Author: Gautam Siddharth
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: May 1, 2005
URL: http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnist1.asp?main_variable=Columnist&file_name=SIDDHARTH112.txt&writer=SIDDHARTH&validit=yes
Speaking to Rainer Kellers, a German journalist
on a short stint with this newspaper, was edifying. He was pleasantly surprised
to see that Indians, even after letting in the winds of globalisation, had
not lost their strong cultural moorings - something that wasn't true of many
other places he had seen even in his own native Germany. This, when we often
hear the lament amongst ourselves that we are in danger of getting knocked
off by Americanism; or that the rate at which our urban youth is changing,
our culture will soon get subsumed by a new identity that will be wholly alien
to what we were till recently.
Such backsliding logic beats me because the
indications are rather to the contrary. There is an increasing interest in
the West about India and if one were to take note of its trajectory, this
appeal has only been intensifying. One of its most visible acknowledgement
is the West's growing fascination with Indian popular culture. To a large
extent this has been fashioned by the expatriates - with sizeable Indian population
in English-speaking West, it was but natural for the local milieus to be affected
by the "way of life" of a quaint and, shall we say, exotic minority.
However, that is an acceptance of India on
the world stage at a more general level. For, classical India with its music,
yoga and astrology - together constituting the "mystic package"
- has always found "converts" to Hinduism in the West. This is true
to such an amazing extent that I often find a greater - and more refined -
understanding of India in westerners than many of us at home. To many people
in the West, India answers their academic and spiritual quests to a higher
degree and with far better results than their own socio-religious and philosophical
contexts.
This search had brought Rainer Kellers to
India twice before. As a back-packing trekkie, he discovered the quieter,
gentler side of India. In fact he reminded me of another German I had met
three years ago at Rishikesh who held similar appreciation of India. From
my notes of that period, I recall he was Peter Meir, a chartered accountant
from Bremen in his mid-50s. "Most of the places in my country have become
monstrously ugly. Concrete forests populated by automatons. When I come to
Rishikesh, I realise there isn't a single place in my country that connects
us with our past in the same way. There is no inhabited place in Germany where
time has stopped." Meir and Kellers are both among a growing tribe of
Westerners who, given a chance, could reacquaint Indians with India. But there
are others as well, who do so in even more profound ways.
One such person is the author of that extraordinarily
lucid book, Astrology of Seers, David Frawley. He is the director of American
Institute of Vedic Studies (Santa Fe, New Mexico) and a follower of Ramana
Maharishi. In his book, he discusses why the Himalayas hold such enormous
importance and appeal not just for Indians but for the entire family of humanity.
What indeed was it that led the earliest seers to the Himalayas, and from
there to profess a world view that gave birth to Sanatan Dharma? Frawley says
that life, or intelligence on earth, finds nourishment from its primeval source
of light and sound, and explains that this process takes place through the
phenomenon of vibrations. It is these vibrations that fell for prolonged periods
in special astrophysical configurations on some regions in the Himalayas,
which led to the first "revelations" in human history, the Vedas
and the Upanishads.
Frawley holds that stars and planets are the
luminous agents responsible for reflecting these vibrations - of intuitive
light, sound and knowledge - that ascertain our birth and, in particular,
our karma, a concept that is easily the loftiest of Sanatan Dharma. Truth
was pratyaksha, or manifest in its universal form, to these seers as a result
of those vibrations, and the accompanying sound gave birth to, and further
refined, one of the first classical languages, Sanskrit, which which was the
medium of the Vedas.
The Himalayas form the most vital part of
Indic consciousness and are therefore revered as devabhoomi. This is the reason
why these imposing ranges still inspire mystics of different races by providing
them with the environment to further propel their quest for wisdom. Aldous
Huxley said, "A totally unmystical world would be a world totally blind
and insane." To which Rabindranath Tagore added, "Man has a feeling
that he is truly represented in something which exceeds himself."
Both their statements affirm the existence
of a higher authority that governs life and which, through nourishment of
intelligence, helps in comprehending it. In that sense, both can be called
seers, who fit the description of "one who sees", as established
by Patanjali in his Yogasutras: "The seen exists for the Seer alone...
The Seer and the seen are linked together that the real nature of each may
be known." (The Mind of India, by William Gerber, Southern Illinois University
Press.)
More than the scriptures, it is the experiences
of such seers that settle the question of how life ought to be lived. The
Sanskrit term of referring to an eminent person as "Mahanubhaav"
(maha-anubhav) actually meant one who has had the experience of great vision
and awakening. That is why, in the Mahabharata, when Yudhisthira was asked
by the Yaksha, "What is the path?", the eldest of the Pandavas,
in order to bring his brothers (put in a coma by the Yaksha) back to life,
replied: "The Srutis differ among themselves; the Smritis differ among
themselves; the Sages differ among themselves; the essence of Dharma is concealed
in a cave; follow the path adopted by the Mahajana."
