Spiritual but not Religious
Spiritual but not Religious
Moving beyond postmodern spirituality
by Elizabeth Debold
Standing on the bank of India's sacred Ganges as it rushes past
Rishikesh, I am captivated by the river's sapphire sparkle. A living
luminosity leaps from its many faceted surfaces, transforming the
air, the white rocks on the shore, and even my feet as I look down at
them. I turn to look around me and the same luminous sparkle shines
from everything: the rocky shore, the bone-thin bodies of the holy
men, an emaciated cow, the buildings and hills further on. Surprised,
I start to laugh. I've just finished a week of retreat, in silent
meditation, and this is my first foray outside the cool, dark ashram
and its austere regimen. My perception is heightened—colors vibrate,
the rushing river voices a soundless roar, and this extraordinary
light suffuses everything. it's alive, I realize; the light is alive.
Everything around me, the entire world, is transparent, lit from
within. I have the sense that I could simply reach out and tear the
surface of reality to reveal this underlying blaze. But the ordinary
sense of I-am-here-and-the-world-is-out-there is gone. All of the
space between is filled—it's all One—and I am not separate from that.
I am completely empty and this fullness is everywhere. I laugh:
lightness of being is something of a pun. Years later, I will learn
that this perception was a glimpse of the guru mind.
A Western seeker in the East—isn't this a classic scene from the
happy hippie days of the sixties and seventies? But this was the
nineties, I was in India with my American spiritual teacher, and I'm
no hippie. The gold rush days of Westerners going East for
enlightenment and the great Zen masters and Hindu yogis coming West
that reached a fever pitch in the seventies are now over. Many
thousands of flowers have bloomed through this remarkable cross-pollination—an often unacknowledged result of our globalizing world.
While the nightly news keeps us aware that globalization has created
a world stage for religious conflict, less often do we recognize that
the innumerable books on spirituality, the countless martial arts
studios, the varied offerings for spiritual retreats and classes in
meditation and yoga are also a byproduct of our increased global
connectedness. With typical Western ingenuity, we've revealed the
mystic heart that beats within the various paths to God or to the
Self beyond the self. The burgeoning interfaith movement—often viewed
with concern by religious traditionalists—is a result of the growing
awareness of the commonality among different faiths. We've cracked
the code of these sacred traditions, plucking pearls of awakening
from the hard shell of religious ritual and sacrifice. it's a
stunning human achievement. And it's a testament to our enduring
search for who we are and why we are here.
However, considering this trend within a larger historical and social
context, and reflecting on my own experience, I wonder where the
current flourishing of spiritual pursuit is actually taking us.
Devising individualized spiritual paths from the cornucopia available
in today's spiritual marketplace, more and more of us are seeking
outside the context of religion. Religio, the root of the
word"religion," means to bind—to the Absolute, and also to each
other, in a shared cultural understanding of who we are and why we
are here. Does this uniquely postmodern spirituality—each of us in a
religion of one—have the capacity to bind us into a true global
culture? Or do we need something more?
Over the past several decades, the number of people who are seeking—and finding—direct access to the mystical dimension has increased
dramatically. Between 1962 and 1994, the percentage of U.S. adults
who report having had"A religious or mystical experience"grew from
twenty-two to thirty-three percent, and more recent polls indicate
that this figure may now be as high as forty percent. While this
figure would include the"conversion"experiences that are part of
Baptist and other fundamentalist Christian sects, the number of
Americans who identify themselves with a traditional religion has
decreased, and those who check"none"When asked for a religious
affiliation have doubled in the last decade. These
unconventional"nones," who, after Catholics and Baptists, are
possibly the third-largest group in the country, comprise some twenty-nine million people. According to a 2001 survey, two-thirds of
the"nones"believe in God, more than one-third consider themselves
religious, and they buy many books on spirituality. Looking at the
rise in numbers of people having spiritual experiences and the
decline in traditional religious affiliation, it seems very likely
that many of those who are now having mystical experiences are doing
so on their own, or in unorthodox ways.
