Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

Volume 11 Article 10

January 1998

Infinity and the Logic of Non-Dualism

Joseph A. Bracken

Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/jhcs

Part of the Religion Commons

Recommended Citation Bracken, Joseph A. (1998) "Infinity and the Logic of Non-Dualism," Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies: Vol. 11, Article 10. Available at: https://doi.org/10.7825/2164-6279.1183

The Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies is a publication of the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies. The digital version is made available by Digital Commons @ Butler University. For questions about the Journal or the Society, please contact [email protected]. For more information about Digital Commons @ Butler University, please contact [email protected]. Bracken: Infinity and the Logic of Non-Dualism

Infinity and the Logic of Non-Dualism

Joseph A. Bracken, S.J. Xavier University, Cincinnati, Ohio I I

I

WHETHER ULTIMATE REALITY is to more closely resembles that of Ramanuja. In be conceived as a personal God or an any event, my deeper purpose here will be impersonal principle somehow at work in first to illuminate the problem of attributing the world is an issue which tends to divide infinity to God or whatever else is the major world religions into opposing considered to be Ultimate Reality and then, camps. Furthermore, even within a given in setting forth my own position, to indicate religion philosophers and theologians may how one might be able· to resolve that differ on how God or Ultimate Reality is to problem by reconceiving infinity as a non­ be conceived. Within Vedantic , dual reality in a special sense, namely, as an for example, SaIikara and Ramanuja are immanent activity within entities rather than clearly in opposition on this point even as some kind of entity in its own right. For, though they share the same basic world view thus understood, it can be represented as in so many other respects. Likewise, something that is necessarily both itself and Christian philosophers and theologians have not itself at the same time. through the centuries disagreed over this To begin, then, if one accepts the idea issue (e.g., the deeper reality of God in the that is infinite, thatis, numerically thought of Thomas Aquinas and Meister "one without a second", then SaIikara Eckhart). At least one of the underlying appears to be right in maintaining that there philosophical issues, moreover, seems to be must be two distinct standpoints with respect the question of infinity. If Ultimate Reality to knowledge of Brahman, namely, the is truly transcendent or infinite, i.e., beyond absolute and the relative. "The supreme human comprehension, then it cannot truth . is that Brahman is non-dual and simultaneously be personal. For, to be a relationless. It alone is; there is nothing real person would seem to involve being a beside it. But from our standpoint, which is relational and thus finite reality, one whose the empirical, relative standpoint, Brahman identity is fixed by relation to other persons. appears as God, the cause of the world.,,2 Ultimate Reality may indeed take on the Logically, nothing else can be the case if appearance of personhood' for the religious Brahman is infinite in' this sense. All devotee. But in itself it must be beyond the multiplicity must be an illusion. For, if personal in order to remain infinite, in the anything else besides Brahman really exists, words of the Chandogya Upanishad, "one by that very fact it renders Brahman finite, without a second".l less than infinite. It is no longer "one In this article I will first review the rival without a second". The fact that this other positions of Sailkara and Ramanuja on this entity is absolutely dependent upon Brahman point and then pass to a consideration of the for its existence and activity, as in Madhva's thought of two contemporary Christian understanding of the God-world theologians, Robert Neville and myself, in ' relationship,3 does p.ot alter the fact that it recently published books. I will indicate how nevertheless exists apart from Brahman and Neville's position bears some limited thereby limits the alleged infinity of resemblance to that of Sailkara just as mine Brahman. It is something that Brahman is not.

Hindu-Christian Studies Bulletin 11 (1997) 39-44 Published by Digital Commons @ Butler University, 1998 1 Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies, Vol. 11 [1998], Art. 10 40 Joseph A. Bracken

