Q: How perennialist is A Perennial Digression? A: As with anything, it’s best to define our terms. In the broadest sense, “Perennialism”—the idea that underlying all religions and philosophies there is a common core of experience, knowledge, and wisdom about the unity of God, world, and self that is simply received and transmitted in culturally diverse forms—is just a corollary of philosophies like Neoplatonism and Advaita that want to suggest a common existential, noetic, and psychic unity to reality. If reality itself is genuinely One, then it stands to reason that the epiphanic and theophanic encounters with reality that inspire religions and philosophies would all really be experiences of the same thing, and this would also account for the real parallels or points of shared teaching, metaphysically and ethically, that we find when we do comparative work. The term and the corresponding idea first appears in Agostino Steuco’s
Very well written. I agree wholeheartedly with you, as I think we share much the same journey and viewpoint (though I definitely lack your education!). Just as you say, though I find it easy to acknowledge that, say, Vishnu, Krishna, Shiva, and Ganesh are God as He appears beyond my tradition, I cannot worship them even though intellectually I know it is not idolatrous - it would still be a betrayal of my bhaktic experience with Christ.
Great piece, mate. I deeply appreciate (and feel an affinity with) this kind of qualified, humble, apophatic perennialism. And, as much as I adore both Watts and Huxley, I'm with you: neglecting the particular is—in some very real sense—to neglect the ultimate and infinite.
A similar form of perennialism is embedded into Gaudiya bhakti, where a personal attachment to any of the infinite forms of God is requisite for spiritual progress. Another feature that makes our tradition "perennial" by default is its thorough description of karma, jñana and different forms of bhakti, which allows us to consider all traditions as valid but also place each of them in a hierarchy of purity according to clear standards of selflesness and ontological accuracy.
As for our perennial pro/against Advaita dispute, please consider this quote from a book by vaishnava scholar Steve J. Rosen: "The concepts of identity and difference are both inadequate to describe the nature of being. Exclusive emphasis on the one leads to a virtual denial of the world as illusion, while exclusive emphasis upon the other bifurcates reality into two and creates an unbridgeable gulf between God and the world. Both concepts [...] seem to be equally necessary. Identity is a necessary demand of reason, and difference is an undeniable fact of experience. An ideal synthesis of identity and difference must be the cherished goal of philosophy. But the synthesis, though necessary, is not possible or conceivable. This is the final test of human logic. It fails. But the logic of the infinite succeeds where our human logic fails. In the perfect being there is no conflict between necessity and possibility. Here, what is necessary actually is. The clue to the solution of the problem, according to the school of Śṛī Chaitanya, therefore, lies in the inconceivable power (acintya-śakti) of God, by which the concepts of identity and difference are transcended and reconciled in a higher synthesis." (Sri Chaitanya's Life and Teachings.)
This was a very illuminating piece as far as your personal perennialist vision. It's interesting to see how our theological contexts shape our self-understanding. Within the world of perennialism, you're almost a sort of conservative (if you'll pardon the comparison), as you're still bound rather tightly to your Christian particulars. Yet to many Christians, you'd be (and I won't ask for pardon with this comparison, as I think you'll relish it) a dirty theological liberal and a half-pagan.
I'm still curious about how a distinctive Christian moral vision fits in with perennialism. It seems to me that more syncretistic and philosphical approaches to religion run a distinct risk of becoming morally and politically toothless—or, at best, to result in the perennialist merely ascribing their particular moral and political convictions to the Godhead or Dao, as though they just happen to live at the end towards history has always been moving. Yet the moral particulars of religious traditions often ask too much to be anchored in mere personal experience, and surely no cultural or political context just happens to be the true Dharma. Christianity, for example, rejects both sacral and state violence in an uncompromising way (the Resurrection being, as DBH has argued, a definitive repudiation of both). Can "a deeply personal response to the mystery of things as I’ve encountered and learned to name it" really say of capacocha, for instance, or usury (to take a less extreme example), "This is wrong"? Can someone die for "the divine as I particularly know it?" I know I would want more than that, but I also know I'm not you.
