David Frawley Quotes (1950-)

“Mantras can work to hold and sustain our prana. Prana, [we could say], is the spirit of mantra. Mantra in turn is the expression of prana.”

“It is not necessary to live in India to be a Hindu. In fact one must live in harmony with the land where one is located to be a true Hindu.”

“The idea of the ‘Hindu right’ is largely a ploy to discredit the Hindu movement as backward and prevent people from really examining it.”

“Sita, Rama and Lakshmana met the venerable ancient seer Agastya in their travels to the south. The company of the wise brings joy: seeing the three holy wanderers the yearnings of the heart are naturally fulfilled.”

“Voice of India through Ram Swarup, Sita Ram Goel and Koenraad Elst provided the main intellectual defense of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement starting thirty years ago. Their contributions were very important in sustaining it.”

“I first noted the name Vamadeva while studying the Upanishads. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad quotes Rishi Vamadeva for the great saying (mahavakya) Aham Brahmasmi (I am Brahman or I am God). This it relates to Vamadeva’s saying in the Rig Veda, "I was Manu and I became the Sun (IV.26.1). The Aitareya Upanishad mentions Vamadeva, who was said to have learned the Vedas while still within his mother’s womb. It quotes another statement of Vamadeva from the Rig Veda (IV.27.1), "When I was in my mother’s womb I learned the birth of all the Gods." Among the first hymns of the Rig Veda whose inner meaning became clear to me were those of Brihadukta, the son of Vamadeva (RV X. 54 – 56). Others were hymns of Vamadeva himself, which comprise most of the fourth book of the Rig Veda, particularly his hymns to Agni and Indra, such as Sri Aurobindo also specially admired.”

“Old India had a high rate of literacy, particularly because of its educational system, its Sanskrit and its gurukulams.”

“Old India had a high rate of literacy, particularly because of its educational system, its Sanskrit and its gurukulams.”

“No ancient story, not even Homer's Iliad or Odyssey, has remained as popular through the course of time. The story of Rama appears as old as civilization and has a fresh appeal for every generation.”

“Hinduism is a religion of the Earth. It honors the Earth as the Divine Mother and encourages us to honor her and help her develop her creative potentials. The deities of Hinduism permeate the world of nature.”

“There is nothing anti-Muslim about CAA but it is anti-Hindu not to recognize the suffering and oppression Hindus in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh have had to endure, as well as the other religious minorities in these Islamic states.”

“About this time I also received a copy of the Yajur Veda from India, which I found, to my surprise since even Aurobindo hadn’t talked of it, to be as inspiring as the Rig Veda. The power of the mantras continued to unfold and new Vedic vistas arose.”

“Ram Swarup is probably the most important and cogent writer on Hinduism in the last half of the twentieth century.”

“I can think of no other modern writer who better epitomizes this role of an intellectual kshatriya than Sitaram Goel.”

“Ganapati was a Vedic scholar, a Tantric yogi, an Ayurvedic doctor and a Vedic astrologer, as well as an active social thinker and reformer – covering the same basic range of fields that I had and at a much deeper level. He even researched the history of the Vedas and the Mahabharata. He was probably the greatest Sanskrit poet and writer of this century. His greatest work, Uma Sahasram, has a thousand verses and forty chapters each down flawlessly in a different Sanskrit meter. I recognized him as a model for what I was attempting in all aspects of my work. He also presented an approach that balanced my connection with both Aurobindo and Ramana. Through Ganapati I was able to bridge the gap between the two. No doubt a secret affinity with him was behind the position that I had taken.”

“Swami Rama was another major guide and teacher in my life. Most importantly he connected me with the world of nature through his towering Himalayan spirit and his indomitable will.”

“About the same time I discovered the teachings of Swami Rama Tirtha, who lived at the turn of the century and was another great Vedantin. I felt a special inner kinship to Swami Rama, who was a poetic, inspirational and independent figure.”

“The recent Coimbatore bombing that killed a number of BJP workers was likened in the New York Times to the Reichstag fire which Hitler staged to gain power. The implication was that the BJP planned the bombing as an election ploy, even sacrificing its own members, and that they are as ruthless as Hitler. That Islamic terrorist groups were linked, was ignored.”

