From: "Ali Kazmi" <alikazm-AT-digicom.net.pk>
Subject: Re: 
Date: Sat, 6 Feb 1999 03:01:18 +0500


>Unka Bart wrote:
>
>> In the Hindu literature, the many gods exist merely to aid the reader in
>> focusing on one or more of the many facets of the energy that underlies
and
>> motivates the universe.  Educated Hindus understand this, and do not
>> mistake the mythic "gods" for "real" gods; whereas the uneducated do tend
>> to make that mistake and similarly, treat the hindu literature as
>> "religion."
>>
>> The same thing happens in Buddhism, for the same reason.
>
>Does the Hindu literature say so, or is this a modern interpretation?
>
>(surely you're kidding here...?)

Well this is taking a "maharishi'ish" look at things. The educated hindus
that I know do acknowledge that their religion is a mythology, but, they
still pray to the gods and fulfill the rituals. What Unka Bart is talking
about is enlightned hindus - which there will be as many of as enlightned
christians or muslims or buddhists - not many.

All gods are personifications of underlying natural phenomena - and people
usually pray to effect the underlying phenomena, the monotheists are a bit
confused because they only have one god for all the phenomena - and
therefore sometimes start believing in a "real" god - one unconnected to the
universe. but the pantheists have a god for each attribute of the universe,
so they aren't as confused. Hindus pray to Laxmi - not becuase she is a god,
but because she is Luck. Or to Lingam because it represents fertility. I
don't think any hindu, educated or uneducated, believes in god as a thing in
it's self.



Cheers


Mephistopheles