Abstract
This article compares modern Advaita (nonduality) Vedānta and Roman Catholic afterlife beliefs, with special attention to the dialogue of Swami Vivekananda, formal Roman Catholic teachings, and Edith Stein. It draws also on other commentators and includes some brief reference to other forms of Vedānta. It analyzes significant congruences, parallels, differences, and critical issues. The article begins with a focus on essential similarities and contrasts in theological anthropology, situates these within the spiritual ideals of modern Advaita Vedānta mokṣa and Catholic Christian redemption, and relates them to conceptions of heaven, purgatory, hell, and reincarnation, between the two traditions. It also draws into the dialogue a view of rebirth espoused in the modern Christian Hermeticism of Valentin Tomberg.
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Notes
Clooney (2016) sketches the critical dialogue historically that Jesuits had on the topic of reincarnation, with special reference to Alessandro Valignano, Matteo Ricci, Roberto de Nobili, Jean Venance Bouchet, and Joseph Betrand.
See Clooney (2010: especially 3–19) which lucidly summarizes key features of this comparative method, including the advocacy of participatory engagement in aspects of other traditions, which might then enrich the understanding and appreciation of features of the theologian’s own tradition. While new comparative theologians typically remain neutral with respect to truth claims concerning themes or issues of comparative dialogue, Vivekananda was a passionate critic and apologist for Vedānta.
Throughout this article, citations to Vivekananda’s Complete Works follow this format: CW volume number: page number.
No doubt Vivekananda is aware that Buddhism does not fit this rhetorical generalization of his lecture here, though the Pudgalavādins were an exception—a popular tradition for about the first thousand years of Buddhism that posited a soul.
For example, Swinburne speaks of “immaterial subjects of [pure] mental properties. They have sensations and thoughts, desires and beliefs and perform intentional actions” (1997: 333).
The Vedāntaparibhāṣā states: “[The subtle body] helps (the soul’s) passage to other worlds and lasts till liberation.…The subtle body…is called the ego” (Mādhavānanda 1972: 164).
Abhedānanda writes: “This center is called in Sanskrit Sûkshma Sarîra or the subtle body of an individual. The subtle germ of life or, in other words, the invisible center of thought-forces, will manufacture a physical vehicle for expressing the latent powers that are ready for manifestation” (1902: 78).
Stein’s published works include substantial sections on Thomistic scholasticism, and she translated his Quaestiones Disputatae Veritate. Although she shows deep respect for this tradition, her philosophical theology is also colored by her phenomenological background and she disagrees with Thomas on some matters—for example, she claims that memory is a faculty of the soul, that creation is an image of God and not just a vestige, that angels are not pure forms, and that matter is not the principle of individuation (Maskulak 2007: 10–11, 75, 81, 20n64). I note also that Pope John Paul II, who promulgated the Catechism in 1992, was influenced by phenomenology.
Malkovsky argues that Vivekananda advocates an Advaitic goal of nondual experience within a hierarchical framework of spirituality that situates what I would call nonmystical and doctrinally focused “Christianity alongside [Madhva’s] Dvaita” (1998: 224). Nevertheless, Vivekananda acknowledges that, experientially, Christian devotionalism can lead to Advaitic realizations and he sees Jesus as “God incarnate” and as advocating a nondual ideal (Malkovsky 1998: 227). Mahadevan (1967: 73), Rolland (1970: 219–20), and other scholars agree with this assessment of Vivekananda’s Advaitic inclusivism. Gregg insists that, within his framework of types of yoga, Vivekananda “valorised Advaita (a non-dualist Hindu tradition) and devalued aspects of Hinduism that were associated with what Vivekananda perceived to be ‘low levels’ of spiritual awareness, such as Gauni Bhakti (theistic devotion)” (2019: 1). In his inclusivism, Gregg argues that “Vivekananda understood his formulation of Vedanta to be universal, applying it freely to non-Hindu traditions” (2019: 1, also 18, 126). More recently, Medhananda (2022) has proposed a very interesting thesis that there was a diachronic “evolution in Vivekananda’s thinking about the harmony of religions” (129; emphasis in the original), wherein he moved from an inclusivist Advaitic hierarchical stance, which he held only for a brief time from 1894–95, before reconceiving “the Vedāntic universal religion as a pluralistic framework based on the four Yogas” (129), each of which—“Yoga, Bhakti, Jnana, or–selfless work” (CW 6: 182)—is equally conducive to the salvific realization of “Infinite Divine Reality in some form or aspect” (Medhananda 2022: 123). Long also reads Vivekananda this way—as holding that none of these spiritual paths are superior to each other—where the apparent inconsistencies on this issue are “a function of the audience that each master was addressing at a given time” (2008: 62). Medhananda associates this egalitarian pluralistic framework with the influence of Ramakrishna’s Vijñāna Vedānta on Vivekananda’s thought, which I will discuss below in the conclusion of this article.
