THINKING EAST

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THINKING EAST

• Aphorisms and reflections on the past, present
  and future significance of Indian thought.

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If I were asked under what sky the human mind has
most fully developed some of its choices gifts,
has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems
of life, and has found solutions, I should point
to India. Max Mueller
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In India our religions will not ever take root
the primordial wisdom of sexuality will not let
itself be reduced to events in Galilee. On the
contrary, Indian wisdom is flowing back to Europe
and will bring about a fundamental transformation
in our knowledge and thinking.   Arthur
Schopenhauer
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Devoid of intellectual discernment are those
Europeans who want to convert and civilise the
Hindus. Friedrich Nietzsche
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to begin with we see that Europe can only
reproduce what in India, under the people of
thinkers, had already been accomplished several
thousand years ago as a commandment of
thinking.   Friedrich Nietzsche
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Our purpose will surely be served when the Indian
world-view becomes known. It will make us aware
that we, with our entire religious and
philosophical thought, are caught in a colossal
one-sidedness, and that there can be found yet a
quite different way of grasping things than the
one which Hegel has construed as the only
possible and rational way.   Paul Deussen
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We Westerners are about to arrive at the
crossroads that the Indian thinkers had already
reached about seven hundred years before the
birth of Christ.  Heinrich Zimmer
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the gods were never dethroned in India. They
were not disintegrated and dissolved by criticism
and natural science, as were the deities of the
Greeks The gods of Homer became laughable, and
were later regarded as incompatible with the
more spiritual and ethical, later concepts of
divinity India, on the other hand, retained its
anthropomorphic personifications to assist the
mind in its attempt to comprehend what was
regarded as manifested through them What is
expressed through the personal masks was
understood to transcend them, and yet the garb
of the divine personae was never actually
removed. By this tolerant, cherishing attitude a
solution of the theological problem was attained
that preserved the personal character of the
divine powers for all the purposes of worship and
daily life, while permitting an abstract, supreme
and transcendental concept to dominate for the
more lofty, supra-ritualistic stages of insight
and speculation. Heinrich Zimmer
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The strength of the Sanskrit language accounts
for the uniqueness of Indian philosophy, which,
as creative thought expressive of the inner life,
is unsurpassed by any other people Rudolf
Steiner
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Indian thought, with its usual profundity and
avoidance of arbitrary divisions, regards
Philosophy as religious and Religion as
philosophical. The "liberty-loving nations of the
West" have been in the past greatly, and still
are to some extent, behind India in the matter of
intellectual and religious freedom. As has been
finely said in India, Satyannasti para dharmah
(There is no religion higher than Truth) and as
the Vedas have proclaimed, Truth will conquer
(Satyam Jayate).  Sir John Woodroffe
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Hinduism may not be called a religion in the
sense other religions are known. It is much more
than a religion, it is a total way of life.
Hinduism has no founder. Its authority is Eternal
Truth. The cumulative record of metaphysical
experimentation. Behind the lush tangle of
religious imagery, is a clear structure of
thought. Compared to the rugged originality of
the Indian traditions, the language of today's
philosophers concerned with being often sound a
little contrived. Hindus have always been
metaphysicians at heart. It is the underlying
ideas, and not the images which count. Sir
John Woodroffe
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It is not too much to say that the mind of the
West with all its undoubted impulses towards the
progress of humanity has never exhibited such an
intense amount of intellectual force as is to be
found in the religious speculations of India ...
These have been the cradle of all Western
speculations, and wherever the European mind has
risen into heights of philosophy, it has done so
because the Brahmin was the pioneer. There is no
intellectual problem in the West which had not
its earlier discussion in the East, and there is
no modern solution of that problem which will not
be found anticipated in the East. Matheson
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It is less than a hundred years since the West
came to possess some knowledge of Yoga Over
several decades knowledge of yoga in the West has
come to take the form either of a strict academic
discipline or, on the other hand, as something
that one sees rather as a religion, albeit one
that never developed itself into an organised
church Carl Jung
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On the meaning of yoga for Indians I wish to be
silent, for I can make no judgement on a matter
on which I have no knowledge from personal
experience. As for the meaning of Yoga for the
West, however, I have something to say. Carl
Jung
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The West, with its bad habits of wanting to
believe, on the one hand, and educated scientific
and philosophical critique on the other, falls
either into the trap of belief and uncritically
swallows concepts like Prana, Atman, Purusha,
Samadhi etc. Scientific criticism however,
already stumbles over the concepts of Prana and
Purusha. This split in Western mentality makes
it impossible from the start to realise the
intention of yoga. Either it is seen as strict
religious duty or as a form of training such as
memory training, breath training etc. Carl Jung
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I would say to you, if I may. Study yoga
yourself. You will learn an endless amount from
it, but do not apply it, for we Europeans are not
made in a way that we can apply these methods
without preparation. An Indian Guru can explain
everything to you and you can make it your own.
But do you know who the guru addresses? In other
words, do you know who you are and how you were
made? Carl Jung
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The power of science and technology in Europe is
so huge and undeniable that it is almost
pointless to know all that has been discovered
and all that can be done with it. A completely
different question begins to dim here who
applies this knowledge? In whose hands lies this
power?   Carl Jung
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The Westerner doesnt know his own soul,
which protests suicidally against him. Carl
Jung
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If we recall that in our time an equiform manner
of calculative thinking is commandeering world
history all over the globe, then we must be
equally determined to keep in mind that this
equiform thinking is only the standardised and
monolithic form of that historical mould which we
call Western. Martin Heidegger
