A Martial Spirit, Part 2

I decided to look into some of the more martial aspects of Hinduism, and I came across some very interesting speeches taking place in Gujarat. The one that I felt was the most passionate was given by a spiritual leader called, Sadhvi Rithambara. She had a fire that the other male leaders of this organization could not match. It is this aspect of Hinduism along with its deeper philosophies that need to be given focus. I heard in Gujarat it is Muslims who live in terror, not like it is in the European countries, where it is the Europeans that are in terror of the Muslims. I watched a rally by a radical imam in Britian, and he mocked the British so bad, telling them not to interfere with the Muslims, or they will pay. His tone was a sardonic one, and at this moment I said that in this respect America is superior to Europe. We commanded the Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden, and their defiance was met with punishment. I would like to say that I am not a big fan of the Neo-conservatism that America wishes to spread, I would much rather see this martial spirit exemplified in a more traditional Indo-European system.

Here is the speech by Sadhvi Rithambara, it is a sign of the martial virtues returning to the Aryan Vedic Dharma.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8817218285615987893&q=vhp&hl=en

I find many parts of this speech beautiful. The comment about planting the flag of India into the chest of Islamabad, and destroying Karachi and Rawalpindi evokes images of the ancient Aryan warriors. I also liked when it was chanted, "Victory to the Lord's Holy Army", and the crowd responded by what seemed to be a hail of some sort. This aspect of Hinduism is definitely more pleasing to serious minded people than the form which the hippies promulgated.

A Martial Spirit

I was reading an article by Koenraad Elst, and though I greatly respect him, I feel that his criticism of the Nouvelle Droit requires a response. The article in question is located at http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/articles/fascism/Nazi5Poewe2.html, and though the criticism of the Nouvelle Droit is a side issue from the main topic, this is what interested me about the article, and warrants a response. More specifically, my response will be to two points that he had about the Nouvelle Droit, because these are important issues.

5) its sympathy for Islam, one element which it does indeed have in common with Hitler and Himmler and the authors discussed by Poewe, and strange for alleged neo-Pagans given that Mohammed’s career consisted in the extermination of Paganism from Arabia; (6) its lack of a credible philosophical or religious backbone, compensated for with restless explorations of Pagan mythologies and frivolous exercises in aimless erudition or contrarious rhetoric (the annual conference in Paris is called Journée de la Pensée Rebelle, “day of rebellious thought”, a sign of prolonged adolescence), which struck me by its contrast with the solid philosophical and religious grounding of modern Hindu thinkers whom I had read, such as Sri Aurobindo, or whom I knew in person, particularly Ram Swarup and Sita Ram Goel;

The sympathy for Islam is not because of Islam per se, but because of two features which are present in Islam to the exclusion of other religions nowadays. Islam has a martial spirit, and it seems that other religions lack this martial spirit. Though Koenraad Elst admires the Vedic Dharma for its sophisticated philosophies, I think that it is equally important to revive the martial spirit of the Vedic Dharma. It is time that verses in the Bhagavad Gita where Krishna tells Arjuna it is his duty to fight gets as much attention as the verses dealing with its advanced metaphysics. It is time that songs are sung about concepts of the warriors engaging in activities like a Rakshasha Vivaha as a privilege of warriors. It is time that the Vedic Dharma is stressed by figures like Bhima with his awesome mace, rather than people singing mantras while throwing flower petals around each other. It is time the martial spirit awakens in the Vedic Dharma. Islam also seems to have a spirit that is moving history at the moment and is opposed to liberal democracy and global capitalism. Though I am opposed to sharia law in any Aryan land, the Muslims have stood up against liberal democracy and global capitalism. There are political and economic ideals that mirror the Aryan Dharma, and these are found in autonomy and economic justice, not the empty notion of negative freedom and economic liberty, which just results in the exploitation and reduction of man. A follower of the Aryan Dharma must have the same spirit to reject liberal democracy and global capitalism for something clearly better as the Muslim does for his sharia law. I also would rather lament the conquest of Zoroastrianism by Islam more than Arabic paganism. Though I sympathize with the past Arabic pagans to have their traditional religion, it is more important that we associate ourselves with an Aryan Dharma more so than a general paganism.