I was clearly a"none," which is rather ironic given that I was
raised a Catholic and as a girl thought about being a nun. It was
the"none"sense of wanting a deeper ground to my life that led me to
Rishikesh. It wasn't that I hadn't invented an incredible life for
myself: a family of caring, wonderful friends; a regular practice of
Buddhist meditation; a challenging relationship with a brilliant and
big-hearted man; and work that drove me, anchored me, and was my
emotional center. Passion for my work—about girls' development and
women's liberation—was a mysterious force in my life. From high
school onward, at each critical life juncture, when I made a deeper
commitment to it, the world opened up. The more risks I took, the
more became possible, leading me from activism to graduate school at
Harvard to an extraordinary women's research group to writing a best-selling book and even to Oprah. Given that my mother had raised me to
be a good wife and mother, I was often surprised, and almost in awe,
at what was unfolding. Yet my life felt flimsy, as though a sudden
gust of wind could sweep everything I had put together off the face
of the earth. I often felt fake and hollow, and I began to wonder if
having a child would make a difference. But wasn't that an awfully
poor reason to bring life into the world? With the help of a good
therapist, I had pretty much stopped using emotional drama to add
thrills to my life. Instead, I went from one intense project to
another, with intermittent bouts of shopping for things that I didn't
need. Sometimes a pair of shoes would haunt me for a week.
So I was in Rishikesh to find something deeper. And by following my
teacher's instructions during the retreat, that strange sense of
separation and constant craving fell away into a glorious realization
of the perfect goodness of life. I joined the many millions who have
glimpsed ultimate Oneness. Given that the path of the mystic has
usually been reserved for a few courageous souls—the"special forces"
of the religious traditions—these numbers are staggering. We seem to
be on the edge of something significant. But what exactly is it? Some
of the New Age's most beloved prophets—Deepak Chopra, Eckhart Tolle,
and Barbara Marx Hubbard, to name a few—believe that such evidence is
an indication that we are in the process of a global transformation
of consciousness. Paul Ray, author (with Sherry Anderson) of the
popular Cultural Creatives, has estimated that twenty million people
in the U.S. are"In the process of awakening.”And he's recently
stated that a total of nearly four million people in the U.S. and
Europe are close to attaining a stable personal awakening.
While this is compelling news, the real significance of this surge in
spiritual experience will depend on how we make sense out of the
experiences themselves. Genuine moments of transcendent grace are
experienced by fundamentalists, fatalists, and contemporary seekers
of freedom alike. However, the fundamentalist sees in the experience
an utter validation of a personal relationship to the One True God in
which he or she believes. What happens when the religious context
isn't there—when we take spirituality out of the traditions and
experience transcendence on its own?
Spirituality and religion are like romance and marriage, argues one
Unitarian Universalist minister.”Without the traditions and legal
structures of marriage to contain it and sustain it, romance is
always in danger of flaming out or heading down blind alleys,
extinguished as quickly as it first appeared.”But for most of us
living in a contemporary postmodern context, the very idea of
religion may evoke a sense of stricture, empty ritual, and blind
adherence to precepts that are out of step with our time. A recent
poll suggests that of the one in five Americans who see themselves
as"spiritual but not religious," forty-seven percent view religion
negatively. Although religion creates a structure for the highest
truths that have been revealed to us, providing an ethical and moral
context for our lives, for many of us today, spirituality and
religion aren't wedded together—they are divorced (and thankfully
so). But I wonder if our discomfort with the notion of religion may
be partially due to our collective amnesia about the significance
religion has had in human transformation.
