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Ram Swarup

107 quotes

“India's education had two aims, both organically linked. One was to strengthen our body and mind, our nerves and vitality. If the Indian teaching on this subject is followed faithfully, it ensures full, vigorous, healthy and long life. Similarly, it ensures health and unimpaired senses and a mind with undiminished powers. According to the Hindu Psychology, a man's mind and senses are powers of the soul. Therefore, they should be strengthened, widened, deepened, purified. "May I see and hear clearly and abundantly", is the repeated prayer in the, several Upanishads. Another variant of this prayer is: "May our eyes see the good, our ears hear the good." To see and hear and desire better, purer, finer and deeper is the first aim of Indian education. This means strengthening character, controlling desires and impulses, increasing powers of concentration and will. Not only this opens up our hidden powers, but this is even the basis of any fruitful life at all. If our senses and mind run their unbridled course, uninformed by any higher light, they will lead to self-destruction. But purified in the light of the soul, they become a blessing.”
Ram Swarup (1920–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hindu thought also exerted a great influence on ancient Greek thought as M.E. Pococke shows in his India in Greece. It is believed that Pythagoras visited Indian and learnt the doctrine of transmigration and many ascetic practices from here. One meets many parallel ideas in the Upanishads and Plato. These similarities are not fortuitous but they emanated from a common deeper vision and life-philosophy. Apollonius the "wise man of Tyana", perhaps the greatest saint of the Hellenistic world, a contemporary of Jesus, visited the wise men of India and was highly satisfied. Later on, he also visited Ethiopia to meet her naked ascetics, who, he believed, had borrowed their spirituality from India. But, as he already suspected, he did not find them worthy pupils of India.”
Ram Swarup (1920–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Pythagoras and Orphic mysteries stand very high in Greek religion and they have family likeness with Hinduism. Lecky in his History of European Morals quotes an old tradition in Greece that Pythagoras had himself come to India and learnt philosophy from the gymnosophists. It seems he believed in an "all-pervading soul" which is at least one important attribute of Hindu âtman. He believed in rebirth or transmigration; he taught and practised harmlessness or non-injury; chastity was the leading virtue of his school of thought; he taught silence; he taught that the end of man is to "become like God". Orphic mysteries taught release (lysis) from all material entanglements, which is close to moksha of the Hindus.”
Ram Swarup (1920–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He visited India to meet its wise men. He met one Iarchus and was deeply satisfied. The latter asked him: "What knowledge do you think we have that you lack?" Apollonious replied: "It is my opinion that your ways are wiser and much more godly. But if I were to find among you nothing that I do not know, I would also have learned that there is nothing further for me to learn." Iarchus told him: "You, our visitor, have (already) a share of this wisdom, but yet not all of it." Then the teaching began but what it was and about its nature nothing is said. The biographer, however, relates many anecdotes and throws interesting sidelights. He tells us that in their very first meeting, Iarchus told Apollonius everything about him, his ancestry on his father's and mother's side, his journey and the people he met and talks he had with them. Apollonius was amazed. Iarchus also told him about Apollonius' nature and said: "We discern every kind of soul, and have countless clues to discover them." "Ask me whatever you like, since you have come among men who know everything," said the chief of the Indian wise men to his distinguished visitor. He in turn asked the Indians if they knew themselves, expecting them to be like the Greeks in thinking it is difficult to know oneself. But to his surprise, Iarchus replied: "We know everything because we begin by knowing ourselves. None of us would approach our kind of philosophy without knowing himself first." Apollonius had no difficulty in accepting this statement for it was also his own belief. He asked Iarchus what they thought they were, and the latter replied: "Gods." And why? "Because we are good men," Iarchus said (p. 80). Later on in his life when he used this doctrine before the Emperor of Rome when he was being tried for instigating treason, he also told him that Iarchus and Phraotes, the two Indians, "are the only humans whom I consider Gods and worthy of being called so".”
Ram Swarup (1920–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Any conscientious scholar of the Adi Granth will be struck by the fact that both in its origin and development, in its soul and body, it belongs to a larger literature of a similar nature and ethos found all over India. And the common source of them all is the Upanishads, the Yogas, the Puranas and the Mahabharata. All the spiritual categories, approach, message, motif, images, metaphors and illustrative material derive from that source, and only the language is regional. But nothing is lost in the repetition and the message remains fresh and invigorating; in fact, it acquires a new confirmation as it is renewed in the lives of Godmen from generation and region to region. The Adi Granth reproduces hundreds of passages and phrases almost verbatim from the older scriptures.”
Ram Swarup (1920–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“These similarities were not accidental caused by a “Hindu environment”, as some post-Macauliffe Akali scholars try to explain. They arose because the Sikh Gurus were Hindus; they were brought up and nourished on Hindu scriptures; they were shaped by the Santtradition of their day which derived from the Upanishads and the Yogas and Sikh Gurus were Vaishnavas who remembered their God by the name of Hari or Rama or Govinda.Nanak alone used the word “Hari’ 630 times; in the Adi Granth, it occurs 8,300 times. Similarly, the word ‘Rama’ appears 2,500 times. Whether one understands these names in their more popular and Pauranik sense or in their more Upanishadic and Yogic meaning, in either case there is no escape from the traditional identity.”
Ram Swarup (1920–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Not only does the Adi Granth reproduce hundreds of passages from the older scriptures but like the rest of the Sant literature it also follows the lead of the Upanishads and the Gita and the Yoga Vasishtha in all doctrinal points. Its theology and cosmology, its God View and world-view, its conception of deity and man and his salvation, its ethics, philosophy and praxis and Yoga – all derive from that source. It believes in Brahma-Vada, in Advaita, in Soham, in Maya, in Karma and Rebirth, in Mukti and Nirvana, in the Middle Path (in its Yogic sense), in the Backward Journey and the Reversed Current, in death-in-life, the Tenth Gate and the Fourth State. It prescribes the path of action, devotion and knowledge.”
Ram Swarup (1920–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source