“Along his journey Rama freed Ahalya from her curse. The grace of God is so strong it can free us from the most difficult situations. Through it our inner wisdom, symbolized by the sage's wife, can be released from the stone of ignorance and materialism in which it is trapped. But for this to occur, we must open ourselves to the Divine Will. Otherwise obstacles will arise that we cannot possibly overcome by our power.”

“Krishnamurti was, on one hand, a typically self-alienated Indian intellectual criticizing his own culture. But, on the other hand, he possessed a genuine meditative mind in harmony with the same tradition, a strange contradiction but one that was appealing to people who could not relate to traditions. He had important teachings on perception and on the workings of the mind and emotions that added much depth to my meditation.”

“Veer Savarkar was another Indian leader senior to Gandhi who was a firebrand revolutionary like those of Europe with whom he associated. He had a strong vision of Indian nationalism and was also not adverse tot using force to remove the British. He was a deep thinker and a yogi in his later years. Unfortunately his work was denigrated and distorted by leftist opponents. There was a concerted effort to malign him a Nazi because of his anti-leftist views, even though he was an opponent of Hitler and wanted India to join the war on the British side! Through Savarkar I gained a different idea of India's independence movement, which clearly was much more than the Gandhian images which is all that people in the West really know.”

“I studied the works of Kapali Shastri, the guru of M.P. Pandit, who wrote extensively on the Vedas from Sri Aurobindo’s point of view. Many of my comments on the Upanishads that I had written were echoed in Kapali’s work. I eventually discovered that Kapali, prior to connecting with Aurobindo had been a disciple of Ramana Maharshi. He was responsible for many of the Sanskrit works on Ramana under the pseudonym K. Kapali was the chief disciple of Ganapati Muni, who was perhaps the chief disciple of Ramana. Ganapati had first discovered Ramana as a young boy then called Brahma Swami, because he was a Brahmin boy. He renamed him Ramana and Bhagavan. Ganapati wrote several important Sanskrit works on the Maharshi and also put Ramana’s teachings into Sanskrit, which Kapali as his disciple commented on.”

“Guruji Golwalkar was the second head of the RSS after Hedgewar, who founded the organization in 1925. He was a mild mannered schoolteacher with a philosophical bent of mind. His main work is a Bunch of Thoughts, which is a collection put together from his many talks and articles. In it I found a clear analysis of the social problems of Hinduism and of modern India with both practical and spiritual solutions to the problems. Golwalkar gave a clear critique of culture showing the dangers of materialism, communism and missionary religions and suggested a dharmic alternative based upon Hindu and yogic teachings. The book was like an application of the thought of Vivekananda and Aurobindo to the social sphere. I was also surprised to know that such a deep and flexible approach was branded as fundamentalist by leftists in India.”

“From 1976 through 1980 I corresponded with the great woman saint of India, Sri Anandamayi Ma. I had decided to write her as a friend of mine had recently done so and received a reply. To my surprise a letter came back from her within a few months. Swamis Atmananda and Nirvananda helped with my communications. I planned to visit Ma in India but somehow could not get the resources together to bring it about. I also wrote a few articles for their magazine Ananda Varta. Contact with Ma inspired me more into a Vedantic and Hindu mold. Her energy would come in waves, almost like an electrical force, encouraging me to deeper practices. Ma’s energy opened up devotional potentials for me, not merely for the Goddess but also for Shiva and Rama. I began to look into Bhakti Yoga, chanting and devotional meditation. Images of Hindu deities appeared in mymind.”

““Witzel quotes favourably a statement at the beginning of this rather long article about India's role as "the cultural diffusion cul -de-sac of Asia" (p.1), an idea that has "kept me occupied on and off over the past few years." This sums up Witzel's view of Indian civilisation — it is the cultural backwater and dead end of Asia, where wandering nomads can go no further, with no real civilisation of its own. Not surprisingly Witzel has little appreciation for the Vedas, Vedanta, Yoga, Buddhism or anything else India has produced. His extensive bibliographies on ancient India seldom refer to any Indian scholars, and certainly avoid mentioning any yogis like Aurobindo who have different views. You would never find Witzel chanting Om, practicing Yoga or in any other way honouring the great traditions of the region. His anti-India views reflect those of the colonial era which he is continuing. For this reason Witzel is mainly honoured by Marxists in India whose political agenda favours rejecting anything great not only in the Vedas but in Indian civilisation as a whole, which many Marxists following Marx himself see as an invention of the British. However, no one who really studies and loves the Vedas will be fooled by such theatrics. There is much more to the Vedas than Witzel's philology.”

