Namaste Garnet,
no, you didn't stick your foot in your mouth.
the Indian religions are a bit different than the Semetic traditions.
generally speaking, what you will find is that one can be a Buddhist, for instance, and hold a different philosophical position than another Buddhist, yet both are still Buddhist.
the same is true for the Hindu (Sanatana Dharma) traditions, perhaps even to a greater degree than it is in the Buddha Dharma.
it is also important to bear in mind how the Sanatana Dharma view of God and therefore, reality, is of a radically different character than the Semetic traditions. perhaps this can help explain a bit more:
the extent to which the mythologies-and therewith physchologies- of the Orient and Occident diverged in the course of the period between the dawn of civilization in the Near East and the present age of mutal rediscovery appears in their opposed version of the shared mythological image of the first being, who was originally one but became two.
the best known Occidental example of this image of the first being, split in two, which seem to be two but are actually one, is, for course, that of the Book of Genesis, second chapter, where it is turned, however, to a different sense. For the couple is spearated here by a superior being, who, as we are told, caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man and, while he slept, took one of his ribs.
in the Indian version it is the god himself that divides and becomes not man alone but all creation; so that everything is a manifestation of that single inhabiting divine substance: there is no other; whereas in the Bible, God and man, from the beginning, are distinct. Man is made in the image of God, indeed, and the breath of God has been breathed into his nostrils; yet his being, his self, is not that of God, nor is it one with the universe. The fashioning of the world, of animals, and of Adam (who then became Adam and Eve) was accomplished not within the sphere of divinity but outside of it.
there is, consequently, an intrinsic, not merely formal, separation. and the goal of knowledge cannot be to see God here and now in all things; for God is not in things. God is transcendent. God is beheld only by the dead. the goal of knowledge has to be, rather, to know the relationship of God to His creation, or, more specifically, to man, and through such knowledge, by God's grace, to link one's own will back to that of the Creator.
moreover, according to the Biblical version of this myth, it was only after creation that man fell, whereas in the Indian example creation itself was a fall - the fragmentation of a God. and the God is not condemned. Rather, his creation, his "pouring forth" is described as an act of voluntary, dynamic will-to-be-more, which anteceded creation and has, therefore, a metaphysical, symbolical, not literal, historical meaning. the fall of Adam and Eve was an event within the already created frame of time and space, an accident that should not have taken place. the myth of the Self in the form of a man, on the other hand, who looked around and saw nothing but himself, and said "I", felt fear, and then desired to be two, tells of an intrinsic, not errant, factor in the manifold of being, the correction or undoing of which would not improve, but dissolve, creation. the Indian point of view is metaphyscial, poetical; the Biblical, ethical and historical.
http://www.comparative-religion.com/forum/showthread.php?t=560
metta,
~v
