Polytheism, Monotheism and Monism
The Riga Veda describes the evolution of polytheistic, monotheistic and monistic conceptions in Hinduism.
Polytheism is the belief in many gods, Monotheism in one God and Monism in the existence of one reality with diverse manifestations. All these are found in The Riga Veda.
Polytheism is the belief in many gods. Monotheism is the belief in one supreme God. Monism is the belief that everything in the universe is made from one basic substance or principle. Monism is more a metaphysical theory than a theological belief. In From Polytheism to Monotheism we have seen how the Vedic philosophy moved towards the worship of one Supreme God. That God, as is the case in all monotheistic religions, was a distinct and separate entity from the universe and its components including humans. In the later verses of the Riga Veda we see an advanced development of monism, which is the belief that there is no underlying difference between the components of the universe and the prime cause of the universe.
Monism was arrived at by a process of inquiry into the monotheistic paradigm. When God created the universe what matter did He use? In several verses of the Riga Veda the answer is that He used preexistent matter. The question then arose as to who had created the preexistent matter if God was the prime cause. The Vedic seers then moved to an answer that God must have created the universe out of his own nature. This is revealed very poetically in one of the most famous hymns of the Riga Veda.
“Sages who searched with their heart's thought discovered the existent's kinship in the non-existent.” (Chapter X Verse 129)
This process of inquiry then led the seers to the vision that God cannot be anthropomorphic and they began to conceive of God in neuter terms. The sages also saw the underlying unity among the diverse manifestations of nature. This strengthened their belief in a divinity that is not anthropomorphic. Some of the more frequent terms employed for God were ‘Sat’ or Truth and Absolute. The sages realized that one cannot see the divine; one can only experience it and at best only inadequately describe it. Because of this inadequacy various descriptions of the divine prevail. But “The truth is one, the learned call it by many names”. The monist view of creation was that universe and its components are a manifestation of God and not a creation of God.
However this led to theological difficulties. Humankind does not need a God that it can contemplate and admire and be in awe of. It needs a God that it can pray to and seek sustenance from. This precludes it from being a part of that divinity. God has to be distinct from humankind if He has to help and guide humankind. There was also a need to conceive of God as a personality to enable worshippers to reach out to Him. Somewhere at this point there was a divergence between philosophy and theology, only to be reconciled later. The unification takes full effect in the verses of the Bhagwad Gita.
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