Dear friends!
May we share with you this message from D. Raja Ganesan to Arran Stibbe:

Dear Arran

Greetings from India. I am grateful in the first instance to Dr. Lindner for introducing me to your 'Dignity Beyond the Human World Project'. I read the writeup on your page. It reminded me about a note on a book Professor Jeffrey Moussaieuf Masson, an Sanskrit professor-turned-psychoanalyst-turned a scholar-at-large is said to have written about whether elephants experience the kind of emotions we do, during the late nineties.

The ancient Indian attitude is one of reverence to the whole universe. It is not, however, a pagan animism. Pagan animism is worshipping everything in its original subhuman form. The ancient Indian attitude of reverence to everything goes beyond name and form to the ultimate stuff of the universe. It is in recognition of the spirit that pervades everything. It is founded on the firm belief that everything -- as it is expressed in the Bagavad Gita, the Bible of Hinduism -- plants, animals, men and kings and rivers and mountains -- are one and divine. The philosophy of Advaita Vedanta underlies the attitude and belief.

You are working in an area spearheading an attitude which -- if my perception is right -- goes against the very grain of contemporary humanism. Wish you wholeheartedly all success because I endorse the attitude that everything, not just human beings alone, deserve, not mere dignity, but reverence -- of course, not in the sense in which the frightened pagan revered everything but in an enlightened way.

D.Raja Ganesan

PS: I would like to add a clarification that whereas pagan animism is based on fear and ignorance the Advaita Vedantic attitude is rooted in an understanding of the world as one and a tranquility born out of such a knowledge.