CHAPTER
8
THE SEMITIC AND ORIENTAL RELIGIOUS CONVERGENCE IN
UNDERSTANDING OF THE ULTIMATE REALITY
The Semitic Religions (Christianity and Judaism mainly) live
from the conscious, and, rational level or by the rational level of the soul.
But in Hinduism, Bede Griffiths finds out the other half of it. In oriental
religion we, live by the other dimension of the human existence. Here we
discover the unconscious, the intuitive dimension of the soul. Bede wanted to
experience the marriage of these two dimensions of human existence, the
rational and intuitive, the conscious and unconscious, the masculine and
feminine. After coming to India he said that, "I want to discover the
other half of my soul."1
8.1.The Semitic Religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam)
In Semitic Religion and tradition God is represented as
transcendent, Lord of creation, infinitely ‘Holy’ that is separate from and
above nature and never to be confused with it. In Hebrew-Christian tradition
starting from the infinite transcendence or Yahweh, sees God descending to
earth, manifesting himself through his angels, speaking his word to this
prophets and finally becoming ‘incarnate’- the word becoming flesh-and
communicating his spirit to man. St.John’s Gospel speaks about the incarnation
of God. It says, "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with
God, and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came
into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being."2
Griffiths says that today people look for " is there with Christian
tradition a path to the supreme, not by way of doctrine or ritual but of direct
experience of Reality-Not words or thoughts, but direct experience of God, of
truth, and of Reality.
There is in all Semitic Religion, a profound sense of the
infinite holiness of God, his moral righteousness and refusal to tolerate Sin,
but also of his infinite compassion and willingness to forgive the sinner who
repents. Every form of Semitic Religion has its own serious limitation. Each of
them has a deep sense of the holiness of God, of his moral purity, and
rejection, of sin together with his immense compassion and mercy, which
represents a profound insight into the nature of Reality itself. Yet in each of
them, there is a spirit of tolerance, which has become a serious obstacle to
their acceptance. The Semitic conception of God is that an utterly transcendent
Being set over against the world as its creator and Lord and ruling its destiny
from above. The holy bible depicts it. "God says to Moses in the oldest
testament, speak to the people of Israel I am the Lord Your God."3
" In Christian tradition God is also conceived as
immanent in nature. St. Paul himself quotes the saying, ‘in him we live and
move and have out being.’ The Hebrew starts from the transcendent of God and
gradually discovers his immanence. The Hindu starts from the immanence and
reaches towards his transcendence. It is a difference of point of view. Each is
complementary to the other and opens up a difference perspective."4
When Christian faith is seen from the Oriental perspective,
another aspect of the Truth contained in the original revelation is disclosed.
In the first place the use of the word, ‘God’ come to be questioned. In the
context of Semitic context, ‘God’ is conceived as a Person. But the word
‘Person’ like all other terms applies to the ultimate Reality, is a term of
analogy.
In Christianity the divine Reality manifested itself in the
Person of Jesus, in his life and death and resurrection. This was a unique historical
revelation within a unique historical tradition, with both its values and its
limitation. Jesus came at the end of a long historic process to bring to
fulfilment the hopes of a particular people and to reveal the final purpose of
God in their history and in human history as a whole. The birth of Jesus from a
Virgin was the sign of the birth of a new humanity, born ‘not of the will of
the flesh, or of the will of man, but of God’. His miracles were the sign of
the ‘new creation’. The transformation of matter by the Spirit, that is,
through its penetration by consciousness. His death and resurrection were the
sign of the passage through death to new life in the spirit, which man has to
undergo in order to ‘realize’ God. His ‘descent into hell’ and his ‘ascension
into heaven’ are the signs of the penetration of the Spirit into the depths of
the Unconscious and the passage to the Super conscious state, the ‘fourth’
state of Hindu tradition, which is beyond out present state of consciousness in
space and time. Finally m his Second Coming is the final manifestation of the
Truth of Reality itself, when the whole creation and the whole of humanity
passé out of its present state of being and consciousness into the total
consciousness of Reality- the Being, Knowledge and Bliss of Saccidananda5
8.2. The Oriental Religions (Hinduism)
In oriental tradition God-or the Absolute is immanent in all
creation. The world doesn’t exist without God, but in God. He dwells in the
heart of every creature. The danger of the position is that God is very easily
confused with nature. The transcendent aspect of Being is lost sight of and the
result is pantheism. In the same way, God is conceived as the good, and the
distinction between the good and the evil is easily lost.
"Perhaps the greatest weakness in the Oriental
tradition is that the material world tends to be regarded as an illusion –as
Maya-the product of ignorance (Avidya). The world of ordinary experience is
held to have only an apparent reality and in the ultimate state of knowledge
(Paravidya) all differences disappear and the one, absolute, reality alone
remains."6 In Hindu or oriental concept of God-or rather of
Ultimate Reality is that of an immanent power in and in man, hidden in the
heart of every nature. "The Hindu temple is itself essentially a
‘sacrament’ a representative of the divine mystery manifested in nature and in
the human soul."7
The authentic Hindu tradition does not deny the reality of
the material world. It sees the whole creation as pervaded by the one eternal
spirit who creates, sustains and finally dissolves the world, and this
all-pervading spirit-the Brahman-is not less transcendent that immanent. It is
unseen inconceivable, unimaginable, indescribable, of every name and form which
may be given, to this Supreme Being, we have to say neti, neti.
"The world is constructed, is constructed in terms of
subjects and predicate, but the Brahman is the one ultimate subject, of which
everything lese, is a predicate."8 In oriental tradition, they
are not guided by any dogmas or doctrine. All oriental doctrine arises from an
experience of God. To address God they use the words likes Brahman, Atman, Tao,
Nirvana or Void. There are all words, which point towards the nameless reality,
which cannot properly be conceived and is as much beyond personality as it is
beyond any human concept. " In Hinduism Brahman is the name given to that
Reality conceived as the source from which everything comes, the Ground in
which everything exists, the Goal to which everything aspires. It is the One,
the Eternal, the infinite, the Transcendent or whatever name we choose to give
to the beyond, of human existence."9 The Brahman according to
Hinduism is experienced only when mind in meditation goes beyond images and
concepts, beyond reason, and will to the ultimate ground of consciousness. It
is experienced in the depth of the soul.
END NOTES
1. Griffiths, Bede. The Marriage
of East and West, (Great Britain; William Collins Sons & Co Ltd, 1982),
P.16.
2. Nelson, Thomas. The Holy
Bible, The New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition for India
(Nashville: Catholic Bible Press, 1993), St.John 1:1-4.
3. Ibid., Exodus 20:1-3.
4. Griffith, Bede. The Marriage
of East and West, PP. 25-26.
5. Ibid., P. 34.
6. Fernando, Albano. The Hindu
Mystical Experience (New Delhi; Intercultural Publishers, 2004.), P.17.
7. Bede, Griffiths. Christian
Ashram, (London: Darton, Longman & Todd 1966), P.99.
8. Griffiths Bede, Vedanta and
Christian Faith (USA: First Dawn Horse Press, 1973), P.37.
9 Ibid., P. 26-27.
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