SPIRITUALITY AND PHILOSOPHY

I am inspired (and pained) to find a theory which could explain the asymmetry and injustice in the world. Not only do I want a theoretical model to explain it, but I want the model to be actually correct (i hope you see the difference). I think I have found such a model in the philosophy of Karma and Advaita. I don't know whether it is correct! I am testing its predictive power and corollaries in the real world setting, I will be better informed 5 to 10 years hence, whether the theories actually work. This page is dedicated to let others know about these theories and see if it works/already worked for them.

A few people who have inspired me tremendously: Krishna, Vivekananda, Sri Ramakrishna and Subhas Chandra Bose

I am a spiritually inclined person and believe in the Advaita Philosophy. I am greatly influenced by the personality of Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekanand. My ishta deva is Krishna, who I believe showed a perfect reconciliation between all philosophies. Gita, the biography of Sri Ramakrishna (By Richard Schiffman), Lectures of Vivekanand are some of the best books I have read.

I respect all religions and happen to believe that any religion followed honestly leads to the same result. HONESTY is the greatest religion.

When I organized an informal course on Hinduism at my graduate school during January 2006, I was forced to put my mind-map of the Hindu philosophy into an orderly fashion into slides. The ideas expressed in these slides have shaped up from the time I was in class eighth and first started reading, practicing and experiencing the philosophy. My views developed, changed, matured over all these years and are still in a state of flux! The claim of these slides is not the true theory of World, but one of the most appealing possibilities which explains it all...

Read through these slides to get a vision of the rational theory which forms the substratum of Hinduism. Slides from Session III goes back to the fundamental question as to how 'I' put this philosophy in life.

To go through the other sessions, please refer http://scripts.mit.edu/~varun_ag/hinduism/ (Note: I don't subscribe/unsubscribe to views expressed herein by other speakers)

Though I am clear about my views and my interpretation on Hinduism and the advaita philosophy, I have not been able to write my views in an ordered way. Underneath, I have compiled some articles I wrote while participating in discussions. Two things in this regard:

The following article was written in reply to a mail, where a person was trying to prove spiritual studies as illogical and aimless. It establishes the equivalence of spirituality to experminental sciences.

As in case of experimental sciences, things are proved by experiments, so are they in spiritual sciences. The validity of the experiment is only accepted, if it can be repeatedly done at different places and time and it gives the same result. Therefore taking a simple example, Newton's laws are proved experimentally and we rightly accept them. But, in case I ask someone to get those results practically and demonstrate its success, it would take a lot of work and energy. To set ideal conditions for the law to work (in limits of experimental error) practically and give right results will require tremendous amount of work, infact it will be virtually impossible to prove them again in absence of a lab and the extra sensitive apparatus it needs. But we still believe in it. WHY? (On the contrary, an amatuer on not getting the right result with his experiments may deny the law. But that is verily his own fault.) In exactly the same way, all the people in this group though know the law, are busy trying to fix up the apparatus, trying to set up the right conditions for the experiment to work, we all want to see God, we are not here for some intellectual debate, but we know we have been not able to set up the experimental conditions to do the same, like being
egoless, independent of desires, etc.

Therefore we have a theory at hand, which is logically convincing to us, it seems to give us the answer to our doubts about I, the universe and God. Intellectually it seems very correct. It being logical and convincing, and having at hand experiences of people who have proved these results, we tend to move in the same direction and see God.

Now for some hard talking. I don't understand, why people want to jump in case of spirituality, they don't treat it like any other science. Being a engineering student, when I start on a topic, I read all the previous work done on it and then go forth with application or further research, same is necessary for religion. There is no blind faith in it, but study, experimentation, further results or agreement with the past results. There is no need of any jumping and asking abstract questions in the beginning, there is no need to reinvent the wheel everytime, try to see how the previous theories have been, are they logically satisfactory, do they have some experimental results and what is the scope further. All I can say is to the common man, give spirituality a break, it is very much logical and scientific.

Article on the relevance of religion and why it is dimishing in the present generation	Article on the relevance of karmic theory in context of the advaita philosophy
Article on the philosophy followed by Sri Ramakrishna	Article on the logic behind spiritual studies