Episode Transcript
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right, welcome back, ladies and gentlemen to Cultish.
1:52
Welcome to part two. We are talking about
1:54
Hinduism with our good friend Sandeep. Andrew, thank
1:56
you for joining us. I'll be joining you
1:58
soon up in Utah. But let's just
2:00
jump right into it. So you
2:03
were talking about all the different aspects
2:05
of Hinduism, the different temples that Shiva,
2:07
the practices, and we're going to kind
2:10
of get in those and compartmentalize pieces.
2:13
But what was the turning point for
2:15
you as far as like your
2:17
testimony? You grew up in Hinduism, but all of a sudden
2:19
something changed. You
2:22
had something you had never done before. Kind
2:24
of take us into that if you could. So
2:27
it all started in the year 2015, October,
2:29
I remember. So
2:34
I just, you know, you
2:36
were young, you messed up your
2:38
life, what young people go through.
2:41
So I was a very
2:44
prominent guy in my
2:46
friend's circle. And at
2:49
the same time I was very religious. Shiva
2:52
was my God. Anyway
2:56
so in 2015, I never, just
2:58
to let everyone know, I never been to a church before
3:00
in my life. Never. Never
3:02
stood near a church, even 200 feet near. Never.
3:08
So in 2015 I felt like going to a
3:10
church. Now I don't know why something
3:13
came inside me. I should visit
3:15
a church. And then so in
3:17
a metro station I saw a
3:20
picture of a cathedral. It's
3:23
170 years old, cathedral. So
3:26
I was like, okay, you know, so I walk
3:29
inside this church for the first time in my
3:31
life. And then so
3:33
I stood at the back. You know, I didn't go in
3:35
the front. I mean, this is not my thing. I'm
3:38
a Hindu. So I stood at
3:40
the back and I was listening to this guy. He
3:44
was sharing some things which I never heard
3:47
before. It was
3:49
about like God loves you so much that
3:51
He's ready to forgive
3:53
you no matter what you have done in your
3:56
past and even yesterday what
3:58
you have done. If you want to start. again,
4:01
he loves you that much, he
4:04
cares about you. In Hinduism there
4:08
is no verse which says that God
4:10
is telling to a repentant sinner,
4:13
someone who wants to restart his
4:15
life that your
4:17
karmas are forgiven
4:19
and I love you.
4:21
There is nothing, no verse. We never grow up
4:23
hearing these things in Hinduism.
4:25
We always believe reincarnation, the
4:28
samsara, we believe in that
4:30
we will again take birth and we are
4:32
brahmins because we did something really good in
4:35
our previous birth. That
4:37
is why in Chandogya Upanishad I was saying in
4:39
Vedas it says you are born as brahmin. So
4:42
anyway I was listening to the guy and he was
4:44
saying all of these things which I never heard before
4:46
and I stood at the back and I really liked
4:48
it. So this guy later
4:51
on we became friends and he
4:54
started inviting me to evening
4:56
service. But I
4:58
was still skeptical about
5:00
the whole thing but
5:02
I was at the same time excited and later
5:06
on I found out that he is
5:08
also a former Hindu Brahmin from the
5:11
Brahmin caste. So
5:13
I keep on going to his
5:15
place and wherever he calls me
5:18
every Sunday different churches. I
5:20
was just excited. So
5:23
he gives me a Bible for the first time in
5:25
my life. I
5:27
had a Bible in my hand. I
5:30
remember going back to my home and
5:35
by the time of 6-7 months I
5:37
believe everyone now inside the
5:39
home is already seeing me going to
5:41
church and fascinated about Jesus. But after
5:45
7 months when I went back to
5:48
home my father saw a
5:50
Bible in my bag and
5:52
that was the
5:55
time when all the problems started. He saw a Bible
5:57
in my bag. So he asked me what is this?
6:00
I said, this is a Bible, it's just a
6:02
book. You say, no, this is a
6:04
Bible. What is it
6:06
doing in your bag? And it's
6:08
too much, you know, you're going church
6:11
like kind of every Sunday, what are
6:13
you trying to do? What will the
6:15
society say? What will the relatives say?
6:17
We are Brahmins, we're not from a lower
6:19
caste. We have a
6:21
temper, what is going on? And he was
6:24
really getting angry. And I
6:26
remember that evening, I still
6:28
remember very clearly, it was my mom,
6:31
my father, my sister, we were sitting in
6:33
a room. And
6:37
we were having heated discussion, me
6:40
specifically with my dad, and he hit
6:42
me. And he was
6:44
angry, he hit me, I was like, wow. So
6:48
that was the time, you know,
6:50
he started telling me, you know, Hinduism is the
6:53
oldest religion, you know. Christianity
6:55
is just a new religion, it's just 2000 years
6:58
old. I mean, what's
7:00
going on? I mean, you like, you know,
7:02
Hinduism is a pagan ideology,
7:04
you believe in everything, kind of, you
7:06
believe in sun, you believe in moon,
7:08
it all comes from the Vedas, you
7:10
believe in rivers, cows. So
7:14
Hindus have no problem with Jesus, or
7:17
with Muhammad, with any other gods. But
7:19
the problem started when
7:22
I accepted Jesus as my only
7:24
Lord and Savior. And that
7:26
didn't happen until I opened the Hindu
7:29
scriptures. I started comparing it
7:31
with the Bible, because I
7:33
was getting questions from my family members,
7:36
from my mother's side, you know, what's
7:38
going on, you know, we are the
7:40
oldest. So that's the time when I
7:42
started going to the scriptures and the
7:44
Bible, and I saw huge, huge differences,
7:47
huge. You know, one says karma,
7:49
it's a bondage, the
7:53
samsara cycle, you know, you just take
7:55
both, again and again, and the
7:58
Bible says, you know, grace which
8:00
you don't deserve, the meaning of grace
8:03
but still God loves you. Yeah. What
8:06
would you say, because you mentioned earlier you said you had
8:08
written, when you were talking to this person from this cathedral
8:10
church, they were talking to you
8:12
about the gospel and Jesus and grace and
8:15
you said you had reservations or
8:17
skepticism. What specifically were you skeptical
8:19
about in contrast to what was
8:21
being presented to you versus your
8:23
entire upbringing? Yeah, I was skeptical
8:26
about I don't
8:29
belong in this thing, you know, so this
8:31
is just I like so I have to
8:33
have some safe distance but I
8:35
don't know I was just getting drawn to it and
8:37
here is one more thing, I had
8:40
no encounter with any missionary or you know
8:42
many Hindus would say someone gave a bag
8:44
of rice you know this is a common
8:46
thinking, lot of missionaries they accuse Christians back
8:49
in India, Christianity is like 5% we are
8:51
minorities you
8:53
know, so 80% is
8:55
Hindu, so many Hindus they accuse
8:57
Christians that you know they fool the
9:00
poor people by giving a bag of
9:02
rice, you know Mother Teresa, you know
9:05
she converted many Hindus by giving taking
9:07
care of the poor, here
9:09
is the question what's wrong in that even,
9:11
what's wrong in that even, no Hindus does
9:13
that even, no Hindus take care of their
9:16
lower caste, the poor lower caste who are
9:18
only meant to have a
9:20
job like cleaning bathrooms you know cleaning
9:23
sewage the drains and
9:25
you know all the dirty jobs
9:27
like after you know burning dead bodies
9:30
you know Brahmin doesn't do that, Brahmin
9:32
you will never see burning dead bodies
9:34
that's not the job of Brahmin, our
9:36
job was to be a priest you
9:39
know to have the highest position
9:41
in every Hindu temple if you
9:43
go you will see Brahmins, no
9:45
one from the Shudra caste are priest in that
9:48
in that congregate you know in that temple, so
9:51
yeah interesting if
9:53
you're go ahead Andrew, is the
9:55
basic view in India of
9:57
Christians like people that are Less
10:00
than or from a younger religion like
10:03
almost like the there the let's say the
10:05
highest classes knows is stuck up to The
10:08
Christian is that kind of how it works and also
10:10
when you met in the church was an actual building
10:13
Are there actual physical church buildings
10:15
out there or people like kind of secretly
10:17
meeting in homes? How
10:19
does that work? Yeah, so that that's a
10:22
very nice question. I'll say I mean so
10:24
I belong for I You know Calcutta
10:27
is near my hometown. So over
10:29
there you'd see many old cathedrals
10:32
Cathedrals like really a church
10:34
building huge So
10:36
that's the place where I first
10:38
got to know about Christ,
10:41
you know So no missionaries
10:43
involvement. I never met a missionary. We
10:45
didn't lack a bag of rice, you
10:47
know we my family was not that
10:49
poor so but
10:52
but Secret
10:54
churches are in many places in India
10:56
in the most conservative Hindu
10:59
state in India is the Uttar Pradesh where
11:01
one of I mean one of
11:03
my closest friend who is also a former
11:06
Hindu he is Like
11:09
he's serving in Uttar Pradesh where
11:13
the chief minister is Yogi
11:16
Aditya not and he's a very Hindu
11:18
nationalist guy, you know The prime
11:20
minister is also spreading Hindu nationalism
11:22
in India So I remember I
11:24
was talking to him a week
11:26
ago and he was telling me
11:28
that you know a lot of Hindus local Hindus they
11:31
came to him and they said we know where
11:33
you guys stay and you guys Are
11:36
Christians right? You're having church
11:39
meetings right evening services, so
11:42
they they So
11:44
he was telling me they are really They
11:47
like they don't go outside in the evening
11:51
Like especially the woman no
11:53
one goes after eight nine o'clock outside
11:56
Because you know, they threaten Christians
12:00
If you leave Hinduism, that's the point.
