Why did we create this site?
For almost twenty years of my adult life I worked an eight-to-seven job, with sitcoms, eating disorders, and chronic illness for company. In 2019, I almost died in a car accident. The car was totaled and I had a few cracked ribs, but I also realized I had a second chance. Months after my recovery, covid-19 hit. Since then, my journey of meditation, exploration, and learning began in earnest.
To explore profound ideas, I had to free my self from the rules of causation, whether those rules arose from the supremacy of Gods, society, or science. To find the truth, I had to free the seeker. This site is one outcome of my freedom. I am also pursuing a youtube channel, and spend the rest of my free time debating and discussing ideas with my fellow seekers on discord.
Our Team
We are a group of free-thinkers and seekers on the ancient and continuing quest for Sanatan Dharma (सनातन धर्म), the Eternal Order of Existence. Sanatan Dharma should not be equated with the current social and cultural practices of Hindus. Many have been oppressed and misled for centuries, first by the internal orthodoxies and later by a thousand years of genocides and oppression by external conquering forces that slowed down their material and spiritual evolution.
Chinmay Drishti
I have been exploring Sanatan Dharma philosophy and Theories of Existence since 2019. I am a reader and writer of Sanskrit. I want to share my ideas and learn from the community.
Ritu Jain
I came up with a concept for this website in 2021. I am surprised every day that we still don't know the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. I enjoy learning about history and spirituality.
What this site is about
What is Hinduism?
The term Hinduism is an exonym. The closest correspoding endonym is Sanatan Dharma. The term ‘Hindu’ is also an exonym, but it has no equivalent endonym. Sanatan Dharma is not restricted to a geography or religion, and the use of the term Hindu as a religious identity by those of an Abrahamic persuation simply has no basis. We therefore frame a spiritual definition of the term in the article Who is a Hindu?, and use it exclusively in the spiritual sense.
एकं सत विपरा बहुदा वदंति ।
ekaṃ sad viprā bahudhā vadanty
There is one truth, but the learned call it by many names
What is our inspiration?
The great philosophers are our inspiration – the Upanishads and their nameless authors, Ved Vyas and the Bhagavad Gita, Plato’s Phaedrus, and Schopenhauer’s The World of Will and Representation. There are many more in that list, too many to mention on a landing page. The modern-day Brahmanas (great scientists and teachers) are our inspiration, from Einstein, Bohr, Bohm, Penrose, and Tegmark. Our inspiration begins with the Upanishads, the oldest metaphysical works from pre-history, and culminates in the evolving edge of modern science. A particular belief system does not limit us.
How we define spirituality
द्वे विद्ये वेदितव्ये इति ह स्म यद् ब्रह्मविदो वदन्ति परा चैवापरा च तत्रापरा ऋग्वेदो यजुर्वेदः सामवेदोऽथर्ववेदः शिक्शा कल्पो व्याकरणं निरुक्तं छन्दो ज्योतिषमिति।
अथ परा यया तदक्षरमधिगम्यते ॥
According to those who understand Brahman (supreme consciousness), knowledge consists of higher and lower knowledge. The lower knowledge is about chanting, ritual, grammar, etymological interpretation, and astronomy. The higher knowledge is about that which does not change.
We define spirituality as the study (and experience) of metaphysics. Metaphysics, by definition, deals with the eternal, the unchanging, the uncaused, the permanent, and the platonic. Anything outside these boundaries naturally falls to physics, or in general, science. Science deals with the ontology of matter, energy, measurement, causality – things that grow and die. We consider spirituality and emperical science to be what the Mundaka Upanishad calls higher knowledge, and the applied science as lower knowledge. On TheSpiritualHindu.com, we believe that both materialism and spirituality are useful tools to discover the true nature of existence, the Sanatan Dharma.