Thoughts Of Western Philosophers And Thoughts Leaders On Advaita Vedanta And Hinduism

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Thoughts On Hinduism And Eastern Philosophy: 

What distinguishes the Vedanta philosophy from all other philosophies is that it is at the same time a religion and a philosophy. ~ Max Muller

In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. It has been the solace of my life; and it will be the solace of my death. They are the product of the highest wisdom. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, German Philosopher

What extracts from the Vedas I have read fall on me like a light of a higher and purer luminary. In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad-gita, in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial.. ~ Henry David Thoreau

The soul is not born, it does not die; it was not produced from anyone; unborn, eternal, it is not slain, though the body is slain. I owed a magnificent day to the Bhagavad-gita. It was the first of books; it was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which exercise us. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson Paraphrases The Gita In The Essay Immortality

Through Hinduism, I feel a better person. I just get happier and happier. I now feel that I am unlimited, and I am more in control. ~ George Harrison (1943-2001)

It (Hinduism) is the only religion in which the time scales correspond to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long, longer than the age of the earth or the sun and about half the time since the big bang. ~ Carl Sagan In Cosmos

The perennial philosophy is expressed most succinctly in the Sanskrit formula – ‘tat twam asi’(That art thou); the Atman, or the immanent eternal Self is one with Brahman, the Absolute principle of all existence; and the last end of every human being, is to discover the fact for himself. The Bhagavad-Gita is the most systematic statement of spiritual evolution of endowing value to mankind. It is one of the most clear and comprehensive summaries of perennial philosophy ever revealed; hence its enduring value is subject not only to India but to all of humanity. ~ Aldous Huxley

I go into the Upanishads to ask questions. ~ Niels Bohr

I should only believe in a God who knew how to dance. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

The Vedanta is, now as in the ancient time, living in the mind and heart of every thoughtful Hindu This fact may be for poor India in so many misfortunes a great consolation; for the eternal interests are higher than the temporary; and the system of the Vedanta, as founded on the Upanishads and Vedanta-sutras and accomplished by Sankara’s commentaries on them, equal in rank to Plato and Kant is one of the most valuable products of the genius of man- kind in its search for the eternal truth. On the tree of wisdom there is no fairer flower than Upanishads and no finer fruit than the Vedanta philosophy. ~ Paul Deussen (1854-1919)

The earliest of these Upanishads will always maintain a place in the philosophic literature of the world, among the most astounding products of the human mind. ~ Max Müller

We find that Materialists and Immaterialists existed in India.. before Berkly or Priestley, or Dupuis or Plato or Pythagoras were born. Indeed Newton himself, appears to have discovered nothing that was not known to the Ancient Indians. ~ John Adams In 1817

I am that which is. I am all that was, that is, and that shall be. No mortal man has ever lifted the veil of me. He is solely of himself, and to this Only One all things owe their existence. ~ Excerpt From The Paintings of Egypt By French Egyptologist, Jean-Francois Champollion

Two years spent in the study of Sanskrit under Charles Lanman, and a year in the mazes of Patanjali’s metaphysics under the guidance of James Woods, left me in a state of enlightened mystification. ~ T.S.Eliot In After Strange Gods

When I read the Bhagavad-Gita everything else seems so superfluous. ~ Albert Einstein

The marvel of the Bhagavad-Gita is its truly beautiful revelation of life’s wisdom which enables philosophy to blossom into religion. ~ Herman Hesse

The greatest error of a man is to think that he is weak by nature, evil by nature. Every man is divine and strong in his real nature. What are weak and evil are his habits, his desires and thoughts, but not himself. ~ In Maharshi and His Message By Paul Brunton

“I obtained not the least thing from complete unexcelled awakening, and for that reason it is called complete, unexcelled awakening.” ~ Henry Miller Quoting The Buddha

As the Zen masters say: Think only and entirely and completely of what you are doing at the moment and you are free as a bird. No Westerner wants to accept such a statement, naturally — it seems so simple to be true. We prefer to complicate things, with our prejudices, or principles, our beliefs, our judgments. And so we continue to feed the machine which grinds us to nothingness. ~ Henry Miller On Zen in a letter to a friend.

