The Logic of Hinduism

Lecture Outline

• 1) Hindu Panentheism and Indian History

• 2) Why does God Create?

• 3) Meditation– Why?– How?

• 4) Argument for Immortality

Combine Pantheism and Monotheism: Panentheism

“In Me are all existences contained,

Not I in them!” (Bhagavad Gita)• Pantheism: God is everything; everything is God• Monotheism: there is one God, separate from the

world He/She creates.• Combine: Panentheism: 1) the world is the

expression of God in time/space, 2) yet God also remains the conscious Unity in all expressions

Emanationism

“They comprehend not, the Unheavenly,How Souls go forth from Me; nor how they come Back to Me.” • 1) Soul (Aspect, Part of Brahman) goes forth into

forgetfulness (matter)• 2) => Karmic existence in samsara (illusion of

time and space)• 3) Return to consciousness of inner divinity

(moksha, Nirvana): Sat-Chit-Ananda or bliss consciousness of being)

Neo-Kinship and the unity of God and the World

• Ancient kinship > animism – =>pantheism– Hinduism absorbs animistic hunter-gatherers

• Evolution of polytheism (=> avatars) and monotheism does not reject animism

• >Panentheism (“Pan” = all; “hen” = one) • Continuity with early beliefs of kinship society• Contrast with monotheism of the West and Middle

East: God is above and outside of nature (separation of God and world)

God Becomes Human

• God knows Him/Herself, but does not experience what it is to be God.

• To experience something requires first not being it. – E.g., to experience joy requires sorrow

• Hence, to experience Him/Herself, God must become (pretend to be) not-God:

• > the creation of the world

Path to True Self

• Krishna is an “avatar” because Krishna realizes his true being as Brahman

• Ordinary human (Arjuna) fails to understand this

• Hence Arjuna is caught up in cycle of birth and death (Samsara) and Illusion (Maya)

• To find peace/joy/bliss: find your real Self• This is God’s experience of being God

Meditation: Path to the Inner God

• The Saint who shuts outside his placid soul

• All touch of sense, letting no contact through;

• Whose quiet eyes gaze straight from fixed brows,

• Whose outward breath and inward breath are drawn

• Equal and slow through nostrils still and close;

• That one—with organs, heart, and mind constrained,

• Bent on deliverance, having put away

• Passion, and fear, and rage;--hath, even now,

• Obtained deliverance, ever and ever freed.

What does meditation do?

• We normally identify ourselves with our thinking mind, our desires => Ordinary self, ego.

• Concerned with past and future• Not being in the present• We normally don’t control our mind; it controls

us.• We need to set aside the mind to discover our real

being: the experience of being: I AM

You are not your thoughts

• = “You” are not your thoughts

• Become aware of the Self outside of the thoughts.

• That is really the You that is the expression of God: the true Self

How to meditate

• Sequestered should he sit, • Steadfastly meditating, solitary,• His thoughts controlled, his passions laid away,• Quit of his belongings. . . .• There, setting hard his mind upon The One,• Restraining heart and senses, silent, calm,• Let him accomplish Yoga [=union], and achieve• Pureness of soul [Atman], holding immovable • Body and neck and head, his gaze absorbed• Upon his nose-end . . .

Light Meditation

1. Feel and relax your body completely

2. Focus your attention on nose-end for a while • Feel disconnected from the body

• Ignore your thoughts

3. Close eyes and observe the darkness, shadows, inner clouds, colors, forms

4. Keep searching for the light in the center for as long as possible

Krishna’s argument for immortality

• That which is • Can never cease to be; that which is not• Will not exist. To see this truth of both• Is theirs who part essence from accident,• Substance from shadow. Indestructible,• Learn thou! The Life is, spreading life through all;• It cannot anywhere, by any means,• Be anywise diminished, stayed, or changed.

The fleeting frames

• But for these fleeting frames which it informs• With spirit deathless, endless, infinite,• They perish. Let them perish, Prince!• And fight!

(1) Being

1. Being cannot come out of non-being

2. If once there was nothing, now there would be nothing.

3. Hence being is eternal

(2) Non-Being

1. Things that come into existence and pass away – i.e., change – are a mixture of being and non-being:

2. Inasmuch as anything is, it cannot not-be.

3. Inasmuch as anything is not, it cannot be.

4. So changing things are illusory, “shadows” on the wall – “Maya”

(3) Being and Non-Being

1. Inasmuch as I am a changing being of time (focused on past and future), I am involved in Maya (Illusion)

2. My true being is in the present moment of Now, the moment of IS/AM

3. Inasmuch as I AM, I AM Eternal, Divine

Plato’s argument for immortality

• The human soul can recognize unchangeable truths. – E.g., The Theorem of Pythagoras.

• We can recognize unchanging Beauty in itself in the changing beautiful things.

• The soul must be like what it knows and loves. • Therefore, the soul must also be unchangeable • Rise to the soul level, above preoccupation with

sensory objects (the shadow world)