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Questions about Hindu Monotheism — often phrased rather bluntly such as “Is Hinduism monotheistic or polytheistic?” — have cropped up of late. The answer, in a general sense, is either “it depends” or “whose monotheism?” or “which Hinduism?” Folks, at least according to the search trends, seem deeply concerned — even disturbed — that any form of Hinduism could be monotheistic as opposed to polytheistic. Seeing such a trend in the search console has me wondering if we might blame some popular philosophical text such as David Bentley Hart’s The Experience of God.
The problem is worsened by how many offended parties claim to be monotheists but are, in turn, little more than glorified deists or even themselves functional atheists. Perhaps not, but it seems a great swath of Western thinkers know… almost nothing about the late Vedic Sanskrit texts, in spite of The Penguin Classics’s attempt to circulate them widely for English consumption. I have a hunch this revelation of a Hindu monotheism fuels more of an exorcizing of Joseph Campbell, Rudyard Kipling, and James George Frazier types rather than their more philosophical counterparts; or more to Occidental reverse-catapulting of said Byzantium-vaulting far-east-seeking lapsed Catholics (or, as is far more often the case, Catholics that never quite understood their own tradition) than it prompts such folks to reckon with Hindu monotheism ideas as ideas.
The offending passages that may have prompted this are peppered throughout Hart’s book and others, but a couple of his passages come to mind.
To wit:
“To speak of “God” properly, then—to use the word in a sense consonant with the teachings of orthodox Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, Hinduism, Bahá’í, a great deal of antique paganism, and so forth—is to speak of the one infinite source of all that is: eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, uncreated, uncaused, perfectly transcendent of all things and for that very reason absolutely immanent to all things.”
― David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss
And also:
“The soul’s unquenchable eros for the divine, of which Plotinus and Gregory of Nyssa and countless Christian contemplatives speak, Sufism’s ‘ishq or passionately adherent love for God, Jewish mysticism’s devekut, Hinduism’s bhakti, Sikhism’s pyaar—these are all names for the acute manifestation of a love that, in a more chronic and subtle form, underlies all knowledge, all openness of the mind to the truth of things. This is because, in God, the fullness of being is also a perfect act of infinite consciousness that, wholly possessing the truth of being in itself, forever finds its consummation in boundless delight. The Father knows his own essence perfectly in the mirror of the Logos and rejoices in the Spirit who is the “bond of love” or “bond of glory” in which divine being and divine consciousness are perfectly joined. God’s wujud is also his wijdan—his infinite being is infinite consciousness—in the unity of his wajd, the bliss of perfect enjoyment.”
― David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss
…which deals a bit more with the formulation in that text.
It seems that folks within particularly… shall we say insular traditions — the sort of fundamentalists (both biblicists and folks that do the same with a 16th century tradition) for whom the gated community of heaven juxtaposed against the eternal conscious torment of infants predestined to hell is the best part of the story — have a particularly visceral reaction to this idea.
Vedas make such vomit.
However, to play advocātus diabolī for the potential saintliness of someone’s favorite text, you can have even demonic texts (not that I would comment one way or another on the Upanishads in this manner, but such folks do), according to the Bible, that still worship one God:
You say you have faith, for you believe that there is one God. Good for you! Even the demons believe this, and they tremble in terror.
— James 2:19
To have a text that isn’t demonic, you need to have something beyond monotheism. If it’s monotheism you’re being precious about — monotheism alone drives your persecution of other faiths — perhaps you need to reevaluate your core tenants. So it’s not some great revelation to be able to say we’re all talking about the same monotheism here: if the demons can tremble in submission, why can’t we all? What should trouble us more is when we say even less than the demons say: which is that there is no God, but that’s an entirely different article.
We’re here to illumine the idea of Hindu monotheism, its interplay with Christian and Islamic and Jewish traditions (among others). The easiest way seems to me to be to go verse-by-verse through the Penguin Classics version of the Upanishads — the one any one of you could get from the story — and see where Judeo-Christian monotheism rears its beautific horn.
Kena Upanishad
In Part I of Kena (and I’ll be using the page numbers from the 1965 Penguin Books paperback edition), we find a series of phrases that would make both Boethius and C.S. Lewis proud. We’re speaking over and over of The Alone, God, Brahman, Being, the One Spirit — many names, these scripts use. This first section, it seems to me, may well be worth quoting entire:
from part 1:
Who is the Spirit behind the eye and the ear?
