Years ago in an anthropology class, the teacher told us something that went like this (paraphrase from hazy memory):

'If you arrive to make first contact with a society that has not yet dealt with strangers, the first people willing to contact you are probably not fully members of that society.

For some reason they may be marginal. They may even be considered trouble makers or have grudges or be misfits.

People like this have more to gain and less to lose by interacting with a stranger.

But because they are marginal members, the information they provide about their society may be in accurate or even biased by personal grudges.

The fully integrated members of that society will hold back and keep their distance.

'So a maverick cannot give an anthropologist information that is fully accessible to someone wholly integrated into that society.

So never be content with learning information from those persons initially willing to talk with you. That information has to taken with a grain of salt and compared with what you learn later after you have acculturated and gained access to members in full standing.'


But...the early audiences for Vivekananda (and also Maharishi) had not taken anthropology classes. They were not told that the first Indians who arrived in the West were unusual Indians, mavericks who had more to gain by leaving India and trying their fortunes among the barbarian Westerners than by staying at home and retaining their caste status.


Vivekananda is a medium through which many, many Westeners and western educated Indians have learned about Hinduism. The Blavatskian Theosophists were highly taken with Vivekananda's work, but he soon caught on that they were flaky and tactfully dissociated himself from that sector. (Agehananda Bharati)

According to Agehananda Bharati, just about every guru willing to do outreach to Westerners has utilized Vivekananda's work. For until very recently, only non Brahmin Indians with western educations were willing to claim that Westerners could become Hindus. The traditional gurus who were Brahmins and Sanskrit educated would have refused to do any outreach to Westerners. In fact, to cross the ocean was to lose caste--precluding any journey that took one from India to the West. Only families and individuals wiling to make a radical break with Indian tradition were willing to do such a thing (eg as when Gandhis family send their son to Britain to be trained as an attorney.)



V himself had a western education and he expressed his version of Hinduism and Advaita in catagories of thought comfortable and familar to those who received a Western education.

V went to America in 1893 and lectured at the World Conference of Religions in Chicago and created a sensation and in those long ago pre Internet days, thus was the first person to reach the US and represent his version of Hinduism--and could make it seem he spoke for all of Hinduis, when what he did was merely provide an idiosyncratic and ideologically biased version of it that has since become highly influential.

Vivekananda, despite his vast influence, he is not a reliable introduction to Hinduism.

He was Western educated, and had the very honorable intention of trying to assist Indians to deal with the trauma of India being overtaken by a technologically superior first world nation. He also wanted to break the power of the Sanskrit literate Brahmin elite who were at the top of the caste system.

Vivekananda came up with a variety of Hindu reform meant to break the power of the Brahmins. But he did it by fostering a very anti intellectual and misleadingly simplified form of Hinduism that concentrated on just a few texts, and that was so comfortable for Westerners and Western educated Indians that his version has now become an unexamined biased lens through which many Indians now learn about Hinduism



Quote:
Vivekananda further develops the contrast between the "Guru" and "Pundit":

You will find that not one of the great teachers of the world went into the various explanations of texts... You study all the great teachers the world has produced and you will see that no one of them goes that way.... As my Master used to say, what would you think of men who went into an orchard, and bruised themselves counting the leaves, the size of the twigs, the number of branches, and so forth, while only one of them had the sense to begin to eat the mangoes? So leave this counting of leaves and twigs, and this note taking to others.... Men never become spiritual through such work; you have never once seen a strong spiritual man among these "leaf counters." From "The Teacher of Spirituality." Selections, pp. 54-55.


In this largely rhetorical flourish, Vivekananda treats the teacher-as-realized-sage and the teacher-as-pundit as if it the two are mutually exclusive.

Of course, the claim that none of the great teachers of India was ever an exegete is mere hyperbole that flies in the face of the fact that recognized masters like Shankara and Abhinavagupta were also great commentators. It is worth noting that Vivekananda is here addressing a largely Western audience who would have been, for the most part, ignorant of Indian intellectual and religious history.

Other aspects of the Vivekananda's distinction between the "Guru" and the "Pundit" recall the discourse of Rammohan in other ways. In a manner reminiscent of Rammohan, Vivekananda relates the "book learning" of the panditas to their purported conceit and pride:


The various methods of explaining the dicta of the scriptures are only for the enjoyment of the learned. They do not attain perfection; they are simply desirous to show their learning. From "The Teacher of Spirituality." Selections, p. 54-55.

Here, Vivekananda appears to dismiss the tradition of expounding upon the purport of the Upanishads and the consideration of that purport. But it is actually only the exposition of a particular class of teachers that Vivekananda dismisses here -- that of the "Pundits."

The exposition of the "Gurus," and apparently Vivekananda's own interpretation of Vedanta, remain intact.

The contrast between the "Guru" and the "Pundit" in Vivekananda's writings is closely related to another theme, the contrast between "book learning" and "experience." This distinction sheds light on how Vivekananda understands the distinction between the "Guru" and the "Pundit." In the following passage Vivekananda combines the two dichotomies and forms a contrast between knowledge derived from books, which "serves the intellect," and esoteric initiation from the Guru, which "serves the spirit."


This quickening impulse, which comes from outside, cannot be received from books; the soul can receive impulse from another soul, and nothing else. We may study books all our lives, we may become very intellectual, but in the end we find that we have not developed at all spiritually... In studying books, we sometimes are deluded into thinking that we are being spiritually helped; but if we analyse ourselves we find that only our intellect is being helped, and not the spirit. That is why almost every one of us can speak most wonderfully on spiritual subjects, but when the time of action comes, we find ourselves so woefully deficient. It is because books cannot give the us that impulse from outside. To quicken the spirit, that impulse must come from the another soul. That soul from which this impulse comes is called the Guru, the teacher.... From "The Teacher of Spirituality." Selections, pp. 51-51.



In fairness, V wanted to create a vision of Hinduism that would support social justice and political action--Western concepts--hence his new emphasis on experience and action. But...long term V's ideology which sought to end domination by Brahmin scholars, is now creating a new system of New Age power oppression--that of Gurus whose 'experience' overrules any amount of critical thinking.

Booo.

These two essays will give an intriguing overview.

[kelamuni.blogspot.com]

[kelamuni.blogspot.com]

The emphasis on 'experience' at the expense of ignoring the cultural and scholarly background of Hinduism and of equating Hinduism with Advaita Vedanta when it includes very much more than that.

Vivekandandas lingering influence is to make it seem that intellectual acuity and background research are incompatible with spiritual attainment--a very reassuring message for persons eager to 'feel good' but who dont want to do their homework--an effort that would protect them from crooks.

And a distorted teaching that makes it seem that background reading is incompatible with holiness empowers charlatans who are ignorant and who want to steer us away from intellectual effort and research to ensure we never learn enough to identify the extent to which they are charlatans who have everything to gain by ensuring that we never value our minds enough to develop them, read enough--and identify these characters as charlatans.

Instructing people to keep dumb and stay out of the library is to my perspective, to tell people to darken their minds--which is as bad in its way as handing out street drugs and rot gut booze.