We Are All Hindus Now - By Lisa Miller | NEWSWEEK - # 5

[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

 

 

" Tolstoy argues, very persuasively, that the core teachings of Jesus

have been lost to the modern Christian. Man is too comfortable with

the way things are to really adopt Jesus approach to life.

 

Most of what passes for Christianity today is nothing of the sort. A

great deal of it is self-serving. Jesus said salvation is personal --

you don't need a " church " to be saved. As Tolstoy explains, churches

are largely the invention of men, who crave a hierarchy and order.

 

This book is a revelation, and can make Christians feel rebuked by

Tolstoy's words. "

 

Wikipedia Article: The Kingdom of God is Within You

 

 

" Jesus' kingdom was not like the popular expectation. He used the

phrase " kingdom of God " with a different meaning. His kingdom was not

of this world (John 18:36). It was not like the kingdoms of this

world. It was the kingdom of God, a supernatural kingdom. It was

invisible to most people (John 3:3)—it could not be understood or

experienced without the Holy Spirit (v. 6). God is Spirit, and the

kingdom of God is a spiritual kingdom. " - Tom Harpur, Life after Death

 

http://www.adishakti.org/prophecies/1_kingdom_of_god_has_arrived.htm

 

 

" Rivers, ponds, lakes and streams - they all have different names,

but they all contain water.

 

Just as religions do - they all contain truths.”

 

Muhammad Ali, WTC, N.Y. Sept. 21, 2001

 

 

" We must enter the new period our own way and solve its questions for

ourselves, because though truth, the radiance of reality, is

universally one and the same, it is mirrored variously according to

the mediums in which it is reflected. Truth appears differently in

different lands and ages according to the living materials out of

which its symbols are hewn . . . Resistance is a standard part in the

recurrent cosmic comedy that is enacted whenever a spark of supernal

truth, drawn down by the misery of creatures and imminence of chaos,

is made manifest on the phenomenal plane.”

 

Heinrich Zimmer, Philosophies of India

 

 

" Human society has yielded for seventy centuries to corrupted laws

until it cannot understand the meaning of the superior and eternal

laws. A man’s eyes have become accustomed to the dim light of candles

and cannot see the sunlight. Spiritual disease is inherited from one

generation to another until it has become part of the people, who

look upon it, not as a disease but as a natural gift showered by God,

upon Adam. If these people found someone free from the germs of this

disease they would think of him with shame and disgrace.”

 

Khalil Gibran, Broken Wings

 

 

" That you have to be born again, that you have to be baptized, that

you have to become a Pir, that you have to become a Brahmin — all

these descriptions have come to us from all the great scriptures. It

is very easy to say that we don’t believe in God, we don’t believe in

any Incarnation, we don’t believe in Jesus, we don’t believe in any

religion, we don’t believe into anything; is very easy to say.

 

Even it is easy to say that we believe in them, we believe in God, we

believe in Christ, we believe in Krishna, Rama, all that. Both things

are equally the same.

 

When you believe in God you believe in the darkness and ignorance,

and when you do not believe in Him also you are in ignorance. By

believing into you close your eyes, accept the faith and go along

with it. Of course it shows that you are conscious of some Power

which is beyond. Such people have a great chance. But in the case if

you go to these extremes in this kind of faith then you start only

believing in Christ, only believing in Muhammad, only believing in

Krishna — I mean depending on where you are born. How human beings

are so narrow-minded? "

 

Shri Mataji Shri Nirmala Devi

Being Born Again

Caxton Hall, London, U.K. — May 12, 1980