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Neo-Vedanta

Neo-Vedanta, also called Hindu modernism, Neo-Hinduism, Global Hinduism and Hindu Universalism, are terms to characterize interpretations of Hinduism that developed in the 19th century. These modern interpretations emphasize ideas, such as Advaita Vedanta, that are asserted as central or fundamental to Hindu culture. The development took place partly in response to western colonialism and orientalism, contributing to the Indian freedom struggle and the modern national and religious identity of Hindus in the Republic of India. This societal aspect is covered under the term of Hindu reform movements. Among the main proponents of such modern interpretations of Hinduism were Vivekananda, Aurobindo and Radhakrishnan, who to some extent also contributed to the emergence of Neo-Hindu movements in the West.

From their origin and through much of their history, and continuing in the present, the terms “Neo-Hindu” or “Neo-Vedanta” have also been used polemically, the prefix “Neo-” then intended to imply that these modern interpretations of Hinduism are “inauthentic” or in other ways problematic.

History

Unifying Hinduism

With the onset of Islamic rule, hierarchical classifications of the various orthodox schools were developed to defend Hinduism against Islamic influences. According to Nicholson, already between the twelfth and the sixteenth century,

  • … certain thinkers began to treat as a single whole the diverse philosophical teachings of the Upanishads, epics, Puranas, and the schools known retrospectively as the “six systems” (saddarsana) of mainstream Hindu philosophy.

The tendency of “a blurring of philosophical distinctions” has also been noted by Burley. Lorenzen locates the origins of a distinct Hindu identity in the interaction between Muslims and Hindus, and a process of “mutual self-definition with a contrasting Muslim other”, which started well before 1800. Both the Indian and the European thinkers who developed the term “Hinduism” in the 19th century were influenced by these philosophers.

Within these socalled doxologies Advaita Vedanta was given the highest position, since it was regarded to be most inclusive system. Vijnanabhiksu, a 16th-century philosopher and writer, is still an influential representant of these doxologies. He’s been a prime influence on 19th century Hindu modernists like Vivekananda, who also tried to integrate various strands of Hindu thought, taking Advaita Vedanta as its most representative specimen.

Colonialism and Modernism

With the colonisation of India by the British, a darker era in the history of India began. Prior to this, Muslim rule over North India had had a drastic effect on Hinduism (and Buddhism) through systematic persecution. While the Indian society was greatly impacted, its economy however continued to remain one of the largest in the World. Muslim rule over Southern India was also relatively short-lived before the 17th century.

In contrast to the Muslim rulers, the British actively engaged in destroying the Indian economy as well.

The economic destruction wrought by restrictive British policies and Industrial revolution in Europe, led to the dismantling of the prevailing decentralized education systems in India in the 18th century. The British state-supported education system, after the English Education Act of 1835, emphasized western religions and thoughts at the cost of indigenous ones.

The British also nurtured and were involved, post 1813, in the aggressive propagation of Protestant Christianity. This was concomitant with the British propaganda machine’s involvement in the spreading anti-Hindu sentiments. In response to the British rule and cultural dominance, Hindu reform movements developed, propagating societal and religious reforms, exemplyfying what Spear has called

  • … the ‘solution of synthesis’ – the effort to adapt to the newcomers, in the process of which innovation and assimilation gradually occur, alongside an ongoing agenda to preserve the unique values of the many traditions of Hinduism (and other religious traditions as well).

Reinterpreting Hinduism

Neo-Vedanta, also called “Neo-Hinduism” is a central theme in these reform-movements. Neo-Vedanta aims to present Hinduism as a “homogenized ideal of Hinduism” with Advaita Vedanta as its central doctrine. It presents

  • … an imagined “integral unity” that was probably little more than an “imagined” view of the religious life that pertained only to a cultural elite and that empirically speaking had very little reality “on the ground,” as it were, throughout the centuries of cultural development in the South Asian region.

Neo-Vedanta was influenced by Oriental scholarship, which portrayed Hinduism as a “single world religion”, and denigrated the heterogeneousity of Hindu beliefs and practices as ‘distortions’ of the basic teachings of Vedanta.

Luc Paquin

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Ink is a liquid or paste that contains pigments or dyes and is used to color a surface to produce an image, text, or design. Ink is used for drawing or writing with a pen, brush, or quill. Thicker inks, in paste form, are used extensively in letterpress and lithographic printing.

