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Euer Vedanta

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264 Semesters "Basic Study Course"

The Vedas
„Hinduism“, 4
th Part
HH Shri Satyanarayana Dasa Babaji Maharaja

Today I will speak on the basis, the scriptures on which Hinduism is founded. As you know, most of the World Religions have some scriptures, some book. That‘s what the word Bible actually means, it means „The Book“. In Hinduism we have what we call as the Vedas which is a body of knowledge. The word veda comes from the word vit which has got different meanings. It means: „that which makes you attain your goal“, „knowledge“, „love you achieve“ [? acoustically not clear].

The idea is that

We are human beings
and we have a very special faculty
which is unique to us.

And that is to acquire knowledge and be able to transmit it to others. Other living beings, animals, birds, aquatics, they also have some knowledge but it is very, very limited. On top of that they are unable to transmit it.

If you see the dogs
the way they are living now
and the way they are eating.

They were doing this also 5,000 years ago.

And you can predict that after another 5,000 years they will be doing the same thing. There is no progression. The only thing is that Darwin says that they can evolve into human beings. But within the dog species it remains the same. But as human beings, you know that we have changed so much. The way our forefathers lived, ate and arranged the society was much different than what we are doing. The amount of knowledge, the type of knowledge they had, it is different, right? There is change happening and the main reason for this is that we have an ability to transmit knowledge from one generation to another generation.

We can pass on knowledge.

Similarly, the Vedas were passed down and originally, they were given by God. This is the traditional belief. There are two beliefs about Indian scriptures - one is the traditional belief, another is the modern scholarly belief what the scholars say. At least scholars agree that

Rig-veda
is the oldest scripture of the world.

There is nothing older than that.

This everyone agrees upon. But there are different theories regarding when they came into existence. Some are saying 1,500 BC, some say 3,000 BC, some say 10,000 BC. Different types of theories have been put forward on the basis of language analysis, on the basis of some astronomical data which is available inside. They are trying to figure out: this has happened so many thousand years ago, so it must be around that period“. These are some of the processes by which they calculate the time. But traditionally, we belief that they were actually revelations from God directly to the first Creator who is called Brahma. And from that onwards, the knowledge came down by way of transmission. Therefore, Vedas are also called Shruti which means „which were heard“.

Originally
there was no tradition
of writing the Veda down.
You had to just hear it and then
commit to your memory.

You go to the Guru and he will teach you, you listen carefully and you repeat, then you just keep it in your head. Until long time it was never put down in book form. Therefore, it is difficult to say, really speaking, when they came into existence, because we don‘t know for how many centuries they were passed down like this. This tradition continued till recently. The first time the Vedas were printed was by Max Müller, before they were not printed. So that‘s the reason they are called Shruti and Veda because it is a body of knowledge.

There are many, many scriptures in India and they are primarily divided into two categories, one is called Shruti or the Veda and the other is called Smriti. Smriti literally means recollection, remembrance. Smritis were written down by sages who got the Vedas from Brahma, the first person who received it. Brahma had 10 sons who were sages and he taught it to them.

As humanity progressed, the Veda became divided.

There was a need for it because the Veda is actually quite complex to understand and there is a lot mention of prayers, rituals, yajnas, all these types of things. So on the basis of Veda, understanding the meaning and purpose behind it, the sages compiled books which are called Smritis so that a common person can understand what is to be done. That is how the Smritis came into existence - and they were also authoritative. But Veda was the supreme authority. If there was by chance any conflict between Smriti and Veda then Veda will take precidence. Although, there is very little chance that they will conflict with each other because the Smritis were written down on the basis of Veda. These are the two main divisions, and then we will speak what is inside the Smritis and what is inside the Veda. Veda originally was only one, but then it was divided into four in order to ease its understanding, because as humanity progressed and as time passed, the memory diminished.

We think
that we are better off than before
but actually, our
memory is much less
than what our forefathers had.

In India there are still people who have amazing memory, you will be just amazed on how much they have in their head.

There are people in India
who know everything by heart.
They can quote the whole
Mahabharata [200,000 verse lines],
Bhagavad Gita and the Puranas.

And they will tell you exactly „this chapter, this shloka“. You just wonder: „Is he having something behind his hand where he is looking at, or what is it? [Laughing in the audience].

So previously, people had amazing amounts of memory. But as time progressed, our capabilities decreased. This is Indian belief. The common belief is that we are going upwards, but according to Indian belief, we are going downwards.

The human capacity, intellectual abilities, memory, even physical strength, they have all diminished in due course of time.

When you read in the scriptures
descriptions of ancient human beings
they were like Superman.
They had many more powers, even physically.

Although the recent history may tell something different. According to Olympics, they are always breaking former records - so that may be true within a short span of time. But if you take a bigger time span, let‘s say 10,000 years or 50,000 years, then it is going down. At least in case of memory you can certainly know this. Nowadays you also don‘t need to memorize.

If you don‘t use it, you lose it!“

Previously, they were not having books, so naturally, they had to memorize the knowledge and therefore, their memory was good. Now you have everything on computer, you don‘t need to memorize, so you lose this ability. Science says that 95 % of our brain is not used, what we utilize for our daily dealings is maximum 5 % and the rest remains unused, at least that‘s what I read. So if according to Dawin‘s theory, this [great memory capacity] has evolved, then it must have been used once upon a time. Because nothing evolves uselessly, right? We must have used it. And now we are using less. This means, previously, people used more brain. I don‘t know what is the explanation from the viewpoint of neuroscience, but this is my guess that they have used it once upon a time because even according to Darwin‘s evolution, we evolve things, we develop new things because we need it, because the environment changed or whatever. And if something is not being used now, that means it was used before. Otherwise, why does it exist?

In any case, the Vedas are voluminous, they are very big. In fact, Indian scriptures are so big that if you drop everything else and just study, one lifetime is not enough to study them. You have to take a few births to go through everything. Somebody calculated

It will take 132 years
just to go through the Vedas.

That‘s a lot of time. Of course, this is not taking into account the various commentaries and commentaries on commentaries. The Vedas are four and they are called

Rig-veda

Yajur-veda

Sama-veda

Atharva-veda

Each Veda has got four divisions to it. Those divisions are called

Samhita

Brahmana

Aranyaka

Upanishad

There are four Samhitas and many Brahmanas, Aranyakas and Upanishads. This itself becomes quite voluminous. And this is not considering the commentaries. Everything in India has a commentary to it, because to understand the original is very difficult. And there are commentaries upon commentaries to explain it further. Yet this again shows that our capacity to understand has gone down. Originally, people would read and understand. Only later, it had to be explained to them.