CORRECTION

[I have made one correction to the piece below  – changing Cambridge to Oxford. Mr. Sudduth also informs me that he has now left Vaishnavism for Zen. I will add a link later.]

ORIGINAL POST

Michael Sudduth, an Oxford analytical philosopher, researcher in paranormal phenomena, and devout Christian, on his journey to Vaishnavism and the truth that the paths to God are many:

My movement into Christian inclusivism was partially responsible for my eventual departure from the Calvinistic Baptist tradition around 2004, after 18 years of affiliation with this tradition.  The movement was gradual and actually began shortly after attending Santa Clara University.  While fellow church members “tolerated” my attending a Catholic university (primarily because I had the pastor’s support), criticisms mounted while I was in graduate school.  Many of my fellow church members were suspicious of my course of study.  They were, like most of the Calvinistic Baptists I have met over the years, clearly not fans of philosophy.  But there’s at least one thing worse than philosophy, and that’s Roman Catholicism.  Indeed, I was often under the impression that some Calvinistic Baptists hated philosophy because it was something Catholics did so well.  My increasing positive appraisal of different aspects of Catholic theology and enthusiasm for the work of St. Thomas Aquinas intensified “concerns” about the “spiritual effects” of my education, and these concerns eventually evolved into frequent vicious criticisms that served only to alienate me from this particular theological tradition.

It’s worth noting that the unpleasant dynamics of rigid Christian exclusivism I experienced among Calvinistic Baptists were not a mere local phenomenon.  I found more of the same, and sometimes worse, intolerance and narrow-mindedness towards Catholicism and other forms of Christianity in at least six different Calvinistic Baptist churches I attended between graduate school and the first five years of my teaching career.  The lack of respect for philosophical inquiry, rigid exclusivism grounded in a highly parochial conception of Christianity, distaste for self criticism, and a moral outlook and practical theology that was intractably stuck in a perpetual time warp, circa 18^th century New England, each contradicted many of the intuitions forged through my own spiritual experiences and intellectual reflections.  These each alienated me from participating in the life of the tradition, which I terminated around 2004.

The Journey to India

A bolder venture into inclusivism developed after 2004 when my Christian inclusivism evolved into an inclusivism of world religions. The regular teaching of courses in world religions, the nature of religious experience, and philosophy of religion at this point in my career provided me with an opportunity to dig deep into eastern philosophy and religious practices. This exploration resulted in my growing appreciation of eastern approaches to God, as well as an assimilation of aspects of eastern thought to my own developing philosophy of religion.  Never personally detached from matters of intellectual interest, my attraction to eastern spirituality eventually manifested in my own spiritual experiences and practices, which became increasingly oriented towards the mystical and philosophical heritage of the devotional or bhakti traditions of India.

In 2011 I converted to Gaudiya Vaishnavism (also known as Bengali Vaishnavism), an eastern stream of devotional theism that may be traced to the teachings of Caitanya Mahaprabhu in sixteenth-century Bengal and the sacred Vedas of ancient India. On its philosophical axis, Gaudiya Vaishnavism is a school of Vedanta, which seeks to systematically elaborate the teachings of the Upanishads, Brahma Sutras, and Bhagavad Gita –principal sacred texts of the Indic traditions.  On its religious axis, Gaudiya Vaishnavism is a monotheistic mystical tradition centered on bhakti (love and devotional service) to Krishna as the Supreme Personality of the Godhead.

My conversion to Gaudiya Vaishnavism gradually emerged over a three-year period as the result of major shifts in my religious and philosophical perspective that were facilitated in part by my more mature reflections on core questions in the philosophy of religion, my deeper engagement with Vedanta philosophy, and my study and teaching of the Bhagavad Gita, one of the great sacred texts of eastern philosophy and spirituality.  My inclusivist attitude helped remove obstacles to understanding other traditions and inspired the pursuit of the wisdom contained in those traditions, but ultimately it was only one element among a variety of interrelated philosophical and experiential factors that led me to the wisdom of India.

After a near fatal automobile accident in March 2011, I experienced a deep personal transformation that drew me closer to the teachings and spiritual practices of the Gaudiya tradition. My associations with Swami Tripurari Maharaja and the devotees at Audarya (the Vaishnava ashram in northern California) provided me with a unique opportunity to more authentically explore the philosophical and spiritual tradition of Gaudiya Vaishnavism.  Most importantly, it served as a catalyst for my own experience of  Krishna consciousness, which brought profound clarity to different aspects of my personal life and spiritual journey. Already long convinced on philosophical grounds that God may be experienced in different ways through diverse spiritual practices and traditions, each yielding its particular form of spiritual attainment and relation to God, I see my movement eastward as the natural development of my personal devotion to God that began in the summer of 1984.  It’s not surprising that devotion should be dynamic and evolve in a way that reflects changes in our psychological dispositions, aesthetic sensibilities, and intellectual outlook.

Now, 37 years later, I reflect on that brief exchange with my mother when I was a young boy. “Which God?” my mother cynically responded, “the God of the Jews? Jesus? Allah?”  “There is only one,” I replied.  I believe the intuition back then was correct. There is only one Absolute being. Indeed, there are philosophical reasons for supposing that there could not be more than one Absolute being.  What I know now theoretically and experientially, and didn’t see back then, is why the One appears as many. “