Brahman in Hinduism and Christian Theology

[lovemuffin]

Are there parallels between them?

Note: I expect a comparison to possibly offend both sides, but I find both Hindu and Christian expressions of the Divine to be beautiful (allowing for my perhaps idiosyncratic and incomplete understanding of both, but especially of Hindu beliefs), so I mean the comparison to be respectful of both, and mindful of the real differences between the two traditions. When in doubt, assume I'm an idiot rather than malicious.

Some texts I find inspiring:

athāto brahma jijñāsā
"Now the aspiration is to know Brahman" (Brahma-sutra 1.1)

sarvam khalvidam brahma
"All is truly Brahman" (Chandogya Upanishad, 3.14.1)

tat tvam asi
That [Brahman], Thou art!" (Chandogya Upanishad, 6.8.7)

"...it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me..." (Galatians 2:20)

"...that God may be all in all" (1 Cor 15:28)

"Who knows Brahman as truth (satyam), knowledge (jñāna), and infinitude (anantam), hidden in the cave of the heart, in the highest heaven, attains all desires" (Taittiriya Upanishad, 2.1)

"That from which beings are born,
that by which, when born, they live
that into which, when dying, they enter,
that you should desire to know:
that is Brahman" (Taittiriya Upanishad, 3.1)

"They should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’..." (Acts 17:27-28, apparently citing Epimenides?)

purnam adah, purnam idam
purnat purnam udachyate;
purnasya purnam adaya,
purnam evavasisyate

"That is Wholeness, this is Wholeness
From Wholeness comes Wholeness
If Wholeness is taken from Wholeness
Wholeness still remains" (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 5.1.1)

"What we have seen is the totality, recapitulated as one;
Received not in essence, but by participation.
Just as if you light a flame from another flame
it is the whole flame you receive" (Symeon the New Theologian, Hymns 1)

"into blind darkness fall those who worship Ignorance
into blinder darkness still fall those who worship Knowledge" (Isa Upanishad)

"You who are beyond, beyond All! What other name befits you
Alone you are ineffable, of every voice you are the source
Alone you are unknowable, from you all thought is born..." (Gregory Nazianzen, Hymn to God)
​

To summarize all this as I understand it: Brahman means something like the "Ultimate Reality", beyond both knowledge and ignorance, as Pseudo-Dionysius, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory Palamas, and other Christian mystics have also said. This ultimate reality, which might also be called "God", is both beyond everything, the source of everything, yet also "hidden in the cave of the heart", as Paul also said, "do you not know you are the temple of the Holy Spirit?" Through love, through wisdom, and through karma (right action) this ultimate reality may be "known".

 

[George-ananda]

I think the loftiest stages of Hinduism and Christianity start sounding very much like the same thing. Christ taught at both the dualistic level (God is my father) and also at the higher non-dualistic level ( I and my father are One). The spirit of God is within; not an external being.

 

[Kirran]

I think it's not so much the Holy Spirit which has such parallels with Hinduism, but the concept of God itself, in Christianity's mystic dimensions. Monism emerges commonly.

 

[Orbit]

I recently finished reading a book on mystics across different traditions, and one thing that did strike me was that the Christian (and Muslim) mystics emphasized the nondual, as does the Advaita Vedanta.

The other thing that struck me was Meister Eckhart's concept of the Godhead, separated from the God concept. This reminded me of Brahman.

Eckhart also spoke of the Godhead the same way Brahman is spoken of - in apophatic terms, by negation. For example "neti neti": Brahman is "not this not that" and "has no attributes". Eckhart said the same of the Godhead.

The real question is what do we do with these thoughts?

 

[Kirran]

No.
(But if you want to think there are, that's fine. You wouldn't be the first person to make that conjecture.)

What of the assertion you made elsewhere about Sanatana Dharma emerging spontaneously? Wouldn't it make sense for aspects of it to emerge out of Christian thought?

 

[lovemuffin]

The real question is what do we do with these thoughts?

To me, that's answered in the Brahma-Sutra text I quoted first: now I aspire to know Brahman. Or, to continue the theme, now I am drawn upwards (epektasis) towards God, as Gregory of Nyssa wrote about, using the life of Moses as an allegorical framing, as well as the Song of Songs.

And that "knowedge" is not epistemic. It's not a set of abstract propositions "about" something. Rather, "one should seek to know him by which all of this is known". To know the knower, which is not epistemological knowledge but rather the realization of union, which is salvation and liberation, both according to the thought of the christian fathers and the upanishadic wisdom.

