Spiritual education - some thoughts...

There might be something called the absolute truth - but does that negate the possibility of having different interpretations (differing for different personalities)? Wouldn't the absolute truth be something that a person would have to grow into? As in, different facets of it would be revealed as a person's experience and knowledge grow. Thus, the personalization of that truth should be a dynamic process. So, at different stages, for a Hindu, advaitham, dvaitham and visishtadvaitham could all work... because life is dynamic. So, although the basic truth wouldn't change, the internalization ought to be dynamic too! Now, we can easily go on to incorporate other non-Hindu views as well... keeping the same explanation in mind. What a person best identifies with, at that stage of his life, as long as it helps him move forward with happiness and strength (and strong morality - just for the quibblers who start talking about psychopaths), is his religion or rather his life path. Worrying about absolute truth gets noone anywhere but toward warpath.

The thing I like about hinduism is basically this: you can start off with the epics as a kid and enjoy just the superficial story. Then, as you grow, the different tales and epics can be probed for deeper meanings. And finally you get to the point where you're researching the Bhagavad Gita at a time when you want to (and are not forced to by well-meaning adults), and when your intellect has sufficient background knowledge and experience-related gatherings to understand the deeper universal meaning propagated in the same. Given that I haven't much experience with the other religions, I will not talk about how they teach. All I know is that, in the end, the knowledge of self and spirituality propagated by any faith is one and the same. So, most respectfully, it cannot be but correct to say: To each his own! And if you want to delve even further... not even two Hindus belonging to the same family have the same definition of Hinduism... after all, each person's faith is strongly colored by his/her perception of reality and life! To give everyone a solid foundation for that freedom is the basic idea of spiritual education...