Influenced by Hinduism/Sanatan Dharm

Influenced by Hinduism/Sanatan Dharm

Edger Mitchell

The spacecraft was oriented perpendicular to the plane that contains the Earth, the Moon and the Sun. Not flying perpendicular to that plane – but moving through it back to Earth. The spacecraft was rotating to maintain the thermal balance of the Sun. What that caused to happen was that every two minutes, with every rotation, we saw the Earth, the Moon and the Sun as they passed by the window. The 360-degree panorama of the heavens was awesome and the stars are ten times as bright and, therefore, ten times as numerous than you could ever see on a high mountaintop on a clear night. It was overwhelmingly magnificent. I realized that the molecules of my body and the molecules of the spacecraft had been manufactured in an ancient generation of stars. It wasn’t just intellectual knowledge – it was a subjective visceral experience accompanied by ecstasy – a transformational experience.The experience in space was so powerful that when I got back to Earth I started digging into various literatures to try to understand what had happened. I found nothing in science literature but eventually discovered it in the Sanskrit of ancient India. The descriptions of samadhi, Savikalpa samadhi, were exactly what I felt: it is described as seeing things in their separateness, but experiencing them viscerally as a unity, as oneness, accompanied by ecstasy.

Carl Gustav Jung, German psychiatrist and psychoanalyst.

Steve Jobs
Albert Einsteen- We owe a lot to Indians who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.
Erwin Schrödinger an Australian Physicist-- The Bhagavad Gita is the most beautiful philosophical song existing in any known tongue.
Werner Heisenberg, a German Physicist--Quantum theory will not look ridiculous to people who have read Vedanta
Julius Robert Oppenheimer- Invention of atomic bomb.Access to the Vedas is the greatest privilege this century may claim over all previous centuries.Hinduism is the only religion in which the time scales correspond, to those of modern scientific cosmology. Access to the Vedas is the greatest privilege this century may claim over all previous centuries.
Niels Henrik David Bohr, a Danish Physicist-- I go into the Upanishads to ask questions.
Carl Sagan, an American Cosmologist--

The Hindu religion is the only one of the world’s great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an innate, number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond, to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long. Longer than the age of the Earth or the Sun and about half the time since the Big Bang. And there are much longer time scales still.” [Carl Sagan, Cosmos]

“The most elegant and sublime of these is a representation of the creation of the universe at the beginning of each cosmic cycle, a motif known as the cosmic dance of Lord Shiva. The god called in this manifestation Nataraja, the Dance King. In the upper right hand is a drum whose sound is the sound of creation. In the upper left hand is a tongue of flame, a reminder that the universe, now newly created, with billions of years from now will be utterly destroyed.” [Carl Sagan, Cosmos, pg 213-214]

A millennium before Europeans were willing to divest themselves of the Biblical idea that the world was a few thousand years old, the Mayans were thinking of millions and the Hindus billions.” [Carl Sagan, Cosmos, pg 213-214]

