Hinduism

[SaturninePluto]

Hi.

I was wondering if there are any decent sources/ websites online to learn a bit about Hinduism?

If anyone may have some links?

I am trying to learn more of Hinduism, due to new information coming to light, regarding my heritage, or genetic make up.

If anyone has any links to start with for learning, I would appreciate it- buying books isn't an option for me currently, until I can find if there are any bookstores more local nearby.

I'd simply like to learn a bit, then perhaps head to the library.

Thank you.

[inavalan]

Originally Posted by SaturninePluto

Hi.

I was wondering if there are any decent sources/ websites online to learn a bit about Hinduism?

If anyone may have some links?

I am trying to learn more of Hinduism, due to new information coming to light, regarding my heritage, or genetic make up.

If anyone has any links to start with for learning, I would appreciate it- buying books isn't an option for me currently, until I can find if there are any bookstores more local nearby.

I'd simply like to learn a bit, then perhaps head to the library.

Thank you.

If I were you, instead of relying on an anonymous forumite's opinion, I would google-search for "hinduism", "hinduism pdf", etc., and form my own opinion.

For books on Hinduism, I would firstly browse their Amazon.com reviews.

[Vinayaka]

Originally Posted by SaturninePluto

Hi.

I was wondering if there are any decent sources/ websites online to learn a bit about Hinduism?

If anyone may have some links?

I am trying to learn more of Hinduism, due to new information coming to light, regarding my heritage, or genetic make up.

If anyone has any links to start with for learning, I would appreciate it- buying books isn't an option for me currently, until I can find if there are any bookstores more local nearby.

I'd simply like to learn a bit, then perhaps head to the library.

Thank you.

Much can be downloaded or is in ebook format. All the stuff at Himalayan Academy, for example is free. The book 'What is Hinduism? would be a great start.

[jonesboy]

I have to say a good book that got me started was Autobiography of a Yogi.

It is a classic and does a great job of introducing people to the various beliefs.

[SaturninePluto]

Thank you all for your thoughts and suggestions.

[Shivani Devi]

Namaste.

I also have a suggestion.

It is a book called "All About Hinduism" by Swami Sivananda from the Divine Life Society in Rishikesh. Here is a free PDF of that book:

https://archive.org/stream/AllAboutH...nda_djvu.tx t

The way I started learning about it? well, I cheated. I learned about Hinduism the way any Hindu child would...by reading comic books and stories.

I had a huge supply of Amar Chitra Katha (Immortal Captivating Picture Stories) comics in my youth...about a hundred of them and they were my 'prized possession'...along with a collection of wooden puppets from Java (wayang golek), and I would play out all the scenes from within them.

Let me see if these things are still available:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amar_Chitra_Katha

Oh the fun times...

Aum Namah Shivaya

[SaturninePluto]

Thank you very much Shivani for your suggestion.

Namaste.

(Excerpt from message of Shri Datta Swami)

Pravrutti means knowledge related to yourself, your family members and the society (creation). Nivrutti means the knowledge related to God (creator) & path to please & get love of God. All other religions concentrated much on Pravrutti so that the human being transforms from devilish or animal nature to human nature and the fruit for this is heaven. Here, one is expected to avoid injustice & follow justice to maintain balance of society. If one disturbs balance of society following injustice, God is displeased & gives punishments.

In the Nivrutti, human being is expected to transform from the human nature to the divine nature. Here, one has to even cross the justice for the sake of devotion because God is greater than justice. God is protector & justice is the protected. Here, one pleases God to climax & gets eternal love from God. In Pravrutti, one is like a good employee following rules & boss is pleased to give promotion. But, promotion is not eternal (disappears on retirement), which is the temporary heaven only. In Nivrutti, one is like the family member of the boss to get his earned property forever.

In all other religions, status of God is mentioned as Father of heaven, which indicates that main stress is on Pravrutti. In Hinduism, status of God is Lord of eternal Brahma Loka, which indicates stress on Nivrutti. All other scriptures mainly concentrate on Pravrutti & limit progress of soul up to heaven only. If you examine Gita, it starts with Pravrutti to establish justice by destroying unjust evil forces, but it gives stress on Nivrutti in entire contents. Ofcourse, there are a few exceptional devotees of Nivrutti in other religions also like Abraham, who sacrificed his son for sake of God. But, in Hinduism, Pravrutti was limited to scriptures like Manu Smruti only.

Gita is a special scripture of Nivrutti (Moksha Shastra). This is the status of ancient Hinduism. But, today, in India if you see even Pravrutti is in the lowest state in practice with full corruption etc. This shows what we were yesterday and what we are today.

The reason for this is the twisted interpretations of the scripture by the over-intelligence of the middle age scholars in India.

Today, our status is far below even in Pravrutti compared to the other religions. In other religions, Nivrutti was not there but Pravrutti is well established due to lack of misinterpretations by over-intelligence. Therefore, there is a need to revive Hinduism filtering from the twisted misinterpretations and bring back the pure Pravrutti, which is the foundation for Nivrutti. For this purpose, Lord Datta entered this human body and is doing this divine work of establishing the original sense of the scriptures in India and also to develop Nivrutti in other religions.

The original Hinduism correlates with all the other religions in the interpretations exposing the unity of religions. The unity in diversity is already the inherent characteristic of Hinduism, which contains several diversified sub-religions, which are united in the original sense and hence, Hinduism will never oppose the unity of world religions.

posted by: surya (disciple of swamiji)
www.universal-spirituality.org