Yogi and mystic Sadhguru explains the origin of the word “Hindu” and looks at why there is actually no such thing as Hinduism. Being Hindu is a way of life, not a religion.
Sadhguru: The term and concept of Hinduism was coined only in recent times. Otherwise, there was really no such thing. The Hindu civilization was born on the banks of the river Sindhu, which is known as Indus in English today. The Persians introduced the term “Hindu”, derived from the Sanskrit word Sindhu, to denote the people who live beyond the river Sindhu. Essentially, what you call Hindu is a geographical and cultural identity. It had never been the intention to organize it into a religious identity. Basically, the whole culture was oriented towards realizing one’s full potential.
It is only recently and due to external influences that this geographical and cultural identity has attempted to transform itself into a religious identity called Hinduism. Hindu was never an “ism”, and the attempt to organize it as a religion is still not successful because the Hindu way of life which is referred to as Sanatana Dharmaor universal law is all-inclusive in nature and does not exclude anything. The Hindu way of life is not an organized belief system but a science of salvation.
The science of salvation
The conflicts in the world have always been projected as good versus bad, but really, the conflict is always one man’s belief versus another man’s belief. In the past, religion was far more important to people than it is now, but still there were no theocratic states in this culture; the ruler had his religion and the subjects had the freedom to follow theirs. There was no conflict because people did not look at religion as an organized process.
Everywhere in the world, the problem was always this – if anybody spoke anything other than the existing organized religion of that time, the first thing that the people said was, “Kill.” Whether it was a Socrates, a Mansoor or a Jesus – these are the famous people – a million other people who never became known to the world have been killed for this same reason. So in those parts of the world, realized beings were wise enough to just shut up and do their own business rather than talking in a big way and getting killed. I would say thousands or even millions of them did get killed. More than two million women were burnt on the stake in Europe simply because they exhibited some quality which was considered a threat to the organized religion.
For example, Jesus did not do anything very revolutionary. He did not talk about demolishing the temple, replacing the gods or about a new religion. He only talked about taking the business out of the temple. For that, they did such horrible things to him.
Everywhere else people believe “God created us.” Here we know we created god so we take total freedom to create whatever kind of god we can relate to.
Five hundred years before Jesus, Gautama the Buddha made fun of all the Hindu gods. He said, “You people worship snakes, trees and cows. You don’t know what god is.” So people stepped back and said, “We also know there is only one god but we just enjoy the variety.” Gautama pushed on and said, “There is no god.” The Hindus stepped back, opened their Upanishads and said, “See, even our Upanishads say there is no god but there is atman and there is a universal soul, paramatman.” Then Gautama said, “There is no atman or paramatman. You are an ‘anathma.’” That means he is saying you are a non-soul.
In this manner, the man contradicted and made fun of everything that they were saying but nobody ever thought of throwing a stone at him or crucifying him. Such things never arose. People called him for debates, they sat and debated for months. When they failed in the debate, they became his monks. Because the pursuit is truth, so people sat down and argued whether what they knew was true or what the other person knew was true. If his truth was more powerful than yours, you become a part of him. If your truth was more powerful than theirs, they would become a part of you. It is a very different kind of search. People were searching to know. They were not just believing and trying to prove that their belief was right.
There is no belief system to the Hindu way of life. Someone believes in God, someone else can choose not to believe in God. Everybody can have their own way of worship and way to salvation. If there are five people in your family, each one can worship the God of their choice, or not worship anything, and still be a good Hindu. So you are a Hindu irrespective of what you believe or don’t believe.
At the same time, there was a common line running through all these. In this culture, the only goal in human life is liberation or mukti. Liberation from the very process of life, from everything that you know as limitations and to go beyond that. God is not held as the ultimate thing, God is seen as one of the stepping stones. This is a Godless but a devout nation in the sense that there is no concretized idea of God. When I say Godless, we need to understand that this is the only culture that has given humans the freedom not just to make a choice of Gods, but to create the sort of God that you can relate to. You can worship a rock, a cow, your mother – you can worship whatever you feel like – because this is a culture where we have always known that God is our making. Everywhere else people believe “God created us.” Here we know we created god so we take total freedom to create whatever kind of god we can relate to. A farmer worshiped his plough, a fisherman worshiped his boat, people worshiped whatever aspect of lifethey related to most, and that was perfectly fine.
A Godless nation
In the East, spirituality and religion were never an organized process. Organization was only to the extent of making spirituality available to everyone – not for conquest. Essentially, religion is about you, it is not about God. Religion is about your liberation. God is just one more stepping stone that you can use or skip towards your ultimate liberation. This culture recognizes human wellbeing and freedom as of paramount importance versus the prominence of God, and hence the whole technology of god-making evolved into the science of consecratingvarious types of energy forms and spaces.
The essential purpose of God is to create reverence in a person. What you worship is not important. It is not about liking something or disliking it. The object of reverence is irrelevant. If you make reverence the quality of your life, then you become far more receptive to life. Life will happen to you in bigger ways. There is so much misunderstanding about these things because there is a certain dialectical ethos to the culture where we want to express everything in a story or in a song. But in a way, this whole culture referred to as Hindu is rooted in the spiritual ethos of each individual working toward ultimate liberation as the fundamental goal in life.
If you explore mysticism in India, it is absolutely incredible and this has been possible because it does not come from a belief system. It happens as a scientific means to explore dimensions beyond the physical.
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