On Absolute Truth in Hinduism: Impersonal Energy or a Supreme Person?

At Harvard’s Bhakti Yoga Conference in 2025, a man whose Hindu name is Kaustubha spoke on the three phases of ultimate truth: Brahman, Paramatma, and Bhagavan. Is the absolute truth an energy or a person? Is God a non-personal energy or a person. In Vedanta Hinduism, this is a salient question. According to Kaustubha, absolute truth is that which is not dependent on anything else; a truth from which everything else comes. Kaustubha defined Brahman as being impersonal energy, which is that from which everything else manifests. The Upanishads emphasize the realization by a person that one’s true self is identical to the impersonal energy of being itself that is infinite, aware, powerful, and blissful.  Although the Bhagavad-Gita can be interpreted thusly, as per Shankara’s commentary, but also as Krishna being the Supreme Person, which is more ultimate than Brahman. What gives? Who, or what, is on top in terms of ontological ultimacy (i.e., ultimately real)?

The full essay is at "On Absolute Truth in Hinduism."

Living Ritual

I contend that for a religious ritual to be “alive” is for it to be responsive to spiritual truths as they are played out by or among the people who have gathered even just as spectators rather than participants. In liturgy, the readings and the ritual itself can stimulate a spiritual state of mind (un état de l’esprit—this last word alone signifying the connection), which in turn can even unconsciously prompt conduct that can be observed to be religious (or spiritual) in nature. For a ritual to be alive is for it to incorporate such conduct in order to draw attention to the underlying religious truth manifesting in one or more persons. The antagonist in this drama is the strict literalist who goes inflexibly by the letter of the ritual’s laws rather than the spirit thereof, ignoring that only the spirit rises and thus is capable of lifting humans in general and in a liturgical context in particular.

The full essay is at "Living Ritual."

Fatima: The Miracle of the Sun

The film, Fatima (2020), tells the story of the three Roman Catholic children in Fatima, Portugal, who in 2017 claimed to see and hear the Virgin Mary periodically over a period of 6 months. The film centers around Lucia, the oldest of the three children, and, moreover, the question of whether the children really encounter the Virgin, or are lying, hypnotic, or even psychotic. In the film, as well as in “real life,” a miracle is associated with the last visitation. In the story world of the film, the visitation really happens, and the multitudes watching the children come to believe this when the Virgin delivers on a miracle as promised. Historically, believers as well as nonbelievers who were present at the event have testified that the Sun moved around in the sky and even came closer. If this really happened as witnesses have described, then the empirical “proof” in the story world of the film is not the whole story, and the religious truth therein is not limited to the faith narrative, but holds in an empirical, supernatural sense. An implication is that Jesus not only resurrects in the Gospel stories, but also as an empirical event in history. But, then, why have such supernatural events been so rare since the “time” of Jesus?  And, yet, witnesses as far as 40 km away from the visitation of the Virgin reported seeing the miracle of the Sun.

The full essay is at: "Fatima"