Nikola Tesla--All perceptible matter comes from a primary substance, or tenuity beyond conception, filling all space, the Akasha or aluminiferous ether, which is acted upon by the life-giving Prana or creative force, calling into existence, in neverending cycles, all things and phenomena.
Aldous Huxley,, an English writer. Wrote a book called "The perennial Philosophy".
Alfred North Whitehead, a mathematician and philosopher.
Arnold J Toynbee, a British history philosopher
Arthur Schopenhauer, a German Philosopher -Upnishads are the production of the highest human wisdom.
Francois Voltaire, a French philosopher and writer--The Veda was the most precious gift for which the West had ever been indebted to the East.
Rudolf Steiner, an Australian philosopher-- The epic poem of Bhagwat Gita represents the "Fully ripened fruit" of Hinduism. In order to approach a creation as sublime as the Bhagavad-Gita with full understanding it is necessary to attune our soul to it.
Wilhelm von Humboldt, Perssian philosopher-- this episode of the Mahabharata was: "The most beautiful, perhaps the only true philosophical song existing in any known tongue ….perhaps the deepest and loftiest thing the world has to show. I read the Indian poem for the first time when I was in my country estate in Silesia and, while doing so, I felt a sense of overwhelming gratitude to God for having let me live to be acquainted with this work. It must be the most profound and sublime thing to be found in the world.
Albert Schweitzer, Theologian,philosopher--The Bhagavad-Gita has a profound influence on the spirit of mankind by its devotion to God which is manifested by actions
Annie Besant,Theosophist---India is the mother of religion. In her are combined science and religion in perfect harmony, and that is the Hindu religion, and it is India that shall be again the spiritual mother of the world.
Arthur Holmes, a British geologist--Long before it became a scientific aspiration to estimate the age of the earth, many elaborate systems of the world chronology had been devised by the sages of antiquity. The most remarkable of these occult time-scales is that of the ancient Hindus, whose astonishing concept of the Earth's duration has been traced back to Manusmriti, a sacred book.
Bulent Ecevit, Ex Prime Minister of Turkey, writer, poet--I was fortified by the Bhagavad Gita which taught that if one were morally right, one need not hesitate to fight injustice
Charles Eliot--The Hindu has an extraordinary power of combining dogma and free thought, uniformity, and variety. Utmost latitude of interpretation is allowed. In all ages Hindus have been passionately devoted to speculation. It is also to point out that from the Upanishads down to the writings of Tagore in the present day literature from time to time enunciates the idea that the whole universe is the manifestation of some exuberant force giving expression to itself in joyous movement.
Christopher W. B. Isherwood, American writer and translator--I believe the Gita to be one of the major religious documents of the world. If its teachings did not seem to me to agree with those of the other gospels and scriptures, then my own system of values would be thrown into confusion, and I should feel completely bewildered. The Gita is not simply a sermon, but a philosophical treatise.
Erwin Schrödinger, an Austrian physicist,-- Most of my ideas & theories are heavily influenced by Vedanta.
Frederica of Hanover, Queen consort of Greece -- It was my advanced research in physics that had started me on a spiritual quest. It culminated in me accepting the non-dualism or absolute monism of Shankara as my philosophy of life and science. You are fortunate to inherit such knowledge. I envy you. While Greece is the country of my birth, India is the country of my soul.
Fritjof Capra, an American physicist-- Modern physics has thus revealed that every subatomic particle not only performs an energy dance, but also is an energy dance; a pulsating process of creation and destruction. The dance of Shiva is the dancing universe, the ceaseless flow of energy going through an infinite variety of patterns that melt into one another’’.For the modern physicists, then Shiva’s dance is the dance of subatomic matter. As in Hindu mythology, it is a continual dance of creation and destruction involving the whole cosmos; the basis of all existence and of all natural phenomenon. Hundreds of years ago, Indian artists created visual images of dancing Shivas in a beautiful series of bronzes. In our times, physicists have used the most advanced technology to portray the patterns of the cosmic dance.
George Bernard Shaw, Nobel Prize winner-- The apparent multiplication of gods is bewildering at the first glance, but you soon discover that they are the same GOD. There is always one uttermost God who defies personification. This makes Hinduism the most tolerant religion in the world, because its one transcendent God includes all possible gods. In fact Hinduism is so elastic and so subtle that the most profound Methodist, and crudest idolater, are equally at home with it.
