1.

Research on the Story of creation in Rig Veda

The Rig Veda is a group of poems that people in India first sang and recited maybe about 1500
BC, soon after the Indo-Europeans arrived in India. People passed down these poems by reciting them
out loud for hundreds of years, adding some and forgetting some. By about 1000 BC, the Rig Veda
reached its final form, and then people finally wrote it down in Sanskrit in the Guptan period, about
500 BC. The Rig Veda is one of the most sacred texts of Hinduism.

Veda tells the story of Prajapati, the first god who created the world. Prajapati means "Lord of
Creatures". Prajapati was sacrificed to himself by the younger gods Indra, Agni, and Varuna, and out of
his body the whole universe was made. The Rig Veda says that each of Prajapati's other parts turned
into a different group of people, so that Indian people thought of themselves as belonging to one of
four castes, or groups. This idea of caste seems to be a Vedic idea.

The Paradox of Origin

Few cultures are as impenetrably complex as that of India. This is evident also in its ancient sources to
ideas of the creation of the world. In Rig Veda, the collection of hymns from around 1500 to 800 BCE,
the poet of one of them contemplates the very question if something can be first, i.e. if there can have
been a creation at all.

Rig Veda 10:129 is in a famous hymn of the tenth mandala. It is generally regarded as one of the later
hymns, probably composed in the 9th century BCE. It has the Indian name Nasadiya Sukta, "Not the
Non-existen", and is often given the English title Creation, because of its subject.

The Paradox of Origin

The advanced abstract reasoning in the hymn has brought it a lot of attention, not only within
indology, but from scholars of philosophy and the history of religion as well. Its line of thought relates
splendidly to cosmological thinking of the philosophers of Ancient Greece, all through to present day
astronomy.

Who knows from whence this great creation sprang?

He from whom all this great creation came.

Whether his will created or was mute,

The Most High seer that is in highest heaven,

He knows it - or perchance even He knows not.

 Mainly, Rig Veda 10:129 reveals an insoluble paradox in which the human mind of the past as well
as the present easily gets trapped: How can the universe have sprung into existence, i.e. how can
something come out of nothing? How can there be a beginning, before which there was nothing?

Much of what puzzled people three thousand years ago, still puzzles us today. This dilemma, too.
Present-day scientists wrestle with the paradox, speculating about multiverses and such in an effort to
explain the something out of nothing. Doing so, they might just move the problem to another location,
not solving it at all.

So, we should be wary of taking for granted that our ancestors were intellectually inferior to us.
We have more facts, but they knew what we still would not know today, nor tomorrow.

2. Research on the life of Mahatma Gandhi

Mahtm Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (/ndi, n-/;[3] Hindustani: [mondd as krmtndd

andd i]; 2 October 1869 30 January 1948) was the leader of the Indian independence movement
against British rule. Employing nonviolent civil disobedience, Gandhi led India to independence and
inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. The honorific Mahtm (Sanskrit:
"high-souled", "venerable")applied to him first in 1914 in South Africais now used worldwide. In
India, he is also called Bapu ji (Gujarati: endearment for father,papa and Gandhi ji. He is unofficially
called the Father of the Nation.

Born and raised in a Hindu merchant caste family in coastal Gujarat, western India, and trained in law
at the Inner Temple, London, Gandhi first employed nonviolent civil disobedience as an expatriate
lawyer in South Africa, in the resident Indian community's struggle for civil rights. After his return to
India in 1915, he set about organising peasants, farmers, and urban labourers to protest against
excessive land-tax and discrimination. Assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921,
Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for various social causes and for achieving Swaraj or self-rule.

