April 14th 2019 - Understanding the Vedas (ancient Hindu texts) by Dr. Ramakrishna Narayanaswami - at Cerritos Library

Date/Venue:  April 14th, 2019  (Sun) 1:30 PM - 3 PM @ Skyline Room, Cerritos Public Library, 18025 Bloomfield Ave, Cerritos, CA, 90703 Please note the venue. View this email in your browser Speaker: Dr. Ramakrishna Narayanaswami Topic:  Understanding the Vedas (ancient Hindu Texts) Date/Venue:  April 14th, 2019  (Sun) 1:30 PM - 3 PM @ Skyline Room, Cerritos Public Library, 18025 Bloomfield Ave, Cerritos, CA, 90703 About the lecture: The Vedas are the ‘pramaNAs’ of Sanatana Dharma (also known as Hindu Religion). While most SD followers hold Veda in great reverence, they are not likely to have either studied or understood the Vedas. During the past two to three centuries, the Western scholars and the Indologists (indigenous scholars in India who have studied the works of the Western authors or worked under/with them) have written about the Vedas that have not, in the speaker’s opinion, accurately described the ‘essence and secrets of the Vedas’. Whether due to inability to understand the ‘cultural ethos’ of the land and the people, or due to inability to understand the symbols and symbolisms used in the Vedas, or due to whatever other reasons, the speaker contends that Western publications on the Vedas have failed to do justice to the Vedas as the “oldest books of wisdom the world has known”. It was Sri Aurobindo (SA) (1872-1950) who explained that the Vedas have ‘spiritual and psychological meanings’ in addition to the external word-meanings of the Veda Mantras, and that only by exploring and understanding such meanings, also known as the ‘adhyathmic’ meanings, are we able to understand the wisdom and power of the Vedas. T. V. Kapali Shastry (TVKS or KS) independently felt that Vedas had deeper meanings and joined the SA Ashram in Pondicherry and worked with SA from 1940s till his own death in 1953. Prof. R. L. Kashyap set up SAKSHI (Sri Aurobindo Kapali Shastry Institute) of Vedic Culture in Bangalore in 1997 and has translated all the Vedas in 26 volumes. This talk will discuss the SA approach to understanding the ‘essence and secret of the Vedas’ by explaining the ‘spiritual and psychological meanings’ of Veda Mantras. This talk will also try to show that understanding the Vedas correctly will benefit all SD followers to lead a life of peace, harmony and perfection. About the speaker: Dr. R. Swami Narayanaswami is an Engineer by profession. He got his B. Sc (Engg.) degree form the College of Engineering, Trivandrum and M. Tech. degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and Ph. D. from the Texas Tech university, Texas. He was selected to the prestigious National Science Foundation – National Research Council Post-Doctoral Fellowship to spend 2 years at NASA, after which he spent another 3 years as a Research Scientist at NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia. He was the founder-President of 2 companies on Engineering Software Solutions, the first an IP company (1984-1999) and the second a Services company (2000 to 2016) with offices in US, India and Europe. He is now fully retired and lives with his wife, Sarasa Narayanaswami, in Westlake Village, CA. He is a Veda practitioner from his initiation (diksha) in his teens to the present. He has lectured on Gita and taught the ‘Major Upanishads (dasopanishads)’ to his friends in the early 2000s. He is  teaching Vedic Chanting from his home every Sunday for the past 15 years. He was involved with the Malibu temple from its earliest planning stages and served in the Temple Board in the 1980s as Chairman of the Religious Committee. During the past 6+ years, he is lecturing on the ‘spiritual’ meanings of Veda Mantras and doing research on the Vedas under Prof. Kashyap. Mission Statement of Bharatiya Vichar Manch: To promote dialogue by which Dharmic philosophy, culture, and traditions can positively influence global thought and action. Some of the past lectures are available at: http://www.youtube.com/bharatiyavicharmanch http://www.facebook.com/bhartiyavicharmanch.la If you want your email address to be added to the mailing list, please send an email to bvmanchla@gmail.com   Please forward the lecture invitation to your contacts who might be interested in attending. Sign up for our list! Going forward flyers will be posted at this web address, please save this address in your favorites section of your web browser. 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