Lord Warren Hastings, the first governor general of British India--I hesitate not to pronounce the Gita a performance of great originality, of sublimity of conception, reasoning and diction almost unequalled; and a single exception, amongst all the known religions of mankind. The writers of the Indian philosophies will survive, when the British dominion in India shall long have ceased to exist, and when the sources which it yielded of wealth and power are lost to remembrances.
Thomas Stearns Eliot, a poet and editor. "The Waste Land" a long poem by T. S. Eliot ends with the last line "Shantih shantih shantih"
Sunita Williams, an astrouaut carried Ganesh murty and Bhagwad Gita with her, in space.
Jeffery Armstrong
John Woodroffe---Ages before Lamarck and Darwin it was held in India that man has passed through 84 lakhs (8,400,000) of birth as plants, animals, as an "inferior species of man" and then as the ancestor of the developed type existing to-day. The theory was not, like modern doctrine of evolution, based wholly on observation and a scientific enquiry into fact but was a rather (as some other matters) an act of brilliant intuition in which observation may also have had some part. To the philosophers of India, however, Relativity is no new discovery, just as the concept of light years is no matter for astonishment to people used to thinking of time in millions of kalpas, (A kalpa is about 4,320,000 years). The fact that the wise men of India have not been concerned with technological applications of this knowledge arises from the circumstance that technology is but one of innumerable ways of applying it.
Romain Rolland---French novelist--If there is one place on the face of the earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India....For more than 30 centuries, the tree of vision, with all its thousand branches and their millions of twigs, has sprung from this torrid land, the burning womb of the Gods. It renews itself tirelessly showing no signs of decay.The true Vedantic spirit does not start out with a system of preconceived ideas. It possesses absolute liberty and unrivalled courage among religions with regard to the facts to be observed and the diverse hypotheses it has laid down for their coordination. Never having been hampered by a priestly order, each man has been entirely free to search wherever he pleased for the spiritual explanation of the spectacle of the universe.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, an American writer--The Bhagavad-Gita is an empire of thought and in its philosophical teachings Krishna has all the attributes of the full-fledged montheistic deity and at the same time the attributes of the Upanisadic absolute.
Max Muller, Indologist--Whatever may be the date of the Vedic hymns, whether 1500 B.C.E. or 15,000 B.C.E., they have their own unique place and stand by themselves in the literature of the world. They tell us something of the early growth of the human mind of which we find no trace anywhere else. In the Rig-Veda we shall have before us more real antiquity than in all the inscriptions of Egypt or Ninevah....the Veda is the oldest book in existence.
Jean-Sylvain Baily, French astronomer--The movement of stars which was calculated by Hindus 4,500 years ago, does not differ even by a minute from the tables which we are using today. The Hindu systems of astronomy are much more ancient than those of the Egyptians - even the Jews derived from the Hindus their knowledge.
Hermann Hesse, a poet--The marvel of the Bhagavad-Gita is its truly beautiful revelation of life's wisdom which enables philosophy to blossom into religion.
Hermann Graf Keyserling, a German philosophe-- Hinduism at its best has spoken the only relevant truth about the way to self-realization in the full sense of the word. induism has produced the profoundest metaphysics that we know of.. The absolute superiority of India over the West in philosophy; poetry from the Mahabharata, containing the Bhagavad-Gita, “perhaps the most beautiful work of the literature of the world".
Henry David Thoreau, an American author and philosopher--Whenever I have read any part of the Vedas, I have felt that some unearthly and unknown light illuminated me. In the great teaching of the Vedas, there is no touch of the sectarianism. It is of ages, climes, and nationalities and is the royal road for the attainment of the Great Knowledge. When I am at it, I feel that I am under the spangled heavens of a summer night
Ramanujan ( Mathematician) said that he never studied math as such. All formulas came to his mind, his tongue recited, and he wrote those down. It is similar to Shrutis written by ancient Rishis.
"The Matrix" movies ( The matrix, the matrix reloaded, and The matrix revolutions) shows some of the basic principles or philosophy of Sanatan Dharm. It shows that prakriti is an illusion, mind is maya at play. We have to calm down the mind to know the truth and go to that place where there is eternal happiness and no boundaries. Material world is a trap which prevents us from getting enlightened. We need to choose to do the right thing.

