One Truth, Many Voices: Wisdom of the Upanishads and the Bible
At first glance, the Upanishads and the Christian Bible appear to represent conflicting spiritual perspectives. One grew out of ancient India and speaks of Brahman, the ground of all existence that transcends name and form, and of Atman, the identical, eternal, unchanging presence of Brahman within all sentient beings. Later, the Christian perspective emerged from the Middle East and centered on a personal God, concepts of sin and redemption, and a linear journey towards salvation. Despite the apparent differences, however, these two traditions share similarities that reveal a common aim: to reconnect humanity with its divine source.
Using differing terminologies, both the Upanishads and the Bible point to an ultimate reality that transcends human comprehension while being the substance of being itself. In the Upanishads, the word Brahman is used for the indescribable, formless absolute, simultaneously immanent and transcendent. Passages speak of Brahman as “not this, not that,” emphasizing its nature beyond all dualities and attributes. Similarly, the Christian Bible contains declarations of God’s transcendence and omnipresence. Passages like “God is Spirit” (John 4:24) or “in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28) echo the pervasive, formless nature of the absolute. While traditional Christian theology posits a distinct and separate Creator, Christian mystics like Meister Eckhart point to a unity where God is intimately present within and as all creation, mirroring the Upanishadic understanding of Brahman as the Self of all.
A key aspect of both traditions is the alleviation of suffering caused by perceived wrongdoing. The Christian framework, with its emphasis on sin and forgiveness, appears highly dualistic with a separate God forgiving separate individuals for their transgressions. However, from a nondual perspective, forgiveness can be seen as the ultimate act of non-resistance to reality, a letting go of the ego's attachment to guilt and past narratives. The grace of God is the ever-present reality of wholeness and perfection, available when the mind ceases to identify with the belief in separation. In other words, “getting right with God” is not a negotiation with an external, transcendental judge, but a re-alignment with the perfect, unblemished, changeless nature of our innermost being.
Similarly, the Upanishads contain teachings on non-attachment to the past. Certain passages employ personification to emphasize that the true Self is utterly unaffected by accumulated actions. “When he is seen within us and without / He sets right all doubts and dispels the pain / Of wrong actions committed in the past” (Easwaran, Mundaka Upanishad, part II, 2:9). The suffering caused by perceived wrongdoing in the past dissipates when the belief in a separate actor, the ego, is understood to be illusory. There is only the Self experiencing the richness and diversity of appearances within consciousness, within itself. Consciousness, the potential for experience and the ground of all being, cannot be judgmental, for there is nothing outside of consciousness upon which judgment could be pronounced. Judgment is a function of the mind (an appearance in consciousness), not of that which knows the mind.
Both the Upanishads and the Christian Bible, when explored from a nondual perspective, point to the recognition of our essential nature; however, the Upanishads is more direct in its call for discerning the true Self that is identical with the ultimate reality of awareness.
Jesus’ teachings on losing one’s life to find it (Matthew 10:39), becoming “one with the Father” (John 10:30, 17:21-23), or the Kingdom of God being “within you” (Luke 17:21) are pointers to this dissolution of the separate ego and the realization of a unified ground of being. The “new creation” in Christian theology can be seen as the transformed perception of reality that comes from abiding in this oneness, where the world is seen as an expression of divine consciousness.
So in many ways, while the outer forms, narratives, and theological frameworks differ, the Upanishads and the Bible, in essence, are pointing to the same truth, that of a shared, unified reality, which, in it’s purest expression, is the fullness of Love.