Ink can be a complex medium, composed of solvents, pigments, dyes, resins, lubricants, solubilizers, surfactants, particulate matter, fluorescents, and other materials. The components of inks serve many purposes; the ink’s carrier, colorants, and other additives affect the flow and thickness of the ink and its appearance when dry.

History

Many ancient cultures around the world have independently discovered and formulated inks for the purposes of writing and drawing. The knowledge of the inks, their recipes and the techniques for their production comes from archaeological analysis or from written text itself.

The ink was first invented in India. The Indian inks used natural plant (plant dyes), and mineral inks based on such materials as graphite that were ground with water and applied with ink brushes. The best inks for drawing or painting on paper or silk are produced from the resin of the pine tree. They must be between 50 and 100 years old. The Chinese inkstick is produced with a fish glue, whereas Japanese glue is from cow or stag.

The process of making India ink was known in China as early as the middle of the 3rd millennium BC, during Neolithic China. India ink was first invented in China, although the source of materials to make the carbon pigment in India ink was later often traded from India, thus the term India ink was coined. The traditional Chinese method of making the ink was to grind a mixture of hide glue, carbon black, lampblack, and bone black pigment with a pestle and mortar, then pouring it into a ceramic dish where it could dry. To use the dry mixture, a wet brush would be applied until it reliquified. The manufacture of India ink was well-established by the Cao Wei Dynasty (220-265 AD). Indian documents written in Kharosthi with ink have been unearthed in Chinese Turkestan. The practice of writing with ink and a sharp pointed needle was common in early South India. Several Buddhist and Jain sutras in India were compiled in ink.

Wiccan Ink

Add power to your spells by writing them with magical ink!

Because these magical inks are made from only natural ingredients, separation may occur. This is normal. Please make sure to shake well before use.

Dragon’s Blood Ink

Color: Red

Good for protection, energy, and purification. Adds power to any spell, incantation, or other charm. Increases potency of your spells. Has strong banishing powers against negative influences, and will drive away negativity.

Dove’s Blood Ink

Color: Red

Good for love, romance, friendship, and peace. Add power to love spells. Thank your spiritual guides and helpers. Ignite romance and passion.

Bat’s Blood Ink

Color: Red

Good for domination, command, curses, and hexes. Great for summoning spirits. Good for binding spells. Also use for spells of mystery, darkness, and all things hidden.

Butterfly’s Blood Ink

Color: Golden Yellow

Good for change, inspiration, and expression. Helpful for calling on the element of air. Magical aid for artists, brings creativity. Aids in communication, for both the physical and spiritual realms. Once dry on your parchment, Butterfly’s Blood Ink is nearly invisible. Which makes this ink excellent for spell working that relies on the subconscious, or sigils.

Raven’s Blood Ink

Color: Copper Red

For healing, transformation, and mystery. Good for healing spells. Excellent to use in spells bringing about transformation, or spells to ease one’s mind when faced with a life transformation. Use this ink when you want to add an air of mystery to your spell workings.

Raven’s Feather Ink

Color: Dark Red

For commanding spells and spells to contact the dead. Good for summoning spirits, banishing spirits, and exorcisms. Use this ink to create your own “talking” boards for contacting spirits, or for mediums to write out their questions for the dead.

Lampblack Ink

Color: Black

Lampblack ink adds extra power to any spell. Particularly useful for wisdom and knowledge spells, making this an excellent ink for writing in a witch’s book of shadows. You can also charge Lampblack ink with specific intent by coordinating the color of the candle used to create the Lampblack soot.

Invisible Ink

Color: Invisible

Write on a piece of paper with lemon juice. When you want to read what has been written, warm the paper by candle light. (Don’t burn it!) The words will “magically” appear.

Alchemy Ink

Color: Blue

With lavender for transformation, change, dreams, imagination and fairie magic.

Wishes Ink

Color: Green

With sage for wishes, desires and magic related to the material plane.

Sweet Talk Ink

Color: Red

With rose for love, friendship, and relationship magic.

Vision Quest Ink

Color: Purple

With hyssop for clairvoyance, intuition, divination, and magic involving the psyche.

Monk’s Ink

Color: Black

For general magical and mundane use.

The Lost Bearded White Brother

Transcendentalism was a religious and philosophical movement that developed during the late 1820s and ’30s in the Eastern region of the United States as a protest against the general state of spirituality and, in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard University and the doctrine of the Unitarian church as taught at Harvard Divinity School.

