to afford any desired stuff of pleasure and conveniences that satisfy his whim is seemingly a one-pointed goal in life. So, don’t hold back, go in with guns blazing to achieve them. Make your affluence as ostentatious as you wish. Yes indeed, it is the much touted education, as normally believed, which promises this glitzy world of opulence, entertainment and name and fame. The targeted aims of any wannabe doctor, engineer, politician, model, film star and so on are to achieve the brilliant profession and occupation and reputation and start quenching the thirst for ever insatiable sense gratification till ones breathe their last. Basic necessities apart, with the success their material wants and desires may swell up that could be in any form depending upon the mind-set. But be sure, there will never be the point of time when they find themselves absolutely content.
The definition of Education in modern day? Very crisp and direct. Be hot at your chosen area of studies available, the rest will unfold for you. No limitation, no restriction, no social stigma nor even inhibition. Darn the consequential chaos and upheaval and subtle loopholes, provided the disciplines chosen are materially roaring and smashing. Damn the ethical norms if they are overwhelmingly endorsed by the so-called modern day elites. No problem, you being bloody cunning, self-centered, uncompassionate, irreligious, undisciplined, violent, licentious if you can handle and elude them artfully.
Dr. X, a widely reputed surgeon of precision, is unkind, ill-tempered and a notorious womanizer. He refuses downright to operate on any underdogs if they cannot make hard payment that is fixed. But, he is a much-sought after Mr. Right who has mastered every part of your anatomy. Significantly, he can neatly deal with any organs of your body, so we have legally no right to question his personal flaws and morals. In his elaborate study of the science there is practically no references and emphasis that he must be morally acceptable before pursuing the profession.
Similar is the case with a lawyer. He can be a dangerously double standard fox. He may cook up crafty schemes for making money out of petty cases. He may make illiterate and poor lots his grazing ground. He can prove a wrong as a right and vice versa. Well, a heinous rapist gets away through his contrived design and skill. A heartless murderer gets acquitted if his only lust for money is fulfilled. Perhaps, to sum up, he is like the only Messiah of all evildoers.
No exaggeration, so is the case with the literate men of any trade and profession. But do not be critical, they are the blessed recognized people of letters and esteemed designation. Please update yourself, there are a colossal number of careers and employments put forth by the education of modern day. Why to waver, be a star on par with Aishwarya, all the splendour will be at your feet. Or, choose to ape the demeanour and sensuality of Britney Spears or Jennifer Lopez to entertain and stir the lust of the global masses. More? You may burn the midnight oil to acquire the exclusive art of Mariah Carey and practice how artfully you can drive the virile hawk into submission.
Why to shrink to do more exciting and impressive if you have gained mastery of the English, one of the most fashionable languages on earth. You can pick up a crap and discuss astutely till you feel jaded. Well, publish hot journals like Cosmopolitan by piecing together all the filths and sleazes which potentially set the reader on sensual fire. Hey think big, produce the movies that liberally and flagrantly shed light on how best one can flirt with the senses, the project will be an instant crowd puller and more gainful.
No worry about the sleaze factor at this cutting age of development, if you can competently defend yourself. Immodest Madonna has attended icon status, eccentric Michele Jackson has a great number of die-hard fans. Marilyn Monroe and Helen are legendary figures and a source of inspiration for the present world that swears by fashion and modernity. The leaders who are ruling us are not men of rectitude and scruples but devils of hell. They have no qualms about indulging in any sorts of immoral activities -------- kidnapping, murder, corruption, sex are some vile ornaments adorning their haughty souls.
Yes, succumbing to the devilish heat of lust, anger, greed, desire and ego, thus perspires and stinks the rumpus world of decadence and illusion. The cloud of illusion seems so thick that the mankind has almost lost the sight of immutable truths. Further, in pursuance of exploring the ways and means for better and easier life it has merrily gone blind to the most subtle facts about human psychology, function and behaviour of the bossy five senses. To make the matter worse, perhaps being overwhelmed by the startling ambience of advanced conveniences and luxury, the so-called academic pundits in delusion have virtually omitted the moral values from the recipe of education. Needless to say, the mother Nature sternly requires a man to live within the periphery of morality and sensibly control his senses in order to lead a sane and peaceful life or else they (the senses) will drive his mind turbulent rendering him physically and mentally feeble and stressful that may, in course of time, culminates in complete degeneration of the self.
