The Original Good Cop

The Abrahamic God has often been described as a ruthlessly strong, angry, jealous male, quick to take offense, one who can toss you into eternal hellfire, etc. But being as subtle as a sledgehammer creates an image, and hence recruitment, problem. Some Abrahamic variations do not care about PR or niceties. His will will be done, one way or another, and peace is established by the fear of the sword or the fear of the bigger sword. Other cults are smarter.

Enter: son of God. The epitome of love, charity, kindness, and persuasion. Benevolence multiplied by Goodness raised to the power of divinity. Rather than put the fear of God in you right away, you first do a meet-and-greet, and then gradually get acquainted with the good son. He's the good guy, who is on your side, fighting your cause in the trenches, accepting your shameful sins, who's taken the hit for you so you won't have to, who will save you from the torrid wrath of the angry big-boss CEO upstairs. And he's the only one who can protect you from the quintessential bad cop, and all you have to do is sign on the dotted line. And it works. every time. spectacularly. You are hooked. The good guy too has a dark side - after all, he's a chip of the old Abrahamic block, but you do not want to see it until it is too late. It's like an age old retail trick that works like a charm. You are suckered by the promotion that practically gives away the core, attractive hardware, and you end up paying through your nose for the endless expensive accessory products for the rest of your life. No surprise then that billions around the world have fallen, and continue to fall for the world's first and original good-cop bad-cop trick.

The GCBC routine has since been re-employed over the years in a variety of different forms and improvisations to facilitate religious conversion and digestion of native cultures. India is a prime example. Hindus, in particular, fall for this all the time because they invariably view the junior good-cop very positively in isolation but then fail to spot the GCBC system at work, and that it is the bad cop boss upstairs that ultimately calls the shots. This failure of not adopting a systems approach is costing India. Some of the intellectual Hindu writers online fall for this and end up looking silly.

The work and methods formulated by Rajiv Malhotra to delineate the hostile ecosystems at work, expose them, guard against them, and eventually turn them back, are incredibly important to internalize. Listen to this debate between Rajiv Malhotra and a wonderful, nice, courteous, and friendly good cop in Houston. RM explains the GCBC system really well here.

Digestion of Hinduism: A Self-Study

Introduction
This is the first update on an ongoing self-study to improve my own understanding of 'digestion' using the example of Yoga. This is work in progress.

'Digestion' is a term coined by Rajiv Malhotra. My reading is that it represents the calculated misappropriation of methods and concepts from Indian (dharmic) knowledge systems, which are subsequently reassembled and integrated into an existing western or non-dharmic framework with the final goal of maintaining or enhancing the latter's balance of power, and if necessary, discarding the original dharmic method/concept/source/context as redundant and obsolete. Rajiv Malhotra explains this via the tiger-deer metaphor, which is discussed in other blog posts and in his forum.

Background
(Read 'Being Different' book for the complete and accurate details)
Fundamental Christianity, like its Islamic and Judaic counterparts, are history-centric systems. In more general language, their core is dogmatic and tied to a finite number of unique supernatural top-down intervention(s) in human-recorded history. On the other hand, Indic religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism are based on Dharmic thought systems that are not history-dependent. Dharma is a Sanskrit non-translatable that roughly means ~ 'that which sustains or upholds'. I view dharma as 'that which is essential', and Sanskrit as the best available language to explain the essence of the cosmos. Though there are significant and deep metaphysical differences between these different dharmic systems and a pluralism of their dharmic sub-variants, they all adhere to a common set of Dharmic truth claims, including Punar Janma (rebirth) and Karma (cause and effect). All these systems believe in one more forms of Yoga as a dharmic path to reach the ultimate truth without external crutches or textual/historical artefacts.

Being Different
Dharmic truth-claims are permanently irreconcilable with a history-centric core.  For example, if Christianity becomes dharmic, the idea of original sin, the need for a son of God, intermediary prophet, etc. become totally irrelevant. Dharma and Dogma are incompatible. Islam, and Judaism have similar issues. Furthermore, these history-centric religions are themselves incompatible with each other, since each rejects the other's record of unique divine interventions in history. Thus there is also a need for a HC systems to augment it's own idea inventory to appear superior to its HC competitor when they fight for global market-share.

