When we turn to Rāmānuja, we are entering another world altogether from the one inhabited by Teilhard de Chardin. Rāmānuja lived in India during the eleventh century CE, and the influences upon his thought were derived from the spiritual traditions he valued and incorporated within the authoritative lineage of Śrīvaisnavism.

Rāmānuja was a Vedāntin: he worked within the long-established oral tradition of providing expository commentaries on those religious texts believed to be part of Vedic knowledge or śruti (literally ‘that which is heard’). He would have been trained in the knowledge of the Upanisads, and one of his major works was a commentary on the Brahma-sūtras (or Vedānta-sūtras, as they are sometimes called). All his work was based on the teachings of earlier spiritual teachers, so that in one sense it was purely traditional. Ramakrishnananda, a biographer of Rāmānuja, makes the point very strongly: