Dear Je,
This is Srinivas, I attended the just concluded Level-2 Indian Philosophy camp in Vienna. Hope this letter finds you!
(Though I can comfortably read tamil, writing doesn’t come naturally as I never learnt tamil in School or college.)
After our classes, I drove towards Munich with two other friends who also attended the camp. The drive was full of literary discussions – Venmurasu, Aram and many more of your works. It was only after we parted our ways to board our individual trains, the thoughts of two day camp engulfed me, reached out for my notebook and started recollecting the points in a more structured way. An inner voice told me to write back to you on these thoughts.
The two hour refresher to cover the topics of level-1 of Indian philosophy on our day of arrival set the base for the next 2 days: intense, well-structured and deep philosophical talk, delivered in a way one can relate and follow easily. Most of us are aware of six Darshanas of Hinduism, but drawing parallels with Western philosophical terms like ontology, intuition, epistemology, logic etc gave a fresh dimension.
The first day of level-2 camp began with the journey of Human civilization; explored characteristics of work that can be termed as “Veda”, examined Vedas of various civilisations around the world and concluded with talk on Vedas and Agni around the campfire. That part of your talk where you connected the entire human cultural and thought evolution – from early stone age, later stone ages through Ice age, and provided a definition of Veda was a deeply emotional moment. The viewpoint that Vedas were an attempt by early humans to recollect their ice age memory via intuition, and the thought that we can connect to entire Human civilisation everytime we get associated with Vedic chants, moved me to tears.
Later that night, sitting around the campfire, you spoke about Vedas and how the ancient human mind viewed fire, nature and the entire cosmos, and played “Agneyam” chants on phone. That engrossing talk, dancing flames of the campfire, sounds of Angenyam echoing at night was a surreal experience. Towards the end, the skies showered light drizzle on us, mind immediately connected back to part of talk about milking of the sky god from “Book of Divine Cow”.
Day-2 of classes covered deeper aspects of Indian Vedic structure, Gods, philosophical concepts in Veda, was a wonderful academic deep dive. We covered the vedic concepts of “Prajapati”, “Purusha”, read the often intentionally misquoted “Purusha Suktam” and learnt how one should understand “Purusha suktam” correctly . The high point was once again the talk around the campfire; It started with a light hearted narration of a comedy scene, ended with “Purusha Suktam” chant, leading to your point about two biggest fears of the current generation – Death and Ego of the Self. That point about the Ego of Self struck me at the core, it has been the cause of micro depressions, worries in me for sometime now.
We ended the camp with a one and hour lecture on the concept of “Brahmam”. Although I have heard your translation of Shristi geetham many times in the “Geethai ” talk, hearing directly made a deeper impact.
The previous day we covered the topic of “Aham” and the last day we covered “Brahmam”. Few years back, I began learning Advaita, but fear grew within me after a point; maybe one day I will grow properly in my spiritual journey to realize “Aham Brahmasmi” without Fear. I want to discuss this fear at a later point – either in future discussions or classes .
Looking forward to further classes.
Regards
Srini
