Classical Religions, Global Research Assembly, Guild #20, Summer '74

HINDUISM

1. What is Hinduism? What part of the base and complex history of India does it include? A highly developed religion of self­transcendence and ascetic practices existed before 3000 B.C. among the aboriginal people of the Dravidian period. The Vedic religion, brought to India in the Aryan invasions 2000­1000 B.C., provided a rich pantheon of awarenesses and concepts which began a profound encounter with the Dravidian spirit. After 800 B.C. the Upanishads emerged as a leap forward in self­conscious religion. Profound awareness, such as contained in Atman, Brahman, 'tat tvam asi', and the syllable 'OM' became the foundation stones for Hinduism. But the religious vitality of this same seedbed produced other closely related religions. By 500 B.C., Jainism, a conservative formation of ancient Dravidian themes, was an extensive force. Also around 500 B.C., Gautama, the Buddha, set in motion fresh innovation in religious vitality. During the ensuing complex interactions between 400 B.C. and 400 A.D., the Great Epics of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, which includes the Bhagavad Gita, took form. It is also said that in the great paradoxes of the Bhagavad Gita, the Dravidian and Aryan roots became fully and fruitfully combined. Hinduism certainly includes the Upanishads, the Epics, the Bhagavad Gita, and many other vast and significant movements in religion, art and social patterns. Hinduism might be defined by these check points, but narrow definition might cloud the strange essence of Hinduism which is a style of inclusiveness that gives to Hinduism a feel of antiquity and of vastness that is unique on the earth.

I. CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE SELF

2. The dialogue with Hindu awareness of the deeps of humanness must begin with a feel of what consciousness is like within the Hindu experience. Consciousness in the Hindu heritage is a total state of being that includes 'reality' as well as 'reason'. It includes the acting out of awareness as well as the interior experience of it. Consciousness is the participation of the self­conscious being in the flow of all being. Consciousness does not always rest in customary reality, but has strange things happen to it:

"A holy man, Markandeya by name, is wandering through the interior of Vishnu s body, visiting the holy hermitages, gratified by the pious pursuits of the sages and their pupils. But now an accident occurs. In the course of his aimless, unending promenade, the sturdy old man slips, inadvertently, out through the mouth of the all­containing god. Vishnu is sleeping with lips a little open, breathing with a deep, sonorous, rhythmical sound, in the immense silence of the night of Brahma. And the astonished saint, falling from the sleeper's giant lip, plunges headlong into the cosmic sea. At first, Markandeya does not behold the sleeping giant, but only the ocean, utterly dark, stretching far in the all­embracing, starless night. He is seized by despair, and fears for his life. Splashing about in the dark water, he becomes presently pensive, ponders and begins to doubt. 'Is it a dream? For the world as I know it, and as I observed it in its harmonious course, does not deserve such annihilation as it seems now suddenly to have suffered. There is no sun, no moon, no wind; the mountains have all vanished, the earth has disappeared. What manner of universe is this in which I discover myself?"' (Zimmer, Myths and Symbols in Indian­Art and Civilization, pages 38 and 39.)

The reality man sees is a function of the limitations and happenings of individual consciousness. The holy man fell into the Land of Mystery.  As the story continues, the saint, still in the Land of Mystery, becomes aware of the sleeping god, which is 'this world', partly submerged like a mountain range in the vast expanse of the waters. As he swam nearer the giant swallowed him and he was back in the familiar landscape again. Now he wonders if his trip to the other world was real.
        
3. As life continues, the trips become more frequent.  In fact, consciousness can become such an intense oscillation between this world and the other world that every inhalation of breath is a trip to the other world, every exhalation of breath a return back to this world. There is a Hindu story of the gander 'Hamsa'. This name is the sound of breathing. Ham is inhalation, you see the goose fly off into the top of the sky. Sa is exhalation, you see the goose fly down to the earthly lake. The holy man  contemplating the goose knows that he lives in two realms.



