History of Materialism in India

Th. Stcherbatsky Amidst the diverse philosophical systems which we find in India, ancient as well as modern, it is quite natural that there must have been some materialistic system too. Their main approach lies in reducing all the psychic processses to physical ones, negating the independent existence of soul, and affirming that the so-called soul is simply one of the properties of organized matter. This is philosophical materialism. Th. Stcherbatsky Another approach that we find in India...

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Science versus Miracles: Reading a message in a sealed cover

B Premanand Experiment: 133 Effect: Telling the number a person thinks. The tantrik asks a person to tell a number. When ash is rubbed on the surface of a blank card the number appears. Props: Soap, ash, blank card. Method: Write the numbers 1 to 9 on the board with soap. Ask a person to tell a number from 1 to 9 and rub ash on the part that number is written. Experiment: 134 Effect: Reading a message in a sealed cover. The psychic gives a card to his client, asks him to write his problem clearly, put it in an envelope...

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The Belief in Rebirth and the Gospel of Gautama Buddha

Normal 0 T.A.P Aryaratne When we speak of Buddhism we mean the doctrine set forth in a certain collec­tion of compositions, chiefly discourses, orally transmitted over a period of some five centuries before the Christian era began, and committed to writing towards the close of that period. From this fact we cannot justly conclude that these documents are totally unreliable as a guide to the teaching of the Buddha; but to assume the opposite, namely that they constitute a completely...

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Science versus Miracles: Tantriks and their Tricks

B. Premanand When the tantrik spits on sawdust, it bursts into flame. Experiment: 131 Effect: When the tantrik spits on sawdust, it bursts into flame. Props: A metal-bowl, well dried sawdust, sodium peroxide (powdered), water. Method: Keep in metal bowl dry sawdust mixed with equal parts of powdered sodium peroxide. Ask some one to bring a glass of water, drink some water and spit a small quantity over the sawdust. It will burst into flame. Experiment: 132 Effect: The oracle gets possessed...

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Hegel, Heine, Marx: Hanuman and Sabala

Ramkrishna Bhattacharya    In ‘The British Rule in India,’ one of his contributions to the New-York Daily Tribune, 25 June 1853, Marx waxed both passionate and indignant:   ‘We must not forget that these little [village] communities [in Hindostan] were contaminated by distinctions of caste and by slavery, that they subjugated man to external circumstances instead of elevating man to be the sovereign of circumstances,… exhibiting its degradation in the fact that man, the...

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