The Mahabharata says that no sacrifice (Yagna) was existing in Satyayuga
(The age of the Sindhu civilization).
The elite of society accepted Yoga as the most important
philosophy and practice of life. Yoga,
Samkhya and Lokayat were considered so important in society that Kautilya in
his book Arthasastra called them the light of all systems of knowledge
(Sastras) and the only ideal way to deal with all activities. He asserted that
Aanwikshiki (Yoga, Samkhya and Lokayat) was the store house of the core
material of all Dharmas (religions).
Aanwikshiki was a perfectly rational system of knowledge. Kautilya does not give a high place to the
Vedas which he calls TRAYI. Aanwikshiki was the guiding
system of the Sindhu civilization.
Aanwikshikians occupied the highest seat of honour in the Sindhu
civilization. Aanwikshikians came from
all tribes. Any one could become a Yogi. Charvak
talked with the Pandavas as a representative of a respectable group of Brahmins
who did not accept gifts (Santiparva). Lokayatikas
practice Yoga and also may come from low caste people (Lokayata by D. P.
Chattopadhya, Indian council of philosophical research, New Delhi).
Non-violence was accepted as the main value by all
Aanwikshikians. Only women could have
discovered such philosophies. No hunter
society would have accepted non violence as the supreme value of life.
R. Rajgopalan writes
in his book, ‘Indus Valley’, ‘How was this vast and complex
civilization managed? The earlier view was that there was a strong central
authority like a ruler. Only then could
they have had the common features we see. Public buildings like the granaries
and the Great Bath also supported this view.
It was also felt that different social classes must have existed for
maintaining the whole system. Skeletal
biology contradicts this view. If social
classes had existed, then some people would have had better food and hence
better growth. This would be shown in
their teeth and bones. Now 350 skeletons
from five major sites do not show any significant difference! There are also no
royal tombs. It is possible that the
Indus Civilization was maintained at an advanced level without social classes,
central authority and warfare! If we can prove this, the Indus Civilization
would be shown to have been a truly exceptional one – unmatched even by today’s
democracies and republics!’
The Mahabharata proves concretely that such a classless,
casteless and war –free society existed in the Indus valley. This society was evidently a socialist
society.
Yoga was the greatest discovery of the Indian scientists of
the pre-Vedic period. Pre-Vedic Yoga
does not accept miracles and mysticism.
Yoga should be subjected to all the tests of modern science and only
those parts which pass the tests can be accepted. Human mind can be changed
through Yoga. We can not build a
socialist society with the present decadent mind possessed by the elite
(particularly the rulers) through out the world. Eminent scientists interacted
with the Dalai Lama and were surprised to find fully controlled noble minds
among the Tibetan Yogis. Lamaism in Tibet got contaminated by the non
scientific Tantra and the theory of rebirth. Still its Yoga system retains its original
vigour. How this system was tested in
the laboratory makes interesting reading.
We can hope for a better future for humanity if our elite accept this
God-free Yoga system which abhors miracles and mysticism. The Buddha’s mind was
a gift of the Yoga system.
Below are given the results of some tests of the Yoga system
by the scientists in the laboratory.
The Neuroanatomy of compassion
While the fMRI findings were quite preliminary, the EEG
analysis had already borne rich fruit in the comparison between Oser (a Lama
Yogi) at rest and while meditating on compassion. Most striking was a dramatic
increase in key electrical activity known as gamma in the left middle frontal
gyrus, a zone of the brain Davidson’s previous research had pinpointed as a
locus for positive emotions. In research
with close to two hundred people, Davidson’s lab had found that when people
have high levels of such brain activity in that specific site of the left
prefrontal cortex, they simultaneously report feelings such as happiness,
enthusiasm, joy, high energy, and alertness……… …………………………………
In short, Oser’s brain shift during compassion (Yoga) seemed
to reflect an extremely pleasant mood.
The very act of concerns for others well-being, it seems, creates a
greater state of well-being within oneself.