  1. The Kierkegaardian picture of the self depicts the self as a relation between the individual's network of worldly relations and the other world. (The other world means the transcending of those relations in the very midst of these relations.) Now the self is that relation between this world and the other world taking a relationship to itself. This very secular modern picture of the self is sufficient to show how the self of man is a great mystery. The self is as great a mystery as the mystery to which the self is a relation. What an awareness that is, to see grounded in my own life the fact that the mystery of the whole sweep of time and space is no more profound a mystery than the mystery of my own self. I am not simply the complex of humiliating finite qualities and facts that make up my earthbound images of myself. I am a relation to the mystery which relation relates to itself and there fore experiences itself as mystery.
  1. The ancient writings of Hinduism got all this said in three words: 'tat tvam asi' ­ that thou art, See all that huge expanse of mysterious Being ­ that thou art. The 'that' is Brahman, sheer Mystery, sheer Being. The 'thou' means the true Self, Atman, the self that is no less sheer mystery than Brahman. The 'art' means that Atman is of the same order of being as Brahman. But this is not an abstract formula like the Kierkegaardian philosophy. Tat tvam asi, the identity of Brahman and Atman, is not abstract language pointing to something; it is expressing in religious poetry a state of consciousness.
6. It is that state of consciousness in which the oscillation of consciousness between this world and the other world has become constant. It is the conscious preoccupation with the eternal aspect of the self. It is endlessness as a state of being in the midst of this world   This state of consciousness is described as release, bliss, perfection. It is the end for which a human being should spend his whole life. It is the depth of really living your life.
                        

II. SYMBOLS AND BEYOND SYMBOLS
7. Very important for Hindu anthropology is the puzzling term 'maya'. It denotes the unsubstantial character of the observed and manipulated world as well as the finitude of interior powers of mind and personality. Maya can be said to be deceit, trick, and display of illusion. It is also the rolling universe and evolving forms of individuals; it is the terrible, wonderful cycle of rebirths. Man needs to know how it works and also how to transcend its spell into true knowledge. Breaking through maya means breaking through both the layers of tangible and visible experience and through the interior layers of the psyche. Maya is the flowing fields of all the states of finite consciousness. When the state of final consciousness comes, maya is seen as non­existing. 8. Mind or intelligence, the system of names, forms, shapes, colors, is participant in maya. True knowledge is beyond the range of intelligence. The intelligent ego mistakes itself and its experiences for reality. Compared with reality, the knowledge possible within the boundaries of reason is called ignorance. Ignorance is a state of consciousness which blinds, clouds, covers over with sludge the fullness of knowledge. Ignorance is paradoxical 'reality'. It cannot be said to 'be' since it is not reality, and yet it cannot be said to 'not be' since it is a real factor in social life. Insofar as ignorance is man's total view of self and world, it is reality for the consciousness that is in it, but it blocks one from Reality or True Knowledge. Ignorance cannot be demonstrated to exist by true knowledge, for when knowledge comes, ignorance is gone. This is like investigating darkness with bright light. Ignorance is itself an expression of mystery .. 9. Now all science and all religion, though they may be pathways to knowledge are themselves ignorance. Knowledge is beyond symbols. It looks back upon symbols as mere forms given to knowledge for the ignorant ones moving toward knowledge. Those who participate in knowledge know the inadequacy of all symbols. All gods are but majestic lordly faces painted on the sublime blank of Brahman-the sheer mystery that never goes away-the one without a second. To know Brahman is to know Atman, the sheer mystery of the self. The knowledge of Brahman­Atman is the destruction of all gods. Yet this does not mean a contempt for the gods. In fact those who know Brahman­Atman are helpful to others when they provide gods for those who do not yet know Brahman­Atman. Masks of Being serve man to lead him to the full knowledge of Being. Whatever symbol has held any part of the Mystery is kept forever in the treasure chest of those who know the Mystery, So a paradoxical attitude to all religion is seen. All religion is revered insofar as it is a system of symbols that hold and communicate the mystery. But also all religion is ignorant for it clouds and covers over with sludge the pure clear water of Brahman­Atman.
  1. A similar attack is made upon the mind. The mind posits distinctions but Brahman­Atman means a state of consciousness beyond the distinctions the mind posits. The mind posits 'Brahman' and then must posit 'liberation' and then 'bondage' and on and on. But in the state of consciousness which Brahman­Atman point to, there are no distinctions like that. All is Brahman­Atman-no liberation or bondage exists. All is mystery. So where is time? Where is space? Where are lesser stages of consciousness? The mind and all its works are experienced as belonging to the realm of ignorance. Space and time, all phenomena all lists of phases, stages, and methods whirl into sheer unreality at the appearance of Brahman­ Atman as a living state of consciousness.
11.  This kind of thorough­going negation of reason and religion must be seen as the experience of an essential truth about human existence. The mystery is not a symbol nor an idea. The mystery is pure Being. For living consciousness, the mystery is a state of being in which the negation of all limited states of being is the living experience. This state of consciousness of the eternal mystery is basic and foundational in human existence. These negative expressions about the final state of consciousness are, of course, themselves a new opportunity for self­deception. There is a form of ignorance that, in the name of final consciousness, holds in contempt all limited consciousness and the contents of limited consciousness, namely, this world . Three hundred years after Sankara had, in about 800 A.D., given classical formation to the transcendence of Brahman-Atman, Ramanuja fought against his followers for an affirmation of this world and for an affirmation of piety and the anthropomorphic expressions of God that make piety possible. He understood and maintained the transcendence of Brahman-Atman, but added the assertions that Brahman and the world are one. He pictured the world as the body and Brahman as the soul. The world is not foreign matter, but is itself Brahman in another form. The ego, being of the world, is a sort of 'body' of which Atman is the soul.  Hence, Brahman, the soul of the world, is also the soul of my soul.  With such images he attempted to maintain the identity of Brahman­Atman and avoid a depreciation of the world.

