Something many Hindus fail to get again & again: Xtianity & Islam are both attempts at universalization of a particular ethnic group's racial history, sacred geography, language, eating/dressing habits & festivals. Ok, what does this mean? See next tweet.
This means that a particular ethnic group's racial history, sacred geography, language, eating/dressing habits & festivals are presented as the racial history, sacred geography, language, eating/dressing habits & festivals of ALL peoples, ALL ethnic groups in the world.
And this universalization is achieved all the while retaining the special status of that particular ethnic group which is the founder-group that founded this belief system.
So, imagine. You have a neat pyramid scheme here, where the founder-group, that obtained access to this divine knowledge/providence for the very first time in history in its own language, gets the "first-mover" advantage.
So, in order to make this a bit more comprehensible, let us take a concrete example. In the case of the third abrahamism, what can we observe among Indian Muslims or those from Malaysia, Indonesia or even Singapore? You note a trend of arabization. What does this mean??
And these non-Arab muslims accept these priors: 1 That the final & infallible divine revelation in all of history happened in the Arabian Peninsula, 2 that the last recipient of this revelation was an Arab & 3 the first human/prophet was Adam who communicated with "God" in Arabic
The Indians ones had Hindu ancestors & the Malays had ancestors who practiced an indigenous Malay polytheism with influences from Hinduism & Buddhism. Their sacred geography, sacred language, eating habits, etc were precisely what one would expect from their respective homelands
But today, they see Saudi Arabia as "sacred geography" & prefer to dress like Arabs. Among Malay preachers, the one with a superior knowledge of the language is considered more esteemed. On top of this, they deem their own ancestral heritage as filth as explained here:
Now, some may be wondering as to why I would take so much time to explain a rather simple phenomenon. Unfortunately, it is the case of the Hindu that he does not pay attention to even simple & obvious things if they are of no immediate material concern to him...
In the examples demonstrated, one sees that the "Indian-ness" or "Malay-ness" of the Indian or Malay muslim has been reduced to a mere bodily/genetic identity, a mere host for a parasitic & utterly alien system of belief/thought that has completely taken over the host.
And this is from a Hermetic text (A text attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, a Greco-Egyptian syncretic deity from Greek Hermes & Egyptian Thoth) which gives a prophecy of the horror to fall upon Polytheist Egypt:
Note highlighted line: This is indeed what happened to the Egyptians at the hands of the Christians. And when Islam descended upon Egypt, even the Coptic Christians' distortion of the Egyptian tongue utterly perished and was replaced by Arabic.
The pratIcya mahAmaNDala which offered itself up to the preta & the pretamata & aimed to "universalize" the preta throughout Asia , Africa & South America was itself a victim of the same parasitical trick. How? Read here: patriot.dk/ravage.html
This is not a difficult subject to understand but even among educated Hindus, most do not appreciate the full significance of these issues. So, they tend to repeat worthless cliche such as, "All religions lead to God" or "sarva dharma samAbhava".
There is always this unsophisticated urge among Hindus to take refuge in very comforting notions of a fictitious harmony between religions and hardly a desire to actually study the subject at hand and understand the nuances.
So, let us retrace a few steps & go back to the concept. We saw examples of Indian & Malay Muslims attempting to look, speak, eat & dress like Arabs, apart from the obvious adoption of an Arab religion itself. Wait. What does this all have to do with the alleged pyramid scheme?
So, what happens here? He distinguishes himself from the surrounding polytheist society by means of distinct attire/appearance (down to tiny details like the trademark free-flowing beard with trimmed mustaches), differing personal laws/values culinary regulations (halal), etc.
He recognizes a "one true God" & sees the larger Hindu society around him as misguided polytheists. So, he sees himself as part of a distinct group living in a society whose majority is in opposition to the core principles, values, rules and habits imposed by his faith.
His notions of sacred, ideas of personal laws & jurisprudence, his understanding of theology, his calendar of festivals & observances, his rites of passage come from a foreign, alien land which he sees as sacred.
So, he sees himself as distinct from the larger society of the nation he resides in & everything that contributes to this sense of distinction is supplied by this foreign, "sacred land" (The Arab world or more particularly, Saudi Arabia). Where will his loyalty be then?