42.Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher.

George Harrison, Musician, American. "My sweet Lord" and "Hare Krishna Mantra" song.
Jahnavi HArrison, Musician, Sings Krishna Bhajans.
Jan Frederik Staal, born in Amsterdam, professor at the University of California, Berkeley. In Rules without Meaning Staal controversially suggested that mantras "predate language in the development of man in a chronological sense". He pointed out that there is evidence that ritual existed before language, and argued that syntax was influenced by ritual. Staal argued that the ancient Indian grammarians, especially Pāṇini, had completely mastered methods of linguistic theory not rediscovered again until the 1950s. In 1975, a consortium of scholars, led by Staal, documented the twelve-day performance, in Panjal village, Kerala, of the Vedic Agnicayana ritual. It is available as a documentary titled Altar of Fire. He drew a parallel between geometry and linguistics, writing that, "Panini is the Indian Euclid. He said that Ancient India recognized infinity whereas other civilizations had frowned upon it.
Avram Noam Chomsky,an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian,social critic, and political activist-- the first generative grammar in the modern sense was Panini's grammar. .Knowing more about Panini and his disciples brought one ultimately to understand the epistemology behind transformational grammars and to realize that the conflict with Traditional Grammar is more than a formal or functional one but rooted deeper in a difference of monotheistic Judeo-Christian epistemology, on the one side, with deistic philosophies or pantheistic Hindu epistemology on the other. In the review of the literature on the subject a very good start is to read articles published by the Sanskrit scholar F. Staal on the role of Sanskrit in modern sciences, linguistics, and especially uplifting Chomsky as a discoverer of the ancient work of the Hindu grammarian Panini. Staal compared Hindu ritual concepts with the concepts of Chomsky on language. Staal’s review of Chomsky as the revival of Panini is interesting: Thanks to ‘the grammar of Panini’, ‘no other language, to this day, has been so perfectly described’ as ‘Sanskrit’ . Perhaps to accentuate his turn against school grammar, Bloomfield expropriates from the terminology of ‘the ancient Hindu grammarians’: ‘sandhi’, ‘samprasarana’, ‘karmadharaya’, ‘davanda’, ‘tatpurshana’, ‘amredita’, ‘bahuvrihi’, ‘dvigu’, and ‘avyayibhava’, accrediting them as ‘technical terms of linguistics’. He also commends ‘the Hindus’ for ‘the apparently artificial but eminently serviceable device’ of the ‘zero element’, which he equates with ‘nothing at all’ ; but surely the difference between zero and nothing is precisely the point -- that we can ‘view’ ‘absence as a positive characteristic’

47.AL BAsham wrote a book titled 'The wonder that was India'. He said--The debt of western world to India in the field of Mathematics can not be overestimated. Most of the great discoveries and inventions of which Europe is so proud of, would have been impossible if Europe had been sackled by unwidely system of Roman Numerals.

48.Spanish Monk Vigila from Kingdom of Navarre said- It should be noted that Indians have an extremely subtle intelligence and when it comes to airthmatic, geometry and such other advanced disciplines, other ideas must make way for theirs. The best proof for this is the 9 figures with which they represent each number no matter how high.

Donald A Mackenzie-- What is generally called the 'Dawn of History' is really the beginning of a later age of progress. It is necessary to account for the degree of civilization attained much before this dawn for a much larger duration.
J Miller-- India was perhaps the first land, in this particular cycle of history, where that glory was expressed in verbal imaginary that man could understand.
Arthur Meier Schlesinger Jr., an American historian-- Taste of India provides us a sense of identity so vital in today's world.
Friedrich Max Müller-- “If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered over the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions of some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant, I should point to India. And if I were to ask myself from what literature we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of the Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw the corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human a life... again I should point to India.”

“If I were to look over the whole world to find out the country most richly endowed with all the wealth, power, and beauty that nature can bestow—in some parts a very paradise on earth—I should point to India. If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most full developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions of some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant—I should point to India. And if I were to ask myself from what literature we, here in Europe, we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of one Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw that corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human, a life, not for this life only, but a transfigured and eternal life—again I should point to India.”

