Hi Sanjay,

I like your dedication to your teacher. I followed a teacher, Vethathiri Maharishi, who was all science as well, and there are many like him, (like our Avtar) should you be interested in his spiritual science pick up Universal Magnetism, and Biomagnetism which are just two of his many books, before you keep using the word “only”.

You can’t discount belief totally, because it does play an important role in finding the truth. There are a lot of religions who don’t believe in self-realization, so they don’t apply themselves to this ultimate goal, and thus become stagnate. Although Christianity and other religions are similar in many ways, however they do not preach about enlightenment now, but think some saint will guide them to heaven after death, which explains their laziness towards spirituality. Their belief system is askew and needs to be rewired towards looking within and finding or uncovering their true Self.

I had to believe in my teachers as you do yours. Trust and belief in enlightenment has to be ingrained before one attains the desire to pursue it with earnestness. It’s ironic but you have to use the mind and its belief system to research and find the correct path or guidelines in spirituality, and this leads to a correct belief system that realizes self-realization as a possible and attainable goal, by you through sincere determination. You have to ultimately believe in your teacher, in the supreme state, and in yourself. I can see these wonderful qualities that are in yourself whether you want to admit it or not. Your belief is that enlightenment is real and available now, and to one and all. Belief leads to research and desire, and desire leads to earnestness, and earnestness leads to enlightenment. It encompasses both belief and the science like you pointed out. A scientist has to believe in himself, in the formula that’s presented, in the person who presents it, before he has the desire to apply it or test it. Since the spiritual formula takes fortitude, patients, endurance, trust, confidence, and desire, a belief in it and yourself is a must or prerequisite before self-realization can dawn. ~Kurt~

Sanjay,

Correct me of I'm wrong, but I can't find where you put the proper credit for the above quotation. I recognized it immediately.

Original Title:
Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol.1

Commentaries of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Osho calls Patanjali 'an Einstein in a world of Buddhas' and shows us step by step, in a experiential way, how to attain to Patanjali's definition of yoga: 'the cessation of the mind':

The book is here:
http://www.wonderfull-things.com/oshos/yoga_1.htm

Exact discourse is here:

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega

In December 1973 Osho begins the 10-part series in English on Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, about the science of meditation.

http://tinyurl.com/5kffdo

A beautiful quote by Osho. I'll give the benefit of the doubt of assuming you simply forgot to reference the original ;)

I might add that I originally was introduced to the writings of Deepak Chopra through the late disciple of Osho, Swami Asanga, who used to travel the world giving meditation camps based on Osho's early meditation camps given in the 1960s in India, which he had the profound good fortune to attend. He taught us meditations such as the early precursors to what eventually became his famous "Dynamic Meditation" technique.

This stuff is powerful, powerful brew. The early 1970s material from Osho is particularly unvarnished. At this time he gave his discourses on Yoga, and then the series on Lao-Tzu. Amazing discourses by him.

Dear Sanjay, thank you for bringing attention to the great subject, the yoga and it's provenance. I agree with the main line of your post, yet let me remind you in turn, that yoga is no more Hindu than a theory of relativity is Jewish.

I would suggest you look into the origin of the science. Yoga wasn't discovered by Patanjali ( the author of the Sutras ), he merely albeit brilliantly formulated its practice in the most concise manner possible.

If you had the chance to study the scriptures which predate the era of Patanjali, I mean the Vedas, the Puranas and the Aranyakas, you'll see that though there is no word such as yoga, instead you'll find many places where the word tapasya is mentioned and the one who practices it is known as tapasvin.

Now, 'tapas' from sanskrit means intense heat or intense fervor which later has been renamed into the yoga and the one who practices it a yogin.

Hinduism itself, as a set of religious believes, has been found on the practices and philosophical doctrines of all the six systems of indian thought, including yoga. It is an error to conclude that Hinduism gave birth to yoga - for the contrary is the truth - it is Yoga that lays at the origin of Hinduism.

You are right to say though that Yoga is to be experienced yet it is still one of the six systems of Indian Philosophy with a particular aim at verifying the knowledge via the direct perception of what has been understood prior to that through investigation by the intellectual means.

* * *

In all my humility, I wish you to go to the Maharishi's Vedic Science ( After all, Deepak, in his own words, ''owes all he knows to the Maharishi'' ) and the ground braking re-discovery by the brilliant doctor, endocrinologist who has been appointed by His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi to become his successor, Dr Tony Nader ( also known as Adhiraj Maharaj Raja Raam ). In his work Dr Tony Nader showed that our physiology has a one to one correspondence with the vedic sounds and vedic literature.

According to re-discovery the Vedic term Yoga corresponds to the Association Fibres of the Cerebra Cortex in our physiology and is responsible for unifying quality of Consciousness.

So Yoga has no origin in the domain of the human culture, just as its meaning applies, being a Unity, it is not a buy-product of the human thought but an integral reality of every being. Which is deeply ingrained in the very essence of our existence.

Jai Guru Dev

igor

In that theme there is "A world without belief - The Infinite Player."

Part of the The Great Dissemination that began in Oct 04.

You can click my name above, for the world without beliefs or below for the Lethal Text Series.

You can also Google "The Great Dissemination" or "Lethal Text" in quotes.

Lethal to the world's group fictions and the status quo old consciousness.

Sanjay,
Thank you for your story about who you are and where you are on your journey here now.

