Sinners and Saints, Spiritual Meditations, NewAgeIslam.com

Spiritual Meditations

Sinners and Saints

By Jug Suraiya

The 'scandal' of Nithyananda is of course not a scandal at all. A needless brouhaha has been created about self-styled 'godmen' who turn out to be satyrs in holy garb, sinners disguised as saints. Such distinctions would be meaningless both for the hedonist as well as the spiritualist. In Tantricism, for instance, to name just one spiritual discipline, sex is only a means to attain a higher level of consciousness, as are alcohol and narcotics, both of which are commonly viewed as vices.

However, the Catholic church's cover-up of alleged paedophilia and the 'sex guru' episode might revive that old chestnut: the nature of 'good' and 'evil', the difference between saints and sinners, angels and demons. Are good and evil polar opposites, implacable adversaries, like matter and anti-matter, absolute in themselves? That was the heretical Manichean worldview. This presented the problem of two absolutes, good and evil, or two infinities, which is a logical impossibility. In orthodox Christian theology, evil is not absolute in itself; it is an absence, a retraction of the good, the way a shadow is the lack of light. But this means that absolute good, or infinity, can be restricted, which again is logically impossible.

In the Indic perspective, good and evil aren't two sides of the same coin; they are the same side of the same coin. Or, to use the analogy of light, good and evil represent the two ends of the same spectrum, which ranges from infrared to ultraviolet. Seen in this light - both literally and metaphorically - good and evil are part of the same continuum, but at different margins of the same scale.

http://newageislam.com/sinners-and-saints/spiritual-meditations/d/2746

Kashmir: Some Indian intellectuals’ dangerous disenchantment India minus K-word, Current affairs, NewAgeIslam.com

Current affairs

Kashmir: Some Indian intellectuals’ dangerous disenchantment

India minus K-word

Jug Suraiya

20 Aug 2008,

Syed Ali Shah Geelani, self-proclaimed leader of the separatist movement, is no M K Gandhi. But what if he and his followers were to adopt the strategies of non-cooperation and satyagraha which were used to gain independence, and were the prenatal influences which shaped the idea of India? Could the Indian state use physical force against such a peaceful mass movement — if in fact it did arise, as some say it now has — and still retain its moral idea of itself?

It could — and inevitably will — be argued that drawing a parallel between Gandhi's 'Quit India' movement and contemporary Kashmir's 'Quit, India' upsurge is untenable and unconscionable: the British were an alien occupying force; Kashmir is an integral, constitutionally legitimised part of India. But after more than 60 years of concerted

effort — military deployment, repeated elections, the giving of subsidies — India has been unable effectively to counter the demand for azadi.

http://newageislam.com/kashmir--some-indian-intellectuals%E2%80%99-dangerous-disenchantment/current-affairs/d/605