The Essential Dharmic - Part 1: Necessary Conditions

This blog is as always, a work in progress, and will be revisited in the future as the ideas further crystallize. This post is introductory and leaves a few statements undefended and unexplained. This will be revisited in subsequent posts rather than make this introduction a very long one.

Background, Motivation, Preliminaries
a) This brief note was triggered by this tweet by the dedicated blogger @realitycheckind whose analysis and insightful commentary on the Indian education system, among other important topics, has helped shape a lot of minds.

b) This note uses ideas from a prior work that introduced a new modeling interpretation of History-Centrism, a concept introduced by Rajiv Malhotra in his book 'Being Different' (BD). The aim is to reintroduce the problem of 'who is Hindu' as the task of determining necessary and sufficient conditions (N/S), if any to 'be Hindu'. To answer this question, I borrow heavily from Rajiv Malhotra's new book 'Indra's Net' (IN). These posts are a first attempt to look at the ideas introduced in these books from a math-logical angle and see if any novel and useful insight reveals itself.

In the introductory blogs in this space, we saw how dharmic thought systems (DTS) were non-trivially different from history-centric (HC) ones, and the N/S conditions that used to delineate HC, and deemed "secular" and "universal" in nature, are in fact inadequate - they are neither sufficient nor necessary to distill the essentials of a dharmic. We explore this space further using ideas from 'Indra's Net'.

c) Most, if not all, of those who are trying to rediscover their dharma in their own way, belong to science, engineering, and math-based disciplines. Hopefully the language employed here is not so unfamiliar as to make it entirely unreadable.

d) Rather than just examine the Hindu issue, we follow Rajiv Malhotra and address the broader and (more powerful) general case of 'dharmic', which then allows us to treat 'Hindu' as a special/specific instance within this dharmic family.

e) These posts are less about conclusive and definitive answers, and more about getting dharmics to ask rigorous questions and initiate a debate: Who are we?
To begin to know what makes us who "we are",  a good place to start is knowing 'who we are not', so let's begin there.

Questions
First, I agree with the depicted tweet.
Reason: Abrahamics are an instance of HC religious membership, and it has been shown before that N/S conditions that define HC do not work for DTS (including Hindu Sampradayas, Jains, Buddhists, and Sikhs).

This leads us to three questions:
a) Are there essential features that allow a person to even qualify as a potential dharmic, and then
b) go a step even further and ask if we can stipulate conditions that are sufficient to characterize/define a dharmic?
c) What are the benefits and risks of having or not having such 'essentials'?

Separation Rule: Machine Learning Analogy
We will address these three question over the next few blogs, starting with (a) today. In particular, we are looking for a separation rule that allows us to achieve two objectives:
a) The separation rule should bring out certain salient properties of dharma thought systems, and be commonly satisfied by all instances within the system
b) These salient features should not be present in non-dharmic systems.

In other words, identify what is special and common to the dharmic cluster, but is also anathema to non-dharmic systems. This problem can be illustrated via this classical machine-learning picture that classifies incoming data as 'red' or 'blue'.
(picture source: http://glowingpython.blogspot.com/2011_10_01_archive.html)
Imagine the blue dots to be instances of a dharmic system such as Advaita, Buddhism, Jaina, etc., and the red dots to signify instances of non-dharmic systems (including history-centric faiths like Sunni, Mormonism, Protestantism, and new-age systems like scientology, random hippie movements, tree-huggers, cargo cults, etc.). The dotted line represents a machine-learning rule such that any current or future new religion that lies to the left of the line (e.g. answer computes a "YES" to the rule) is classified as potentially dharmic, and instances that fall to the right (e.g. answer computes a "NO" to the rule) is classified as surely non-dharmic. Also the proximity of the observed data point to the line may indicate the degree of violation or satisfaction. For example, an exceedingly adharmic system that permits genocide and slavery of innocents would be "red" and far away from the dotted line while some pagan faiths may be merely borderline red. Therefore, such a separation rule would also prescribe an 'escape route' for a non-dharmic system that allows it to eventually turn dharmic by reforming itself by becoming a "YES" instance. Clearly the presence or absence of such a separation rule has important practical implications in this world.

This allows us to rephrase our questions by asking:
- does there exist a separation rule that allows us to classify an input system as dharmic or not dharmic.
- Is this rule necessary, sufficient, both, or neither?

Rajiv Malhotra answers the first question in the affirmative and specifies an instance of a separation rule in his recent works (BD, IN) by a detailed examination of a variety of historical data and other sources of information.  Whether this rule is necessary and/or sufficient needs to be carefully analyzed.



The Essential Dharmic
There are three possibilities regarding the essentials in (a):
Possibility 1. We can reliably write down necessary conditions to even qualify as dharmic. These conditions may or may not be sufficient.

Possibility 2. We can reliably write down sufficient conditions to even qualify a dharmic. These conditions may or may not be necessary.

Possibility 3. No necessary or sufficient conditions can be written down that qualify or disqualify a person from being dharmic.

Response:
1. There are necessary conditions to even qualify as a dharmic. Equivalently, these represent sufficient conditions to disqualify a person from being dharmic
In other words, before we even try to essentialize Hinduism or other members of the dharmic family, we can and must be at least be able to tell what it is not. These conditions include:
- rejection of Karma
- rejection of Punar Janm

A person who rejects Karma or Punar Janm cannot be accepted as dharmic. A rejection of any one of these dharmic beliefs is sufficient grounds for disqualification, and an acceptance indicates a basic and necessary qualification (i.e., in the sense that it does not guarantee anything and in itself is not sufficient to pass the exam, but at least allows you to take the exam). Indra's Net makes innovative use of the terms Nastika, and Astika to distinguish between those who reject, or accept these two truth claims, respectively. HC members, in particular, are disqualified, since Karma or reincarnation are irreconcilable with the N&S conditions (why?) that define their own membership. The reasons for including these two specific truth claims are quite deep and worth studying. These beliefs are shared by all members of the dharmic family, but are not (in fact, cannot be) shared by history-centric systems at least, and some other new-age cults and other historic faiths. Detailed reasons can be obtained by reading the works of Rajiv Malhotra, but we will try to present additional intuition in the next post using the models developed in this space.

 
What is also important is that this separation rule is derived from dharma and not some secular-western legalese, and are also significantly different from HC/Abrahamic type membership conditions. To see the intuition behind this, let's look at two tweets together:

Again, I would agree with statements in both tweets if it means that essential features of DTS (if any) are not same as that for HC (e.g. Abrahamic). However, given the 140-char limit of twitter, this is a bit terse and is more focused on the legal point of view. I would disagree if the intent of these tweets was 'anything goes for Hinduism'. There has to be certain necessary conditions of elimination that narrow the scope and state a basic qualification for a person to possibly be dharmic, and there can be a debate on what these necessary conditions are. The conditions stated above are based on my understanding of the discussion in 'Indra's Net'. For example:
- a person who believes in any of the truth claims in the Nicene creed would not be able to meet these conditions and thus be disqualified as Nastika from a dharmic perspective.
- A secular person or an atheist who rejects Karma or say, an Islamist or a pagan who rejects reincarnation would be disqualified and deemed a Nastika from a dharmic perspective.
- It follows that a person who is not rejected is an Astika. However, whether these conditions are also sufficient to fully and definitively answer 'who is a dharmic' i.e., is an astika = a dharmic? is a discussion for another day.
- It is also interesting to note that the Astika/Nastika dichotomy and the necessary conditions employed to come up with this classification does not depend on simplistic belief or non-belief in some dualistic 'God'. Evidently, Nastika does not equal "atheist" and Astika does not equal to 'believing in God'. This is not surprising once we see that 'atheism' and 'God' are constructs that came out of history-centric systems that has dominated the airwaves in the west and middle east for many centuries now.