12:02
That's the problem. When you choose Jesus
12:04
as the only Lord and Savior, that's
12:07
the problem. And India ranks, a
12:09
lot of people I think don't
12:11
know that India ranks 10th or 11th, I believe,
12:14
in the most persecuted countries in the
12:18
world for Christians. So
12:21
that side of Hinduism, no one knows about.
12:25
You don't get to see that a lot in the cities,
12:28
but when you go out from the cities,
12:30
outskirts, you get to see Christians
12:33
not getting seen
12:36
as equal in the
12:38
society. Yeah, I mean that's fascinating just
12:40
because from the West, they
12:42
view India as kind of this sort
12:44
of sacred area of like mystique and
12:47
also a lot of syncreticity
12:50
of far and also just different syncretism
12:52
as far as different religions and sort
12:55
of a lot of peace and tranquility
12:57
amongst like the spirituality within India where
12:59
there's like the gurus that the spirituality
13:01
plays there, but in reality, there's
13:04
a lot of specifically intolerance towards Christians specifically.
13:06
And you see that also too, like there's
13:08
a lot of persecutions of Muslims as well
13:10
too in India. Yeah,
13:13
I would say there are
13:15
anti-conversion laws. If anyone research
13:17
about this in India, there
13:20
are anti-conversion laws in many
13:22
states in India like
13:24
Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar.
13:27
There are some more other
13:29
states where there are anti-conversion
13:32
laws specifically for Christians
13:35
actually because we spread the gospel and
13:37
people like the gospel because it's something
13:39
which they never hear. I
13:41
never hear growing up something
13:44
like grace. We grow up hearing
13:47
about samsara, karmic cycle and
13:49
all. So, that's why
13:51
in Uttar Pradesh, for example, if someone,
13:53
a Hindu accuses a Christian
13:55
that he forcefully tried
13:58
to convert me by giving me Just
14:00
false accusation. Someone just going
14:02
to a police station and
14:04
saying, this Christian, this guy
14:07
bribed me. Just
14:09
a false accusation. He will be
14:11
taken to the prison. And then
14:13
later on, there are many
14:15
many Christians inside the prison for years. But
14:19
you don't get to see that in the West. Here
14:22
you see Hare Krishna dancing around on
14:24
the road and so
14:27
much freedom. Right. So going back into
14:29
your story then, you're looking at a lot of sort of
14:32
conflict of interest, at least for yourself, where you're
14:34
realizing that you're going to this
14:37
church, you've got a Bible, you're considering
14:39
Christianity and this message of grace in
14:42
contrast to the continuous cycle of
14:44
reincarnation, but also just a lot
14:46
of accolades of being in
14:48
the highest caste system. And then
14:50
obviously, like being in
14:53
a position where your father strikes you,
14:55
regardless of whatever religious backing you're from,
14:58
just the concept of that for anybody is just
15:00
like terrifying. I've ministered to people who have been
15:03
experiencing that as well too. But
15:06
was that kind of like the main catalyst then for
15:08
you to start really kind of wrestling through? Okay.
15:13
Is it truly Christianity? Is it truly Hinduism?
15:15
Is that kind of when you started like
15:17
really kind of examining the claims of Christianity
15:19
versus Hinduism? That was
15:21
the evening, I believe,
15:24
when I really started to focus on
15:27
comparing Hinduism and Christianity.
15:29
That was the time because it's
15:32
been already a year now. By
15:35
that time, like 15 to 16, I would
15:37
say a year, already so
15:39
many people are questioning me, why leave Hinduism?
15:41
We are the oldest. We
15:43
are so peaceful. Look what
15:45
the Britishers did to India. They
15:47
are Christians, right? Look what the Christians
15:50
did to India. So
15:52
again, that's a whole
15:55
misunderstanding. Obviously,
15:57
there were bad people, but there were a lot of good
15:59
missionaries who were there. built hospitals, the
16:01
first hospital, the first school in
16:03
India, the first old age home
16:06
in India were all founded by
16:08
Christian missionaries. So
16:10
that was the time I started really
16:12
digging into the Hindu scriptures, comparing
16:14
it with the Bible and then
16:16
huge differences, you know, evidence
16:19
for the Hindu gods. Was
16:21
part of that study too in hopes that maybe
16:24
the Lord might convert even your father, like having
16:27
answers to him because he probably
16:29
asked you very tough questions, I would assume. Yes,
16:33
I would say this. My mom is already
16:35
in the halfway to Christ. She
16:38
reads native language Bible.
16:41
My dad is still struggling. You know,
16:43
Hinduism is a pagan religion where you
16:45
believe everything. So he
16:48
is, he don't like, he's not angry
16:50
on me anymore, but he, I'm sure
16:52
he really hopes that which, you know,
16:54
my son comes back to Hinduism, you
16:56
know, because again, he's surrounded with Hindus,
16:59
right? You are from the
17:01
Brahmin caste, not just a lower caste.
17:03
You left everything. You gave up everything.
17:05
Yeah. What's up everybody? It's
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Koltish merch. Talk to you later guys. And
17:32
so you started a comparison. So what were some
17:34
of the initial contrasts that you saw between what
17:36
you grew up with and as
17:38
you began to compare the Hindu scriptures versus the Bible,
17:40
what were some of the main differences that you saw?
17:43
The main differences which I
17:46
found were like, you know,
17:48
the main two I would say was, you know,
17:51
reading the life of Krishna at
17:54
the same time, comparing it with Jesus.
17:58
So, you know, Krishna. Krishna, we
18:00
get to see in the
18:03
scripture Bhagavata Puran where Krishna
18:05
is stealing women's
18:08
clothing when
18:12
they are taking shower in the river, like
18:14
when they are taking bath in
18:16
the river, Krishna is stealing
18:18
the clothes of these girls.
18:21
So that's like what Jesus never did
18:23
in all of these differences. And
18:26
then in the Bhagavad
18:28
Gita, which is the part of Mahabharata,
18:30
here you get to see there is
18:33
a fight between cousins, kauravas
18:35
and pandavas over a kingdom
18:37
called Hastinapur. And they
18:39
just want to fight, like
18:42
who can win over
18:45
this kingdom. And so Krishna
18:47
is trying to convince Arjuna that you
18:50
should fight this war to establish truth
18:54
on earth. And
18:56
Arjuna is saying, no, I don't want to fight because
18:58
I know these people, they are my relatives,
19:00
I know their faces, I am
19:03
ready to forgive, let
19:05
them take the kingdom. But Krishna
19:08
is continuously trying to tell
19:10
Arjuna, you should fight the war, you
19:13
should fight the battle, trying to convince.