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Calculative thinking computes. It computes ever
new, ever more promising and at the same time
ever more economical possibilities. Calculative
thinking races from one prospect to the next.
Calculative thinking never stops, never collects
itself. Calculative thinking is not meditative
thinking, not thinking which meditates the
meaning which reigns in everything that is.
Martin Heidegger
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Martin Heidegger has shaken the foundations on
which the Occident builds.   Eugen Fink
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It is the office of Asia to take up the work of
human evolution when Europe comes to a standstill
and loses itself in a clash of vain speculations,
barren experiments and helpless struggles to
avoid the consequences of her own mistakes. Such
a time has now come in the worlds history.
  Sri Aurobindo
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the result will be no more Asiatic
modification of Western modernism, but some
great, new and original thing of the first
importance to the future of human
civilisation.   Sri Aurobindo
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For those now disenchanted with industrialization
and scientific materialism as well as
pseudo-spirituality, India's ancient spiritual
heritage provides a rich alternative. Eastern
philosophy, and the devotional heart of India's
Vedanta in particular, can fill the empty
shopping bag of our Western accomplishments.
Swami B.V. Tripurai
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It is no secret that we in the West live in a
time of spiritual crisis. Western civilization
has been guided by Christianity. Now it appears
that this period is drawing to a close. Both
religious institutions and social structures are
in disarray. A great many things that were
considered basic assumptions of western thought
are being challenged. Stephen Cross
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increasing numbers of Westerners in revolt
against what they have found to be the shallow,
gadget-dominated, spiritually empty civilization
of the West have turned to Hinduism in search of
greater meaning or purpose in life. There is no
doubt that the great Hindu tradition offers
profound spiritual insights, as well as
techniques for attaining self-realization,
detachment, and even ecstasy.. 
Beatric Pitney Lamb
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India indeed has a preciousness which a
materialistic age is in danger of missing. Some
day the fragrance of her thought will win the
hearts of men. This grim chase after our own
tails which marks the present age cannot continue
for ever. The future contains a new human urge
towards the real beauty and holiness of life.
When it comes India will be searched by loving
eyes and defended by knightly hands.  
W.J. Grant
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... a chapter which had a Western beginning will
have to have an Indian ending if it is not to end
in self-destruction of the human race. At this
supremely dangerous moment in human history, the
only way of salvation is the ancient Hindu way.
Here, we have the attitude and spirit that can
make it possible for the human race to grow
together into a single family.
Arnold Toynbee
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Must not there be a different way of grasping
things than the one which was launched by the
Greeks, a way that needs to be fashioned yet by
becoming aware of the implicit and unquestioned
foundations on which they are built? not an
alternate way which can be substituted for the
Greek, but rather a foundational way which can
provide the Greek and Western enterprise with the
foundation of a more primordial awareness and
thus break its appearance of absoluteness and
independence? J.L. Mehta
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Brahman is not conceptual knowledge of Being,
though wisdom about Being (SAT-VIDYA), or about
Brahman as Being, is part of it. Brahman is SAT
(Being), the ground of all that is, including my
own being which is of the nature of sheer, pure
CHIT (awareness, of which knowing is itself a
derivative mode) J.L.Mehta
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From the Rigveda to Aurobindo, the central
Indian tradition has made the choice in favour of
the primacy and priority of consciousness.   J.L.
Mehta
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the representation of private interests ...
abolishes all natural and spiritual distinctions
by enthroning in their stead the immoral,
irrational and soulless abstraction of a
particular material object and a particular
consciousness which is slavishly subordinated to
this object. Karl Marx
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A philosophically revived and refined Hinduism
can and should serve the noble and most necessary
purpose of resisting The New Atheism and the
Monotheism of Money that dominates todays
world - along with the unquestioned assumptions
of the purely technological science that is its
unquestioned religion. Only such a new Hinduism
can help bring an end to the rising ocean of
spiritual ignorance, ecological devastation,
economic inequality and global mayhem that go
with the blind worship of Technological science,
The Market and the God of the Abrahamic faiths
essentially nothing but a divinisation of the ego
and of limited ego-consciousness. Hinduism alone
can accomplish this world-transforming aim - not
through Jihad, violence or war but through the
supreme principle and innate power of Awareness
(Chit). Peter Wilberg
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• As Ghandi said An eye for an eye makes
  the whole world blind. That is one major
  reason why a new and truly global Hinduism, one
  freed of attachment to ethnicity, caste and
  gender discrimination, communalism - and the
  current encroachments of global capitalism and
  consumerism in its mother country is so much
  needed. Such a Hinduism would no longer be
  identical with India or the ethnic Hindu
  Diaspora from the Asian subcontinent. Yet it
  alone could offer the world an alternative to the
  world-destructive war that is raging between
• rampant secular materialism, consumerism and
  imperialism,
• its religious-political prop in the form of
  Judaeo-Christian Zio-Nazism, and
• reactionary feudalistic and fundamentalist
  Islamism.
• Peter Wilberg

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The New Yoga of Awareness is a new Hindu-Tantric
world-view which recognises that God is not a
Supreme Being with awareness - a type of divine
Superego. Instead God IS awareness that pure
awareness whose light is the divine Source of all
beings, yet also immanent within them as their
eternal and divine Self. Peter Wilberg
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• The Awareness Principle at the heart of Hindu
  Tantric theosophy
• - that there is and can be nothing outside
  awareness. - that awareness CHIT is everything
  and that everything in turn, is an awareness. -
  that awareness is not the private property of any
  being and that it cannot in principle - be the
  function or product of any thing or object we
  are aware of, including the human body or brain.
  - that awareness is the very condition for our
  experience of any self or universe, body or being
  whatsoever.
  - - that God is not a supreme being with
  awareness but IS awareness, an awareness absolute
  and unbounded by any being.
• Peter Wilberg