Where we stand at the beginning of the third millennium makes it
difficult to understand the power of religious traditions that were
founded two or more millennia ago. Human consciousness has evolved so
much that it is almost inconceivable to grasp what life was like as
the great religions emerged and then rose in prominence across the
globe. Imagine being bound in a rigid social hierarchy to the small
group of people with whom you share a language and customs, living in
a frighteningly violent and disease-ridden world teeming with demons
and supernatural forces. Murder and mayhem are common; demonic forces
throw people into uncontrollable rages and lusts. Strange and
unpredictable things happen—your child is born deformed, bringing
disfavor on your tribe, which leads to a drought that ruins the
crops. You don't know why these things happen or whether your people
will be successful in appeasing the gods. Skirmishes with other
tribes may result in your death or your capture and enslavement. Most
of your life is spent trying to avoid the wrath of the gods or anyone
above you in the social hierarchy, as you toil in backbreaking labor
just to eke out survival. An inescapable parade of horrors is most
likely part of your existence: "perpetual war, senseless violence,
ritual sacrifice, systemic abuse, and mind-numbing repetition," as
Robert Godwin documents in his remarkable One Cosmos under God. And
he notes that although roughly one hundred million people died due to
war in the twentieth century, it is estimated that if the world was
still populated only by tribes, this number would be twenty times
larger.
Miraculously, as if in response to a crying human need, the great
religious traditions either emerged or transformed in the span of
about one thousand years to embrace humanity in a new vision of the
future. This era is what historian Karl Jaspers identified as the
Axial Age, seeing in it the dawning of"What was later called reason
and personality.”We are still indebted to the insights of the sages
and saints who walked on earth then: Lao-tzu, Gautama Buddha, Jesus
Christ, Socrates, Confucius, Jeremiah, and Muhammad. From
approximately 800 BCE to 200 CE, there was a dramatic shift away from
identification with one's tribe and toward the development of
individual consciousness—giving birth to the first truly individual
sense of self. Before this, as Godwin explains, a human being"felt
his own impulses were 'not truly part of the self, since they [were]
not within man's conscious control.'"Tumultuous emotions, like rage,
envy, and lust, were thought to be"A supernatural attack [by gods or
demons] from the outside.”So, for example, it wasn't your own lust
driving you to distraction over an attractive neighbor, but the zing
of Eros' arrow. It was only during the Axial Age that human beings
gradually began to recognize, and take responsibility for, those
forces of good and evil that they had projected onto the gods. As
theologian Ewert Cousins tells us," 'Know thyself' became the
watchword of Greece; the Upanishads identified the Atman, the
transcendent center of the self. The Buddha charted the way of
individual enlightenment; the Jewish prophets wakened individual
moral responsibility.”Practices of inquiry, meditation, petitionary
prayer, and confession were developed to give humanity the practical
means of cultivating an inner sense of responsibility and, most
importantly, a moral conscience.
How many of us postmodern Westerners today think of the moral
teachings of religion as a revolutionary step for humanity? I've
always related to the basic commandments of the Judeo-Christian
tradition as a combination of the quaintly outmoded and the
commonsensical. Certain commandments—Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt
not steal—make such perfect sense, it's hard to realize that they
were a radical challenge to people's lack of self-control several
thousand years ago. Others—like Thou shalt not make unto thee any
graven image—are odd remnants of a long-ago time. But for me, the
Commandments themselves weren't the real problem—it was the pervasive
sense of Catholic guilt, of being in a state of sin. Guilt was a lead
weight on the freedom that was lifting my generation at the end of
the last century. I was utterly fascinated by the words attributed to
Christ in the Bible. I wanted what he was experiencing, his
connection with the sacred, not a set of rules to follow. And that
desire for contact with the Source unmediated by the doctrines and
dogmas of religion is what many of us mean when we call
ourselves"spiritual but not religious.”
