Most people who are interested in Indian spirituality will be familiar with Advaita Vedanta, the non-dualistic philosophy whose principal exponent is Sankara. This is a profound but flawed system of thought which I have written about on several occasions, chiefly to point out its flaws. See posts under the Non-Duality label. Advaita was clearly influenced by Buddhism, even though the two were rivals, and one of the reasons for its popularity in the West is that, like Buddhism though not in quite such a dramatic fashion, it does away with God who is reduced to an existent in the relative world, albeit the prime existent. This makes it seem to the unwary, steeped in/corrupted by modern ways of thinking, a deeper analysis of reality than theistic religion.
Most Westerners also believe that Advaita is the summation of Hindu thought. The Traditionalist school of René Guénon and Frithjof Schuon adopted this approach. In fact, that is not the case. In India monistic religion precedes theistic religion which probably arose in reaction to non-duality as its shortcomings became apparent. The qualified Advaita of Ramanuja, which accepts the reality of both the individual soul and God even though the two can be joined in a union of oneness, is one well-known example, and there is also the later and lesser known example of Saiva Siddhanta, the -anta suffix signifying the end of something, the conclusion to which it leads, as in Vedanta which is the end of the Vedas, their culminating point. So Saiva Siddhanta is the final word on knowledge about Siva who in this system stands for the Supreme God.
As a doctrine in codified form Saiva Siddhanta appeared in the 12th century in the south of India with mystical texts that described how the soul, sinful as it is by its own nature, cannot attain liberation except through knowledge of Siva bestowed by his grace on one who loves him. Love is important as it is not in Advaita which is all about knowledge. Souls are intrinsically divine but separate themselves from God through egotism and the impurities or bonds acquired through experience in the material world. Union with the deity is attained through his grace and is absolute in that there is no sense of separation whatsoever, but even in this union the individual self remains thereby drawing a clear distinction between this approach and that of the non-dualist. For the Saiva Siddhanta devotee God always has a transcendent aspect even when he is fully realised as immanent, so even in liberation the Creator/created relationship remains.
God is perceived as the soul of the soul, closer to you than your own self, but he is also infinitely beyond you. This idea is similar to the Christian understanding of the relationship between the soul and God, and the spiritual approach to the deity in this system also has something in common with Christian practice. Siva, which is simply a name for the Supreme First Principle or Primary Person, can only be known through love. This love has four stages. The first is that of the good servant towards his master. The second is like the child towards its parents. These tend to imagine God as external but the following stages see him as within the soul and involve meditation on his perfection. The first is compared to friendship while the final stage which brings full knowledge of and oneness with Siva is likened to the union of lovers.
I have often expressed my conviction that the Incarnation had a spiritual effect worldwide, influencing whoever was able to receive it through inner sensitivity. Naturally, the greatest effect would have been through the spread of the knowledge of Christ by missionaries. But in addition to this Christ entered into non-Christian religions, which may have been culturally resistant to the actual Christian religion, by permeating them with his spiritual being. You can see this with the idea of the Bodhisattva appearing in Mahayana Buddhism in the centuries after Christ, and you can also detect it in the Bhakti movements in both North and South India. I suggest that Saiva Siddhanta is an example of this process. I'm not saying that Saiva Siddhanta is Christianity in disguise. It is what it is, completely itself and outwardly has nothing to do with Christianity. Nor am I saying it is exactly equivalent to or equal to Christianity. But the spiritual essence of it can be compared to the essence of Christianity because Christ has suffused it with his presence and stamped it with the concept of religious love. Christ is only fully present in Christianity but I contend that he is not entirely absent elsewhere to the degree that other religions are able to open themselves up to his universal spirit.
4 comments:
That's very interesting and useful. I knew nothing about this , before reading.
I also agree with your remarks about Christ having a spiritual effect on everyone worldwide, and other religions (even when there was no cultural transmission) - indeed by my understanding we presumably bring into incarnation some kind of implicit knowledge of the work and possibilities of Jesus from pre-mortal spirit existence.
As I assume that this mortal life is mostly about spiritual learning, and that we make the final decision about resurrection after death, then it seems plausible that the best learning environment for *some* incarnating souls might well be a non-Christian religion and culture.
Such an environment might be better for educating particular people in particular "lessons" that they most need to know.
After death, they would remember and know Jesus Christ and would have the chance to follow him post-mortally.
Indeed, as things are in the post-Christian West, it might well be better to know nothing at all about Jesus Christ; rather than to have the kind of selective, distorted and plain false pseudo-Christian knowledge that permeates the West at present and recently.
Yes, I think you're exactly right. Jesus is wise enough to know that not everyone would accept him outwardly because people have their own religions and don't want to take up foreign ones. That, after all, is quite natural. So, he enters into these religions insofar as they allow themselves to be open to his spiritual influence and points them towards his inner reality which is of more importance than the outer.
And, as you say, many of the churches have now gone so far away from Christ that they give a false impression of him.
I don’t think that monism is fundamental point of contention . After all , there are nondual theists . To my lights , the main point of disagreement centers on the question of realism.
The lack of
I'm a non-dualist theist in that I believe there is no fundamental separation between man and God, but real non-dualism as in advaita goes further than that and reduces even God to something in the relative world with the relative world ultimately of no consequence. I know they try to hedge their bets with the neither real nor unreal gambit but they deny the value of the individual whereas I would say with Christianity and Saiva Siddhanta that the individual is the whole point of creation and endures even in the highest state.
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