“After finishing this Vedic study I had no idea what to do with it. Fortunately, through a personal friend I came into contact with M.P. Pandit, the secretary of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. I had long admired Pandit’s many books on the Vedas, Tantra, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Pandit was perhaps the foremost scholar of Indian spirituality, not from an academic view but from a real understanding and inner experience that spanned the entire tradition. If anyone could appreciate what I was doing, it was he. I first visited Pandit in San Francisco in the summer of 1979. I brought my writings on the Vedas and Upanishads and explained my approach to him. What I received from him in return went far beyond my expectations. Pandit was a calm and concentrated person, with a penetrating vision. He listened carefully before making any comments. Instead of trying to influence me he was quite receptive and open to what I was attempting. I told him that I was not an academic but doing the work from an inner motivation and an intuitive view. He said that it was better that I was not an academic because I would not repeat their same old mistakes and could gain a fresh view of the subject. Pandit strongly encouraged me to continue my work, offering his full support. He called my Vedic work my "Divine mission," that I should follow out. He said both to my surprise and my honor that he would get my writings published in India.”

“One occasion where I saw US-based Indian Marxists in action was at the 1996 Annual South Asia Conference in Madison, Wisconsin... I knew that excellent and innovative papers by N.S. Rajaram and Shrikant Talageri had been rejected by the organizers, so I felt entitled to expect presentations of top-notch scholarship dwarfing even that of Rajaram and Talageri. Instead, what the audience got, was a canvassing session for the “Forum of Indian Leftists” without any scholarly papers. The speakers disdained to even mention any of the argumentative contents of the AIT debate, except “David Frawley’s paradox” (the AIT’s puzzling implication pointed out by Frawley, viz. that the Harappan civilization had numerous cities but no literature, while Vedic civilization had a vast literature but no cities), which they simply laughed off without discussion ad rem. ... But Frawley’s paradox is entirely pertinent: what are the chances that a literate culture leaves the biggest conglomerate of archaeological sites behind, but only a handful of short inscriptions as the complete corpus of its literature; while the illiterate conquerors produce a vast and sophisticated literature within a few centuries, but leave no sizable architecture behind? What are the chances that the largest civilization of the world loses its language to a conquering band of nomadic tribesmen? The AIT has the weight of probability against it.”

“One final reason for being confident is that because of the work of Ram Swarup, Sita Ram Goel, Koenraad Elst, David Frawley, and Rajiv Malhotra the corpus is now reaching a critical mass. So, that we can think that within few years we will have a library for India and a library of India.”

“Here [Witzel] throws a bombshell: “Kazanas is heavily influenced here by Frawley’s most amazing paradox”. (Elsewhere I borrow from Kak or some other “fundamentalist-colleague”.) I was not heavily influenced by Frawley’s paradox. I simply acknowledged (after some research) that Frawley had “first noted” this paradox, namely that the literate Harappans left no literature while the non-literate, archaeologically unattested Aryans left their voluminous productions. With this I suppose [Witzel] tries to draw attention away from the fact that he has no explanation for the Aryanisation of North India. In [Witzel]’s mind Frawley is a fiendish figure of fundamentalist Hindutva, Astrology and the like, and therefore cannot utter any truth; if [Kazanas] is “influenced”, [Kazanas] also cannot utter any truth.”

““David Frawley is one of the most important scholars of Ayurveda and Vedic Science today. I have great respect and admiration for his knowledge and the way he has expounded the ancient wisdom of the Vedas.””

““Frawley is an Indian in an American body. The ease with which he enters into the spiritual of the Indian tradition and renders its deeper concepts in terms of modern thought shows an unusual familiarity with this ancient wisdom.””

““David Frawley is a formidable scholar of Vedanta and easily the best known Western Acharya of the Vedic wisdom.””