19:16
And then I started to see Jesus, I
19:19
mean so much different. Even
19:23
to the point when Jesus was getting caught,
19:26
one of his disciples cut the ear of the
19:30
God who came to catch Jesus. What
19:33
did Jesus do? He healed the ear
19:36
of that person. And he said whoever
19:38
lives with the sword dies with the sword. That's
19:41
a huge difference. I mean
19:43
Jesus had followers, thousands, so
19:47
he could have did the same thing
19:49
like Krishna, I have
19:51
read Krishna's, but here is the difference.
19:53
And I started to see all of this. Shiva,
19:57
I read Shri Puran and then I see Shiva.
20:00
worshipping fellows and
20:02
all of these stories which is horrible like,
20:06
it's so dirty. And
20:09
then I see Jesus' life when he met
20:11
a woman and when he met a woman
20:14
how he talked and how he behaved with
20:16
them. I
20:19
am the living well. Whoever
20:21
drinks from my cup no
20:23
more becomes thirsty again.
20:27
And the way Jesus treated a woman and
20:30
Shiva treated a woman, huge
20:32
differences. What would be the difference there?
20:36
I think of like John 4, when the
20:38
will be a prime example, what would be
20:40
the contrast between that and like in
20:42
the Hindu scriptures specifically? For
20:45
example, like the Shiva Puran, Shiva
20:48
is in the forest and
20:50
then there are wives of the priest
20:53
like the disciples
20:56
of Shiva I would say and Shiva
20:58
is naked, ashes all over his body
21:01
and the wife goes and starts
21:03
to hug Shiva because he was
21:05
looking probably very handsome and
21:08
the disciples get angry because their
21:10
wives are running after Shiva. And
21:13
so what Shiva, so
21:16
the disciples they curse Shiva to
21:18
a god by the way and
21:20
the curse even worked that
21:23
his phallus may fall on
21:25
the ground. So the phallus fell on
21:28
the ground and it caused destruction all
21:30
over. So the disciples they
21:32
went to another god and they were
21:34
like you know what should we do
21:36
this is causing a disturbance all over
21:38
the world. And so the gods say
21:40
that look for a feminine
21:42
you know like
21:45
a body organ you
21:47
know and it's just
21:49
so nasty. You know all of these
21:52
stories are explicit. Yeah, yeah but
21:54
when I open Bible we don't get to
21:56
see these things you know. I mean Jesus,
21:58
look at Jesus. the whole point.
22:00
Look at Jesus, what Jesus did and how he
22:03
behaved with women. Huge difference.
22:05
The second most thing which
22:08
I saw when I was
22:10
in the middle of Hinduism, Christianity,
22:13
you know, one year already in
22:15
Jesus, but still everywhere I'm going I'm saying
22:18
I'm a Hindu. I just believe, I just
22:20
like Jesus. I didn't say I'm a Christian
22:22
even after one year. So I was still
22:24
struggling, battling, you know, with all these thoughts.
22:27
The second most important thing which I saw
22:30
was the evidence for the gods. Let's
22:33
look at the evidence. Let's look at
22:35
the evidence for the Bible and for
22:37
the Vedas. And here's the most important
22:40
thing. We have so
22:42
many manuscripts for the Bible,
22:44
for the New Testament, P52,
22:46
all these papyrus, you know.
22:49
And then, so P52 is
22:51
like comes within some decades,
22:53
you know, after Jesus's death, you know. And
22:56
then we see for the Vedas,
22:58
we don't get anything until
23:01
the 15th century AD. Yeah.
23:03
That's the Vedas are the
23:05
most important scripture for Hinduism,
23:08
you know. And the earliest evidence, the
23:10
manuscript we have for Vedas comes from
23:12
just like five, six hundred years ago.
23:15
So these are the huge differences, you
23:17
know, evidence for Krishna's life. There's none.
23:20
There's nothing. Like is there
23:22
any inscription? Any, because,
23:24
you know, any Hindu, if you ask, they will
23:26
say Krishna is like five thousand years old. So
23:29
is there any stone or a book or
23:31
a paper which papyrus something which
23:33
shows that, okay, here is Krishna's
23:35
name mentioned. There's nothing. Yeah. There's
23:37
nothing. So I started to see
23:39
this. The evidence for Christianity is
23:41
like huge compared to other worldviews,
23:44
you know. These two were the
23:46
with the most important thing which
23:48
strengthened my faith on Christianity. Yeah.
23:51
Don't they also say that Sanskrit is
23:53
the oldest language? Yeah. They say Sanskrit
23:55
is the oldest language, you know. So
23:58
they're like Hindi. Bengali,
24:02
most of the Indian languages came out
24:05
from Sanskrit. But again,
24:07
if Sanskrit is
24:09
the oldest language, what
24:11
evidence do we have for Sanskrit?
24:16
Do we have anything written?
24:19
Do we have any manuscript for
24:21
Sanskrit? Do we have
24:23
any inscriptions? But
24:26
we have nothing. Everything before the
24:29
second or third century BC, we
24:31
have nothing for Sanskrit. But the
24:33
Greek language has older evidence,
24:35
goes back to the
24:37
14th century. We have
24:39
like clay tablets for the language of
24:41
Greek, which is way older than Sanskrit.
24:44
And also, is there something
24:46
specifically within Hinduism in their worldview
24:48
when it comes to the language
24:50
of Sanskrit? Do they believe it's
24:52
from sort of like divine nature
24:55
of origin when it comes to like Sanskrit?
24:58
There's something divine behind that language. Like there's, you
25:00
look at like, for example, like the tetragrammaton. You
25:02
look at Hebrew, like the names of God, and
25:04
like Yahweh, and stuff like that. But when it
25:06
comes to like the nature of the language of
25:08
Sanskrit, do they believe there's something sort of divine
25:11
or sort of esoteric within like how it's written
25:13
or how or the origins of it? Yes.
25:17
So Hindus believe it's
25:19
a common belief in India that Sanskrit is
25:21
the language of the gods. So
25:23
the gods, they spoke in Sanskrit. And
25:26
from Sanskrit, and other languages came,
25:31
most of the Vedas, the
25:33
Sanskrit which the
25:36
Hindus, they talk, that's the
25:38
Devnagari script. It came out
25:41
from the older version
25:43
of Sanskrit. So Sanskrit is seen as
25:46
the language of the God. Yeah. But
25:49
about in terms of like a
25:52
cosmology, did you ever think anything about that?
25:54
Like Genesis one, in the beginning, God created
25:57
the heavens and the earth and did
25:59
any like comparisons. to
26:01
the Indian belief?
26:03
Yes, I like this question.
26:06
When I was reading the Puranas, I was looking for
26:08
the creation story of
26:11
Hinduism. Like in Genesis, we get
26:13
to see, God said, let
26:15
there be light and how the
26:17
creation begins. But
26:20
in Matzah Puran, it's one of the major
26:22
Puranas among all the
26:24
Puranas, we get to see the
26:28
darkness over there. When
26:31
I was reading Matzah Puran, I started to see
26:33
that in the scripture,
26:35
it says that the darkness came from the,
26:38
the darkness and the light came from the
26:41
same God. Brahma
26:43
is the creator and
26:46
there were demons created by God
26:48
and I started thinking, the Satan,
26:50
they are called in the Sanskrit
26:53
term Ashura's, you know demons. In
26:55
English, we call demons, in some
26:58
case we call Ashuras and
27:00
someone who doesn't follow God's
27:02
way. So these people, they came out of
27:05
the gods and they were not listening to
27:07
gods, to the Hindu
27:09
gods. And they used to
27:11
be more powerful than Hindu
27:13
gods during the night time.
27:16
So I started to see this difference. I mean,
27:18
how can demons be more
27:20
powerful than the gods?
27:25
I see a huge difference here. Like
27:27
I was telling you Mohini, the
27:30
female avatar of the
27:32
male God Vishnu, whom she
27:34
was trying to continuously hug.
27:37
Over there we get to see that Vishnu
27:40
changed his male form to feminine because
27:42
female form to
27:46
wean over the Ashuras, the demons.
