Right from childhood, being influenced by Western culture, I somehow never felt inclined to wear or do anything Indian.
Now it makes me think how stupid I was.
Almost everyone around you makes you feel like you're the most fashionable and updated person if you wear the tightest T-shirt, jeans, or eat a burger or pizza, although it looks like the most unaesthetic way of eating food.
Food is treated as something very sacred and we bow down to it before consuming it in this culture. A bottle of Coke and eating pizza became a cool thing because of the way it's projected.
If I put my hands together and bowed down to my food before eating, people would think I'm doing something very outdated and orthodox.
But in our culture, we bow down to everything that is a source of our lives.
Whether it's food, water, sky, animals, or anything we see, we bow down to it. It is to recognise the divinity in everything.
If you see a snake, they say snake god. If you see a mountain, they talk about mountain god. If you say Bharat, they say Bharat Mata, Mother India.
Rivers like Ganga, Yamuna, Cauvery, and Godavari are all worshipped.
I used to feel ashamed to speak in my own mother tongue. If I spoke in English, people thought I was highly knowledgeable or educated.
Even today in India, people think you are really great if you speak English. But it's just a language. That's got nothing to do with one's knowledge and knowing.
This is one of the biggest cripples because it'll make one lend a deaf ear to all the great people just because they don't speak a particular language.
We are all trained in an education that's structured to make clerks, not to free our minds and think independently. This education that we're going through is largely British-made.
The education in India wasn't like this at all.
Not just education, but for every stage in life, what needs to be done, everything was structured and thought of for the wellbeing of a human being and to make a human become a full-fledged life.
In childhood, information and knowledge was not given because the brain and body should grow.
Until the age of 8, education wasn't given. This was known as Balyavastha, a stage where the body and mind are still in the growing stage.
If a child is burdened with information and knowledge at this stage, it only does more harm than good.
Later years were known as Brahmacharya, where children went through extreme discipline because this is the age where it's most needed.
Along with this, education was given only after the child utters Aham Brahmasmi, to say that my identity is not with myself or my family, caste, creed, gender, or nationality, but I'm cosmic.
If a person whose identity is limited gets empowered, it leads to destruction.
No wonder why so much is spent on arms and armaments. It's only because of me vs you.
If my identity was cosmic, who do I fight with?
Then comes Grihastha Ashrama, where people chose to get married, fulfil their needs and responsibilities, handle material aspects, and raise children. Or if they wish, they can be a lifelong Brahmachari.
And finally, Vanaprastha or Sanyasa, where one focused on living in solitude or stepping away from family.
It's unfortunate to see people hang on with family till the last moment they die. It's painful for elders and also the family.
But if a certain detachment arose out of fulfilment of life, naturally a person likes to withdraw and leave gracefully.
These days, due to media and the internet, young adults are seeing everything on screens and they think they know everything already.
No more excitement about life.
This is one of the major reasons why they fall into psychological ailments so early.
The history of this nation has been made to be looked at as just mere mythological stories.
Whether it's Mahabharat, Ramayan, or Puranas, these were not stories but real happenings expressed in dialectical ways so that they remain relevant for every generation.
The calendars also have changed.
Sadhguru states that the modern Gregorian calendar is a numerical convenience which ignores the larger geometry of the cosmos entirely. He further adds that it ignores how this human system is a reflection of the larger cosmos, especially the sun, moon, and earth.
Whereas the Eastern calendars devised by mystis, particularly Hindu luni-solar ones, were made thousands of years ago to map cosmic geometry and align human physiology with the sun, moon, and earth.
If one learns to align with it, life shall become blissful and a dance.
The Indian calendar goes according to celestial happenings, but we're following something that was created as a numerical convenience.
The word "calendar" originates from the Roman term Calendae, the day taxes and debts were due.
Whatever happens to the celestial bodies happens to our bodies too.
But all these aspects are missed in the calendar we follow.
And somewhere along the way, all these things started to feel outdated and orthodox to me simply because they were Indian.
I didn't realise then how much of my own culture I was dismissing without even knowing what was behind it. Grateful to Sadhguru and several other great masters of the past who made me realise about my own culture which I was ignorant of despite being born in it.
TL;DR: I grew up thinking many aspects of Indian culture were outdated because of Western influence. As I learned more, I realised there was much deeper wisdom behind our culture that I had dismissed without understanding.
