Hinduism Its Meaning for The Liberation of Spirit

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

According to Hinduism, religion is experience and A not the mere acceptance of certain time-honoured dogmas or creeds. To know God is to become like God. A man may quote scripture, engage in ritual, perform social service, or pray with regularity, but unless he has realized the divine spirit in his heart, he is still a phenomenal being, a victim of the pairs of opposites. One can experience God as tangibly as "a fruit lying on the palm of one's hand," which means that in this very life a man can suppress his lower nature, manifest his higher nature, and become perfect. Through the experience of God, a man's doubts disappear and "the knots of his heart are cut asunder." By ridding himself of the desires clinging to his heart, a mortal becomes immortal in this very body.

Hinduism Its Meaning for the Liberation of Spirit was originally published in 1958 by Flame & Brothers PERSPECTIVES Publishers, New York as part of Its WORLD series, planned and edited by Ruth Nanda Anshen, was unavailable for long

It has been our constant endeavour to bring out important texts on religion which are long out of print or very difficult to acquire, but are of great significance for their transcendental and intrinsic value.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

the author wishes to express his gratitude to the University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, for permission to use material from his article entitled "Concentration and Meditation as Methods in Indian Philosophy," published in Essays in East-West Philosophy (1951), in preparing the chapter dealing with raja-yoga; and to the Sri Ramakrishna Committee, Belur Math, Calcutta, for permission to use material from an article by Pramathanath Mukhopadhyaya entitled "Tantra as a Way of Realization," published in The Cultural Heritage of India Vol. II (1937), in preparing the chapter dealing with Tantra. He is also grateful to Dr. Nelson S. Bushnell and Brahmachari Yogatmachaitanya for reading his manuscript and making many valuable suggestions for the improvement of the text, and to Mrs. W.E. Bankert and Miss Cora Washburn for typing the manuscript.

In the following pages I have attempted to give a brief Account of Hinduism in both its theoretical and its practical aspects. It is written mainly from the point of view of non-dualism, which, in my opinion, is the highest achievement of India's mystical insight and philosophical speculation, and her real contribution to world culture. Non-dualism preaches the oneness of existence as ultimate truth. It asserts that knowledge, after revealing the identity of subject and object, can go no further. Hence the truth it preaches is claimed to be the whole truth and therefore free from contradiction, since only a partial truth may be contradicted. For the same reason, non-dualism has no quarrel with any other system, harmonizes conflicting philosophical doctrines, and lends itself to the welfare of all beings.