Reorienting orientalism and holistic understanding of human life

• UG102.
• Engaging in humanities in the digital age requires liberating one's perspective from the materialistically oriented popular agenda dominating contemporary academia, and adopting a universal holistic perspective based in consciousness. To universalize knowledge requires re-orienting to establish the foundation of knowledge in the expanded consciousness of the knower, and to protect the humanities from the political agendas of dialectical materialism and religious fundamentalism, to rescue valuable knowledge from the oblivion of obsolescence by facilitating its transition to the digital medium, to harness the technologies of the digital medium to reveal new insights and more progress, and to guide technological development. This course clarifies the need to reorient one's perspective from fragmented materialism to holistic consciousness, and to reorient research towards fundamental rather than secondary issues.
• Instructor: Peter M. Scharf, Tanuja P. Ajotikar, Ph.D., and Shankar P. Adluri, M.D., D.N.B., M.Phil..
• Schedule: 17 September – 17 December.
• Course meeting times: Sunday 9:00-11:00am U.S. Central Time.
• Course fee: $1,500; ₹10,000 for residents of India.
• Register.
• Register (residents of India).
• Course materials:
  • Nader, Tony. 2021. “One unbounded ocean of consciousness: simple answers to the big questions in life.” Penguin Random House. URL https://www.drtonynader.com/one-unbounded-ocean-of-consciousness/.
  • Scharf, Peter M. 2020. “Creation mythology and enlightenment in Sanskrit literature.” Journal of Indian Philosophy 48.4: 751--766. DOI 10.1007/s10781-020-09437-y. URL https://rdcu.be/b6eh9.
  • Scharf, Peter M. 2020. “Determining the ancient Vedic conception of speech by samanvaya of hymns of the R̥gveda.” Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute 97, edited by Shreenand Bapat and Shilpa Sumant, pp. 150–185. Paper presented at the Seminar on the Vedic Philosophy of Language, Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 9 August 2019, Pune.
  • Additional readings to be announced.

Lecture	Topic
1	Consciousness versus materialism
2	Fundamental research versus secondary research
3	Reorienting humanities
4	Creation mythology and enlightenment
5	Vedic philosophy of language
6	Opening one's own awareness to the field of unbounded consciousness
7	Adjusting one's routines to be in accord with nature