But regrettably, the mainstream education has apparently never taught us to regulate the senses for self purification and realization of inner joyfulness. No strange, we normally find ourselves ceaselessly engrossed and obsessed with the thought of short-living sense gratification and desire fulfilment or anxiety, fear, envy and anger. I am afraid, while having been unable to control the nagging mind, we have increasingly become a mere meek slave to it being ever preoccupied in the task of supplying more tempting sense objects to the senses as dictated by the former. Please note, gradual weakening of the faculty of intellect, memory and creativity is because of one being engulfed by mental agony caused by excessive indulgence in sense pleasure and high expectations from the things pertaining. Therefore, here it seems the modern education has been obviously working as a catalyst in the laboratory of the glossy world where evils alone are precipitating. Maybe, being intensely apprehensive of the impending nightmarish situation, the great thinker Albert Einstein had also warned us as saying ------ ‘Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind’, ------here the religion means that which teaches us, besides about the existence of the omnipresent Almighty, moral values and significance of humanity. And therefore I firmly believe, the true education is that which teaches first the ways and skills how best one to control those bullying five senses and mind with a sole aim to enable the inherent divine virtues to be blossomed . Once that is achieved the enlightenment and inner joyfulness come on its on accord, as teaches the Gita. In essence of this long discussion let me conclude thus------ Education is the vehicle for self-development, righteous action its fuel, intelligence the driver, must ply on the road of morality to reach the light of eternal knowledge that opens up the landscape of blissfulness and divinity.
Salil Gewali
email :sgewali2000@yahoo.co.in
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Should we not know the significance of Indian philosophies in the words of western scholars ? ----
Albert Einstein
"We owe a lot to Indians who taught us how to count, without which
no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made."
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"Land of religions, cradle of human race, birthplace of human speech, grandmother of legend, great grandmother of tradition. The land that men with intellectual bent desire to see and having seen once even by a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of the rest of the globe combined."
-------- T. S. Eliot
" Indian philosophers' subtleties make most of the great European philosophers look like schoolboys."
George Bernard Shaw, (1856-1950) Dramatist, Nobel Laureate in Literature
"The Indian way of life provides the vision of the natural, real way of life. We western veil ourselves with unnatural masks. On the face of India are the tender expressions which carry the mark of the Creators hand. "
Francois Marie Voltaire (1694-1774) France's greatest writers and philosophers
" I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganga --- astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis, etc."
" It is very important to note that some 2,500 years ago at the least Pythagoras went from Samos to the Ganga (Ganges) to learn geometry...But he would certainly not have undertaken such a strange journey had the reputation of the Brahmins' science not been long established in Europe..."
H. G. Wells (1866-1946), English author and political philosopher
There is space in its philosophy for everyone,
which is one reason why India is a home to every single religion in the world.
Sir William Jones, English philologist
"Wherever we direct our attention to Hindu literature, the notion of infinity presents itself."
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American author, essayist, lecturer, philosopher, Unitarian minister
"I owed a magnificent day to the Bhagavad-Gita. It was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which exercise us."
,
George Bernard Shaw
"This makes Hinduism the most tolerant religion in the world, because its one transcendent God includes all possible gods. In fact Hinduism is so elastic and so subtle that the most profound Methodist, and crudest idolater, are equally at home with it."
Professor F. Max Muller , German philosopher and philologist
"In the history of the world, the Vedas fill a gap which no literary work in any other language could fill. I maintain that to everybody who cares for himself, for his ancestors, for his intellectual development, a study of the Vedic literature is indeed indispensable."
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), German philosopher and writer
"In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. It has been the solace of my life; and it will be the solace of my death. They are the product of the highest wisdom."
Julius Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) Nuclear physicist, philosopher
"Access to the Vedas is the greatest privilege this century may claim over all previous centuries."
Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), German philosopher
"India has created a special momentum in world history as a country to be searched for knowledge."
Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), German philosopher
"It strikes everyone in beginning to form an acquaintance with the treasures of Indian literature, that a land so rich in intellectual products and those of the profoundest order of thought..."
Roger-Pol Droit French philosopher, and Le Monde journalist,
"The Greeks loved so much Indian philosophy that Demetrios Galianos had even translated the Bhagavad-Gita". There is absolutely not a shadow of a doubt that the Greeks knew all about Indian philosophy."
Frederich von Schlegel, (1772-1829), German philosopher, critic, and writer, the most prominent founder of German Romanticism
"There is no language in the world, even Greek, which has the clarity and the philosophical precision of Sanskrit," adding that " India is not only at the origin of everything she is superior in everything, intellectually, religiously or politically and even the Greek heritage seems pale in comparison."
----- Voltaire, (1694-1774), France's greatest writers and philosophers
"the Veda was the most precious gift for which the West had ever been indebted to the East."
The Upanishads
As is the human body, so is the cosmic body
As is the human mind, so is the cosmic mind.
As is the microcosm, so is the macrocosm..
As is the atom, so is the universe.
Alfred North Whitehead, British Mathematician
The vastest knowledge of today cannot transcend the buddhi of the Rishis in ancient India; and science, in its most advanced stage now, is closer to Vedanta than ever before.
Dr. Fritjof Capra, American physicist
To the Indian Rishis the divine play was the evolution of the cosmos through countless aeons. There is an infinite number of creations in an infinite universe. The Rishis gave the name kalpa to the unimaginable span of time between the beginning and the end of creation.
Herman Hesse (1877-1962) German poet and novelist, awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1946 says:
"The marvel of the Bhagavad-Gita is its truly beautiful revelation of life's wisdom which enables philosophy to blossom into religion."
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), American Philosopher, writer, Unitarian, social critic, transcendentalist:
"In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seems puny."
Ella Wheeler Wilcox, (1850-1919) famous American poet and journalist
" India - the land of Vedas, the remarkable works contains not only religious ideas for a perfect life, but also facts which science has proved true. Electricity, radium, electronics, airship, all are known to the seers who founded the Veda.
Hans Torwesten, German philosopher and writer
The Vedas and the Upanishads are India's proudest and most ancient possessions. They are the world's oldest intellectual legacies. They are the only composition in the universe invested with Divine origin, and almost Divine sanctity. They are said to emanate from God, and are held to be the means for attaining God. Their beginnings are not known. They have been heirlooms of the Hindus from generation to generation from time immemorial.
Professor F. Max Muller, German philosopher , philologist
"The Vedic literature opens to us a chapter in what has been called the education of the human race, to which we can find no parallel anywhere else."
Ella Wheeler Wilcox, (1850-1919) famous American poet and journalist
" India - the land of Vedas, the remarkable works contains not only religious ideas for a perfect life, but also facts which science has proved true. Electricity, radium, electronics, airship, all are known to the seers who founded the Vedas."
Jean-Sylvain Bailly, French Astronomer who calculated the orbit for the Halley’s Comet
"The motion of the stars calculated by the Hindus before some 4500 years vary not even a single minute from the tables of Cassine and Meyer (used in the 19-th century). The Indian tables give the same annual variation of the moon as the discovered by Tycho Brahe - a variation unknown to the school of Alexandria and also to the Arabs who followed the calculations of the school... "The Hindu systems of astronomy are by far the oldest and that from which the Egyptians, Greek, Romans and - even the Jews derived from the Hindus their knowledge."
------ Aldous Huxley
“Hinduism, the perennial philosophy” that is at the core of all religions.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), German philosopher and writer
"How entirely does the Upanishad breathe throughout the holy spirit of the Vedas! How is every one, who by a diligent study of its Persian Latin has become familiar with that incomparable book, stirred by that spirit to the very depth of his Soul !”
Romain Rolland (1866-1944) French Nobel laureate, Historian
"Religious faith in the case of the Hindus has never been allowed to run counter to scientific laws, moreover the former is never made a condition for the knowledge they teach, but there are always scrupulously careful to take into consideration the possibility that by reason both the agnostic and atheist may attain truth in their own way. Such tolerance may be surprising to religious believers in the West, but it is an integral part of Vedantic belief."
