The Body Divine: The Symbol of the Body in the Works of Teilhard de Chardin and Ramanuja

Cambridge Studies in Religious Traditions

by Anne Hunt Overzee

The Body Divine explores the ways in which two spiritual teachers, one Christian (Teilhard de Chardin) and one Hindu (R^D=am^D=anuja) have seen the world as inherently divine, and have presented this insight theologically through the use of a symbol, that of the "body of the divine" (the body of Christ/Brahman). In a careful study of their beliefs, Dr. Hunt Overzee shows how both thinkers came to understand reality in terms of consciousness, believing that salvation/release is realized through attaining the Lord. This goal is approximated through a changed view of things, in which everything is seen to belong to the Lord and to manifest His presence. The author compares those spiritual practices taught by each thinker in order to help people attain the Lord, and places these practices in a broader context of practices for transforming consciousness. In so doing, Dr. Hunt Overzee makes an important contribution to comparative theology, and uses her subjects as the starting point for an exploration of the wide-ranging implications of a religious symbol whose potency is perennial, cross-cultural, and of continuing contemporary importance.

236 pages, Hardcover

First published December 12, 1991

Reviews

[Scriptor Ignotus · Rating 3 out of 5]

"A thousand heads hath Purusha, a thousand eyes, a thousand feet.
On every side pervading earth he fills a space ten fingers wide.
This Purusha is all that yet hath been and all that is to be;
The Lord of Immortality which waxes greater still by food.
So mighty is his greatness; yea, greater than this is Purusha.
All creatures are one-fourth of him, three-fourths eternal life in heaven [...]
When Gods prepared the sacrifice with Purusha as their offering,
Its oil was spring, the holy gift was autumn; summer was the wood [...]

- ṛg veda 10.90


"He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross."

- Colossians 1:15-20


Examining the comparative thought of Teilhard de Chardin—a twentieth-century Catholic priest and paleontologist who attempted to reformulate traditional Christian tenets in light of modern scientific paradigms—and Ramanuja—an eleventh-century Vedantin philosopher and exegete who developed the doctrine of viśiṣṭādvaita, or qualified non-dualism between Brahman and the individual jīva—this book explores how each thinker, drawing on a great deal of scriptural and traditional precedent, represented the God-world relationship symbolically as that between soul (or mind, intellect, etc.) and body. Both men thought of the world as the body of the Supreme Person (Christ or Vishnu) in whom all things hold together and relate to one another, and considered the end of devotional practice to be the "attainment of the Lord" as one becomes aware of the subsistence of all things in the Divine and thereby unites oneself with the all-encompassing God-consciousness.

While the book aptly identifies these symbolic parallels, it gives itself little space to elaborate on how their metaphysical implications are worked out in Teilhard or Ramanuja. I think it would have benefited from broadening its ambitions.