A blog on understanding your 'self' – and for lovers and teachers of interfaith as inter-spiritual living. It's an ongoing stream of interspiritual Nondual & interfaith resources for realizing happiness by finding our way home to our true Self.
“I honor the Spirit in you which is also in me.” — attributed to but not claimed by author Deepak Chopra
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“I honor the place in you in which the entire Universe dwells, I honor the place in you which is of Love, of Integrity, of Wisdom and of Peace. When you are in that place in you, and I am in that place in me, we are One.”
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“That which is of God in me greets that which is of God in you.””The Divinity within me perceives and adores the Divinity within you.
Traditionally Namaste is spoken while bringing the palms of your hand together at your heart and gently bowing your head. In it’s simplest form it is a humble act honoring the equality and sacred nature ofall.Namaste is composed of two Sanskrit words, nama meaning “to bend or bow”, and te meaning “you”. To offer this greeting to another is to surrender your self and acknowledge that you and the receiver are one. Namaste invokes recognition of the divine nature of all beings.
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Denise E Brittain yoga instructor includes this explanation on her site;
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The Namaste hand gesture, also known as the Anjali mudra, is rich in symbolic meaning.
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As we line the left hand, representing karma or action, with the right hand, representing rightful knowledge, we are implying that our actions and thoughts are of the highest form.
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This simple physical, mental and verbal act is a deeply spiritual expression meant to honor and celebrate the divine essence of all beings.
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In Namaste we let go of our differences to find common ground where we bathe in divine light.
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Let us surround those who are dear to us, as well as those we don’t even know, in peace, love and light; with the acknowledgement that we are all one.
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Let our thoughts, words and actions be full of kindness to one another, as well as to ourselves.
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Let our yoga practice be a sanctuary to calm our spirits and open our hearts to the beauty of our world.
Living in this post-modernist time one of the problems is knowing who the bad guys are. I’m sure fundamentalism is a bad thing – because it bears bad fruit.
For me Terry Eagleton is the best writer about the human aberration known as fundamentalism. (SEE Chap 7 of After Theory)
His new book is Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate
Karen Armstrong is the best popular presenter of the historic perspective of religions and their fundamentalisms. (SEE The Battle for God)
Her new book is The Case For God
Saying that science has made religion redundant is rather like saying that thanks to the electric toaster we can forget about Chekhov, says Terry Eagleton in this gloriously rumbustious counter-blast to Dawkinsite atheism. Eagleton, who is perhaps Britain’s most venerable cultural critic, is not a Christian, though he was in the 1960s. But he continues, unfashionably, to be a Marxist, and his critique of the New Atheists is rooted in the historical materialism of revolutionary socialism, but with a thread of poetry woven through it.
In Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate, his starting point, perhaps paradoxically – and paradoxes sparkle throughout this coruscatingly brilliant polemic – is that Dawkins, along with fellow atheist Christopher Hitchens (or Ditchkins, as he mischievously conflates the pair) purport to be advocates of science and reason. And yet they are disgracefully cavalier with both.
Eagleton is not anti-science or reason. He merely points out that science has produced Hiroshima as well as penicillin. And liberal rationalism, in addition to its many undoubted triumphs, has provided the intellectual underpinning for exploitative capitalism and the wanton destruction of the environment on an unprecedented scale. Indeed Eagleton is stronger on reason than Ditchkins, for he thinks carefully about what his opponents say whereas Dawkins & Co prefer knockabout rhetoric to serious engagement with mainstream religious thought.
This is, then, a demolition job which is both logically devastating and a magnificently whirling philippic. Ditchkins, he says, makes the error of conflating reason and rationality. Yet much of what seems reasonable in real life turns out not to be true. And much that is true, like quantum physics, seems rationally impossible.
For all that, the book levels a broadside at faith too. The history of religion is “a squalid tale of bigotry, superstition, wishful thinking, and oppressive ideology.” Just as communism has misunderstood Marx, he argues, so the Church has betrayed Christ by backing an establishment of warmongering politicians, corrupt bankers and exploitative capitalists for centuries. The Jesus of the gospels, he insists, was as radical a revolutionary who took the side of “the scum of the earth”. The love he offered was as transformative as true socialism. It is easy to see why a lot of people will not be happy with this book. Much of what it says is too true.
Karen Armstrong is radical in a different way in The Case For God which is subtitled What Religion Really Means. What it does not mean, she agrees with Eagleton, is the fundamentalism cited as normative by Ditchkins. Armstrong surveys the intellectual history of religion in a way that is more comprehensive and measured but much less fun. What it shows is that the modern way of thinking about God, as a big bloke with superhuman powers, is a comparatively modern invention. Until 300 years ago almost no-one thought that, and nor do many religious believers today.
Religion, she argues, is traditionally not something that people believe, but something they do – using liturgy, ritual, prayer, meditation and spiritual exercises to discover an awareness of the transcendental inside themselves. It is not rooted in what the Greeks called logos (reason) but mythos (stories which may not be factual but which carry some universal truth about how humans behave). It is not something to be comprehended but something beyond the limits of language which is to be absorbed intuitively like music.
After the Enlightenment, when science and reason became the dominant lens through which we viewed the world, this truth was downgraded. God became a being who stood outside the world to create it, rather than the apotheosis of all that is good in it. This crude reduction suited both fundamentalists and dogmatic atheists alike; atheism in any period always seeks to define the God it doesn’t believe in. The subtlety of theologians like Aquinas, who happily posited the possibility that the world had no origin at all, is forgotten. The intuition of the pre-modern era for spiritual imagination and meditative humility has now calcified into scientific literalism.
