Western Indology

the outsider's Lens

Indology

Indology means the study of India, through the lens of its recent incarnation as a nation-state formed in 1947, albeit it has endured since time immemorial as a civilizational-state.

The perceived sense of the collective Self of India has, of course, been much damaged historically, by outsiders, such as its invaders, colonizers, and other subversive ideologies, to the point that it even lacks a single widely accepted name, in academia & popular discourse, as depicting its current existence.

Western Indology

In recent centuries Indology, or the study of the Indic civilization, has been viewed from a Western perspective, using a reductionist model trying to understand something foreign, to extract & digest the juicy bits, and discard its unsavory remains.

Geocultural Politics

Many Western Indologists, albeit having some academic exposure to Sanskrit, but lack deep exposure to the culture, thus falling short of properly characterizing the specimen under their lens.

Western cultural ideologies, and the Middle-Eastern (West Asian!) regions from which they originally arose, would look at the Hindu culture as a religion of the "other", embodying Satan, or Shaitan, because from the West's perspective, the East is the bewildering "other" that needs to be tamed.

So it's not surprising that the Outsider's perspective on Indology is, in parts, violent, aggressive, and insidious, for it has been driven by the geopolitical ambitions, and grand narratives, of Western super-powers in the clash of civilizations.

According to them, India per se is of limited vintage, since we owe the formation of the country as a single nation-state to its colonial masters, thus conveniently ignoring the civilization-state of yore.

This civilizational-state when identified with its overt form in Hinduism, is seen merely as a chaotic admixture of various intermingled faiths - a steamy broth of a perennially bubbling religion that has no place in the rational mind.

This line of thinking stems from Western invasion models that typically seek to wipe out & replace previous cultures with newer updated versions, like ever-new versions of downloaded software, not just as warring armies seeking physical gains, but also from an inner drive to tame the psychological substratum of heathen cultures.

For example, America created its grand narrative of American Exceptionalism by bludgeoning native cultures into oblivion and cooked up one based on embellished hagiographies of its conquering heroes, instead of timeless ideals deified.

Consequently they have completely given up on Epic Narratives, a huge issue in the development of human spirit.

As further examples, observe many such similar examples such as:

which have all been extracted for value, systematically eliminated, and now preserved only in chloroformed museums, and thus no Epic Narratives possible here either.

The  most egregious example is that of the Greek culture which has come to be safely co-opted as the root civilization of Western/European nations - safe, since statues cannot rise up from the grave to protest their instrinsically spiritual Thought systems being digested by outsiders. 

Phases 

The outsider's lens of Western Indology has been played out in two distinct phases:

Loss of Identity

The analytical, but reductionist, lens of Western Indology has served to highlight some of the valuable contributions of this civilization, as well as its aberrations that need reform, but having thus been dismembered has also resulted in the disintegration of its civilizational sense of Self.

Witness the many colonial leftovers consigned into sterile museums as memoirs of their conquest over the lesser races.

Thus Western Indologists are attempting to erase our unique identity by also systematically merging it into the amorphous post-modern geopolitical blob called South Asia. Witness the pernicious move to erase even the name India from California textbooks!

Democratic Thought

Democracy was actually personified as a goddess in Greek culture, although it is not clear whether this deification process was rooted in any underlying Yogic model, and even if it was, any evidence has been systematically mummified, that it doesn't rise up from the grave and shake the foundations of modern Western hyper-rational thought.

So, after having co-opted the useful bits of Greek culture into its framework, and having stuffed the pesky epics and their memorabilia into museums, ancient Greece has now been anointed as the sole cradle of democracy - now the root governance Thought system of the Western model.

Linguistically, demo-cracy in Greek, literally means a rule of the people. But in all practicality, the common man had no time to involve themselves with governance and it was left to the elite senators to be the representatives of the public. 

However there are documented instances of democratic governments in the Indian civilization rivaling the timeframes of the Greeks, and today as a nation-state India endures as the world's largest democracy, albeit manifested in its own unique expression.

Insider Lens

The insider's view is rooted in the vast historical timeline of the civilization-state, as opposed to the limiting nation-state model, and is best explored through a lived, multi-generational experience.

Political Identity

In its recent rise to dominance on the world stage, the nation-state of India is seeking an Epic Narrative, an indigenous national brand, to project a coherent force in the geopolitical jostling for regional and world power.

The current political approach for creating such an integrated Indian cultural identity is called Hindutva, -tva indicating the essence of being a Hindu, but it has been painted into a regressive corner by employing a skewed lens, rooted primarily in religion and caste. 

Swadeshi

In recent decades, the field of Swadeshi Indology has come about as an insider's perspective to studying the Indic civilization.