This view of spiritual development of the soul in Christianity would seem to parallel somewhat Rāmānuja’s Viśiṣṭādvaita perspective. Medhananda writes: “For Rāmānuja, the soul is ‘contracted’ (saṅkucita) in a state of ignorance but gradually expands through spiritual practice and God’s grace. For Śaṅkara by contrast, the soul is always identical with nondual Brahman in its essence but fails to realize its divine nature due to ignorance (what Vivekananda here calls ‘delusion’)” (2022: 70). See also footnote 12 below.
Stein observes: “We can conceive of a bodily corporeality [Leiblichkeit] which does not weight down the spirit but rather serves it as an absolutely pliable instrument and medium of self-expression. In such a way we picture the state of the first human beings prior to the fall and the state of the blessed after the resurrection of the body” (2002: 392).
Vivekananda writes: “Similarly, the whole universe, comprising all nature and an infinite number of souls, is, as it were, the infinite body of God. He is interpenetrating the whole of it. He alone is unchangeable, but nature changes, and soul changes.…All these souls were pure, but they have become contracted; through the mercy of God, and by doing good deeds, they will expand and recover their natural purity.…There are God, soul, and nature, and soul and nature form the body of God, and, therefore, these three form one unit” (CW 1: 401). So Vivekananda’s account of Viśiṣṭādvaita parallels the sense of the spiritual development of the soul in Roman Catholicism. However, there seem to be three major differences between Viśiṣṭādvaita and Roman Catholic anthropology, along with some significant correspondences. According to Viśīṣṭadvaita (1.3.4.a–b), (i) all ātmans are ultimately “the equal of God” and have “the same form” as each other (Van Buitenen 1968: 95). Tapasyānanda (1990) writes, they “all are of the same nature of consciousness and bliss” (58), and in liberation they share in God’s inward consciousness, “blissful nature,” “soul-nature,” and “agency” (55); (ii) the ideal condition of mokṣa transcends the physical and subtle bodies—in mokṣa the “body will fall”; and (iii) the “liberated ones” will receive “the new spiritual body of Śuddha-sattva [pure light]” (59). Still, I should note that, despite those elements of “qualitative sameness” between God and liberated jīvas, the ātmans also differ from God in their monadic nature or individual “centre of consciousness”—“Aṇutva”—and in their role as subordinate mode and “dependant accessory” of God (Tapasyānanda 1990: 58), becoming God’s “instruments of service” or remaining “absorbed in the bliss of Brahman” (59). Moreover, it does appear that new spiritual bodies are intimately connected or related to the previous subtle bodies—where “their atomic nature (Aṇutva) remains, distinguishing them from the Infinity (Anantam) that God is” (Tapasyānanda 1990: 59). In Roman Catholic eschatology, the discarnate soul, transfigured by the unitive vision of God, will be reunited with the body, which will be recreated or resurrected into a spiritually transformed and glorified body. Does this recreated body/soul parallel the “new spiritual body of Śuddha-sattva”? Moreover, the thoughts, will, and actions of the incarnate jīva clearly play a significant role in the movement to religious liberation. So there seem to be interesting correspondences between the two traditions concerning (i) the transformative movements to the spiritual ideal, (ii) the nature of the liberated soul-body, and (iii) the devotional service of it, in union with God, even if Viśiṣṭādvaita claims the reception of a “new” soul-body and an ideal merging with God that goes beyond the sense of Christian union, as well as the transcendence of the physical body in spiritual liberation. Moreover, there are (iv) interesting similarities in the relation between God and nature, especially with certain mystical streams in Christianity. For example, Van Buitenen comments that “the prakriti is a prakāra [aspect] of the Supreme Brahman who pervades, directs and animates it” (1968: 35), while Stein “broadens…the mystical body [of Christ] to embrace all of creation,” and not just people and angels, where “grace flows from Christ into all creatures,” as Maskulak observes (2007: 119). See also footnotes 10 above and 26 below
Ratzinger writes: “Purgatory is not, as Tertullian thought, some kind of supra-worldly concentration camp where man is forced to undergo punishment in a more or less arbitrary fashion. Rather is it the inwardly necessary process of transformation in which a person becomes capable of Christ, capable of God, and thus capable of unity with the whole communion of saints” (1988: 230). Malkovsky stresses the more “personalist” and “mystical” focus of the sanctification model: “The satisfaction model has, until recently, been the one more emphasized by Roman Catholicism, but nowadays Catholic theologians, including the late Pope John Paul II, have begun articulating the doctrine of purgatory in more personalistic terms, describing the spiritual transformation that takes place after death when the human person finds herself in the unmediated presence of a personal God of infinite purity, love, mercy, and truth. This more personalistic or even mystical understanding of purgatory is, then, the position expressed by the sanctification model” (2017: 8–9).