— Kana Upanishad, Part 1. p. 51.
It is the ear of the ear, the eye of the eye, and the Word of words, the mind of mind, and the life of life. Those who follow wisdom pass beyond and, on leaving this world, become immortal.
There the eye goes not, nor words, nor mind. We know not, we cannot understand, how he can be explained: He is above the known and he is above the unknown. Thus have we heard from the ancient sages who explained this truth to us.
What cannot be spoken with words, but that whereby words are spoken: Know that alone to be Brahman, the Spirit: and not what people here adore.
What cannot be thought with the mind, but that whereby the mind can think: Know that alone to be Brahman, the Spirit: and not what people here adore.
What cannot be seen with the eye, but that whereby the eye can see: Know that alone to be Brahman, the Spirit: and not what people here adore.
What cannot be heard with the ear, but that whereby the ear can hear: Know that alone to be Brahman, the Spirit: and not what people here adore.
What cannot be drawn with breath, but that whereby the breath is indrawn: Know that alone to be Brahman, the Spirit: and not what people here adore.
This calls to mind, of course, the conclusion of The Abolition of Man, which goes:
To reduce the Tao to a mere natural product is a step of that kind. Up to that point, the kind of explanation which explains things away may give us something, though at a heavy cost. But you cannot go on `explaining away’ for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on `seeing through5 things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to `see through’ first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To `see through’ all things is the same as not to see.
— C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
Or, as is said among every other monotheistic formulation, God isn’t our eyes, but “Be Thou my vision”; our ears, but “the music of the spheres” — the Harmony we hear (the means of hearing Harmony) when noise is put to order; not mind, but reason; our conscious life, but Consciousness; not an animal, but The Animate that makes it an animal as in we are animate creatures and not inanimate objects. All of this points towards some governing logic — a דבר — behind every other part of our being.
Lewis uses a similar metaphor when in The Personal Heresy he tries to show how a poem both does and is logic and art:
To see things as the poet sees them I must share his consciousness and not attend to it; I must look where he looks and not turn round to face him; I must make of him not a spectacle but a pair of spectacles : in fine, as Professor Alexander would say, I must enjoy him and not contemplate him. Such is the first positive result of my inquiry.
— C.S. Lewis, The Personal Heresy (12)
Or consider sūrah Al-An’am 6:103 in the Quran:
No vision can encompass Him, but He encompasses all vision. For He is the Most Subtle, All-Aware.
— Al-An’am 6:103
from part 2:
He comes to the thought of those who know him beyond thought, not to those who imagine he can be attained by thought. He is unknown to the learned and known to the simple.
— Kana Upanishad, Part 2. p. 52.
This, it seems to me, is a shorter but nearly identical formulation to Paul’s in Corinthians:
For Christ did not send me to baptize but to proclaim the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power. For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,
‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.
Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.’
— The Apostle Paul, 1 Corinthians 1:17-31; NRSVACE
Or Socrates:
“I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.”
― Socrates in Plato, The Republic
from part 4:
Concerning [Brahman, the Spirit Supreme] it is said:
— Kana Upanishad, Part 4. p. 53-54.
He is seen in Nature in the wonder of a flash of lightning.
He comes to the soul in the wonder of a flash of vision.
His name is Tadvanam, which translated means ‘the End of love-longing’ …and all men must adore such a lover of the Lord.
Entirely possible this section is referring to a minor demiurge first and foremost due to an odd syntax in which case the statement is simply moved back a step in deference, however either way the final cause of the statements seem to parallel what Augustine says:
“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
— St. Augustine, Confessions (Lib 1,1-2,2.5,5: CSEL 33, 1-5)
For the FULL REVIEW, go to:
https://lanceschaubert.org/2023/02/19/hindu-monotheism-the-upanishads-and-vedanta/
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veganmama28's review against another edition
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exhuman's review against another edition
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That which cannot be thought by mind, but by which, they say, mind is able to think: know that alone to be the Brahman, not this which people worship here.
That which is not seen by the eye, but by which the eye is able to see: know that alone to be the Brahman, not this which people worship here.
theemptyset's review against another edition
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