--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj <vajradh...@...> wrote:
>
> On Oct 1, 2009, at 4:01 AM, Premanand wrote:
>
> > As the phrase appears in the context of Maharishi's
> > organisations, and since "GYaanam" roughly means
> > 'knowlege', "chetanaayam" can mean 'consciousness'
> > and "nihitaam" translates as 'placed', there is good
> > reason to suppose this is the source Sanskrit. Perhaps
> > it is not actually a Scriptural quotation, but if it
> > is it would be nice to find it.
>
> It's probably a post hoc adaptation. It sounds as if
> later pundits found the original source untenable, so
> they simply translated the English into Sanskrit. As
> you can see from the file I uploaded to the "Vedic
> Science" folder in the files section, the MIU catalog
> gives the words of the verse I had previously quoted
> as the source for the phrase "Knowledge is structured
> in consciousness", the motto of MIU. Since this verse
> is really about the "highest heaven" and "gods" and
> these ideas were later interpreted as the Unified Field
> of all the Laws of nature ("highest heaven") and the
> impulses of creative intelligence (the gods), it is
> also a key verse for the fabrication of the TM mythos
> that had many of us believing at one time that when
> we were "transcending" we were uniting with the Unified
> Field of physics!
Vaj continues his misrepresentation of this issue.
Again, here's the translation that appears currently
on the MUM Web site:
"The verses of the Veda exist in the collapse of fullness
(the kshara of 'A') in the transcendental field in which
reside all the Devas, the impulses of Creative Intelligence,
the laws of nature responsible for the whole manifest
universe."
Note that "Knowledge is structured in consciousness"
does not appear.
Also note that the Devas ("gods") are explicitly said
to reside in the "transcendental field."
"He whose awareness is not open to this field, what can
the verses accomplish for him? Those who know this level
of reality are established in eveness, wholeness of life."
As I noted earlier, Vaj insists on interpreting these
verses as fundamentalist Christians interpret the
creation story in Genesis on the basis of an English
translation of an ancient language, taking the English
translation literally rather than understanding, as
most religious scholars do, that the original was
highly metaphorical and the translation necessarily
poetic.
Maharishi's interpretation of these verses, as set
forth in the translation above, is hardly unique to him,
nor is the idea of "Knowledge is structured in
consciousness" unique to him.
If you Google this--
+"knowledge is structured in consciousness" -maharishi
-"transcendental meditation"
--in other words, filtering from the search any references
to Maharishi or Transcendental Meditation, you get 10,400
hits, including in both spiritual and secular contexts. Many
of the spiritual contexts are Hindu or Vedic; most of the
spiritual contexts, including the non-Hindu/non-Vedic ones,
reference the Rig Veda as the source of the idea.
There's a secondary school in India, with no connection
to TM, whose motto is "Knowledge is structured in
consciousness":
http://cbhsskadayam.com/index.html
Bottom line: MMY did not invent the idea that knowledge
is structured in consciousness; nor is he alone in
attributing the idea to the Richo Akshare verse of the
Rig Veda.
Whether a specific Sanskrit phrase that can be translated
"knowledge is structured in consciousness" is found in
the scriptures or not is irrelevant.
In the translation in Vaj's file--
"Richa is situated in Akshara: knowledge is structured
in consciousness, the nonchanging transcendental basis
of all relative existence, in which reside the impulses
of creative intelligence responsible for the whole
manifest universe."
--it's clear that "knowledge is structured in
consciousness" is not meant as a literal translation
of the Sanskrit but is rather an explanation of what
"Richo akshare" means.