Strange as it may seem to us today, it was the development of an
individual sense of conscience—accompanied by the painful experience
of guilt—that enabled us to step out of the shadows and begin to
author history. As long as we humans felt ourselves to be mere
victims of powerful and uncontrollable forces, both internally and
externally, there was no way to be responsible or to make choices
that would lead toward salvation—in this life or the next.”Only an
independent self has the power to recognize its guilt and confess its
wrongdoing," write social scientists James and Evelyn Whitehead, and
that recognition makes each person"responsible for his [or her] own
actions.”In the West, Christ's message that every soul was beloved
by God created a personal bond between God and each of his people
that was the context for developing this sense of responsibility. As
Richard Tarnas writes in his brilliant opus The Passion of the
Western Mind," By granting immortality and value to the individual
soul, Christianity encouraged the growth of the individual
conscience, self-responsibility, and personal autonomy relative to
temporal powers—all decisive traits for the formation of the Western
character.”Christianity —and all of the major religions of the Axial
Age—gave each human being a way out, off the cycling wheel of toil
and trouble, to reach the salvation of heaven. But this demanded
strict obedience to one's relationship to God and to the
extraordinary order of God's creation, manifested in the dazzling
perfection of the Great Chain of Being. For the first time, we had a
moral obligation to bring ourselves in line with that perfection. And
if we broke that sacred covenant, thereby sinning, which literally
means"missing the mark," we felt guilty, and that guilt propelled us
to do right and create a civilization to celebrate God's Kingdom on
earth. Each Christian knew his or her place in the cosmos and God's
heart and knew that through piety and sacrifice, it was possible to
abide for eternity with Him in the afterlife.
I think it would be safe to say that the very lack of that context—the absence of that sense of knowing my place in the cosmos and in
God's heart—brought me to Rishikesh. I could no longer find that
sense of place in the religion of my youth. As a child, I was deeply
moved by the imposing majesty of Catholic ritual. I was in awe of the
statues of the beautiful long-haired man nailed to the cross with
blood dripping from his wounds and the lovely lady in blue balancing
on a globe with a snake crushed under her pretty feet. But that seems
like more than a lifetime ago. Twenty, thirty years later, after so
many years of schooling, I know too much, and perhaps not enough. My
intellect has been sharpened by the objectivity of science and a
classically modern education that tells me that life emerged from a
random, purposeless process and that science is the key to all human
progress. But both the longing in my heart and the inadequacy of
science and technology to create a truly just world called that into
question. Those of us born after the Second World War no longer stand
on the ground that has supported humanity through the ages—religion,
nation, the notion of progress, or even family. Thou shalt honor thy
father and mother, the Bible says. But my parents each move into the
darkening years of their lives alone, while I am free to roam.
Postmodernity—the transitional era that we are now in—is my milieu.
We postmoderns have seen through, and detached ourselves from, all
that has given meaning to human life in prior generations. It gives
me enormous freedom. But the price I pay is that I'm all alone.
Perhaps ironically, it is that aloneness—the acutely self-conscious,
self-reflective, responsible, and independent individual sense of
self—that became possible through the spiritual explosion of the
Axial Age and the development of the world's great religions. Over
the two thousand years since, human beings have taken increasing
responsibility for the miracle and burden of being conscious. In
fact, when the bureaucratic dogmatism of the Church threatened to
stifle the development of independent thought, another explosion in
consciousness erupted—what we call the Western Enlightenment. This
ignited the scientific revolution that has defined modernity. No
longer was God the ultimate Creator and Judge; we took the power of
creativity and objective reason back into ourselves. This was an
event of enormous spiritual significance. We so often think of the
birth of science as a purely rational affair because it has led to
such a reductionistic materialism, the belief that all of life can be
reduced to random processes inherent in matter. But one only needs to
listen to Voltaire to dispel that notion: "Meditation is the
dissolution of thoughts in eternal awareness or Pure consciousness
without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude
in infinity.”Voltaire was searching for direct contact with the
eternal—for a spiritual, but not religious, enlightenment.