Why Digestion and Not Complete Borrowing?
If the HC west were to attempt to openly borrow and adopt authentic Yoga, it would immediately clash with their dogmatic core, because Yoga as path of achieving self-realization, represents freedom from history and history-centrism (a full chapter in Rajiv Malhotra's book 'Being Different discusses this). Hence, Yoga in its original form, meaning, and context cannot be adopted by the west unless they give up their HC dogma. The Yogasanas may help them look better, feel healthier, but they cannot proceed beyond that to reach higher levels of consciousness without seriously comprising their dogmatic beliefs. Thus openly acknowledging and borrowing Yoga poses an existential question. What to do?

Visit India as students, humbly learn from Gurus for years. Then take a step back, analyze Yoga, de-construct it and strip it down to smaller components. Then pick and reassemble those pieces that are not in conflict with their dogmatic core, to synthesize a bastardized or cannibalized version of Yoga, and reject the rest as waste material.

This mangled synthesis of "Yoga" is initially considered as generic knowledge, and not unique to dharmic systems, but is eventually retro-fitted and back-traced to some obscure Western source, over time. Thus, history-centricity is preserved, while also allowing their followers to get real but highly limited benefits of Yoga, while still keeping them dependent on prophets and supernatural interventions. To increase the comfort level, "Yoga" practititioners can mechanically chant "Hallelujah" or "A.Hu.A", or recite the Torah instead of the essential and profound 'Om'.

Interestingly, look at the reverse case. Dharmic thought systems can happily and openly borrow from progress achieved by western science and technology since it is compatible their dharmic 'operating system' core that is based on the scientific idea of cause and effect. No digestion is required and the original ideas are neither distorted, nor misrepresented. Science has always been compatible with dharma, but not always with a HC core.


Summary
To summarize, Digestion is a method of:
1) extracting the 'nutrients' out of a dharmic concept,

2) discard the crucial dharmic constituents itself as unnecessary waste,

3) reassembling non-dharmic nutrients to synthesize a new distorted concept (rename it as "Christian Yoga, Christu-natyam for comfort and acceptance) that is of limited use and importantly, is fully compatible with history-centric dogma,

4) obfuscate, alter, or delete the original context, depth and meaning of the concept (e.g. the true, deep meaning and intent of Yoga and Bharatanatyam is lost)

5) deny credit to the dharmic primary source, and erase it over time, and even sell the mangled form back to Indians


Outcomes
I count at least two crucial practical benefits of digestion to the west. Let's use HC Christianity as an example.

Once we have a Hindu-DNA enhanced Christianity , there is
OUTCOME 1) SIGNIFICANT REDUCTION IN EFFORT TO FORCE OR COERCE CONVERSIONS OF HINDUS.

OUTCOME 2) REDUCED MOTIVATION FOR DOGMA-FOLLOWERS TO TURN DHARMIC


why? Aren't these positive outcomes?

To see (outcome 1), History-centric religion will now have all the externally observable equivalent features contained in Hinduism - Christian Yoga, Christunatyam, Christian Veda, Jesus Pooja, etc.  The myth of sameness becomes incredibly strong. The message to dharmic peoples will simply be:
YOU DO NOT EVEN NEED TO CONVERT ANYMORE. WE ARE THE SAME. PLUS WE DO NOT HAVE CASTE/COW/SATI/DOWRY PROBLEMS. YOU MERELY NEED TO UPGRADE.

For (outcome 2), the message to dogma-followers will be:
YOU DO NOT NEED TO CONVERT OUT OF YOUR FAITH. WE ALREADY HAVE EVERYTHING DHARMIC FAITHS HAVE, AND WE ARE MODERN.

To summarize, hte net outcome of digestion is that the HC system gets stronger, and the dharmic system gets weaker. Thus a digester like Phil Goldberg will have no problem criticising conversion because:

After digestion is complete, there is no need to coerce and convert! Digestion allows HC religions claim equivalence and even superiority in features and benefits, even though they are only superficially the same as dharmic religions. The myth of sameness becomes incredibly strong.