27:49
So the God is trying
27:51
so hard to wean over the
27:53
demons. So this is like
27:56
the creation story which I started to see
27:58
in Hinduism, like I started the
28:01
demons are more powerful than
28:03
gods in certain period
28:06
in the day. So
28:09
that doesn't sound good. So
28:11
you're wrestling
28:13
through all this and what were there
28:15
any particular topics when it came to
28:17
your subjections and wrestling through this? How
28:19
long did this process take as a
28:21
whole? The
28:25
whole thing, even to this
28:27
day, I
28:30
study Hinduism and the more
28:32
I study, the more confident I become on
28:34
Christianity. My faith
28:37
on Jesus increases more because even
28:39
to this day, my dad, my
28:41
mom gave up hope on me.
28:44
It's too late, it's been eight years
28:46
now. But after
28:50
that one year, when I started
28:52
to really dive into Hinduism,
28:55
and when I came to America first, I started
28:58
to see a lot of Westerners here, so
29:00
fascinated about Hinduism. And
29:02
so that was the time which
29:05
really pushed me to study more
29:07
Hinduism. And I started
29:09
to get into debates with my own
29:11
family members from my mother's family side.
29:13
They came to my home. A
29:16
few of my family members gave me
29:18
huge books to read
29:20
about Hindu monks and how
29:23
Hinduism is the only
29:25
path. So I used to get
29:27
into debates often, asking
29:29
them what evidence do we have for Krishna
29:32
or for the Bhagavad Gita
29:34
is all about war. So
29:36
any Hindu who calls
29:39
himself Hindu believes that the war
29:41
Mahabharata, Kurukshetra, is a war which
29:44
is all about Mahabharata. That
29:46
war really happened. But do we have
29:48
any evidence? I used to get into
29:50
these debates often. It
29:53
took a year, like two or three years, I
29:55
was very deep into this, studying
29:58
overnight like till 3. o'clock
30:00
morning reading the Hindu
30:02
scriptures the Puranas and
30:05
caste system comes from Rigveda
30:07
book 10 you know people start saying
30:10
no people invented caste system you know
30:12
what does the what does the scripture
30:14
say specifically about the caste system like
30:17
chapter and verse yeah Rigveda
30:19
in the book 10 in
30:21
the mandala 10 it says that the
30:24
god Vishnu you know from his
30:26
mouth the brahmin's came so that's
30:28
why brahmin's are the highest
30:30
you know if you see a human body
30:33
the mouth is like on the top and
30:35
then from his lower little lower body part
30:38
from the shoulder
30:40
chest area from here
30:42
the the shatriya's came and
30:44
then from the thai the
30:47
the thai part the vashas
30:49
came and then from the
30:52
feet of Vishnu the shudras came
30:54
the lowermost caste so you see
30:56
it comes straight out of the
30:59
Rigveda book mandala 10 yeah comes
31:01
out and then we have Chandokya
31:03
Upanishad which mentions another lower caste
31:05
which are called Chandalas Chandokya Upanishad
31:08
book five it literally says based
31:10
on your karma your
31:12
samsara cycle depends on so you
31:14
become brahmin or shatriya or if
31:16
you have done the more horrible
31:19
things you become a worm or
31:21
snake you know some kind of like animal
31:23
like lower category
31:26
animal or you're born as a
31:28
lowermost caste Chandalas yeah uh Andrew
31:30
i'm gonna let you ask this question i
31:32
i see just your mind being blown over
31:35
there when it comes you obviously we
31:37
have the slogan on our show and
31:39
t-shirt that's popular at the abatnent shop
31:41
cultish.com but bad
31:43
theology hurts people so you're so while
31:46
Sandeep is talking about chapter and verse
31:48
about how where the caste
31:50
system originates from and just
31:53
for you andre when you look at just sort of
31:55
you know the episodes we do with daniel stephen karnie
31:57
and kind of the culture in india like Where
32:00
do you see that caste system
32:02
being taking place? What questions would
32:04
you have for Sandeep specifically about
32:06
how that plays out like
32:09
in India? How is it practically
32:11
played out? What would come to mind with a question
32:13
you'd want to ask Sandeep? Yeah,
32:16
thinking about the gospel and how God saved
32:18
your soul, how does
32:20
the gospel essentially
32:23
destroy any fundamental
32:25
thoughts on the caste system,
32:27
right? Because when Christ sets
32:29
you free, you are free
32:31
indeed. It seems like the gospel is in opposition
32:33
to any form of caste
32:36
system. What was going
32:38
on in your mind? Like you said for
32:41
a while you still said you were Hindu, but you
32:43
were going to a Christian church. When
32:46
did the gospel permeate your life so much
32:48
to where you're like, I'm a Christian, and
32:51
then your worldview shifted, your
32:53
paradigm shifted, even within thinking
32:55
about a caste system versus
32:57
the gospel. Yeah,
33:01
it was tough for me.
33:03
It was really hard. I
33:06
lost all of my friends
33:08
for sure, more than friends. You can
33:10
lose friends, but then when you start
33:13
losing your family members, that's
33:15
the most hardest thing. When
33:17
your mom and dad
33:19
start hearing from other people,
33:21
from your own family actually,
33:24
that you
33:26
both must have done some kind of wrong
33:29
thing. That's why your son
33:31
converted to Christianity. And
33:35
then after they went out
33:37
from our home, my relatives, when
33:39
me and my dad, mom, we
33:42
are sitting, they used to really
33:44
feel sad. I used to see that sad
33:47
thing in their eyes. It
33:49
was really painful for me. But
33:52
as I kept on reading the Bible,
33:54
as I kept on reading the
33:57
gospel, and seeing Jesus
34:00
his life, how
34:03
he lived on this earth and what
34:06
he did and the
34:09
evidence for his life.
34:14
That was something like I cannot deny,
34:17
I cannot be ignorant because
34:19
I was trying hard to just be
34:22
a good Hindu at the same time, just
34:24
go to church. But besides
34:26
telling my friends and everyone
34:28
that I am still a Hindu, I was
34:30
still wearing that thread, the
34:33
white Upanana thread, which the Brahmins,
34:35
every Brahmins, every priest wears that.
34:38
Do you explain visually what that is, what they
34:40
wear and what it represents? We saw that they
34:42
are wearing that at the temple yesterday, right? Yes,
34:46
absolutely. The priest has to
34:48
wear the Upanana. Upanana is
34:50
like where you
34:52
shave your hairs. You
34:54
be bald and then you have orange, like
34:58
the clothes with the priest they wear,
35:00
the orange clothing, the saffron
35:02
clothing it is called. So
35:04
in that picture, I
35:07
still have that
35:11
white thread around my body and
35:13
then every time you go before sleep or
35:15
if you are going to
35:18
the bathroom, you
35:20
chant the mantra,
35:22
the Gayatri mantra which is Om
35:25
Bhur, Bhuveshvara, Tassavitur,
35:28
all this mantra, chant.
35:32
So I was still wearing that
35:35
thread, but the truth in Christianity
35:37
really blew my mind. I used to
35:39
be awake overnight and just trying hard
35:41
to maybe just
35:45
Hindu, that Hinduism should win in
35:47
evidence. I was trying hard,
35:49
but the evidence for Christ was like
35:52
blowing my mind into the manuscript. It
35:54
is like coming after decades which is
35:56
still there in the British library.
36:00
And for the Vedas is nothing, it's like coming
36:03
up 2000 years, the first manuscript, who knows
36:05
what happened in 2000 years in
36:07
that time. They all say the Bible
36:09
was changed, what about this 2000 years, right? You
36:12
know, this huge evidence, you know,
36:14
and then the differences in the gospel, which
36:18
literally doesn't talk about caste, doesn't
36:20
talk about there
36:22
is Brahmin or there is different
36:24
caste, it says that,
36:27
you know, God so loved the world, He
36:29
gave His begotten Son, you know. Whosoever,
36:32
whosoever believes in Him
36:36
shall find eternal life, you know. And so do this,
36:38
you did this before the podcast, so you just said
36:40
John 3.16. What's
36:42
your, so what's your native language? It's
36:45
Bengali, that's what I
36:47
speak at home, but also the
36:49
most spoken language in India is
36:52
also Hindi. Okay. So yeah.