(Okay, maybe I am you, and we're both living and moving and having our being in the Logos, but you get my point).
Here's a question: what if Jesus was nothing more than a false prophet, who predicted an immanent apocalypse that never showed up and is therefore logos of nothing?
We are I am
Very well written. I agree wholeheartedly with you, as I think we share much the same journey and viewpoint (though I definitely lack your education!). Just as you say, though I find it easy to acknowledge that, say, Vishnu, Krishna, Shiva, and Ganesh are God as He appears beyond my tradition, I cannot worship them even though intellectually I know it is not idolatrous - it would still be a betrayal of my bhaktic experience with Christ.
Great piece, mate. I deeply appreciate (and feel an affinity with) this kind of qualified, humble, apophatic perennialism. And, as much as I adore both Watts and Huxley, I'm with you: neglecting the particular is—in some very real sense—to neglect the ultimate and infinite.
A similar form of perennialism is embedded into Gaudiya bhakti, where a personal attachment to any of the infinite forms of God is requisite for spiritual progress. Another feature that makes our tradition "perennial" by default is its thorough description of karma, jñana and different forms of bhakti, which allows us to consider all traditions as valid but also place each of them in a hierarchy of purity according to clear standards of selflesness and ontological accuracy.
As for our perennial pro/against Advaita dispute, please consider this quote from a book by vaishnava scholar Steve J. Rosen: "The concepts of identity and difference are both inadequate to describe the nature of being. Exclusive emphasis on the one leads to a virtual denial of the world as illusion, while exclusive emphasis upon the other bifurcates reality into two and creates an unbridgeable gulf between God and the world. Both concepts [...] seem to be equally necessary. Identity is a necessary demand of reason, and difference is an undeniable fact of experience. An ideal synthesis of identity and difference must be the cherished goal of philosophy. But the synthesis, though necessary, is not possible or conceivable. This is the final test of human logic. It fails. But the logic of the infinite succeeds where our human logic fails. In the perfect being there is no conflict between necessity and possibility. Here, what is necessary actually is. The clue to the solution of the problem, according to the school of Śṛī Chaitanya, therefore, lies in the inconceivable power (acintya-śakti) of God, by which the concepts of identity and difference are transcended and reconciled in a higher synthesis." (Sri Chaitanya's Life and Teachings.)
This was a very illuminating piece as far as your personal perennialist vision. It's interesting to see how our theological contexts shape our self-understanding. Within the world of perennialism, you're almost a sort of conservative (if you'll pardon the comparison), as you're still bound rather tightly to your Christian particulars. Yet to many Christians, you'd be (and I won't ask for pardon with this comparison, as I think you'll relish it) a dirty theological liberal and a half-pagan.
I'm still curious about how a distinctive Christian moral vision fits in with perennialism. It seems to me that more syncretistic and philosphical approaches to religion run a distinct risk of becoming morally and politically toothless—or, at best, to result in the perennialist merely ascribing their particular moral and political convictions to the Godhead or Dao, as though they just happen to live at the end towards history has always been moving. Yet the moral particulars of religious traditions often ask too much to be anchored in mere personal experience, and surely no cultural or political context just happens to be the true Dharma. Christianity, for example, rejects both sacral and state violence in an uncompromising way (the Resurrection being, as DBH has argued, a definitive repudiation of both). Can "a deeply personal response to the mystery of things as I’ve encountered and learned to name it" really say of capacocha, for instance, or usury (to take a less extreme example), "This is wrong"? Can someone die for "the divine as I particularly know it?" I know I would want more than that, but I also know I'm not you.
(Okay, maybe I am you, and we're both living and moving and having our being in the Logos, but you get my point).
Here's a question: what if Jesus was nothing more than a false prophet, who predicted an immanent apocalypse that never showed up and is therefore logos of nothing?
How do you feel about a Hindu coming to Christ. Would it be right for them to still pray to Vedic gods?