Sva- in Sanskrit means the Self, and indicates the insider's perspective, a valid lens since the notion of the individual Self and its discovery is so deep rooted in the culture.

According to this lens, the larger Self of the Indian civilization exists in a seamless continuum from time immemorial, despite many seismic evolutions of its social structures, all historical layers still visible, their diverse voices needing to be harmoniously integrated into the whole.

Epic Narrative

The Epic Narrative of Bhārat the civilization-state surely needs to be formed, but certainly not manufactured, nor hallucinated, into a coherent geocultural identity, free of strife, and realizable aspirations that are being much promised to us.

Awaken  Bhārat - but from what exactly, and to what exactly ? And upon awakening, then where to ?

There are two geo-political changes afoot:

To unite a country such as India, by integrating its hyper-diverse cultures into a vibrant whole identity, is no mean feat, and when successful, will naturally be seen as the model for the whole world to emulate. So it's a worthy task.

This what we call as creating the Epic Narrative, a story about the identity of the civilizational-state that harks back millennia and could endure forever even.

Siddhānta 

A Darshana or a well-thought out point of view, such as Rishi Sapiens, becomes a सिद्धान्त  Siddhānta when the narrated Story of the Darshana is realized in the material plane, for the word सिद्धि Siddhi indicates the power to manifest.

In practical geocultural terms this idealized state of humanity is a:

Obviously, we are a far cry from realizing Rishi Sapiens as a Siddhānta, but that's the evolutionary challenge, in our modern democratic ethos.

The Western Psyche

Having thoroughly seen the "Eastern", "Indic" mind of the Hindu civilization, warts and all, we are now ready to delve into the Western mind.

So what is it that has made the Western mind what it is, as described above, in the grand geo-political stage ?

Brainwashing Narratives

If there is one thing above all the Western Mind excels in is the formulation and spread of Grand Narratives. Not just cooking up stories, but also backing them up in material abundance and freedom of human expression.

Patently, storytelling in commerce and geopolitics, has resulted in Western brands as the world's most recognized, their soft brainwashing model forcing consumers to think in a particular way, to serve a biased objective, reflecting the brute power of the mechanical approach. Of course, brainwashing by ideological hardliners in the name of misplaced patriotism, or nationalism, is a different league altogether, but of the same ilk.

Western Universalism

An oxymoron, surely.

Thus the Western psyche is that which believes its Thought system needs to be universal and all other models need to be obliterated.

Unlike Yoga model, which by definition integrates all Thought systems, and the Hindu model which tries to be accommodative too, and are thus capable of being meta-models.

Asuric Domination

Western model stems from an Asuric mindset, of limited thinking consonant with origins in desert climes, which naturally leads to domination of peoples and the Earth, to grab as much as possible in the one tough life at hand.

The mindset is useful to build and tame machines, as the western civilization has remarkably demonstrated, and now it needs to be flushed of the Asura virus, and channeled for the Age of AI, and there too with the right mindset of coevolution, with machines & humanity.

Particularly in the Age of AI, a few mainstream narratives are being promoted, that bring about a sense of existential fear, or at least helplessness for the masses who are being swept up in this new tide of human endeavour.

Unlike Yoga model, which teaches transcendence of Space and Time, hence takes a much broader perspective.

Whiteness, not White

The "Western" perspective does not necessarily mean "white folks" because there are plenty of "white folks" who are Dharmic, and as a counter there are plenty of so-called "modernized Indians" who have adopted the essence of Western frameworks, or Whiteness, in the naive belief that modernization = Westernization. 

Thus all of the points mentioned herein are equally true of any culture that holds the Western Thought model in high esteem.

Selectivity

Western thought is rightfully accorded plaudits for its many material achievements in science etc., but when there are specific aberrations in the world due to some element of Western action then there is concerted effort to distance from Western Thought systems.

Very unlike Yoga, where the individual is required to own up to everything that they experience, even their own birth since it could have come from a "different life" - not as a way to be fatalistic, but to urge us to self-evolve.

Reductionism

If anything defines the Western psyche, it is reductionism, that is, breaking down the object of study into its essential components, a very machine-like approach that disregards its holistic living nature.

This analytical methodology used in Science has had its positives & negatives.

Yoga model is also deeply analytical but we are enjoined to throw away eventually all scaffoldings to allow the essence of the psyche to flower forth, and for that to then create harmonious material change.

Philosophy

Philo-sophia is literally the love of Sophia, and as the original Greek goddess of cleverness and skill would have been a perfect emblem for who we are as curious creatures born into Life.

Sophia was, unfortunately, deified in her later incarnations as received wisdom.