This is how abrahamic religions further extra-territorial loyalties. And who benefits from the loyalties of these Indian or Malay muslims? A small example: rt.com/business/33713…
Now, I do not care one bit about Indian or Malay Muslims becoming tools at the hands of the Saudis or others, to be exploited solely for their financial & political benefits, while themselves getting nothing in return, or worse, getting humiliated. But what is the lesson here??
Hopefully, the dhimmi Hindu gets a perspective of how the abrahamic religions work, their modus operandi that is, & what will be our own eventual destiny if we fail to learn the all-too-available lessons & allow abrahamisms to take over a Hindu-majority country.
This thread is not yet complete. I originally planned to discuss how Hinduism is distinct from abrahamic religions in this respect but it was rather late yesterday night and I had to stop. Will continue when I get the time....
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This goes well with the Saiddhāntika conception of Ātmā (Self/Soul) & its inseparable Cicchakti (which is the Ātmā’s individuality). Every Ātmā, when divested of all non-innate, insentient characteristics (form, name, māyā which supplies it with the stream of bodies/faculties through births, karmic baggage, etc), is a unique sentient, whose fundamental nature cannot be further simplified.
I was also trying to formulate, yesterday night, the “categorical”/“univeraal” Śivatvam as an analog of the One before I decided to write this morning:
1. Every sentient is *a* Śiva (*a* Cidghana, a unique unit of consciousness) and therefore has an inseparable Cicchakti (individuality), which is but its Śivatvam/Śiva-ness.
2. Imagine a set consisting of every sentient’s Śivatvam. One may therefore speak of a universal Śivatvam, for discussion’s sake.
3. In the Siddhānta, universals are denied—there is no universal separate from the individuals which partake in it.
4. “The One/Śivatvam neither is”—Śivatvam as universal does not exist, separate from individual instances or Śivatvam.
5. “Nor is Śivatvam one”—There is no universal Śivatvam that is ‘one’—i.e. a unique entity—as it cannot partake in itself.
6. Therefore, Śivatvam is an infinite class of members, one for each sentient.
Hope this made some sense: @premavardhanam @EPButler
Or one may change the set of Śivatvam-s to a set of Śiva-s and the result will be the same because Śiva and Śivatvam are considered different-yet-non-different. It may be, in fact, more cogent.
Fact is, it is the Āgamika-Tāntrika religion that saved the Vaidika-Paurāņika religion. Firstly, it supplemented the latter in the form of material incorporated into the Purāņas.
Secondly, the developed methods in Tantrāgama have been incorporated into vaidika praxis (nyāsa, mudras, etc).
Thirdly, when the Aupanișada Vidyās and Upāsanas had mostly died off due to broken transmission, it is the Upāsanakrama of the Tantrāgama that was adopted by the Yatis of the different schools of Vedānta: Śrīvidyā by the Advaitīs, Pāñcarātra by the Vaișņavas.
Tantrāgama massively built on Sāńkhyā and its Tattvajñāna has proven to be an invaluable supplement to the Dharma as a whole.
Those who think Tantrāgama is about worship or Kșūdradevatas have zero idea of what they are discussing.
Even outside the realm of theology, Tantrāgama has helped the Vaidika-Paurāņika religion. For example, Kāmikāgama has a whole chapter dedicated to gifting qualified Vipras for their Vedic learning.
It is to the credit of Siddhānta (which falls under Tantrāgama) that Vedic institutions were supported in TN by groups across the board and a large group of non-Brāhmaņas became teetotalers and took up an Ācāra that was compatible with Vaidikācāra.
Who do you think made large swathes of people adopt such an Ācāra? Vaidikas?
No. It’s the Ācāryas of the Siddhānta who drew upon the power of Śiva to impress Vaidikācāra and its associated norms and habits on large groups of families, which were otherwise untouched by Vaidikācāra. The Pāñcarātra too made similar contributions.
Anyone who ignores the Brāhmaṇa texts of the Veda & the Karmakāṇḍa, and treats them as if they are non-existent, in their overall narrative on the meaning of the Veda, no matter how eloquent they are or sagacious they sound, cannot be authoritative, let alone a Ṛṣi.
Problem is even those who affirm the Vedatvam of the Brāhmaṇa texts ignore their importance & their overall interpretative framework makes Śrauta rituals & Karmakāṇḍa redundant & meaningless.