“The true history of the world must always be the history of the few; and as we measure the Himalaya by the height of Mount Everest, we must take the true measure of India from the poets of the Veda, the sages of the Upanishads, the founders of the Vedanta and Sankhya philosophies, and the authors of the oldest law-books, and not from the millions who are born and die in their villages, and who have never for one moment been roused out of their drowsy dream of life.”

“Whatever sphere of the human mind you may select for your special study, whether it be language, or religion, or mythology, or philosophy, whether it be laws or customs, primitive art or primitive science, everywhere, you have to go to India, whether you like it or not, because some of the most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India, and in India only.”

“Now let us look to the ancient inhabitants of India. With them, first of all, religion was not only one interest by the side of many. It was the all-absorbing interest; it embraced not only worship and prayer, but what we call philosophy, morality, law, and government, —all was pervaded by religion. Their whole life was to them a religion—everything else was, as it were, a mere concession made to the ephemeral requirements of this life.” “the true conquerors often those whom the world calls the vanquished.”“how small a strip has as yet been explored of the vast continent of Sanskrit literature, and how much still remains terra incognita.”
1. Abu Rayhan al-Biruni, an Iranian scholar. He travelled to the Indian subcontinent and authored a study of Indian culture Tārīkh al-Hind (History of India) after exploring the Hindu faith practiced in India.
Henry David Thoreau:

"In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavat Geeta, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. I lay down the book and go to my well for water, and lo! there I meet the servant of the Brahmin, priest of Brahma, and Vishnu and Indra, who still sits in his temple on the River Ganga reading the Vedas, or dwells at the root of a tree with his crust and water---jug. I meet his servant come to draw water for his master, and our buckets as it were grate together in the same well. The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganga (Ganges)."

"Whenever I have read any part of the Vedas, I have felt that some unearthly and unknown light illuminated me. In the great teaching of the Vedas, there is no touch of sectarianism. It is of all ages, climes and nationalities and is the royal road for the attainment of the Great Knowledge. When I am at it, I feel that I am under the spangled heavens of a summer night."

Julia Roberts: I practice. I practice a lot of things. Hinduism is somethin that I'm very intrigued by and very interested in. I have become a practicing Hindu. We go to temple, chant, pray, and celebrate.
Will Smith: "Travelling to India and experiencing the colours, people and natural beauty has awakened a new understanding of myself, my art and the truths of the world," Smith captioned the series of photographs and a video, including that of the Ganga aarti.
Tony Nader: Lebanese Neuroscientist. Relates Ramayan to endocrine system.
John Samuel Hagelin is the leader of the Transcendental Meditation movement in the United States.
Dr Jose Luis Alvarez Roset, Raja of Latin America for the Global Country of World Peace, reported inspiring progress in implementing Consciousness-Based Education in Peru and Colombia, along with news of two more universities implementing Maharishi's educational programmes in Venezuela.
Jonas Masetti--Deciple of Swami Dayanand Saraswati and a teacher of vedanta. Presides over Viswa Vidya Institute. Petropolis, Rio de Janeiro.
Brian Rudd-- Up until his death Brian Rudd — a homeless man in Sydney — lived a destitute life. The 58-year-old shoe-shiner, better known as Shoeshine Brian, would ply his trade at his regular pitches at the city’s Central Station, Martin Place and on the Pitt Street Mall. There was, however, one life-long wish; to visit India. When that began to look increasingly improbable, Brian instead asked for his ashes to be scattered in the Ganges in Varanasi, adhering to the Hindu belief that the ritual frees one from the cycle of life and death.Former Australian cricketer Steve Waugh visited Varanasi to perform the last rites for Brian Rudd, a popular, homeless shoe-shiner in Sydney at the Dashashwamedh Ghat in Varanasi.
Celebrated American basketball player Dwight Howard has found "peace" after a visit to Varanasi, the spiritual capital of India. The 36-year-old shared snippets of his journey to the holy city.“At peace with myself and the world after a visit to Varanasi. A spiritual journey that has rejuvenated the soul," the 36-year-old wrote in an Instagram post.(April 2022).
"At peace with myself and the world after a visit to Varanasi. A spiritual journey that has rejuvenated the soul. Congratulations @narendramodi for magical reformation of the holy city. Varanasi has inspired so many legends, I am humbled. I am sure the reincarnation of this sacred city will inspire many more," Howard captioned the post.

