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Quotes on Hinduism

81. Ramanuja (1017-1137) known as the greatest exponent of Visistadvaita Vedanta.

" The Bhagavad-Gita  was spoken by Lord Krishna to reveal the science of devotion to God which is the essence of all spiritual knowledge."
The Supreme Lord Krishna's primary purpose for descending and incarnating is relieve the world of any demoniac and negative, undesirable influences that are opposed to spiritual developement, yet simultaneously it is His  incomparable intention to be perpetually within reach of all humanity. " ¹³⁰

82. Serge Elisseev says:

      " The East is impenetrable to the West only for the man who deliberately refuses to get rid of certain ideas which, like armor, prevent him from bending  . . . The teaching of the great Indian thinkers could spiritually enrich the European soul.  In the course of its history, the European civilization has lost most of its spiritual values. It can no longer recover them though it still realizes their necessity. For the best of men cannot exist simply on the ideal of "efficiency of work" in the American way. In the condition in which the West finds itself, it is easier for us to go and search for truths in the India, than to come back to the few values we have left in the course of the development of our civilization." ¹³¹

83. Dr. Albert Schweizer,(1875-1965)   humanitarian, theologian, missionary, organist, and medical doctor.

" The Bhagavad-Gita has a profound influence on the spirit of mankind by its devotion to God which is manifested by actions."¹³²

84. Richard Waterstone, studied Sanskrit at the University of Edinburgh, journalist, creator of BBC documentary, author, comments in his book on " India: Living Wisdom"

"There is a striking resemblance between the equivalence of mass and energy symbolized by Shiva's cosmic dance and the Western theory, first expounded by Einstein, which calculates the amount of energy contained in a subatomic particle by multiplying its mass by the square of the speed of light : E=mc2. " ¹³³

85. Roger Housden author of "Travels Through Sacred India" and a student of the spiritual traditions of India for over 20 years, concurs in his book:

"Time, for example, is intimately connected with the goddess Kali, which partly accounts for her destructive nature. Energy - in Einstein's equation, E=MC2 - is personified in India as Shakti in her various guises." ¹³⁴

    86. Vinoba Bhave,(1894-1982), the great spiritual leaders and social reformers of modern India, was a disciple of Mahatma Gandhi. Founder of the Bhoodan, or land-gift, movement, seeking donations of land for redistribution to the landless, said :

    "The Supreme Lord of the Gita confirms the faith of each and grants the rewards each seeks....No matter what we revere, so long as our reverence is serious, it helps progress."
    " Hinduism gives its followers complete freedom. It does not insist on any particular discipline or prayer. Religion has to release us from bondage. The only imperative commandment it can have is to ask us to purify ourselves. Hinduism has emphasized the need for inner purity. Indian civilization and culture has shown a tremendous capacity for assimilation and absorption. If Hinduism becomes narrow, we shall be destroying our precious heritage. "¹³⁵

87. J. W. Hauer, a missionary in India and an official exponent of "the German faith", and a Sanskrit scholar, who gave to the Gita, a central place in the German faith. He declares that the book,

" gives us not only profound insights that are valid for all time and all religious life, but it contains as well the classical presentation of one of the most significant phases of Indo-Germanic religious history....Here spirit is at work that belongs to our spirit." ¹³⁶

88. W. Norman Brown, author of Mythology of India, has stated:

" As a religion, Hinduism has set side by side in peaceful coexistence every shade of belief ranging from the most primitive sort of animism to a highly sophisticated philosophical monism, and with this has gone a corresponding range of worship of practice extending from the simplest disease spirits to the most concentrated meditiation designed to produce knowledge of abstract impersonal reality." ¹³⁷

89. BalGangadhar Tilak (1856-1920),freedom fighter, great Sanskrit scholar and astronomer. His contribution to modern India stands on par with that of Mahatma Gandhi's.  Proclaimed to the nation, "Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it!"  Wrote his famous commentary on Bhagavad-Gita, the sacred book of Hindus. 
    He stressed that Gita  taught Karma (action), nothing but action. Religion or spiritual message were secondary and the need of the hour was to arise and fight. This was Lord Krishna's message to Arjuna. ¹³⁸

90. Leopold von Schroeder says:

    "The Indians are the nation of romanticists of antiquity. The Germans are the romantics of modern times. Sentimentality and feelings for Nature are common to both German and Indian poetry. He concludes that all the romantic minds of the West turn towards India because of the deep-rooted similarity between romanticism in Europe." ¹³⁹ (Off all the European nations Germany's response to India was most enthusiastic and open hearted.

