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  25.5  HOW TO RETRIEVE OUR HINDU HERITAGE FOR OURSELVES 

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There  are 18 steps to be taken/understood, mostly in sequence:

(Generally, you have to concur with every step (before you take the next step) for the process of this retrieval. At any stage if you have reservations on this concurrence, it is advisable to stop with that step and wait for your time!)

 

  1. First accept you need to retrieve yourself from a spiritual/heritage fall.

  2. Convince yourself that there is a supernatural absolute Power beyond anything that you know of or can imagine.  Don’t look for any proof for this. Without accepting this  (at least temporarily as an axiom) you cannot hope to achieve anything  that can be associated with Hindu Heritage.

  3. Let us give a name to this Absolute Power. Call it God.

  4. All Gods that you have heard of are only different manifestations of this Absolute Power, that is God.This is the first major distinguishing feature that marks out the Hindu Religion from other religions.

  5. This Absolute Power is itself a manifestation of what may be called the Absolute Reality. For simplicity we shall call this THE ABSOLUTE.

  6. Every manifestation of THE ABSOLUTE has a name and a form, whereas THE ABSOLUTE itself has neither name nor form. Still the Upanishads, for purpose of communication,  give it a name BRAHMAN. Very often they use the word IT for BRAHMAN.

  7. There are divine manifestations and not-so-divine manifestations. The former are the so-called ‘gods’  in the Hindu religious panorama. The latter generally comprises all of us, humans, as well as the sub-human species  except on rare occasions when the divine manifests itself as a living being, human or otherwise, and in such cases, they are called Avatars of the Almighty.   This #7 is the second major distinguishing feature of Hinduism which marks it off from other religions.

  8. Each such name and form of a divine manifestation has an importance, in the sense that if you meditate on the name or form consistently and in total concentration, you can rise up the spiritual ladder.  This can be tried by actually practising this discipline for a continuous length of time.  And observe your own mind during and after the practice.  Keep going until you can yourself feel and accept  the change that has taken place in your own mind. (For the purpose of this practice, Hinduism gives a long list of mantras and aphorisms.  You have to get one or more of them from a competent Guru.  If a Guru is  not available, still do the practice yourself). To retrieve yourself back to your traditional Hindu heritage, this would be your first active step.

  9. Your life itself is a manifestation of THE ABSOLUTE. In fact every life, human or otherwise, is a manifestation of THE ABSOLUTE.  (This may be difficult to accept  but this acceptance (at least as a tentative hypothesis) is also a necessary step for any retrieval of yourself).

  10. All of us living beings have had a long past . (This is the third major distinguishing mark of the Hindu religion and Philosophy). Each one of us has had several lives. The bodies have perished. But each mind carries the tendencies accumulated by it in its various lives, to its future lives.  

  11. In any one life, to conquer these accumulated tendencies, which may as well be bad tendencies most of the time, one has to use one’s intellect effectively.  This is the internal struggle between good and bad that every one goes through.

  12. The goal of one’s life, according to Hinduism, does not stop with the pursuit of earthly objectives, though  it is a pursuit which no one can escape from. The ultimate pursuit has to be after a spiritual uplift.

  13. For this end, a dispassion towards all mundane goals has to be developed. So say all the scriptures of Hinduism.  To get to see this point  must be the first objective of every spiritual seeker.

  14. Once you are at least partially convinced that ultimate peace-cum-happiness cannot come from pursuit of material wealth and welfare, then you will see the wise strategy of Hinduism in making  all its rules of obligatory disciplines  from the point of view of the need to develop and cultivate a habitual sense of dispassion towards everything that is temporal and transient.

  15. And Hinduism, like all other religions, leans heavily on the Faith in the Supreme Power that is God, for the eradication of the bad tendencies and traits in oneself.

  16. In addition, Hinduism, unlike most other religions, leans heavily also on the fundamental spiritual truth of the immanence of divinity in each living being.  This is in fact the most profound distinguishing mark of Hinduism.  If you have come to this stage of seeing sense in this truth, you are already a Hindu at heart.

  17. Thus Transcendence of the Ultimate Absolute Reality over everything that is perceptible to our senses and the mind; and Immanence of the same in all matter, whether animate or inanimate  --these two constitute and exhaust  the basic Truths of Hindu Spiritual Thought.

  18. The concluding consequence of the above to the Religious Thought is : Do all your actions as a dedication to that Immanent Spirit in you and Surrender to It  your everything – Body, Mind and Intellect -- . Thereafter there is no After!

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