A key differentiation is that HC membership rules (e.g. Nicene Creed) imply exclusivity and introduce a host of duality-ridden binary partitions like us-them, before/after, moral/immoral, atheist/theist, Satan/God, etc. that are of limited use to dharmics. Although these partitions are simple and easy to grasp, separation rules derived from HC are not universally applicable (including in legal courts), and certainly cannot be employed to narrow the scope of who dharmics are or are not. We will conclude part-1 with a case study to illustrate this point.

Case Study: The SGPC in 1925 came up with a definition of 'Sikh'. Here is Arun Shourie talking during the book release of Indra's Net:

" ...People were asked what is your religion. So, 95% of them said we are Shinto, 76% of them said we are Buddhists. It couldn't be: because it was no different for them. It was completely Judaic, Christian, Islamic notion that you can either belong to this or to that. We are Hindus, many of the people, persons like me, all my reading is Buddhist, many of my practices would be from teaching of the Buddha but nobody would say that I am less of a Hindu or more of a Buddhist or vice versa and actually this notion was fomented in India and the first time this happened is in the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee Act. In that Act, ‘Who is a Sikh’ is defined. ‘Who is a Sikh’ – He who believes in the Granth Saheb, He who believes in the Ten Gurus. Most of us could be Sikhs from that point of view, therefore a new clause was added "..and who does not belong to any other religion". You and I may think it is just an administrative thing, but that seed is sown in 1925 and you see it in the agitations of Bhindranwale and others much later... as to what happens when these seeds come into being. "

We can see that the SGPC came up with two conditions
i) the first is clearly a necessary condition: belief in Granth Saheb and Ten Gurus. Seems pretty reasonable and natural. I, like most dharmics, deeply believe in both, and I personally agree that this is an important requirement.

ii) a second necessary condition that in combination with the definition-type ruling on "who is a Sikh", makes their statement taken in totality behave like a sufficient condition for defining a Sikh, and weeding out non-Sikhs:
A Sikh is essentially one who believes in the truth claims of the Granth Saheb and the Ten Gurus, and does not simultaneously belong to any other religion.

The latter clause is a HC-like membership rule that forbids any dual-citizenship, and is likely to be a bitter pill for dharmics to swallow and I personally reject it. Why? (i) in itself is sufficient to reject all HC members (e.g all Abrahamics) who cannot simultaneously satisfy HC's N&S conditions that irreconcilably contradict (i), and have to pick one faith over the other. However, (i) is not sufficient as far as excluding members within the dharmic family who do not explicitly label themselves Sikh. Therefore, the only role of (ii) appears to be to introduce an exclusivity clause to reject those who call themselves Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, etc. Rajiv Malhotra's separation rule does not repeat this sectarian mistake, and returns the focus rightly to the biggest picture there is, the Kurukshetra where dharma battles adharma. This decision may well turn out to be one of the great turning points of the Kurukshetra. It is possibly a side-effect of the mistake by SGPC that Wikipedia today describes Sikhism as 'monotheist' - tragic fiction. Depending on the context and situation, most dharmics today operate like a Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, or Jain, or one or more combinations. Clearly this kind of exclusivity based essentializing is dangerous, misinformed, and adharmic because of the harmful tensions it creates within the society. There may be disagreements within the dharmic family on the nature of the ultimate reality (e.g. Shunya or Brahman) that causes one to choose a Buddhist or an Advaitin perspective, but there was and is unanimous agreement on the primacy of (saamanya) dharma, and upholding its integral unity (ref: BD, IN).

This sets up the ground rules for coming up with such N/S conditions or rejecting such conditions. Any alternative candidate for the separation rule that is put forward to improve upon the necessary conditions for dharmics stated here has to be equally, or more sustainable and must transparently and unambiguously support dharma. Simply put, a viable alternative can only arise from a dharmic basis. Furthermore, dharma, unlike history-centric constructs, is truly universal.

Take Aways
The key takeaways of Part-1 are:
- "anything goes" and some (random) "way of life" answers to who is dharmic is non-rigorous, open to adharmic manipulation, random claims and definitions of Hindu-ness that are neither necessary or sufficient, and is especially unacceptable in a world where the dharmic market-share of demographics, geography, and global influence is shrinking at an alarming rate every year. We can and must do better.

- the presence of a separation rule that narrows down the scope of who is and is not dharmic has important practical implications and value. However, a bad choice of a separate rule brings with it its own negative side effects and risk

- necessary and/or sufficient conditions derived from History-centric theology or secular concepts are unlikely to work for dharmic classification/qualification, are not universal, and hence rejected.

- necessary conditions rooted in dharma are required to narrow the scope on who qualifies to be dharmic, and thus also prescribe sufficient grounds for disqualification.

- Necessary conditions based on the ideas from the book 'Indra's Net' are stated here.

- Note that this response rejects Possibility #3 by clearly stating that there are indeed certain essentials having a dharmic basis, that are at least necessary to be Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, or Jain (or dharmic, in general). However, are these conditions sufficient? What is so special about Karma and Reincarnation? Does having any separation rule invariably come with the burden of risk? We will discuss this in a later post.


Acknowledgements:
thanks to @sighbaboo and @DigestionResist for reviewing an early draft and sending me feedback despite their busy schedules. Errors and shortcomings in this post are entirely mine and bugs will be fixed periodically blogs as more data becomes available and understanding improves.

Digestion of Hinduism: Inside the American Veda

The first part of my notes-to-self covered my interpretation of digestion, a term coined by Rajiv Malhotra. This lead to an active twitter debate that led to many questions, mostly centered around Phil Goldberg's 'American Veda', which was previously critiqued elsewhere as facilitating digestion, and a stand which I support. I fact, I have found that AV does a lot more than that. It also directly digests and misrepresents Hinduism, and celebrates the digestion of Hinduism, perhaps unintentionally. This second set of notes will add more substance and take some of those follow-up questions as a starting point.

Throughout these posts, the emphasis in bold/underline/quotes are mine. Often direct quotes are italicized. Let me state upfront that I admire Goldberg's candid admissions. I believe he is Jewish, and therefore does not proselytize. This is my critique of his work, as well as the other interviews and articles he has written. There are places in the book AV where he even agrees that Indian methods and dharmic ideas have been misappropriated. But his disappointing response is to kick the can down the road to the Hindu advocacy groups to deal with the Hindu image issue, and washes his hands off, i.e. 'it is not my problem'. Fair enough. He is not Hindu, and this book is not about Hinduism. AV is a book written by the west, of the west, and for the west. Hindus and Hinduism are but props in the AV stage.

[update Dec 23: typos fixed]



Cover Page
American Veda: How Indian Spirituality Changed the West

American Veda and Indian spirituality implies that Hindu religious concepts are tied to a geography. There is no call-out in the book of the universal truth claims of Karma and Punar Janma of Hinduism and the universality of dharma - the latter is the single-most important thing, in my opinion, a Hindu reader should look for in such books: Ask what is the status of dharma in the book? It is totally ignored in the title. The title suggests that the book starts with some fuzzy "spirituality" from India toward building a new American Veda suitable for western consumption without the stench of Hinduism's caste, cows, and curry.

