ABSTRACT
While the notion that human existence is to be viewed in terms of a temporal journey toward the eternal goal of perfection recurs across various Hindu and Christian systems, it is articulated through specific concepts relating to the nature of the human person, which are drawn from scriptural materials such as the Upaniṣads or the Bible. If the essential core of the human person is transcendentally perfect, the spiritual goal would involve a recovery of this primordial purity, whereas for an account in which the human person is significantly, if not utterly, distorted, spiritual fulfillment would require a process of reformation in and through worldly existence. There is, then, a deep correlation in Hindu and Christian styles of “theological anthropology” between techniques of spiritual emancipation and conceptions of the human person—the question, “How may I be liberated or redeemed?” is logically intertwined with the question, “Who or what am I?”
