Enlightenment vs Theosis , Advaita Vedanta vs Orthodox Christianity

                                                                       

Vedanta may be divided into seven main historical branches. The most popular today, Advaita, or nondual, appears to be the least compatible with Orthodox Christianity, both in theology and practice. Yet, in actual practice, many in Advaita Vedanta do worship in prayer in song; and in theology, some serious thinkers have squared non-dualism in Christianity, qualifying it of course, such as the great Catholic theologian Stratford Caldecott HERE, or the brilliant Sara Grant HERE.

Christine Mangala Frost, and Orthodox Christian Scholar and convert from Hinduism, presents a brief, clear, conservative theological comparison between Advaita Enlightenment and Orthodox Theosis or Divination.

The following is from her book,The Human Icon A Comparative Study of Hindu and Orthodox Christian Beliefs:

"There is the Self-Luminosity of Brahman and of the ‘Uncreated Light’. For Śaňkara, the self-luminosity of Brahman is an important concept, and he speaks of the liberated person in terms of that same light: he or she is literally ‘en-lightened’.

“On account of ignorance, the self appears conditioned, as it were; when that is destroyed, the pure self verily shines of its own accord, like the sun when the cloud is dispersed."

(Ātmabodha, v.4.)1

When a person is liberated, he or she is understood to have become ‘light-filled’. In fact, in many Śaiva bhakti hymns (for Śaiva bhakti tends to align itself with advaita) the poet-saint’s divinisation is described as ‘merging’ into a light that is ‘Uncreated’. Here advaita touches on a motif that is central to Orthodox theosis: that of ‘Uncreated Light’.

However, one question still remains….might that not mean that the self-luminosity (or ‘uncreated light’) of the immortal and imperishable Brahman is simply transferred ontologically to the ātman of a mortal and creaturely individual?….any total identification of the creature with the uncreated such as one might derive from pronouncements such as ‘I am Brahman’ would be rejected by Orthodox theologians as blasphemous….

                                    

The route to theosis in Orthodox theology, historically speaking, comprised two currents that in the fullness of time merged into one: first was the Platonic-Evagrian, which focussed on the ‘nous’, a term that means ‘mind’ but is more than mind, and hence is best translated as ‘spiritual intellect’: it is that ‘eye’ of the inner being of which Jesus speaks (Matthew 6:22; Luke 11:34). A second current was the Macarian legacy (originating from a fourth century Syrian monk, Macarius), which focusses on the ‘heart’, on aesthesis (sensibility) – the term ‘heart’ being used, as in the Psalms, to indicate the whole inner man.

 These two currents merged in the writings of Diadochos of Photike (fifth century ), in Maximus the Confessor (580-662) and in Symeon the New Theologian (949-1022 ); whilst the notion of bringing the mind into the heart through prayer, especially by means of the Jesus Prayer, gained currency. By the time Gregory Palamas is writing on deification (1296-1359), this integrating meditative practice is seen as one of the most effective ways to prepare oneself for the grace of deification.

If we now turn again to Śaňkara, for him the intellect or buddhi (which can be equated with the ‘nous’) plays a key role in achieving the so-called advaitic ‘epistemic switch’. Not only the intellect but the ‘heart’ is implicated in the ignorance that Śaňkara observes in the worldly (samsāric) ‘I’.

 It seems it is this ‘darkened’ condition of the inner self that Śaňkara has in mind when he speaks in Ātmabodha1 of ‘the transmigratory tract filled with attachments and aversions’. If we use Orthodox terminology, these would be called the ‘passions’, which in their unredeemed state darken the nous. In Orthodox thinking, the nous when purified is spoken of as ‘luminous’, for it regains its reflective capacity to radiate the glory of God. Given that the Church Fathers use the same idiom as Śaňkara when describing the purified nous as ‘luminous’, it is surely possible to see the luminosity of the nous as the luminosity of the liberated person’s buddhi or intellect.

It is this aspect of Śaňkara’s approach to the process of divinisation that aligns him with an Orthodox approach to theosis, even after one has allowed for major divergences. His boldness of vision enables him to speak of the possibility for mortals of a ‘divine’ mode of life. Nevertheless, there remains one crucial difference. In Orthodox thinking, the cleansed nous is an instrument, the locus of ‘divinisation’, but it is not the experience itself: the purified nous may make theosis possible; but theosis always depends on divine grace. Moreover, in Orthodox theology, divinisation always implies Trinitarian life: a life of relationship, of love, and of kenosis, self-emptying.

…..when Advaitins insist on exalting the highest state of ātman-brahman as ‘impersonal’, is this claim for the ‘impersonal’ as ‘highest’ quite so self-evident as they assume? More important still, is the exaltation of Brahman as impersonal compatible with any notion of ‘holiness’? Surely ‘holiness’ is inseparable from any idea of divinisation, yet would not that seem to require a relationship with an ‘Other’?

It is significant that questions and objections such as these, which an Orthodox Christian might well want to put to Śaňkara and his followers, have already been voiced by the founders of two other schools of Vedānta, both of them unequivocally theistic: by Rāmānuja (1077-1157 ) and by Madhva (1238-1317 ). In the skilled debates conducted by the founders and followers of theistic Vedānta, not only their questions but also their answers should strike a sympathetic chord among Orthodox Christians."

You can read more about the "light body" "HERE"