A Truth with Many Names
There’s a common thread within much of modern religion that tries to draw a hard-and-fast line between the deities of different traditions. Even for believers of religions that share ancestral DNA, there can be a tendency towards discounting the legitimate belief of different traditions. For example, while many Christians would willing accept that Jews worship the same god as them, there is likely to be more pushback against the idea that Muslims also worship that same god. Despite the fact that these religions all descend from the mythical figure of Abraham, and share many of the same prophets and scriptural texts, there is a desire to delineate them and make clear the divisions we have decided to draw up.
It’s important to note, however, that this is not the universal model of religion. In many Eastern faiths - such as Hinduism - there has traditionally been much less desire to lay claim to the exclusive knowledge of the “true” god. Instead, what we see in Hinduism is a belief that all things stem from Brahman, the Ultimate Reality. And while Hindus may then sub-divide Brahman into various gods - Vishnu, Shiva, Ganapati, Shakti, Parvati, etc. - the understanding is that these deities all exist as forms of Brahman. In fact, humans, too, are but forms of Brahman. In Hindu thought, particularly within the Vedanta Darshana (Vedanta tradition), there is little to no separation between us and the ultimate reality. Because of this, and their idea that all deities are eventually one with the Ultimate Reality, Hindus have historically held the belief that all religions are valid paths to the divine. Or, in other words, we all worship the same Truth, though we may call it different names.
I think it is not secret that most of my reflections on faith and religion are through a decidedly Christian lens. While I draw wisdom from many traditions, Christianity is the metaphysical home to which I always find myself returning, whether I really want to or not. But, it is also no secret that I have no problem borrowing the framework of one spiritual tradition in order to explore or better understand another. It is in this practice of exploring other metaphysical frameworks that I first discovered Vedanta, and specifically Advaita Vedanta, which holds the idea that there is no separation between the self (atman) and the Ultimate Reality (Brahman). Advaita is countered by Vishishtadvaita and Dvaita which hold varying levels of distinction between atman and Brahman.
When I first discovered Advaita, it seemed that a whole new world of understanding opened up for me. It made perfect sense to me that all things would ultimately return to the source from which they first arose - that all would find their rest in God. Unfortunately for me, most traditional understandings of Christianity hold that there is a profound and inescapable distinction between Creator and creation. These interpretations hold that God created us out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo), and therefore that we are made of different “stuff”, or essence, than God. This reading was counter to what seemed to speak so clearly to me from the pages of the Upanishads. In my belief, we arise from God, exist in God, and return to God at our passing. But traditional Christianity rejects this notion.
Luckily for me, there are more readings of Christianity than just the traditional orthodoxy, and it was in the long tradition of Christian mysticism that I first realized that there would be a place for me within the orthodoxy of Christianity. Because, while mystic often straddle the line between orthodoxy and heresy, the best of them know how to present their ideas in such a way that they remain within the bounds of the Church while still pushing at its edges and expanding our vision of God. And it is in this marriage between the Advaita framework and Christian mysticism that I first began to see that all truths ultimately lead to the same God.
If we affirm a Christian truth that God is that in which we live and move and have our being, and if we can come to understand the insistence of St. Teresa of Avila that God dwells at our very cores, and if we can accept the radical unity in Christ proposed by Paul, then it must be that all people are one with the same Lord. And, if all people are one with this same Lord, who is Truth and Being, then how could anyone get away with not encountering this Lord? Even if we call God by many different names, and even if we divide up religion using our own manmade categories, it is important to remember that God is beyond our language and understanding. We cannot capture God in our words and ideas. We can only experience Her as She is - a Truth with many names.