 

[Kirran]

To me it wouldn't make sense, no. The general sense I get is that people try to do that, but it still doesn't come across as the same thing. I get this from long discussions I've had with Christian mystics. It always boils down to the same old thing. I ask, "Why does Christ have to be part of it? Couldn't Brahman, or whatever you want to call it come through as a realisation without the aid of Christ?"

And the answers is always the same ... "No, you definitely need Christ."

If this is a necessary component, then certainly it's a different thing, although I'd still say there are some parallels. I'd be interested to hear what well named has to say r.e. the necessity of Christ in realisation.

 

[lovemuffin]

From a Christian perspective you need Christ, and I wouldn't want to eliminate the meaning of Christ from Christianity any more than I'd want to eliminate all the richness of Hinduism from its tradition. I'm not so much attempting a synthesis to some universal single religion. But I do think there is some functional equivalence between Christ as a Christian symbol (more than, but certainly not less than the historical narrative) and certain streams of thought in Hinduism, as I understand them. But they aren't identical.

I don't think "Christ" in a Christian sense is necessary to Hindus, even if the Christian might understand a common experience as an experience of Christ, and the Hindu understand it from a different perspective

 

[Kirran]

From a Christian perspective you need Christ, and I wouldn't want to eliminate the meaning of Christ from Christianity any more than I'd want to eliminate all the richness of Hinduism from its tradition. I'm not so much attempting a synthesis to some universal single religion. But I do think there is some functional equivalence between Christ as a Christian symbol (more than, but certainly not less than the historical narrative) and certain streams of thought in Hinduism, as I understand them. But they aren't identical.

But do you think somebody can achieve such a state of realisation without Christ, if they are, for example, a Hindu or a Buddhist? Or is it a false experience?

 

[lovemuffin]

Sorry, I edited my post. I type faster than I think. No, I do not think it is necessary for Hindus to use the word Christ or to adopt a Christian understanding of Hinduism.

 

[Kirran]

Sorry, I edited my post. I type faster than I think. No, I do not think it is necessary for Hindus to use the word Christ or to adopt a Christian understanding of Hinduism.

I know the feeling. My posts are sometimes pretty unclear as a result. Imagine that, me, unclear.

I'll give more time before replying to you.

I believe there are too, but only on an intellectual level. The depth of Brahman in Hinduism quite clearly has no words for 'it'. So the very minute you try to describe it in words, by definition, means you're talking about something else altogether,

But then maybe every individual talking about Brahman is talking about a different thing. Because they're doing it through words.

I think some non-Hindu mystics get pretty deep.

But I don't know, I'll need to think more on this.

 

[lovemuffin]

The reason Christians tend to insist on this point is because of their soteriology, i.e the way they understand sin and salvation. I depart somewhat from orthodoxy on this point, at least insofar as it relates to a Christian stance towards other religions. I say "at least" that much because universal reconciliation is not unknown in Christianity, but even some who believe that all will be saved will conceive of it in a way where they are saved eventually by acknowledging Christ using more or less Christian terms.

For me, the word, the history, the sacraments, the symbols, the conceptual and systematic theology, all of it points to a reality which is unknowable, ungraspable, beyond all knowledge and ignorance, that is God, according to the long apophatic tradition of Christianity. "No one has ever seen God". Christian theology and symbology is not an absolute truth, it is a human tradition, a beautiful and important one in my opinion, but its truth is not in the dogmatic absoluteness of a particular mode of thought or expression, but in the reality of the things that thought attempts to point towards. In the same way, I think other religions, and Hinduism for me is the best example, contain very similar insights expressed in other ways. The names are not ultimately that important. God, as Gregory Nazianzen wrote, is "beyond every name".

All that said, from a practical human standpoint, guides, initiations, traditions, people need them to make sense of it all. We have to live life. I am a Christian and I practice my religion in a Christian way, using Christian symbols. Even though I also draw much inspiration from other streams of thought. I can't help but incorporate that inspiration into my overall Christian worldview. It would be hard for me to completely change my entire culture and way of seeing the world. But I don't absolutize that worldview. Which is what I mean when I say the Hindu view (leaving aside the issue of the great variety of Hinduism; obviously I resonate with some ideas more than others) is not something I see as inferior or in need of anything from my perspective to reach salvation or realization.

 

[Windwalker]

I get this from long discussions I've had with Christian mystics. It always boils down to the same old thing. I ask, "Why does Christ have to be part of it? Couldn't Brahman, or whatever you want to call it come through as a realisation without the aid of Christ?"

And the answers is always the same ... "No, you definitely need Christ."

That's not anything I've ever heard taught by any mystic. I'd like some citations for this, please.

And that was the essence of the long dialogue between Father Bede Griffiths, and Ram Swarup.

