Namaste

Malcolm Smith unpacks the meaning of "Namaste" and asks whether "the divine within me, honoring the divine within you" is a doctrinally sound concept through a New Church lens. -Editor

In India and Nepal the traditional greeting is to say, “Namaste” and bow slightly to the other person with your hands pressed together in front of your chest. In Sanskrit, namaste literally means simply “I bow to you,” but this simple phrase has also been invested with many other meanings. For example, “I honor the Spirit in you which is also in me” and “That which is of God in me greets that which is of God in you.” The authors of the Wikipedia article on namaste argue that it’s just the equivalent of “how do you do you?” and it’s not accurate to say that it means these things.

In recent times the term “namaste” has come to be especially associated with yoga, spirituality and meditation in the United States, Europe and Australia. In this context, it has been redeployed in terms of a multitude of very complicated and florid new meanings which do not tie in with original meaning or etymologically sound analyses of the word.

However, regardless of whether it is accurate to say that namaste means these things, the idea of that which is of God in me honoring that which is of God in another person is out there and I want to examine this idea from the perspective of some New Church teachings.

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