In the twenty-first century ... “India will conquer her conqueror"

"Around the middle of this century Arnold Toynbee predicted that at its close the world would still be dominated by the West, but that in the twenty-first century "India will conquer her conquerors".1 Preempting the place that is now held by technology, religion will be restored to its earlier importance and the center of world happenings will wander back from the shores of the Atlantic to the East where civilization originated five or six thousand years ago.

The spiritual heritage of India is one of the world’s standing miracles. It would rank among the greatest human achievements were it not that “achievement” isn’t really the right word. It is more like a reception - the opening of a people to receive, through inspiration, The Breath of the Eternal. For the outbreathing of the eternal is what India has taken truth to be - see infra, p. 8. We know that “Hinduism” is a label affixed by outsiders. Long ago, people to the west of the Indus River mispronounced its name and called those who lived on it or to its other side “Hindus,” and in time “Hinduism” came to be used for their beliefs and practices. The Indians themselves knew no such word. There was no need for them to think of the truth by which they lived as other than the sanatana dharma, the Eternal Truth. It was Truth Itself—truth that had become incarnate in the tradition that sustained them.

How the incarnation was effected is itself an interesting point. In the West we tend to think of knowledge as cumulative: bits of information get joined in bodies of information that can grow indefinitely. India recognizes a kind of knowledge that fits this model, but she considers it "lower knowledge"—knowledge that is gained by reason and the senses playing over objective, finite particulars. Higher knowledge (paravidya) proceeds differently. Or rather, it doesn't proceed at all, for it enters history full blown. It is futile to ask when this higher knowledge first appeared, for India has no notion of absolute beginnings—beginnings require time, and time for India is not absolute. The most we can say is that when a new cosmic cycle opens there are souls waiting in the wings, so to speak, with the higher wisdom already in store. Who these souls are is not a generic accident: India has no place for chance or accident— the law of karma precludes it. The men and women who are born wise on the morning of a new creation are so because, though the world they enter is young, they themselves are not. Their jivas (individual psyches) having being held over from preceding cosmic cycles, they are already `old souls'—old chronologically, to be sure, but more importantly in experience... Their concluding legacy to the phenomenal world is to impregnate the new cycle with reflective knowledge of the truth they have assiduously shepherded. Keeping in touch with this truth through meditation, these rishis (seers) transmit it orally, direct from guru to disciple, until eventually their oral tradition gets committed to writing. In India the texts that result are the Vedas.

If we see the Vedas in this light, as apertures through which the Infinite entered conscious human awareness in South Asia in the present cosmic cycle, what word of the Infinite do the Vedas impart? First the warning that on this topic words are unequal to their task. They can be useful, of course, or the Vedas themselves would not have been written, but a fundamental Vedic teaching concerns the limitations of words themselves when directed towards ultimates. Sooner or later these ultimates phase beyond language entirely. Neti, neti, not this, not this; the map is not the terrain, the menu is not the meal—the Vedas never tire of repeating this basic point. In this kind of knowing, words do not cause understanding; at best they occasion it: from spirit to spirit communion leaps. The word "Upanishads," denoting the culminating sections of the Vedas, makes this point in its very etymology. Deriving from the roots which when conjoined mean to approach (upa) with utter (ni) firmness to loosen and destroy (sad) spiritual experience, it warns the reader right off that the topics he is about to encounter call for more than book learning. For their province is that `higher mathematics' of the human spirit where knowing merges with being. Upanishadic truth is so subtle, so abstruse, that purely objective, rational intellectuals are likely to miss it entirely—off such intellectuals it rolls like water off oil. Only when discerned in a life that is living it—a life that incarnates it in its outlook, moods, and conduct—does truth of this order become fully convincing."

Huston Smith, in the foreword to "The Spiritual Heritage if India" by Swami Prabhavananda

Note:
1. Culturally, not politically, Toynbee's prediction appeared in an address he gave to The Philosophical Society of Edinburgh University in November, 1952.

