On Sep 17, 2007, at 7:51 PM, emptybill wrote:
On Sep 16, 2007, at 11:51 PM, Bronte Baxter wrote: I think it dismisses way too much to reduce the gods to qualities of consciousness. In the sense that we are all just qualities of consciousness, I suppose you could say that's true. But in the practical sense, the gods are unique individuals, no different that way than a flesh-and-blood person. They simply exist on a dimension that is vibrating faster than this one and therefore not visible to the eye. In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj <[EMAIL PROTECTED]: Just glancing over it, it smells of TMO reductionism. It makes westerners feel more at ease or as if there is no form corresponding to the sound (of the bija) that they'd have to worry about. Emptybill says: So Vaj help me out. Are you simply saying that Bronte's explanation accords with Aurobindo and the TMO?
No, I'm pointing out the reformist movements of Aurobindo, et al, are not only parallels with the post-Shankara Vaishnavite revival where the merchant class, controlling translation of Shaivite texts attempted to obscure their origins and to connect the Shaivite gnosis to an imagined Vedic tradition, but they themselves (Aurobindo, Vivekanada, the TMO and others) are also similar to the Vaishnavite- inspired tendencies which occurred during the British colonial period to reduce the older Dravidian gnosis to something palatable for western prejudices. And again they tried to blend the earlier Dravidian teachings and tried to link them to some imagined "Vedic tradition". But truly there is little or nothing left of the Aryan Vedic tradition. Most of practical Hindu spirituality--including the Hindu sciences (Ayurveda, Vastu, etc.)--are all tantric in origin. Even the Bhagavad-gita is derived derived from the agamas.
Because saying it accords with Vaishnava explanations doesn't make sense to me.
Not Vaishnavism in the sense you're thinking, but Vaishnavism as the religion of the city and priests which seeks to co-opt the Pagan, ecstatic religions of the Shaivites and the Agamas, and reduce it to something acceptable to city dwellers. And today, acceptable to the west, primarily Judaeo-Christians.
Most of them are super-concretizers. However, saying that many Westerners attempt to find a diffuse, metaphoric way to explain deva-s is certainly true of the typical Western intellectualizing Buddhist and also of some "Hinduized Westerners".
Yes!
