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In this book, we analyze the psycho-social consequences faced by Indian American children after exposure to the school textbook discourse on Hinduism and ancient India. We demonstrate that there is an intimate connection—an almost exact correspondence—between James Mill’s colonial-racist discourse (Mill was the head of the British East India Company) and the current school textbook discourse. This racist discourse, camouflaged under the cover of political correctness, produces the same psychological impacts on Indian American children that racism typically causes: shame, inferiority, embarrassment, identity confusion, assimilation, and a phenomenon akin to racelessness, where children dissociate from the traditions and culture of their ancestors.


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Prakṛtilaya

From Hindupedia, the Hindu Encyclopedia

By Swami Harshananda

Prakṛtilaya literally means ‘dissolution into the prakṛti’.

In the Śāṅkhya and the yoga systems, out of the several attainments predicated for the sādhakas,[1] the state of prakṛtilaya is also the one. Some practitioners of yoga, who have developed intense vairāgya or detachment towards the world and its pleasures but who have not acquired the right type of viveka or discriminatory knowledge, meditate on the prakṛti or pradhāna, the fundamental matrix of the material universe.

By samādhi on it, they are able to merge themselves in it after death. This state called as ‘prakṛtilaya,’ though free from sorrow, is devoid of any consciousness or bliss. After being in this condition for a very long time, they return to sansāra or transmigratory existence, the cycle of births and deaths. The Sāñkhyasutras[2] of īśvara-kṛṣṇa[3] and the Yogasutras[4] of Patañjali[5] refer to this state.


References[edit]

  1. ↑ Sādhakas are the aspirants of yoga.
  2. ↑ Sāñkhyasutras 45
  3. ↑ He lived in 4th cent. A. D.
  4. ↑ Yogasutras 1.19
  5. ↑ He lived in 200 B. C.
  • The Concise Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Swami Harshananda, Ram Krishna Math, Bangalore

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