Ramanuja's qualified non-dualism, to be Brahman's "body." But, just as the human sure, offers a response precisely to this line body and soul together make up the " of argument. Ramanuja, it will be composite reality of an organism, so remembered, argues that creatures really Brahman would seem to be only a part, exist but only as part of Brahman, as the though admittedly the controlling part, of "body" of Brahman. 4 Hence, their only the composite reality which is Brahman plus reality is to be various finite manifestations the world of Nature and of individual selves. of Brahman; in this sense, Brahman can still be regarded as "one without a second". It would seem, then, that, given the Cogent as Ramanuja's argument may be at conventional understanding of Brahman as first reading, it still seems to me that there infinite, Sailkara presents the inore logical are logical problems associated with this case. All appearances to the contrary not­ soul-body analogy for the God-world withstanding, there can be only one reality. relationship. For, on the one hand, if Everything is Brahman; and Brahman itself Brahman is the Inner Self or antarylimi of is transpersonal, beyond the personal. For every created entity such that the entity is personhood is a relational concept. That is, totally under the control of Brahman, then it as Martin Buber pointed out in his would appear that that entity has no celebrated work I and Thou, I become a ontological independence of Brahman, no person in saying Thou to you as another reality apart from Brahman. Ramanuja, for person. Without a Thou, there is no personal example, has the following definition of a I. 8 But this once again would imply that body in his commentary on the Brahmli­ Brahman is not infinite, "one without a Sutras: "Any entity that a sentient being is second". Relation to another "I" would able completely to control and support for render Brahman finite. its own purpose, and the essential nature of One may counterargue, to be sure, that which is entirely subservient to that self, is infinity when applied to the Hindu notion of its body". 5 But, given such a definition, the Brahman or Western notions of God should independent reality of the created entity is be understood qualitatively not quantitative­ quite ambiguous. It appears to be simply a ly. That is, Brahman or God implies the "mode" (priikiira) of the divine being; its qualitative fullness of being rather than a only meaning or value is to be a finite~ single all-comprehensive entity. Yet, even if manifestation of the transcendent reality of Brahman, for example, is conventionally Brahman.6 described as saccidlinanda (being, On the, other hand, if one argues that the consciousness, bliss), i.e. more as a state of created entity, e. g., an individual self, is being than an entity, such a perfect state of sufficiently independent of Brahman to make being must somehow really exist; it must bee its own decision in line with its specific the de facto experience of or the karma or fate, albeit with the "permission" Supreme Self. Otherwise, the claim that of Brahman,7 then the reality or ontological saccidlinanda really exists could readily be independence of the created entity is assured dismissed as illusory, pure wish-fulfilment but Brahman is no longer "one without a on the part of unhappy human beings. second". It is rather one among many. Even Similarly within the Christian tradition, though it is clearly the Highest Self, it is not while God is no doubt qualitatively superior the Absolute Self. For it shares existence to creatures, it does not follow that God is with finite selves who likewise, at least to for that same reason infinite in the sense some extent, control their own existence and discussed above. ,For, as long as creatures activity. Admittedly, these other entities are exist who subjectively exercise some of the dependent upon Brahman for that same· perfections objectively possessed by God, existence and activity in that they constitute then God must be said to share existence

https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/jhcs/vol11/iss1/10 DOI: 10.7825/2164-6279.1183 2

_ i Bracken: Infinity and the Logic of Non-Dualism Infinity and the Logic of Non-Dualism 41