I am a Zen addict through and through… No intelligent person, no sensitive person, can help but be a Buddhist. It’s clear as a bell to me. ~ Henry Miller

The idea that man is like unto an inverted tree seems to have been current in by gone ages. The link with Vedic conceptions is provided by Plato in his Timaeus in which it states…” behold we are not an earthly but a heavenly plant.” This correlation can be discerned by what Krishna expresses in chapter 15 of Bhagavad-Gita. ~ Carl Jung

In the philosophical teaching of the Gita, Krishna has all the attributes of the full-fledged monotheistic deity and at the same time the attributes of the Upanishadic Absolute. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Sanskrit language, whatever may be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin and more exquisitely refined than the either. ~ Sir William Jones, Chief Justice of India under the British and founder of the Royal Asiatic Society.

The word Vedanta meant originally the end of the Vedas-that is, the Upanishads. Today India applies it to that system of philosophy which sought to give logical structure and support to the essential doctrine of the Upanishads-the organ-point that sounds throughout Indian thought-that God (Brahman) and the soul (Atman) are one. The oldest known form of this most widely accepted of all Hindu philosophies is the Brahma-sutra of Badarayana (ca. 200 B.C.)-555 aphorisms, of which the first announces the purpose of all: “Now, then, a desire to know Brahman.” Almost a thousand years later Gaudapada wrote a commentary on these sutras, and taught the esoteric doctrine of the system to Govinda, who taught it to Shankara, who composed the most famous of Vedanta commentaries, and made himself the greatest of Indian philosophers. ~ Excerpt From the Book The Story Of Civilization – Our Oriental Heritage By Will Durant

The Bhagavad Gita is the most systematic statement of spiritual evolution of endowing value to mankind. The Gita is one of the clearest and most comprehensive summaries of the spiritual thoughts ever to have been made. ~ Aldous Huxley

On the friendship Between Swami Vivekananda And Nikola Tesla: After meeting the Swami and after continued study of the Eastern view of the mechanisms driving the material world, Tesla began using the Sanskrit words Akasha, Prana, and the concept of a luminiferous ether to describe the source, existence and construction of matter. Read more at the Tesla Society HERE.

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J. Robert Oppenheimer Bhagavad-Gita Quote:

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George Harrison Of The Beatles:

George Harrison Of The Beatles

“If there’s a God, we must see Him. If there’s a soul, we must perceive It; otherwise it’s better not to believe.” ~ George Harrison Quoting Vivekananda; The #1 hit Beatles’ single “My Sweet Lord” was inspired by a passage from one of Swami Vivekananda’s books.

The Hare Krishna philosophy had a significant impact on Harrison’s albums Chants of India, My Dear Lord, All Things Must Pass, The Hare Krishna Mantra, and Life in the Material World. The subject of his song “Awaiting on You All” is japa-yoga. Swami Prabhupada had an impact on the song “Living in the Material World,” which included the phrase “Had to get out of this place by the Lord Sri Krishna’s grace, my salvation from the material world.” Swami Prabhupada is credited with inspiring the song. The Bhagavad Gita served as the primary inspiration for the song “That Which I Have Lost,” from the album Somewhere in England.

From the Hindu perspective, each soul is divine. All religions are branches of one big tree. It doesn’t matter what you call Him just as long as you call. Just as cinematic images appear to be real but are only combinations of light and shade, so is the universal variety a delusion. The planetary spheres, with their countless forms of life, are naught but figures in a cosmic motion picture. One’s values are profoundly changed when he is finally convinced that creation is only a vast motion picture and that not in, but beyond, lays his own ultimate reality. ~ George Harrison

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The Brahman forms everything that is living or non-living. The wise man knows that all beings are identical with his self, and his self is the self of all beings. ~ Isha Upanishad

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Quotes From Books: 