Strong words? read on and make up your own mind.

Foreword by Huston Smith
Who is this Huston Smith and why did Goldberg pick him to write the foreword?
He's described a 90+ year old "rock star of religions". My ignorance. I never heard of this chap, so I looked him up. Here are some interesting snippets.

"Smith was born in 1919 in China, where his parents were Christian missionaries...."

Smith: "... "I happen to be a Christian. I was brought up and drenched in that," he said. "I am very orthodox in thinking that Jesus acted in his life the way God would have acted if God had assumed human form... I think that God imploded, like a spiritual big bang, to launch the eight civilizations that make up recorded history and the religions in those civilizations.""

Zero connection with dharma so far, but we see Mr. Smith clearly state where his roots are: History-centric Christianity.

Here's the Wikipedia entry on his religious practice that examines other religions (including, and in particular, Hindu Vedanta) for many years, he returning to his Christian roots to write this book:
"The Soul of Christianity: Restoring the Great Tradition"

 Here's an Amazon.com blurb on what this restored Christianity looks like:
"... "I have tried to describe a Christianity which is fully compatible with everything we now know, and to indicate why Christians feel privileged to give their lives to it."
—Huston Smith

.... In his most personal and passionate book on the spiritual life, renowned author, scholar, and teacher of world religions Huston Smith turns to his own life-long religion, Christianity....Smith cuts through these to describe Christianity's "Great Tradition," the common faith of the first millennium of believers, which is the trunk of the tree from which Christianity's many branches, twigs, and leaves have grown. This is not the exclusivist Christianity of strict fundamentalists, nor the liberal, watered-down Christianity practiced by many contemporary churchgoers..."


Right in the introductory pages available for free at Amazon.com, you can clearly see Smith states that he visited India may times and learnt of "dharma" before proceeding to digest Dharma into the Christian notion. His exact words on how he redefines dharma: "It is the duty that God has imposed on me". Being a Christian, he is of course referring to a monotheist God who is a task-master.  The meaning of dharma has been totally inverted. This is the abysmal level of scholarship and mis-translation of Sanskrit, which we see in other chapters of the AV book too.

In the first chapter of Smith's book, after the introduction, Smith talks of his new Christian world view, where the very first set of paragraphs attempts to mangle the dharmic idea of "Purna" made famous by the famous Shloka. Next, tackles at causation (related to Karma...), at which point I cried halt. The foreword to AV cites a single verse from the Christian bible where false equivalences for Bhakti, Jnana, and Karma is given! Rock star.


Foreword writers are deliberately and carefully chosen, and usually for deep reasons. AV's foreword writer is a famous and devout Christian, the son of two devoted missionaries who studied Vedanta for long, and visited India several times, and ultimately used this information, not to become Hindu or dharmic, but to repair and re-invent an improved Christianity for the west using digested versions of Hindu concepts.

This is how American Veda begins and ends. This is the template.

Theme of American Veda
Goldberg is sincere westerner who is looking to improving the condition of his country and repairing their society and religion. To achieve this task, he, like Huston Smith, uses Hinduism as a tool-box containing an useful assortment of nuts and bolts, from which the west can freely select compatible parts to plug the gaping holes in their systems. Chapter after chapter in this book is not about how Hinduism and India benefits from the interaction with the west, but the total opposite.  Which begs the question:

If AV is about utilizing bits and pieces of Hindu ideas deleted from their Indian context, and suitably modified to enhance Christianity, Judaism, and western health care, etc., why the heck are the useful Hindu idiots cheering, showcasing, and funding such works? What has India and dharmic systems got in return from the US for this? ZILCH.

Much of American Veda is a biographical celebration of who's who of U-turners and digesters:

Maslow, Bensen, Ken Wilber, Carl Jung, Father Keating, ....

and a bunch of opportunists like Deepak Chopra who have made a lot of money selling faux-Vedantic snake oil to a gullible western audience. This blogpost links to a video lecture of Rajiv Malhotra that walks through an entire list of U-turners and digesters. We won't go into these biographies, even though they make for fascinating and bewildering reading. In this remainder of this part of the self-study, I cover the introduction and the first chapter of AV, focusing on Goldberg's own words and annotations. I highlight just a few of the many gaping holes in this book that makes a mockery of dharmic concepts and try to point out how these mangled ideas facilitate digestion.

For more background and context on American Veda and Phil Goldberg, readers can read this blog: digestingveda.blogspot.in. We owe the writer a thanks.


Chapter - Introduction
1. Here, PG starts off providing a list of excuses about why he has not used Hinduism in the title. Clearly, he is aware this would become an issue. Some reasons include:
a.  "people will misconstrue the nature of this book". (Exactly how?)

b. [Opportunistic] gurus who came to the west said they were not preaching Hinduism (so?)

c. Yoga and Vedanta do not have to be viewed religiously at all ...

2. As far as Buddhism, he equates the Buddha to Jesus as a reformer. I would seriously contest this as another false equivalence, but some other day. This book does not credit Buddhism in the cover either. Of Jainism or Sikhism, I could find no mention.

3. He calls Yoga and Vedanta, India's major export. Despite that, India has not seen one dollar in returns yet!

4. He finds India's epic 'tales' of Ramayana and Mahabharata to be rich in 'magic and mystery', and makes the Iliad and Odyssey look like short stories.

5. Page 10:
Goldberg offers us this gem: infinite divine can be called Allah, Lord, or Brahman, which is justified citing 'Ekam sat Vipraha bahudha vadanti'.
 
Shockingly poor scholarship fills the American Veda. Goldberg is honest enough to concede that he is not confident about the completeness of the translation of the Vedantic principles he cites by adding caveats such as "does not pretend to do justice to Vedanta...". What can we be sure of in AV then?

The above reasoning is a distortion of Hinduism, designed to propagate the myth of sameness. Doing so allows him to move on to his next, and by far, most serious error, which opens the door to wholesale digestion.

6. On Page 11, Goldberg claims:
 "Vedantic principles are accompanied by Vedic concepts of Karma.... and reincarnation. Most applications of Vedanta-Yoga do not require these supplementary ideas, and ordinary practitioners in the west do not necessarily believe in them"

Supplementary ideas?!

Karma (cause and effect) and Punar Janma (Reincarnation) are central and fundamental truth-claims of dharmic thought system. Hinduism (and its pluralism of manifestations), Sikhs, Jains, and Buddhists subscribe to this. These dharmic fundamentals are precisely the ones that the Judeo-Christian system is incompatible with, and this is also exactly why Goldberg has deliberately brushed them aside as unimportant waste material that can be rejected! Once we get rid of these crucial dharmic elements, the mutilated remainder of the Hindu concepts can be digested into JC systems, without hurting their history-centric dogma.  This is exactly what was stated in part-1. In Philip Goldberg's own words, we have clear evidence of digestion being facilitated.

7. On the same page, PG favorably compares Vedanta to perennialism. Rajiv Malhotra has previously stated that "The whole Perennial Philosophy is merely stage-2 of the uturn." AV systematically glorifies (as Rajiv Malhotra put it) these so-called western pioneers, who in reality, just reassembled and repackaged many of the original ideas from dharmic systems.