with these creatures and thus is not "one activity, are they one concrete reality. without a second". By their very existence, This grounding activity, moreover, is creatures limit the infinity of God even infinite because it serves as the ontological though they exist only as reflections of the ground for literally everything that exists. It divine being and perfection. is, accordingly, not limited by its activity in Thus the distinction between qualitative any single entity. Rather, it transcends them and quantitative understandings of the all since it is their common ground or infinite cannot be sustained under careful source of existence and activity. Whereas scrutiny. Logically, the qualitative entities are inevitably limited or defined by understanding of the infinite has to be their relations to one another, this grounding grounded in a quantitative understanding of activity is strictly unlimited and· therefore the infinite as numerically "one without a infinite since it has no rival. In the words of second" . What is presupposed here, of the Chandogya Upanishad, it is "one without course, is that the Infinite is somehow an a second". aut it is "one without a second" entity: for Sailkara, the Absolute Self; for as an activity rather than as an entity. An Ramanuja, the Highest Self; for Christian infinite entity by definition eliminates the theologians, God as the Supreme Being. On possibility of other entities besides itself the other hand, if the infinity of God or which really exist. An infinite activity, on Brahman were rethought in strictly non­ the contrary, only makes sense in terms of entitative terms, namely, as the reality of an many entities in dynamic interrelation. The all-comprehensive activity, then the only reason for an infinite activity to exist relationship between Brahman (or God) and is, in other words, to empower entities to finite entities might well be established on a exist both in themselves and in relation to new basis. one another as members of a common What do I mean, however, by the term wodd. 11 "an all-comprehensive activity"? My What I am arguing here, accordingly, is supposition is that entities exist both in that a distinction should be made between themselves and in dynamic relation to one Brahman and Atman within the Vedantic another only by virtue of an underlying tradition and between the act of being and activity which serves as the ontologi~al God in the Christian tradition. Brahman and ground for their existence and activity. 9 its counterpart· in the Christian tradition, the Every entity, accordingly, is dual­ act of being, are to be considered infinite dimensional. . There is its underlying because they are two names for one and the ontological ground and its existence as an same ontological reality, namely, an entity in virtue of that same ground. lO As underlying activity which brings into I see it, this could well be the basis for a existence and relates to one another all the new understanding of the much controverted entities (both divine and creaturely) that notion of non-duality in the exist. Atman, on the other hand, and the tradition. That is, non-duality does not exist personal God of Christian belief represent in the first place between an infinite entity the Supreme Being, that which possesses this and finite entities, but rather between the activity by nature and which somehow grounding activity at work within an entity shares it with all other beings. Thus, as I and the entity itself as an existing reality. argue in The Divine Matrix, one can and For they are not simply identical; the should distinguish in the Vedantic tradition grounding activity is not an entity, and the between the cosmic Self or supreme Atman, entity is other than the grounding activity. the atman of the individual finite self and At the same time they are not-two since only Brahman as the underlying ontological together, namely, as grounding activity and activity common to them both which links that which exists in virtue of the grounding them in an I-Thou relationship. 12

Published by Digital Commons @ Butler University, 1998 3 Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies, Vol. 11 [1998], Art. 10 42 Joseph A. Bracken

i Similarly, in the Christian tradition, one without determinate character of divinity should distinguish between God, the apart from creating." 16 individual creature, and the act of being This somewhat cryptic reference to God common to them both which links them as Neville spells out in a later book in the , i ! I,:' Creator and creature within a common following manner. The doctrine of creation world. out of nothing (ex nihilo) has three In The Divine Matrix, I devoted a components; the creative source, the creative chapter to an analysis of the "Great act, and the created product. The created I' Sayings" in the and to a product is not only the world of finite somewhat more detailed analysis of the entities but the determinate reality of God as i;l writings of SaiIkara and Ramanuja, all in the their creator. God, in other words, moves light of this new understanding of the from pure indeterminacy to determinate Infinite as an underlying activitr; rather than reality in creating the world. The creative as a transcendent entity. 3 In the act is the ontological creativity referred to remaining pages of this article, accordingly, above. Finally, the creative source is God as I will focus on the writings of two wholly indeterminate apart from creation. contemporary Christian theologians, namely, Neville's reasoning here is that, if God were Robert Neville of Boston University and a determinate reality apart from creation, myself, in which this notion of the Infinite then one would have to postulate still as an underlying activity rather than as a another reality beyond God which would transcendent entity comes to the fore in the provide the ontological reason for God's analysis of the God-world relationship from determinateness apart from creation. a Christian perspective. I will offer a brief Ultimate reality, in other words, must be summary of our two positions and then intrinsically indeterminate; for otherwise one indicate how in a curious way we reflect the is always faced with the question how it different stances taken by Sailkara and. became determinate. 17 Ramanuja on the reality of Brahman/Atman. Neville's conception of the God-world In Behind the Masks of God, Neville relationship is, accordingly, in some ways argues that every entity is a "harmony" of close to that of SaIikara. Neville argues that essential and conditional features, i.e., of God· as creative source is purely featur,es which distinguish it from other indeterminate; in that respect, God as entities and of features which link it to other creative source is akin to SaIikara's notion of entities. 14 He then adds: Given the Brahman. Likewise, Neville argues that God existence of two such entities, each with its is creator or a determinate reality only own harmony of essential and conditional through interaction with creatures, somewhat features, the way that SaiIkara arg.ues that Brahman is ISvara there must be an ontologial ground of manifest as (Lord) only in interaction mutual togetherness in which each with with human beings in search of an both essential and conditional features explanation for the origin of reality. On the faces the other with both essential and other hand, unlike Sailkara, Neville conditional features. I propose that this postulates the real existence of finite entities ground is ontological creativity, apart from Brahman as the indeterminate creativity of the very being of all things source of reality and, above all, the real insofar as they are together in any sense existence of a universal grounding activity whatever. 15 which he calls ontological creativity (as Finally, he also notes that ontological opposed to SaiIkara's more ambivalent creativity "is the presence of the wholly position on the status and function of miiyii). transcendent God beyond God creating the My own position is certainly more in determinate creatures of the earth but line with orthodox Christian theology and