How good is your system if it does not, for example, have a stimulating explanation for why the Hautra Brāhmaṇa give 100s of correspondences (bandhas) between a particular Śastra (not Śāstra, but Śastra which is a particular combination of Ṛk-mantras) & the day/time of a particular sacrifice (To give a generalised form: “Let Hotṛs recite X-Śastra for Nth day of Y ritual as X contains word A & A is related to N”).
Where does this tie in with soteriology & metaphysics? Does this have a meaning beyond fulfilling desires? What was & is the point of all this? Are these rites still relevant given the advent of later rites & paths? What is the relationship between the old rites & new rites/knowledge?
Many Hindus have a very poor appreciation of the importance of ritual/spiritual technology & what it can do. A robust & powerful ritual/metaphysical technology can transform even the most primitive (whether apparent or actual) of religions into something very profound & this can create an extremely strong attachment to the Deity & its coterie which undergird that system, including becoming subjected to that Deity’s limitations (if the Deity is truly not transcendental or “enlightened”).
It’s precisely because of this potential one has to be very careful because getting initiated into a system with such ritual technology can leave a very deep mark/stain “on” the soul (figuratively, since the soul can’t be stained & the actual locus of the mark is the innate malaśakti obscuring the soul but this gets very technical), which can be very difficult to remove without a truly competent master.
Such a mark can prevent a soul from progressing towards the higher end of spiritual traditions & obstruct them from realizing the fruit even if they get initiated into such a higher-end Sampradāya. This is why, in the Siddhānta, prior to Dīkṣā (initiation), a rite called Liṅgoddhāra has to be first performed for a convert from another system in order to remove the mark (Liṅga) from the initiate, though many teachers (particularly those who are completely outside Saṁskṛta scholarship, are exclusively vested in the Tamizh tradition & are not well-versed in the Āgama) are sadly not well-equipped to do this.
Many Hindus often find it cool to clap back with retorts like “all these Abrahma religions are barbaric & worship false gods”, mirroring what the Abrahmas say. What they don’t get is that we have to confront them precisely because they are real & they have complex spiritual technologies which work but are ultimately not beneficial.
In this regard, those in a position to understand should be able to see something like the below & see in it a diminished version of a similar technology used by the Śaiva-Mantramārga (particularly the Siddhānta) &, to a much lesser extent, the Pāñcarātrikas. It also shows how the use of a proper, ritual technology (even if ultimately limited) can transform a religion even if the base framework is primitive/crude .
The below table is based on the Yahudas’ Kabbalah. What parallel concept/ritual technology in the above-mentioned Āstika Sampradāyas does it remind you of?
Screenshot in above tweet missed the last column. See this:
Further correspondences:
1. Map between the worlds in above table & different prayers
2. Correspondence between the 22 letters of the Hebrew Alphabet & the sefirot (these are emanations within Yahava; like his Guṇas/Kalās)
Based on these, some of you can see the parallel ritual technology used in Siddhānta-Śaivam (and rarely these days in the Pāñcarātra).
While certain paths are open to MahāmlecchādayaH by initiation, a problem they undeniably present is that they can’t be content with being passive spectators. They have to be leaders & reshape the path/system in their image. No ritual space can be closed off to them.
A certain Āṅglika Mantravādī of the “Adhvamata” of the Cīnas in this realm is a good example of this tendency. Another example is this priest initiated into the Pāñcarātra, who has taken it upon himself to waive off the applicability of adhikāravidhi for…well…himself.
Many of them are simply not interested in or devoted to preserving the integrity of a Sampradāya’s teachings & practices. If it’s a space that appeals to them, they want to own that space & will undermine traditional institutions & rules in play, if that is deemed necessary.
Came, by chance, across a passage from Aitareyabrāhmaṇa that ties in with the point in the thread below as to how in rituals, the ritualist is given a taste of the universal power (sarvārthakriyā) that becomes manifest in Paramukti. Explanation of the Śruti in subsequent tweets:
The Śruti speaks of how the Agnihotrī leads (nayati) humans & all other beings as dakṣiṇā (ritual fees) to the Devas through the evening Agnihotra (hence the rest of creatures in the evening).
He leads the Devas themselves & all other beings as dakṣiṇā to humans through morning Agnihotra (from other Śrutis, we know that Devas preside over cognitive faculties). This is why when a human wakes up, he finds himself charged with the will to go places & do things.