pro-technologists;
Husseinite Muslims;
New Christendom;
the Ramakrishian Eclectics whose Kali-worshipping branch includes Americans.
Why should Americans worship Kali? Why should they worship Christ? Religions have spread across the world from ancient times.
Human beings:
have experiences;
derive beliefs from experiences;
interpret experiences in the light of beliefs;
project experiences from beliefs, e.g., visions ("I see Lord Krishna and I weep.")
Religious experience is numinous (an awesome presence), mystical (inner oneness) or visionary (culturally conditioned).
Kali-worship will spread to the US only in unusual conditions but that is what Poul Anderson imagines.
17 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
There should be no Kali worship at all. Not only because does not exist, but also because the devotees of Kali practiced thuggee, murdering people as a religious rite. Fortunately, the British Raj stamped it out.
Extreme circumstances can bring back old horrors. In Stirling's THE PESHAWAR LANCERS worshipers of the Peacock Angel and Kali practiced human sacrifices and cannibalism as religious rites. Because many people had fallen into despair after catastrophic asteroids struck the Earth in that alternative 1870's. They concluded the true "God" was Satan or Kali.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Ritual murder was an obvious abomination. Goddess-worship as such is unobjectionable. I prefer the male god, Vishnu, but I regard all of them as mythological and metaphorical, not metaphysical. My meditation practice does not refer to deities although, again, they are part of Buddhist mythology.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
That is where we disagree. Because I take God and even "gods" seriously, with the latter being errors. I believe the true God revealed Himself to mankind thru Abraham, Moses, the Prophets, the Sages of Israel, culminating with the Incarnation of God Himself as man in Christ.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: the traditional Christian approach was that pagan deities actually existed, but were evil demons.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I know, but I think there were other early Christians who did not believe the pagan "gods" existed at all, not even as evil fallen angels.+
Ad astra! Sean
I'll come back on this at length, maybe tomoz.
I take gods very seriously. Without them, we would not exist. I mean as the people we are, not just as physical organisms. Gods are an important part of our imagination and, without imagination, we would not be human beings. Without Zeus, Thor, Sherlock Holmes etc but with different pantheons and fictional characters, we would be human beings but very different ones. We and our gods are interdependent.
A god is imagined by millions, is presented in statues, pictures, dance, songs, stories and scriptures. Some people vividly imagine him. Krishna's speech at Kuruksetra matters. This is not falsehood but "higher fiction" (Alan Moore). It is part of us.
"I will proclaim the manly deeds of Indra."
"Indra, Agni and Vayu were first among the gods because they first saw Brahman, the Spirit Supreme. 'Who is that being that fills us with wonder?' they asked."
"The gods are My million faces."
To the sun: "That spirit far away within thee is my own inmost spirit."
Inspiring. More later.
Today has been entirely Music Festival.
Kaor, Paul!
I agree with your first paragraph but not the rest of what you wrote. Moreover, I think some pagans were coming close to being monotheists, groping to find the true God. One example being the Amon hymns of XIX Dynasty Egypt, with their exalted, nearly monotheistic conception of Amon.
Ad astra! Sean
Some pagans becoming monotheists. Of course true. More soon.
Sean,
Since you regard monotheism as truer than monism, note that Vaishnavism, in which Krishna is an avatar of Vishnu, and Krishnaism, in which Krishna is the supreme God, are two forms of monotheism.
The supreme God is either the ultimate reality or a personification of that reality. Philosophical Hindus are tolerant of either view although there are intolerant monotheists, I think reacting to Christianity.
Hindus can incorporate the Buddha and Christ as avatars.
"Truth is one. Sages call it by different names."
"There is a light that shines above all things on Earth, above the heavens, above the highest, the very highest, heavens. This is the light that shines in our hearts."
"He is far and he is near. Standing still, he overtakes those who run."
"As a man standing on a rocky eminence seeth those who are beneath him and in distress, so the sage who, by his wakefulness, hath put to flight his ignorance, looketh down upon suffering humanity." (Dhammapadha (Buddhist))
Paul.
"The truth is hidden behind a disc of gold. Unveil it, o god of light, that I who love the true may see."
"That god who sees in highest heave, he alone knows. Or perhaps he knows not."
"How can the knower be known?"
The Music Festival took place in every public space, indoor and outdoor: churches, pubs, historical buildings, restaurants, city squares and a converted warehouse. The people were one for half a week.
I see monotheism as a step towards monism. If I am wrong, then God understand that seekers of truth have different understandings.
A Jesuit priest creatively suggested that Christians can see Indian gods as the man on the road to Emmaus.
Kaor, Paul!
And there are many points I disagree with, in your comments above.
Monotheism is not merely truer, it is true. Some of those Hindus were right, there is only one God, and that God is a real Person, not a mere manifestation of "reality."
My vague recollection was that some Hindus, after making contact with Christians, either Syro-Malabar Orthodox or Catholic missionaries, were embarassed by the crude, childish polytheism of Hinduism, and reacted against it.
I absolutely reject any notion of "incorporating" Our Lord into Buddhism or Hinduism. Christians cannot agree to any compromising of divine revelation or any kind of syncretism, morphing together different religions.
No, truth was definitively and gradually revealed by God thru Abraham, Moses, the Prophets and Sages of Israel, culminating with the Incarnation of Christ. Philosophers like Buddha might have some fragments of truth, but no more than that.
And God unveiled Himself to mankind thru His Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I am an impersonalist on philosophical grounds. The creator before the creation would be a self without other which is like a square without sides. I do not accept historical evidence for the Resurrection or the idea of a blood sacrifice. However, my main purpose was to express a point of view, not to win converts to it.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
More matters we are going to have to agree to disagree about.
Ad astra! Sean
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