Julius Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) Nuclear physicist, philosopher, developer of the atomic bomb
“The Gita, the most beautiful philosophical song existing in any known tongue.”
H. G. Wells (1866-1946), English author and political philosopher
Hinduism is synonymous with humanism. That is its essence and its great liberating quality."
Lord Curzon (1859-1925) British statesman, Viceroy of India from 1899 to 1905, and later became chancellor of Oxford University
" India has left a deeper mark upon the history, the philosophy, and the religion of mankind,
than any other terrestrial unit in the universe."
William Butler Yeats (1856-1939) Irish poet, dramatist, and essayist and Nobel Laureate
"It was only my first meeting with the Indian philosophy that confirmed my
vague speculations and seemed at once logical and boundless."
Mark Tully former BBC correspondent in India, author
But I do profoundly believe that India needs to be able to say with pride,
"Yes, our civilization has a Hindu base to it."
Paul William Roberts Professor at Oxford , award-winning television writer, producer, journalist, critic and novelist.
“India is the only country that feels like home to me,
the only country whose airport tarmac I have ever kissed upon landing.”
Jean-Sylvain Bailly, French Astronomer who calculated the orbit for the Halley’s Comet
"The motion of the stars calculated by the Hindus before some 4500 years vary not even a single minute from the tables of Cassine and Meyer (used in the 19-th century). The Indian tables give the same annual variation of the moon as the discovered by Tycho Brahe - a variation unknown to the school of Alexandria and also to the Arabs who followed the calculations of the school... "The Hindu systems of astronomy are by far the oldest and that from which the Egyptians, Greek, Romans and - even the Jews derived from the Hindus their knowledge." the Jews derived from the Hindus their knowledge."
Pierre Simon de Laplace ( 1749-1827) French mathematician, philosopher, and astronomer, a contemporary of Napoleon. Laplace is best known for his nebular hypothesis of the origin of the solar system.
" It is India that gave us the ingenious method of expressing all numbers by ten symbols, each receiving a value of position as well as an absolute value, a profound and important idea which appears so simple to us now that we ignore its true merit. But its very simplicity, the great ease which it has lent to all computations, puts our arithmetic in the first rank of useful inventions, and we shall appreciate the grandeur of this achievement the more when we remember that it escaped the genius of Archimedes and Appollnius, two of the greatest men produced by antiquity."
Why as yet we have not incorporated the these secular thoughts into the academic curriculum ? Is speaking truths about the mother land a treachery and unethical? Could you put your efforts such that these thoughts are taught in all the academic institutions ? Your efforts in this direction will be nothing but a great tribute to this ancient land of knowledge and spiritualism.
Forward it as much as possible !
Yours comments are warmly entertained. Compiled by:
SALIL GEWALI
Shillong, Meghalaya
Email: sgewali2000@yahoo.co.in
phone: 09863028358
"We owe a lot to Indians who taught us how to count, without which
no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made."
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"Land of religions, cradle of human race, birthplace of human speech, grandmother of legend, great grandmother of tradition. The land that men with intellectual bent desire to see and having seen once even by a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of the rest of the globe combined."
-------- T. S. Eliot
" Indian philosophers' subtleties make most of the great European philosophers look like schoolboys."
George Bernard Shaw, (1856-1950) Dramatist, Nobel Laureate in Literature
"The Indian way of life provides the vision of the natural, real way of life. We western veil ourselves with unnatural masks. On the face of India are the tender expressions which carry the mark of the Creators hand. "
Francois Marie Voltaire (1694-1774) France's greatest writers and philosophers
" I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganga --- astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis, etc."
" It is very important to note that some 2,500 years ago at the least Pythagoras went from Samos to the Ganga (Ganges) to learn geometry...But he would certainly not have undertaken such a strange journey had the reputation of the Brahmins' science not been long established in Europe..."
H. G. Wells (1866-1946), English author and political philosopher
There is space in its philosophy for everyone,
which is one reason why India is a home to every single religion in the world.