91. Jagdish Chandra Bose (1858-1937), a pioneer of modern Indian science, combined ancient Indian introspective methods with modern experimental methods to demonstrate "the universal livingness of matter" or the "omnipresence of Life in Matter."
Modern science thus endorsed the ancient Upanishadic truth that the entire universe is born of a life-force and is quivering with a touch of animation. His work represents the triumph of spirituality over extreme materialism.¹⁴⁰

92. Kenneth Walker, a famous British surgeon, has dveoted a good deal of time and writing to the study of Indian thought and literature in search of an answer:

"From the point of view of science, we see man as an elaborate piece of mechanism, his actions determined by his central nervous system and his environment. From philosophy we learn that his capacity for knowledge is strictly limited, so that by means of his sense organs alone he can never know reality. This is confirmed by Hindu philosophy, but a new idea is added. Man, as he is can see no more and do no more, but by right effort and right method, he can gain powers, understand more and achieve more." ¹⁴¹

93. Rudolph Steiner, (1861-1925), Austrian architect, highly interested in the alignment between science and nature, matter and spirit, he developed an anthropomorphic architecture for his own Anthroposophical Society. A scholar who had edited the works of German dramatist/poet Johann Wolfgang Goethe.

" In order to approach a creation as sublime as the Bhagavad-Gita with full understanding it is necessary  to attune our soul to it." ¹⁴²

94. William Butler Yeats (1856-1939),1923 Nobel Laureate in Literature, described his first meeting with a Hindu philosopher at Dublin.

"It was my first meeting with a philosophy that confirmed my vague speculations and seemed at once logical and boundless. "¹⁴³
In his "Meru" written in 1935 - Meru is the central mountain of the world in Hindu Mythology - Yeats contrasts the peaceful life of the mystic, despite the hardships of nature, with the transitory cycles of creation and destruction exemplified in the world of man.¹⁴⁴
Yeats was keenly interested in Yoga system and the Tantra.

95. Stephen P. Huyler, art historian, cultural anthropologist, curator at the Smithsonian's Arthur M. Sackler gallery, in his book 'Meeting God: Elements of Hindu Devotion', defines Hinduism:

" Hinduism is a religion of individuality'. All Hindus believe that the Absolute is the pure blend of opposites, neither masculine nor feminine. The focus and means of worship are many, but the process has a common thread. It acknowledges one of the fundamental principles of Hinduism. God is a universal force, indivisible and yet infinitely divisible, the one and the many, the perfect mixture of all facets of existence" ¹⁴⁵

96. Roger Garaudy, a muslim philosopher says:

"The Bhagavad-Gita is a rich message, directed toward the human being, showing him the path for his actions, in order to establish a divine society on earth." ¹⁴⁶

97. C. Rajagopalachari was a scholar, a statesman, and a linguist.  A contemporary of Mohandas Gandhi, he was also free India’s first Governor General.  Perhaps his most signal accomplishment was his thoughtful rendition of the Mahabharata and Ramayana in English, making the stories and wisdom contained in those classics available to a new generation of English educated Indians.

He spoke eloquently of the Upanishads:

" The spacious imagination, the majestic sweep of thought, and the almost reckless spirit of exploration with which, urged by the compelling thirst for truth, the Upanishad teachers and pupils dig into the "open secret" of the universe, make this most ancient of the world's holy books still the most modern and most satisfying." ¹⁴⁷

98. Octovio Paz (1914-1998)was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990. He served as  Mexico's ambassador to India from 1962 until 1968. This is what he says about Hindu art in his book "In Light of India":

The Hindu genius is a love for abstraction and, at the same time, a passion for the concrete image. At times it is rich, at others prolix.  It has created the most lucid and the most instinctive art. It is abstract and realistic, sexual and intellectual, pedantic and sublime. It lives between extremes, it embraces the extremes, rooted in the earth and drawn to an invisible beyond." ¹⁴⁸

99. Thomas Merton (1915-1968) was a Trappist monk, poet, social critic and author of many books, including Seeds of Contemplation, Life and Holiness, Mystics and Zen Masters.  Merton , in his book "Thoughts on the East" talks about the living importance of the Bhagavad Gita:

" It brings to the West a salutary reminder that our hightly activistic and one-sided culture is faced with a crisis that may end in self-destruction because it lacks the inner depth of an authentic metaphysical consciousness. Without such depth, our moral and political protestations are just so verbiage. If, in the West, God can no longer be experienced as other than "dead", it is because of an inner split and self-alienation which have characterized the Western mind in its single-minded dedication to only the half of life: that which is exterior, objective and quantative." ¹⁴⁹

100. J. Donald Walters (Swami Kriyananda), World renowned as a singer, composer, and lecturer, founder of the Ananda Village is perhaps the most successful intentional community in the world. In his book " The Hindu Way of Awakening: Its Revelation, Its Symbols" says:

" India, has accomplished in the field of spirituality what, in the world of finance, the free market (as opposed to a controlled economy) has succeeded in doing: The individual seeker has been left free to explore and develop his own spiritual potentials. Other scriptures have hinted at the deeper truths of inward religion. But the priests in every religion seldom quote those passages, which they rightly see as threatening to their institutional preeminence." ¹⁵⁰

" The insights of which the Hindu teachings are based were revelation in the highest sense of the word." ¹⁵¹

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