12.  Such thinking is not without precedent in earlier heritage of the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads. A simple expression of it can be observed in the explanation of the repetitive syllable OM. In Sanskrit, the vowel O is a diphthong compounded of A and U. The pronunciation of the syllable thus represents four states of consciousness, A, U, M, and SILENCE. These are phenomenological states of the descent of consciousness.
                        ~
A ­ means this world awake ­ the other world intrudes.
U ­ means this world in dream sleep ­ the other world intensifies.
M ­ this world in deep sleep ­ the other world conquers.
Silence ­ this world is gone ­ the other world reigns.

But the silence cannot be said to be the only reality while the other three are said to be unreality. All four are reality. The world that is experiencing the mystery is as real as the mystery that the world is experiencing.





  1. FACES OF THE MYSTERY
13. Hindu mythology reveals an intimate understanding of the creative, maintaining, and destructive dynamics of Being symbolized in the anthropomorphic manifestations the mystery. There is the divine activity of god Brahma, the passive director of creation, the one in whom the cycle of creation knows itself as already having come to pass. He is the remote supervisor of the cosmic process of creation. He is called the first born of the universe. Brahma is the first of the masks of Being, not to be confused with Brahman, pure Being in itself. Brahma is pictured as impassive silence.

14. Vishnu is the divine embodiment of the mystery as sustaining. To know Vishnu is to know that being itself is out to preserve its creation, to rebalance its own opposing forces, to refresh the human spirit when social and spiritual disintegration signal collapse. He is the sign of resurgence, of sacrificial responsibility, the symbol of the mystery's love for the world. He incarnates himself time and again to be direct action in the world whenever a critical imbalance forebodes disaster. As up holder of the dharma, social morality, he subdues, transforms, banishes, but never finally removes the tyrannical forces of destruction. Though he be the embodiment of all sustaining compassion he carries within himself a paradox.  Mythologically, he defeats one of his own symbols, the great serpent, when the demonic side of its nature threatens to overpower the world order. Disguised as a dwarf, he cheats the demons out of their control of the world.  He exhorts his human companions to enter a great war and advocates a vast fratricidal slaughter as necessary to uphold the social order. Resurgence is engaged in a bloody battle with the satanic forces of anarchy and chaos which are nevertheless only overcome, never finally annihilated.  For there is no possibility of creative living, of human authenticity isolated from struggle, from life's volcanic eruptions, but the mystery incarnate transforms them, reconciles them within itself. Krishna of the Bhagavad Gita is Vishnu's most influential incarnation and the focal point of modern Hindu devotional movements. Here Being, mythologically grounded, reminds man of his sacred trust, the preservation of this world's structures in creative equilibrium. To love Vishnu is to love the mystery in the mundane, the world as the adopted home of the mystery.





