varna

[Guest guest]

Subbuji wrote:

A: The disposition of others to concede

the claim of Hinduism is quite beside

the point, for the intrinsic worth of

anything is always there whether one

recognises it or not. As for the claim

being high, I desire to point out to you

that I cannot possibly put it lower.

E: How is that?

A: Please bear with me if I take Christianity

as an example to illustrate my

point. If belief in the personality of Christ

is a necessary condition of

salvation, we must be prepared to say

that all those persons who have lived

before the time of Jesus have been denied

the benefit of salvation for no fault

of theirs and simply because they happened

to be born when Jesus was yet unborn.

The same reasoning would deny salvation

to those who have lived even at the same

time as Jesus or since that time, but may

not have even heard of him. Further,

don't you think it very unfair on the

part of God that He should suddenly wake

up on a particular day and prescribe for

all mankind a necessary condition for

salvation? Did he forget that the people

who had the misfortune to be born

before Jesus, had souls to save? If He

did not forget, did He take care to

prescribe for them the means necessary

to enable them to attain salvation? If He

did so prescribe, His prescription could

not possibly have included a belief in the

Jesus to be born. Therefore, the only, logical

hypothesis, which a reasonable man can accept is

that God, even when He created

the first man (if there was such a time),

Himself simultaneously promulgated

also the means for his salvation, for even

the first man was certainly in need

of salvation. We accordingly say of our

Vedas that they were co-eval with the

first man (not in the sense that they were

created together, for we believe that

there was no first creation and that everything

is beginningless, but in the

sense that they were co-existing) and that

they are the revelations of God

Himself. Any religion which traces its

origin from a later time, any time after

creation, and from any teacher other than God,

is bound to be imperfect and

short-lived.

 

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Namaste All,

I had in '74 an extraordinary meeting with

the sage of Kanchi but that is another story. In this case

it has to be said that he was misinformed about

the salvation of those who pre-dated the incarnation

of Christ. The position is clear in the majority

Christian tradition Catholicism.

 

"Those who, through no fault of their own, do

not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church,

but who neverthless seek God with a sincere heart,

and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do

his will as they know it through the dictates of

their conscience - those too may achieve eternal

salvation."

 

I hold no brief for the Catholic Church and I

merely offer this in the belief that sound

judgment is preceded by sound information.

 

Now it is interesting that in a post on varna

very little was said about it as such only that

it was special to the Hindu. Why has no one but

myself and Dhyanasaraswati grasped the thorny

question of purity and pollution which is at

the centre of all the bother. I discern a

profound embarassment about the issue. Now I

was looking at a programme about slavery on

T.V. the other night and was surprised to learn

that there are more slaves now than there ever

has been in the history of humanity. One of

the hot spots for it is India where generations

get enslaved to pay off a small loan. Now this

is of course illegal and against the constitution

but they, the slaves themselves, believe that they

are slaves in their souls and they

find it impossible to walk away from.

How much does the caste system as it

actually works with its non-person status

applied to dalits actually facilitate such

a shameful state of affairs?

 

Best Wishes,

Michael.