Encounter with a Holy Man
When I was minister of the First Unitarian Church of Youngstown, nearly twenty-five years ago, a member of my congregation put me in contact with the Indian community of Cleveland. Every few years Cleveland Hindus sponsored a guru from India, who gave them a burst of spiritual renewal. My congregant wanted our Youngstown church to host a workshop featuring the current visiting guru—a practitioner—who practiced Kundilini Yoga.
I made arrangements by telephone with this guru to attend a Friday gathering in his honor at a private home and a Saturday presentation at the Youngstown church. It was winter. The first date was snowed out.
I remember being very anxious/insistent that the event should continue as scheduled. After all, it was winter and a snowstorm was a common Lake Erie Snow Belt event. On the Northeastern Ohio Snowstorm scale, it was only a "little" meteorological even. But the guru gave me my first experience with a certain fatalism said to characterize the Indian spirit. He wasn't anxious and asserted that it was "fate" that it was snowing. Rather than plow through, he simply wouldn't come. He said we would reschedule.
We did. Ellie and I arrived at the Friday evening party after he had arrived and most of the guests were drinking and eating and talking in small groups—a typical party. Mr. Kulkarni—he went by V.G. Kulkarni and refused to tell me what V. G. stood for - was sitting on a love seat. I was introduced to him face to face for the first time. Rather than stand, he beckoned me to sit down beside. And he held my hand, his fore and index finger touching my palm.
Neither before nor after have I held hands with a man for several minutes. I was uncomfortable. But immediately I felt heat—not warmth, but heat—radiating from his fingers to my palm. I assumed he was giving me energy, so I also felt privileged.
We talked some. Abruptly, he indicated a woman standing on the other side of the room and asked me to call her over. She was a good friend—one of the most intelligent persons I knew; she was remarkably uninhibited/assertive in most situations. I did what he asked. His first words to her were, "Does your tongue ever want to leap up into your nostrils?"
She was shocked into uncustomary silence—who wouldn't have been? After a dramatic pause he asked very matter-of-factly, "You can touch your tongue to your nose, can't you?" She was further shocked, because only one or two other persons knew that this was true.
He explained that a long, supple tongue was a signature of many rebirths and a soul advanced to the brink of enlightenment. What he'd meant by the tongue leaping up the nostrils, meant not the external nose but internal nostrils. Such a "tongue trick" was one of the exercises he taught as part of Kundlini, which he dramatized as "snake power."
Kundilini yoga use psychological meditations on the seven chakras, or spirit centers of the body. Mr. Kulkarni, in the subsequent workshop, visualized the process as a snake coiled at the base of the spine, which can shoot up the seven charkas and emerge from the lotus chakra at the top of the head—resulting in enlightenment. Those who are ready, such as my aforementioned friend with the long and limber tongue, might quickly accomplish enlightenment; but most must do work on their lower charkas, which, if not attended to will sabotage the process of meditation.
He told me that I was "living" in my throat chakra, on the fifth level, not bad, but I had work to do.
Mr. Kulkarni was small, stocky, very dark Aryan Indian. He was matter of the fact and ordinary. He was worldly, too. He owned a chemical factory that made dyes in southern India. But he also had his own English translation of the Hindu spiritual classic, the Bhagavad-Gita and gave me an autographed edition.
Mr. Kulkarni had remarkable perception and demonstrated powers. He is the "holiest" or most highly evolved religious person I've ever met. And though I never practiced Kundilini, I incorporated his teachings into my consciousness.
Hinduism and the West
Hinduism was one of the first world religions that impacted the Western Culture. It has had a continuing influence. Ralph Waldo Emerson imbibed of it and wrote a memorable poem titled "Brahma." Henry David Thoreau once said his mind had been shaped by two books: Mr. Emerson's Nature and the Bhagavad-Gita. Before there was New Age, there was Theosophy. Theosophy's founder Madame Blavatasky borrowed freely from esoteric Hinduism. Martin Luther King's non-resistance drew from Mohandas Gandhi's doctrine of satyagraha, which he found in the Bhagavad-Gita. Many of us have enduring images of "The Beatles" hanging out with the Maharishi.
Hinduism is arguably the most complex of the great world religions for a number of reasons:
- the age and breadth of Indian civilization;
- its organic nature—it was not founded by a single figure or a particular event, but grew out of pre-historic and historic sources;
- its syncretism—an easy assimilation of a range of practices and outlooks.
It's the latter that I want to look at in my quest to offer you a single spiritual truth that each of the great seven world religions offers. Hinduism's spiritual truth is Acceptance.
The Hindu Worldview
Indian psychology is practical—"commonsensical," which for me makes it particularly appealing. In a fashion, Hinduism is also an empirical religion, in the sense that many of its practices originated through processes of experience/experimentation that replicate from generation to generation and from person to person.
Hinduism ranges from the serene intellectualism of "pure" Vedic practice to the blatant sexual imagery of Tantric rituals.
The Hindu worldview pays particular attention to the observable human condition.
In estimating the human condition, first are the Twin Paths of Desire: the conjoined path of pleasure and the path of worldly success. We can say "yes" to this, can't we, from our vantage? Our American culture is consumed with feeling and looking good, with power and the privilege that power brings, with the accomplishments and the trappings of success. (A bumper sticker of recent of recent years summed this up: "The winner is the one with the most toys at the end.")
However, it seems to be a psychological reality that pleasures, things, and successes lose their allure. They poison themselves, within the context of a progressing human life. For instance, have you ever yearned/lusted after something, that when you acquired, it loses its luster, so you shake you head with amazement at why you wanted it in the first place?
