Veda20- Were the Vedic Indians vegetarians?

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Vegetarianism is considered to be a virtue in many places. In some parts of India, you are looked down if you are a non-vegetarian. 

 

What about the Vedic Indians? Were they vegetarians?

Veda19- The amazing constructs of Vedic Indians!

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If you have ever visited Egyptian pyramids, you probably have marveled at their construction. Their construction instills awe, not as much due to the structural complexity, but because of their gigantic proportions. The constructs of Vedic Indians that I am going to discuss in this episode amazes one not because of their size but because of their structural complexity and aesthetic beauty.

Veda18- Were the Vedic Indians mathematical genius?

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A few decades ago, I came across a paper published in one of the renowned peer reviewed mathematical journals. The paper claimed that whatever we know today as geometry, trigonometry and so on, actually originated in ancient India. Whether it is the so-called Pythagoras theorem, or the precise value of mathematical constants such as Pi or even methods to approximate the square root of 2, were all known to ancient Vedic Indians! 

 

The paper even claimed that the ancient Babylonians borrowed these ideas from Vedic Indians. And the Greeks like Pythagoras could have taken cues from them.

Veda17- Did the aliens really visit Vedic Indians?

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If you read some of the mantras in the Veda, it appears as if the Devas or the Vedic aliens used to visit the Vedic Indians as and when they were invited. The descriptions are so vivid and honest and the dialogues are so intimate that it is difficult to believe that it was just a matter of superstition or fakery.

Veda16- Aliens of the Vedic kind!

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In the previous episodes we discussed how the ancient Vedic rituals of India were in fact some kind of communion with aliens from outer world. These aliens were called Devas. This is how ancient Indians viewed the entire process.

Veda15- Were Vedic Indians in touch with aliens?

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UFO sighting, purported incidents of aliens from outer space visiting the earth, and so on, have always intrigued modern humanity. 

 

Many interesting and popular movies have been shot based on these themes.

Veda14- What is important - sound or meaning?

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I always had lot of interest in the Vedas. But my focus has always been on the Upanishad part that deals with philosophic issues covered by the Vedas. Being a person whose main access to Vedas is through printed books or electronic media, I did not have much need to remember things. My computer could do that job for me 😉

Is there a mind beyond brain?

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Contrary to what most people believe, Yoga is not all about ‘twisting and turning’😉. The body postures that are most popular as Yoga today are only a small part of Yoga. The real Yoga is about how we can modulate our minds to achieve various ends.

Veda13- Memorizing through meaning association

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All of us routinely employ this even without being aware of it. I had a student whose name was some difficult to pronounce Arabic word. That was the first time I was hearing such a name. I had tough time remembering his name. 

 

So, once I asked him what that name really means. He not only gave me its meaning, but also told me some story from Quran related to that name. I remembered that name for a long time, after that!

Veda12- Memorizing through rote learning

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Do you remember how you used to memorize a nursery rhyme in your younger days? If the rhyme is a bit too long, you probably split it into fragments, went back and forth uttering the words in these fragments, probably even repeating some of the words, and so on. You kept repeating this process for a while. That seemed to help you in remembering the rhyme.

Veda11- Ingenious ways to remember a massive text

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We were discussing various reasons why Vedic Indians never wrote down the massive texts namely the Vedas. They chose to orally transmit them from generation to generation. No matter why they did that, it was a herculean effort considering the size of these texts. Added to this, there were stringent restrictions on exact ways of pronouncing the Mantras, the elaborate liturgy and so on. They appear to have managed to preserve all these things almost unchanged over thousands of years without resorting to writing them down. How did they manage to do that?

Veda10- Too much of secrecy is bad

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In the previous episode we discussed whether the ancient Indians who propagated the Vedas were illiterates. This doubt arises since Vedas were never written down and were passed down from generation to generation in a purely oral tradition. What could be the reason?

Veda09- Were the propagators of the Vedas illiterate?

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Just imagine that some day, not in the distant future, our entire earth gets completely destroyed either due to some natural calamity or some man-made disaster, wiping out the entire humanity. And some alien lands on this earth either by accident or as part of his exploratory expedition. What would he find here? He will definitely find lot of RCC structures, well laid roads, remnants of our electronic and other mechanistic gadgets. 

 

But he would find no evidence of our vast knowledge which were recorded and stored in our computers. All those hard drives and CDs would have been burnt to ashes. We are also not in the habit of erecting stone inscriptions the way our forefathers did. Our books and other such storage devices are highly perishable. What do you think the alien would conclude?

What happens when you meditate?

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Many people are curious to know what happens when one meditates for a prolonged duration on a regular basis. Will we experience God? Will there be an extreme ecstatic experience? Does one attain special psychic powers? These are some of the questions people often ask.

Veda08- How big are the Vedas?

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Sometimes, we have a tendency to associate importance with size. If a Guru has billions of followers then he must be a great Guru; if someone has millions of followers on the social media then whatever that person says should be important; if a religious scripture is voluminous, then what it contains must be the truth, and so on. But that is not necessarily true. I sometimes joke that greater the following a Guru has, more mediocre he is 😉 You find more people at the base of the intellectual pyramid!

Veda07- A boy with a dog like tail!

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Some parents have weird fancies! Here we have a poor man Ajeegartha who had a son named Shuna ShEpa – a name that literally means “tail of a dog”! Did this boy have a dog like tail? We don’t know. But his father found it right to give such a funny name to this boy.

Veda06- Is there a white Veda and a black Veda?