8. In Page 12, he says "whether it's a falafel or philosophy, Americans embrace foreign products when the circumstances are right, and conditions in the United States were right for Vedanta-Yoga from the start"

Falafel. Vedanta-Yoga. foreign product (!)

Wow, such reverence and seriousness.

This is the author that Ms. Nirmala Seetharaman's foundation found worthy enough to invite for a talk, and for RSS to promote? that certain Sanathana Dharma institutions showered money on?



These are just the first few pages. Toward the end of the book, there are sections where it appears like Goldberg is practically showing Padres/Rabbis how such digested Vedanta-Yoga' can improve the situation in their church and synagogue without impacting their central dogma. He also does this in a Huffington Post article. Indeed as early as page 23-24, Goldberg very honestly states his intentions. Indeed, AV is a very honest book. I'm sure PG believes in his mind that he's doing a lot of good.

9. In his own words, we can find the real reason for deleting Hinduism/Buddhism/Sikhism/Jainism from this book:

 "This [book] is not a threat to Western religions; Americans are not about to abandon their churches, synagogues, and mosques, for Hindu temples. Figures of Shiva and Krishna will not replace crosses in American homes."

It is very, very clear. Hinduism has NO role in this book, and he sees no role for Hinduism in American homes. He is seeking not to replace dogmatic Judeo-christian ideology with dharmic ideas as many gullible Hindus believe. Instead, he is seeking to complement and solidify the existing dogma with a digested Hindu layer. This is precisely what was mentioned in part 1. In his own words, we have the evidence of the outcome of digestion.  Once this happens, this enhanced Christianity can be re-exported to India. Conversion in India will be a piece of cake. This is what India gains from digestion.

Still not convinced? then read further ...
"Exposure to eastern spirituality is more likely to strengthen a person's relationship to his or her native religion than to destroy it".

Goldberg has gone out of his way to calm his western audience and his publishers. This book is not about bringing dharma to replace dogma. This is about making Judeo-Christianity stronger to stem the flow of disenchanted members out of their system.

I could go on. There are nearly 400 pages in this book, and I have covered less than 25 in this post since I do not have a digital copy to expedite this work. There are more fallacies and errors to point out, but that will take up a lot of space and is left as an exercise to the reader. I will however add one final point on the comments that Goldberg makes in page 292, to illustrate the kind of lame arguments used to justify digestion.

"One physician told me "But replacing the the orange robe with a white lab coat opens it up to a lot more people". So does calling meditation a stress-reduction technique, not a sadhana for achieving moksha. We will never know how many heart attacks were prevented, or how many millions of pills were not taken, because of that decision.

There is another place in the book where a false argument of "Indian philosophy versus Western science" argument is given. Digestion of Yoga into all these medical buzzwords is justified since it gives these methods the requisite "scientific legitimacy".  Mr. Goldberg: Indians, Tibetans, Sri Lankans, Indonesians, and many millions in Asia (not just India) for centuries benefited scientifically from Yoga, without having to mutilate Yoga and delete moksha, and did not require white lab coats to "make it look" scientific. It always was scientific, and dharmic religions have never been in conflict with science. This silly justification insults intelligence.
 

Conclusion and Summary
Based on my study, I personally find American Veda to be a mediocre and error-ridden piece of work that directly enables, and also (perhaps inadvertently) celebrates digestion while moving toward a goal of ensuring that western society derives maximum benefits from the Hindu toolbox, taking what it deems to be compatible and useful (dharma-nirpeksha stuff), and discarding the rest.

Digestion is not an end-goal. It is not easy to spot unless you examine the end-state of the Hindu concept being appropriated. It is merely a means to an end. Usually, that end-goal is to preserve and enhance Western religion. The primary goal is neither to harm or help the cause of dharma. Rather they are indifferent to it. Impact on Hinduism and dharma is collateral damage, which authors may express regret about, but is not really their concern.

It's time we stop celebrating every new and shiny piece of work that comes of the west just because it is superficially favorable to Hinduism. That's a symptom of mental colonization. Let's first fund and support those among our own who are busting their backs coming up with high-quality work. Being brown should not be a disqualification.

Review of Asimov's 'Nightfall' from a Dharmic Perspective

Introduction
Nightfall (NF) was written by Isaac Asimov in 1941, when the war that was burning down Europe would escalate into a global war. It remains one of the best science fiction stories ever written and won many awards. Reams have been written about this book in the western literature. The attempt here is to subject 'Nightfall' to a Purva Paksha, i.e., examine the ideas in the book from a native Indian (Dharmic) viewpoint, utilizing some key ideas in Rajiv Malhotra's book 'Being Different'. We will rely on the original version (about 20-odd pages) of NF that was published in 'Anthropology through Science Fiction', 1971. (The next post in the TQ blog will cover another Asimov story in this book). You can read 'Nightfall' online here.

(picture source link: ghostradio.files.wordpress.com)

Synopsis
NF visits the human-inhabited planet of Lagash at a most critical point in its civilization, when five of its six suns have fizzled out, and the sixth ("Beta") appears to be in danger of meeting the same fate, leaving its inhabitants to endure 'night' for the first time ever. Archaeologists determine that Lagash has gone through repeated cycles of birth and destruction. Physicists , after applying the laws of gravity and orbital motions, and centuries of analysis, calculate that each boom-bust cycle lasts 2049 years that ends with a solar eclipse of a sole remaining sun. Psychologists explain that the resulting onset of nightfall and its terrifying darkness brings about an extraordinary claustrophobia among the population. Driven insane by fear and chaos, the people will proceed to light up and eventually burn down Lagash to cinder. This fear drives a bunch of scientists to build and move into an artificially lit doomsday hide-out.

On the other hand, Lagash has a group of cultists who follow 'the book of revelations' that pretty much talks about all these effects, but attributing causality to some external divine force. Furthermore, the book talks about an appearance of many stars in the sky in the end, which cult followers have to view to achieve salvation. While the cult cares less about the cause ("they believe it because the book says so"), they share valuable data with the scientists, and in this bargain, the scientists will validate that the cultists were indeed prophetic.
The scientists proceed to provide rational explanations for the phenomena that coincide with that the cult says, but as a result of this scientific explanation, increasing number of Lagashians desert the cult since they do not need the book anymore for supernatural explanations, greatly annoying the cult that accuses the seculars of Blasphemy. The scientists reciprocate this dislike for the cultists and in the end, the cultists attempt to destroy their observatory that is trying to photograph and analyze the final scene, fearing that the scientists were interfering with their moment of salvation. As nightfall descends, the Lagashians go crazy and burn down their civilization, as predicted.

Asimov's introduction to Nightfall
Per Wikipedia, Asimov says that he wrote NF after being introduced to Emerson's quote by John Campbell:
"... If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, 
and preserve for many generations,
the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown!
Campbell's opinion to the contrary was: "I think men would go mad." "

Asimov writes a two-page introduction to NF in this book and makes the following observations:

a. A cult that at it's core does not address the problems that cause the society's ills will hasten its disintegration.

b. Religion or science? (classical binary choice approach that characterizes the Western frame of reference). Science was successful in explaining why Lagash would burn down, and in that process were able to rescue many cultists from their dogmatic existence. But in the end, neither science, nor the cult were able to save the people from self-destructing, thereby indicating the inadequacy of the cult and science in providing timely and practical solutions for a critical problem.

