WHAT IS HINDUISM?
awareness’ – meaning subjectivity or awareness as such in
contrast to anything we are aware of. This distinction is
central to what I call ‘The Awareness Principle’, a radical
neo-Hindu approach to religion, life and science whose
first principle is that awareness as such (Sanskrit chit) cannot,
in principle, be reduced to the property or product of any thing
or being that we are conscious or aware ‘of’ - including the
human body or brain.
Understanding the divine as a universal, absolute and
supreme awareness - transcending and yet also immanent in
all beings – has implications that transcend theology and
subvert our current understanding of both ‘science’ and
‘religion’. At the same time they are wholly congruent with
the Marxist understanding that religious concepts of God as
a supreme, all-ruling being or group of beings arose with the
development of class society and its rulers. Similarly,
modern scientific concepts of consciousness as a
mysterious by-product of ‘matter’ arose with the
development of an industrial society oriented to the
production of material commodities ‘possessing’ a
mysteriously invisible and immaterial property – an
‘exchange value’ or ‘market value’ quite independent of
their tangible, material nature and ‘use value’.
By recognising the inner unity of Hindu and Marxist
perspectives we can see that the ‘supreme being’
worshipped as the ‘God’ of the Abrahamic faiths is in
effect a divinisation of the human ego – seen at the same