An external teacher can offer a foundation in which one can explore and test the "mathematical formulas." An external teacher can be a guiding light. However, a true teacher lets go at some point so the student can fly and explore on their own. A true teacher encourages one to go within to one's own inner teacher -- light of oneself. A teacher can offer information and draw forth inspiration. But a true teacher says: "Fly!"

Is not "yoga" when teacher/student and student/teacher find themselves in union at the same inner core of soul?

Trish~~

Yôga is the application of Samkhya. Samkhya is a philosophy, yôga is practice. Patanjali codified iríshiwarasámkhya yôga, but there was niríshiwarasámkhya yôga before. He was great at what all sages were great, keeping the tradition alive when the culture changed.

Ôm

Rafael

In my research, I found that the word Hindu and Hinduism coined by British. Could someone comment on this? It would be a big joke on how stupid ego is, when people are fighting over Hinduism when the word itself is just a tag. I was raised as a Hindu ;-).

Good comment, alayavijnana. The understanding of the most ancient civilization, which is squarely rooted in Vedic Hymns, has been largely colored by the tags placed by, first the christian missionaries and later by the british ''explores''. The name of the country itself has been coined by the explores on the grounds of being the land of Hindus. Whence India. Instead of sticking with Bharatavarsha as it was known to its founders throughout its long history.

The name of Bharatavarsha (the land of Bharata) is of spiritual significance, it translates as ''bearer of the oblation'', which means 'the supporter', from the root [bhr] - 'to support'. So it means the land of people who support or uphold righteousness, in other words, those who support Dharma. Just pause for a moment at the depth of the name the land was destined to carry. The bearer of oblation.

Oblation here is a sacrifice, it is the sacrifice in a form of spiritual practice required to sustain balance in nature. It is a awesome task and and a noble purpose, the land and its people carried for millennia so that it would be preserved at passed over to the other cultures when there is an urgent need for it.

* * *

So much for the naming and the renaming.

Try to reverse the situation, what would've happened if Great Britain was colonized. Would the name Protestania be an appropriate one ?

Those kudos still lay at the base of how westerner understands the profound subtly of names and meanings in oriental civilization, and most importantly in relation to the meanings of words which have long lost its flavor in the occidental culture. The words like: guru, dharma, jnana, vinjana, samadhi, brahman, etc... are seldom taken for what they really, really, really mean.

"In my research, I found that the word Hindu and Hinduism coined by British. Could someone comment on this?"

The roots are more earlier than that:

"When and how the word 'Hindu" was coined is not precisely established. It is absent in early sacred literature of Indian origin. It was used by ancient Persians, without religious connotations, for the people inhabiting the lands of river Indus. Regular usage of the word is encountered in the accounts of foreign invaders of the medieval period, to describe collectively the followers of Indian religions. British Raj, with the help of the academia, defined Hindus precisely for demographic and legal purposes."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu

Good one, Irvine. True, the term Hindu was given by my ancestors from Central Asia, who gave the world a first written account of Indian culture outside of India itself: in 10th century by physician Abu Ali Ibn Sina (Avicenna) who studied Ayurveda in India and later by polymath Abu Rayhan al-Beruni, who is also known as the father of Indology; for instance he translated Patanjali Yoga Sutras into persian, thus (in my view) facilitating a new approaches in sufi tradition back at home in Asia.

Now, the wiki's page reads:

''Hindū is the Persian name of the Indus River, first encountered in the Old Persian word Hindu (həndu), corresponding to Vedic Sanskrit Sindhu, the Indus River.[15] The Rig Veda mentions the land of the Indo-Aryans as Sapta Sindhu (the land of the seven rivers in northwestern South Asia, one of them being the Indus). This corresponds to Hapta Həndu in the Avesta (Vendidad or Videvdad 1.18)—the sacred scripture of Zoroastrianism. The term was used for those who lived in the Indian subcontinent on or beyond the "Sindhu".[16]
The Persian term (Middle Persian Hindūk, New Persian Hindū) entered India with the Delhi Sultanate and appears in South Indian and Kashmiri texts from at least 1323 CE,[17] and increasingly so during British rule. Since the end of the 18th century the word has been used as an umbrella term for most of the religious, spiritual, and philosophical traditions of the sub-continent, excluding the distinct religions of Sikhism, Buddhism, and Jainism.
In current English usage, Hindu denotes the religious, philosophical, and cultural traditions native to India.''

To unravel the origin of the word Hindu, we must distinguish the original meaning of the word in farsi, which referred to the Indus river (Hindus - in farsi), from the english one boldly assigned to the religious practice. Whence confusion served the purpose in the political sense when establishing the rule over India. So I stand by my original entry in comment No. 9. Otherwise the word Hindu is a historical joke and there is no corresponding reality, yet we have to deal with it since it nevertheless exists.

"Try to reverse the situation, what would've happened if Great Britain was colonized. Would the name Protestania be an appropriate one ?"

It would probably be called "Tamisamia" and practices of the Anglican Church, Druids(and whichever other spiritual
practices existed there) would be called "Tamisamism".

[]´s

Rafael

Hinduism was the "religion" of India after the Arab Invasion in VII-VIII DC. Before that, India
was predominantly Buddhist. The contact with the Arabs made so called "Hinduism" the official religion, probably by following the classic Indian tradition of incorporating the invaders logic
into their own religious practices.

Rafael