In this regard Hinduism has probably the best organized and most complete teachings of all religions and has addressed in detail all aspects of our existence, including those considered to be outside the domain of religion in other cultures. The literature of Hinduism in these different fields is both much older and much larger than that of any other religion. Hinduism is not organized as a belief or social institution but as a vast set of teachings that we are free to approach from our own angle.

Some people have wondered if Hinduism is a religion at all. They state that its very absence of organization and its non-seeking of converts disqualifies it from being a religion in the common sense of the word, and that it thereby fails to have a world view. They would see it just a collection of local cults from the Indian subcontinent, with every sort of primitive ritual and superstition that has long been discarded in the Western world.

On the other hand, Hinduism contains some of the world's most profound spiritual philosophies, like Vedanta, which have inspired many great Western thinkers including Thoreau, Emerson, Goethe, Schopenhauer, and a number of modern physicists. Hindu sages themselves have looked upon the West itself as spiritually primitive and lacking in any real experience of the Divine or higher states of consciousness, for which even terms are lacking in European languages.

Hinduism as a religion sees the validity of all aspects of human spiritual aspiration, from the use of simple images to the most exalted formless meditational approaches. Those who judge it by one side only reveal their own lack of comprehension. Hinduism is a multidimensional tradition that no form of linear thinking, whether scientific or theological can grasp.

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