Does Hindu Godhead have a dark side?

Discussion in 'Religion Archives' started by Woody, Mar 2, 2005.

  1. Woody Musical Creationist Registered Senior Member

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    I have been posting a chart on world religions, and have received a lot of responses. Thanks to everyone.

    I was advised that Hinduism actually worships only one God with millions ofaspects. After some research on the subject I discovered that "Cali" is a part of the Hindu godhead, and she likes humans to be killed. This appears to be a pretty nasty manifestation that requires human sacrifices in order to be appeased.

    Is Cali a separate carnation or is Cali part of the Godhead?
     
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  3. everneo Re-searcher Registered Senior Member

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    'Cali' wants humans, especially evangelist christians, to be sacrificed.

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    She does not have so much power to cause flood and brimstone/fire on massive scales though.
     
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  5. Woody Musical Creationist Registered Senior Member

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    everneo,

    Why the preference for christian sacrifices? Are you just kidding? Surely you are kidding? Are you?
     
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  7. everneo Re-searcher Registered Senior Member

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    Hmmm.. because ev.christians are the only followers of true God, right?
    I heard from some baptists that 'Cali' is the grandmother of Satan.

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  8. Woody Musical Creationist Registered Senior Member

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    No,

    They are prime cuts for the altar, so I hear. Other meat will do as well.
     
  9. Yorda Registered Senior Member

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    The hindu trinity is of Brahma, the creator, Vishnu, the preserver, and Shiva, the destroyer. Like in the Christian trinity, these God's are one and the same. Brahma is not Brahman, the absolute, the one and only God, which can't be described in words. The gods in the hindu trinity all have partners, Kali is the wife of Shiva.

    Kali ("the black one") is the Hindu mother goddess, symbol of dissolution and destruction. She destroys ignorance, maintains the world order, and blesses and frees those who strive for the knowledge of God.

    Kali is one of the most misunderstood forms of God (there are over 30 forms of Kali) The ordinary Western mind perceives Kali as hideous and absurd, forgetting that some of the symbols of Western faiths have the same effect on the Hindu. While Christians believe in a God that is all good and a devil that is all bad, Hindus believe in only one Universal Power which is beyond good and bad.

    Kali creates and nourishes and she kills and destroys. By Her magic we see good and bad, but in reality there is neither. The whole world and all we see is the play of Maya, the veiling power of the Divine Mother. God is neither good nor bad, nor both. God is beyond the pair of opposites which constitute this relative existence.

    Why would anyone want to worship the terrible Mother of the cremation ground? According to Tantrics, one's spiritual disciplines practiced in a cremation ground bring success quickly. Sitting next to corpses and other images of death, one is able to transcend the "pair of opposites" (good-bad, love-hate, etc) much faster than another person who blocks out the unpleasant aspects of life.

    People in the East don't think that all other religions are wrong, they respect them, they believe that all religions are a way to one God. They believe that it is the same God in all religions, disguised in different forms and names. When westerns would hear the the name Ptah (God), they would think: 'Ah, it's the Egyptian God...' but people of the East would recognize this God and realize that it's "the absolute".

    The gods in Hinduism has genders, but of course this is just "symbolical". Genders are only images, ways, to describe the different forms of God. The difference in male and female is that male is hard and female is soft.

    There is no light without darkness. There is no good without bad. The good and bad is a result of the human mind. When a man breaks his leg, he might hate God for doing such a thing to him... But the bad things are not really bad, they are what we think of them. Bad things can make us stronger if we accept them, understand their meaning and go through them.

    When you achieve happiness, you will achieve sorrow, and when you achieve sorrow, you will achieve happiness. It's an endless circle. If you accept the good and bad and learn by them, you'll soon be neither happy or sad, you will just "be".

    etcetcetc

    ... Hinduism is a very complicated religion.
     
  10. Woody Musical Creationist Registered Senior Member

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    Yorda,

    Do some Hindus still practice human sacrifice?
     
  11. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Wow, Yorda, that was an amazingly lucid description. Some Hindus do require a woman to die when her husband dies, but I feel this is a perversion of the concept of Kali. People will die anyway, death makes room for life, they are inseparable. You wouldn't survive very long if you only ate and never excreted. The ecosystem is the same way.
     
