The path of passionate devotion to a god (bhakti) is the most popular way to achieve moksha. The divine power within us is the Atman and we connect with the Supreme Universal Divinity which is the mysterious Brahman. Most popular is the god Vishnu, who has many names and has appeared as avatars (saviors‑the incarnation of deity) in the form of a giant turtle, as Gautama Buddha (see chapter 7) and as Rama and Krishna, the two important heroes of Ramayana and Mahabbarata. It tells their story of creation. In fact, one can be a good Hindu and believe in one god, many gods or no god at all! Our most recent ancestors are the primates. They ascended to the sun, but the sun was not fitted for their abode. Together they created beings. I created from the different parts of my body innumerable sons. From what archaeologists have been able to discover, the Dravidians had a polytheistic fertility religion that centered upon worship of the forces of nature and use of rituals, merging human sexuality with the hope for abundant crops. When I came into being in this land, Shu and Tefnut jubilated in the Watery Abyss in which they were. Man has evolved by natural selection from earlier species. The Bible teaches that each person is created by God, will die once and then be resurrected once at the judgment (see John 5:17‑30; 1 Cor. Karma is a concept of Hinduism which explains through a system where beneficial effects are derived from past beneficial actions and harmful effects from past harmful actions, creating a system of actions and reactions throughout a soul's (Atman's) reincarnated lives forming a cycle of rebirth. While the earliest Vedas were blatantly polytheistic and devoted to rituals and sacrifice, the later Vedas showed a movement toward pantheism (from the word "pan," meaning "everything," and "theos," meaning "God"). For the Hindu, each person is "god" (or at least part of "god"). … His followers say that he practiced all the spiritual disciplines of Hinduism, Christianity and Islam and that he attained a vision of God in each one. In a concept also found among many other peoples, the parts of this first being became the various living creatures, including man. Still, the social reality in many Indian villages is that change comes slowly and grudgingly. Man. A Brahma marriage is where a boy is able to get married once he has completed his student hood, or Brahmacharya. Atman is a spark of the Divine, it is a ray of the all-bright Sun; it is a drop from the celestial ocean. The Bible teaches that God became incarnate only once in human history (see John 1: 14). Even lower on the social totem pole were the Untouchables who, until the twentieth century, were considered so low they were outside the caste system and, most of the time, were treated as subhuman. At the beginning all things were in the mind of Wakonda. The path of knowledge most often includes the practice of yoga (yoking, or union). This is because, for Hindus, contradictory ideas are not a problem. Lo, the first word and the first discourse. They were denied property, education and dignity. According to the way of bhakti, a devotee may choose any of the 330 million gods, goddesses or demigods in the Hindu pantheon and passionately worship that particular god. At Hindu weddings, the bride and bridegroom represent the god and the goddess, although there is a parallel tradition that sees the groom as a prince coming to wed his princess. Man is invested with a soul, called the Atman in Sanskrit. For the Hindu, karma means merit or demerit, which attaches to one's atman (soul) according to how one lives one's life. Although the earlier Hindu scriptures had mentioned many gods, the highest goal, according to the later Vedic literature, was union with Brahma, the impersonal absolute. Gandhi also said that he could not believe there was any "mysterious or miraculous virtue" in Christ's death on the cross. With him the Gods performed the sacrifice, as did also the heavenly beings and seers. This very aesthetic path is open to men only in the highest castes, and it is described in the Upanishads, a series of philosophical treatises composed beginning around 600 B.C. Then I planned in my own heart, and many forms of beings came into being as forms of children, as forms of their children. In some forms of Hinduism, souls may be reincarnated as animals, plants or even inanimate objects. Brahmins grew more and more powerful until they became the highest social class. Karma ("action") has to do with the law of cause and effect. The Puranas speak of Manu, progenitor of our race. One hymn tells how four castes of people came from the head, arms, thighs and feet of the creator god, Brahma. “Atma, the impersonal divine principle or the immortal element in Man, undistinguished from the Universal Spirit.” “In hours of Samadhi , the higher spiritual consciousness of the Initiate is entirely absorbed in the ONE essence, which is Atman, and therefore, being one with the whole, there can be nothing objective for it. Man is to become divine by realising the divine. ", Gandhi, like other Hindus, could not accept the Christian answer to the problem of sin, yet he felt a deep hunger for real salvation from sin. Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World and one of Vedanta's ardent followers, said, "It is perfectly possible for people to remain good Christians, Hindus, Buddhists or Muslims and yet to be united in full agreement on the basic doctrines of the Perennial Philosophy.". The four castes were the Brahmins (priests); the Kshatriyas (warriors and nobles); Vaisyas (merchants and artisans); and Shudras (slaves). Typically, Eastern religions emphasize that everything in the world is temporary, changing, ephemeral and unreal and that our perceptions of the world are most often misleading and illusory. The Brahmins also maintained a monopoly on the higher truths of pantheistic Brahmanism. Hinduism teaches that the atman is perfect, free and unlimited, and no matter how many lives it takes, eventually each and every atman will realize its divine nature. All creatures, including man, were spirits. Their stories emphasize the oneness of man and nature. They believe that Jesus is not God but just one of many incarnations, or avatars, of V'shnu. According to Hinduism, three Gods rule the world. The people say that the fleas in his hair became human beings. A more difficult way to achieve moksha is the path of knowledge (inana), which includes self‑renunciation and meditation on the supreme pantheistic reality of Hinduism. It also refutes the Hindu teaching of continuous reincarnation and their belief that Christ is just another teacher ‑ avatar (super‑savior). For Hindus, the great spiritual challenge is that the soul, or atman, is separated from Brahma (Ultimate Reality) and trapped in samsara, the seemingly endless process of being reincarnated over and over. An understanding of the Hindu beliefs about God is important even if we don’t know any Hindus or people from India because we are all in contact with the New Age movement, and it draws its ideas about God from Hinduism.