The "essence", according to who? You?

 

[Orbit]

I believe there are too, but only on an intellectual level. The depth of Brahman in Hinduism quite clearly has no words for 'it'. So the very minute you try to describe it in words, by definition, means you're talking about something else altogether,

OOPS wrong quote: I'm replying to the "Christ is necessary" post. Sorry.

Interesting. Even when I was a Christian that would not have occurred to me. Mysticism is direct experience of the Godhead--to me you can't be focused on Jesus-as-avatar and still be connecting to undifferentiated Godhead. It sounds like you were talking to literalist Christians, not really Christian mystics.

 

[Orbit]

I have a general point to add about the "un-nameable" issue. To dip into another tradition for an apt saying, Lao Tzu said "The Tao cannot be spoken". But he also went on to write 7,000 words about it. As humans, to try to express the ineffable is the only way we have to communicate with one another about it. I think we can agree to accept that all words are imperfect approximations.

 

[Desert Snake]

The reason Christians tend to insist on this point is because of their soteriology, i.e the way they understand sin and salvation. I depart somewhat from orthodoxy on this point, at least insofar as it relates to a Christian stance towards other religions. I say "at least" that much because universal reconciliation is not unknown in Christianity, but even some who believe that all will be saved will conceive of it in a way where they are saved eventually by acknowledging Christ using more or less Christian terms.

For me, the word, the history, the sacraments, the symbols, the conceptual and systematic theology, all of it points to a reality which is unknowable, ungraspable, beyond all knowledge and ignorance, that is God, according to the long apophatic tradition of Christianity. "No one has ever seen God". Christian theology and symbology is not an absolute truth, it is a human tradition, a beautiful and important one in my opinion, but its truth is not in the dogmatic absoluteness of a particular mode of thought or expression, but in the reality of the things that thought attempts to point towards. In the same way, I think other religions, and Hinduism for me is the best example, contain very similar insights expressed in other ways. The names are not ultimately that important. God, as Gregory Nazianzen wrote, is "beyond every name".

All that said, from a practical human standpoint, guides, initiations, traditions, people need them to make sense of it all. We have to live life. I am a Christian and I practice my religion in a Christian way, using Christian symbols. Even though I also draw much inspiration from other streams of thought. I can't help but incorporate that inspiration into my overall Christian worldview. It would be hard for me to completely change my entire culture and way of seeing the world. But I don't absolutize that worldview. Which is what I mean when I say the Hindu view (leaving aside the issue of the great variety of Hinduism; obviously I resonate with some ideas more than others) is not something I see as inferior or in need of anything from my perspective to reach salvation or realization.

This is fine, however 'Christ' is not an idea. He is the man form of G-d. We can therefore put a 'person' to G-d..the idea that G-d is invisible only is inferred from Scripture, but falsified by the existence of Jesus. Jesus is not a metaphor for deity, or a parable for how we are to act.

 

[lovemuffin]

We do not actually disagree. "Symbol" is a difficult term but in my usage it does not mean "concept" or "idea". Symbols are very often real and concrete. Jesus in my view is both Human (Purusha, "Son of Man"...) and fully Divine, the "icon of the invisible God", and who has seen him has seen the Father. Nevertheless, for Christian theology, and especially eastern Christian theology, the ineffability of the Divine is still crucial. There is a reason that orthodox Christology approached the question of the relation between Jesus' humanity and divinity in a purely apophatic way: two natures "without separation, division, confusion, or change". Yet they did not specify what union is, only what it was not. There is obviously a lot to explore, potentially, but I've tried to focus my comments.

I agree for example that there is a comparison between the idea of incarnation in Hinduism and incarnation in Christianity, although I think here there are very real differences in terms of what the purpose and meaning of those incarnations are between the two traditions.

 

[Valjean]

I see no concept of Brahman in popular Christianity, and if a Christian mystic dissolves in Brahman, how can he still be called a Christian?

 

[lovemuffin]

A further thought, the apparent tension between the "invisibility of God" and the Incarnation of Christ is very much the mystery of the transcendence and immanence of the Divine, which I think is a topic that finds expression in both traditions in ways that seem very similar despite their differences. In Hinduism there is the central question of the relation between Atman and Brahman. In Christianity it is expressed in the hiddenness and inscrutability of God, which is yet experienced, because "Christ lives within me", who has sent the Spirit to us. Or in the idea that humanity is already an image of the Divine.

 

[Valjean]

There are levels of expansion in both traditions, but I've never read of any Christian equivalent of mahasamadhi or cosmic consciousness.
The very idea of "greater than God" would be heresy in Christianity, wouldn't it?