Yoga of the Holy Spirit is in line with the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo

Sunday, March 18, 2007 ctc bulletin A Religio-Cultural Proposal for Building Communities in Asia K. P. Aleaz. Revd Dr. K. P. Aleaz kleaz@satyam.net.in is Professor of Religions at Bishop's College and Dean of the Doctoral Programme of North India Institute of Post-Graduate Theological Studies in Kolkata, India.

There is a need for us Christians to seek forgiveness for the damage done to other religious faiths and that is our first proposal. The second proposal is that we should have our mission conceived as to proclaim the liberative elements in other religious traditions, when such elements are destroyed by vested interests. The third and final proposal calls for a reconception of our theologies of religions into a perspective called Pluralistic Inclusivism, for the very transformation of our faith-experience with the help of other faith-experiences...

The dialogical theologies of Brahmabandhav Upadhyaya, P. Chenchiah and K. Subba Rao are a practical demonstration of theological construction in terms of Pluralistic Inclusivism. Brahmabandhav Upadhyaya[35] was of the view that the Vedantic conception of God and that of Christian belief are exactly the same and that Maya of Advaita Vedanta is the best available concept to explain the doctrine of creation. Though he was honestly actualizing his primary assumption that the function of Vedanta is to supply a new garb to an already formulated Christian theology, Upadhyaya did not reinterpret either of the Vedantic concepts of Saccidananda and Maya to serve as explanations of a readymade Christian theology. Rather he showed that Saccidananda is Trinity and that Maya expresses the meaning of the doctrine of creation in a far better way than the Latin root Creare.

Chenchiah[36] discovered the supreme value of Christ not in spite of Hinduism but because Hinduism had taught him to discern spiritual greatness. For him theology was based on direct experience of Jesus and this experience varies as per the background and context of the believer. Hence, there is a possibility for new interpretations of Jesus. His own experience was that Christianity is not primarily a doctrine of salvation but the announcement of the advent of a new creative order in Jesus, namely, the Kingdom of God where the cosmic energy or Shakti is the Holy Spirit. We are incorporated in the new creation of Jesus today through the Yoga of the Holy Spirit which is in line with the integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo....

Trinity therefore may be conceived as Saccidananda and the function of Jesus, going beyond the Atonement theories, can be experienced as pointing to the pervasion, illumination and unification of all levels and layers of human personality as well as the whole creation by the Supreme Atman. Posted by Dr. T. Jacob Thomas at 7:29 PM cca@cca.org.hk