Language of the Gods, Part One: The Primordial Mantra, with Debashish Banerji

Debashish Banerji, PhD, is former Dean of Academic Affairs at the University of Philosophical Research in Los Angeles as well as an adjunct faculty member at Pasadena City College and the California Institute of Integral Studies. He is also the former director of the East West Cultural Center in Los Angeles. He is author of Seven Quartets of Becoming: A Transformative Yoga Psychology Based on the Diaries of Sri Aurobindo and also The Alternate Nation of Abanindranath Tagore, a book about his great grandfather. He edited an anthology about his great uncle, Rabindranath Tagore in the Twenty-First Century. Here he describes the Indo-European family of languages and the relationship between Sanskrit and other languages of Europe and Asia. The linguistic similarities are also related to cultural and religious similarities. It is notable that the pantheon of gods in the ancient Rig Veda bears a strong resemblance to the Greek pantheon. This is not accidental. In India, Sanskrit developed a unique life as a language used in ritual and as a language for the sacred texts of the Vedanta tradition. These include the Vedas and the Upanishads, the Brahmanas, and the Bhagavat Gita. As such, Sanskrit became a language for contemplation. The very sounds of the language were thought to have the power of altering consciousness. Of particular interest is the mantra, AUM. It is considered to be the primordial sound of the universe that, when repeated, gives access to the entire spectrum of consciousness. New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in "parapsychology" ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He serves as dean of transformational psychology at the University of Philosophical Research. He teaches parapsychology for ministers in training with the Centers for Spiritual Living through the Holmes Institute. He has served as vice-president of the Association for Humanistic Psychology, and is the recipient of its Pathfinder Award for outstanding contributions to the field of human consciousness. He is also past-president of the non-profit Intuition Network, an organization dedicated to creating a world in which all people are encouraged to cultivate and apply their inner, intuitive abilities. (Recorded on December 19, 2015)