*EBI = Essential Background Information
Children are smart. Even as infants. Their only method of bringing meaning to their experience is to add meaning to various sounds coming from their parent’s mouths. As the child develops their vocabulary grows, and with it their ability to understand their world. Speaking to them puts their brain to work associating sounds with things, and this education never stops. The degree of how much parents talk with babies is found to be later linked to their IQ in adolescence. We could even say that education is mostly a matter of increasing the words in our vocabulary and associating those words with their concepts.
Words are thus the building blocks of our reality. More words = greater ability to understand. Fewer words = reduced ability to understand.
However, even if we know many, or even most, of the words in our language, there is a great difference of words, along with their associated meanings, between languages. This is why parents often want their children to learn a foreign language – to broaden their understanding of the world from both an informational and cultural point of view.
In that regard Sanskrit is unique in that it is a spiritual language having words with associated meanings and concepts having no direct equivalent in Western languages. However, many Sanskrit words have worked their way into the Western lexicon due to the cultural crossover of the 60s when so many Indian Swamis came to inspire America’s disgruntled youth.
Guru is one that most people know, although its original meaning of a self-realized spiritual teacher has been transmogrified into someone who is an expert in a particular subject matter.
Yoga is another well-known word due to the popularity of one specific aspect of astanga-yoga practice: hatha yoga.
Karma is another that almost everyone has heard, although it is safe to say that few actually fully understand (or accept) its meaning, for if they did this would be a much nicer world.
And there are many, many more, such as: Bhagavan, jiva, atma, gunas, shyaktavesh, samsara, kala, murti, brahman, tamas, brahmana, surya, prasad, lila, rasa, yuga, astra, shastra, siddhanta, siksha, diksha, avatar, ashrama, kulam, veda, darshhan, kali, etc.
Sanskrit is the language of the Vedas, the greatest body of spiritual literature on the planet, which includes the Rig, Atharva, Yajur, and Sama Vedas, the 18 Puranas, Itihasas, 108 Upanisads, Mahabharata, Ramayana, Bhagavad-gita, Vedanta-sutra, and more.
There are many living spiritual traditions in India that have been practiced for millennia, who hold a very concrete understanding of history, considered pre-history by modern scholars, in that it goes back far, far beyond the last 5,000 years of their study, to the very beginning of the creation of this world.
Taken together, Sanskrit words form an entire spiritual worldview that is entirely different from, and more insightful than, the atheistic, materialistic worldview taught to youth in schools all over the world. The perspective provided by this spiritual worldview allows for a very different way of analyzing and thus understanding this world. This difference is significant as it provides the vantage point that Einstein said is needed to solve problems.
The Vedic Worldview
I submit that the spiritual worldview of the Vedas provides the vantage point needed to fully understand and solve all of today’s seemingly intractable problems – specifically, the questions about how to live, and the purpose of life. The Vedic worldview is one I have studied for 50 years, and will be the basis for everything that I will be writing here about How Then, Shall We Live?
Here’s the summary version of the Vedic worldview that will be expanded on in future posts:
1. God is a person and is the source of the creation of the material and spiritual worlds. He is the cause of all causes, and the maintainer of all living beings.
2. The Lord has many different, and inconceivable, energies and potencies.
3. We are not the body we presently occupy – that is, not male or female, but are eternal living beings of conscious spiritual energy, in Sanskrit called the jiva or atma. As expansions of the Lord we are of the same spiritual energy as He, and thus we have the same personal qualities such as happiness, likes/dislikes, desires, love, etc. Whereas He possesses unlimited potency, our potency is minute in quantity.
4. There exist two worlds – the perfected spiritual world and this present material world – and we have the choice to live in either. The material world allows the living being complete freedom to do whatsoever they please by the agency of free will. But our desires and actions are subject to the law of karma, causing us to rotate through an unlimited number of lives.
5. While in the material world we may occupy, or live in, any of 8.4 million species of life – a tree, insect, animal, aquatic, bird, human, etc. The atma takes a material body as a suitable vehicle with which to fulfill its desires.
6. Human beings are under the influence of Maya, or the illusory energy, a necessary condition for them to feel that they are enjoying their experience in the material energy and fulfilling their desires.
7. Human life offers us developed intelligence by which we can become free from Maya, realize our spiritual nature and free ourselves from samsara, or repeated birth and death.
8. Freedom from the endless cycle of birth and death is achieved through spiritual perfection, by which we become eligible to enter the spiritual world for an eternal life of supreme joy, or bliss.
9. The material world functions on the basis of stringent laws, being ignorant of which, we create needless suffering for ourselves.
10. The process of spiritual education is first: to understand who we are as spiritual beings; second: to learn how this world works and how to navigate it successfully; third: to learn the science of God and how to enter into a personal relationship with Him; and fourth: to understand how to properly act in that relationship, and by doing so, gradually elevate ourselves to spiritual perfection and achieve love of God.
Of course there are many, many more details, but this is not beyond the ability of any willing person to grasp and apply.
The Vedic worldview is the operating manual for this material world. At present, with very few exceptions, everyone in this world is struggling in the darkness of ignorance, which manifests as so much illusion, struggle and suffering. Understanding how this world works as a combination of both matter and spirit, and the laws by which this world functions, gives us the understanding we need to establish a society and culture that serves both our material and spiritual needs. That is the intention of this blog.
Rest assured, there is a better way to live.
While researching for this article I found and took a vocabulary test, and I nailed it! Here’s the link if you want to have a go at it.