This will do

Religion: a means of integral liberation (moksha) through dharma sadhanas.For Rev Fr Cyriac Kanichari CMIby Desmond M Coutinho
The course distinguished between the artful particulars of Faith and the general call of Religion. Even moderate Hindus comfortable in the secular world would hesitate to admit that they were following the dharma sadhanas due to the backwash against modernity which in India occasionally splashes into the widespread use of gang rape, selective murder and state-wide genocide as an instrument to encourage religious conversion.
The example of Nicholas of Cusa is relevant. He began his legal career as a member of the Conciliar Party at the Council of Basel. The Conciliar movement was democratic, God working from within rather than from on High. Cusa defended it because he wanted a more just world. He believed in Religion that derived from God's call in the human heart applied equally to all although better interpreted by the more intelligent. But in order to preserve this vision Cusa switched sides and supported the minority party of the Pope. In the quattrocentro the striving for independence from authority backed by the majority was becoming an ugly ochlocracy with various Dictators of the common will vying with each other to form a new papacy. Today in order to preserve the spiritual insights of the dharma sadhanas it may be necessary to repudiate entirely both the terminology, culture and heritage to which it intrinsically belongs.
The Dharma Sadhanas are primarily techniques for individual liberation via a guru-Brahmachari mediation, they were not designed for a people directly and only indirectly designated to oppress a non-people of the Shudra, Dalits and Tribals. From at least the Manusmrti these people were not allowed to attend any religious practices. The purana stories offered to proclaim the inner teachings granted to select Brahmins to the people of God offer to clear examples of how the rest of us should be kept in our place. Arjuna in the Mahabharat comes across a Tribal Archer who has more talent and ability. In order to maintain his paramouncy in archery the Tribal is ordered to cut off his thumb. In a later Purana Krsn in order to bring back to life his Guru’s son finds a Dalit who had been practising Dharma Sadhanas illicitly, once he put him to death the natural order is restored and the Guru’s son returns to life.
Since Religion describes relationship between God and God’s people, Dharma Sadhanas more properly can be deemed a form of personal devotion or spirituality and one similar to a Sprituality of Dutch Boer South Africa or regrettably modern Zionism in Israel, the raising up of an Invidual at the expense of the People of God.
Indeed it was Western Orientalism that provided India with a sense of History. History belongs to a people and Indians are only now becoming a people, Indian legends and myths refer to an ancient time when they were a people but until the British came and created an Indian Empire there is no evidence to suggest any truth in this. The number of languages, food styles, religious practices and mini-cultures within India also belie any beliefs in a Pan-Indian nation. Aside from one noted Tamil Historian of the twelfth century India has produced only purana and Itihasa. As a first requirement for genuine Religious as opposed to personal spiritual Liberation there needs must be a sense of History.Judaism offers this in the story of the Exodus, which Christianity took as transformed in the Paschal Mystery and prefigured in the sacrifice of Abel. If we seek modern Indian Scripture which takes up this typos we must look for prophets among Indian Subaltern Theologians, Poets, Politicians and rabble rowsers.
The second requirement of Religious experience is Liturgy, a prayer of a community as opposed to personal mystagogical practices. The sadhanas may be performed in a hall but essentially they are private practices for self-development. A possible response is that ultimately these two forms merge in Moksha. The aphorisms of Mahayana and Hiniyana Buddhism, I shall not enter Nirbana until every blade of grass has so entered, and I shall enter Nirbana to lessen the burden of unliberated souls in the World are ultimately similar. The Sadhanas remain by their own standards the quest of men of Genius for answers, for meaning and for peace. Although this does not deny God’s free and graceful response to this searching Religious experience is always a communication always twofold. A corrollary critique can be made against Christianity. If God alone makes the request and people respond not to that call but one of their own making Christianity ceases to be a Religion.
Prescinding these opening comments there are commonalities to all true Religion in the techniques of Dharma Sadhanas. Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism have all taken up some of the eightfold yoga of Pantajali, his Yamas form the underpinning of all these faiths especially Ahimsa, Satya, Asteya, Aparigraha and Brahmacharya. Indeed with Ghandhi-ji both a communal aspect of these personal devotions emerge in Gram Swaraj, and a negative side in his title of Dalit Drohi, the man responsible for the maintenance of Varnashrama in India, at least according to the poor in their own words, from his caste-centred politics during the 1930s especially in the betrayal of the Poor at the Poona Conference.The Children of the Covenant from East Syriac Tradition do emulate many of the techniques of the Sadhanas except their place is within the community not above it. This early Syriac movement stressed personal ascetism, purity and self-discipline Neither do the children of Qyame derive from a caste except where Indian culture prevailed. They could live in families, communities or in the desert. The Ihidaya monks are closer to the elitist model of Hindutva and the Modern Christian Church but these only appear to give sway to the invincible illusion of Inviduality. For a monk in this tradition is like Maya a sign of contradiction, only by leaving the hustle and bustle and in finding stillness can they rediscover the essential true connection in God with all.
On an interesting tangent, although the analogy of St Thomas principle of Individuation is attractive when considering the reality and unreality of Maya, unreality as an analogue of Individuality and reality as an analogue of Personhood, there is a greater attraction in considering Duns Scotus view that individuality is an aspect of Haeceitas, that there is a mystic element to the sense of distinctiveness that is neither real or unreal. What gives a person a sense of distinctiveness is their Thisness which does not depend on matter and is therefore the distinctiveness that abides in as part of a glorified body of Christ after death. The invincible illusion of individuality then becomes the sin of pride in kneeling down and worshipping your own Haeceitas because it reminds you of the image and likeness of one who is to be worshipped. The reasons for Scotus’ rejection of Aquinas first principle of Inviduation are too far down the tangent and I am not entirely certain if I fully understand it.Tangents perhaps are a better analogy for the way of Moksha. As Wittgenstein put it even for the Sadhanas they are like ladders which once you have climbed you throw away.
I hadn’t realized that the belief of the Logos in the mind of God before creation, Creation as a negative potentiality in God’s coincidentia oppositorum was a restatement of Augustine’s rationes seminales, the Logos Spermatikos, which had for many years lain in disuse as it was rejected by Thomas and all the later Scholastics. In the process of reading for and writing this assessment this is one of the insights that became clarified.
I could mention that the sadhanas of srvana, manan and nidihyasana were practised more prayerfully and spiritually in the Syriac tradition under Ephrem Jacob Aphraphat et al than all the clever German protestants of the 19th Century who hijacked Biblical Criticism in the West for many generations. But a better presentation of the truth that Moksha must eventually break free from all techniques, that Religion ultimately exists independently of all Faiths rests in the denial of the title thesis.
To confound matters further on this eigthth day of September the feast of the Nativity of Our Lady my final criticism of the Thesis Title is that there can be no integrative Religion outwith Our Lady, extra Maria nullus salus. Returning to the twofold communication model of integrative religion, God requires informed consent in order to begin the process of Salvation Moksha. God condescends to answer the adolescent complaint I never asked to be liberated, with the model of Our Lady. Even though the World was created by God through God and for God in the Logos, and even though all creation existed as rationes seminales in the coincidentia oppositorum of God in negative potential, God awaited for one moment when all creation hushed, which Mar Jacob of Serugh relays as intense Camp David negotiations, for Our Lady to say Yes. And because a Yes means nothing if we cannot say No. All depends on Our Lady’s Yes, all Moksha derives from her and outwith her Yes all is Oblivion. On this feast day of Our Lady then let us praise and laud her name.