Interestingly, Hinduism recommends that you go with your desires; to indulge yourself within conventional moral limits, of course; but indulge yourself nevertheless. Hinduism trusts that such indulgences will prove themselves essentially empty desires.
The Twin Paths of Desire eventually lead to a realization of what really matters:
- personal being, or being alive;
- awareness or knowledge;
- genuine joy—the antithesis of frustration, futility, boredom.
These qualities we not only want, we want without limits and without bounds. What we really want we want infinitely.
The Path of Renunciation, which is also the path of Liberation and ultimate fulfillment, is a growing away from the twin paths of desire, toward the qualities that we want infinitely.
In a complex cosmology Hinduism asserts that the spiritual essence Brahma (God) permeates the natural world, but curiously the natural world is something of illusion (maya) as well as the result of God's play (lila). The divine in the human—atman (soul)—yearns for connection in Infinite Being or Brahma, which is achieved through enlightenment and also escape from the wheel of cause and effect. The notion of karma, that actions have effect, results in a notion of transmigration of souls from one life to another, the station of birth depending on the deeds done in a previous existence.
Hindu cosmology works in concert with what I'm calling a natural, common sense psychology. In the Hindu scheme, a typical human life passes through four predictable stages that relate to age:
- the student of the first quarter of life has the task of acquiring knowledge and skills under a mentor, while choosing a particular life path;
- the early adult years are those of the householder, who establishes a family, has a career, tastes the pleasures and pursues the accomplishments of career and society;
- when desires and successes lose their allure and luster, this signals the onset of retirement, which relates to the path of renunciation; one grows increasingly reflective, in the allegorical sense, retreating to the forest;
- ultimately and ideally, when one has divested desire, one becomes unattached and may roam the world without desire—a sannyasin or wandering beggar.
To this template of the typical human lifespan, Hinduism adds the dynamic of personality. Each of us has a particular, innate orientation to the world. So Hinduism offers a variety of spiritual paths, or yogas, to suit categories of personality: reflective, active, emotional, and experimental. Jnana yoga follows the path of the intellect. Karma yoga follows the path of work or activity. Bhakti yoga follows the path of love—devotion to a god or gods. Raja yoga follows the path of psychological experiment. (Kundilini is a form of raja yoga.) Most of you are familiar with the plethora of gods within Hinduism. Even the "big" God has various aspects: Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Sustainer, Shiva the Destroyer. But there are plenty of other deities, many whose origins can be traced to prehistoric Indian practices. My favorite such god is the elephant headed male god, Ganesh. (If you ever have a chance to visit the Hindu temple in Lemont, experience the niches of the various gods venerated by Chicagoland Hindus. Watch the priests attend to this god and that god as part of their daily rituals.)
The Hindu Spectrum of Acceptance
So Hinduism accepts many gods, the progressive tasks of a progressing life, and varying personalities. It even has a liberal acceptance of other religions as valid paths for other peoples and cultures. This ideal has now and again been manifested in certain great religious leaders such as Ramakrishna or Gandhi. Such enlightened Indian personalities recognized that each faith had a contribution to make to the other faiths. They affirmed that religious diversity is a richness. All of this adds up to the spiritual truth of Acceptance.
The rewards of Acceptance are readily seen:
First, there is Acceptance of the human condition that leads on the most intimate level to the Acceptance of Self. Hinduism recommends that desires should be accommodated when appropriate in a life. For example, my acquaintance, Mr. Kulkarni, was told by his own guru to get married and satisfy his big sexual appetite, otherwise an unfulfilled sexuality would continually drag him down from any spiritual advancement he might make. In a larger view, atman or the soul's identity with Brahma or God will eventually prevail. Hinduism has an implicit trust in the natural processes and progressions. And there is also Acceptance of varying personalities, so though you may not be like me and our paths may be different, our paths lead to the same destination. This adds up to an easy and natural optimism in the human condition, where differences are not a matter of shame or blame, nor is there a hierarchy of one way better to other ways.
What I alluded to in my opening anecdote, a certain fatalism, also relates to Acceptance. In this view things are what they are. Circumstances will unfold as circumstances will unfold. Fatalism in this regard isn't resignation, but its more Acceptance of what can't be changed. There's an art to discerning what can and what can't be changed, an art that results in a certain equanimity that we of the obsessive and driven West, sometimes miss. (The value of such acceptance is implicit in A.A.'s familiar "Serenity Prayer," composed by Reinhold Neibhur in the 1930s: "God grant me the serenity to accept what I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.")
And finally, Acceptance is a spiritual outlook that has particular value in our New Globalism—the situation in which advancing technologies have figuratively made the world smaller, the situation in which culture rubs against culture, including the rubbing of religions. (The current, so-called "war on terrorism is not just about economics and politics, oil and geography; to a significant degree it's about religious conflicts between Islam on one side and Judaism and Christianity on the other side.) Without discounting the fanaticism that has pocked India's history, India has also been a model for diverse religions sharing the same nation: Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Parsee, and Christians. At the very least, a few of India's great religious figures who have promoted more than mere acceptance. They have extolled the counsel and cross-fertilization that can take place among religions.
The world will continue to be made up of contending faiths. While I would argue that Acceptance is a spiritual truth that all religions should embody, I'm willing to settle for an Acceptance that exists for more practical reasons: lack of conflict and even survival.
Of all essential truths I identify from the seven great world religions, Hinduism's Acceptance may well be the most pertinent and practical in context of the New Globalism.