  1. But the preservation is only one side of divine activity. Just as powerful, as inevitable, as paradoxically life­giving, is the relentless energy of destruction, the annihilation of all finite realities, the ceaseless flow of time devouring all life, the consuming, chaotic vital life urge in the face of inescapable death, the impartial violence of creation, the unconcerned playfulness of the mystery. To know the mystery is to know the destroyer, Shiva. What being, in its mask as Shiva, the mystery, annihilates is every attempt to reduce life. That which masquerades as final reality is crushed in order that human consciousness might come to know itself in its freedom. Before the pantheon of Hindu gods could win the elixir of immortality, they had to drink the cup of poison. that destroys all life. Shiva, the great ascetic, was only one capable of draining the cup. Having detached him self from all things, he can take them all into himself. Death has
no power over him, he has made it part of his very being, the power of death that releases the endless life. Shiva is sheer destruction, but he is also life. He protects all who take refuge in him, for death cannot turn its back on you when you offer yourself to it. To know Shiva is to know that life feeds on itself, it lives off its death. Shiva's feminine counterpart the goddess Mother Kali, is worshipped in the form of a bloodthirsty warrior, disemboweling her victims and being refreshed by their blood which she drinks from the cup of a crushed skull. To live is to love the mystery that kills you. As Lord of the Dance, Shiva whirls, delirious with cosmic energy, turning creation to ashes, crushing it with irresistible onslaught of his drive to transcend. And this timeless frenzied dance is at the same time regenerating the life it devastates. The ancient symbol of Shiva is the phallus. In him, being is inescapable death and inexhaustible potent fertility, being becomes final renunciation and boundless creative passion. Being creates out of itself and insatiably consumes itself. To love the mystery as Shiva is to love the power that consumes your life.

16. Vishnu, the mystery that becomes human ally and irresistible pied piper, and Shiva, the perfect ascetic and master of the violent cosmic dance, and Brahman, the unapproachable mystery in these three, Hinduism has three partial masks of Brahman, the one, unchanging, absolute reality. When you stand face to face with Vishnu, you find that he is also Shiva, and he is at the same time the impassive Brahma. Dare to stand face to face with Shiva and you discover that Brahma and Vishnu are there, too. Whatever face the mystery confronts you with it contains all its faces. The three faces is sometimes called the High Lord, Isvara. While being is ripping you apart and feasting on your insides it is becoming the brother that sustains you in the world, and it is beyond both.  While the mystery is luring, enchanting, engaging you in compassion and obedient service to the world, it is turning your resurgence to ashes, smashing your engagements, driving you into freedom. It is beyond these faces of Shiva and Vishnu and Brahma, and yet it acts through these great and powerful masks. It is one, unknowable, and yet differentiates itself to become available to finite consciousness and, therein, to reveal the infinite and paradoxical nature of consciousness. Hinduism's capacity for (1) endowing any object and creature with mystery; (2) seeing the face of being behind all beings; and (3) seeing every object and creature as participating in the mystery is staggering. Once the mystery has shown through anything, it is forever changed, luminous, a reminder of the ever remote, ever present mystery. Consequently, anything that has been touched by the mystery and has revealed for a time the deeps of humanness must not be discarded. It is incorporated into the pantheon, put into the vast treasure chest of symbols. Hinduism is like a trophy case, full of layers of history marking a journey of great events. What difference does it make now which side first introduced the trophy? It has been touched by glory, and as such will always point to a significance beyond itself. Hinduism survived one catastrophe after another, wrenchings that would have decimated a closed symbol system, by absorbing the invaders, the cataclysms, the deities and weaving them into its net, adding them to the collection of multifaceted mystery.  So the Aryan gods Indra, Agni, Soma, Rudra were absorbed and transformed. Buddha, the wayward Hindu, became an avatar of Vishnu, Shiva extends to Parvati and the great mother Kali, Durga and so on. Monkey's become Hamuman, allies of Vishnu and Rama; the elephant becomes Ganesh, the rat his vehicle, to clear the way for the spirit journeyed.