Oddly enough, many of us today who are seeking the spiritual without
religion are looking for relief from the world that Voltaire and his
brother philosophes have wrought. Three hundred years later, the
demand to create and to produce in a globalizing world has cost us
our job security and often seems to threaten our sanity. Our
constantly whirling minds—the endless internal to-do lists, fantasies
about our weekend plans, inner dialogues with different parts of
ourselves—are leading us to pop Prozac, hike in the wilderness, lie
down on the therapist's couch, or sit alone in meditation. The
pressure is only escalating. And we are desperate for a way out—sometimes just simple relief that can be bought on the cheap in a
bar. But others of us are looking for something deeper, wondering
what is permanent and real in a world where everything is disposable.
And so we seek, looking to have some experience of the ultimate that
will take us beyond ourselves and relieve us from the uncertainty and
confusion of our lives. No wonder that Andrew Delbanco observes in
The Real American Dream that"The most striking feature of
contemporary culture is the unslaked craving for transcendence.”
How do we satisfy that craving? With neither religion nor science nor isms of any kind"organizing desire into a structure of
meaning," as Delbanco says, what do we have that meets the depth of
our longing for the More that transcends the mundane? We're caught in
a postmodern paradox: we desperately long for the embrace of
something larger, all-encompassing, and real, and yet all we trust is
the narrow bandwidth of the self. Our feelings—what feels right or
good or true—have become our compass through life. Significant
numbers of us—"nearly four out of ten teens (38%) and three out of
ten adults (31%)," according to a 2002 poll by the Barna Group—base
our moral choices only on"Whatever feels right or comfortable.”
Guilt, and the sense of being obligated to something other than
oneself, is out of the question. It makes us feel uncomfortable.
Thus, we are left with nothing greater than the span of our feelings
to bind us to life and each other. And so the seeking of pleasure,
Delbanco argues, becomes our"last link to the feeling of
transcendence ... the 'last sacrament of the dispossessed.'"
Without being accountable to anything larger than the impulse to
satisfy our cravings, even our spiritual pursuits can leave us empty.
When the Transcendent is revealed to me by the Ganges, what do I do
with that revelation of the radiant mystery that imbues creation with
life? My heart knows that this luminosity is the face of God, the
Ultimate, the Creative Principle. IT is I and all things: there is no
separation. My place in the universe has become transparent to me,
simply by my uniquely human capacity to know and to recognize that
which I witness. This glimpse of the Reality behind reality radically
challenges the island of"I"that I have always thought myself to be.
I am literally in ecstasy, meaning"unstuck," released from the
confines of my separate sense of self and acutely aware of everything
around me. Curious, I lean forward and feel a pull. The thought, this
changes everything, flashes through my mind. There is something more
that I am being called to—an obligation to this Whole. Something
higher than my self is calling me to surrender ... and what do I
do? I exult in the feeling of ecstasy, the experience of freedom and
satisfaction. The next day, the direct experience of Oneness has
faded, and as it fades into memory, I begin to crave that incredible
feeling, almost instantly forgetting its significance and what it was
pointing to. I just want another blast from beyond, one that will
take me to a bliss beyond pain, boredom, and craving again. Nothing
has changed. So I keep moving on, craving more. And after the next
experience, I will once again move on, seeking another experience.
And then one more...
This is what it means to be one of the dispossessed, to be alone with
a racing mind and aching heart, seeking emotional relief within the
shallow confines of the self while avoiding pain or struggle or
guilt. How many hours of therapy have we collectively clocked to try
to find some relief from the intensity of our thoughts and feelings?
How much bliss and ecstasy do we need to have before we will be
satisfied? Without a larger raison d'tre than the desire for self-satisfaction, we will only find narcissism—an endless hall of mirrors—at the end of our spiritual search. We have come to a"borderline"In
our individualistic culture, says philosopher Roland Benedikter,
where"We have just two possibilities: go toward despair or go one
step beyond.”