Sir William Jones, English philologist
"Wherever we direct our attention to Hindu literature, the notion of infinity presents itself."
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American author, essayist, lecturer, philosopher, Unitarian minister
"I owed a magnificent day to the Bhagavad-Gita. It was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which exercise us."
,
George Bernard Shaw
"This makes Hinduism the most tolerant religion in the world, because its one transcendent God includes all possible gods. In fact Hinduism is so elastic and so subtle that the most profound Methodist, and crudest idolater, are equally at home with it."
Professor F. Max Muller , German philosopher and philologist
"In the history of the world, the Vedas fill a gap which no literary work in any other language could fill. I maintain that to everybody who cares for himself, for his ancestors, for his intellectual development, a study of the Vedic literature is indeed indispensable."
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), German philosopher and writer
"In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. It has been the solace of my life; and it will be the solace of my death. They are the product of the highest wisdom."
Julius Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) Nuclear physicist, philosopher
"Access to the Vedas is the greatest privilege this century may claim over all previous centuries."
Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), German philosopher
"India has created a special momentum in world history as a country to be searched for knowledge."
Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), German philosopher
"It strikes everyone in beginning to form an acquaintance with the treasures of Indian literature, that a land so rich in intellectual products and those of the profoundest order of thought..."
Roger-Pol Droit French philosopher, and Le Monde journalist,
"The Greeks loved so much Indian philosophy that Demetrios Galianos had even translated the Bhagavad-Gita". There is absolutely not a shadow of a doubt that the Greeks knew all about Indian philosophy."
Frederich von Schlegel, (1772-1829), German philosopher, critic, and writer, the most prominent founder of German Romanticism
"There is no language in the world, even Greek, which has the clarity and the philosophical precision of Sanskrit," adding that " India is not only at the origin of everything she is superior in everything, intellectually, religiously or politically and even the Greek heritage seems pale in comparison."
----- Voltaire, (1694-1774), France's greatest writers and philosophers
"the Veda was the most precious gift for which the West had ever been indebted to the East."
The Upanishads
As is the human body, so is the cosmic body
As is the human mind, so is the cosmic mind.
As is the microcosm, so is the macrocosm..
As is the atom, so is the universe.
Alfred North Whitehead, British Mathematician
The vastest knowledge of today cannot transcend the buddhi of the Rishis in ancient India; and science, in its most advanced stage now, is closer to Vedanta than ever before.
Dr. Fritjof Capra, American physicist
To the Indian Rishis the divine play was the evolution of the cosmos through countless aeons. There is an infinite number of creations in an infinite universe. The Rishis gave the name kalpa to the unimaginable span of time between the beginning and the end of creation.
Herman Hesse (1877-1962) German poet and novelist, awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1946 says:
"The marvel of the Bhagavad-Gita is its truly beautiful revelation of life's wisdom which enables philosophy to blossom into religion."
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), American Philosopher, writer, Unitarian, social critic, transcendentalist:
"In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seems puny."
Ella Wheeler Wilcox, (1850-1919) famous American poet and journalist
" India - the land of Vedas, the remarkable works contains not only religious ideas for a perfect life, but also facts which science has proved true. Electricity, radium, electronics, airship, all are known to the seers who founded the Veda.
Hans Torwesten, German philosopher and writer
The Vedas and the Upanishads are India's proudest and most ancient possessions. They are the world's oldest intellectual legacies. They are the only composition in the universe invested with Divine origin, and almost Divine sanctity. They are said to emanate from God, and are held to be the means for attaining God. Their beginnings are not known. They have been heirlooms of the Hindus from generation to generation from time immemorial.
Professor F. Max Muller, German philosopher , philologist
"The Vedic literature opens to us a chapter in what has been called the education of the human race, to which we can find no parallel anywhere else."
Ella Wheeler Wilcox, (1850-1919) famous American poet and journalist
" India - the land of Vedas, the remarkable works contains not only religious ideas for a perfect life, but also facts which science has proved true. Electricity, radium, electronics, airship, all are known to the seers who founded the Vedas."