For example, Gregory of Nazianzus (329–389 CE), Gregory of Nyssa (330–395 CE), and Ambrose (339–397 CE), following the influential lead of Origen of Alexandria (184–253 CE). See influential contemporary developments by Hick (1976) and Hart’s (2019) more recent analytic critique of the traditional Christian doctrine of hell and his passionate apology for universal salvation.
Jakob Böhme (1648) provides a detailed account of the nature of this radical freedom in his treatment of human participation in the primary divine creative “will”—the mysterious and magical source of creation’s vitalism, which arises in the theogonic movements of the first person of the Trinity from the Ungrund of the Divine Essence. Boehme suggests that human beings are able in their fundamental freedom that is associated with this primary creative will to refuse to participate in the redemptive movements of the second and third Persons of the Trinity, in creating and working towards extremely self-oriented and self-isolating ideals, quite apart from what would bring them spiritual fulfillment and ultimate happiness (Stoeber 1992: 143–64). Also, at a vividly practical level, Dostoevsky (2011) illustrates the radically free human movement towards hell through certain characters in his novels, most fully and powerfully with Pavel Fyodorovich Smerdyakov in The Brothers Karamazov (Stoeber 2015: 257–62).
It is interesting how some interpretations of scriptural passages would seem to support the belief in such conditional immortality, for example, Matthew 10:28: “be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna”; and Romans 2:12: “All who sin outside the law will also perish without reference to it” (New American Bible 1987: 1076, 1265).
Tapasyānanda writes: “The Tamo-yogyas [jīvas who become essentially evil]…wallow in sin until whatever capacity of consciousness and bliss there is in them is completely effaced and they are reduced to inertness characteristic of material substances.…[This means] the complete effacement of the specific characteristics of the Jīva” (1990: 177).
Vivekananda claims: “Maya is eternal both ways, taken universally, as genus; but it is non-eternal individually”; “every soul must eventually come to salvation” (CW 5: 317, 2: 242); Abhedānanda writes “[Vedānta] holds that each individual will become perfect like Jesus or Buddha or like the Father in heaven and manifest divinity either in this life or in some other” (1902: 81); Ramakrishna insists: “All will surely realize God. All will be liberated.…All, without any exception, will certainly know their real Self” (cited in Maharaj 2018: 264).
Vivekananda writes: “Mukti means…freedom—freedom from the bondages of good and evil.…The good tendencies have also to be conquered” (CW 5: 317).
Weil’s view here concerning “necessity” seems consistent with Jesus’s apparent insistence that not all personal suffering can be attributed to punishment for the sins of an individual or for the sins of her or his ancestors: “As [Jesus] passed by he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him…’” (John 9:1–3; New American Bible 1987: 1203). See also Matthew 5:45 and Luke 13:1–5.
Since the nineteen-seventies Stevenson and Tucker have provided a body of systematic investigative research that has explored descriptions by children (aged 2 to 8 years) of memories of past-life happenings, unusual behavior, and birthmarks or other disfigurements that correspond to specific deceased individuals, which they have been able to verify. Although these children normally lose such memories as they age, Stevenson and Tucker have found remarkable correspondences in several cases that provide some empirical support for the theory, even if other explanations have been proposed by sceptics, such as paramnesia, unconscious deception, and clairvoyance.
