'Non-Religious'; the fast-growing preference.

More than one billion people around the world define themselves as agnostic, atheist or nonreligious. What's more striking: “nonreligious” is not only the fastest growing religious preference in the U.S., but also the only one to increase its percentage in every state in the past generation.

In February, 1968, the Beatles came to India for an extended stay with their new guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. It may have been the most momentous spiritual retreat since Jesus Christ's spending those 40 days in the wilderness. From Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman, succeeding generations absorbed India’s 'science of consciousness', and millions have come to accept and live by the central teaching of the vedic wisdom: “Truth is One, the wise call it by many names.”

Recent bestsellers from Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris stress the irrationality of belief and what’s wrong with religion, while offering a few positive alternatives. In Good without God, Epstein explains how humanists strive to live well, build community, uphold ethical values, and lift the human spirit…all without god. “It’s not enough to just ‘discover’ the meaning of life. Humanism is concerned with one of the most important ethical questions—what we do once we’ve found purpose in life.”
In the 1960s, almost all progressives thought what Marxism said was right: religion was the opium of the people. But that did not provide answers to bigger questions or a means to get one's life together. That led to the spread of Eastern Philosophy, Mysticism, Yoga, Hinduism and Buddhism. There was something in the zeitgeist that brought the East to the forefront. It was Ravi Shankar’s music, it was the Beatles, it was drugs... and the passion to get answers.

I read Bagavad Gita and a few other books by western interpreters -- Alan Watts, Aldous Huxley, and Houston Smith – who presented ancient teachings in a very rational and sensible way that made sense or rather talked to me. I remember saying to myself, “Why do they call this mysticism? There’s nothing mysterious about it.” It makes sense and offers an empirical approach to human development and attempts to define our place in the cosmos. That got me hooked, and I wanted more and more. And now I want to start meditative practices which have the power to transform life for the better. The Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson, to me, is the very western perspective on meditation…

Thank you and enjoy the rest of your week,

love,

prof. dr. alex abraham odikandathil