04.01.2006, Rajaganesan Dakshinamoorthi kindly wrote:

My dear Evelin

[...]

I have read in contemporary Indian magazines that are supportive of Hinduism that proselytisation disrupts families and makes enemies out of mothers and sons.

At the other end, I use to quote frequently an episode in the life of Ramana Maharshi,a saint who lived during the twentieth century in this part of India. This incident occurred when India had been a colony of Britain and many Britishers were in positions of power in the administration. A British Police Officer, a staunch Christian, heard about Ramana Maharshi whose asram was within his jurisdiction.

The Maharshi, on the onset of his adolescence has had an obsession with death though there were no external or medical causes therefor. He ran away from home, roamed the hills, went into a cave where he is said to have spent a decade and more in meditation (on the human condition)and emerged a saint. ( Prophet Mohammed too is reported to have had a prolonged retreat in a cave before he perceived himself a prophet). The Maharshi realised that it is the body that dies but the soul within is immortal. Further, the individual soul is an integral part of the universal spirit.

The Maharshi used to wear only a loin cloth. People thronged to him. He gave no discourse,made no gestures of blessings or even cast a compassionate look. He just use to recline on a bed with nothing but a loin cloth. But his very presence, it is said,radiated peace and serenity. He has had many admirers like Paul Brunton who was a Britisher (or,an American citizen-I am not sure)and who wrote extensively about the Maharshi. This British Police Officer, however, had nothing but contempt for a man who is clad in a loin cloth. But as he was admired by many he had a curiosity to see what this phenomenon was about. He went in his official dress, with retinue and paraphernalia, to the asram. As he approched the asram he found an indescribable serenity surrounding it. When he entered he found the maharshi just reclining with his loin cloth and a number of people sitting silently, their minds filled with peace and their countenances expressing it. This officer, who had come to scoff at this near-naked man in the arrogance and superiority of a high ranking official of the colonial power whose proselytisers flaunted Christianity as the only way of secular (economic) and spiritual salvation for Indians mired in poverty, became at once humble and spell-bound. He stood silent savouring the serenity of the asram for sometime. Then he asked an attendant-devotee of the asram whether he could speak to the 'Swamiji'. The attendant asked the Maharshi. He gestured,'By all means, you can'. The officer went near the Maharshi and just asked him,'Swamiji, shall I become a Hindu?' The Maharshi replied,'Go and be a better Christian; if you do, you would have become a Hindu'.

I for one believe that conversion through proselytisation makes for spurious, hollow and sham persona. Not only that: even formal adherence to the religion into which one had been born makes for some psychic violence though it may be mute and invisible. Though I am born and brought up a Hindu,I have a fascination for Buddhism. Not that I am an admirer of the Buddha. One of the chapters in my doctoral thesis was a kind of post-mortem psychoanalysis of the Buddha's lifecourse. I could kind of understand his departure from the Hindu religion into which he had been born and articulation of Buddhism from a purely secular, scientific, psychoanalytic point of view. My credo in this regard is Shakespeare's: 'A man's jusgement is a parcel of his fortunes'. That way I readily endorse Swami Vivekananda's observation,'Let each man be a sect (ie.,religious 'group') unto himself. Swami Vivekananda was a saint of the Indian renaissance who began his famous speech in the World Parliament of Religions at Chicago,1893, as 'Dear Brothers and Sisters of America'.

Yes, my religion must be based on the experiences I accumulate,reflect on and sift during my life-course, and not on any ready made dogma. No, not even on any extraordinary experience like mystical experience. In a note I prepared for inviting papers for a session on 'Alienation,Meditation and Mysticism (from a purely secular,scientific perspective) in the XII World Congress of Sociology, I pointed out that mystical experience had,as a rule, only made for a relapse into the religion into which one had been born and from which one had strayed during his adolescence and youth and that even when there is a departure it can be accounted for in terms of secular psychological laws.

That brings me to the end of this long e-discourse: Buddhism says the very quest for a worldview, the blue print for a completed structure for our beliefs about the world is a disease! I guess it must be the underlying theme of the book in German by Karl Jaspers,'The Psychopathology of Worldviews'about which I have read only secondary references in English. Why do you want to have closure? Why do you want answers for all your questions? Why don't you accept life as it comes and why seek an explanation for everything (especially the bad things) that happens?

A famous Tamil film lyricist whom I admire sang: There is no tomorrow but the living moment is the boundary.

Yours sincerely
D.Raja Ganesan

D. Raja Ganesan wrote a poem, in 1979, that he kindly shares with us:

'God is Mad'

As a child
I was told
There ruled
Over this world
A moral umpire
Justly patient
and kind.

I waited and waited
For His justice
To Unfold.

Had not Nietzsche said
That God is dead?

Alas
Though I had
Lost my faith
Long ago
My fear of God
Will not go.

As the world
Is clearly bad
I sadly conclude
God must be mad.