| Awaken Bharata |
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| Books By David Frawley |
| THE HINDU RENAISSANCE AT A TURNING POINT | |
| However,
it is not the purpose of this article to praise this spiritual
renaissance for its great accomplishments but to analyze its
limitations and try to determine what it needs to do in order to go
forward. In doing so what I say may appear critical of certain
teachings and teachers that some readers may hold in high regard. I
ask them to keep an open mind. The fact of the matter is that in
spite of all that the Hindu renaissance gained it was not able to
awaken India to its real spiritual heritage.
The intelligentsia and the government of the country, though having some sympathy for these great teachers, moved in a different and ultimately hostile direction, away from Hindu Dharma, in fact ultimately away from Dharma altogether. Modern India followed the socialist West and took upon itself a Western intellectual ethos, leading to the diminution, if not denial of its great spiritual teachers past and present. It did not try to follow the Hindu renaissance, much less develop it further, but to leave it behind or to turn it into something else, something non-Hindu or simply a general spiritual or humanistic concern not linked to any specific tradition. There must have been something in the Hindu renaissance that allowed this to occur and requires correction for it to develop further. The Western Yoga movement too, though drawing its impetus from the teachers of the Hindu renaissance, similarly has been moving away not only from Hinduism but from Vedanta, which has become a term that most Western Yoga students cannot define. The wealth of Hindu Dharma remains largely unknown to them and they have seldom been given any key to penetrate into it and gain a cultural support to their spiritual efforts. Their Yoga as become progressively more physical, having little of renunciation, asceticism or spiritual aspiration to it. |
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