As far as the second point is concerned, I do agree that it is imperative to have a sophisticated metaphysics. This is what I greatly admire about Vedanta. It is also equally important to deal with the cultural aspects of the present world, and show how a traditional Indo-European pagan outlook could help. This I believe is the project of Alain de Benoist. Also, I will reiterate my previous point because it is of grave importance. Though the Vedic Dharma has a metaphysics which is superior to the Christian or Islamic, it needs to reassert its martial spirit.

The warrior's look is like a thunderous rain-cloud's, when, armed with mail, he seeks the lap of battle. Be thou victorious with unwounded body: so let the thickness of thy mail protect thee. With Bow let us win kine, with Bow the battle, with Bow be victors in our hot encounters. The Bow brings grief and sorrow to the foeman: armed with the Bow may we subdue all regions.

Rig Veda Hymns to the Weapons of War 1-2

Minor Analysis of Christianity

The question is, why was Christianity defined in this positivistic manner that is overly concerned about doctrine and dogmas, and not a spiritual outlook based upon intelligent metaphysics and a genuine religious sentiment? This has to do with the nature of Jesus, and then in turn the nature of man. When the doctrine of Athanasius won out over that of Arius, the Christian faith defined itself in such a way that would lead to Augustine, Tertullian, Luther, Kierkegaard, etc.. Athanasius defined Jesus in such a way that his spiritual nature was eternal, of the same substance as the father, and the logos, which for the Greeks permeated all reality, became restricted to a man in Palestine for a short period in history, now in control by the church. What was spiritual in Jesus was the essence of God which we as creatures can never imitate. Salvation is a product of God’s grace which is given through the church. Though if we follow the position of Arius, and Jesus was created, and achieved his status as God’s son through participation in the Logos, then we as human could do this as well. It would be through the logos, which is all pervading, then swelling in our soul that we would achieve salvation, moksha, nirvana, etc., and Jesus would be a role model, not a guilt sacrifice. The key here is that a God-Man creates a gulf between him and the rest of us, that doesn’t allow for the spirituality of emulation, but that the eternal deity is the only one that can satisfy this debt through sacrifice that we humans can never pay, except in the infinite interest of guilt. This works perfect for institutional control of the human soul. The church now through being the bride of Christ on earth becomes the one who is in control of how this grace is given. All of our spirituality is lost; it is only through obeisance through the church, that we are saved. The Protestants are no better, they have replaced the sacraments of Catholicism with the degrading level of guilt that we see in Luther and Calvin and the ridiculous fanaticism and silliness that we see in Pentecostalism. This is because they have the same core theology of Catholicism, no matter how much they protest. Catholicism flourished when there was the need for a strong monolithic religious institution that could give stability to a strong monolithic political institution. The political institutions and culture do not have the need for a Catholic presence to invigorate it; the theolgia gloria is a dead theology. Christianity is in the process of greater and greater dissolution, and is being more and more spoken in a Protestant voice, a Protestantism that is Baptist and Pentecostal.

Christianity has never really been productive in the spiritual sense, it is not productive in the cultural sense anymore, and is not necessary for political reasons considering the infrastructure of the “Christian world”. This spiritual vacuum must be filled, because the vulgar hedonism that I see in consumerist atheistic materialism absolutely sickens me. My opinion had Arius won over Athanasius, Jesus would have been a spiritual figure which would of led to a greater figure that would of have had his birth in Europe, who would have been Aryan.

Some Religious Sentiments

In the previous article, I was critical of Christianity being a positivistic religion. I still hold to this position, but the reality is that Christianity is still the dominant religion amongst people of European descent, so I feel it is necessary to take some of its key figures and reinterpret them to create what I called in the previous article, a metaphysical religion. The attack in the previous article was centered on Jesus as rising from the grave to conquer sin and death, and Adam as responsible for this sin and death by eating from an apple from a tree. Taken literally this is credulous and superstitious, but allegorically, I believe it represents a schema for a good metaphysics. When Kant reinterpreted Christianity to fit his moral religion, he also got rid of any elements that were superstitious. In his moral-religious philosophy there was the aspect of free choice that had the propensity to sin, and there was the aspect that chose to act according to the categorical imperative. This propensity to sin was seen as coming from the heteronomy that acts according to immoral imperatives to achieve a desired end in this world. The figure that will exemplify this behavior is Adam; he is the propensity to sin. The pure and moral activity of the categorical imperative is characterized by Jesus. Jesus is the ideal and autonomous self that acts according to the dictates of practical reason. This can be further developed by Schopenhauer in which we have an empirical and noumenal self. The empirical self is that which is conditioned by space and time, limited by the present events of the world, where the noumenal self is our ideal nature, our eternal character. This is also a good heuristic for understanding Heidegger, in which Adam can be seen as the inauthentic self which loses itself in the interconnected network of beings, whereas Jesus can be seen the authentic self which is truly searching after Being.

