Seeking the universal truths in our religions that can bridge humanity's divides

5 Nov 2024

In his book, Bridges Across Humanity: Different Religions, Similar Teachings, Akhil Gupta explores the deep commonalities within global religions, hoping to bridge divides with a message rooted in shared human values and wisdom.

Akhil Gupta sits in his apartment overlooking Central Park. At 72, the founder and director of the Universal Enlightenment Forum — former chairperson of Blackstone India, and former head of corporate development at Reliance Industries — feels both grateful for the life he leads and aware of what remains to be done.

Gupta views the world with gentle optimism, which comes from a genuine belief that humanity can achieve more, “if only”. If only, for example, we could grasp our shared commonalities, starting with acknowledging the similarities within religious teachings.

His interest — and the book he authored, Bridges Across Humanity: Different Religions, Similar Teachings — was inspired by a moment from his childhood.

“The seed was sown by my mother. When I was 10 years old, she said, ‘Son, this is a very special birthday for you, and we are going to do something special.’ And she made lots of food, divided into six equal instalments… In India, poor (people) hang around their respective temples of faith,” says Gupta.

“There was a Jain temple, a Sikh temple, a Hindu temple, a mosque, a church and a synagogue… We went, we made six trips, and we fed the poor. Of all the faiths… I still remember: I came back home and I realised they all had the same expressions. They all were very grateful, and I could see that they wanted to give their blessings to me.

“We came home and our father said that there’s a famous expression in Sanskrit called the ekam sat vipra bahudha vadanti, which means truth is one, but people, wise men, say it differently.

“That was the seed. I was seeing different religions through the lens of commonality, not how different we are and how superior the Hindu religion is.”

Years later, Gupta took 12 religion courses at Harvard University — he has been associated with Harvard since 2015 — where his studies led him to uncover 54 powerful common themes that he aspired to share with the world.

“I’m on to my 108th commonality now, and I think I have another six or seven,” he says.

“The beauty of this is that there are at least 60 of those commonalities that have nothing to do with a belief in anything… In this age where people are going away from religion, if we extract these pearls of wisdom and present them to people, that’s what I want to do.

“I think that is what the world needs because there’s so much othering that’s going on right now. And this book is to fight the othering, to say how common we are. Our human nature is the same. The human body is the same. We are so interconnected. We drown ourselves in all the false narratives which are all heightened by vested interests.

“The idea behind this book is to make people aware of those false narratives and vested interests, and we can bring heaven on earth if we just live our life with awareness and see how common our destiny is.”

Daily Maverick interviewed the author in New York.

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Daily Maverick: You identified 54 commonalities for this book; how did you determine the structure and sequence?

Akhil Gupta: You can start (this book) anywhere, there is no sequence required.

On our website, you’ll find we have categorised (them) into ethical, philosophical, mystical categories, and so on. And sometimes one (theme) fits into more than one category, so we have to decide which category it is.

But you can start anywhere.

In fact, my professor, who is at the Harvard Divinity School, recommends that people read (one theme) one day at a time and soak it in. There are 54 themes so you read once a week and you have it for the year.

The last chapter talks about religion in the meaning-making framework, if you see religion as a meaning-making technology… From the beginning, the human mind has been trying to figure (things) out. If you see how that meaning is made differently depending on how much education you have and how much exposure you have, it gives a framework to understand why there are so many differences.

For example, if I look at the sky with the naked eye, that’s one order of mind. But if I look at the telescope that enhances my capability, then I send a satellite over there that gives me another view, then I am making my framework more and more comprehensive. In our own lives, different people have different and complex frameworks to which they answer questions.

My mother hasn’t had the exposure that I had. She believes in a personal God. She believes Lord Krishna looks after her. I used to believe that for a long time. Today, I don’t believe it. And she could be right. I could be wrong, but today, with my knowledge, and I had, you know, hundreds and more courses that she’s been (exposed to), so I have a more complex framework.