I I i https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/jhcs/vol11/iss1/10 DOI: 10.7825/2164-6279.1183 4 Bracken: Infinity and the Logic of Non-Dualism Infinity and the Logic of Non-Dualism 43

possibly more in line with the personalistic entities are less the "body" of God than co­ theism of Ramanuja. For I argue that the existent members of a cosmic society with ontological creativity or grounding activity God. The unity of the cosmic society, at work within and among the entities of this moreover, is not the unity of God as its world does not emanate from a totally transcendent member but the dynamic unity l unknown source as Neville claims but from brought about by the divine nature as the , , God in terms of the divine nature, that underlying principle of existence and activity ! ' which makes God to be God, even apart for all the members, God included. It is the from creation. Even God as a personal being unity of a specifically social reality rather or entitative reality, in other words, requires than the unity of an individual entity as in a grounding activity in order to exist; but Ramanuja's scheme. this grounding activity, as I see it, is the To sum up, then, the relationship divine nature. It is, so to speak, the hidden between the Infinite and the finite would dimension of God just as the grounding seem to be necessarily non-dual; somehow activity is the hidden dimension of the being the Infinite must encompass the finite or it is or entitative reality of every created entity. not really infinite. This would seem to be Thus, while Neville is correct in saying that the enduring insight which a Westerner like only something indeterminate can explain myself should gain from pondering the what is determinate, that indeterminate "Great Sayings" out of the Upanishads and reality is not completely unknown. It can be the writings of SaIikara and Ramanuja. What identified as the divine nature, that which, this paper, on the other hand, has argued is first of all, makes God to be God and then that there are two distinct options for what secondly, through the act of creation, that one means here by the' Infinite. If the which makes all creatures both to be Infinite is understood in quasi-entitative themselves and to exist in relation to one terms, then the position of SaIikara would another and to God. 18 seem to be logically more consistent than The possible affinity of my scheme with that of either Ramanuja or various Christian the thought of Ramanuja consists in the fact theologians like Neville or myself. Because, that we both seem to be aiming at a if an infinite entity is truly "one without a panentheistic' understanding of the second", then multiplicity is an illusion. All God-w~rld relationship. That is, we both appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, believe that finite entities exist in God and only Brahman really exists. through the power of God. This is what But, if the Infinite is understood to be an Ramanuja e~idently had in mind with the all-comprehensive activity such as Neville metaphor of the world as the "body" of and I have urged, then finite entities really God. Likewise, this is what I have in mind . exist and, at least within my scheme, a with the argument that creatures exist in and personal God in dynamic interaction with through participation in the divine nature or these finite entities really exists. The divine act of being. Where we differ, of governing idea here is that there is a non­ course, is that for Ramanuja finite entities, dual relationship between a universal at least from one perspective, have no grounding activity called creativity and the reality except as "modes" or finite entities which it thereby empowers to exist. manifestations of Brahman or Vi~,!u; for me, Both the grounding activity and the entities on the other' hand, finite entities really exist unlike the non-dual relationship, unambiguously have their own real existence first, within Sailkara's scheme between the and activity apart from God as a Absolute Self and ,finite entities in which transcendent entity even as they depend on finite entities ultimately do not exist and the divine nature for that same existence and then within Ramanuja's scheme in which the activity. In my scheme, accordingly, finite relation of finite entities to Brahman or