Jean-Sylvain Bailly, French Astronomer who calculated the orbit for the Halley’s Comet
"The motion of the stars calculated by the Hindus before some 4500 years vary not even a single minute from the tables of Cassine and Meyer (used in the 19-th century). The Indian tables give the same annual variation of the moon as the discovered by Tycho Brahe - a variation unknown to the school of Alexandria and also to the Arabs who followed the calculations of the school... "The Hindu systems of astronomy are by far the oldest and that from which the Egyptians, Greek, Romans and - even the Jews derived from the Hindus their knowledge."
------ Aldous Huxley
“Hinduism, the perennial philosophy” that is at the core of all religions.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), German philosopher and writer
"How entirely does the Upanishad breathe throughout the holy spirit of the Vedas! How is every one, who by a diligent study of its Persian Latin has become familiar with that incomparable book, stirred by that spirit to the very depth of his Soul !”
Romain Rolland (1866-1944) French Nobel laureate, Historian
"Religious faith in the case of the Hindus has never been allowed to run counter to scientific laws, moreover the former is never made a condition for the knowledge they teach, but there are always scrupulously careful to take into consideration the possibility that by reason both the agnostic and atheist may attain truth in their own way. Such tolerance may be surprising to religious believers in the West, but it is an integral part of Vedantic belief."
Julius Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) Nuclear physicist, philosopher, developer of the atomic bomb
“The Gita, the most beautiful philosophical song existing in any known tongue.”
H. G. Wells (1866-1946), English author and political philosopher
Hinduism is synonymous with humanism. That is its essence and its great liberating quality."
Lord Curzon (1859-1925) British statesman, Viceroy of India from 1899 to 1905, and later became chancellor of Oxford University
" India has left a deeper mark upon the history, the philosophy, and the religion of mankind,
than any other terrestrial unit in the universe."
William Butler Yeats (1856-1939) Irish poet, dramatist, and essayist and Nobel Laureate
"It was only my first meeting with the Indian philosophy that confirmed my
vague speculations and seemed at once logical and boundless."
Mark Tully former BBC correspondent in India, author
But I do profoundly believe that India needs to be able to say with pride,
"Yes, our civilization has a Hindu base to it."
Paul William Roberts Professor at Oxford , award-winning television writer, producer, journalist, critic and novelist.
“India is the only country that feels like home to me,
the only country whose airport tarmac I have ever kissed upon landing.”
Jean-Sylvain Bailly, French Astronomer who calculated the orbit for the Halley’s Comet
"The motion of the stars calculated by the Hindus before some 4500 years vary not even a single minute from the tables of Cassine and Meyer (used in the 19-th century). The Indian tables give the same annual variation of the moon as the discovered by Tycho Brahe - a variation unknown to the school of Alexandria and also to the Arabs who followed the calculations of the school... "The Hindu systems of astronomy are by far the oldest and that from which the Egyptians, Greek, Romans and - even the Jews derived from the Hindus their knowledge." the Jews derived from the Hindus their knowledge."
Pierre Simon de Laplace ( 1749-1827) French mathematician, philosopher, and astronomer, a contemporary of Napoleon. Laplace is best known for his nebular hypothesis of the origin of the solar system.
" It is India that gave us the ingenious method of expressing all numbers by ten symbols, each receiving a value of position as well as an absolute value, a profound and important idea which appears so simple to us now that we ignore its true merit. But its very simplicity, the great ease which it has lent to all computations, puts our arithmetic in the first rank of useful inventions, and we shall appreciate the grandeur of this achievement the more when we remember that it escaped the genius of Archimedes and Appollnius, two of the greatest men produced by antiquity."
Why as yet we have not incorporated the these secular thoughts into the academic curriculum ? Is speaking truths about the mother land a treachery and unethical? Could you put your efforts such that these thoughts are taught in all the academic institutions ? Your efforts in this direction will be nothing but a great tribute to this ancient land of knowledge and spiritualism.
Forward it as much as possible !
Yours comments are warmly entertained. Compiled by:
SALIL GEWALI
Shillong, Meghalaya
Email: sgewali2000@yahoo.co.in
phone: 09863028358
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