What Defines a Hindu? And could you become a Hindu

The idea of Hinduism as most people know arose in India and the colour and joyfulness is spreading in the Western world. In the streets of almost every major city in the world, people are coming out and dancing, chanting and celebrating. Increasing numbers of people are joining these movements so what about you?

As discussed in previous posts, the term Hindu is one of geography and properly refers to the geographic region of greater India more correctly known as Bharat and sometimes written as Bharatha. However in this modern era the term Hindu is applied as a religious label.

This is extremely confusing because anyone born in India is automatically a Hindu. Therefore Moslems, Christians, Jains and believers in other faiths are also Hindu but they distance themselves by saying they don't believe in Hinduism.

So what is Hinduism? In reality this is a term given by the foreign invaders and occupiers of Hindustan and they call it a religion. Because the Western world claims moral superiority in everything back to earth unprecedented military and economic prowess, the majority of people believe this narrative or are too apathetic to care.

The terms Hindu and Hinduism are completely mythical without any substantive basis yet the billion or so people who have been classified as Hindus by the all knowing and all-powerful Western academics stand out as being different from ordinary believers and it is an belief that we have a sense of separation between the West (we who believe) and those labelled as Hindus who have not only no beliefs but no need for belief because they have knowledge.

When we boil this down, we have two approaches to life. The Western approach is in denying universal truth and substituting it with beliefs and disbelief's. Belief in a creator God, belief that the universe is only external to oneself, belief in one's own moral superiority and more however I'm sure you must be aware?

In contrast those who are referred to as Hindus don't believe anything yet they have a reverence for life and over the millennia have evolved a highly refined scientific appreciation of the nature of existence. The peoples of Hindustan were observers of life and they kept asking why. They discovered the earth was round and had a good knowledge of mathematics, the elemental sciences and astrophysics thousands of years before Europeans even began thinking about such things and when they did such enquiry was prohibited by the church.

The Western worldview was one of survival of the fittest, the world is a physical place and the human mind something to be placated and controlled. Give the mind something to believe in and the people a purpose in working towards something greater than themselves by making someone else greater yet believing they were serving God. The Western worldview is one of total corruption.

In contrast the Hindus sought oneness with life and confirmation of the truths of existence within the depths of one's own psyche. Here we come into the technology of being human and our inheritance not only from our line of parentage, but the information garnered by the yogis and mystics over the millennia.

In terms of knowledge the 'Hindu practitioner' knows that bringing the palms of the hands together in front of the chest activates energy centres within the body which have beneficial effects on body, mind and universal consciousness because such things can be experienced. The Hindu knows that life is sometimes painful yet suffering is entirely self-created and it is impossible to enumerate the vastness of Hindu knowledge that is defined by Western academics as a belief system whereas in fact it is a knowledge system.

When one knows the immensity of life one cannot help but bow down in humility but one cannot bow down forever, one must stand and celebrate. Like every human being the Hindu must deal with the practicalities of survival. Given the Roman Empire based on greed and savagery survived a mere 500 years, the ideas within 'Hinduism' gave rise to a civilisation that continues to flourish despite the concerted efforts of Muslims and Christians to destroy it over the past thousand years or so.

The original word Hindu represented the five rivers flowing across north-west India an allergist to the five senses that we all possess along with the knowledge that all the information received by our five senses are processed and experienced within our own minds or consciousness which means we do not have any direct experience of the world around us which in many ways is an interplay of energies. The best way to relate with these energies is by cultivating a lightness of being, nonattachment yet with intense involvement.

So could you become a Hindu?

Because Hindu and Hinduism are applied terms to what cannot be understood, there is no formal way of ever becoming a Hindu. It's a process of personal growth and the application of wisdom in one's own life. If you can appreciate your five senses and the wonder of the world around you to such a degree that your answer is knowing that you do not know (the ultimate answers) yet you keep on asking while at the same time appreciating and celebrating without need of belief.

The Western thinker affected by centuries of belief in the untrue or unprovable derides the Hindu's belief in different gods. It is said within Hinduism that everyone should have their own personal God, an expression of one's own dream of a higher state. The gods and deities of the Hindu pantheon represent aspects of life. There is no such thing as prayer asking for salvation or any boons, gods and deities are man-made tools for self transformation and enlightenment. Unfortunately today many Hindus have been reduced and only believe, a sickness foisted upon them by the dominant powers of the economic and political world.

Going to your weekly yoga class and meditating a little will not make you a Hindu, but it might begin to awaken a sensibility within yourself that you are indeed a part of life and not separate from life. There is a process of waking up to the fact that Western, religion, philosophy, economics, corporatism and militarism are destroying the planet we depend on for our existence.

There is a process of waking up to the fact that yogic sensibility and Hindu tradition provide an alternative way of living. The primary precepts for a Hindu lifestyle is one of harmlessness, of cultivating joyfulness, success and prosperity.

If the world was to adopt this attitude, was to realise that not knowing didn't matter yet we are learning and growing in the world would be a much better place. The ancient Hindus knew the dangers of physical technologies which is why they didn't develop them. All Western technology has been developed on Hindu knowledge, numbers, language, metallurgy, chemistry and even textile making. All these sciences arose in the region of India.

The Hindu ideas of creation are those adopted by modern physicists, the Hindu ideas of reality are being proved by modern physicists, the idea that we don't know the answers to our ultimate questions are agreed by our most eminent scientists but unfortunately not by those who make the rules we live by which is leading to the destruction of our planet.

The Hindu knowledge that we do not know combined with the fact that we live on a finite planet is that we have ample time to learn and grow, to discover more about our humanity and the technology of who we are. To be a Hindu is to be an adventurer was provisioned to be unbound of social constraints, to drop out and meditate yet be supported.

The Hindu has a respect and appreciation of life, an inquiring intelligence and a desire to be the best person that one can be. To become Hindu one must become deeply spiritual in a living, like affirming way following a sense of Dharma not through belief but though experiencing.