Published by Digital Commons @ Butler University, 1998 5 Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies, Vol. 11 [1998], Art. 10 44 Joseph A. Bracken

Visnu remains somewhat ambiguous. One 14. Robert Cummings Neville, Behind the Masks can, in other words, equivalently "have of God: An Essay toward Comparative one's cake and eat it too". Both the Infinite Theology (Albany, N.Y.: State University of and the finite can be seen as real without New York Press, 1991), p. 62. logical contradiction. Neither is ultimately 15. Ibid. illusory. 19 16. Ibid., p. 63. 17. Robert Cummings Neville, Eternity and Notes Time's Flow (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1993), pp. 1. Chandogya Upanishad, VI, 2, 1-2: in The 154-55. Thirteen Principal Upanishads, trans. Robert 18. Cf. The Divine Matrix, pp. 52-68, where I Ernest Hume, 2nd ed. (London: Oxford provide a process-oriented, trinitarian University Press, 1975), p. 241. understanding of this hypothesis. 2. Arvind Sharma, The 19. In a recent article, the physicist/theologian and : A Comparative Study Robert John Russell took note of the in Religion and Reason (University Park, existence of mathematical infinities in terms PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, of transfinite numbers (e.g., the set of all 1995), p. 2. Reference is to T. M. P. even numbers ad infinitum) and the possible Mahadevan, Outlines of Hinduism (1960; existence of an infinite (i.e., an open or reprint, Bombay: Chetna, 1971), p. 147. continually expanding) universe (cf. Robert 1. Eric Lott, Vedantic Approaches to God John Russell, "The God Who Infinitely (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1980), pp. Transcends Infinity: Insights from 109-15. Madhva's position here is actually Cosmology and Mathematics into the quite close to that of classical Western Greatness of God" , The Center for Theology philosophers and theologians like Thomas and the Natural Sciences Bulletin 16, n. 4 Aquinas. (Fall, 1996). Hence, if infinity is to be used 4. Ibid., pp. 48-49. of God, then God must be understood as the 5. Ibid., p. 107. Absolute Infinity which is unknown in itself 6. Ibid., pp. 49-50. Cf. also Surendranath but yet manifest in and through what God Dasgupta, A History of , 5 creates (much as the mathematician Georg vols. (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1988): III, Cantor postulated an Absolute Infinity as the 156. logical ground of all sets of transfinite 7. Lott, Vedantic Approaches to God, p. 108; numbers). Russell concludes: "Thus the cf. also Dasgupta, A History of Indian infinity of the universe in terms of space and Philosophy, III, 159-60. time reveals something of the God who is 8. Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. Walter their source, while at the same time hiding Kaufmann (New York: Scribner's, 1970), God, leaving God as unknown and pp. 54, 62. incomprehensible" (10). My suggestion to 9. Cf. my recently published book The Divine Russell would be, to give further Matrix: Creativity as Link between East and specification to this insight by employing the . West (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, scheme developed above. That is, God is 1995), pp. 2-3, 52-69. revealed in creatures because the divine 10. Ibid., pp. 38-51, for a discussion of this nature is the simultaneously immanent and notion of ground and existent in the mystical transcendent ground of their existence and writings of Meister Eckhart and in the activity. Every creature is thus a genuine philosophy of Friedrick Schelling and Martin reflection of the divine being. Yet God is at Heidegger. the same time incomprehensible to human 11. Ibid., pp. 25-37, where I establish this idea minds because God's own entitative reality in terms of the concept of the act of being (i.e., God as simultaneously three and one) within the theology of Thomas Aquinas. "infinitely" exceeds our capacity to 12. Ibid., p. 81. understand it. 13. Ibid., pp. 75-92.

https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/jhcs/vol11/iss1/10 DOI: 10.7825/2164-6279.1183 6