Speaking of the American-Indian relationship, President Obama predicted it would be "one of the defining partnerships of the twenty-first century." No doubt it will be. But in fact, our two nations have been trading partners of sorts for more than two centuries, and Americans have derived far more from the arrangement than they realize.
As the land of material discovery and innovation, the U.S. has given India advantages from electric lighting to computer technology, not to mention the inventions that made Bollywood a larger producer of movies than Hollywood. What we've imported in return is far more subtle, but perhaps even more profound. Ages ago, the vast subcontinent birthed explorers and innovators who focused on the inner realm. Those geniuses -- spiritual sages or scientists of consciousness, depending on your perspective -- gave us, through a series of modern translators and adapters, insights that have profoundly influenced religion, healthcare, psychology, the arts and other areas of life. The way we understand ourselves and the universe has been shaped by India more than we can readily appreciate.
It began when early translations of Hindu and Buddhist texts, along with scholarly commentaries, arrived from Europe and found their way to Ralph Waldo Emerson. The philosopher who has been called our "founding thinker" absorbed Indian philosophy with the gusto of a gourmand sampling savory curries for the first time. It helped to shape the Emersonian world-view, which gave rise to process philosophy and American pragmatism, as well as to a literary tradition so pervasive that Yale's Harold Bloom called the Sage of Concord "the mind of America." Anyone who reads Emerson, whether a high school student for an assignment or an adult for illumination, gets a dose of Indian philosophy, whether or not he or she realizes it.
The same can be said of anyone who reads Henry David Thoreau or Walt Whitman. The Bhagavad Gita that Thoreau borrowed from his mentor, Emerson, was his constant companion on Walden Pond. When Obama noted the debt that America owes to Mahatma Gandhi for his immense influence on Martin Luther King, he left out the initial phase of that great U.S.-India volley: Thoreau, who called the Vedas "the royal road for the attainment of Great Knowledge," was one of Gandhi's inspirations. Whitman too was touched by India's "deep diving bibles and legends" and "far-darting beams of the spirit," and poets from Emily Dickinson to Bob Dylan were all touched by our national bard.
That was just the beginning. The pioneers of the so-called New Thought movement drank deeply of Eastern ideas, giving rise to Theosophy, Unity Church, Science of Mind and other institutions that became spiritual homes to an army of seekers. Later, the swamis of the Vedanta Society tutored men whose collective impact on the culture has been incalculable: the British expatriates Gerald Heard, Christopher Isherwood and Aldous Huxley; the comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell; Huston Smith, the most influential religious scholar of the past fifty years; and J.D. Salinger, whose later works taught Eastern Philosophy 101 in fictional form.
Come 1968, the Indian tsunami triggered by the Beatles' now-legendary visit to the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi gave us far more than The White Album (as if that weren't enough). Over a million people learned Transcendental Meditation, while scientists began the enterprise that has since produced over a thousand experiments on meditative practices. Seminal books like Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda and Be Here Now by Ram Dass (nee Richard Alpert) were devoured. Youngsters who studied with gurus went on to become scholars who taught religion in a new way, enlarged the study of psychology to encompass the spiritual dimension, introduced new methods to psychotherapy and began to rethink the nature of consciousness. Self-help authors like John Gray of Men Are from Mars fame adapted Eastern ideas to books and seminars. Popular thinkers like Deepak Chopra and Ken Wilber integrated them into books that appeal as much to secular types as to spiritual seekers. Medical experts like Dean Ornish incorporated yogic teachings into mainstream health practices. And the trickle of Americans going to yoga classes became a mighty river that's now fifteen to twenty million strong.
If you think these are minor phenomena compared to the economic and geopolitical issues discussed by Obama and Indian leaders, consider how many healthcare dollars are saved when people practice meditation and yoga instead of buying drugs and undergoing surgery. More important, India's philosophy of Vedanta and the methodologies of Yoga gave the land of the free a rational, pragmatic, individuated way to conceive of spirituality. And more important still, consider what India's ancient pluralism -- embodied in the Vedic maxim, "Truth is one, the wise call it by different names" -- offers a modern world torn by religious and ethnic tension. Half a century ago, the great historian Arnold Toynbee wrote that India's spiritual legacy offers us "the attitude and the spirit that can make it possible for the human race to grow together into a single family -- and, in the Atomic Age, this is the only alternative to destroying ourselves." For all these gifts, both manifest and yet to be realized, Obama should have offered his partner a sincere "Namaste."
decimal numbers - 0123456789 - !! zero and infinity !!
mathematics - algebra, infinite series etc
These contributions are never mentioned in our textbooks and our children are deliberately kept in the dark and grow up with prejudice "West is rational and East is not" etc.