Gandhi famously led Indians in challenging the British-imposed salt tax with the 400 km (250 mi)
Dandi Salt March in 1930, and later in calling for the British to Quit India in 1942. He was imprisoned
for many years, upon many occasions, in both South Africa and India. He lived modestly in a self-
sufficient residential community and wore the traditional Indian dhoti and shawl, woven with yarn
hand-spun on a charkha. He ate simple vegetarian food, and also undertook long fasts as a means of
both self-purification and political protest.

independence movement against British rule and in South Africa who advocated for the civil rights of
Indians. Born in Porbandar, India, Gandhi studied law and organized boycotts against British
institutions in peaceful forms of civil disobedience. He was killed by a fanatic in 1948.

Religion and Beliefs

Gandhi grew up worshiping the Hindu god Vishnu and following Jainism, a morally rigorous ancient
Indian religion that espoused non-violence, fasting, meditation and vegetarianism.

During Gandhis first stay in London, from 1888 to 1891, he became more committed to a meatless
diet, joining the executive committee of the London Vegetarian Society, and started to read a variety
of sacred texts to learn more about world religions.

Living in South Africa, Gandhi continued to study world religions. The religious spirit within me
became a living force, he wrote of his time there. He immersed himself in sacred Hindu spiritual texts
and adopted a life of simplicity, austerity, fasting and celibacy that was free of material goods.

Gandhis Ashram & the Indian Caste System

In 1915 Gandhi founded an ashram in Ahmedabad, India, that was open to all castes. Wearing a simple
loincloth and shawl, Gandhi lived an austere life devoted to prayer, fasting and meditation. He became
known as Mahatma, which means great soul.

In 1932, Gandhi, at the time imprisoned in India, embarked on a six-day fast to protest the British
decision to segregate the untouchables, those on the lowest rung of Indias caste system, by allotting
them separate electorates. The public outcry forced the British to amend the proposal.

Gandhis Assassination

In the late afternoon of January 30, 1948, the 78-year-old Gandhi, weakened from repeated hunger
strikes, clung to his two grandnieces as they led him from his living quarters in New Delhis Birla House
to a prayer meeting. Hindu extremist Nathuram Godse, upset at Gandhis tolerance of Muslims, knelt
before the Mahatma before pulling out a semiautomatic pistol and shooting him three times at point-
blank range. The violent act took the life of a pacifist who spent his life preaching nonviolence. Godse
and a co-conspirator were executed by hanging in November 1949, while additional conspirators were
sentenced to life in prison.

3. The FOUR YOGAS

The four paths of Yoga are Jnana Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Karma Yoga, and Raja Yoga. These four paths of
Yoga are aspects of a whole that is called Yoga. The four paths of Yoga work together, like fingers on a
hand.

Yoga is the preexisting union: Yoga means the realization in direct experience of the preexisting union
between the individual consciousness and the universal consciousness. There are different ways of
expressing this, including that Atman is one with Brahman, Jivatman is one with Paramatman, or Shiva
and Shakti are one and the same. Each of these ways of saying it come from a different viewing point,
while they are not essentially different points of view. They all point in the same general direction of
union or Yoga.
The four paths of Yoga: There are four traditional schools of Yoga, and these are: Jnana Yoga, Bhakti
Yoga, Karma Yoga, and Raja Yoga. While a Yogi or Yogini may focus exclusively on one of these
approaches to Yoga, that is quite uncommon. For the vast majority of practitioners of Yoga, a blending
of the four traditional types of Yoga is most appropriate. One follows his or her own predisposition in
balancing these different forms of Yoga.

Jnana Yoga: Jnana Yoga is the path of knowledge, wisdom, introspection and contemplation. It
involves deep exploration of the nature our being by systematically exploring and setting aside false
identities.

Bhakti Yoga: Bhakti Yoga is the path of devotion, emotion, love, compassion, and service to God and
others. All actions are done in the context of remembering the Divine.

Karma Yoga: Karma Yoga is the path of action, service to others, mindfulness, and remembering the
levels of our being while fulfilling our actions or karma in the world.

Raja Yoga: Raja Yoga is a comprehensive method that emphasizes meditation, while encompassing the
whole of Yoga. It directly deals with the encountering and transcending thoughts of the mind.