Following is from wikipedia:
This is a list of converts to Hinduism from Christianity.
Name-- Nationality-- Notes
Alfred Ford (Ambarish Das) American heir to the Ford family fortune
Alice Coltrane (Turiyasangitananda Swamini) American raised Baptist but became a follower of Satya Sai Baba; jazz pianist, organist, harpist and composer
Annie (Chitra Shaji Kailas) Indian Malayalam actress
Alain Daniélou (Shiva Sharan) French French historian, intellectual, musicologist and Indologist.
Christopher Isherwood British novelist, playwright, screenwriter and autobiographer
Claudia Ciesla German model and actress. She is vegetarian. Recently moved to Mumbai and acted on Indian movies.
David Frawley American professor and scholar on Sanatana Dharma/Hinduism,author of more than 30 books on Yoga and Hinduism, winner of Padma Bhushan and many more awards
E. C. George Sudarshan Indian physicist, professor and winner of Dirac Prize and Padma Bhusan
François Gautier French political writer and journalist
George Harrison British musician, member of The Beatles
Job Charnock British trade agent who has been controversially described as the founder of Calcutta
John Coltrane American jazz saxophonist and composer. He converted to Hinduism along with his second wife Alice Coltrane.
John Levy British philosopher and translator of books on Advaita Vedanta
Jomol Indian actress
Joseph Ritson British antiquarian and traveller
Julia Roberts American Famous Hollywood actress and winner of three Golden Globe Awards
Krishna Das American singer
Leelawathy Ramanathan Australian writer and Hindu activist who converted upon marrying Ponnambalam Ramanathan
Lissy Indian actress
Nayanthara Indian actress and model
Russell Brand British comedian to Hare Krishna
Romapada Swami American Vaishnavia sannyasi and initiating guru
Satsvarupa dasa Goswami American senior disciple of A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
Satyananda Stokes American (and later British Indian) farmer
Ieva Zasimauskaitė Lithuanian singer, Eurovision contestant
Hollywood superstar Sylvester Stallone performed Hindu ritual, Shraad, for his dead son.
South Africa's cricket icon Jonty Rhodes performed puja for his daughter India in Mumbai

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एक विदेशी महिला की गौसेवक बनने की कहानी।
18 साल की उम्र में वह आई थी भारत, पिता थे जर्मनी के राजदूत।
यहां घायल गोवंश को देखा तो सहलाने लगी, किया इलाज। जीव जंतुओं के प्रति अतिशय लगाव था।
भगवान श्री कृष्ण की नगरी रास आ गई और यही शुरू कर दिया घायल गोवंश एवं जीव जंतुओं की सेवा व इलाज। पूरी जवानी भारत में रहकर जीव जंतुओं के इलाज एवं सेवा में कुर्बान कर दिया।
वर्तमान में उम्र हो गई है 62 साल ।
पुराना नाम फ्रीडेरीके इरीना ब्रूनीग वर्तमान का नाम सु- देवी दासी है। गोवर्धन के पास राधा सुरभि गोशाला स्थापित कर अपने आप को संपूर्ण रूप से समर्पित कर दिया है बुंदेली मां ने।
2019 में पदम श्री पुरस्कार से सुदेवी जी को नवाजा गया ।