share this article
We continue this from part 1 here.
Another instance of ‘Hinduism in the blind spot’ is found in the personage of Graham Hancock. A fair majority of his work could be generalized as finding, investigating and articulating evidence that humanity’s history on this planet goes back much deeper in the past than is generally understood. This is why he frequently and rightly declares - we are a species with amnesia. Indeed, we are indebted to him for uncovering previously unknown or suppressed information on things such as the Great Sphinx in Egypt or Gobekli Tepe in Turkey. He has spent a lifetime over his pursuit, most of it at the cost of being vilified and ostracized by mainstream academic communities all over. And by no means could we accuse him of anything even closely resembling bigotry, racism or chauvinism. In fact, in this clip of his recent appearance at the Flagrant podcast, he even declares that the Indian civilization is “at least five thousand years old” and that “the correctly discredited notion of an Aryan invasion of India needs to be abandoned.” With Graham Hancock then, we are presented with Hinduism in the blind spot even in the demonstrable absence of any racism/bigotry motivating it. Some pointers on what we mean when we identify Hinduism in his blind spot:
- Hancock’s lifelong pursuit of history, especially archaic and prehistoric history which would evidence human civilization being of a much older vintage than is generally conceded, stands in stark contrast to his “at least five thousand years old” caption for Indian history. After all, the existence of Bhirrana, Lahuradewa, Sothi-Siswal, Rakhigarhi, Mehrgarh (to name a few) evidences a vintage at least double that amount. And any mildly serious investigation would uncover remarkable continuities to Indian civilizational history. And yet, even for a researcher as open-minded and non-racist as Graham Hancock, the historic memory present in the itihāsa-purāṇa tradition is of no apparent curiosity or value.
- More on the above, Hancock’s speculations on a cataclysmic event just prior to the Holocene onset could find much support from Paurāṇika memories of flood events in the 1st manvantara, of earthquakes/deluges triggered by Hiraṇyākṣa who beats the earth down with his club, and of the world-rivers being locked in ice by the dragon Vṛtra - undone by Indra’s victory over him which finally release the waters. Supplementary information comes from tha Tamil Saṅgam tradition, which tells us of past Madurais that were lost to the sea.
As in the previous case, we must make disclaimers that no criticism of Hancock is actually intended here. After all, in his book Underworld: the Mysterious Origins of Civilization he writes:
The Sanskrit texts make it clear that a cataclysm on this scale, though a relatively rare event, is expected to wash away all traces of the former world and that the slate will be wiped clean again for the new age of the earth to begin.
Indian thought has traditionally regarded history and prehistory in cyclical rather than linear terms…India conceives of four great epochs of ‘world ages’ of varying but enormous lengths: the Krita Yuga, the Treta Yuga, the Dvapara Yuga and the Kali Yuga. At the end of each yuga a cataclysm, known as pralaya, engulfs the globe in fire or flood.
The Red Hill was referred to in the most ancient surviving work of Tamil literature, the Tolkappiyam, which itself makes reference to an even earlier work now lost to history which in turn had supposedly been part of a library of archaic texts, all now also vanished, the compilation of which was said to have begun more than 10,000 years previously.
He clearly knows enough to make these references and rightfully recruit them in favor of his own theories. But the engagement is superficial, and perhaps because he usually speaks of now extinct civilizations - Greeks, Egyptians, Anatolians, Mesoamericans - he speaks of Indian historic memory as if it is no longer alive and embodied. This becomes more apparent in the other component of his work - consciousness and conscious phenomena. Though familiar with the likes of Deepak Chopra and Shri Subhash Kak, and despite the presence of this guest article on his own website, Hancock’s work on the conscious experience and humanity’s trajectory on it is largely uninformed by the substantial complement it could receive from Hinduism. For example-
- He theorizes on consciousness having a reality independent of the brain, surviving beyond death and even re-locating itself, but makes no references to punar-janma, ātman, brahman or other notions within Hinduism that detail the very same.
- His works on altered states of consciousness among ancient civilizations, and underpinning religious origins, parallels Hinduism’s usage of yogic and meditative practices, but we find no reference to this (happily though, he also does not seem to repeat the tired trope of soma as a psychedelic).
- When he speaks of the psychedelic experience, and more specifically of the DMT (a highly potent psychedelic substance) experience, we find enough references to what would easily be identified by Hindus as lokas, devas, piśācas etc., i.e. - non-material entities and planes of existence. But he does not directly cite Hinduism in such cases.
Of the above, the last point is a glaring omission prevalent to the entire psychedelic subculture/phenomenon.An entire experience that quite tangibly puts one into encounter with entities of all kinds, in dimensions fundamentally real and yet non-material, seems to steadfastly avoid any reference to the one continuing belief system in the world that would actually platform such an experience with a detailed ontology. And this instance of Hinduism in the blind spot brings us to our final example.
The Almost Ṛṣi - Terence McKenna
Why do we speak of McKenna, legendary and late psychonaut, as an almost ṛṣi? Like the ṛṣis of old, he did in fact touch some surface of the pure truth, even if barely a scratch. What he did is the literal description of a ṛṣi - pierce through the veil of ṛta and perceive the satya beyond - even if a speck of it. McKenna’s latter-life ramblings, and a near-certain surrender to the deep state notwithstanding, for the briefest of moments in time he bore true witness. And yet only almost, because not to the enabling soil was he born. He came in a different culture, one both then and now being an inversion of everything true and real. No true ṛṣi could germinate in that soiled a soil, but some almost could - and McKenna was one of them.
In context of this essay, it should be noted that he spent many years in India, and some in Nepal and Tibet. This brought him in contact with many a baba, yogi, sadhu and lama. In fact he claimed to have even introduced a Tibetan monk to the psychedelic mushroom, and the latter confirmed that it did indeed give access to the lower bardo states. But while this confirmed to him the truth of the psychedelic experience, the experience conversely did not confirm the veracity of Hindu/Buddhist cosmogony and cosmology! In one of his many talks McKenna famously declared that no “rishi or roshe” could give us the answers, and in another he explained śakti so reductively and ignorantly as “energy” that knowing Hindus would instantly scoff. And all of this was despite the fact that-
- McKenna frequently spoke of logos, eschaton, and the monad in ways that have clear parallels to brahman, prakṛti, and vimarśa.
- He famously declared that “the world is made of words. And if you know the words that the world is made of, you can make of it whatever you wish” but was apparently unaware of the śabda brahman. His idea that through linguistic construction, we create and perceive our reality, essentially ‘thinking reality into existence,’ is anticipated by ṛṣi Bhartṛhari’s śabdādvaita, which posits language and cognition as ontologically identical to the supreme reality.
- On the ontological identity of language and reality, his intuition that language itself is a lower-order derivative of meaning better understood in the psychedelic space, or that the origins of religion lay in early attempts to describe the psychedelic state in language, has clear resonance to the Vaidika notion of mantra-draṣṭās.
- On the inherent cognitive role of language in shaping human consciousness, he speculated that language shapes consciousness and conditions our perception of the world, suggesting that it is an integral and inherent part of human cognition. This again is directly parallel to Bhartṛhari’s idea that sentence meaning is not just a sum of word meanings but a cognitive state or intuition (pratibhā) that is inherent in all beings.
- On the transcendence of language beyond its structural form, he declared that language is more than just a series of sounds or written characters; it is a medium that transcends its physical form to shape our perception and understanding of reality. Bhartṛhari’s sphoṭa theory suggests that the true meaning of language is found in the complete sentence, transcending the individual words and their physical expression.
With McKenna we are met with a case of Hinduism in the blind spot so glaring it almost infuriates. One wishes one could go back in time and point him to the Vākyapadīya or the Sāṅkhyakārikā. Not to chauvinistically educate him on Hinduism’s primacy or glory, but because his output and consequently the rest of us would be significantly enriched by the encounter. In the ultimate analysis, Hinduism in the blind spot is not merely a lament for the in-group of concern, it is a prohibiting factor in the general pursuit of knowledge and furtherance of ideas.
But if it is not racism, bigotry, lack of curiosity, chauvinism, Hinduphobia or any such thing that we blame, and if it is not the people involved in specific that we criticize, then what really does this blind spot reveal to us?
On Non-Translatables, Turned Gazes and Telling One’s Own Story
For one, the blind spot vindicates the suggestion that fundamental Hindu concepts are non-translatable - famously articulated by Shri Rajiv Malhotra. One may replace a ‘spinal conduit’ with a ‘suśumnā nāḍī’ or a ‘life-force’ with a ‘prāṇa,’ and vice-versa. But a natural grounding in Hindu ontology is needed to actually understand and anticipate how Hinduism possesses an organic taxonomy for many of the ideas at the edge of modern understanding on reality, consciousness, language etc.
In turn, this reminds us that we need not be eager to use racism/bigotry as explanations. Without the above grounding, even the most well-meaning and deeply curious minds can not be expected to be aware of ways in which Hinduism can inform them. This means that what Prof. Balagangadhara writes - that all of modern humanities are essentially the Western mind in conversation with itself - is essentially true. Only such a mind could find fringe evidences to non-material entities as a wholly unexplained phenomena, for example. And only such a mind could enter the psychedelic realms and return thinking that humanity’s familiarity with the realms, their landscape and their constituents is not an archaic enterprise. Such a mind is also pre-conditioned to thinking of “other people” as extinct civilizations (and most of them are), which is why it has no praxis for engaging with living and continuing belief systems.
Lastly, this reminds us that the onus is on us - the Hindus. Hinduism lies in the blind spot, but we are not here to place blame. If indeed we think the logos can correlate to the śabda brahman, if indeed we find modern speculations on angels and demons simply a scrambling towards devas, asuras, piśācas and bhūtas - the articulation can only come from us. If we are not impressed by psychonautic attempts at mapping the contours of the non-material space, where, pray, are our own maps for them? If we find even AI generated text at the edge of speculations to be reminiscent only of ancient Hindu truths, then what prevents us from prompt engineering a whole renascence?