Furthermore, since these digested concepts are delinked from dharma, existing dharmic systems will be seen as obsolete relics of a bygone era that never contributed much, and fit only for a museum. Where are the original native thought systems of Africa, North America, Australia, Middle East? They have been digested into one of the history-centric systems. Only India still remains their unfinished business, and barely so, because of the remarkable anti-fragile properties of Hinduism.








How Phil Goldberg made the Vedas Kosher
Now take the case of Phil Goldberg. His ideas and views have been covered in the 'hitchhiker's guide to BD' blog. His American Veda book deliberately makes no mention of Hinduism. anywhere. Why? This is not mere semantics. His audience is the west. His goal, as he himself has openly stated is that the western peoples can retain their existing (history-centric) faiths but be able to get the benefits of 'sprituality' (without caste/cow/sati/dowry etc). Thus, the only way out for him to be successful while also achieving this goal is employ digestion. Platitudes at other times keeps the Indians convinced that all is well and hunky-dory.

Digestion (as a strategy) relies on treating Hindus as useful idiots.

To summarize, we can now see that Goldberg's actions results in:

a) The original Vedas being stripped of their context, ideas appropriated and digested into an "American Veda" that is 'kosher' and compatible with history-centrism dogma.

b) The full meaning,and context of the original, Hindu Vedas get diminished over time and eventually lost.

c) The AV becoming a ready-to-consume all-American, self-contained reference textbook for Vedic ideas that gives it's readers a comfortable western interpretation of dharmic concepts. See how Hinduism is bypassed? This can only result in further degradation of Hindu dharma's 'brand' in the west, which Phil Goldberg does not see as his problem.

d) Any random person can latch on to this approach as a cookie-cutter to create a Scientology Veda, or a Timbuktu Veda, and sell books, patent, commercialize, and make money. A lot of "Yoga" methods have been similarly appropriated, commercialized, patented, and even weaponized by the Pentagon (e.g. Yoga Nidra). Just like the west has "paddle boat Yoga, Power Yoga, Aqua Yoga, ...".
 
e) Note that this digested multiplicity does not represent genuine and dharmic pluralism, since such proliferation is dharma nirpeksha (sans dharma), thereby only leading to corruption and adharma in the form of egoistic patent quarrels, practitioner injuries and disillusionment, marketing wars, greed, etc. 
 
f) Furthermore, since the west controls the global discourse, these mangled meanings and definitions become the accepted ones, show up in Wikipedia, western school textbooks, and eventually accepted by the leftist-controlled textbooks consumed by Indian students.

g) Net result, as Rajiv Malhotra states: the history-centric tiger has eaten up the deer, the deer nutrients are converted into tiger DNA, making the tiger stronger. What is left of the dharmic deer is a pile of poop.


Phil Goldberg Celebrated in India
How have the dharmic deer welcomed folks like Phil Goldberg?
Some samples that I am aware of:

1) He was invited to give a talk organized by Ms Nirmala Seetharaman's foundation, which was promoted by a prominent RSS intellectual/spokesperson. Attempts to contact Ms. Seetharaman on twitter prior to this talk got zero response.

2) His HuffPost article that condemns conversion was reproduced on a reputed Indian website (IndiaFactsOrg) that promotes dharma. Note that these articles in themselves are not a problem and such sites have every right to publish any material they deem worthy. However, such articles help Hinduism very little, but boosts the digester's credibility a lot. As Rajiv Malhotra tweeted "it is like Rahul Gandhi talking about evils of corruption". Does Hinduism need a 'facts lecture' from the Goldbergs of the world to tell us that the coerced conversions represents a clear and present danger to India?

3) Monetary funding from Sanathana Dharma institutions.

4) Have his book cited as an shining example of positive Hindu influence on the west, even by strong 'Hindutva' proponents, when all that AV really does is to make it easier for the west to remain rooted to dogma by incorporating useful (intellectual/textual but not the deep dharmic) benefits of Hinduism.
 
Note: I look forward to IndiaFactsOrg uncovering the complete facts about digestion of dharmic ideas and methods, and disseminate it to a wider audience.


