By Deepa Majumdar
The magic of Christmas reaches beyond Christians to affect us all. Unless stone-hearted, we all tremble with love, when we think of the Son of God born of immaculate conception (the most exalted form of birth), but in a humble stable. Peace and goodwill enter our hearts, melting all enmity and vengeance. While Christmas has a special meaning for practicing Christians, it has meaning also for non-Christians – unless they are bigots. Even western secular liberals praise Christ as a great revolutionary! So, His birth means something even to atheists. Here in wintry Northwest Indiana, the bare trees clutch the sky, their skeletal branches glistening with ice, like candelabra. Christmas imbues them with special beauty. Silent sentinels, they shine beneath the starry heavens, with the quiet joy of Christmas. Thus, even nature rejoices at Christmas. Why? Because the different world religions are not isolated from one another. They are kindred spirits tied together under one grand syncretic principle. Moreover, one does not have to be religious to feel the magic of Christmas. For this syncretic principle synthesizes not just all religions, but all beings in what Plotinus called invisible strings of sympathy.
From the assertion of monotheism (whether monistic or not), and the hierarchy of prayer – to the lives of saints, the power of holiness, and the centrality of moral principles – the major world religions, in their higher aspects, share many treasures in common. But in their lower ideological aspects, they also share dark toxins. If the Abrahamic religions have had a sad history of persecuting other religions, then those originating in India are no less violent. Thus, Hinduism has historically turned its violence inward – through the blasphemy of the caste system, a distortion and caricature of the Varna system – but also outward (in 20th and 21st century, ideological versions of Hinduism, like Hindutva etc.), thus breaking the covenant of higher Hinduism with the syncretic principle of religion articulated in the Rig Veda – which asserts that all religions are equally true. By persecuting Muslims, Christians, and other religious minorities, this lowest Hinduism has betrayed its own higher aspects. Buddhism has been no less violent – in countries like Sri Lanka, and Myanmar. Moreover, all the world religions have persecuted women, lending a pseudo “divine” support to patriarchy! The major world religions are therefore tied both at their summit and their base. At the summit, they share a luminous syncretic principle in their shared commonalities. At their ideological base, they share a dark syncretic principle that manifests itself through religious xenophobia and egotism.
Yet the principal world religions also differ greatly – with paradigmatic differences that cannot be overlooked. From the definition of God, to the details of the afterlife, and the relationship between mysticism and morality, the world religions vary greatly. For Christians God is the Trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. For monistic Advaita Vedanta, God is Brahman, the one and only Reality, for whom the best pronoun is “It.” The Abrahamic religions (in their traditional doctrinal forms) reject reincarnation, while most world religions, especially those from the east, accept it.
Religion, I would suggest, is like language. Just like the different world languages vary greatly in how they synthesize sound with the rational grid of grammar, so also the world religions vary in their basic tenets. Yet, just as different languages share in common a syncretic principle of communication, so also religions share a higher syncretic principle that synthesizes them. Just as different languages use different words for “love” – but they mean the same thing – so also the different religions use varying costumes of the Divine, but they mean the same divine Quintessence that stands as their origin, quite as the Great Ocean stands as the origin of multiple rivers.
But what happens when these different rivers forget their shared Origin and start devouring one another? What happens when the different religions forget they share the same origin and start destroying one another? Religious practice serves as the surest panacea for egotism. Religion, therefore, is the most powerful means of sublimating and overcoming the ego. Yet it is religion more than politics, or business, that can be the greatest source of egotism. Sincere practice of any true religion decimates the ego, thus strengthening the self. But religious identity exacerbates the ego like nothing else. In fact, religious egotism can be more lethal than secular egotism. Rooted in the religious identity rather than in the practice of religion – religious egotism kills in the name of God – thus betraying the syncretic principle that ties all religions in a common storehouse of Truth.
This begs the question – what is it that threads the different religions together in a tapestry that represents the highest syncretic principle of religion? What is this principle – the Great Ocean that unleashes all the rivers of individual religions, synthesizing them by serving as their origin – yet permitting the violence endemic to the lowest ideological aspects of religion? This, according to the Rig Veda is God or Truth, which is one, but with myriad paths leading to it – all of them equally true. Like history, religion too expresses the conjoint will of God and man. Thus, despite God Himself being the syncretic principle that ties all religions together, violence happens when religious zealots kill in the name of God.
In recent history, this divine syncretic principle, celebrated in the Rig Veda, was embodied in the person of Sri Ramakrishna, and Holy Mother – two historically simultaneous Incarnations of God who were really one in two corporeal forms. Sri Ramakrishna demonstrated this syncretic principle of religion, promised in the Rig Veda – not just by embodying it – but by proving it with His unique practices. Like a scientist, He demonstrated this syncretic principle by practicing not only the varying sects of Hinduism, but also Christianity, and Islam – each to its mystical culmination –declaring in His inimitable patois that all religions lead to the same goal – or, “all jackals howl the same way [at the summit].” He, therefore, proved experientially that all three religions lead to union with the same divine Origin.
Thus, God Himself, who, like a chameleon, appears in different costumes in different religions – for the sake of His human votaries (because they vary in their religious proclivities) – serves as the highest syncretic principle that underlies and synthesizes all true religions. This God is Truth itself – to be distinguished from truthfulness, which is the application of Truth.
We should, therefore, not be surprised that holiness, sanctity, and compassion are never the prerogatives of any one religion, but belong to all true religions. Nor should we be surprised that Christmas makes us mellow, regardless of our religious affiliations, or lack thereof. It makes the arrogant humble, the miser generous, and the spiteful, forgiving. Christmas makes us pause to recollect ourselves and think of the absurdity of materialism in this short life, whose only purpose is to return to the Great Ocean wherefrom we came, and of which, we are individual waves.