17.  Everywhere he looks the Hindu is inundated by mystery. The most mundane becomes symbol of the highest.  The sacred cow, much maligned, is not just a four­footed animal; it is the symbol of the benevolence of being. The benevolence of being itself ambles down every street, providing you with the necessities of life. The mud rooted lotus is more than a flower, it is the goddess Parvati, and it is wisdom, enlightenment and the journey to the center. Snakes are more than they seem; they are reminders of the primordial creativity of Vishnu; the Ganges was not always a river, it is the goddess Ganga come to refresh the earth and purify. Breathing is not mere respiration. It is the journey of consciousness, the rhythm of the universe being emanated and reabsorbed, it is the cosmic sound. The mystery is everywhere. Every form, the form of the formless, the whole world is the showcase of the mystery itself.  Hinduism knows that no image, no deity can contain the fullness of being, all are finite representations of the infinite, so the entire pantheon can expand limitlessly. The symbol system absorbs every particle of authenticity. Symbols have no lasting reality in themselves, but through them Being is present in the world.



  1. KARMA
18. Hinduism's grasp of the tension between determinism and freedom, between acting and being, is held in the concept of Karma.  Karma is the ontological law of causality.  A being becomes what he does, and his actions are conditioned by the nature of his being. It is a person's general and specific fate and the cumulative affects or momentum of his past actions. Every act makes an impression on one's being, there is no escape from the karma one accumulates. There are three aspects of karma as it operates within the cycles of time: (1) seeds of destiny already stored as a result of past acts which have a potential effect on the future, (2) seeds that would collect and be stored if one continued in the path of ignorance and (3) seeds that have already born fruit, i.e., the limitations and reality of one's present biography. Each person is bound to and shaped by his unique karma, it is his very particular fate and destiny. It operates in an endless cycle of actions imprinting themselves on a person's very essence which is then bound to work out the effects of this action, the resulting activity consequently creates new impressions on his being which creates actions, etc.  For better or worse (and usually worse), one becomes what one does, is saddled with it for all eternity.



19. Is there no way to break this vicious cycle of fate? To wipe the slate clean? Freedom from the bondage of karma is won only through realization of self, the realization of the mystery that is beyond my life, but is nevertheless the meaning and in fact the only reality of my life. This realization and the detachment that follows destroy immediately the first two types of karma, for it is attachment to actions and things which bind. Bondage comes not from acting, but in positing your significance in the act, from desiring this and that and being blinded to the fulfillment in the mystery that is reality. But the third aspect of karma cannot be escaped, for it is the very stuff of the life at hand, and this destiny must be acted out to the end. Yet, now acting in the world is by one apart and totally detached so the remaining 
karmic fate is gradually acted out and fades away with the life of which it is a part.
        

20. The impact of this law of karma on Hinduism has been tremendous. It contains far more than the moral imperative to 'do good'. It is the understanding that you shape your very being by your doing and by your relationship to it. Freedom breaks loose when you become the realization that the reality of your life is being itself, beyond all actions and causality.



  1. YOGA

21. Yoga is an exercise, an activity of a serious aspirant of human fulfillment, in which a focusing of the spirit journey can take place and a new life emerge. Yoga presupposes a personal ego in need of release from binding forces. The most primitive yoga predates the Aryan invasions. These early yoga emphasized the release of spirit from the matter of the world through practicing austerity. The awakened man is driven to ascetic practices as a normal sign of his awakening. Denial of food, sex, comfort, and the endurance of pain focus his journey of detachment and give him power over this world and its gods. A second type of yoga involving the learning and repetition of holy teachings, began its long development as Aryan and Dravidian piety mingled. A third type of yoga might be described as devotion (bhakti) to images or personifications of a cherished god. And a fourth type, prominent in the Bhagavad Gita, is the yoga of devotion to selfless action (karma) in this world. While these four types of yoga are mingled in actual use and named in various ways, it is helpful in order to illuminate the depth of the yoga concept to distinguish these four elements in this complex heritage of methodological experimentation: A. Ascetic yoga, B. Mental yoga, C. Devotion yoga and D. Action yoga.