Emerson's Quote
Emerson, whose quote inspired the book, was greatly influenced by Hinduism. Rajiv Malhotra writes in his book 'Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism': "... Europe's encounter with Sanskrit revolutionized the European study of linguistics, and its encounter with Hinduism and Buddhism deeply informed Western philosophy and challenged the Judeo-Christian traditions. Some westerners, such as the American transcendentalists: Thoreau, Emerson and Whitman, broke away from Christian orthodoxy as a result. This process continues today ever more deeply in the mainstream of the West through yoga, meditation, healing sciences, the arts, eco-feminism, philosophy, and pop culture...".

Indeed, Emerson's aforementioned quote is taken from his work 'Nature'. Sanderson Beck notes:

".. In his essay on "Nature" Emerson reveals the essence of his philosophy: "Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul." This has been stated before in the Sankhya philosophy of India ... Spirit, or the oversoul which includes all individual souls, is the eternal essence of an infinite absolute reality which creates all the transitory phenomena of Nature The Sanskrit terms are Purusha which means Person and Prakriti meaning Nature.."

Interestingly, Beck says "....the truth may be spoken in any language, and we must not hasten to conclude that he merely adopted the Hindu religion, but rather that he found there corresponding ideas to the illumination he received from his own soul and experience in life. In his essay "Compensation" which describes the spiritual law of karma, or cause and effect in human action, he indicates he discovered this principle himself although it has been known for millennia in India and is similar to Greek notions of justice and retribution .."

This paragraph can be recognized as yet another attempt to digest Hinduism into Western universalism, and amputate critical Hindu ideas from its original body of work. In fact, Emerson's text reads but like an English re-interpretation of the original Sanskrit texts of Hinduism.

Nightfall appears to depict Emerson as the cultists in NF who see the divine in the once-in-a-thousand-year stars but at the same time, also exposes the limitations of science in solving society's most difficult problems. In the end, the scientists of Lagash are shocked to see thousands of stars that they never expected would fit into such a small sky, and as they begin their descent into terror, lose their coherence, and remain unable to find a rational explanation for this final phenomenon. On the other hands, the cultists did have an explanation, however inadequate.

Dharmic point of view
Hinduism, like other Dharmic religions, does NOT see a contradiction between itself and science. Indeed, concepts of Hinduism have not come into conflict with science so far, be it Heliocentrism, Evolution, Quantum Mechanics, or the
Theory of Relativity. The Hindu belief of cyclical time is exemplified in NF by the creative-destructive cycles of Lagash. In contrast, NF's cultists accept their book-ordained fiery end without question and implicitly reject Karma - a mindset that could have potentially changed the end result for the population. They believe that the stars that show up on doomsday are a historically divine intervention from elsewhere (duality). These stars provide, at the risk of madness, a collective salvation for only the populace of Lagash that views them but not others, who will be damned, and is thus not linked to individual Karma or Sva-Dharma. It is clear that NF's cult is not based on a Dharmic thought system but is history-centric, and nearly exactly models any Abrahamic religion.


In the end, neither the cultists (who are not dharmic but dogmatic), nor the atheistic seculars (limited by their senses to incomplete understanding) are able to develop adhyatma vidya (inner sciences, self-realization techniques) required to transcend the limitation of the human sense and the primordial fear of darkness. Doing so would have also enabled them to get past the few hours of darkness due to a solar eclipse.

Nightfall on Earth
Clearly, all religions are NOT the same, not in 1941 when the global war began, not now on earth, or in some futuristic Lagash. Every year, there are many predictions of the end of the world. Every year, the primordial fear of nightfall drives many so-called rational and smart people to believe this may well be possible and call for a collective holding of hands to fight the terror of darkness. This is how cults operate.  Science merely laughs. Dharmic faiths like Hinduism, on the other hand that have no conflict with science by design, talk of timeless, cyclical time and empower you to overcome your fear of eternal darkness.

On why Multiculturalism usually doesn't work - Part 1

We kick off the next series of articles that explore the contrasting effects of the 'Synthetic Unity' that defines the west and the 'Integral Unity' that defines India, as discussed in Chapter 3 of the book 'Being Different' (BD) by Rajiv Malhotra. The first three posts in this series serve to motivate and provide contemporary real-world examples that highlight the importance of these concepts by building upon an article "A Working Model for Multiculturalism" that is linked in the articles section of 'Being Different' website.

The author of that post primarily analyzes multiculturalism in a localized office workspace scenario and presents two main arguments:

a. 'Zero' tolerance (or mere tolerance) policy of a company is at best a necessary condition for establishing a multicultural workplace, but one that in itself is insufficient.

b. Mutual respect is a necessary and sufficient condition for achieving a stable, working multicultural solution.

Our post attempts to use these two findings as a starting point and extend them as follows:

1. Apply the idea of 'mutual respect' to a more general setting that goes beyond a local workplace where everybody is typically bound legally by a strict corporate policy.

2. The paradox of sameness.

3. Examine alternative theories developed in the West and contrast it with BD's mutual respect

In the west, multiculturalism experiments have invariably failed because of the lack of mutual respect, which if present, actually encourages multiculturalism and diversity. The United States fares a little better due to the combination of the bill of rights, Abraham Lincoln's legacy, and crucially, the Dharmic Gandhi inspired civil rights movement of Dr. Martin Luther King, but it is not a done deal yet.

Multiculturalism Works When There is Mutual Respect
Rajiv Malhotra in his book 'Being Different' highlights the importance of mutual respect (MR). MR possesses what can be called a multi-layered meaning. The first level is pretty straight forward: you respect me, I respect you, and we get along. Even at this macro-level, MR is superior to tolerance that says: either one or both of us tolerate each other, and we somehow get along. However, MR does not just stop there. Tolerance implies either a single unidirectional relationship (I'm superior and tolerate you) or two one-way relationships filled with anxiety (I tolerate you, and you tolerate me). MR implies a single bi-directional bond based on permanent equality, i.e. our respect for each other must be mutual or not at all, unlike tolerance that is characterized by one or more one-way relationships based on the (seemingly paradoxical) centrifugal notion of sameness. Let's apply these implications of tolerance and MR to a multicultural situation:

Scenario1. In Europe, many leaders have accepted that multiculturalism has either failed or doomed to fail. Why? Our argument: because it is based on tolerance. Both parties want sameness, but the question then is which party must transform to achieve this objective? This requires that either Islamic immigrants adopt the Judeo-Christian/Atheist west's norm, or the West embraces dogmatic Islam. In other words, one of the parties must be digested by the other, but given the irreconcilable differences in the predominantly history-centric thought systems (Islam, Judeo-Christianity, Atheism: see previous blog posts for a detailed discussion of our history-centric modeling approach) neither of these options are really realizable. Instead, the Western governments have set up policies that aim to superficially placate Islam to an extent, and in response, the immigrants have likewise compromised cosmetically to tolerate Western 'decadence'. Not surprisingly, this has resulted in a stalemate characterized by a permanent state of difference anxiety, which can lead to occasional bouts of extreme violence from both parties. Our most recent post on the Virginia Tech and Oikos University shootings argues that the root cause was difference anxiety.