  12. duendy Registered Senior Member

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    goddess Kali is commensurate with the very anceint idea of the Crone aspect of the Goddess, the Dark Moon
    ...what the patriarchs did was to separate out the 'dark Goddess' from the whole meaning of Goddess.......as they separated the wild aspect from the passive, keeping the latter in its 'acceptable' goddess images of 'Eve' and the 'Virgin Mary'

    This is why Indian culture is based on patriarchal hierarchical structure with its caste system. for like pther patriarchies it has dis-membered the Goddess
     
  13. Rick Valued Senior Member

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    Hi Woody,

    i wish to answer your question. Its Kali and cali, and she kills Demons and Humans.(In a nut shell)

    Thank you.
     
  14. Yorda Registered Senior Member

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    I don't know since I don't know much about Hinduism. I've never heard that they sacrificed humans. Human sacrifice is a very STUPID thing to do. But, let's say that some "hindus" really practice human sacrifice... Well, then they are not "Hindus" anymore. Instead, they are "stupid".

    A Christian means one who follows Christ... Now, there are many people who say that "christians" are evil, they kill people in the name of God... or whatever... Then it's obvious that they are not followers of Christ, even though they would say: "I am a Christian". Only God knows what we really are. Bush calls himself Christian for example, but only because he CALLS himself Christian doesn't mean that he IS.
     
  15. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Basically, God and Satan aren't separate, and one will never "win" over the other.
     
  16. beyondtimeandspace Everlasting Student Registered Senior Member

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    God and Satan are not polar opposites, as many people often believe. Nor are they one, spidergoat. Satan in simply a creation, a creature, created by God, and therefore cannot be all-evil. Furthermore, if one understands what the terms good and evil mean (as I believe Medicine Woman does), to be fully and completely, 100% evil is to be non-existent. That's because what you're talking about then really is a complete lack, total nothingness. Satan is something, and will always be in some way good. It is simply that all his choices are evil in purpose and intent. God, on the other hand, is said to be all-good. That is, God is all, infinite, and in another sense, beyond the effects of good and evil, much like the Hindu God who is beyond all good and evil.

    EDIT: Also, God and Satan are not at war. Rather, Satan is fighting God. God does not fight Satan. In fact, God still loves Satan. It is the servants of God who battle with Satan. Angels protect us against him, and we fight against his temptations.
     
  17. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    I was just using a Christian metaphor to explain an aspect of Hinduism. Christians, like Woody, if I may presume to say, see God as the good force and Satan as the evil force in the universe, doing battle by proxy on Earth, which, of course, God will win in the end. I think the Hindu view is very different, with the creative and destructive forces seen as aspects of the same thing, a true polarity. Being opposite, and being polar, are not quite the same thing. An opposing army can prevail, while two things that are polar need each other to exist, like the positive and negative poles of a magnet.

    Personally, I think good and evil are not absolute forces, but are the result of human interpretation of what's good for society. Murder may be seen as evil, but it's not evil when a predator kills it's prey, and the absolute action is in both cases the same, the killing of one creature by another. Destruction, however, can be seen as a universal thing, a manifestation of the idea that no condition is permanent. To be against any form of destruction is to be antagonistic to the way of nature, which in Hinduism, is the way of God.

    But, it is important to say, in Hinduism, the Godhead is not separate from the world of people and events, it is everything. You and I are God, like the cow in the street, and the typhoon that wipes out your village.

    When Hindus worship Kali, I think they are acknowledging an aspect of their own nature and that of the world around them. In Christianity, the idea of creation and goodness as eternally in conflict with destruction and evil has pathological consequences. It gives Christians the arrogance to dominate nature, ignore the ecological balance, and persue whatever is good for humans, because we seen as the most important creation- to the detriment of everything else.
     
  18. beyondtimeandspace Everlasting Student Registered Senior Member

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    While it may be the case that many Christians see things as you describe, that isn't really what Christianity teaches. I am Christian and I would not say that God is the good force of the universe and Satan is the evil force in the universe doing battly by proxy on earth. Not at all. Neither would my teachers, who happened to be priests. Furthermore, Christians do recognize destruction as part of the natural order of things. At least, on the physical level. All things made of matter change, and destruction is a nessecary part of that change, since as soon as a thing changes, what it was before is no longer, and something new is in its place. There is a certain seed (akin to the pinecone, but I'm not sure of the name of the tree), which only opens under the heat of fire. The only way for this tree to spread its seed is out of the flames of a forest fire. Destruction brings about creation. This is how it is in the physical world. But it is not thus in the spiritual.

