My conception of the Hindu faith

in all humility I should admit that I did not understand anything and keep silent myself, silence being the first step towards wisdom.

My purpose is not to present a synthesis of the philosophy of Hindu thinkers, having undergone not any university training in philosophy and read only a fraction of their writings, including in addition to the 4 Veda, their analysis in Upanishad, approximately 36 devotional poems called Puraana, without forgetting Raamayana and Mahaabhaarata, to limit the list to ancient writings (1). Those who have a better knowledge of these texts will kindly forgive me for possible interpretation errors or having presented only one version, that which gave back to me faith in God, after having disavowed during more than forty years the conception of religion which had been transmitted to me by Catholic priests. My goal is not to criticize the Christian faith. Each one is free to conceive his own relationship with the Almighty and to give Him a name of his choice. I do not claim to have understood well the essence of all holy books. Holy they all are owing to the fact that they were written to help us to approach closer to God, by holy men or God Himself, according to what you like to believe. The main point is not to decide who hold the truth among the Christian, the Mulslim, the Jew or the Hindu but to form an opinion in which one believes. I do not know in which chapter Mahabharat I have read this thought but I find suitable to quote it here: “a knowledge is never perfectly erroneous nor completely true”. To give a crude example, the ancients idea that the sun turns around the earth is wrong but helps nevertheless to visualize the principle of solar eclipses by the shadow of the moon. If above quotation is not the basic concept of the Hindu religion, you can consider it as a good definition of the Hindu way of thinking. God is undefinable and our understanding of Him is evolutive. Whatever our beliefs as for His goals concerning creation and our fate, to reappraise them is not a sign of depravity but inherent in our nature- the  limited comprehension which He granted us. We will see that according to Hindu philosophers, God leaves us the choice of our future. It is not forbidden to imagine that He could magnanimously grant to each one, in accordance with his wishes, the reward for his good will and/or acts of enjoying the bliss in heaven as hoped by the believers of Semitic religions or to become in complete union with Him- some kind of dissolution in God- as sought by the Hindu. The purpose of this text is in no case to convert anybody but just to draw your attention to my personal point of view about Hindu religion and, if I have not badly digested my readings, to increase a little your culture. Can this contribution provide you a better understanding of the meaning of life for a thousand million people. In this respect , I think appropriate to quote a thought of Jawaharlal Nehru: “The culture is the capacity to understand the other person. The cultured mind has its doors and windows opened, imbibing new things. It has the capacity to understand the others view point fully, even though it cannot always agree with it.” I must admit that the limited number of review publications on Hindouism in the bookshops and Internet, compared to the huge amount of literature on Buddhism, Yoga, Zen, Tantras, shock me deeply since a long time. Moreover, their reading constitutes a good exercise of the tolerance, taking that they most often turn right from the start Hindouism into a whole of exotic myths, ancient rituals and center the discussion on the controversial system of castes. If I can give you a little more spiritual point of view, even partially erroneous, this text will have at least some use.

note 1: Being unable to edit the text with uperlining long vowels as it is usual, I adopted the convention to double the long "a" which are distinctly pronounced by any Indian like for instance the first "a" in the name of Lord Raama. One greets others met in the street by invoking "Ram Ram" and one pronounces clearly the second "a" only in Raamayana. Uperlining long i,e or u appeared to me less essential because they are never completely silent.

Invested during a certain time of a material envelope to enjoy the creation of God, our soul must learn to get freed of this subjection by detachment and meditation for recovering its true nature. "Two are the objects of the soul, to make one with the Supreme Brahman and to be for ever for the good of all the world; whether here or elsewhere does not essentially matter" (Sri Aurobindo).