36:54
How do you say, so how do you say John 3.16 in Hindi? You
36:58
say like, Wow.
37:23
They go to eternal
37:26
life, they have eternal
37:29
life. Yeah.
37:32
Yeah. And that's like, dude, it's like,
37:35
there's something about like hearing the gospel,
37:37
like in another language, like I got
37:39
saved on the mission field, like I've
37:41
got maybe, yeah, we all,
37:43
like it's like hearing that is
37:45
always like gives me. Yeah. So
37:49
in the Bengali language, which is
37:51
also came out from Sanskrit, by the way,
37:54
Sanskrit is the mother language. Yeah. Hindi,
37:57
Bengali, Marathi, Telugu, all
38:00
of these other Indian
38:02
languages. There is no official language in
38:04
India. There are many languages. You go
38:07
west, there is Marathi. You go southern
38:09
part of India, they speak Telugu. You
38:11
go east, they speak Bengali. A lot
38:13
of people, millions of people. It
38:15
is the fifth most spoken language on
38:18
earth. So in Bengali,
38:20
it is called Johan, Thine Sholo.
38:24
That is how you say John 3.16. My mother
38:26
told me Johan Thine Sholo. So
38:31
when you said Masi, that part of what you read,
38:33
what word is that? Yeshu
38:35
Masi. Yeshu Masi is the Hindi
38:38
term for Jesus Christ. I
38:40
had a feeling that was the case. I think I have heard, yeah,
38:42
I think I have heard Daniel, Stephen
38:45
Kearney, brother Daniel who has been on
38:48
the podcast before and I have seen videos of him doing
38:50
evangelism. I see him say that word a lot. So
38:53
I figured I put two and two together that maybe that is what
38:55
you are referring to. For
38:57
Muslims they are called Isa. Yeshu Masi. What
39:05
was it like for you
39:07
once God saved your soul
39:09
coming from a caste society?
39:12
Was there a point at time when
39:14
you looked at someone in a lower caste and you
39:16
were like, man, I am just like them.
39:20
You said when you were younger you would boast in
39:23
a sense that you were the highest class but when
39:25
the gospel saves you, when God saves you, were
39:28
you looking at people in lower class now and
39:30
you are being like, my heart breaks for them
39:32
and I want them to know Jesus and I
39:34
am just like them, a sinner condemned before God
39:37
without Christ? Yeah,
39:42
after 2015, after
39:44
like two, three years I would say I was
39:46
not baptized until 2018. So
39:49
I was really struggling with
39:51
a lot of things. So it didn't just
39:54
happen overnight, 15, 16, that's
39:58
one year, 17 and 18. after
40:00
like three years I was baptized. So
40:04
when I was baptized, like around 17 I
40:06
would say before baptism
40:09
also, things started
40:11
changing my worldview, the way I
40:13
used to think. I opened my
40:18
Upanana, the white thread which I used to
40:21
wear, the Brahmins, that's the symbol. You
40:24
show that on road or on street
40:27
people know that you are your Brahmin
40:29
caste. So I opened that, I kept
40:32
somewhere in my house and my
40:34
father was really unhappy about that, because
40:37
he still wears that. He wears that Brahmin
40:40
the priestly white thread. So
40:44
I'm sure he was not
40:46
happy so I kept that and
40:50
everything started to change and even
40:52
my neighbor, who was my neighbor, I
40:54
touched their feet, they once called me,
40:56
I still remember this, they called me
40:59
to their house and trying to wean
41:01
over me for Hinduism again. They
41:03
called my mom and they was like,
41:06
you know, Sandeep, this is
41:09
what you are doing is not good. These
41:12
Christians have fooled you. But
41:15
I was like, I didn't meet any missionary
41:17
or anyone. So I started
41:19
asking them questions, then answer me, what's
41:22
the evidence for your faith? They
41:24
have nothing out of just emotions
41:26
and feelings. So
41:29
yeah, my worldview started to shift entirely
41:31
like 180 degrees. Everything
41:35
is changing in
41:37
your belief system. You see everyone
41:39
as made in the equal image
41:42
of God, there's
41:44
no differences. I
41:46
think that's God's
41:48
worldview. Yeah, no
41:51
man, that's awesome. And then you had a period
41:53
where you were there but
41:55
eventually, when did you move here to the United States?
41:58
I came first in 2017. I
42:01
was here for like six, seven
42:03
months. Then I went
42:05
back to India. Then
42:08
again I came last year. So
42:11
yeah. And you primarily lived on the East
42:13
Coast? Yeah, East Coast mostly. What
42:15
made you come over here? I
42:18
came over here because
42:20
of like a job
42:22
internship. So
42:25
it's an internship and then I'm going to
42:27
a school here also specializing
42:30
on language. So
42:33
yeah. Okay, so a lot of
42:35
etymology, ancient languages, stuff like that. Yeah. Awesome.
42:39
Yeah. And so like what did you notice
42:41
here? And we'll go into this in another episode as well too. What
42:44
was like the stark differences between like the West
42:46
from East to West? When you
42:48
look at just sort of, it was like the New York,
42:50
like New Jersey area. And this is what year would have
42:52
been? This would have been like 2016 or
42:54
2015? Yeah.
42:58
But what was the contrast between like India and the West
43:00
just from like your first impressions? What did you notice the
43:02
difference of? When I came here for 17, I was in
43:04
New Mexico that time
43:06
for just one month. So
43:16
I saw like the freedom. The
43:18
freedom here is really different. Christians
43:22
in India are not given
43:25
equal rights. You know, they're
43:28
seen as kind of a lower caste. You don't
43:30
have your rights over there. I
43:34
remember, you know, at my workplace, I
43:36
wanted a holiday on Christmas and
43:38
I said, I'm the only Christian in this workplace,
43:41
you know, and everyone is a Hindu. So I
43:43
just need one day off. And
43:45
I still remember my manager was like, we
43:47
are not giving you off. And probably he
43:49
was like, you know, he
43:52
knew my name Sandeep. So it's a
43:54
Hindu name. And then the
43:56
last name is Agasti. That's the, you know,
43:58
the last name always shows. which
44:00
caste you are from by the way. So
44:03
yeah my name is Sandip. Sandip can be
44:05
a lower caste name also but my last
44:07
name which is your father's you know your
44:10
connection your family connection Agasti that's
44:13
the Kannakubj Brahmins you know from
44:15
the UP Uttar Pradesh from the
44:17
Kanpur area so that's a huge
44:19
thing so he didn't give me
44:22
holiday he was like you can
44:24
go to anyone but we are not giving you holiday and
44:26
I was the only Christian in that organization
44:29
in that workplace so when
44:31
I came to the west I see Hindus having
44:33
so much of freedom and that's a good thing
44:35
you know freedom is always good you know you
44:38
have freedom to worship whatever you want in Hare
44:40
Krishna as we see I go to
44:42
you know Hare Krishna Brooklyn
44:44
and all of these places in Times
44:46
Square they dance around all over the
44:48
street and chanting Hare Krishna Hare Krishna
44:50
Krishna Krishna you know all of this
44:53
chant and no one goes to them
44:55
and you know asks any question or
44:57
throws anything but if when
44:59
a Christian is preaching the gospel in
45:01
a Indian market it's
45:03
a whole different worldview you know that's
45:05
why India ranks 10th in the most
45:07
persecuted country in the world for Christians
45:10
you know you will
45:12
get stuff thrown at you and
45:14
if you really talk about a
45:16
little bit of Hindu gods then
45:18
it's a disaster I mean then
45:20
you know when I was
45:22
running my page I remember when I first
45:24
opened my page I kept it hidden from
45:26
many Indian
45:29
places like Uttar Pradesh I selected you
45:31
know on Facebook you can
45:33
select on settings you
45:35
can hide your page from some places because
45:37
because I was like you know I studied
45:39
all of this for this like three four
45:41
years you know I'm doing this and oh
45:43
you know night and day
45:46
I'm being I'm awake till three
45:48
o'clock sometime sleepless night
45:50
