Taking Eknath Easwaran at his word
One thing I’ve struggled with since adopting Eknath Easwaran as my spiritual teacher is the question of what exactly it makes me. A Hindu? A perennialist? A Christian who follows a Hindu? Easwaran is my mother’s favorite religious writer, and to date he’s the warmest, most common-sense guide to spiritual matters I’ve found.
I accept most of his down-to-earth theology with ease. That includes, for instance, his panentheism, perennialism, and view of God as an impersonal force. I find myself more comfortable with his conception of Hinduism than almost any Christian denomination I’ve come across. Yet the doctrine of reincarnation still give me trouble.
On an intellectual level, I find the doctrine more satisfying than Christian ideas of the afterlife. It seems like a neater response to the problem of people not completing their spiritual journeys in a single lifetime than purgatory. Similarly, the belief in countless lives, as opposed to just one, likely does a better job lessening a person’s identification with the body.
Despite this abstract appreciation for the theory of reincarnation, when I think of the afterlife, I inevitably think of an idyllic, eternal place where I reunite with my loved ones. Try as I might, I can’t shake the Christian vision. On a deep, psychological level, that’s what appeals to me. I’ve fought it for some time, wanting to be closer to Easwaran.
Maybe I’ll get to a place in which reincarnation feels less foreign. But for now, that struggle is a distraction from my spiritual progress. Easwaran frequently says you needn’t convert to practice his form of meditation and belief in transmigration of the soul isn’t necessary to make spiritual gains. It’s time I take him at his word.
For instance, in God Makes the Rivers Flow, Easwaran recalls talking to students. “You don’t have to change your religion,” he told them, “to do what I have done. The method of meditation I learned is universal. It can be practiced within the mainstream of any religious tradition, and outside all of them as well.”
Easwaran makes a similar point in the first volume The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living. “It is not necessary to believe in reincarnation in order to lead the spiritual life,” he wrote. “Whether we believe in one life or in many, we can all meditate, restrain our senses and put others first.” Really, there’s no end to such statements by Easwaran.
He even acknowledges there is a risk for converts to the doctrine of transmigration of souls. For instance, in the third volume of the aforementioned trilogy, Easwaran says, “In India, we seldom talk about reincarnation because everybody believes in it. In the West, however, the topic seems exotic, so people sometimes get caught up in it.”
He continues, making clear his utilitarian approach to theology: “If the theory of reincarnation helps you to understand how to face difficult situations with patience and compassion, well and good. Beyond that, I would not advise getting intellectually caught up in it. All kinds of fruitless speculation can result.”
I believe Easwaran was a kind teacher, who cared for his students. If he thought belief in transmigration of souls was needed to make spiritual progress or significantly faster progress, he would have said so. But Easwaran didn’t. In contrast, there were other traits he thought were necessary, which he was explicit about.
As an example, Easwaran believed vegetarianism was an integral part of religious awareness. He was generally diplomatic in making the point, but, in at least one instance, he outright said those who ate animals were spiritually stunted. Easwaran didn’t qualify the statement by noting it only applied to Hindus or those who found it useful.
Again, all of this is to say, Easwaran didn’t see belief in reincarnation as a requirement to living a spiritual life. As he wrote in The Essence of the Upanishads, “We can attain Self-realization whether we believe in one life or many.” There were other traits which Easwaran thought were essential to religious progress, but this wasn’t one of them.