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In this book, we analyze the psycho-social consequences faced by Indian American children after exposure to the school textbook discourse on Hinduism and ancient India. We demonstrate that there is an intimate connection—an almost exact correspondence—between James Mill’s colonial-racist discourse (Mill was the head of the British East India Company) and the current school textbook discourse. This racist discourse, camouflaged under the cover of political correctness, produces the same psychological impacts on Indian American children that racism typically causes: shame, inferiority, embarrassment, identity confusion, assimilation, and a phenomenon akin to racelessness, where children dissociate from the traditions and culture of their ancestors.


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Aṣtasīddhis

From Hindupedia, the Hindu Encyclopedia

By Swami Harshananda

Aṣtasīddhis literally means ‘eight supernatural powers’.

Works on Yoga describe various ‘siddhis’ or supernatural powers. Patañjali in his well-known Yogasutras has devoted the whole third chapter to describe such sīddhis, apart from parts of the second and fourth chapters also.

Of the several such powers described, a group of eight, has been specially designated as ‘aṣṭasiddhis’ or eight supernatural powers in Yogasutras of Patañjali.[1] They generally go together. Patañjali himself administers a warning that these powers are incidental in spiritual life and will prove to be formidable obstacles to self-realization.[2] They are :

  1. Aṇimā - Power to assume minute forms
  2. Mahimā - Power to expand to huge proportions
  3. Garimā - Power to grow heavy or big
  4. Laghimā - Power to become light or weightless
  5. Prāpti - Capacity to obtain even the most difficult things
  6. Prākāmya - Having irresistible will
  7. Īśitṛitva - Perfect mastery over the body, senses and, capacity to create or destroy outside objects
  8. Vaśitva - Full control over the movement of physical objects

The list varies from work to work. The other powers that are sometimes included (the total of course, being always eight) are :

  1. Kāmāvasāyitva - Power of immediate fulfillment of desires
  2. Prakāma- vṛiṣṭi - Power to bring rain at will
  3. Akṛṣṭa- pacya - Power to get crops without cultivation
  4. Uhā - Capacity to acquire knowledge without a teacher


References[edit]

  1. ↑ Yogasutras 3.45
  2. ↑ Yogasutras 3.37
  • The Concise Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Swami Harshananda, Ram Krishna Math, Bangalore

Contributors to this article

Krishna Maheshwari, Deval Sancheti

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