Among the transcendentalists’ core beliefs was the inherent goodness of both people and nature. They believe that society and its institutions – particularly organized religion and political parties – ultimately corrupt the purity of the individual. They have faith that people are at their best when truly “self-reliant” and independent. It is only from such real individuals that true community could be formed.

History

Origins

Transcendentalism is closely related to Unitarianism, the dominant religious movement in Boston at the early nineteenth century. It started to develop in the aftermath of Unitarianism taking hold at Harvard University, following the elections of Henry Ware Sr. as the Hollis Professor of Divinity in 1805, and of John Thorton Kirkland as President in 1810. Rather than as a rejection of Unitarianism, Transcendentalism evolved as an organic consequence of the Unitarian emphasis on free conscience and the value of intellectual reason. They were not, however, content with the sobriety, mildness and calm rationalism of Unitarianism. Instead, they longed for a more intense spiritual experience. Stated in alternate terms, Transcendentalism was not born as a counter-movement to Unitarianism, but, as a parallel movement to the very ideas introduced by the Unitarians.

Emerson’s Nature

The publication of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1836 essay Nature is usually considered the moment at which transcendentalism became a major cultural movement. Emerson wrote in his 1837 speech “The American Scholar”: “We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds… A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men.” Emerson closed the essay by calling for a revolution in human consciousness to emerge from the brand new idealist philosophy:

  • So shall we come to look at the world with new eyes. It shall answer the endless inquiry of the intellect, – What is truth? and of the affections, – What is good? by yielding itself passive to the educated Will. …Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit.

Transcendental Club

In the same year, transcendentalism became a coherent movement and a sacred organization with the founding of the Transcendental Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on September 8, 1836, by prominent New England intellectuals including George Putnam (1807-78; the Unitarian minister in Roxbury), Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Frederic Henry Hedge. From 1840, the group published frequently in their journal The Dial, along with other venues.

Second Wave of Transcendentalists

By the late 1840s, Emerson believed the movement was dying out, and even more so after the death of Margaret Fuller in 1850. “All that can be said”, Emerson wrote, “is that she represents an interesting hour and group in American cultivation”. There was, however, a second wave of transcendentalists, including Moncure Conway, Octavius Brooks Frothingham, Samuel Longfellow and Franklin Benjamin Sanborn – Notably, the transgression of the spirit, most often evoked by the poet’s prosaic voice, is said to endow in the reader a sense of purposefulness. This is the underlying theme in the majority of transcendentalist essays and papers – all of which are centered on subjects which assert a love for individual expression. Though the group was mostly made up of struggling aesthetes, the wealthiest among them was Samuel Gray Ward, who, after a few contributions to The Dial, focused on his banking career.

Luc Paquin

Antagonism

Since the scientific revolution, the relationship of science to religion and spirituality has developed in complex ways. Historian John Hedley Brooke describes wide variations:

  • “The natural sciences have been invested with religious meaning, with antireligious implications and, in many contexts, with no religious significance at all.”

It has been proposed that the currently held popular notion of antagonisms between science and religion has historically originated with “thinkers with a social or political axe to grind” rather than with the natural philosophers themselves. Though physical and biological scientists today avoid supernatural explanations to describe reality, many scientists continue to consider science and spirituality to be complementary, not contradictory, and are willing to debate.

A few religious leaders have also shown openness to modern science and its methods. The 14th Dalai Lama has proposed that if a scientific analysis conclusively showed certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then the claims must be abandoned and the findings of science accepted.

Holism

During the twentieth century the relationship between science and spirituality has been influenced both by Freudian psychology, which has accentuated the boundaries between the two areas by accentuating individualism and secularism, and by developments in particle physics, which reopened the debate about complementarity between scientific and religious discourse and rekindled for many an interest in holistic conceptions of reality. These holistic conceptions were championed by New Age spiritualists in a type of quantum mysticism that they claim justifies their spiritual beliefs, though quantum physicists themselves on the whole reject such attempts as being pseudoscientific.

Luc Paquin

There are a number of different kinds of problems that might hinder a person with aphasia from being able to say what they would like to say. The first thing to emphasize is that people with aphasia know what they would like to say, but they have difficulty finding the words they need to communicate their message.