Scenario2. In contrast, look at India prior to Islamic invasions, a subcontinent where multiculturalism is not just an option, there is really no option but multiculturalism. It worked remarkably well for a couple of thousand years until about 800 years of barbaric foreign occupation that only ended 65 years ago. The key reason was that the prevailing Dharmic thought system strongly emphasized mutual respect. Every cultural variation was deemed equally valid, regardless of its geography (North v South or East v West), or it's sub-Dharmic category (Buddhism, Jainism, or Hinduism) and diversity was embraced as a manifestation of the divine (A beautiful article here explains that in a Dharmic thought system, the question was not whether there was one or many gods, because there is only god !!). In game theoretic terms, multiculturalism based on tolerance in Europe veers toward a zero-sum game with each party waiting to see who blinks first, whereas in ancient India, multiculturalism based on mutual respect resulted in a stable and peaceful non-zero sum outcome, where ideas were challenged extremely vociferously but scientifically and rationally via Purva-Paksha debates, obviating the need for state-sponsored bans or violent crusades. Incredibly, a large portion of that Dharma-generated mutual respect still remains intact in contemporary India, and is perhaps the only reason why a hugely diverse India has thrived whereas a monotheistic and apparently homogenous Pakistan has not. However, as non-Dharmic thought systems gain strength (fed by foreign-sponsors and their Indian supporters), we are beginning to see a breakdown of this stable multiculturalism in peacetime India, and one can discern a switch in the language that, increasingly like Europe, talks of compromise and tolerance rather than genuine mutual respect. The outcome of a continued breakdown is not hard to predict.

Why was the outcome of scenario-1, despite the unity via their common Abrahamic ancestry, an unstable stalemate, whereas the result in scenario-2, characterized by amazingly diverse groups of people, mutually beneficial stability? Why does the former produce and rely on mere tolerance and the latter, mutual respect? Part of the answer lies in the contrast between synthetic unity and integral unity, which we will explore in the next post by examining, what we propose and coin, the paradox of sameness.

As always, this blog is a work in progress and is intended to be used as a resource and reference. Updated text, corrections, and new links will show up as time progresses.

A Finite State Model of the History-Centric Soul

(Work in progress, to be updated)
In this post, we show that the theological soul associated with a History-centric thought system (HCTS) can be adequately represented using a deterministic and finite programmable model (there's an almost Turing Machine like feel to it). As always, feel free to submit substantiated corrections or suggestions.

From previous posts, we know that the human membership associated with a HCTS can be encoded using exactly one bit of information:
1: fully accept the input historical prior P. Output: qualify as a member
0: not fully accept input P. Output: disqualified (all non-humans by default).

There is no other state possible and no other inputs are necessary. Thus HC systems are associated with a finite bounded true/false state, that is only externally controllable and defined only for humans (undefined for non-humans).

Programmable Model Template of History Centric Souls (HCS)
1. HCS have finite starting points denoted T_start and a finite end points (T_end), thus of total duration (T_end - T_begin) and is undefined for any other time.

2. There exists a 1:1 binding-mapping between HCS and human body, i.e., one instance of HCS can be associated with exactly one human instance, thereby precluding the possibility of reincarnation, among other things.

3. The end state of all HCS is collectively and deterministically tied to the acceptance or non-acceptance of the corresponding extraneous input static data set associated with historical prior P (e.g. Nicene Creed). Other inputs are neither necessary nor sufficient.

4. At time T_end, HCS lapse and deterministically receive unconstrained output incentive enjoyable in human form, only if the associated human body validates the static input data within prior P before their mortal end. Thus, infinite reward is at hand regardless of the quality and quantity of all prior finite human acts. This boundless reward is available in an exclusive domain removed from the mortal world and is not accessible to non-members. Note the total absence of causality, sense of proportionality, and Karma, and an exclusive emphasis on continued membership and the keying in of a single collectively valid password.

5. As Rajiv Malhotra notes, the domain of HC God, matter, and the individual HCS are non-intersecting (duality of domains), i.e., the  intersection of any pair of domains = {∅}.

6. It follows from (4) that HCS of non-members are guaranteed to receive infinite penalty in a non-exclusive domain regardless of how virtuous their mortal life was. 

7. Thus the end state for HCS is deterministically determined, is absolutely uncontrollable by the human and absolutely controllable by and dependent on an extraneous, infinitely distant 'God', i.e., strictly binary: either infinite penalty (-∞) or unbounded incentive (+∞), depending only on a single human decision to fully accept or not accept static input data from a historical prior P. There is zero probability of a 'middle-ground' between these infinite extremes showing up in the output, and zero possibility of 'a second chance' to alter an undesirable end-state via rebirth. Claiming ignorance of prior P is not an acceptable excuse either.

8. The starting state (DNA, socioeconomic condition, etc.) of the human form associated with a HCS soul is a one-time randomized draw from an urn, i.e. a human lottery with no chance of a re-draw.

9. At time T_start, all HCS are uniformly scheduled to receive 'infinite penalty' (-∞) upon termination. This default state value is assumed to be sexually transmitted and can be altered (to +∞) only if the human will officially accept the input historical prior P before mortal end. (An example of the direct consequence of this important history-centric property is the aggressive 'harvesting of souls' practiced by agents of Abrahamic theology. In fact, a posthumous attempt was made on the Christian HCS of Mahatma Gandhi recently).

Thus the structural properties of HC soul are (infinitely) different from the 'Atman' of Dharmic thought systems (there are many more differences beyond those addressed here). A key reason for the pattern of a 'bounded, deterministic and programmable model' that repeatedly shows up in Western thought is attributable to a near-exclusive emphasis on history-centrism and its resultant human-centrism, rather than beneficial metaphysics and development (or genuine acknowledgement) of  Dharmic inner sciences that help a human move away from bodily ego and maximize their inner potential. History-Centrism dictates that Yoga may help in the short term, but ultimately, only third-party intervention via a monotheist 'God' can seal the deal (human and HCS being the primary parties). Refer to Rajiv Malhotra's book 'Being Different' for complete details.

Duality masquerading as Advaita

We saw in the previous post ("Contradiction Networks") that the centralized management of the membership associated with History-Centric Thought Systems (HCTS) attempt to redefine themselves by de-emphasizing the HC model without actually eliminating the logical source of the maze of contradictions that characterize HCTS after a finite time period. Such an approach:
a) obfuscates rather than illuminates, and
b) digests, appropriates, and re-brands by stealth, rather than openly borrow, share, or acknowledge.

The level of obfuscation can (and has) reached such tragic levels in the west that the HC-induced duality can (and is now able to) give itself a makeover and present itself in terms of non-duality. Consider this exhibit (thanks to: Atanu Dey): Conference of Science and Non Duality ("SAND").