Even though many of us may understandably long for a simpler time,
it's too late. We can't go back.”Radical changes taking place around
the globe are propelling us quickly into what can be called the
Second Axial Age," observed Brother Wayne Teasdale. After two
thousand and some years, a portion of humanity has finally won the
prize of an individuated consciousness. Now, argue the
Whiteheads," recent discoveries of the genetic code for life; the
globalization of national economies; the growing recognition that
humans are responsible for the health of their environment—all these
events compel the human community toward a new level of consciousness
and conscience.”Those of us who benefit so much from our
interconnected world have to develop further, to widen our
perspective and deepen our sense of responsibility.”The earlier
shift was from a [tribal] collective to an individual consciousness,"
says theologian Leonard Swidler, but as we move toward a worldwide
culture, a second Axial Age becomes possible as"consciousness is now
becoming global.”In such a complex and interdependent world, we
cannot develop commandments to cover all of the difficult ethical
issues that human ingenuity has led us to, such as cloning, resource
depletion, and genetic engineering. Just as the great sages of the
first Axial Age launched the great traditions, we need"spiritual
geniuses," says Karen Armstrong, author of A History of God, to
inspire a new kind of religion—a contemporary moral and philosophical
context for making sense of our lives.
Such a new religion would demand that we be beholden to something far
larger than ourselves—to the Truth revealed in those exquisite
moments of transcendence.”Having developed self-reflective,
analytic, critical consciousness in the first Axial Age," writes
Cousins," we must now, while retaining these values, reappropriate
and integrate into that consciousness ... collective and cosmic
dimensions.”If, that is, we can step beyond the trap of narcissistic
self-satisfaction. As Benedikter comments," Such a step would come
from an evolved, rational mind that is aware of something beyond its
own activity, beyond the ego—one that rediscovers an objectivity that
comes from the void beyond the self where one discovers, as Hegel
said, that one is not thinking one's own thoughts, but that the
cosmic order is thinking thoughts through me. But you cannot avoid
going through the void and the death of your normal self to reach
this place.”
it's more a leap than a step—beyond solitary seeking by the Ganges,
beyond the"spiritual but not religious.”The stirrings of spiritual
longing in the hearts and minds of so many of us postmodern
individualists may well be the first tremors of this second Axial
Age. As Cousins says, this"Is not only a creative possibility to
enhance the twenty-first century; it is an absolute necessity if we
are to survive.”The spiritual accomplishment of the last Axial Age—the development of a self-reflective individual eager for
transcendence—is no longer enough. Now that we can be responsible for
ourselves, we next have to take responsibility for the whole of which
we are a part.”We need to preserve the holiness of the single 'I,'"
Benedikter says," and form a community where those single 'I's can
transform themselves and break through to a critical and contemporary
spirituality.”Rooted in mystical depth, transcending the
narcissistic self, engaging in an ecstatic rationality, we can create
a new religious context for an awakening world. A religion that calls
us to realize our deepest collective purpose, bound together as the
living expression of the mind and heart of God in a cosmic act of
mutual Self-creation.
Spiritual but not Religious
Moving beyond postmodern spirituality by Elizabeth Debold
http://www.wie.org/j31/spiritual-not-religious.asp?page=1
Sages who were already ancient to its composers living in 4000 B.C.
Guide To Hinduism
"The Eternal Religion
Hinduism is so ancient its origins are lost in the mist of
prehistory. Many sages are associated with it, but none claim to be
its first prophet. Hindus believe their religion has existed forever,
even before the universe came into being. They say the truths of
their faith are inherent in the nature of reality itself, and that
all men and women peering into the depths of their inner nature will
discover the same truths for themselves.
The image too many outsiders have of the Hindu tradition is of
primitive, superstitious villagers worshipping idols. As we get to
know the Hindus better, we'll see that their understanding of who and
what is God is incredibly sophisticated. In fact, their view of
the world and our place in it is so stunningly cosmic in scope that
our Western minds start to boggle!
Let's enter the universe of Hinduism, an amazing world where inner
and outer realities reflect each other like images on a mirror, and
the loving presence of the divine is as close as the stillness behind
your own thoughts...