Medhananda (2023) also discusses this question of reincarnation and heredity for Vivekananda, suggesting with Christopher (2017) that the failure “to identify the genetic basis of intelligence, physical illnesses, psychological disorders, and personality traits” actually provides indirect support for “the theory of reincarnation.”
As Swinburne observes: “no human knows how to move a soul from one body and plug it into another; nor does any known natural force do this. Yet the task is one involving no contradiction and an omnipotent God could achieve it; or maybe there are other processes which will do so” (1997: 310–11).
In mokṣa, the physical body is also transcended completely in Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta, though the subtle body—which includes specific individual characteristics developed in embodied experience—does seem to contribute to or participate in the liberation experience of the new spiritual body (śuddha-sattva) that replaces it in liberation (see footnote 12 above). See also below, the view of Ramakrishna’s Vijñāna Vedānta, where final liberation includes not only the manifestation and integration of the subtle body, but also the physical body.
For example, CW 6: 107–9.
Highly regarded by some major figures in modern Christian spirituality, including Hans Urs von Balthasar (who wrote a Foreword to the French edition), Thomas Keating, and M. Basil Pennington, Meditations on the Tarot is a substantial treatment of various themes in Christian Hermeticism, one that is rooted in Roman Catholic teachings. Although the book was published anonymously, Tomberg’s authorship is so well known today that I refer to him here. Faivre writes “There is perhaps no better introduction to Christian theosophy, to occultism, to any reflection on esotericism than this magisterial work, not that of a historian but of an inspired theosopher and—a rather rare occurrence—one who is careful to respect history” (1994: 98).
Citing scriptural references to Jesus’ resurrection body, which was strangely difficult for people to recognize, as well as Saint Paul’s account of its nature (2 Corinthians 4:16–5:15), Tomberg supposes that the fully mature “resurrection body will be absolutely mobile and will create for each action the ‘organ’ which suits it. At one time it will be radiant light—such as Paul experienced on the way to Damascus—at another time it will be a current of warmth, or a breath of vivifying freshness, or a luminous human form, or a human form in the flesh. For the resurrection body will be magical will, contracting and expanding. It will be—we repeat—the synthesis of life and death, i.e. capable of acting here below as a living person and at the same time enjoying freedom from terrestrial links like a deceased person” (1985: 577; emphasis in the original).
Note the striking correspondence to Stein’s depiction of the resurrection body, quoted in footnote 11 above: “We can conceive of a bodily corporeality [Leiblichkeit] which does not weight down the spirit but rather serves it as an absolutely pliable instrument and medium of self-expression. In such a way we picture the state of the first human beings prior to the fall and the state of the blessed after the resurrection of the body” (2002: 392).
In regard to Tomberg’s perspective on the resurrection body, Donald D. Evans commented to me in 2006: “I have strong reservations concerning [Tomberg’s] metaphysics here, which seem to me closer to ‘Eastern’ thought than Christian. The reduction (for me) of matter to condensed energy and will is a way of spiritualizing the human body in particular so that the very notion of ‘incarnation’ is distorted into shape-shifting appearances. I remember bio-energetics founder Alexander Lowen exploding at me when I said, ‘we’re all just energy.’ ‘NO, we’re flesh and blood. What you’re saying has led too many to try to stop being human by climbing Jacob’s ladder into heaven’.” See also footnote 30 above, to compare with Stein’s sense of the body in the resurrection ideal.
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Acknowledgments
This article benefited considerably by careful readings and suggestions given by two anonymous reviewers, as well as through helpful discussions I had with Christopher D. Denny, Bradley Malkovsky, and Swami Medhananda. Taehoon Kim also provided research and technical support. My treatment of Roman Catholic doctrine and theology in this article is a significant expansion of a presentation I gave as a delegate of the Hindu-Catholic dialogue of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB), at the event “Theology of the Afterlife and Ultimate Destiny” at BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, Etobicoke, Ontario, Canada, March 20, 2021. CCCB website can be accessed at the following link: https: //www.cccb.ca/church-in-dialogue/interreligious-dialogue/catholic-hindu-dialogue/
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Stoeber, M. Hindu-Christian Dialogue on the Afterlife: Swami Vivekananda, Modern Advaita Vedānta, and Roman Catholic Eschatology. Hindu Studies 27, 33–65 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11407-022-09334-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11407-022-09334-x