"We Are All Hindus Now" # 2

"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."

Lisa Miller

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

“The doctrine of bodily resurrection, linked closely to the soul's nature and destiny, suffers like a fate. The ancients knew little or nothing about the human organism—its chemical constituents, its functioning parts, its psychology—and even less about the nature of death. Modern man has measured corruption, can detail the chemical changes that take place when bodily life ceases, has a clear idea of what precisely corruption and decay of the human frame connote, and defines human death precisely by the cessation of the observable functions of the body. The three religions define death as the moment when the soul leaves the body.

On the other hand, the scientist cannot accept the “outside” explanation: that a god will “resurrect” the corrupted body. He knows that in a living body today the actual molecules which compose it were not part of it some time ago. In another decade it will be made up of molecules which at present are elsewhere: in African lions, in passion-flowers of the Amazon, in Maine lobsters, in earth in Patagonia, and in the fur of a Polar bear. For the scientist, the body as such has truly ceased to exist. No “shade” or reduced form of the body exists in an “underworld” or in Elysian fields. The body has ceased to exist. He therefore finds the resurrection of the body unintelligible.”

Malachi Martin, The Encounter,
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1970, 286.

"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."

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi

"There are lots of myths in the Bible and one of them is that at the Time of Resurrection your bodies will come out of the graves. This is not only for Christians, but also for the Muslims and Jews. Think of this - What remains in the grave after many years? Only a few bones. And if these bones came out how can you give them Realization? Think of it. It is a big myth. Not possible logically."

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi
India - December 25, 1993

"That’s what it is today. I do not know that what it is to that we are now in the Blossom Time, as I call it, because many flowers are born and they are to become the fruits. This is the Resurrection Time, which is described in all the scriptures, but it’s not like this, the way they had described us. Something wrong with them that all the dead bodies who are in the graves will come out of the graves. I mean, how much is left out of them, God knows. Must be some bones or maybe some skulls there. So they’ll come out of the graves and they will get their Resurrection. This is a very wrong idea.

Once I happened to mean a fellow, a Muslim from Bosnia and he told Me, "I want to die for my religion, for God’s sake." I said, "But why? Who told you to die?" He said, "Now, if I die in the name of God, I’ll be resurrected." I said, "It’s all wrong. That’s not the way it is going to work out. Resurrection is going to work out this way that at this time, all these souls will take their birth. All these souls will take their birth and they will be resurrected. As human beings they’ll have to come."

That’s why we find all kinds of funny people these days, all kinds of cruel, criminal, all kinds of idiotic, stupid, I mean very queer, weird, funny ideas which find such, such a variety of people and such a tremendous population that we should understand they have to have their chance of Resurrection. But how many will come? That’s the point. How many are going to come?"

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi
Philadelphia, USA — October 15, 1993

"Today is the day we are celebrating Easter. Easter is extremely symbolic not only of Christ, but also for all of us, in that the most important day is that of the Resurrection. The Resurrection of Christ has the Message of Christianity. Through Resurrection Christ has shown that one can be resurrected with the body that you have."

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi
Self-Knowledge For Resurrection
Easter Puja, Calcutta, India — March 14, 1995

"If we follow Him (Jesus) then we cannot be conditioned by anything because He talked of Spirit only. Spirit cannot be conditioned, conditioned by anything...

I am here to tell you all these things which Christ could not tell, and to fulfil what He wanted to say. All those things I am saying to you.”

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi
Christmas Puja, Delhi, India — Dec. 24, 1995

"Today we are celebrating the resurrection of Christ. With it we also have to celebrate the resurrection of human beings, of Sahaja Yogis, who have been resurrected as realised souls. With that we have to understand that we enter into a new awareness. He had to come down and again to show to this world that you are the eternal life, that you lead a life that is spiritual, which never perishes. You have to rise, into that new realm, which is the Realm of God Almighty, what you call the Kingdom of God.

And He said it very clearly to Nicodemus that ‘You have to be born again’ when he asked, ‘Am I to enter back into my mother’s womb?’ And He said it so clearly. Those who don’t want to see can remain blind. No, that is, whatever is born of the flesh, is the flesh, but whatever is born of the Spirit is the Spirit.’

But whatever is manmade is not the Spirit. This is the clear statement of Christ, which people wanted to avoid, and start their own organisations, and ideas, and created a very mythical thing in His name. And now the time has come for it to be blasted. It has been going on and on now for thousands of years, captures so many innocent people and people are into it."

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi
V4 No 23 Sept 84 p4

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