I hope the world can learn from India that humans have to come out of this religious ideologies, and start looking within themselves - Know Thyself! Namaskar!
of the > 1000 studies about benefits from meditation > 600 studies [ 358 published in peeer reviewed journals ] are specifically using the unique an d uniquely effective Transcendental Meditation(TM)
in December 2008 ,that glorious month of transsition, i wrote to whitehouse.gov " fund a group of 8 000 yogic flyers with an endowment fund of $ 1 000 000 000 which will measurbaly result in world peace , world health world harmony "
[Emerson ,Thoreau , Whitman , Einstein {unified field}, Mahatma Gandhi + TAO] actualized in every brain]
[the 2.3 TRILLION dollar sickness bil would be reduced by ~$ 1000 000 000 000 , the $ 400 000 000 000 crime bill would be reduced by 23% , provable realities]
while Obama and ChingTao are the 2 most powerful men on the planet; Professor John Hagelin is th emost important man on the planet
power has not and cannot create peace ;only just releif from stress , liberation from bondage to ignorance , results in peace [[[ and ignorance does not just mean uneducated it also means educated ]]
http://www.dlfprojects.org/met/
its important to emphasize that meditation (TM) is spirituality ; drugs are not ; Meditation improves the brain ,;drugs are disaster for the brain
religion is halfway between
His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi ,a year before 1968, made the Beatles promise to stop using drugs
see top 100 studies at tm.org
Vivekanada made a cherished contribution. to claim that he was the greatest Indian to visit the US is certainly a personal perception worthy of respect, but it implies a comparison with Yogananda and Maharishi. V helped pave the way for Yogananda, whose influence was arguably greater than V's, and Maharishi's influence far greater than his predecessors. who was the greatest is a subjective assessment. Maharishi himself always attributed all glory not to himself but to the tradition of Vedic masters.
James Clarke Maxwell formulated the electromagnetic field, a great achievement. subsequent generations of physicists (Wheeler et al) worked to unify the electromagnetic field with the other fundamental forces, and Nobel prizes were in physics were awarded for this further unification. now physicists are working to unite all these forces with gravity. none of it could have been done without Maxwell, but more significant unification would come later. would one say Maxwell was the greatest physicist? someone might, but...
V played his indispensable role, and perhaps he's had more of an influence on your life personally and that's why you say he was the greatest. many others would say the same about Y or M.
i think Maharishi will be recognized, among other things, for reviving the technique of effortless transcending (TM) and systematizing the teaching of it to preserve its effectiveness for future generations — and for establishing meditation and enlightenment on the ground of objectively verifiable knowledge.
Vedic knowledge is all about unification. The word Yoga itself means 'union' or the state of unified awareness.
Interesting that during Maharishi's lifetime, while he was about in the world speaking of the ultimate unity of existence -- the underlying, transcendental field that unites all diversity -- progress in theoretical physics took unprecedented strides toward unification of the 4 forces.
One of the physicists on the Nobel team that accomplished grand unification was John Hagelin, who worked with Maharishi for decades. Hagelin developed a highly successful superstring theory that's still a major element in the architecture of superunification in quantum field theory.
Under Maharishi's guidance, Hagelin took unified field theory much further than his colleagues by declaring that the fundamental force underlying all matter, now glimpsed by modern physics, is actually the field of transcendental consciousness. This blew the minds of many physicists but the concept is graining more ground. Even Nobel physics Laureate Brian Josephson is suggesting that the unified field is actually consciousness.
My point: historically these great Vedic masters came along and increasingly enlivened unity in the collective consciousness of the West by drawing more and more attention to the Transcendent. Coinciding with that subtle shift toward unity in collective consciousness, the scientific model of nature was also becoming increasingly unified.
Experientially awakening the Transcendent in the consciousness of the West maybe the only way to unite the world in peace. That will be India's greatest gift.
:) Vakibs
"The Bhagavad Gita that Thoreau borrowed from his mentor, Emerson, was his constant companion on Walden Pond."
One should thank and respect each other without an ego. Indian constitution is not based on a particular country. It was taken from many countries and Indians thank each of them. Indian even thank any guest for visiting the country with a happy smile and true heart.
Obama however made the connection between Indian and American constitutions. Dr. Ambedkar who penned the Indian constitution has spent considerable amount of time in the USA and was greatly influenced by the US constitution.
So India owes the USA a lot too - not just in the materialistic front but also in the realm of spirituality and ideas.