Holy Cow by Sarah MacDonald
"India is the land of the profound and the profane: a place where spirituality and sanctimoniousness sit miles apart. I have learnt much from the land of many gods and many ways to worship. From Buddhism the power to begin to manage my mind, from Jainism the desire to make peace in all aspects of life while Islam taught me to desire goodness and to let go of that which cannot be controlled. I thank Judaism for teaching me the power of transcendence in rituals and the Sufis for affirming my ability to find answers within and reconnecting me to the power of music. Here is to the Parsis for teaching me that nature must be touched lightly and the Sikhs for the importance of spiritual strength. I thank the gurus for trying to pierce my ego armour and my girlfriends for making me laugh. And most of all I thank Hinduism for showing me that there are millions of paths to the divine." - Sarah MacDonald

Holy Cow, a best-seller by Sarah MacDonald

(Sarah a journalist and girl friend of the ABC's South Asia correspondent deals with her experiences in India. These extracts are from the concluding pages of the book where she summarises her experience.)

The ABC has found a new correspondent and now it is time to leave for Australia and let the tide of a billion lives ebb and flow without us.....

In Sydney I rediscover my relationship with nature. The ocean becomes my temple and my Ganges......I walk through the pristine quiet of the suburban bush of my childhood as fluorescent orange streaks across the sky...Gleaming cars zoom fast on empty, wide and clean roads. A couple bent double laughs with hysterical abandon at a cafe table. I delight to see such open joy and such easy lives, yet at times the luxury and space sit uneasily. My country and I want it all - to be part of a war and not to face its consequences, to be part of the global community but not a port for its refugees. The city rants religiously of real estate and fashion.......The worship of land ownership, the body beautiful, self-help and self obsession for beings blinded by option over load is strangely unfamiliar.

I went to India for love and that country tested that love to a large degree....We now both have a new view of our so lucky lives, yet our innocent optimism has been sucked from our hearts. The overall feeling about our adventure is positive though. Jonathan's career has taken off and I have gained much in my karma chameleon journey. I am reborn as a better person, less reliant on others for my happiness and full of a desire to replace anger with love. Plus I have gained another home. For, I have two spiritual homes now - the quite empty lands of my birth and the cataclysmic crowded land of my rebirth. When I remember India, I think of its ability to find beauty in small things - the tattoo of circles on a camel's rump, a bright silk saree in a dark slum, a peacock feather in a plastic jar, a delicate earring glinting by a worn face and a lotus painted on a truck. I miss the sheer exuberance of a billion individuals and their pantomime of festivals............

India is the land of the profound and the profane: a place where spirituality and sanctimoniousness sit miles apart. I have learnt much from the land of many gods and many ways to worship. From Buddhism the power to begin to manage my mind, from Jainism the desire to make peace in all aspects of life while Islam taught me to desire goodness and to let go of that which cannot be controlled. I thank Judaism for teaching me the power of transcendence in rituals and the Sufis for affirming my ability to find answers within and reconnecting me to the power of music. Here is to the Parsis for teaching me that nature must be touched lightly and the Sikhs for the importance of spiritual strength. I thank the gurus for trying to pierce my ego armour and my girlfriends for making me laugh. And most of all I thank Hinduism for showing me that there are millions of paths to the divine......

Yet, I have brought back something even more important than sacred knowledge. A baby is growing inside me. A baby conceived during our last weekend in the country. This child will forever remind me of the land I lived in and what it took and what it gave. And this baby made in India, will always remind me that India to some extent made me.

Holy Cow, Sarah MacDonald
Broadway (April 13, 2004)
ISBN-10: 0767915747
ISBN-13: 978-0767915748

"Gorgeous splashes of color among filth, flies, and forlorn"
April 21, 2004
By S. Calhoun "rhymeswithorange" (Chicago, IL United States)

Eleven years after backpacking through India with complaints of the poverty, heat and pollution Australian Sarah Macdonald relented to never return; she even went to the extreme of flipping the middle finger to the ground below as her plane ascended into the sky. Sarah wasn't necessarily happy to quit her successful job in Sydney to relocate to New Delhi to live with her journalist boyfriend; she often wondered if she was making the right decision. Upon arrival she started having flashbacks of pugnant body odor and beggars with leprosy. The pollution and thick smog affected her health and wellbeing. It is clear that she isn't quite cut out to live in New Delhi.

