Navaratna S Rajaram

 

"Hindu God is not an external God who reveals himself only to a chosen prophet to be then imposed as the ultimate authority on others. God is something that anyone can know through one's own effort and seeking. Remember Krishna's words: "All creatures great and small - I am equal to all; I hate none, nor have I any favorites."

Fritjof Capra

 

"The dance of Shiva is the dancing universe, the ceaseless flow of energy going through an infinite variety of patterns that melt into one another’’

Amaury de Riencourt

 

...because in the East there is no conflict between fact and faith, since Eastern faith (sraddha) aims basically at subjective cognition rather than the objective "believing to be true" of the Westerner.

 The West has always attempted to impose dogmatically its various viewpoints because, imbued with Biblical, Catholic, Koranic sense of God-given historical mission and the conviction of having the monopoly of literal religious truth, it felt that it was objectively in the right - regardless of the increasing conflict, within its own cultures, between the spiritual messages (often mutually contradictory) of its "revealed" religions and scientific knowledge."

Fritjof Capra

 

"I saw cascades of energy coming down from outer space, in which particles were destroyed and created in rhythmic pulses; I saw the atoms of the elements and those of my body participating in this cosmic dance of energy; I felt its rhythm and I heard its sound, and at that moment I knew that this was the Dance of Shiv, the Lord of Dancers."

Swami Rama Tirtha

 

"Sanatana means Eternal. In its purest form, this religion is Sanatana, because it is based on Truth. Truth is immortal and is never annihilated. It remains the same yesterday, today and forever. Therefore our true Sanatana Dharma, in its purest form, cam never be exterminated.”

 

R S Nathan

 

Rishis of yore did not make a distinction between Science on the one side, and Religion and Philosophy on the other. The Science of the Upa-Vedas and the Vedanagas, and the Philosophies are the Vedas-Vedangas, all culminating in the Vedanata – the end of the Vedas.

Andrew Harvey

 

"While there is no one 'exclusive' dogmatic Hindu tradition, then, there is a very definitely, a spirit of inquiry and of revelation that is so consistent with the greatest of modern Hindu mystics, Ramana Maharshi...down the Upanishads more than two thousand years before him.”

Sardar Kavalam Madhava Panikkar

 

"The Hindu believe in one God, conceived as the universal soul or Paramatma, the absolute and eternal, beyond the categories of thought and expression, and embracing the entire universe. The text - there is only One, the learned speak of it in many ways.

 Though the Paramatma is impersonal or without qualities in itself in relation to the world expressed in terms of the relative, it is personal and man's mind conceives it as having qualities and form. This leads to the doctrine of Ishta Devata, or God, as conceived according to one's preference, as father, mother, guru, lover or even friend.

 The One Supreme thus assumes for the devotee the qualities and form in which he likes to worship. Many who worship the Supreme as Krishna think of him as a playful child, others as the great guru. In the same way, God is conceived by others as the Divine Mother. It is this doctrine of Ishta Devata, the freedom given to every one to worship God with the attributes of his own choice, never however forgetting that the Supreme has no qualities, that has led to the misconception that Hinduism is polytheistic.

 In a sense, it is true that there can be as many forms of Godhead in Hinduism as there are believers, for each one can conceive God only as the limitations of his own mind permit him."

Shri Jagmohan

 

One of the finest pieces of evidence which shows how powerful and insightful was once the Indian mind was its clear and correct understanding of the pattern of human existence on this planet and beyond. It perceived the “non-dual reality” that lies behind the smoke-screen of “surface duality” and realized that the universe was an organic web in which every item of life and nature was inextricably enmeshed with every other item. It also understood that this web was permeated with a cosmic force of which man and nature are the constituents as well as the contributors.

 

” One of the earliest Vedic hymns, composed over 4,000 years ago, gave the message of what is now termed as sustainable development: “Whatever I dig of you, O Earth May you of that have quick replenishment! O Purifying One, may my thrust never Reach right unto your vital points, your heart!”