Note the huge gap between the dynamic nature of its original intent and its fossilized descent.

Not realizing that God & Devil are both mental constructs, like our entire perception of the Universe, is the reason why we suffer actually - but from the perspective of Yoga the actually can two co-evolve to their finest expressions, and in a weird sense they both need each other, for recognizing what we are not helps clarify who we are too.

There is thus a dichotomy between the deeply experiential Yogic insider lens and Western external reductionist lens.

Unlike the deeply experienced insider's perspective, sweat and philosophy typically don’t mix well in Western academia - except when the fireplace gets a little too hot in the drawing rooms of crusty old pontificating men in creaking armchairs.

Undoubtedly the conditioning of the observer's psyche is what constitutes the Lens by which a phenomenon is observed, with all its :

Psychotherapy

Archetypes

Traditional Western model of the Mind is based on the concept of archetypes, but by definition archetype are static concepts, which could become "zombied" life forms, uselessly sucking up life energy, and hence the need for extensive psychotherapy akin to an archaeologist digging to unearth some meaning in the psychic detritus. 

Archetypes are a convenient mechanism to understand the source of our issues, but they are not dynamic or organic enough to resolve mental issues, so it needs to be supplemented with various modalities such as talk therapy, CBT, etc.

Frozen

At the societal level this static model of the collective mind results in the madness of Religion, its "one-time-only prophet" and "God", and a single "frozen-in-time" book of all perpetual truths.

Scarcity

Western ideologies, and the Middle-Eastern desert habitats from which they originally arose, where an ecology of scarcity, a culture of competitive strife.

History fixation

Western models only admit of one life, they are deeply concerned about particular historical facts, and ignoring a popular dictum that history usually repeats, especially in rhyme - that is in a pattern, which is very useful to understand the psyche behind phenomena without getting trapped in the minutiae of the ego, and thus a means to easier resolve conflict.

Othering

This mono-whatever (-theistic, -polistic, bordering on -maniacal) creates fear, or at least anxiety, of anything foreign, and not having the luxury of time on their side, the conflicting side becomes the "other". You are either with me, or you are my enemy.

An outsider's perspective uses a lens that is not in concordance with those who practice the ancient yet living traditions with the Shraddha (conviction & effort) to keep it evolving and relevant. The observed species becomes a mere “-ism”, in this case Hindu-ism, locked into a cage like some esoteric animal, unable to adapt and evolve from within as an inferior being frozen like deer under the headlights of the powerful microscopes staring down at it.

Hyper-sexualized

The other notable issue is their fixation with incestual Oedipal complex and Freud's sexual obsessions which in our definition keeps them stuck at the Svadishthana chakra level. Hardly evolution.

Separation from Meaning

From a linguisitic perspective too, there is a constant dichotomy between signifier and signified in terms of language and its meaning, whereas in our psycholinguistic model there is no such division, and in fact the meaning is actually felt in the body through resonance.

Emotionless

Whereas in the western model after psychoanalysis there is the need to do separate psychotherapy such as talk therapy, the therapist being a human being has to stay aloof from the patient, and in fact can be replace with chatGPT.

Our Mind is a Storyteller model, and its psychic Beings through which we can naturally cleanse & inspire the psyche, is a far superior approach. Our Devas are the ideal chat therapists with whom we can even be in "love" with, what is known as Bhakti Yoga.

Machining of Human Data

As popularized by Facebook, Google, etc. we donate all the data they need to mine the past and parameterize the human, treating us as automatons reacting to triggers. Some sites, like LinkedIn helps us in our professional aspirations, but no way to resolve conflict in the psyche which could hold us back, for which we have to connect to other mediums.

This is not an integrated model by which to evolve humans.

Contrast this with the Yoga model, where humans and all living beings are treated as beings of Consciousness, not merely Sentient Agents living our lives in the matrix - which our online avatars do, and the perfect space for them to help us scale.

Decolonizing Yoga

Westerners learned Yoga many decades ago from places like Maharishi's Ashram in Rishikesh, now called The Beatles' Āshram (!).

Then disbanding to their places of origin, a whole new culture of Western Yoga has formed with precise attention paid to human form, but struggling to find its "divine" form, and isolated to maybe roving bands of excellent Kīrtan singers.

Obviously, like all things White & Western, a colonized form of Yoga is now spreading through India, disconnecting Yoga from its roots in the Hindu culture, which deep integration is in plain sight for anyone who has observed our classic stories through the lens of Yoga.

This is most patently obvious when riding through even the hinterlands of India we see signs for "Yoga & Meditation", blithely ignorant of the fact that they are one and the same, and even further, that the latter is contained solidly within the former!