06/16/2021 – John Thatamanil Part 1: The Immanent Divine

Are you ready…for the party? Okay, hey we got some cool stuff going on today with a cool dude. It’s Dr. B. and Dr. T. You get to decide who’s cooler. This is TenOnReligion.

Hey peeps, it’s Dr. B. with TenOnReligion. This video is closed-captioned here on YouTube and the transcript is available at TenOnReligion.com. The curiously debonair Indian-American scholar John Thatamanil, Thatamanel, Tata Tata Manile? How do you say his name again? I’m just kidding. I know how to say his name. He has written two excellent books. The first one was published in 2006, The Immanent Divine, and that’s what we’re going to cover today. Next week we’ll focus on his second book from 2020 titled Circling the Elephant. Two of his major influences are Robert Neville, whom we have already covered on this channel, and Frank Clooney who is another important figure which we’ll eventually get to on this channel as well. The Immanent Divine is a book which compares and contrasts two religious figures. The first is an Indian Hindu philosopher from ancient times, around the 700’s or so, and the second is Paul Tillich, a Protestant Christian philosopher from Germany who moved to the United States and later published his most important works in the 1950’s. Thatamanil seeks to break down some common stereotypes of Eastern and Western religions and quite frankly, largely succeeds in doing so.

In the preface, Thatamanil makes a point that he has continuously made throughout his career regarding the Christian injunction to love our neighbor. He asks, how can we authentically love our neighbor despite their deepest convictions? If we want to know someone, enter into a relationship with them, and fully understand them, we must learn about everything that they hold dear, and for many people, this includes their religious convictions as well. It’s a powerful way to approach the conversation.

Okay, the structure of the book starts with an introduction, then two chapters on Sankara, two chapters on Tillich, and concludes with an analysis chapter. In the introductory chapter he sets up the medical model as his main framework for the entire work. The human predicament is an illness requiring a diagnosis, etiology (or a cause), a prognosis (like predicting the course of a disease), and a therapy – or how to appropriately respond to the predicament. Using the language of the medical model has the advantage of being neutral so the religious language of either party does not dominate the discussion. That’s actually crucially important.

The next two chapters are on Sankara’s diagnosis and etiology, and then the prognosis and therapy. In the diagnosis and etiology, the problem is largely one of ignorance: confusing two realities that are in truth utterly distinct from one another. The subject is the “self,” which is unchanging, and the object is the “not-self” of mind, body, and senses which are then superimposed on the subject or the “self.” But it goes even further than that because one’s identity is also bound to a whole host of relationships which also solidifies one as a “self.” For Sankara, this mind-body complex is a problem because it is the source of limitation. The “self,” which is in reality infinite and unlimited, appears limited, sort of like air in a pot. That’s a great image.

In the next chapter on prognosis and therapy, the source of knowledge to liberate one from this condition is in scripture. Now, in Hinduism, Brahman is a complicated idea, and I can’t entirely explain it in this short video, but suffice it to say that Brahman represents the source of all unity as ultimate reality. For Sankara, even though what Brahman is remains beyond human thinking, one must come to the realization that one’s innermost self truly is Brahman. This is what’s called an apophatic anthropology. Apophatic in that it transcends human thinking, and anthropology because it is his view of the human being. Immanence means something that is deep within so there is a transcendence in the immanence. When people come to this realization they do not become Brahman. They come to know that their true nature is Brahman. (Ahem…thus the title of the book, The Immanent Divine). In order to come to this realization there is a preparation process to purify the mind as well as a discipline of action to help purge the grief and illusion which creates, or recreates, the self in a circular fashion called samsara. Now one quick thing to mention before moving on to Tillich. What we today label as Hinduism is a huge conglomeration of many religious viewpoints and Sankara only represents one of these perspectives. There are many Hindus who don’t accept everything Sankara has to say, but there is also some overlap in the religious beliefs. It can get confusing. If I keep talking on this subject, I feel like I’m just going to make matters worse. Moving on.

Like the two chapters on Sankara, the two chapters on Tillich are on diagnosis and etiology, and prognosis and therapy. In diagnosis and etiology the key concept of Tillich is courage. One must have courage in the face of anxiety. Such courage is both one’s own and not one’s own. The courage is one’s own because it is not someone else’s, and it is not one’s own because it comes from the power of what Tillich calls “being-itself.” Thatamanil doesn’t really mention this in his book, but Tillich’s views are heavily influenced by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. The more one has studied Heidegger the more one will understand what is going on with Paul Tillich. Basically, the human predicament is that one is estranged from three things: one’s own essential being, from others, and from the ground of “being-itself.” For Tillich it’s separation, and for Sankara it’s ignorance. One must have courage in the face of anxiety because anxiety comes with finitude. We are all finite creatures and we need to learn how to cope with that.

In the Tillich chapter on prognosis and therapy Tillich’s view of God is not that God is a being in the same way that we and other creatures are beings, but rather God is the ground of “being-itself.” God is the source of being for all creatures. Tillich realizes that this view of God gets tricky really easily and that no concept can adequately express the relationship between “being-itself” and other beings like us, so in the end symbolic language is the best road to take. Both Robert Neville, mentioned earlier, and Raimon Panikkar, mentioned in several previous episodes, do a great job explaining how symbolic language does this for world religions. Tillich’s therapy is that one must connect with the Spirit of God as “being-itself” in ecstatic union. But because humans have freedom, this union fluctuates, and all healing occurs only in fragments of time.

The last chapter compares and contrasts both figures. Nothing exists apart from Brahman or “being-itself.” Sankara’s view shows how human beings as infinite mystery preserves transcendence without competing with immanence, basically transcendence in the immanence, or transcendence arising from within. Tillich’s view helps overcome dualism without throwing out the world of experience. For Sankara the desire for Brahman exists but is dissolved when one realizes one is Brahman. For Tillich, the desire for ultimate concern never ends because there must be some distance between us and God for humans to have freedom, but this freedom also inevitably leads to estrangement. The religious experience is “ec-static” because the experiences in which the self is driven to remedy the predicament are ultimately from the ground of “being-itself,” so they are outside the self. The author then makes an interesting argument here which he calls dynamic nondualism. There does not have to be “an outside” driving one to the remedy because the divine life of the Spirit is already within. Thus, it is no longer “ec-static,” strictly speaking, because it’s not outside.

One really interesting thing Thatamanil mentions in his concluding chapter is that what one brings to the comparison of these two figures (or any two figures for that matter) significantly influences how that comparison is formed. Are we religious tourists just trying to have fun learning about another religion, or are we really vulnerable to change? How willing are we to seriously understand and engage something different from what we are? In order to really understand something or someone we must enter into a relationship. In order to truly enter into a meaningful relationship, we must engage at the level of deepest convictions. Not an easy thing to do for many people, but the rewards in this life are rich if we do. The next episode we’re going to take a hard look at Thatamanil’s most recent book, Circling the Elephant. It’s an excellent work so stick around! Until next time, stay curious. If you enjoyed this, please like and share this video and subscribe to this channel. This is TenOnReligion.