Sometimes a person with aphasia might be able to picture an object, person, place, or other message, and just not be able to think what it is called. This is a phenomenon that happens to all of us occasionally, but for the person with aphasia it can be a constant state. Other times, a person with aphasia might know what they want to say, but a related word comes out instead. For example, the person might say “dog” when they mean to say “cat”. Other times, the sounds that make up the word that they want to say come out in the wrong order. For example, if the person wants to say “table”, it could come out “batle”. This might seem like nonsense sometimes, but it is a problem of the brain failing to select the right sounds for the intended word. Finally, some people with aphasia have great difficulty saying verbs and other small words that are important grammatical words, like articles and prepositions. These individuals sound like they are speaking in telegraphic language. For example, the person might want to say “I went to dinner with my family” but it comes out “Me and family dinner”.

Norma

Health and Well-Being

Various studies have found a positive correlation between spirituality and mental well-being in both healthy people and those encountering a range of physical illnesses or psychological disorders. Spiritual individuals tend to be optimistic, report greater social support, and experience higher intrinsic meaning in life, strength, and inner peace.

The issue of whether the correlation of spirituality with positive psychological factors represents a causal link continues to be debated. Both supporters and opponents of this claim agree that past statistical findings are difficult to interpret, in part because of the ongoing disagreement over how spirituality should be defined and measured. There is evidence that positive emotions and/or sociability (which both correlate with spirituality) might actually be prerequisite psychological features needed before spirituality can emerge (i.e. past association with psychological well-being measures might reflect a reverse causation), and that the effects of agreeableness, conscientiousness, or virtue – personality traits common in many non-spiritual people yet known to be slightly more common among the spiritual – correlate more strongly with mental health than spirituality itself.

Intercessionary Prayer

Masters and Spielmans conducted a meta-analysis of all the available and reputable prior research examining the effects of distant intercessory prayer. They found no discernible health effects from being prayed for by others.

Spiritual Experiences

Neuroscientists have examined how the brain functions during reported spiritual experiences finding that certain neurotransmitters and specific areas of the brain are involved. Moreover, experimenters have also successfully induced spiritual experiences in individuals by administering psychoactive agents known to elicit euphoria and perceptual distortions. Conversely, religiosity and spirituality can also be dampened by electromagnetic stimulation of the brain. These results have led some leading theorists to speculate that spirituality may be a benign subtype of psychosis. Benign in the sense that the same aberrant sensory perceptions that those suffering clinical psychoses evaluate as distressingly in-congruent and inexplicable are instead interpreted by spiritual individuals as positive-as personal and meaningful transcendent experiences.

Luc Paquin

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A quill pen is a writing implement made from a moulted flight feather (preferably a primary wing-feather) of a large bird. Quills were used for writing with ink before the invention of the dip pen, the metal-nibbed pen, the fountain pen, and, eventually, the ballpoint pen. The hand-cut goose quill is rarely used as a calligraphy tool, because many papers are now derived from wood pulp and wear down the quill very quickly. However, it is still the tool of choice for a few professionals and provides an unmatched sharp stroke as well as greater flexibility than a steel pen.

In a carefully prepared quill the slit does not widen through wetting and drying with ink. It will retain its shape adequately and only requires infrequent sharpening and can be used time and time again until there is little left of it. The hollow shaft of the feather (the calamus) acts as an ink reservoir and ink flows to the tip by capillary action.

The strongest quills come from the primary flight feathers discarded by birds during their annual moult. Generally the left wing (it is supposed) is favored by the right-handed majority of writers because the feather curves away from the sight line, over the back of the hand. This is actually urban myth. The quill barrel is cut to six or seven inches in length, so no such consideration of curvature or ‘sight-line’ is necessary. Additionally, writing with the left-hand in the long era of the quill was discouraged, and quills were never sold as left and right-handed, only by their size and species.

The Lost Bearded White Brother

Modern Spirituality

Transcendentalism and Unitarian Universalism

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was a pioneer of the idea of spirituality as a distinct field. He was one of the major figures in Transcendentalism, an early 19th-century liberal Protestant movement, which was rooted in English and German Romanticism, the Biblical criticism of Herder and Schleiermacher, and the skepticism of Hume. The Transcendentalists emphasised an intuitive, experiential approach of religion. Following Schleiermacher, an individual’s intuition of truth was taken as the criterion for truth. In the late 18th and early 19th century, the first translations of Hindu texts appeared, which were also read by the Transcendentalists, and influenced their thinking. They also endorsed universalist and Unitarianist ideas, leading to Unitarian Universalism, the idea that there must be truth in other religions as well, since a loving God would redeem all living beings, not just Christians.

