"Nothingness Will Save Me from Nothingness" or Kenosis, the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, and an Advaitic Panegyric of God and Abraham in Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling

Abstract

precis: The universal sense of nothingness resident at the heart of the very conception of evil in existence is one of the primary problems with which all philosophy and theology must grapple. It is at the origin of creation stories universally. My proposal in this essay is to demonstrate that this nothingness is not a negative concept but, rather, is the "obverse" of fullness—experiential and mystical—and that the path to fullness must pass through nothingness, a path that is manifested epistemically in the form of apophasis and, in the ethical dimension, as kenosis, culminating in a realization of the nondual/advaitic nature of reality. Cutting across time and traditions, then, through a textual exegesis of the Principal Upanishads and Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling , I seek to delineate how both texts lead us, nondually, from nothingness to fullness. I formulate this hypothesis finally in the form of the following paradox: "Nothingness will save us from nothingness"—a formulation associated with the Japanese philosopher Keiji Nishitani.