I'm just you know studying
45:52
this Hindu scriptures Puranas the Vedas
45:54
the Upanishads and then the
45:56
Bible and then so I'm really talking about the
45:59
Hindu gods you know this was the Shiva deed
46:01
or Krishna you know stealing you
46:03
know sleeping with the woman whom
46:05
he healed Kupja was the woman whom Krishna
46:07
healed and he slept with that woman you
46:09
know that's the God you see and so
46:11
I see Jesus you know how he is
46:13
treating woman I mean a huge
46:16
not literally huge difference yeah I was
46:18
I'm writing this on my page and
46:20
I'm sitting I'm starting to
46:22
get many comments so I had to hide
46:25
my page because you don't get some freedom
46:27
you know so this
46:29
is the difference which I saw when
46:31
I came to the US first the
46:33
freedom of worship yeah
46:36
I enter what questions you have what's on your mind
46:40
man it's a you went through a
46:43
lot and you went through so much
46:45
stuff I'm just thankful that the Lord
46:47
has saved your soul he has
46:49
you here now and trying
46:51
to help people understand
46:54
the differences between Hinduism
46:56
and Christianity what
46:59
do you think is the number one main
47:02
difference between Hinduism
47:04
and Christianity what would you want
47:06
a Hindu person to first consider
47:09
when thinking about the differences between Hinduism
47:11
and Christianity the
47:13
most important the first thing I
47:16
would say what I we which I had
47:18
questions of the most two important question
47:20
which every Hindu should
47:23
think is you just
47:25
compare the lives of Shiva
47:27
and Krishna or say
47:29
Vishnu with Jesus
47:32
forget everything what church did what British
47:34
did you know a lot of Hindus
47:36
they struggle with this thing they think
47:38
okay this is what Christianity is you
47:41
know but you forget all
47:43
of this you just study the life
47:45
of Jesus from the Bible and study
47:47
the life of Shiva from Shri Puran
47:49
and you see the huge difference you
47:51
know I mean Jesus was never naked
47:53
roaming around in a forest and you
47:55
know women trying to hug him you
47:57
know other wives actually they were the
47:59
wives of his disciples,
48:01
Shiva's disciples, who followed Shiva
48:03
and then they are cursing
48:05
Shiva and his phallus
48:08
falls down on ground. You see these
48:10
stories are like horrible. There's so much
48:12
of difference is Krishna's life if you
48:14
see. I mean
48:18
he stealing the
48:20
clothes of women, when they're taking
48:23
bath in the river and telling them he have
48:26
to come outside, come out from
48:28
the river raising their hands up. The women
48:30
are saying no we are naked. So they
48:32
were trying to cover their bodies. Shiva
48:36
and Krishna are trying to make
48:39
fun out of that. He was with
48:41
his friends and we get the story
48:44
in Bhagavata Puran. Anyone who reads it,
48:46
you get the story there. Krishna is
48:48
with his friends and they
48:50
are laughing about the whole scenario.
48:53
Then he's sleeping with Kubja, the
48:56
hunchback woman whom Krishna
48:58
healed and he went
49:00
to her house and
49:03
she wanted to sleep with Krishna and
49:05
Krishna slept with this woman. You know
49:07
all of these different Jesus you don't
49:09
see that. Then the second thing is look
49:12
at the evidence for Christianity and Hinduism.
49:14
Look at what evidence does
49:17
Hinduism have. For example the
49:19
war Kurukshetra. Is there any
49:22
evidence for that war? Is
49:24
there any evidence that Krishna existed? Is there any
49:27
writing from even say like
49:30
2000 years ago? Is there any writing
49:32
where it says that the
49:34
oldest evidence that we have for
49:36
Hinduism is second or third century
49:39
BC? That's it. That's
49:41
Hinduism. It's over. There's
49:43
nothing before that. For
49:46
David's life, you know King David, we
49:48
have like a stone
49:50
which has his name in
49:52
a huge, huge evidence for the Old
49:54
Testament and for
49:57
Christianity papyrus we have for New
49:59
Testaments. Yeah. So
50:01
another question too as we kind of wrap up and
50:03
what an amazing story. I feel like we've still barely
50:05
scratched the surface as far as what we're going to
50:08
get into. And now, you
50:10
know, you're here, you're over on the
50:12
East Coast. Personally, I
50:14
believe that the
50:16
West is kind of in
50:18
complete freefall from any of
50:21
its historical Judeo-Christian values
50:23
and foundations into neo-paganism. The
50:25
resurgence of paganism is coming
50:28
about the New Age, the
50:30
occult, and you see it with
50:33
all sorts of different cultures, whether
50:35
it's African occultism, the
50:38
spirituality, the occultism, this practice in India through
50:40
the gurus, through yoga, through the different trans
50:42
and general meditations, you see that in
50:45
Nordic spirituality. Like all
50:49
the ancient beliefs, they're all
50:51
resurfacing and regurgitating. Have
50:53
you noticed just with being in New Jersey and kind
50:55
of in that area what is kind of a blue
50:57
state? What areas have you
51:00
seen kind of like the worldview implications? We
51:02
talk about worldviews have consequences. Are
51:04
there times where you see something here like in
51:06
your area where you're like, wait a minute, I
51:08
see that. That reminds me of
51:11
India and maybe that's the implication of like worldview.
51:14
What comes to mind about that? Yeah, I would
51:16
like to share this thing. I
51:19
now live in New Jersey and New
51:21
Jersey has the highest population
51:23
for Indians. New Jersey has
51:26
like 3% I think Indians. That's
51:30
a survey done like few years ago. So now maybe
51:32
4%. So mostly
51:35
Indians you'll find in New Jersey. Like
51:39
in India, if you walk down the
51:41
street in India, you will see dirt
51:43
everywhere. You'll see like it's not clean
51:46
and like a third world country. And
51:52
you get to see that in some parts of New
51:54
Jersey where I come from, Indian street,
51:57
there is a street which is named
51:59
like Indian street. because everything over there
52:01
is like Indian shops and chewing
52:04
tobacco. That's
52:06
like kind of something
52:09
which Hindus they do, like
52:12
you know besides smoking or
52:15
drinking YouTube tobacco. So
52:18
yeah I was shocked when I came
52:20
to New Jersey first. I started to
52:23
see these shops selling like all these
52:25
Indian products, like Indian style
52:27
things. And
52:29
I see that it's getting inside
52:32
the West also. People have soft
52:34
corner for Hinduism. And
52:36
I remember I will share this
52:38
one little thing. I was coming
52:40
with a Hindu. This guy
52:42
I know he's a Hindu. He's from the southern part
52:45
of India. And then we
52:47
are about to enter the metro station.
52:49
And you have a metro card. You
52:51
put your card inside and
52:53
then you get inside. And so
52:55
this guy is like hey let's just
52:57
jump over the metro thing. You know
53:00
come on man. Our train is coming.
53:02
I was like yeah Bubba you have
53:04
to pay right. You should pay. You
53:06
don't take it free right. If
53:08
you pay. So the whole
53:11
world view you know like there's
53:13
like who gonna judge you know,
53:15
who is the ultimate judge. Even
53:17
the gods were under judgment. Anyway,
53:19
you're gonna pay anyway. So
53:22
there's no like there's
53:25
nothing like a fear. You know it's
53:27
like you do whatever you feel like you know my
53:30
worldview change when I accepted Christ. You
53:32
know you do the right things.
53:34
You don't take anything for just granted. Or
53:37
you don't steal. You
53:40
don't take free stuff.
53:42
You work with your hands. You
53:44
know in India you'll see lower caste
53:46
people. They are struggling with their daily life.
53:48
They work for 10 12 hours on the
53:50
field and they paid like $2 $3 for
53:52
the entire day. It's
53:55
really sad and that's Hinduism. That's
53:57
what Hinduism gave to India. That's
54:00
the gift from Hinduism. Yeah. What's
54:03
also interesting is we kind of wrap up this part.