Neo-Vedanta

An important influence on western spirituality was Neo-Vedanta, also called neo-Hinduism and Hindu Universalism, a modern interpretation of Hinduism which developed in response to western colonialism and orientalism. It aims to present Hinduism as a “homogenized ideal of Hinduism” with Advaita Vedanta as its central doctrine. Due to the colonisation of Asia by the western world, since the 19th century an exchange of ideas has been taking place between the western world and Asia, which also influenced western religiosity. Unitarianism, and the idea of Universalism, was brought to India by missionaries, and had a major influence on neo-Hinduism via Ram Mohan Roy’s Brahmo Samaj and Brahmoism. Roy attempted to modernise and reform Hinduism, from the idea of Universalism. This universalism was further popularised, and brought back to the west as neo-Vedanta, by Swami Vivekananda.

Theosophy, Anthroposophy, and the Perennial Philosophy

Another major influence on modern spirituality was the Theosophical Society, which searched for ‘secret teachings’ in Asian religions. It has been influential on modernist streams in several Asian religions, notably Neo-Vedanta, the revival of Theravada Buddhism, and Buddhist modernism, which have taken over modern western notions of personal experience and universalism and integrated them in their religious concepts. A second, related influence was Anthroposophy, whose founder, Rudolf Steiner, was particularly interested in developing a genuine Western spirituality, and in the ways that such a spirituality could transform practical institutions such as education, agriculture, and medicine.

The influence of Asian traditions on western modern spirituality was also furthered by the Perennial Philosophy, whose main proponent Aldous Huxley was deeply influenced by Vivekanda’s Neo-Vedanta and Universalism, and the spread of social welfare, education and mass travel after World War Two.

Important early 20th century western writers who studied the phenomenon of spirituality, and their works, include William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), and Rudolph Otto, especially The Idea of the Holy (1917). James’ notions of “spiritual experience” had a further influence on the modernist streams in Asian traditions, making them even further recognisable for a western audience.

“Spiritual but not religious”

After the Second World War spirituality and religion became disconnected, and spirituality became more oriented on subjective experience, instead of “attempts to place the self within a broader ontological context.” A new discourse developed, in which (humanistic) psychology, mystical and esoteric traditions and eastern religions are being blended, to reach the true self by self-disclosure, free expression and meditation.

The distinction between the spiritual and the religious became more common in the popular mind during the late 20th century with the rise of secularism and the advent of the New Age movement. Authors such as Chris Griscom and Shirley MacLaine explored it in numerous ways in their books. Paul Heelas noted the development within New Age circles of what he called “seminar spirituality”: structured offerings complementing consumer choice with spiritual options.

Among other factors, declining membership of organized religions and the growth of secularism in the western world have given rise to this broader view of spirituality. The term “spiritual” is now frequently used in contexts in which the term “religious” was formerly employed. Both theists and atheists have criticized this development.

Luc Paquin

Some people with aphasia may have trouble thinking of the word that they want to write, even though they know the meaning or message that they want to communicate. In this case, the person will not be able to write the word or say it, because they cannot think of the word itself. We have all experienced this kind of problem, often called “tip of the tongue”. You know the name of a person, place, or object, you can picture it clearly, you can describe it, but you just can’t think of the name of it. When this happens to you, you can neither say the word nor write it.

In other cases, the person with aphasia may know the word that they would like to write, and they might be able to say it, but they can’t write it. In this case, the sounds that need to be put together to say the word are accessible, but the spelling of the word is not. This may seem odd to those of us without aphasia. Our abilities to pronounce words and write them are so closely intertwined that it is hard for us to imagine being able to do one but not the other. But that is what can happen in aphasia.

Sometimes certain kinds of information about the word is available. Sometimes a related word might end up being written, for example, writing “apple” when you want to write “banana”. Other times the person with aphasia might be able to write the first letter, or draw slots for how many letters are in the word, or write the first and last letters, but make mistakes on the remaining letters. In this case, preserved information about what the written word looks like is there, but it’s not complete.

Some people with aphasia might write extra letters or words, or even write down non-words.

Finally, some people who have a nonfluent type of aphasia might be able to write some words but omit “little” words or have more trouble with verbs. They will have more trouble writing sentences.

Norma

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