22. More important perhaps than the distinction between these types of yoga are the ways all four are combined for use by different people and different periods of Hindu history. In a period of resurgence, devotion and action yoga flourish. Classical vendanta yoga, as systematized by Shakara in about 800 A.D., emphasized the mental yoga and the journey toward detachment. A feel for this practice of yoga is seen in the journey of the sincere candidate through four stages: (1) the stage of study of revealed texts, listening to the teacher, paying careful attention, walking through prescribed steps that include repetition of the passage with variations, 2) the stage of reflection, meditation, cogitation, continuous uninterrupted pondering on Brahman in absolute lack of distraction by extraneous matters, (3) the stage of intense focusing, the creation of a one­pointed inner vision through a stream of ideas all of the same kind and all giving consciousness the shape of Brahman, and (4) the stage of merging with Atman­Brahman, the happening in which the distinctions between 'onlooker' and 'the­thing looked­upon' disappear and the consciousness of the devotee is transformed into the substance of the Atman, which is a state of transcendent wakefulness in acute oscillation between consciousness and the being of mystery itself.

  1. Combined with this mental yoga, the other three forms of yoga take their place as preparatory disciplines Action yoga appears as general disciplines: Not to kill, not to lie, not to steal. Devotion yoga appears as one particular discipline: the effort to make god (Isvara) the motive of all one's actions. Ascetic yoga appears in each of the first six lists of disciplines: sexual abstinence, equanimity to comfort and discomfort, or satisfaction with what comes, indifference to all grievances or satisfactions of the body. Further, there is a whole list of disciplines on postures, breathing, the withdrawal of the senses and the concentration on the interior events. The important point is that the non­mental exercises are but preparatory to the mental exercises that complete the job of breaking loose from this world. Action yoga exists here as detachment from excessive lusts. Devotion yoga is understood as preparatory in the sense that the union of the ego with the image of god increases consciousness but cannot lead to the final detachment, in which both ego and god are annihilated. And finally, ascetic yoga is used to master the body and allow mental yoga to function undisturbed.

24. While the focus of the vendanta yoga just described is detachment, or stopping the flow of maya, the yoga taught 300 years later by Ramanuja and others emphasized engagement, devotion yoga and action yoga. The yoga of  800 A.D. came into being in a period of decline which emphasized the worship of Shiva. The yoga of 1100 A.D. arose along with a preoccupation with Vishnu and resurgence.  The period of the great epics and the Bhagavad Gita was another period of preoccupation with Vishnu, devotion yoga and action yoga. One can see how differently yoga functions in a period of resurgence, through a feel of yoga in the Gita.



25. The yoga of selfless action means that one considers the doing of social duties, the giving of alms, the fighting of appropriate wars and any other mundane care for the world an appropriate exercise for fulfilling the spirit journey. The term 'selfless' means that the self is not in the action for any benefit to the self. The ego is always disturbed by changes in its cherished personality, but the self, the Atman, is unaffected.  Childhood, youth, old age, this generation, next generation, no such changes distress the radically detached Atman. He neither kills nor is killed. He is not born nor does he die. The 'owner of the body' is beyond event. He is part of the very tissue of the universe. He is endless.

"Give thought to nothing but the act, never to its fruit and let not thyself be seduced by inaction. For him who achieves inward detachment, neither good nor evil exists any longer here below." BG2.47

"There is naught...that I have need to do, nor anything that I have not obtained and that I might gain, yet I participate in action. If I did not do so without relaxation people would follow my example. These worlds would perish if I did not go on performing works." BG3.22­23




These are the words of Krishna, the incarnation of Vishnu, but the perfect man should act the same way. A devotional relation to Vishnu is in this context a brooding on the return of the utterly detached man to this world in disinterested love. Such devotional yoga backs up action yoga, the exercise of actually turning your mundane duties into a demonstration of selfless humanness.

"For it is impossible for any being endowed with a body to give up activity­ without­rest, but he who relinquishes the fruits of his acts is called to be a man of true renunciation.'' BGl8.ll