Years of painstaking analysis and data gathering efforts by Rajiv Malhotra indicates a distinct pattern emerging within those who sponsor and participate in conferences like these (screenshots below are taken from SAND website):

- there are conferences that consist of members, sponsors, and supporters who are overwhelmingly from the west, many of whom appear to have appropriated ideas, processes, and methods from the Dharmic knowledge base and repackaged such appropriated information as their "own" discovery by deleting its Hindu or Buddhist source and claiming its generic nature (note that such conferences are labeled non-dual rather than Dharmic!):

- The patronizing attitude that is symptomatic of duality is evident: Original non-western (Indian and Tibetan) discoverers and practitioners of such "generic" methods are categorized as (non-scientific or pre-rational) philosophers, sages, or mystics, whereas the westerners who are essentially reinventing the wheel or measuring the level of success of the original scientific discovery have hijacked this success and designated themselves as scientists in self-justification of this blatant unscientific knowledge appropriation:

- Commercial Exploitation of such uncredited appropriations from open-source Dharmic thought systems is conducted by filing patent claims, and/or obtaining academic research grants and overseas conference trips in lieu of direct commercial gain. For example, here is the snapshot of the actual patent claim on "Lucid Dreaming" US 2010/0130813 that is almost certainly ripped from prior-art Hindu/Buddhist methods with no credit or royalty given (see video below for details):

- Stifling of voices that point out the unethical practices that many (but not all) have employed in consideration of material benefits rather than allow a two-way conversation: Here is a full two-hour lecture by Rajiv Malhotra (thanks to: Karmasura) that systematically reviews some of the more prominent instances of uncredited appropriation of Indian Methods based on Dharmic thought systems:


In other words, grand titles for "non-dual conferences" similar to SAND tend to be oxymorons. They are both unscientific and anti-Dharmic! Rajiv Malhotra's next book on U-Turn Theory that among other things may expose such cynical and exploitative patterns of behavior, cannot come out soon enough!

History Centrism: Contradiction Networks

What is a contradiction network? Google generates a limited number of results for this phrase, none of which match how we plan to use this fairly simple concept in the latest installment of our ongoing research into the effects of History Centrism, a definitive phrase introduced by Rajiv Malhotra in his recent book "Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism".  First, we provide a brief recap of the work done so far (feel free to endorse or challenge/improve this work by providing substantiated corrections via counter-examples, etc, to help take this research forward).

Recap
We present a deterministic analytical model of a History-Centric Thought System (HCTS) that among other things, stipulates membership and non-membership criteria (Part 1). This model also helps in making a statement about the stability of membership (Part 2) as well as predict how the duality implied by HCTS drives its interaction with non-members, including non HC groups and alternative HC groups (Part 3). We then comment on how the Western HCTS shapes the overall 'master narrative', i.e. the monoculture of Western Universalism (Part 4). 

We now analyze how and why the membership based on a HCTS protects the claims listed in its historical prior P. To motivate this, we present another implication of the Separation Theorem stated in Part-1.

Implication: A HCTS is a closed and static system
Proof: Given the unique and non-reproducible historical claims of the prior, it follows that no (extraneous) event or discovery at any point in time can dynamically induce an amendment in the definition and rules of membership since doing so would result in a new HCTS that invalidates prior P.

What are the consequences of this implication? 
a. Since the HTCS was non-existent before time(s) T, the unique point(s) on the time-axis at which the event(s) cited in prior P occurred, any event in the universe that occurred prior to T that contradicts the claims of P is deemed not to occurred and hence ignored.

b. Any scientific theory proposed after time T that if accepted would contradict prior P, is rejected. Such rejection proactively applies to any such future discovery. If a theory is confirmed (and becomes a 'law') via newly observed data, thereby rendering parts of P fictitious, then such implications are ignored. This includes any future scientific evidence that uncover past facts (via carbon dating, archeology, etc).

In general, empirical and scientific contradictions that result from prior P are not resolved but ignored (by resorting to self-referential justifications based on the prior P if necessary).

Contradiction Networks

Over a period of time, such a response by the HCTS results in an accumulation of contradictions leading to many members disowning membership. Such a situation can be conceptually represented by a contradiction network or a contradiction graph, a construct for systematically identifying the sequence of implications underlying a mass of contradictions. Mounting scientific evidence that contradicts prior P results in this contradiction network becoming both denser and larger. Consequently, rather than trying to improve the quality of life of its adherents, the HCTS management is forced to spend a large proportion of its time and resources trying to decipher and defend this maze of contradictions. This may lead to:

- defending against criminal and civil lawsuits around the world,

- proposing and funding support for literature that promotes prior-friendly alternatives and pseudo-scientific theories to refute contradicting claims,

- penalizing members, and in general discouraging dissent by stipulating an infinite posterior penalty for infringements (e.g. "eternal hell")

- silencing opposition via:
   i)  counter-claims of contradiction against competing HCTS,
   ii) reflect back claims of human right violations, superstition, and discrimination against non HCTS, and
  iii) penalties against wavering members.

- obfuscating (but not eliminating) the duality implied by the core HC model by adding additional unverifiable layers of HC thought as well as useful metaphysics and practical methods derived from the inner sciences digested from non-HCTS systems. We elaborate on this particular aspect in the next post.

Analysis of History-Centrism - Part 2

In the first part, we analyzed a simple logical model of membership associated with a history-centric thought system (HCTS), a pivotal discovery of Rajiv Malhotra that is delineated in his amazing new book "Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism" where he has reversed the gaze on the west and analyzed their thought systems from an Indian perspective. Using even this simple model, we were able to show that duality, given HC, is a mathematical certainty. The sufficiency condition of the membership rule (which is also necessary) allows a great deal of flexibility and latitude in terms of how members can deal with members and non-members In this sequel, we consider additional implications and start to make statements on how their members are likely to interact with non-members, and comment on the stability of the membership.

Implication 4: History-Centrism implies Human-Centrism
Proof: result follows from the Separation Theorem in Part-1. (It is likely that at some point this human-centrism is practically interpreted as human supremacy over the universe). Similarly, HC also implies Geo-centrism. To analyze how such notions of duality affect the stability of their membership, we first define size:

Given a closed local population system of cardinality N that is in equilibrium, the size is defined as the fraction s (between 0 and 1.0) of the population that are members of a given HTCS

Membership Stability Postulate [work in progress]
If the material socioeconomic incentives and penalties for a local population are equal and independent of membership status, then the rate of change (s') with respect to time, is likely to be negative.

Proof: Since the beliefs in P cannot be verified at any point of time in future give the claim of a unique, non-reproducible event in the history, there is a non-zero probability = the fraction 0 < f/s < 1 of the current members will reject the hypothesis of P at any point in time and become non-members in the absence of any penalty to leave or incentive to stay. In other words, a subset of members think of P as a Bayesian prior. Furthermore, there is no incentive gain for non-members (who by definition have rejected P) to satisfy the necessary condition. Consequently in such a scenario, the size asymptotically approaches zero.

Corollary: The membership size associated with a HCTS in such a decentralized scenario will never be in stable equilibrium.

Given this, the membership can let the HCTS die a natural death or mobilize (via a centralized authority) and attract new members to survive. How? An implication of the stability theorem is that the only viable alternatives are:
a. erect barriers to exit from membership
b. provide incentives to attract new members
c. increase the per-capita family size of members

Example: Christianity in the West and in India
In part-1 we showed that churches that subscribed to the Nicene creed belonged to one particular HTCS. The exit rate from such churches in the west is steady and given that:
a. There is little incremental social or financial incentive for westerners to rejoin the church, and
b. The chronic inability to re-enact the events of P to validate the claimed hypothesis,
has driven an ever increasing number of people in the west into Yoga-based, non-exclusive, non-HCTS systems that focus on the inner sciences, like Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism (conjecture: most of them don't know they are H/B/J). The law of the land may stipulate that penalties for exit are illegal, and given that increasing family size is never really a scalable idea, the only viable option for survival is to focus on emerging markets.