The point is that we are in a world where there is ceaseless activity, and we feel trapped and powerless. This is especially true of our modern capitalist society. We have the choice of living an inauthentic and heteronomous life, where we are acting according to desires that seek limiting ends that are part of our empirical existence, or we can have an authentic and autonomous existence where we act according to our eternal and spiritual nature. The reality is that this is a more Gnostic interpretation of Christianity that is in line with the Pagan mystery religions, but the positivism in Christianity has been disastrous for the spirituality of the European peoples.

To give an explanation of what I mean. The reality is that the world is radically contingent. When we seek after meaning in a career, all of the factors that surround our career goals are contingent upon many factors. There are stories of people who worked in the IT industry for many years progressing on their career then losing their job during the dot com debacle and experiencing miserable depression. There are also people who seek after ultimate meaning in life from a significant other, and then upon this relationship failing, they experience miserable depression. They then seek after anyone to give them meaning, allowing themselves to be exploited. I used to work as a floor host in a strip club while I was in school, and these people are prey to the girls, the girls give them a false sense of self esteem while they foolishly hand over their wallets to them. What is your ultimate nature, and what does your ultimate nature relate to?

We have serious problems. We have allowed economic and romantic interests to dominate our entire life. This society has idealized the man of economic success, and the woman who believes that she is entitled by the cosmic laws of the universe an existence in which all of her romantic desires are fulfilled, and her man sees her as the most meaningful aspect of his life. While we are obsessed in all of these contingent aspects of life that do not deal with the ultimate nature of man, there are a group of people that still hold to this world being radically contingent, that all of our activities will expand into nothingness. There is one divine source that unifies all of these activities, and this divine source gives all meaning, and deals with the ultimate nature of man. Their career does not give ultimate meaning, their relationships do not give ultimate meaning, and their very life does not give ultimate meaning. It is what they believe to be their eternal self relating to the Absolute. I am talking about a more traditional Islamic perspective, which realizes the radical contingency of this existence. I personally would like a position that comes to these conclusions through more of a path of illumination as opposed to fanaticism, but that is a problem inherent in a revealed religion as opposed to a metaphysical one. I have given two links to show what our society idealizes and what their society idealizes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQy3BWj8FgA http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1065908992986670309&q=mtv+sweet+sixteen&hl=en

For all of the many benefits that this society has, we have lost our sense of nobility. From this perspective, the Islamic world is right to reject Western Society. The glamorization of the materialism and the existential solipsism in the sweet sixteen clip versus the spirituality and the sense of higher ideals in the video of Hajj prayer shows something that we lack, and what they still have. This is where I see possible value in certain teachings of Jesus. There are verses in the Bible which Jesus is critical of those who place economic concerns, relationships, and corporeal existence over spiritual concerns. I will list a few.

If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple”, Luke 14:26.
And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves. Matthew 21:12
And he said unto his disciples, Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat; neither for the body, what ye shall put on. The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment. Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn; and God feedeth them: how much more are ye better than the fowls? Luke 12: 22-24

I believe that the only way that this can be taken intelligently is as hyperbole, the reality is that man is a political animal and his existence cannot be a solitary one. The point is what in life has ultimate meaning. I do believe that the message of Jesus was a particular one that dealt with the conditions of Judea at the time, and not universal to the general condition of humanity. This is where I like the message of the Buddha, it deals with the human condition, and its most fundamental level. I do realize that my outlook on Christianity is unorthodox, but that is only because of the Trinitarian version that won out. I will deal with this in the next article.