Beginningless Truth
You might think it takes a lot of chutzpah (if I may borrow a Jewish
term) to claim that your religion is eternal. What Hindus mean when
they say this is their tradition doesn't come from any one founding
father or mother, from any single prophet towering over the bastion
of hoary antiquity. In fact, the first few verses of the Veda, an
incredibly old book, parts of which were composed 6,000 years ago,
acknowledge the sages who were already ancient to its composers
living in 4000 B.C.E.!
Very old Hindu texts speak of a time when it became almost impossible
to survive on Earth because of ice and snow. This could be a
reference to the last Ice Age, some Hindu scholars believe.
Archaeologists have unearthed small statues of goddesses from 10,000
years ago (that's about the time the Ice Age was ending) like those
being worshipped in Indian villages today. So even if we're not
willing to grant that Hinduism is eternal, we still have to admit it
got a jump on the other major religions...
I'd really like to bring home to you the vastness of the time scale
Hindus are talking about here. One area where Hinduism and Judeo-
Christian tradition agree is in saying that at the moment we're in
the seventh day of creation. But according to the Hindu sages, a day
for God is a bit longer than our human day of 24 hours.
The following schema was taught to me by Swami Veda Bharati, a
renunciate who lives in a tiny ashram in Rishikesh in northern India.
He's a devotee of the Divine Mother. (The Goddess is a major league
player in Hinduism, and you'll soon see.)
Swami Bharati's time frame, preserved in the Hindu mystical
tradition, starts with a day and a night in the life of our local
creator god. Years here mean human years:
- One day and night in the life of Brahma is 8,640,000,000 years.
- The lifetime of Brahma is 311,040,000,000,000 years.
- One day and night in the life of Vishnu equals 37,324,800,000,000,
000,000 years.
- The life of Vishnu is 671,846,400,000,000,000,000,000 years long.
- One day and night in the life of Shiva lasts 4,837,294,080,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000 years.
- Shiva's lifetime corresponds to 87,071,293,440,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000 years.
- One glance from The Mother of the Universe equals 87,071,293,440,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years...
If you had been around in the third millennium B.C.E., India is where
you would have wanted to be. The quality of life was higher there
than practically anywhere else in the world. In fact, the towns of
North India in 2600 B.C.E. were more comfortable and technologically
advanced than most European cities till nearly the time of the
Renaissance!
Religious life was vibrant in ancient India. Some of the oldest
surviving spiritual writings came from this part of the world. They
reveal a religion that was both boisterously earthy and
transcendentally mystical—not unlike Hinduism today...
Inner Religion
One of the great ironies of religious history is that, although the
religions that came out of the Near East—Judaism, Islam,
Christianity—adamantly reject most of Hinduism's fundamental
teachings, their mystical traditions—the Kaballah, Sufism, and
Christian Gnosticism—reflect Hindu insights in almost every detail.
Numerous students of comparative religion, from Muslim scholar Al
Buruni in 1000 C.E. to the world famous writer Aldous Huxley nearer
our own time, have expressed their amazement at the parallels between
the major mystical traditions of the world and Hinduism...
Hinduism is by far the most complex religion in the world, shading
under its enormous umbrella an incredibly diverse array of
contrasting beliefs, practices, and denominations. Hinduism is by far
the oldest major religion. It has had more than enough time to
develop a diversity of opinions and approaches to spirituality
unmatched in any other tradition.”
Linda Johnsen, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Hinduism
Alpha; 1st edition (October 11, 2001) pp. 1/77
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Authors of old Asiatic books claimed ultimate truth was discoverable
But if you do not know yourselves, then you dwell in poverty
The failure to attain direct experience of the truth
The real study, in religion, is first-hand experience of God.
For Lao Tze it is the Tao, in Jewish mysticism it is the Shekinah
Spiritual but not Religious
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