    I think this is where a lot of the confusion comes in. Good and evil are seen as positives and negatives. By this, I do not mean to draw parallel to a magnet, but I mean that one posits (adds, grows... or simply is, ect..) and one negates (removes from, destroys.... or lacks, etc..). But from what? Nature. A thing is only said to be evil if it negates or destroys the nature of a thing. There is definitely destruction within the natural world, but it is when the nature of the natural is distorted or destroyed that we call it evil. I don't doubt that if someone saw a cat walking down the street with one leg missing its ears all torn up that person would not be saddened or consider it a wrong. The cat will die eventually, yes, that is part of its nature. However, it is not natural for a cat to have only three legs and missing part of its ears. Isn't it also true that factory farms are a terrible wrong, and people are outraged by them? Hundreds of animals stuffed into small cages for most of their lives, until they're grown enough and fat enough to make a good meal? Is this natural? No, it's disgusting and wrong. Is it wrong just because people are doing it? No, it's wrong because it's a distortion, a perversion of what those animals are and what they are alive for.

    Likewise, when speaking of spiritual entities, angels or demons, we can speak in terms of good and evil. Not that demons and angels are evil and good, per se, but rather that their actions are either evil or good. Demons do not act within the design or structure of their nature, what they are and why they are. Whereas, angels on the other hand do.

    As well, when speaking concerning humans, which are a union of the physical and spiritual, we may also speak in terms of good and evil. It is not unknown that the physical laws and spiritual laws or not identical. A spirit is an unextended, indestructible entity, whereas a body is an extended, destructable entity. Hence, the human nature is a complex one, and the line between good and evil is not always clear. That is, the line between acting, or being according to what you are, who you are, and why you are is not always easy to discern. However, rest assured, there is a nature that can be distorted or perverted, and hence we can act in evil ways. That is to say, we can act contrary to our nature, in ways that are destructive to our nature.

    Often Christians are accused of making nature seem evil, or calling that which is natural evil. This comes out of a misunderstanding. Because there are both spiritual laws and physical laws encompassed within the human being, there are also aspects of both the physical nature and the spiritual nature encompassed within the human being. For example, human nature encompasses such needs or desires as to feed, or to reproduce, or to survive, or even to change. Human nature also encompasses such needs or desires as to celebrate, or to grieve, or to practice self-discipline, or to liberate, or practice freedom, or even to simply remain unchanged. Since the nature of human beings is not perfect (due to sin, which, being an action that negates, or removes from, or destroys nature, altered it, made it less than it was) humans do not have perfect self-control (as they would if their natures were perfect). This is a significant issue, since to be human is to bear the image and likeness of God, which entails free will and intellect. Since we no longer have perfect self-control, we no longer have perfect free will. It is in denying, or mastering the physical or ourselves that we enhance, or practice and strengthen our self-control, or self-mastery. This doesn't mean that the natural is evil. And yet, because of the teachings or practices that we employ, the misunderstanding comes about that we believe the natural to be evil. That simply is not the case. The natural is good, it is that which destroys the natural that is evil.
     
  19. Medicine*Woman Jesus: Mythstory--Not History! Valued Senior Member

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    beyondtimeandspace: "Furthermore, if one understands what the terms good and evil mean (as I believe Medicine Woman does), to be fully and completely, 100% evil is to be non-existent."
    *************
    M*W: Thank you, BT&S! I appreciate the fact that you read my posts.
     
  20. beyondtimeandspace Everlasting Student Registered Senior Member

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    You're welcome, M*W, the sentiment is mutual.
     
  21. ghost7584 Registered Senior Member

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    Jesus said this to the pharisees:
    John 8:44 Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.

    If there is no truth in him, wouldn't you consider Satan 100% evil?
     
  22. beyondtimeandspace Everlasting Student Registered Senior Member

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    No. What is meant by, "there is no truth in him" is that whenever he speaks, he speaks a lie. This, however, does not make him fully evil. That one can even speak of the devil as an existing entity who can lie is enough to say that he isn't 100% evil.
     
  23. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Satan is an angel, the most highly regarded one in heaven by God, at one point. God's right hand man. Wasn't he created by God? I can't imagine that such a perfect being would have the characteristics attributed to him by Christians. Either God deliberately created him that way, or God made a mistake. I think Satan is only evil towards humans, who he dislikes, because they are less perfect than he, yet God likes them better. So, he isn't 100% evil, just evil towards humans. It is obvious that he plays a vital role in Christian cosmology. If there were no Satan, who would torture bad souls? God? There's something really fishy about this story, it just doesn't make sense. I think Satan was on to something, he was a rebel, so he could evolve, he could question God, and this particular angel was the best of the best, there is no way he would react like a spoiled child deprived of his father's attention.
     

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