Home Is Where the Heart Is
Home Is Where the Heart Is
So goes the familiar truism. But the mind has to come to terms with what the heart believes. This is a difficult section for me to write, because it is so close to home. As I have already stated, it is sad that whenever somebody like me questions the main ideas of the dominant religion that is woven into the culture of my birth, they run the risk of being seen as a traitor. A traitor to what, I ask? If my disbelief of the religion that shaped my culture is such a terrible thing, why are westerners being encouraged to become traitors to the West and to the worldview that has shaped the West? Why is it that a westerner moving toward the East in his or her thinking is doing a good thing, but the reverse is a betrayal? The tirade against Chopra by Aseem Shukla, a urologist by profession, from the University of Minnesota and of the Hindu American Foundation, is over Chopra’s resistance to call his brand of spirituality by its rightful name, which Shukla insists is Hinduism. If this is a demonstration of the kind of castigation one faces for believing the same thing but calling it something different, imagine the hostility toward a fellow countryman who doesn’t believe the same thing.
Some time ago, a noted Indian historian by the name of S. D. Jha wrote an article in one of India’s leading newspapers on the pre-Vedic and early Vedic practice of meat and beef consumption. He mustered a wealth of Sanskrit scholars, linguists, and historians of religion to show that this was indeed so, not only, I might add, of Hindu priests, but also of the Buddha himself. Mr. Jha is a highly respected and qualified historian. The vitriol the article engendered and the hate mail he received was beyond belief.
Is it not possible to be honest in what one says without being seen as attacking one’s roots? Is it not possible to expose a falsehood and still love one’s culture of birth? I am an Indian through and through… by birth, by love, by admiration for all that this great culture has poured into my soul. In India we have the term “dharti kay admi.” It means “a person of the soil.” I am of Indian soil. But I have to ask questions where absolute truth is claimed, in order to be able to find reasonable answers. On that, the great sages of India agree. That is what I am trying to do here and, out of my love for both India and the West, demonstrate that the metaphysics that has changed Western spirituality is based on a flawed epistemology.
Some years ago, when the former Soviet Union was still in the grip of the Cold War, I happened to be visiting there with some friends. After we had finished lunch one day, the waitress politely intoned, “Would you like any dessert?”
“Yes, we would,” we answered. “What do you have?”
“Ice cream,” came the sweet reply.
We waited. It was soon evident that nothing further was coming. “Then we’ll have ice cream,” we said.
“What flavor would you like?” she asked.
“What flavors do you have?” we inquired.
“Vanilla,” came the polite answer.
We waited. We stared at one another. That was it. We concluded that she really only wanted to know if we would like vanilla ice cream for dessert but asked us with the charming grace of making us feel that it was the dessert of our choice, among myriad options.
That is precisely the sweet talk of contemporary “Weastern” Spirituality. “Choose the religion of your choice… as long as you include our fundamentals. If not, we’ll call you a fundamentalist.” Chopra never hesitates to use that description in a pejorative way for those who take the Bible as God’s Word. The purveyors of this New Spirituality are brilliant at playing the game to appear very generous while being actually very defining. This is the same game relativism plays: You are told there are no absolutes, but if you run afoul of the relativist, the castigation that follows knows no boundaries and the bigotry vented knows no limits. Chopra wants us to believe that this New Spirituality is not dogmatic and is all-accommodating. But the truth is that its foundation is in the Hindu/pantheistic worldview and the implications of Vedic teaching are at its root. On that there is no equivocation.
Every chapter of Chopra’s Seven Spiritual Laws of Success begins with a quote from either the Hindu scriptures or a pantheist. The last quote is from Einstein, and that completes his scenario of pantheism wedded to science. Dr. Aseem Shukla rightly takes Chopra to task for playing games with words. Here is how he states it in their serial exchange in the Washington Post:
[Deepak] Chopra is the perfect emissary to fire a salvo against my assertion that delinking Hinduism from its celebrated contributions to contemporary spiritual dialogue—yoga, meditation, Ayurvedic healing, the science of self-realization—renders a rich tradition barren and unrecognizable to its adherents…
A prolific writer and gifted communicator, Chopra is perhaps the most prominent exponent of the art of “How to Deconstruct, Repackage and Sell Hindu Philosophy Without Calling it Hindu!”…
The contention that yoga’s foundation is “in consciousness alone,” thereby preceding Hinduism, is a sad demonstration of the extent Chopra and other Hindu philosophical profiteers will go to disassociate themselves from Hinduism… Hinduism and yoga are inextricably intertwined, and the dedicated practice of yoga is absolutely a Hindu practice… Hinduism, being avowedly pluralistic, requires no membership, affiliation or oath of loyalty to borrow, and yes, benefit, from its sacred wisdom… Frustratingly, also, Chopra takes the disingenuous path of impugning a “fundamentalist” agenda to my contentions… But the guilt of plagiarism carries no statute of limitations, and Hindus are wise to the machinations of the pretenders.1
The back and forth between Chopra and Shukla makes for a fascinating exposé of the hostility between them. There are no beatific smiles on display here, no enlightened meditational peace; just plain polysyllabic vitriol. I find it fascinating that Shukla, verbose and rich in philosophical terminology, naively or tendentiously calls Hinduism “avowedly pluralistic” when all the fundamentals of Hinduism are in clear contradiction to the fundamentals of monotheistic religions. All Hindu scholars like to perpetrate this illusion of pluralism within Hinduism. But borrow any of their views, and they will doggedly demand that you identify this “avowedly pluralistic” thought as uniquely theirs. It is quite humorous, actually… the old story of “all yours is mine and all mine is mine.”
Regardless of whether or not we agree on our worldviews, it is necessary that we learn to live peaceably with our differences. Swami Vivekananda used to say, “Not just tolerance but acceptance.” It is a noble intent, but I ask what exactly we are to accept, the belief or the person? I would like to add that tolerance of the belief is the gracious thing to do; acceptance of the person is the loving thing to do. But loving a belief that violates the starting point of your own belief is the hypocritical thing to do.
In the end truth will triumph, whether we like it or not. To sound grand and magnanimous by saying, “I accept all religions,” is actually to either violate them all or violate reason, or both. We all have a right to proclaim what we believe about ultimate things. But that does not mean that everything we believe is right. The thinking person must honestly weigh the evidence and come to the right conclusion. To force anyone to believe matters of transcendent truth is to violate the very nature of those truths. Chopra is not reticent to refer to “empty churches” and the unmet needs of the American seeker after truth. I can tell him the same thing about thousands of Indian youth and businesspeople, those in the arts and leaders in India who come to ask questions about the gospel because their spiritual hungers are not met in the metaphysics of pantheism and the so-called Sanatan Dharma.
It is ironic that the fastest-growing church in the world today is in China. They have had their share of ancient teachers and pantheistic sages. They had atheism forced down their throats by the iron will of a demagogue. In fact, having burned their seminaries and banned gatherings in churches, the Communist leaders were certain that religion in general and Christianity in particular were forever expunged from the Chinese memory. Now, they are turning to Jesus Christ in China literally by the millions. I have spoken there and met with some of their scholars. A Christian professor teaching in one of the most prestigious universities there told me that one of his colleagues made an astounding comment to him: “Whatever you want to say about communism, you can be thankful for one thing; it left the soul empty and that is what makes it possible for you to find students who listen eagerly when you talk about Jesus Christ to them.”
So why Jesus and not anyone else? What are the reasons? Before we get to that, let me turn back to those shapers of the modern Western spirituality that is based in the pantheistic worldview of the East. Again, let me say that Christianity is neither Eastern nor Western. It is the worldview behind it that is different from these other religions.