38 INDIAN PHILOSOPHY
It is regrettable to see how many people believe that the answers to all questions are in India. This is because they have the romantic idea that everything can be found by traveling the world. But in my opinion, the Indian religion is neither better nor worse than those present in other countries. How can a religion that worships rats or executes widows be considered superior? I say this because of the existence there of a cult that adores these animals or the savage custom that has also occurred of forcing widows to die cremated with their dead husbands. However, it must also be recognized that in India a great development was achieved in the metaphysical understanding of the universe, as for example with regard to the reincarnation of the spirit in a new body, unlike the Egyptians who, because they did not understand This they persisted in embalming the dead, a custom that the Christian world continued with the conservation of corpses in pantheons and organizing cemeteries as if they were cities due to the absurd belief in the resurrection of the dead on the day of the final judgment, it is necessary to understand the apocalypse in a symbolic and not literal way as it is done in this case. In this sense, Indian philosophy is much more logical, because it admits that the body and the spirit do not have to be united indefinitely and consequently accepts that the spirit can evolve after death towards a new reincarnation, which would be the true form. of resurrection. Our body is made of earth and that is why it must return to earth without pantheons or lapads and let the spirit be free and continue on its way.
But it must be borne in mind that even though the great spiritual development of this philosophy is true, it must also be recognized that it was not the first in the world to study metaphysics in depth, as it was actually inspired by the previously existing Mesopotamian culture to them represented first by Enoch and Zoroaster and later by Christianity. Because actually Zoroastrianism started 2.000 years a. C and represented the culmination of social and philosophical progress since the origin of civilization in Sumeria. Later the migrations of the Aryan tribes towards India gave rise to the Buddhist religion fifteen hundred years later. Therefore, it is unfortunate that today there are so many scammers who rely on the supposed antiquity of Indian philosophy to offer false miracle remedies to all ills, because in most cases it is nothing more than a way to obtain money with tricks.
There are also those who claim that Christianity was a religious derivative of the Krishna cult that emerged in the 3rd century BC in India. It is true that between these two religions there are some similarities that suggest that some influence could have been produced, but we must not forget that even if this were true, it would in any case be a back and forth influence, because first there would have been the influence of Zoroastrianism in the development of the Indian religion which would have returned as Indian influence on Christianity. Due to poor knowledge of the life of Jesus, the founders of Catholicism could have copied some aspects of Indian philosophy regarding the life of Krishna to give Jesus a more deified aspect. It is possible that Krishna was an ancient king of India who was later attributed divine properties in local mythology. In the past it was common for kings to proclaim themselves divine beings in order to monopolize religious and civil power at the same time and thus increase their power, this is how the legend of Krishna would arise. On the other hand, at the origin of Christianity, Zoroastrianism and the books that later formed the Bible would surely have had more importance, although it could also have received some influence from Indian traditions.
This also happened with the date of the birth of Jesus, since the feast of the winter solstice that already existed was taken as the supposed date of his birth to turn it into a Christian holiday, giving rise to Christmas. The truth is that nobody knows the real date of Jesus' birth, but the church plagiarized the solstice feast in order to appropriate it and make people believe that he was always Christian. We must not forget that Christianity did not become an important religion until several centuries after the death of Jesus, long after that festival began to be celebrated. In places like Stonehenge, high stones were erected to be able to calculate the shortest or longest day of the year by the sun's shadow, and a party was held to celebrate that the sun would no longer descend and from that day on it would rise again bringing light again and life with spring. Therefore, December 21 was used to set the beginning of the year. These stones also served to know exactly the months of the year and to organize the time of sowing and harvesting. In ancient Rome these festivals were called Saturnalia.
Another example of how the organs of power sometimes use religion to perpetuate themselves is that of the lamas of Tibet, because when they claim that their religious leaders can be reincarnated in the children of their choice, what they really do is choose a position of power in an undemocratic way, and they also use that argument to manipulate and condition the future behavior of that leader from childhood. An example of this is what happened with the child Osel Hita, this child born in Spain was designated by the monks of Tibet as the reincarnation of the Lama Thubten Yeshe, but in my opinion, what really happened was that they used the of course birth of a lama in the West as a tactic to involve Western countries in attempts to separate Tibet from C h ina as this could give them a lot of publicity. Using a child and indoctrinating him from childhood to serve his political interests under the presumption of being the reincarnation of a religious leader is undoubtedly a clearly undemocratic act, because by doing so they deny others the right to aspire to office that they offered him, but also, it is a contempt for the right that every child should have to an education in freedom. Because, even if it were true that a person could choose the body in which to reincarnate, that, in no case has to prevent access to that position to the rest of the people according to their merits, nor is it a reason to manipulate a child from his childhood.
In the West, there are many who try to show Indian philosophy as the panacea to all the ills or lamas of Tibet as an example of wisdom, but, the effort they have to put dogma before progress as the Catholic Church does shows that they lack the will to seek the truth. A proof of this is their medieval customs such as wearing simple tunics or wearing a shaved head, if we take into account the intense cold that it does in those regions it is evident that these customs are not very practical and even supposing that they use heating it is evident that the word progress is not one of his favorites.
They say they want to be simple, but simplicity does not have to be in contradiction with progress and when a religious organization refuses to progress it is because it is dominated by dogma. This shows that beings endowed with great intellect such as Buddha or Jesus can arise on all continents, but that does not mean that those who say they follow them have it.
Even though the aforementioned facts are true, it cannot be denied that a high degree in the development of philosophy was also reached in India, because throughout history there were many prophets or inspired people who have existed, but unfortunately their Message has almost always fallen on deaf ears when the social mass that receives it lacks the same inspiration. For this reason, the brilliant ideas of these prophets used to be mixed with the most absurd superstitions causing that in the end they had little benefit for humanity.