54:05
We're going to be talking a lot more in further
54:07
episodes, another content we're doing here, just
54:10
about the new age practices from east
54:12
to west. And there's a lot of different variables in play. And
54:14
Andrew, you can let me know what you think here, is
54:17
that there's a huge distinction between
54:19
sacred animals and in this case
54:22
in Hinduism, you mentioned that if you're driving somewhere
54:24
in India, if you hit a person, you kill
54:26
them, you might go to jail. Lord
54:29
forbid you are driving somewhere and you
54:31
hit a cow and kill a cow in a public
54:34
area. You're pretty much in... You're
54:37
pretty much in... You're done for. Yeah, like
54:39
you hit that cow. Yeah, but you see
54:41
a certain zeitgeist in Spirit of the Age
54:43
2 here in the west now where you
54:45
have all these certain people that are advocating
54:48
against factory farming and animal rights and those
54:50
sorts of things. And yeah, there's sentiments where
54:52
you want to treat animals
54:54
with dignity. I think there's an ethic behind
54:56
that. But specifically, while
54:59
people speak out against animal cruelty, they will look
55:01
the other way and be silent when it comes
55:03
to abortion and like the murder of babies. You
55:06
look at like PETA when they talk about that.
55:08
So there's levels almost in which there's
55:10
adherence towards the sacredness of animals
55:13
versus the imago dei, like us being image
55:15
of God. And you talked about the two.
55:17
Like when you understand, when you embrace the
55:19
gospel, embrace Christ as your Lord and Savior
55:21
that you saw this distinction where there's no
55:24
longer this caste system, but
55:26
it specifically is people that
55:28
are made in the image of God that are equal.
55:31
But now it's almost no less. You're seeing
55:33
almost this weird distinctions between dignity
55:35
between animals and human beings, almost similar
55:37
to India. What do you think about
55:39
that? A lot
55:41
of that things are creeping into
55:43
the west. You know, like I
55:46
was telling you, you hit a
55:48
cow, you're in problem, big problem.
55:50
If you get like, if
55:52
you, if you're driving, you hit a cow,
55:54
if someone catches you because you know cows
55:56
are huge in shape, right? So your car
55:58
will be. I
56:01
don't know what will be your cards
56:03
condition after hitting a huge cow. So
56:05
for sure you have to stand and
56:07
if people catches you, you are like
56:09
literally dead. They will lynch you to
56:11
death. But if
56:13
you hit a person, maybe hardly what
56:15
will happen is corpse will come and
56:17
they will take you to prison. Maybe
56:19
the cows are seen as like next
56:21
to God actually. There are literally scriptures
56:23
which talks about cows are
56:26
next to God. And that's why
56:28
when I first ate beef
56:31
burger, we don't
56:33
grow up eating these things. In India, McDonald's
56:35
or KFC if you go, you don't see
56:37
beef burgers, all chicken. Everything
56:40
is chicken. So like
56:43
how long, like four or five years ago I called
56:45
up my dad and I was like
56:47
hey, I just have to tell you something.
56:51
And he is already, you know, my
56:54
life has changed and my family is
56:56
already into so much of mess and
56:58
all these family members coming to a
57:00
house questioning my family. So I called
57:02
up my dad, it was
57:04
afternoon, I told him, so
57:06
I am tasting beef for the first time. What
57:09
do you think? I was like, I shouldn't
57:11
have called him maybe. He
57:14
was like, I felt him like
57:16
he was just numb. He couldn't speak anything.
57:19
He was like, what are you doing? You know, I was
57:21
even, I was living at this
57:23
place and I told this one guy I
57:25
tasted beef for the first time and he
57:27
like tried to kick me, you know. Because
57:30
he is Hindu, he is like, this is, you
57:32
can't do this thing. This is like, in
57:36
Uttar Pradesh, in a state like Uttar Pradesh,
57:38
if you tell someone, a Hindu, I just
57:40
tasted beef for the first time, you
57:43
will be in problem. Like your life, maybe
57:46
you will be beaten up badly, you will
57:48
die, something like that would happen, brutally
57:50
beaten. So he was not happy.
57:52
So a lot
57:54
of that thing is going in the West, like there
57:57
is a trend where people think that
57:59
you know, going vegan, you know. is
58:01
like a stylish, it's a modern trend,
58:03
it's something very cool you know, I'm
58:06
a vegan you know, but
58:08
here's even medical if you see you
58:10
know what you get from a meat
58:13
you don't get that same thing
58:15
the protein you know the diet
58:17
you know the level of calories
58:19
and all you don't get
58:22
those things in from
58:24
plant-based thing you know even Jesus
58:26
ate fish right yeah I mean
58:29
so this is why even
58:31
cows are seen as sacred that
58:34
doesn't come from the earliest Hindu
58:36
texts the earliest books in Hinduism
58:38
are the Vedas like I was
58:40
telling before in the Vedas
58:42
cows made is like the most
58:45
important thing to eat you know
58:47
like really in Manusmriti in Manusmriti
58:49
is one of the Hindu scripture
58:52
where Manu the writer
58:54
you know the Manu is saying that whoever
58:56
doesn't eat meat he would
58:58
be born like some 20
59:01
times you know as a caste but in
59:03
a particular caste so you have to eat
59:05
meat he is getting angry you know Manu
59:07
over there we have we
59:10
have Satapat Brahmana it's a
59:13
commentary on a Veda
59:16
the Yajur Veda you know this
59:18
Rig Veda this Yajur
59:20
Samma Tharva it's a commentary it's
59:22
a book written by Yajana Valkhi
59:24
he was a sage he was
59:27
a Hindu
59:29
guru ancient Hindu guru again we have
59:31
no evidence anything for all of
59:33
this but at the book says
59:35
in Satapat Brahmana over there it says that
59:39
you have to eat
59:41
the cow meat you know or
59:43
the ox meat you know the
59:45
gods even chose the cows meat
59:49
compared to the other meats so
59:51
they really like you know all the
59:53
best book I would say anyone to buy
59:56
the meat the meat of the holy
59:58
cow written by and Ja is
1:00:00
a Hindu no no westerner
1:00:03
guy okay this book has been
1:00:05
banned in many places in India
1:00:08
this book there
1:00:10
was a court case
1:00:12
you know from a conservative Hindu state
1:00:14
you know they took defiled
1:00:16
a case against this author and
1:00:18
he was threatened so
1:00:21
he had you know bodyguards around him
1:00:24
when he published this book you know so
1:00:27
in this book like there are so
1:00:29
many verses the book is full of
1:00:31
the verses specifically from
1:00:33
the Vedas which literally talks about
1:00:37
how cow meat was eaten you
1:00:39
know like in ancient India we
1:00:41
in Indus Valley civilization we
1:00:43
find the bones of cow bones
1:00:46
ox bones so so
1:00:48
it's just Hinduism has developed over time
1:00:50
and it's a cool trend which is
1:00:52
also happening in
1:00:54
the West you know you know Hinduism is
1:00:56
like in the temple you remember the guy
1:00:58
said that we don't eat
1:01:00
meat yeah have you read have you
1:01:03
read the Manus Meti and you have
1:01:05
to eat Manus saying if
1:01:07
you don't eat it will be because yeah so
1:01:09
in other words there's a lot of double minding
1:01:12
this where it's saying one thing but do the
1:01:14
other and right now it's like well who
1:01:16
cares we can't really have a conversation even though
1:01:19
we have sources that actually back up that
1:01:21
actually say something very different than what
1:01:24
the whole congenital consensus is of Hinduism
1:01:26
specifically like not eating cows here
1:01:29
is one more thing I'd say like
1:01:32
here's my one thing if you
1:01:34
believe something you have to research you have
1:01:36
to provide facts you have to provide evidence
1:01:38
when I was asking my dad when
1:01:41
I was struggling you know I was still a Hindu I
1:01:44
was still having my Upana another thread
1:01:46
on me I used to ask people
1:01:48
okay what is the evidence for
1:01:50
Krishna's life is nothing none there's
1:01:53
no nothing no paper nothing
1:01:55
so why would I believe that he
1:01:57
existed like he's you the
1:02:00
oldest. If you type on Google it is like
1:02:02
a common belief. Hinduism is the oldest. What
1:02:04
makes you say that? So here is
1:02:06
one thing I want to say, people who
1:02:09
think cow is holy, a lot of Hare
1:02:11
Kṛṣṇas by the way, they see cows next
1:02:13
to God, they bow. I used to bow
1:02:15
in front of cow when I was a
1:02:17
Hindu. My grandmother still to this very day,
1:02:19
he feeds the cow like he is feeding
1:02:21
a God and she bows down.