The finding lends scientific support to an observation often made by the
Dalai Lama: that the person doing a meditation on compassion for all beings is
the immediate beneficiary. (Among other
benefits of cultivating compassion, as described in classic Buddhist texts, are being loved by
people and animals, having a serene mind, sleeping and walking peacefully, and
having pleasant dreams)…………
Like all reflexes, the startle reflects activity of the
brain stem and is the most primitive, reptilian part of the brain. Like other brain stem responses- and unlike
those of the autonomic nervous system, such as a rate at which the heart
beats-the startle reflex lies beyond the range of voluntary regulation. So far as brain science understands, the
mechanisms that control the startle reflex cannot be modified by any
intentional act. ……………….
(Paul Ekman is professor of psychology and director of the
Human Interaction Laboratory at the University Of California Medical School in
San in San Francisco).
Paul Ekman explained to the Dalai Lama. “When Oser tries to suppress the startle, it
almost disappeared. We’ve never found
anyone who can do that. Nor have any
other researchers. This is a spectacular
accomplishment. We don’t have any idea
of the anatomy that would allow him to suppress the startle reflex.”
(DESTRUCTIVE EMOTIONS AND HOW WE CAN OVERCOME THEM by Daniel
Goleman. Daniel Goleman is
co-chair of the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in the
Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers University).
To repeat, the Buddha’s mind was not a gift of nature. By practicing Yoga he built the best known
mind of the ancient world. Bertrand Russell had a life long struggle to
discover whether human values were subjective or objective. Yogis were the only people in the world who
discovered that human values were fixed by nature on the pleasure principle (SUKHA)
not of the limbic brain (the animal
brain), but of the pre-frontal cortex. Freud‘s psychology was about the limbic
brain only. Except the Yogis, no scientist or psychologist has applied nature’s
pleasure principle to the pre-frontal cortex.
To quote DHAMMAPADA by the Buddha:-
i.
Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all
mind-wrought. If with an impure mind a
person speaks or acts, suffering follows him like the wheel that follows the
foot of the ox.
ii.
Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all
mind-wrought. If with a pure mind a
person speaks or acts, happiness follows him like his never-departing shadow.
In the book ENLIGHTENMENT: East and West Paulos Mar
Gregorios, president of the world
council of churches wrote, ‘Draw portraits of a tight-lipped Voltaire, of a
morose and intensely self-preoccupied
Kant or Schopenhauer, of a Locke or a Hume, a Kier-kegaard or a Wittgenstein, a
Nietzsche, a Diderot, a Sartre. Keep
these portraits on one side. Draw
portraits of Buddha, Asvaghosa, Nagarjuna, Dharmakirti, Chandrakirti, Dignaga,
Vachaspati Misra, Sridhara and keep them on the other side……….’
‘Ben-Ami Scharfstein, an Israeli philosopher at Tel-Aviv
University, has done us a singular favour by trying to relate the thought of
many of the Western philosophers to their personal lives. The picture that emerges is indeed
fascinating. I cite a sample passage
from the book:
‘Therefore, when I think of the atomism of Hume, James,
Russell and Wittgenstein, I conclude that it must have been their inward
experience that made them receptive to the atomic disintegration of the
self. To Russell, body and mind were
only logical constructions, and the whole person only ‘relations of the
thoughts to each other and to the body.’
…Hume, James, Russell and Wittgenstein underwent deep
depressions, and all were tempted by suicide…..
As we follow Professor Scharfstein on a guided tour of the
personal lives of the major Western philosophers, relating their
life-experiences to their philosophical positions, one is impressed by the fact
that very few of them had attained anything like the personal integration that
we associate with our great Indian philosophers’.
