Just a final note on the question of Danielou and I will leave it at
that: his work has many extraneous issues that don't concern the main point. The
stream of Indic religion goes back before the putative Indo-European entry
point, and the appearance given by so-called 'Hinduism' is completely
misleading, the Vedic tradition being a later construct, which a serious New
Ager might learn to disregard apart from its intrinsic historical or
achaeological interest. It has no relevance to the mainline of Indic
spirituality. Thus the status of Hinduism is highly misleading and any student
thereof might judiciously consider the primordial Shaivism and Jain traditions,
as outlined by figures such as Danielou, taking these with care. This is a
treacherous line of study, but the basic outline is clear. This tradition
belongs to noone and the student of the great yogas should altogether defy the
propaganda and outright exploitations of the Neo-Brahmin tyranny over the
Indian tradition which has been crippled by sophistical doctrines and class
warfare of the most subtle brand.
But the basic outline or periodization given by such as Danielou can
help to orient oneself toward the real Indian spirituality. This is no
small matter as the implications of these views show that, for example, the
endemic confusion with caste is a later imposter and has nothing to do with the
real tradition.
Without getting into the equally treacherous realm of Buddhist propaganda,
we can see that it represented a reform movement trying to outflank the
crystallizing Hindu establishment.
New Agers are often systematically misled by these phantoms of 'Indian
religion' in decline as of the Axial Age. It comes as a shock to realize that
two thousand years of Hinduism has been based on a set of distortions, but the
defenders of Indian tradition would do better to write off their losses and pick
up the real threads of yoga/tantra spawned by primordial Shaivism. In fact,
those traditions, to a close look, are already the case tucked away behind the
various fronts of the Vedic phantoms.
Thank you for your time, and the insights of Indo-European linguistic
studies on this, for many, a practical life and death issue of entanglement in
endless confusion.
John Landon
There is more on this at The Gurdjieff Con blog