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The words ‘white’ and ‘black’ have become taboo words these days. They are reminders of atrocity committed to some races merely based on skin color. I am not talking about those dark ages. I am discussing about Vedas and their possible composers.

Veda05- A King who bartered the youth with his son!

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These days, we hear of sex drugs, aphrodisiacs and even sex transplants. But have you ever heard of anyone exchanging his youth with someone younger than him? That is what the ancient Indian King Yayaati is supposed to have done. It is an interesting story that appears in the great Indian Epic Mahabharata. Let us do a momentary detour into this story.

Veda04- Did some barbaric nomads compose the Vedas?

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Ruins of Indus valley civilization

 

We were discussing about the authorship of the ancient Vedas of India. One of the theories that were proposed was that of some barbaric nomads called Aryans who invaded India around 3500 years ago. It was they who composed the Vedas.

Veda03- Who really composed the Vedas?

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We were talking about the Vedas which are considered to be the repositories of knowledge. 

 

If there is some repository of knowledge, the obvious inference is that it was composed by someone or by a group of people. But the adherents of the Vedas claim that the Vedas are apaurushEya – which means that they were not composed by anyone.

Veda02- Vedas - Unsolved puzzle of ancient India!

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One of interesting observations of ancient Indian Grammarians was that all the words in any language have a verb as their root. That means any word, no matter it is a noun or adjective or otherwise, has a verb from which it originated. There is no language, if there is no action.

How to meditate?

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When you probably are looking forward to the approaching World Yoga day, I have my own small contribution to Yoga.

Veda01- A Mantra to save your life

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I know, it may sound like a cruel joke to talk about any such thing when thousands of innocent lives are going due to the current Corona pandemic. 

 

No, I am not out to sell any such magic remedy. I am afraid, there is none. I am only reminded of how human beings resort to anything whatsoever, when faced with calamities that seem to threaten their lives and there is no solution in sight.

NewBook- How to improve concentration?

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One comes across an interesting story in the Buddhist Tipitakas. Once Buddha was passing through a dense forest all alone. It was getting dark. People advised Buddha not to take such a risk since that forest was known to be inhabited by a cruel robber who almost killed any passersby. He even chopped off the fingers of his victims and wore a garland of them! People called him Angulimala – one who wears a garland of fingers. 

 

Buddha was fearless and he ignored their advice and kept walking into the forest.

(QnA-11)- Is chanting OM really an integral part of Yoga?

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One person who came across some statements made by a well-known Hindu supporter raised this question. 

 

Apparently, this Hindu supporter who has written tens of books on threats to Hinduism from ‘outsiders’ has objections to non-Hindu Yoga Gurus coming up with their own versions of Yoga. 

 

According to this scholar, these non-Hindu Yoga Gurus distort Yoga by replacing some of the essential aspects of Yoga to suite their own religious affinities. One of them is the chanting of the sound OM during Yoga practice.

(QnA-10)- Is Patanjali’s way of meditation wrong?

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All of us have our own biases. We always tend to think that what we believe is the only truth. 

 

So, some people who have their own pet theories even raise questions about Patanjali’s way of meditation.

(QnA-09)- Did Buddha really say that there is no soul?

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This is quite a tricky question. It could potentially lead to unending debates. Most Buddhists believe that Buddha did say that the soul does not exist. 

 

And many a so-called ‘rationalist’ rally behind Buddhism because it rejects the concept of soul!

(QnA-08)- Is Samadhi some form of brain malfunction?

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Before I get into the question answer session, let me make a quick announcement. 

 

The fourth part of my audio book “The Ultimate book on Yoga” is now available. It is titled “Part 4 of The Ultimate Book on Yoga: How do Yoga postures work?”. 

 

It is a one-hour long audio available in most stores and some libraries. You may not find it in amazon/audible though, since they don’t support parts. 

 

If you have ever wondered how Yoga postures help in improvement of health, this is the book for you. 

 

This book investigates into the reasons how Yoga postures enhance health. That would not only satisfy your curiosity but also helps you in performing these postures in the right way to reap the full potential of Yoga. So, please have a look, I mean lend an ear 😉. You will surely find some interesting things about this aspect of Yoga which you probably were never aware of. 

 

As usual, use the link https://books2read.com/UltimateYoga to find this book in your favorite store. This link would take you to the first part of the series. Some stores may list the current part explicitly as a book in the series titled “The Ultimate book on Yoga”, some may show it as other related books. In some stores you may have to explicitly search for it using the title in the search box. I am sure that you will find this book very interesting and useful. 

 

 

Now let us get back to our regular question answer session. 

 

Today’s question is “Is Samadhi some form of brain malfunction?”

 

That is a tough question which can potentially shake the roots of many Yoga enthusiasts 😉 People who are determined to rubbish spiritual experiences and all types of spiritual practices keep quoting all sorts of ‘evidences’. 

 

They argue that the experience that one goes through in advanced stages of meditation are nothing short of some weird happenings in the brain.

(QnA-07)- What could be the clinching evidence to ascertain spirituality?

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We often use the word spirituality to mean some uncommon or mystic set of notions or practices. Even people who do not believe in the concept of spirit or soul use the term to mean such things. Many people talk about ‘spiritual experiences’. Most modern Gurus take subjective experience as the proof of existence of spirituality that is beyond science.

(QnA-06)- Are psychic powers real?

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This is the question I am often asked. Many people get attracted to Yoga or meditation believing that they can attain psychic powers through these practices. Many a Gurus became well known either because of their psychic claims, or through their autobiographies in which they give a long list of mystics they have met in their lives who displayed psychic powers. 

 

Do such powers really exist?