“The young Hindu, of course, is optimistic. He has been to America and he has been contaminated by the cheap idealism of the Americans, contaminated by the ubiquitous bathtub, the five-and-ten-cent store bric-a-brac, the bustle, the efficiency, the machinery, the high wages, the free libraries, etc., etc.”
~ Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“Work done with anxiety about results is far inferior to work done without such anxiety, in the calm of self-surrender. […] They who work selfishly for results are miserable. — “Bhagavad Gita.”
~ J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

The Bhagavad gita says: whenever there is a decline of the law and ‘an increase in iniquity; then I put forth myself for the rescue of the pious and for the destruction of the evildoers, for the establishment of the law I am born in every age.
~ Carl Jung’s marginal note, The Red Book, Footnote 281, Page 317.

The Bhagavad Gita—that ancient Indian Yogic text—says that it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection. So now I have started living my own life. Imperfect and clumsy as it may look, it is resembling me now, thoroughly.
~ Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“Perform every action with your heart fixed on the Supreme Lord. Renounce attachment to the fruits. — “Bhagavad Gita.”
~ J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

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Books To Read: 

• Proof of Vedic Culture’s Global Existence By Stephen Knapp
• The Story of Mankind By Hendrik van Loon
• American Veda By Philip Goldberg
• The Bhagvat-Geeta – Dialogues of Kreeshna and Arjoon By Sir Charles Wilkins
• The Story Of Civilization – Our Oriental Heritage By Will Durant
• The World as Will and Idea By Arthur Schopenhauer which was influenced by the Chandogya Upanishad
• Siddhartha By Herman Hesse
• Bhagavad Gita: A New Translation By Stephen Mitchell
• Hinduism – The Eternal Tradition By David Frawley
• The Hidden Glory of India by Steven J. Rosen (Bhaktivedanta Book Trust)
• Karma: A Guide to Cause and Effect By Jeffrey Armstrong
• Vegetarianism: Recommended in Vedic Scripture By Stephen Knapp
• In Maharshi and His Message By Paul Brunton
• Vedanta For The West By Carl Jackson
• The Wishing Tree (2008) By Subhash Kak

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All this is Brahman. Everything comes from Brahman, everything goes back to Brahman, and everything is sustained by Brahman. ~ Chandogya Upanishad

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Cern And The God Particle: 

Why does CERN have a statue of Shiva?
The Shiva statue was a gift from India to celebrate its association with CERN, which started in the 1960’s and remains strong today. In the Hindu religion, Lord Shiva practiced Nataraj dance which symbolises Shakti, or life force. This deity was chosen by the Indian government because of a metaphor that was drawn between the cosmic dance of the Nataraj and the modern study of the ‘cosmic dance’ of subatomic particles. India is one of CERN’s associate member states. CERN is a multicultural organisation that welcomes scientists from more than 100 countries and 680 institutions. The Shiva statue is only one of the many statues and art pieces at CERN.

Why is the Higgs boson referred to as the God particle?
The Higgs boson is the linchpin of the Standard Model of particle physics but experimental physicists weren’t able to observe it until the arrival of the LHC, nearly 50 years after the particle was first postulated. Leon Lederman coined the term ‘the God particle’ in his popular 1993 book ‘The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What is the Question?’ written with Dick Teresi. In their book, Lederman and Teresi claim the nickname originated because the publisher wouldn’t allow them to call it ‘the Goddamn Particle’ – a name that reflected the difficulty in observing the elusive boson. The name caught on through the media attention it attracted but is disliked by both clerics and scientists.

Nataraja At The CERN

Source: 

https://home.cern/resources/faqs/cern-answers-queries-social-media

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Aldous Huxley Describes the Dancing Shiva Nataraja: 

Listen To It HERE.

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The Hidden Influence of Vedanta: 

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The wise neither grieve for the dead nor for the living. I myself never was not, nor thus, nor all the princes of the earth; nor shall we ever hereafter cease to be. ~ Bhagavad Gita

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