Can we prevent climate change without observing the Yogic value
of APARIGRAHA
(minimize your wants to the greatest extent possible) or establish a socialist
society without accepting the Yogic value of ASTEYA (the principle of
looking after others’ welfare before thinking of one’s own welfare)? Can we save the animal world (read the
chapter DEEP ECOLOGY from the book the web of life written by FRITJOF
CAPRA) without accepting the Yogic value of ‘non-violence’? Can we save
the world from wars of nations and angry communities if the Yogic values of
Maitri and Karuna (Compassion) are not taken into consideration? To quote the Buddha :
Dhammapada (4) “He abused me, he struck me, be
overpowered me, he robbed me.” Those who
do not harbor such thoughts still their hatred.
Dhammapada (5). “Hatred is never appeased by
hatred in this world. By non-hatred
alone is hatred appeased. This is a Law
eternal.’
Gandhi made these principles practical for large communities
fighting for justice. Ambedkar was
guided by Buddha’s teachings and fought
against the age old injustice done to a big disadvantaged community (Dalits in
India). The Buddha was the only
religious preacher in the world who stressed ‘rationality’ and the
scientific principle of fallibility rather than ‘belief’
in the field of religion. His mission
was to place religion on the same pedestal as science. Unfortunately the Buddhists the world over
made the Buddha a God and violated his teachings. The belief – stressing religions like
Hinduism, Christianity, Islam and the Sikh religions have become war
fields. So world thinkers like
Einstein and Russell have lost their
faith in all religions.
The Buddha and Mohabira’s age in India was the twilight
period of the philosophy of the Sindhu civilization. Both the Buddha and
Mohabira were inheritors of the patriarchal legacy of the past Vedic age. Fortunately they retained many matricentric
values of the past. Among these values
nonviolence, Aparigraha, Maitri and Koruna (compassion) were the principal
ones. In the fifth and sixth centuries these values lost their importance. Might became right and even females were
worshipped in the form of warriors. To day, all religions have lost their
humanist outlook. The feudal value of
loyalty (Bhakti) replacing the principle of Maitri for all living
beings, the priests’ embracing of extravagant rituals based on the trader’s
values of conspicuous consumption in the name of the deity, the superstitious
fanatic attachment to obscure litanies, Mantras, miracles and mysticism, the
Indulgence in demonized violence and ruthless imperial exploitation, the making
of women into male slaves: all combine
to create a religious hell for humanity.
Religion is not the only opium for humanity. Every predatory institution mentioned by Thorstein
Veblen and also by C. Wright Mills, a
product of the male brain, bolstered by patriarchal values, is like opium.
Feudal and capitalism-fostered values rule societies through decadent cultures. Human brain develops neural mechanisms
consonant with these devastating cultures.
Insanity of large groups of people is the result. The US spends 54% of its annual budget for
maintaining its war machines. All
ideologies of angry people favouring violent revolutions fail because human
brain accustomed to constant violence develops neural mechanisms that make the
revolutionaries unfit for democratic socialism.
Arrian a Greek scholar, wrote, ‘Megasthenes described seven
categories of Indian castes. The first one is that of “the Sophists’… who are not
so numerous as the others, but hold the supreme place of dignity and honour-
for they are under no necessity of doing any bodily labour at all, or of
contributing from the produce of their labour anything to the common stock, nor
indeed is any duty binding on them except to perform the sacrifices offered to
the gods on behalf of the state.. To this class the knowledge of divination
among the Indians is exclusively restricted and none but a sophist is allowed
to practice that art…. These sages go naked, living during the winter in the
open air to enjoy the sunshine… They live upon the fruits which each season produces
and on the barks of trees…..’ (Scholars tell us that fear of death by Indra
forced them to accept sacrifice as a ritual, otherwise Yoga was the only value
they cherished).
CASTE: The
Emergence of the South Asian Social System by Morton Klass.
(To be
continued in Evolutionary (Science-Directed) Socialism: Part-VI)
Bhagwat
Prasad Rath,
3rd Line, Roith Colony,
At/PO/Dist. – Rayagada –2
PIN- 765002, Odisha.
Phone No. 06856-235092
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