When thinking of what is fundamentally different between a Hindu worldview and Western one, a few primary points come to mind. Here, by Western we refer in specific to the Judeo-Christian worldview, which also includes the Islamic and is alternately called the Abrahamic worldview.
The seeming difference of a monotheistic conception vs. a polytheistic one is relatively superficial, in that it more describes an outcome of the fundamental than the fundamental itself. But deeper within, it elides the occurrence in one a healthy comfort with the very idea of multiplicity, and in the other an existential antagonism to it. This difference reveals itself beyond theological windows - for instance in the discipline of history.
On the Multiplicity of Time
Stalwarts such as Prof. Balagangadhara, Dr. Adluri and Dr. Bagchee have detailed how contemporary enterprises such as Indology and philology are stymied by a uni-linear notion of time, itself derived from the historicism that was necessary to uphold the Judeo-Christian worldview. How this happens can be understood as a series of steps human trajectory has taken in the past ~2000 years.
- The prior state - of many cultures, many traditions, and equally as many histories, ie - as many stories of a people about their own past.
- The emergence of Judaism - a specific community with a specific tale about its own past.
- The breakaway of Christianity from Judaism and consequently, its move towards becoming a global religion, ie - making itself available to the Gentiles, or non-Jews, such as Greeks, Romans and others.
- The necessity then, from the above, of identifying a world history, where the multiple histories of multiple cultures had to be mapped to a singular and specific Christian story of creation, man and God’s interventions in the world.
- The resultant clash of a variety of views on history and time - cyclical, helical, non-linear - against the monistic, linear view of time which presumed that all other views could be methodically sanitized to extract their proper place in the new, Christian world history.
- The inheritance of this linear view of time by the natural and social sciences developed in Europe, particularly in history and philology, culminating in -
- The absolute butchery of Indian tradition at hands of those schooled in such sciences to produce not only a philology that does not understand the culture it studies, but also a history that does only injustice to the subject of its own contents - India, Indian history, Hinduism, etc.
Under the critique of Balagangadhara, Adluri and Bagchee, this has also created within India the misguided and oft-damaging enterprises of historical chronology, text-historicism, and attempted reconciliations of Paurāṇika literature with the world history. These endeavors fall to the same trap - of seeing time as a singular, linear thread - and fail to understand 1) an intrinsic atemporality to the tradition, and 2) the use of temporality as a narrative device in the corpus.
This fundamental difference in how time and the past are understood creates a cognitive dissonance in the modern Hindu - who is generally educated into the linear view and out of the native view that is more adaptive and plural. It results in a near inability in the modern times to not ask - did the Mahābhārata or the Rāmāyaṇa really happen?
That emphasis on ‘really’ points to an even deeper difference in the Hindu and Abrahamic worldviews. A difference in core metaphysics. It reiterates the rift that is perceivable at more symptomatic layers as monism vs. multiplicity. And it is of specific concern in this essay because it helps reveal Hinduism’s essential difference with even a range of secular, modern -isms, as we will see.
The Rift in Core Metaphysics
For the Abrahamic paradigm, the singular, linear view of time has second-order implications.
Everything happens only once.
The universe was created - once, in the deep past. God spanned his creations across his realm and set in motion the cosmic clock - once. That clock has been running unbroken, down to our time, and our future converges with it completely towards the end of time. That end too will come only once. Only one category in this ontology exists outside this arrow of time - the realm of judged souls which is divided between a heaven and hell. There can be an eternal damnation which implies something beyond temporality - but even that is a singular, only one unit of its kind. And all that you are in this moment will at some point end up, only once, in that transcendent realm of judged souls.
The Hindu mind would easily find this a very narrow, limited view of reality. All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again, was a mythic aphorism in the science-fiction show Battlestar Galactica, and in its cyclical view of time it homages the Hindu view not unfairly. Hindu cosmology understands an aspect of time which theoretical physics has more recently intuited as a process of Big Bang and Big Crunch, the latter itself fueling another Bang of creation.
This difference in metaphysics is fundamental, for it has serious impact on both eschatology and teleology.
Eschatology refers to the part of theology that concerns itself with the final events of history, the ultimate fate of humanity and human events, and in general the events of end times. Teleology is an explanation of things by the purpose they serve. In a paradigm where everything happens only once, such as the Abrahamic, a deep urgency and desire for accelerationism is seeded into the metaphysics. Since the journey is known, its final days described and anticipated, why not rush there faster? The ultimate fate of humanity then is to in fact prepare for the end times, and eschatology becomes the teleology - the purpose of human affairs is to set course for the end and arrive there appropriately primed.
The consequence of any action in such a setting is magnified by its singular existence on the arrow of time. Soon comes the day of judgement, and to heaven or to hell we shall be marched. A sin then that prohibited deed we commit, a blasphemy that skeptical word we utter. A glory to God the brother we recruit into his faith, a service to the end times each disbeliever we rid the earth of. This is what we mean by eschatology that becomes teleology. The very purpose of human life and society is defined by its service to the final events of history.
It is easy to see why these impulses will not arise in a metaphysics where the only singular is the One- Brahman. Everything else is, by definition, an emergence of the many from this one, and all of reality is but a cycle of sleeping and waking states. Sṛṣṭi emerges outwards, like the infinitely blooming petals of a lotus, in Brahman’s awakening. And the petals close back into themselves as Laya when Brahman returns to rest. Bṛṃh-manin -> Brahman, literally the outpouring, the spreading out (bṛṃh/बृंह्).
In such a metaphysics accelerationism appears naive, absurd even. And teleology is given the kind of breathing space that can produce a whole, rounded and profound understanding of humanity - the puruśārtha.
We do not live only once - we are born again and again, and the consequence of deed is accumulated over lifetimes as karma. The events of history are only materially understood through their reconstructed actuality, and in reality they are but the reflections of more cosmic, paratemporal events. The Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa are made real not because they “really” happened. They are real because the divine really manifests in them. They are real precisely because they speak of things belonging to the eternal, the Sat (सत्).
This difference in a single-life metaphysics and a multiple-life metaphysics explains Hinduisms divergence from the modern -isms: capitalism, communism, atheism, scientism, rationalism, materialism, etc.
The Single-life Metaphysics’ of Modernity
Whether explicitly or implicitly, the modern -isms are premised on the ‘one life, everything happens only once paradigm’. Capitalism and communism may be non-theological, but both implicitly believe in a material, objective reality with 1) a discernible past, and 2) a future we can create. And both are dangerously accelerationist. Communism is inherently disruptive, for its eschatology requires the revolution of the proletariat and the collapse of incumbent order. Without being theological it ends up with the same incidence of eschatology becoming teleology.
Capitalism may not explicate an eschatology, but it nonetheless contains one. The free hand of the market is supposed to, eventually, bring about a utopia of equity and balance. Give capitalism a sufficiently long reign over this one, singular arrow of time that we live in, and the gods of laissez-faire and their invisible hand will bring us collective good. One that presumably justifies the horrors some of us may experience along the journey. And so emerges a teleology that values disruptive innovation, a culture that designs and creates things with values-agnosticism. A planet where the smartest species accelerates ecological collapse and through its own metaphysics brings the final days of humanity - the end times.
Scientism, rationalism and materialism may diverse from the Abrahamic worldview in critical ways, but their inheritance nonetheless of a unitemporal, monodimensional reality