Mythology
Dear GM, PAMHO AGTSP AGTYH I was recently reciting the dasavatara stotram and considering the verse about varahadeva. वसति दशनशिखरॆ धरणी तव लग्ना शशिनि कलङ्ककलॆव निमग्ना । This rose two issues that I would like to ask you about: How can I accept such an extraordinary story as anything more than a mythological account that may provide a tool for teaching humans about dharma? How should I consider other religious stories that appear to be mythological in nature but are not part of our tradition? Such as a Hopi creation story or Norse gods. How much of this is real and how much is imagination? How much of this is for the purpose of teaching us things which are beyond the realm of cognitive capability? Do some religions get it right and others get it wrong? YHS, Tcsd
HpS - ASA - AGTSP paoho. O.K. Let's write on this for publication.
First, even within our own tradition, Vedic culture, there are texts for those in the mode of ignorance and those in ... So some these are directly exaggerated to deal with really stoned dudes. Even the Bhagavatam says that some of the stories there are allegories. Others the parampara says are actual descriptions of reality but extraordinary to oue personal experience.
Appreciating the parampara, the authority, is very important in this discussion. Like last year I heard Jay Labov from the National Academy of Science saying to most people, college educated people "scientific knowledge" is "revealed knowledge" just as stories coming from different religious traditions. So we have to investigate the scientific or guru-parampara authorities. The last one in our line, Srila Prabhupada is quite accessible through his books and students if we want to investigate, and then he says that everyone of our Acharyas were greatly realized souls with no reason to accept imagination as serious fact.
Parampara, in Mathematics, Proof Through Induction.
Then we can use the available scientific and other information and try to understand these stories in the Bhagavatam. First principle is that the SB is using a different coslmology from that which we have evolved in the West from Socrates to Plato to Aristotle to St. Thomas Aquinas, Kant, Newton, Einstein.
To see the validity of the predominating Western paradigm requires to look carefully at history. There is good literature available, authorities like Harvey Cox, Carl Jung, Marshall McLuhan, E. T. Hall. All well respected scientist - "Quantum Questions" by Ken Wilber. So many books which in the end demonstrate that the Wester Cosmology confronts may experiences that we can't explain and amongst all these the concept of Time we feel one of the most principle.
To many college educated Dudes, time is a line, it moves in one direciton only, it has no branches and all the steps are just the same size!! Very German. Yet, cross cultural studies, regular scientific studies in psychology, advanced physics, show us that there are many alternative views of time which funcition quite well andd even better in different circumstances.
So, to take the "myths" of the SB on their own terms, and not to just extract one thing out of context, like 1 + 1 = 10, and say that it is rediculous, but not to understand that the statement is made after it has been established that we are working in a base 2 number system, we see that the pastimes of Krsna were occuring at the end of the Dvapara Yuga. For us in the Kali-yuga it is like some cockroach in the middle of Winter in New York trying to understand what things were like in the Fall. The vegetation, atmosphere, everything, were different.
What to speak of Satya -yuga.
So many things were possible then that are not now. Methusala in the Bible is worth finding a reading. How old did he and his fellows live.
We could write much more but I think the idea is clear, no? If we read the SB parampara we will gradually understand the cosmology better and see how it is not only reasonable but apparently much more practical. From it come Ayurveda, Vastuveda, Jyotishveda... Very practical and effective physical sciences.
Is O.K.? This is just an extract, but a word to the wise is sufficient. If you look up Carbon Dating on the WIkip. and the Britannica and follow the scholaraly links on them you will see that there are great deficiencies in the scientific "myth" about how they are establishing their dates.
We will post this on the JayaRama.us archives as, vedas-myth.docx