THE DESACRALIZATION OF HINDUISM FOR WESTERN CONSUMPTION, Rama Coomaraswamy Aug 30th, 2007 by logos
Rama Coomaraswamy, M.D.
Rama Coomaraswamy, M.D.
Three Hindu cults which have received widespread acceptance in the West are presented. The first is Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation. You will notice that I do not grace him with the title Maharishi which means “great saint.” The second is that of Mr. Aurobindo, whose most significant spin-off in this country has been the Esalen Institute, and in the Catholic Church, the expositions of Bede Griffiths. The third is the movement initiated by Rajneesh Bhagavan who liked to describe himself as “the blessed one who recognized himself as God.” ...
Aurobindo was clearly out to establish a new evolutionary religion. In his own words Aurobindo told us that “All religions have saved a nurnber of souls, but none yet has been able to spiritualize mankind. For that there is needed not cult and creed, but a sustained and all comprehensive effort at self-evolution.” ... One last spin-off of interest is Father Bede Griffiths, the Benedictine Monk who lived near Auroville in South India. He lived like a Hindu sadhu, supposedly achieving a blend of Eastern and Catholic mysticism. His guru and source of inspiration was also Aurobindo. In his book, A New Vision of Reality, he informs us that the world “is on the verge of a new age and a new culture.” The advertisement tells us he is a “spokes- man of the New Age, speaking for it from his Christian-Hindu Ashram … He concludes his radical vision of a new society and a universal religion in which the essential values of Christianity will be preserved in living relationship with the other religious traditions of the world. Here once again, we have the export of evolutionary and Marxist thought to India, its adoption by a supposed Swami, and its reintroduction to the West, both by Murphy and the Esalen Institute, and also by Father Griffiths within the Catholic Church...Posted in uncategorized
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