A populous country like India that has only recently started re-developing its economy toward regaining its world market share that was sizable until 1750 CE (and then dwindled to near zero due to European colonialism). Consequently, today's India is characterized by significant variations in social and economic status and a lack of clarity and uniformity in laws concerning coerced conversions, thereby making it an attractive region for recruitment, regardless of the negative impact it has on the local culture and society (duality at work again!). Similar to the cost-driven advantage of outsourcing IT work to India-based companies, the church can make a dollar go much farther in India compared to the US or Europe. This move by the churches to expand its membership is laying the seeds for an active duality-driven conflict that existed in a 'cold-war' mode until recently.

Here's a link to an interesting geographical picture of the world religions in 1895:

and this is the 2012 picture (along with future projections).

Analysis of History-Centrism - Part 1

A fundamental difference between Dharmic Thought Systems that originated in India and the Judeo-Christian type that dominates the west is that the former is primarily characterized by philosophical schools of thought focused on self-realization and the 'inner sciences', whereas a defining feature of the latter is History-centrism (HC). This is just one of the many important findings of Dr. Rajiv Malhotra that are mentioned in his revolutionary new book: "Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism". Dharmic thought systems (DTS) of India (including the faiths of Hinduism, Jainism, Sikkism, and Buddhism) are characterized by the absence of such history-centricity. On the other hand,  an examination of their Itihaas, writings, and the recorded debates indicate that the core beliefs were and are guided by one or more philosophical schools of thought.

Reading Dr. Malhotra's book, I was struck by the clearly delineated 'business rule' driven nature of the institutions of HC that centrally manage the religion that arises from the history-centric thought. This meant that it is quite possible to precisely define and represent their membership rules using logical and mathematical models (!)  In this post (first of a series), we begin to explore this idea in depth, and hope to take it to its logical conclusion over time. The use of such a technique allows us to bring into play all the well-defined and universally understood rules of logic and mathematical modeling and infer the rich set of daisy-chain like implications that arise from HC. This in turn will help us better understand the impact it will have in the future on its adherents as well as non-adherents. For example, the hope is that, among other things, it will enable us to go beyond circumstantial evidence and rhetoric and more precisely answer questions like "does the theology of HC religions automatically imply a quest for eventual world domination?", or "does an enforcing of HC automatically imply a violation of the human rights of its own adherents at some level?", etc.

At this point in time, we do not formally finalize rigorous definitions, leaving them tentative and open to discussion, criticism, and corrections. We first state the logical model and then provide a concrete example to illustrate the same. Note: We use the word deterministic here to mean "with 100% probability", i.e. absolute certainty.

[Tentative] Definition
A history-centric thought system (HCTS) is defined by a single unique prior event,  (or fully enumerated and completed prior events, every one of which is unique) 'P' that is assumed to have deterministically occurred in history, even if data corresponding to such an observation is not available for validation or implied in the historical data available at any point in time after the occurrence of P.

Membership rule: A deterministic belief in this prior 'P' is both a necessary and sufficient condition for formal acceptance into the corresponding HCTS. The term 'prior' used here is analogous to that used in the domain of mathematical probability (Bayesian) models and turns out to be a useful aid for understanding and predicting the response of members associated with any given HTCS :
 
Implication 1
The prior P is non-reproducible

Proof: It follows from the definition that in a HCTS, the events defined by P are expected to never occur again even in a probabilistic sense (because if it did, it implies that either the events of P are likely to be non-unique or have not yet been enumerated with certainty).

Implication 2

Given a set of members of a HCTS, we can plausibly predict that their response to a future event to be consistent with the prior. 

Proof: Follows from the 'necessary condition' part of the membership rule.

Implication 3 
Beliefs in another thought system does not result in disqualification only if it does not conflict with prior P.

Proof: This follows from the sufficiency condition. These implications leads to the following key implication:

Separation Implication (Duality)

A belief in an alternative thought system results in disqualification if and only if it conflicts with prior P. 

Proof: The 'if' part of the statement follows from the necessary-condition, and the 'only if' part follows from the sufficiency condition.

We can call this result the 'separation implication' because it in effect bisects the time and space axis into two distinct regions. For example:


Application of the Separation Implication along the time-scale

Given the uniqueness of P at a point in time T(P), it is clear that the prior bisects the time-axis into two regions: (-∞, T(P)), i.e. before 'P' and (T(P),∞),i.e., 'after P'. Consequently, for any time before 'P', every entity is disqualified by definition and the member set is empty.


We now use the Christian thought system (CTS) as an illustrative example.



Prior
The beliefs of the Nicene creed form the prior P for the CTS. It includes [verification needed here. tentative]
a. The immaculate conception and Virgin Mary
b. Original sin
c. Jesus is the son of God / resurrection

Membership: A belief in each of these three elements this prior is a non-negotiable prerequisite for entry into most of the mainstream churches in Christian HTS (ref: Being Different)

Implication 1
Another equivalent immaculate conception, a return to Adam/Eve, and a daughter or another son of God, an equally divine son of another God, can never occur again. This guarantees the monotheism of Christianity.

Implication 2

Regardless of the context, rational members will never subscribe to thoughts that violate the CTS prior. For example, the movie 'Da Vinci Code' attempted to break the determinism of Prior components (a) and perhaps (c), and thus comes into direct conflict with the defining characteristics of CTS, and thus opposed.

Implication 3 
A member of the CTS can dress like an Indian, learn Carnatic music, light incense sticks in front of Ganesha, do 'Yoga', and use moral ideas from the Vedas, and quote the Thirukkural. None of this comes into conflict with the above prior and thus does not imply disqualification. This result in turn implies that such cultural data can be digested into the CTS without conflict.  A member can marry a non-CTS and permit his/her spouse to retain their original faith (or non-faith). What is more interesting is the membership of the progeny that is an output of such a union. A statistical study may reveal interesting results here.

The Separation Implication applied to CTS
A person can memorize the ten commandments and follow all the positive teachings of love and forgiveness attributed to Jesus, but he/she remains disqualified unless he/she swears belief in prior P. An important and direct consequence of the Separation implication is human duality since it separates the population on the planet into two distinct binary categories. Those who are human and exclusive members and those those who are not (including plants, animals, and all other non-humans on this planet and ETs).

Similarly, a person who believes in the concepts of original divinity and the non-duality of the universe is disqualified from membership since it violates the notion of duality inherent in the prior (why?).

Application of the Separation Implication along the time-scale
Anybody in this universe before the Christian Prior were non-members.

In future posts, we will bring out additional implications and discuss more topics from Rajiv Malhotra's amazing book.

Update: March 25, 2012
Bayesian Prior versus History-Centric Prior
We start with a useful but non-rigorous Wikipedia descriptions of a Bayesian prior:
" [A prior] is meant to attribute uncertainty rather than randomness to the uncertain quantity ..."

"A prior is often the purely subjective assessment of an experienced expert."

At this point in the process, there is little difference between a HC prior defined in this post and a Bayesian prior. However in the latter case, as new empirical data becomes available, the belief, expressed in terms of a probability distribution, is updated to take this new information into account and does not remain static. After a sufficiently many observations, the probability distribution is almost completely data-driven, losing its original subjectivity. On the other hand, a belief based on a HC prior is indifferent to new data and remains frozen in time. It must be noted that a some of the HCTS members will not behave in this manner and eventually reject their membership once they recognize the seemingly irreversible conflicts between the newly observed data and the unique historic prior (more about this in Part-2). In other words, a HCTS can become a relatively more inclusive and rational system by re-modeling its prior in terms of a Bayesian prior. Unfortunately, this means 'loss of membership' and a rejection of prior P.