Monday, June 18, 2012

Psychology of Hinduism (Part 1)

Yentharo mahanubhavu, anthariki vandhanamu - Shri Thyagaraja

Rough translation - "all great souls, I salute you."

I have been thinking about concepts of God, organized religion etc. I have scratched the surface of  teachings of various gurus. As far as I am concerned, I see God and (organized or otherwise) Religion as two distinct concepts/entities.




I find, that the concept "god" not very different when It comes to major religions. Unlike Christianity, Islam, Judaism there is no "Single" book that you can refer to  understand how God is defined in Hinduism. By and large the upanishads' define god as formless, and something that you cant see, hear, touch etc and omni-potent and omni-present.

Over a period of time, I began to develop my own opinions about people and their behavior, how they react to what happens to them etc, which I loosely call Psychology.

I intend to share what I THINK/BELIEVE are the fundamental principles that govern some of the practices followed by Hindus, are rooted in some aspects of Psychology.


Click here for the second part, where I explore the concepts of worship, idol worship, prayers etc

9 comments:

prof.av said...

dear gtg, (for those who don't know what is gtg, gtg = gireesh the great),
i am very much impressed by the beginning.
as ur father, i have been following how u shape up. i am proud about the way u r maturing.
now coming to the subject under consideration, i wish to record my opinion about the two aspects u have taken to elaborate.
to me, god is man's creation as the religion itself. hinduism is not a religion, but a way of life. yes, a religion gives u methods to escape from misery. where i differ is, one can substitute service for worship, which is ur third definition of religion
suppose, if we had some institution, other than religion, to find a way of life and an escape route from miseries, then perhaps, world will b more enjoyable to live in. this above mentioned institution must unite and not devide as the present religions do.
any takers?

Anonymous said...

Watch CAST AWAY - Tom Hanks movie, he tells you in very suttle way how god & deities are created by man......(how a football takes a shape of deity and creates faith)

Jey

the g said...

Ravi: I understand what u mean. I have another article in the making - evolution of god "

the g said...

Hi Appa,

I will be talking about service, and the divide in following parts. Watch this space.

Anonymous said...

Hi GV.
Can religion exist without any form of god ?

brgds :-)

the g said...

Interesting question.

"Can religion exist without any form of god ?"

I think as long as there is faith, religion will exist.

Now the faith can be on god, or concept of god, or on WS* Services, .NET, Java, REST services, Denormalization

Anonymous said...

Hmmm,
WS* - flawed but with good intentions
.net - The gates foundation doesn't make up for everything else.
Rest - not real world.
Java - still early days, just a teenager as yet but showing promise.

so, perhaps... I'll go with denormalisation as it is based on Reasoning.

anon.

the g said...

@Anon

I would argue Reasoning is your god, not Denormalisation :)

Jeffry said...

A good way to explain your thought on the revolution .
There is not many topics about Hinduism on the net and its good that i found one now ^