After reading the first couple chapters I expected HOLY COW to be filled with constant whining of India's derelict living conditions and complaints based on a Westernized perspective resulting in a mediocre travel narrative. But low and behold, I was soon pleasantly surprised how Sarah slowly evolved and reevaluated the country that she has scorned for so many years. After she started becoming reacquainted in her new home she started looking beyond the mayhem and dirt and began to see the beauty of India. Being a devout atheist when she first moved to New Delhi she slowly awoke and embraced the dynamic religions of Hinduism and Buddhism; she began to appreciate the sounds and surroundings of her new home.

While her husband is busy working Sarah was able to travel throughout India with her new perspectives and begins to enjoy the dichotomies that India offers. My favorite side trip was the Buddhist retreat in the Himalayan footsteps that taught her to meditate by concentrating on her breathing. I cannot imagine undergoing anything close to that endeavor.

Throughout HOLY COW Sarah Macdonald succeeded in digging past a traveler's first impressions of India to highlight the beauty of this varied land. By reading HOLY COW I now understand just a little bit more of India, and that was my initial goal when I first picked up this book.

Honest, irreverent, illuminating memoir and travelogue
April 14, 2005
By Marie GG "addicted to reading" (Portland, OR)

I, too, traveled in India in my 20s (in my case, when I was 24). My boyfriend (now husband) and I traveled through Asia for 2-1/2 months after leaving Japan, where we had lived and worked for 3 years. We spent a month in India, focusing our time on Delhi, Agra, and Rajasthan. We traveled on a shoestring with only one notable splurge.

Although I have some fond memories of India--my husband proposed to me at the beautiful Lake Palace Hotel in Udaipur--when we left the country, I was extremely ready to leave. I am fascinated with India--its food, its history, its literature, and its culture. However, I have not returned to India since I left 16 years ago, and have no immediate desire to do so. Therefore, I can relate to Sarah Macdonald's first impressions of the country and her new appreciation for it.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book because of her irreverent, honest look at Indian culture, customs, and religions. It's interesting to note how many reviewers feel that Macdonald is being disrespectful to Indians in her portrayal of the country, because I feel it's quite the contrary. Although she is critical of individual Indians and was exhausted and angered by the treatment of women (and I can definitely relate to that), she cried when she left the country because of the close relationships she had formed and the fondness she developed for the whole country.

I enjoyed her forays into Indian religions. She was the first to comment that she realized that she didn't have a full picture of these religions. I did not conclude that she was drawing a broad brush on all people following these religions because of her brief samplings into their cultures and beliefs. As a progressive Christian, I'm very interested in other religions and believe there are many paths to God. Macdonald was fascinated to learn about what makes people believe what they do. When she observed that some of the Jews she encountered practiced their religion in an exclusive way, I did not read that to mean that she felt all Jews were that way...just as she herself could not be compared to all Christians or people who grew up with a Christian background.

I particularly appreciated her observations around September 11 and her sadness about violence begetting more violence and a lack of effort to bridge our cultures and move toward a greater level of global and cross-cultural understanding.

If you read it as a factual account of all things Indian, you will find it lacking. I read Holy Cow as a travelogue, memoir, and one western person's perspective on India, and I found it refreshing, fascinating, and fun.

NOTE: If this page was accessed during a web search you may wish to browse the sites listed below where this topic or related issues are discussed in detail to promote global peace, religious harmony, and spiritual development of humanity:

www.adishakti.org/
www.al-qiyamah.org/
www.adi-shakti.org/  — Divine Feminine (Hinduism)
www.holyspirit-shekinah.org/  — Divine Feminine (Christianity)
www.ruach-elohim.org/  — Divine Feminine (Judaism)
www.ruh-allah.org/  — Divine Feminine (Islam)
www.tao-mother.org/  — Divine Feminine (Taoism)
www.prajnaaparamita.org/  — Divine Feminine (Buddhism)
www.aykaa-mayee.org/  — Divine Feminine (Sikhism)
www.great-spirit-mother.org/  — Divine Feminine (Native Traditions)

"Now, the principle of Mother is in every, every scripture - has to be there." Shri Mataji, Radio Interview 1983 Oct 01, Santa Cruz, USA