The late Sat­gu­ru Sivaya Sub­ra­mu­niyaswa­mi, known as Gu­rude­va (1927-2001), was the Hin­du spir­i­tu­al leader of the largest Hin­du ashram out­side of In­dia. This fa­mous ashram is lo­cat­ed in Hawaii, and all its re­li­gious per­son­al­i­ties are put in “white swamis,” they pro­duce the in­ter­na­tion­al mag­a­zine “Hin­duism to­day” and ad­vise on Hin­du con­cepts.

“Ekam Sat Vipra Bahud­ha Vadan­ti”

“Truth is One, the wise call it by many names.”

Hin­duism is both monothe­is­tic and henothe­is­tic. Hin­dus were nev­er poly­the­is­tic, in the sense that there are many equal Gods. Henothe­ism (lit­er­al­ly “one God”) bet­ter de­fines the Hin­du view. It means the wor­ship of one God with­out deny­ing the ex­is­tence of oth­er Gods, one Di­vine Pow­er, many ex­pres­sions.

Hin­dus be­lieve in the one all-per­va­sive God who en­er­gis­es the en­tire uni­verse. We can see Him in the life shin­ning out of the eyes of hu­mans and all crea­tures. This view of God as ex­ist­ing in and giv­ing life to all things is called pan­the­ism. It is dif­fer­ent from pan­the­ism, which is the be­lief that God is the nat­ur­al uni­verse and noth­ing more.

It is al­so dif­fer­ent from strict the­ism, which says God is on­ly above the world, apart and tran­scen­dent. Pan­the­ism is an all-en­com­pass­ing con­cept. It says that God is both in the world and be­yond it, both im­ma­nent and tran­scen­dent. That is the high­est Hin­du view.

Hin­dus al­so be­lieve in many man­i­fes­ta­tions of Gods who per­form var­i­ous func­tions. These should not be con­fused with the Supreme God. These Di­vini­ties are high­ly ad­vanced be­ings that have spe­cif­ic du­ties and pow­ers, not un­like the heav­en­ly spir­its, over­lords or archangels revered in oth­er faiths. Each de­nom­i­na­tion wor­ships the Supreme God and its own pan­theon of di­vine be­ings.

What is some­times con­fus­ing to non-Hin­dus is that Hin­dus of var­i­ous sects may call the one God by many dif­fer­ent names, ac­cord­ing to their de­nom­i­na­tion or re­gion­al tra­di­tion. Hin­duism gives us the free­dom to ap­proach God in our way, en­cour­ag­ing a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of paths, not ask­ing for con­for­mi­ty to just one.

There is much con­fu­sion about this sub­ject, even among Hin­dus who look at Di­vin­i­ty. Oth­ers will be de­light­ed with the rich­ness of the In­di­an con­cepts of God.

You may wish to men­tion that some Hin­dus be­lieve on­ly in the form­less Ab­solute Re­al­i­ty as God; oth­ers be­lieve in God as per­son­al Lord and Cre­ator. This free­dom makes the un­der­stand­ing of God in Hin­duism, the old­est liv­ing re­li­gion, the rich­est in all of earth’s ex­ist­ing faiths.

We be­lieve the soul is im­mor­tal and takes birth, time and time again. Through this process, we have ex­pe­ri­ences, learn lessons and evolve spir­i­tu­al­ly. Fi­nal­ly, we grad­u­ate from phys­i­cal birth.

Car­nate means “hav­ing flesh as op­posed to just the spir­it.” Rein­car­na­tion means to “re-en­ter the flesh.” Yes, Hin­dus be­lieve in rein­car­na­tion. To us, it ex­plains the nat­ur­al way the soul evolves from im­ma­tu­ri­ty to spir­i­tu­al il­lu­mi­na­tion. Life and death are re­al­i­ties for all of us.

Hin­duism be­lieves that the soul is im­mor­tal, that it nev­er dies, but in­hab­its one body af­ter an­oth­er on the earth dur­ing its evo­lu­tion­ary jour­ney. Phys­i­cal death is a most nat­ur­al tran­si­tion for the soul, which sur­vives and, guid­ed by Kar­ma, con­tin­ues its long pil­grim­age un­til it is one with God.

Even mod­ern sci­ence has dis­cov­ered rein­car­na­tion. There have been many cas­es of in­di­vid­u­als re­mem­ber­ing their past lives. These have been re­searched by sci­en­tists, psy­chi­a­trists and para­psy­chol­o­gists dur­ing the past decades and doc­u­ment­ed in books and videos.

Young chil­dren of­ten speak of vivid past-life mem­o­ries, which fade as they grow old­er, as the veils of in­di­vid­u­al­i­ty shroud the soul’s in­tu­itive un­der­stand­ing. Great mys­tics speak of their past lives as well. So our an­cient scrip­tures, the Vedas, re­veal the re­al­i­ty of rein­car­na­tion.

Rein­car­na­tion is be­lieved in by the Jains and the Sikhs, by the In­di­ans of the Amer­i­c­as, and by the Bud­dhists, cer­tain Jew­ish sects, the Pa­gans and the many in­dige­nous faiths. Even Chris­tian­i­ty orig­i­nal­ly taught rein­car­na­tion, but for­mal­ly re­nounced it in the twelfth cen­tu­ry.

At death, the soul leaves the phys­i­cal body. But the soul does not die. It lives on in sub­tle body called the as­tral body. The as­tral body ex­ists in the non-phys­i­cal di­men­sion called the as­tral plane, which is al­so the world we are in dur­ing our dreams at night when we sleep.

Here, we con­tin­ue to have ex­pe­ri­ences un­til we are re­born again in an­oth­er phys­i­cal body as a ba­by.