Preface .....................................................................................................................
In this book I bring together a diverse selection of
essays and citations aimed at offering new answers to the
question ‘What is Hinduism?’ In doing so, I also offer an
introduction to Hinduism from a number of radically new
perspectives – historical and philosophical, economic and
political, socialist and Marxist. Their common aim is to
overcome the whole idea of Hinduism as just one major
world ‘faith’ or ethnic-cultural ‘identity’ among others - but
instead to reveal anew the universal truth and essence of
Hinduism as the ‘Eternal Truth’ or Sanatana Dharma^1.
Drawing on the most refined and sophisticated
expression of Hindu religious philosophy^2 , I argue that at
its heart is an understanding of the divine unlike that of all
other religions – whether ‘monotheistic’, ‘polytheistic’ or
‘pantheistic’. This is the understanding that God is not a
being – either in the form of a single ‘supreme being’, a
multiplicity of natural or divine beings, or a philosophical
abstraction of ‘pure being’ - ‘Being’ with a capital ‘B’. More
to the point, God is not a being that happens to have or
possess ‘consciousness’.
God is not a being ‘with’ consciousness. God is
consciousness. This is not a consciousness that is ‘yours’ or
‘mine’, but one that constitutes the very essence of the
divine - being the ultimate or divine source of all beings – of
everything that ‘is’. I term this consciousness ‘pure