  1. The practice of action yoga is advised not to give up his profession because it is attended by corruption, for all undertakings are enveloped in corruption. A harlot who fulfills to perfection the codes of her despicable profession can work miracles that baffle kings and saints. Spiritual force is found through entering in fully the mundane affairs of this cycle of decline. Resurgence is this entering into the mundane. Devotional yoga in this context has an entirely different meaning than preparing you for the last push into detachment. Here the devotee broods on the dream scenes of strange adventures in the life of the incarnate Vishnu and unforeseen forces of humanness rise up within the devotee. These forces enjoy themselves and realize themselves in concrete action. The fact that the dream scenes of the gods are rnaya does not present a problem as it did on the journey toward detachment. The journey of the detached man into this world finds devotion to the gods an essential aspect of motivity. Finally, notice that in a time of resurgence, ascetic and mental yogas take a secondary place though they are not absent.
27. The yogas are central to the Hindu religion. They contain its healing dynamic. One must be very careful not to simplify or caricature how they function. They are not understood by simple cause and effect theory, such as three exercises yield three bits of spiritual growth. Practicing yoga focuses consciousness and places it in readiness for 'spontaneous' events initiated by the always unpredictable mystery of life. Hinduism possesses great sophistication about what kinds of yogas do place a man in the way of what kinds of happenings to his spirit journey. And remember, also that the yogas were built by those to whom healing had already happened. The yogas are therefore the witness of healed men. The skilled guru possesses a large collection of possible healing devices to prescribe to ailing devotees.





VI. DHARMA
28. Dharma is "subtle and difficult to understand" is the preface to Hindu articulations of this moral law, social responsibility, or righteous action in the realm of duty. It is subtle primarily because it contains at least three levels of interpretation: the universal ethical law, the structures of social morality and the individual social roles. In the universal sense, to follow dharma is to do what is right, to be obedient to the assignment of showing up as a human being in the world. Socially, it calls for acting within the structures to maintain the order and established patterns of human community. Each individual finally has a particular role to fulfill, a vocation necessary to the continuation of an ethical social universe. Better is one's own dharma, even imperfectly performed, than the dharma of another, well­performed. Dharma is difficult to understand for these three levels of interpretation, though theoretically mirroring one another, are more often in ambiguous conflict. 29. The aim of a human being is not only to transcend the world, but also to build it, to preserve it, to maintain its structures. Just as Vishnu incarnates himself to uphold the dharma, to renew it, so men are to work side by side with the divinity in this sustaining of creation, protecting it from chaos, anarchy and dissolution. The mystery, as Vishnu, takes on human form to set an example of sacrificial action in the world. The caste system is the design to comprehensively engage every person in a crucial aspect of this task. Obedience is to throw yourself without question into your particular role for virtue is not in the nature of the role but in the thoroughness with which it is acted out. Fulfillment is in the very mundanity of your tasks as they participate in maintaining an ordered universe. Similarly, with the manifestations of dharma in the four stages of life, to embody the qualities and responsibility of each stage in due time is to participate in the ordering of the entire universe. Consequently, renouncing the world before you have engaged in it as a student, builder and teacher is to step outside dharma. Yet, this engagement in the activities of the world is not other than the holy life. It is itself an integral part, an accepted stage of the journey toward final liberation. And it is the world to which the realized man returns and completes his life. 30. This is radical affirmation of the world, and yet it is "the world for the sake of." Hinduism's continual emphasis on obedience to the dharma as a universally operating principle precludes the perversion of direct mystical absorption into pure being. The only way to the mystery is through this world, for the phenomenal world is in fact the tool and embodiment of the mystery itself. The emphasis has been however that you go not to the world but through it to the final reality which it points to but cannot contain.
  1. Yudhishthira, hero of the great epic Mahabharata, exemplifies the struggle with the incredible subtlety of dharma. He is the incarnation of dharma and as such lives out of the universal style of patience, fortitude, self-control, purity, insight, truth, avoidance of anger, etc. He is also king, warrior, and this particular role demands that he be an effective liar, cheat, spy and murderer. This is the dharma, the responsibility,
of his assigned station in life. But Yudhishthira longs for release from the worldly burden that continually compromises his integrity, he longs for the ascetic life free of worldly cares. God does not permit it. Krishna directs him back to the 
responsibility of the warrior king as his sacred, inescapable duty. In order to uphold the dharma, which he in fact is, he must renounce even his renunciation and reengage, even though in so doing he necessarily violates his own direct knowledge of himself as universal dharma.  He is literally propelled to fulfill, to be fulfilled in  his human obligations, knowing all the while that freedom is in transcending those bonds. This path of dharma leads him through himself to the liberation in which even dharma is irrelevant.

32. Hinduism maintains the tension between the world and the other world without simplifying the dialogue. Though the ambiguities of radical worldly presence and the final demands of radical detachment never diminish, authenticity is in the struggling with your unique assignment in the historical process rather than embracing a situation that is not your life.