Hindu culture is not a belief system but a scientific way of optimising the life process.

Hindu culture is not a belief system but a scientific way of optimising the life process.

'Hindu' culture was developed not with “Our tradition, our beliefs, our identity, our pride” kind of baseless attitude. We are not a ‘mental’ culture. Ours is a way of life, a way to scientifically optimise the life process, not some whimsical belief system. We are not supposed to be talking “That is your tradition, this is our tradition, we will respect each other’s tradition” kind of evasive language. Such language comes only when we apologetically admit that what we are doing is whimsical without any real basis to it. With this kind of reactive attitude we will become just one more belief system, all of which we are trying to combat. What we should be talking is a responsive and affirmative language, “This is not a belief or a tradition, nor is it mere symbolism. But this is how life optimisation happens.”

But mere information dissemination is not the solution to making this happen. Just talking and talking will not help. As a society, we need to invest ourselves sufficiently in this direction to make sure that a certain portion of the population is dedicated to this, and that they have the subtler aspects of life in their direct experience. Only then the culture will be kept alive (and also, some of the baseless traditions that may have crept in can be filtered out). If there are enough people demonstrating the efficacy of the cultural practices, if sufficient objective evidence and collective trust builds around it, others will not have any problem accepting it as part of their life. Just as Asana and Pranayama was adopted, other aspects of our culture will also be adopted around the globe. After all, all humans want wellbeing for themselves and their family.

What we call as ‘Hindu’ is not merely an identity deriving its pride from the past. If we wake up to it and offer it to the world properly, it is the future.