1:02:23
So India in 2016, around 16 or 15 if
1:02:26
I am not
1:02:30
mistaken, India was the
1:02:32
largest exporter of cow
1:02:34
made. A lot
1:02:37
of people if you just search you will
1:02:39
find in 2015 or 2016 around that year,
1:02:42
India was the largest and today if
1:02:45
you type largest exporter of
1:02:47
beef, I think India ranks within
1:02:49
sixth or fifth number
1:02:51
of countries like within the
1:02:53
fifth rank or sixth rank if I am
1:02:55
not wrong. Interesting. Yeah. Wow, yeah. India was
1:02:57
the global largest beef exporter in 2015. 15,
1:03:00
there you go, 15. That is crazy. And
1:03:05
they are making a, so they are
1:03:07
probably making a huge amount of money
1:03:09
off of that. Well meanwhile you have
1:03:11
got people that will literally starve themselves
1:03:13
to death by an ideology because they
1:03:15
can't dare eat or replenish themselves, let's
1:03:17
say you know go into a vicious karmic
1:03:20
cycle but you have a whole government that
1:03:22
is governed in many ways
1:03:24
by parts with the laws of Indians in a sense of
1:03:26
theocracy where it is like oh it is
1:03:29
rules for thee but not for me. It also kind of
1:03:31
reminds me if you think about like remember like COVID all
1:03:33
the times where you have like leaders who are talking about
1:03:35
how you have to wear a mask here and have a
1:03:37
mask there, how many times people got busted. Like
1:03:39
the governor of California remember he got busted I
1:03:41
think he was, he had shut down all the
1:03:43
restaurants and like thrown babies who would be lost
1:03:45
their businesses and there is a video of him like
1:03:47
someone caught a video of him like with a news
1:03:50
some without a mask and they are like bunched together.
1:03:52
So it is kind of like oh let's do one thing less but
1:03:55
now we are doing the other. the
1:04:01
most conservative Hindu state. You
1:04:03
see the hypocrisy.
1:04:05
People just believe what they want to
1:04:07
believe. There is no fact, no evidence,
1:04:09
it is my emotions and feelings. That
1:04:12
is what Hinduism is. You just believe. That
1:04:14
is it. And also, as we are up
1:04:16
here, and I can't wait for you all to listen to the
1:04:18
other content that we have here. And
1:04:21
Andrew, you think about it in Colossians, it says, Wherefore
1:04:23
if you die with Christ to the elementary principles
1:04:26
of the world, do not submit yourself to certain
1:04:28
decrees as do not handle, do not taste, do
1:04:30
not touch, as if there are
1:04:32
certain foods, but everything is to be received with
1:04:34
thanksgiving. So there is a plethora of
1:04:36
Christians who probably have a lot of different opinions about
1:04:39
different diets, whether it is
1:04:41
like vegan, animal based, carnivore, all that
1:04:43
sort of stuff. And in reality, this
1:04:45
is God's world. And people make a
1:04:47
huge emphasis on one food over the
1:04:50
other. And in this case, you see
1:04:52
just so much inconsistency. You
1:04:54
have even like within the worldview, like the
1:04:56
inconsistency is like the outpouring, where
1:04:58
it's like a one hand, they're exporting beef, but then saying
1:05:00
you can't cows are still sacred in the same way. It's
1:05:03
like as you're talking about earlier, when you're trying, when you're
1:05:05
trying to go up the karmic cycle, even with you being
1:05:07
in the top calf
1:05:09
system, you're trying to get off
1:05:11
your vicious karmic cycle
1:05:13
by adhering to God's like
1:05:16
Shiva, Kali, all these other ones
1:05:18
in the system. And when they're attached to karma too, and
1:05:20
you do, do you remember like when we're at the temple,
1:05:22
right? So if any of you were listening in, I asked
1:05:24
Sandeep and I two days ago, we went and visited a
1:05:27
Hindu temple here in Arizona. And I was
1:05:29
talking to them, I said, well, what happens if I don't become
1:05:31
a Hindu, like I'm going to probably regress and become an animal.
1:05:33
And it's like, yeah, but eventually, you know,
1:05:35
you'll have a chance to become a cow. And
1:05:37
well, not just a cow, you
1:05:40
have to become a cow that is in
1:05:42
proximity to a Hindu
1:05:44
temple where they're here, you're hearing, you have
1:05:46
to be in the presence of like the Hare Krishna
1:05:48
mantra. So if that happens, then you
1:05:50
have a chance to then upgrade
1:05:53
into being like a human, no
1:05:56
guarantee of what calf system you'll end up, you know, how
1:05:58
many lives will take to get there. And
1:06:00
I'm just like, man, what, how
1:06:02
can you just leave in a system like
1:06:04
that? You know, and so it just, praise
1:06:07
the Lord, man, it's such a great opportunity.
1:06:09
This is a huge encouragement. Yeah,
1:06:12
do you have any last kind of thoughts as we wrap
1:06:14
up here? We're going to be going into the New Age
1:06:16
practices, aspects of the West in
1:06:18
regards to our kind of, this is also going
1:06:20
to be a continuation of our serious gods of
1:06:22
the New Age. But do you have any
1:06:24
kind of last thoughts in this segment as we wrap up here? Yeah,
1:06:27
the last one thing which I want to
1:06:29
say on what we talk
1:06:31
about is always look for the evidence,
1:06:33
no matter where it is leading you. When
1:06:37
I was doing my study
1:06:39
overnight, you know, like
1:06:42
I have to wake up next morning,
1:06:44
go to college maybe, it's eight o'clock,
1:06:46
but I was like awake till six
1:06:49
o'clock reading the scriptures, Hindu scriptures, trying
1:06:51
hard that no Hinduism should intervene, you
1:06:53
know, it's not that weak, come on,
1:06:56
no, no, it can't be this weak.
1:06:59
It's weak as like, what will I
1:07:01
say, it's so weak, there's no evidence.
1:07:03
So look for the evidence, not what
1:07:06
your mom or your dad or your
1:07:08
grandmother, grandfather told you. My whole, we
1:07:11
are Brahmins. I mean, my
1:07:14
mother's side, we're all priests, even
1:07:16
to this day, they are priests,
1:07:18
big, the whole city comes to
1:07:20
their place, you know, their
1:07:22
house for blessings and all, but
1:07:24
I'm the only Christian in my family. I
1:07:26
mean, it was not easy for me, a
1:07:28
journey of eight years. So
1:07:31
yeah, look for the evidence, no matter
1:07:33
you're alone. Excellent. Well,
1:07:35
I appreciate you all for listening in to
1:07:37
the second part of this segment. And definitely,
1:07:40
if you want a good support, Koldish and
1:07:42
the ministry, you can do that by the
1:07:44
couple of different ways you can join Koldish All Access.
1:07:46
We're going to have some additional content with Sandeep. You
1:07:49
can also go to, if you want to support us
1:07:51
financially, you can go to the koldishall.com. You can support
1:07:54
us financially or if you want to get all access
1:07:56
content, you can support us there. Go
1:07:58
to koldishall.com. access.com or to
1:08:01
links in our description. You can
1:08:03
definitely check that out. All that being said, we
1:08:05
will talk to you all in the next segment
1:08:07
where we look further into the gods
1:08:11
of the new age and we look at the specific
1:08:13
practices of Hinduism in the
1:08:15
new age in light of the
1:08:17
Hindu scriptures. It's going to be very eye opening. We'll
1:08:19
talk to you all in the next segment. Hey
1:08:22
guys, welcome to our six part series on Hinduism.
1:08:24
I know it's a lot of episodes and if
1:08:26
you don't want to wait week after week in
1:08:28
order to finish the series, you can go to
1:08:31
cultish all access today, become an all access member
1:08:33
and you can binge the rest of the episodes
1:08:36
right now. We'll be doing that with all of
1:08:38
the series coming up in the future. So go
1:08:40
to cultish all access today, become an all access
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member and you'll get that early release of our
1:08:44
content. Take it easy guys.
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