We Are All Hindus Now - By Lisa Miller | NEWSWEEK - # 4

[Guest guest]

We Are All Hindus Now

By Lisa Miller | NEWSWEEK

Published Aug 15, 2009

 

America is not a Christian nation. We are, it is true, a nation

founded by Christians, and according to a 2008 survey, 76 percent of

us continue to identify as Christian (still, that's the lowest

percentage in American history). Of course, we are not a Hindu—or

Muslim, or Jewish, or Wiccan—nation, either. A million-plus Hindus

live in the United States, a fraction of the billion who live on

Earth. But recent poll data show that conceptually, at least, we are

slowly becoming more like Hindus and less like traditional Christians

in the ways we think about God, our selves, each other, and eternity.

 

The Rig Veda, the most ancient Hindu scripture, says this: " Truth is

One, but the sages speak of it by many names. " A Hindu believes there

are many paths to God. Jesus is one way, the Qur'an is another, yoga

practice is a third. None is better than any other; all are equal.

The most traditional, conservative Christians have not been taught to

think like this. They learn in Sunday school that their religion is

true, and others are false. Jesus said, " I am the way, the truth, and

the life. No one comes to the father except through me. "

 

Americans are no longer buying it. According to a 2008 Pew Forum

survey, 65 percent of us believe that " many religions can lead to

eternal life " —including 37 percent of white evangelicals, the group

most likely to believe that salvation is theirs alone. Also, the

number of people who seek spiritual truth outside church is growing.

Thirty percent of Americans call themselves " spiritual, not

religious, " according to a 2009 NEWSWEEK Poll, up from 24 percent in

2005. Stephen Prothero, religion professor at Boston University, has

long framed the American propensity for " the divine-deli-cafeteria

religion " as " very much in the spirit of Hinduism. You're not picking

and choosing from different religions, because they're all the same, "

he says. " It isn't about orthodoxy. It's about whatever works. If

going to yoga works, great—and if going to Catholic mass works,

great. And if going to Catholic mass plus the yoga plus the Buddhist

retreat works, that's great, too. "

 

Then there's the question of what happens when you die. Christians

traditionally believe that bodies and souls are sacred, that together

they comprise the " self, " and that at the end of time they will be

reunited in the Resurrection. You need both, in other words, and you

need them forever. Hindus believe no such thing. At death, the body

burns on a pyre, while the spirit—where identity resides—escapes. In

reincarnation, central to Hinduism, selves come back to earth again

and again in different bodies. So here is another way in which

Americans are becoming more Hindu: 24 percent of Americans say they

believe in reincarnation, according to a 2008 Harris poll. So

agnostic are we about the ultimate fates of our bodies that we're

burning them—like Hindus—after death. More than a third of Americans

now choose cremation, according to the Cremation Association of North

America, up from 6 percent in 1975. " I do think the more spiritual

role of religion tends to deemphasize some of the more starkly

literal interpretations of the Resurrection, " agrees Diana Eck,

professor of comparative religion at Harvard. So let us all say " om. "

 

http://www.newsweek.com/id/212155

 

 

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" The author of the Gospel could not believe that a just God would

allow His followers to be murdered, tortured, and sacrificed in His

name. In place of what the Gospel author saw as a cruel, vengeful

God, the author proposed a creation story consisting of a realm of

two levels: the higher level the realm of the spirit, and the lower

level the realm of the physical world. The persecutions of the

Christians were not part of the divine will but were part of the

world below. The realm of the spirit could be reached, for the author

of the Gospel of Judas, by an effort to " bring forth the perfect

human. " In the text, Jesus enjoins Judas " to seek [after the] spirit

within you. " "

 

http://adishakti.org/_/jesus_enjoins_judas_to_seek_after_the_spirit_within_you.h\

tm

 

 

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Each one of them (Judasim, Christianity and Islam) hides from the

ultimate test of its validity and truth

 

" And, above all, all three persevere in making a claim which cannot

possibly be valid and true: that they are, each single one, the true

religion.

 

Each one of them, however, hides from the ultimate test of its

validity and truth behind a wall of unknowing and expectation. All

three chorus that only on the " Last Day, " when the " End " comes,

when " God " decides, will it be clear that the " other two " and all

others besides were false, and it (the claimant) was all along the

true community of the one " God. " " - Malachi Martin

 

http://adishakti.org/_/each_one_of_them_however_hides_from_the_ultimate_test_of_\

its_validity_and_truth.htm

 

 

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The Great Cover Up [of reincarnation] - Emperor Justinian understood

its inherent political danger

 

" There was a logical reason why the Emperor was opposed to the

concept that all of mankind originally came from God and was returing

to God via the cycle of birth and death. Justinian had been convinced

by high ranking cardinals that it was not in the interest of the

empire to allow Origen's writings to continue to be copied and

distributed. A powerful group of Cardinal's and Bishop's explained

that if every soul had once pre-existed with God, then Christ wasn't

anything special to have come from God. These Cardinals convinced the

Emperor that if people realized they were the children of God they

might begin to believe they no longer needed an Emperor, or to pay

taxes, or to obey the Holy Church. "

 

http://adishakti.org/_/great_cover_up_of_reincarnation.htm

 

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" Of course there are some absurd things which grew with

misinterpretation and interference from unholy people, which are

common in these religions. For example, Jews, Christian and Muslims

believe that when they die their bodies will come out of their graves

and they will all be resurrected at the Time of Resurrection, at the

Time of Last Judgment, at the Time of Qiyamah. It is illogical to

think what will remain inside those graves after five hundred years.

Nobody wants to think and understand that it is not the body but the

soul that will come out of these bodies, be born again as human

beings and be saved through Qiyamah and Resurrection.

 

Who will tell them? No one can talk to them. As soon as one wants to

talk one can be killed. This is the only way they know - how to kill. "

 

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi

 

 

" But these are special time, the Blossom Time. They call it the Last

Judgment, you can call it the Resurrection Time, you can call it the

Qiyamah, they call it in Koran. It is said that people will come out

of their graves and will get their Resurrection. I mean what is left

to the graves is nothing but a few stones and a few bones. No. All

these souls which are dead will take their birth, take human body and

take their Realization in these special times. This is a sensible

thing to say and is also happening. "

 

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi

 

 

" There is a very big chapter on Resurrection, but the fundamentalists

don't want to look at it. They believe their religion is the best.

But what would it has done to anyone? It is so much misinterpreted...

so much misinterpreted. "

 

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi

[Guest guest]

http://www.adishakti.org/_/we_are_all_hindus_now_by_lisa_miller_newsweek_4.htm