Questions to Ponder
1. Do some Hindutva giants and organizations even realize that they are celebrating an end-product that is Hindu-DNA enhanced Fundamental Christianity and not some pluralistic western branch of Hinduism as they foolishly believe it to be?

2. That this history-centric Christianity running on digested Hindu energy needs even less effort to convert dharmic peoples to their side, while also keeping their own followers bound in Dogma?

3. How is the cause of dharma served by celebrating this digestion?

Not just Phil Goldberg, Rajiv Malhotra has identified several westerners who have digested (for example) Aurobindo's ideas, repackaged it to suit Western audiences, and are now paid high fees and invited back to India by big companies to "educate" their management trainees.

The dogmatic tiger's conquest is being celebrated by dharmic deer.

Part-2 of self study is continued here.

Karnataka Government's 'Improper Use of Magic' Office

[updated Dec 9]
The 'secular' states of Karnataka and Maharashtra in India (both ruled by so-called secular parties that were decimated in the recent assembly elections in several other states for their unprecedented corruption and misrule) have drafted an 'anti-superstition' bill. Here's the text of the bill, and a factual critique of the bill that exposes the government plan for what it is: a lousy, unscientific, and politically motivated plan that gives a beleaguered government the right to wantonly interfere in the affairs of any religious group and attack personal liberty, as long as the groups and persons of interest belong to a dharmic faith (like Hinduism), and prosecute them legally, as convenient.

The tragi-comic part of the bill is that these "rational" governments have pretty much recognized the historicity and authenticity of claims of a person that he, and he alone, was (and will ever be) the recipient of a one-time wireless download of divine literary material from a male-only god atop a mountain, which contradicts the prior claims of another person that he was the only (male) progeny of the same god and a human mom, conceived immaculately, and who died and will come back to life at a suitable time. Note that history-centric faiths like Islam and Christianity cease to exist if such superstitions are not accepted into evidence as historically observed and verified data. Hypothetically, if Rama is considered to be a natural human being by Hindus, who then use the Ramayana solely for its ethical and dharmic teachings, Hinduism would continue to flourish. But if Islam and Christianity likewise assumed 'son of God' and 'Koran as word of God' to be useful myth built around non-supernatural human beings, and similarly treat the text they generated as human-generated moral teachings for a peaceful and prosperous life, it invalidates the very basis of their religion in its current form!

To summarize, these truth-claims of History-Centric faiths are superstition that have to be accepted as historical fact by everybody, else they die. Rajiv Malhotra's 'Being Different', among other things, contrasts the top-down History-centric thought systems versus the ground-up dharmic thought systems, and scientifically analyzes the implications, in-depth. This book is now available in Hindi as well. 


Let the full details of this debate be made public, and let the hypocrisy that defines 'secularism' in India be exposed to its gullible public - that a secular government has used superstition to go on a witch-hunt and decide what is superstition and what isn't. Now where have we read of such a crazy scenario before?

Read the critique posted above and then the description below posted from http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Improper_Use_of_Magic_Office.
 

" The Office is responsible for investigating offences under the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery and the International Confederation of Wizards Statute of Secrecy. The Decree prohibits an underage wizard or witch from performing magic, while the Statute of Secrecy prohibits wizards and witches from performing magic in the presence of Muggles or in a Muggle-inhabited area. 

On receiving intelligence reports of a violation of the Decree, a note is sent to the offender detailing actions that will be taken by the Office. First-time offenders are usually let off with a warning while extreme cases may be referred to the Wizengamot. Thus, it appears that the Improper Use of Magic Office deals with offences that are more regulatory in nature than criminal, ... penalties can still be harsh.
Also, this is where the Animagus registration is posted, and that all Animagi must register with all their distinguishing features and traits noted, in order for them not to abuse their abilities. The registry is open to public viewing. Failing to register will receive a sentence in Azkaban.

Contact with Harry Potter

The Improper Use of Magic Office came into contact with Harry Potter repeatedly during his childhood. He received a warning letter from them when Dobby, ..... years later, Harry received notice of expulsion from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry after he used a Patronus Charm against threatening Dementors .... The letter informed him that his wand would be destroyed by Ministry officials and he would be detained until Court notice; this appears to be the standard procedure.... 
It is suggested that the Improper Use of Magic Office attends Wizengamot Court services,... It is presumed that this department has several positions and that they remained loyal to the Ministry even when Cornelius Fudge denied Lord Voldemort had risen again. 

