There are just so many cases! I could write a book about
all the times the West has come around to the ideas that
they previously dismissed as ridiculous Indian ideas, and
now they go, “Oh, actually that’s true!”Q: Well, the concept of nothingness is
from the Indian philosophy. So many
of the fundamental principles of
mathematics came from India.William James, the psychologist, said around 1900, “The
nature of the human mind is that it cannot stay on a
single thought or a single object for more than a second
or two.” Meanwhile these meditators in India could just
stay there; forget hours or days, they could just stay
there. That was completely out of the mindset of the
Western scientists of the Victorian era.Q: One thing that amazes me that Babuji
said is, “The way forward for humanity
is Eastern heart and Western mind,
together.” It’s not that you need one; you
need both. Somebody like you has the
possibility to live that, right?That’s my goal. I feel so blessed that I was given a rigorous
scientific education at a time when quantum theory was
known, general relativity, transistors, everything that we
know about the natural world, and at the same time, the
great thinkers of India like Nagarjuna and others had
been translated.Before 1980 you could not find a good translation of
Nagarjuna, and before 1980 you really couldn’t find any
presentation on general relativity or quantum theory for
lay people. And now you find both if you know where to
look. Someone has to still show you some of these things,
because they are pretty impenetrable at a certain superficial
level, but if someone leads you through it, you can get
it. I teach a one-week symposium on this.Q: You are welcome to do it sometime
here.I’d love to. It would be a blast! Thank you very much.PHOTO: NILA NEWSOM / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
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