The key is empathy, which acknowledges that different people have different frameworks, different orders of mind, with which they are trying to find meaning.

People are trying to find meaning, depending on their own experiences and proclivities, and that’s why I logically respect all religions, just like in the example of my mother…

DM: What was the most challenging aspect of researching this book, especially with the nuanced differences and similarities between religions?

AG: It took us five years to research 54 themes, and now I have another 60 themes in one year.

The research and the heavy lifting were done by Alan Simon (ed: a master’s student from Harvard Divinity School who worked with Akhil Gupta), not me. He would research, and then he would create a draft for me; then I would edit the draft and he’d check it further. So it went through a couple of edits; today it is so much easier because we have three LLMs (large language models). I use ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, and I have my notes from the different classes I took.

What I have learned after doing LLMs research is that the answer you get from this, let’s call it “cosmic thesaurus of knowledge”, depends on the prompt you give.

And humanity has been asking the wrong question: “Tell me what’s the difference between my religion and other religions”; the subtext is, “Tell me how my religion is superior to other religions”, right? So we’ve been getting all the wrong answers.

That’s why all the religions are being practised in silos, are being taught in silos. There’s no course anywhere which shows what are the commonalities within religions. Nobody is even asking students to think about that.

If you ask the right question, like “Tell me how common are the themes?”, you’ll get a completely different answer, and humanity will be very different.

DM: What do you hope readers gain from this book?

AG: It’s almost like a vaccine against an exclusive mindset. That’s the most important. That’s why I’m so passionate about this.

Almost like a vaccination against an exclusive mindset, against “my religion is superior to your religion”.

I always wondered how we all love to travel all over the world. We all love to eat different cuisines. We speak different languages, and we accept all that stuff, except we don’t accept people who have different religions. Why not?

It’s the same thing — we are trying to make meaning in a different way because we are all built differently… What this does is that you can see that the same idea can be expressed in different ways, just like the same wheat can be eaten in 10 different ways; or bread can be made in different ways. We can’t be saying that the chapati that Indians make is better than the French bread that the French make, it’s just different. Different cuisines have the same basic ingredients — it’s just a different flavour, and life becomes richer.

My hope with this book is to get rid of exclusivity and embrace diversity; not just tolerate diversity, but embrace diversity…

In 2016, I met the current president of Harvard University, Alan Garber. He said to me, “What we’re trying to create at Harvard is a T individual. The vertical line is to go very deep into your own domain, whether it’s law, or psychology, or philosophy, or economics, but we also want to have a big horizontal line, so you have an appreciation of all the important topics.”

Same thing about religion. What does a T individual look like in the religious framework? It is to be faithful to your faith and to have this common understanding of all religions.

DM: You mentioned that there isn’t a teaching in religion that spreads widely across other religions. Do you think there could be parallels to be made with how we study science, where the global scientific community is constantly exchanging and building on ideas?

AG: You know (the allegory of) the elephant with the nine blind men? Metaphorically, we are all blind compared to the infinite reality; we know so little and we have such little cognitive apparatus compared to the infinite reality.

In front of that elephant, one of the blind men looking at the tail says, “Oh, this is a rope”; somebody looks at the ears: “It’s a fan!” Somebody looks at the legs: “It’s the bark of a tree, right?” In a religious framework, there can only be one assumption.

As hunter-gatherers, we know what we know today because we shared our insights with everyone else; as they say, the next person stood on the shoulders of the previous person (and so forth).

Imagine if religions did the same thing. How much better off would we be? That metaphor describes the power of all the blind men if they told each other what they saw of the elephant and used it to understand what the elephant is like.

Otherwise, we are all working from a very, very small level of reality.

To me, spirituality is to see, to acknowledge that reality is more complicated than our organism’s perception can perceive.

It happens in every action that we do.

That’s where my next book comes in: Love, Learn and Play; to be spiritual means to be authentic, right? Anything your authentic self wants is to love, learn and play. DM

You can purchase Bridges Across Humanity: Different Religions, Similar Teachings here.

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