.... it was highly unusual procedure for a case of underage use of magic. The hearing was held in Courtroom Ten below the Department of Mysteries at the Ministry of Magic. Incidentally, it was the same courtroom Harry had previously visited via the Pensieve. It was a horribly intimidating room with a chair that self-locks when the defendant sits down..."


Substitute
'Hindu Gurus' for Harry Potter,
'Yoga and dharmic institutions' for Hogwarts
'Secular Indian gov' for 'Improper Use of Magic Office''Secularist/Monotheist goon squads' for 'Dementors',
etc.
and re-read the description above. 

Of course, who 'he who must not be named' maps to in real-world India is left as an exercise to the reader. Clue: person turned 666 yesterday. Oops, mea culpa.

Why Did Shiva Drink The Poison?

[This is an example of an attempt at digesting Shiva into Christianity (Jesus). An abbreviated version of this blog was first posted in the Rajiv Malhotra Forum]

(link source: http://beingdifferentbook.com)


The Samudra Manthana story in Hinduism (pictured in book cover, above) appears to be a key metaphor to describe order & chaos in the book 'Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism" (BD),  where the Amrit (nectar) that comes out of the churning the ocean represents 'order', and the accompanying poison, the 'chaos and disorder'. In multiple online forums, Shiva's drinking of the poison is equated to Christ's crucifixion to proactively save humanity from original sin. Some Hindus have equated Shiva's act as one of collective salvation from sin, feeding the myth of sameness. (see here, here, and here). A key truth-claim of Hinduism is the cause-and-then-effect concept of Karma, so Shiva cannot bear anybody else's "sins". We all have to follow our own Sva-Dharma and shape our own destiny across multiple births. Hindus do not have to (and can't) depend on a "single-life + third-party salvation model" like Christianity. (Read BD & the earlier blog posts on history-centric model of Abrahamic Faiths). Reading Chapter 4 of BD again (I quote from the Amazon-Kindle copy), indicates that this interpretation is incorrect.

1. Firstly, BD notes:
"....The story of the Samudra-manthana is not intended to be taken literally.
Indeed, the ultimate uncertainty of knowing how the universe came about is given
eloquent expression in the famous 'Hymn of Creation' ..."

whereas History-Centric Christianity requires Crucifixion, resurrection & its
implications of collective salvation to be literally and absolutely true, with
no room for alternative explanations.

2. BD also rules out equivalence to a story in the 'book of revelation' where
'satanic disorder' has to be absolutely vanquished:
"...In one such story, Lord Shiva himself consumes the fierce, dark and bitter
poison first churned up from the ocean. He does so in order to overcome it,
leaving the nectar to others. But significantly, Shiva makes this choice both
out of knowledge (of the poison's deadly effect) and love (for those who might
suffer harm) – not out of any dark, destructive passion. Furthermore, he is able
to transmute the poison not by ejecting it but by incorporating it in himself.
An equivalent story in the Book of Revelation, conceivably, might be for Christ,
in his second coming, to assimilate the Devil rather than defeat him in an
external struggle. Thus Christ would be setting a constructive example as
opposed to demanding that all humans join him in a war against all those who
side with the Devil. But, needless to say, this is but a hypothetical scenario;
the good versus evil dualism of Judaism and Christianity is absolute."

3. The section below appears to give the interpretation of 'why Shiva drank the
poison':
"... Disorder serves as a source of creativity by preventing order from becoming
fossilized. The Lord is not only the creator of the universe (as Brahma) and the
maintainer of its order (as Vishnu) but also the one who ultimately dissolves it
(as Shiva). The dissolution makes room for the next cycle of creation. At the
spiritual level, Shiva, the Lord of Yoga, aptly assumes the appearance of chaos
to facilitate the dissolution of bondage to the falsehoods in our minds – making
way for new creation..."

(picture link source: http://bhavanajagat.com/tag/bhagavata-purana-prahlada-charitra/)