So we see a number of revealing shifts in meaning. “I believe” has become scientised to mean “I assert these propositions to be empirically correct.” What it originally meant was “I pledge my heart and my loyalty”. Jesus was asking for commitment not credulity. Similarly the word dogma now means a ruling laid down by authority. But originally it meant a teaching that cannot be expressed verbally but which is intuited through the liturgy.
Fundamentalists, of both the bible-bashing and the Dawkinsite variety, are very anxious to make clear assertions about the God they believe in or reject. By contrast this older apophatic tradition was much keener to assert what cannot be said about God than what can. Ditchkins thinks rationality can bring him to a place of absolute certainty; the old tradition, dating back to Socrates, used reason to arrive in a place where we realise we really know nothing at all. Eagleton makes the same point. Reason operates in a social and cultural context. Modern atheists have their myths and unexamined assumptions too, like the idea that humanity is riding an upward-bound escalator of progress. So wedded is Dawkins to this that he once described the Holocaust as “a temporary setback”. The old Marxist is scathing. “If ever there was a pious myth and a piece of credulous superstition, it is the liberal-rationalist belief that, a few hiccups apart, we are all steadily en route towards a finer world.”
Terry Eagleton’s is a more realistic and darker vision which he characterises as “tragic humanism”. But it holds out the possibility of revolutionary transformation.
Ditchkins’ liberal rationalism, by contrast, is defeatist and has endorsed a cruel and irrational capitalism in which the poor get poorer, the rich richer and the planet overheats. Religion might not have the answers but it asks the better questions.
Richard Dawkins: The God Delusion
The Oxford academic, Richard Dawkins, came to prominence as an ardent atheist, expounding on his gene-centred theory of evolution in his book, The Selfish Gene. His most recent work, The God Delusion, published in 2006, argues that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that faith qualifies as a delusion or false belief. The book has been a runaway success; selling more than 1.5 million copies by November 2007 and translated into 31 languages.
Both according to Vallely make room for God, or at least being human in a non-narrow-materialist way.
Here are a couple of tasters from Vallely’s review. Firstly about Eagleton;
In Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate, his starting point, perhaps paradoxically – and paradoxes sparkle throughout this coruscatingly brilliant polemic – is that Dawkins, along with fellow atheist Christopher Hitchens (or Ditchkins, as he mischievously conflates the pair) purport to be advocates of science and reason. And yet they are disgracefully cavalier with both.
Eagleton is not anti-science or reason. He merely points out that science has produced Hiroshima as well as penicillin. And liberal rationalism, in addition to its many undoubted triumphs, has provided the intellectual underpinning for exploitative capitalism and the wanton destruction of the environment on an unprecedented scale. Indeed Eagleton is stronger on reason than Ditchkins, for he thinks carefully about what his opponents say whereas Dawkins & Co prefer knockabout rhetoric to serious engagement with mainstream religious thought.
This is, then, a demolition job which is both logically devastating and a magnificently whirling philippic.
and about Armstrong,
Religion, she argues, is traditionally not something that people believe, but something they do – using liturgy, ritual, prayer, meditation and spiritual exercises to discover an awareness of the transcendental inside themselves. It is not rooted in what the Greeks called logos (reason) but mythos (stories which may not be factual but which carry some universal truth about how humans behave). It is not something to be comprehended but something beyond the limits of language which is to be absorbed intuitively like music.
After the Enlightenment, when science and reason became the dominant lens through which we viewed the world, this truth was downgraded. God became a being who stood outside the world to create it, rather than the apotheosis of all that is good in it. This crude reduction suited both fundamentalists and dogmatic atheists alike; atheism in any period always seeks to define the God it doesn’t believe in. The subtlety of theologians like Aquinas, who happily posited the possibility that the world had no origin at all, is forgotten. The intuition of the pre-modern era for spiritual imagination and meditative humility has now calcified into scientific literalism.
So we see a number of revealing shifts in meaning. “I believe” has become scientised to mean “I assert these propositions to be empirically correct.” What it originally meant was “I pledge my heart and my loyalty”. Jesus was asking for commitment not credulity. Similarly the word dogma now means a ruling laid down by authority. But originally it meant a teaching that cannot be expressed verbally but which is intuited through the liturgy.
I really hope that Armstrong and Eagleton consider working in co-operation – they are both great truth-tellers.
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To read the article to which this post refers go HERE
Pat Condell, the social network site MLIA (My Life is Average) and the
Saudi intellectual Abdallah bin Bakhit –
the 3 truth-tellers that zapped me in 1 week
As someone interested for half a century in truth and reality it is unusual to discover three disparate gateways to these great human concerns in one month.
The first I have previously mentioned – Pat Condell. That was the truth, reality and art that I found in the work of an atheist. Beware it is strong – and you have to listen hard beyond the ‘abuse’ and anger to certain spiritual truths that are/should be preeminent in many religions – the Golden Rule, Justice, not imposing your world-view on others, hating the act (where appropriate) and not the actor etc
Pat Condell’s talks are here as MP3s and he also has a channel on YouTube. That was surprising because that half century has led me to a broadly mystical view of reality and human reality – as say in Ken Wilber and Eckhart Tolle.
How is it that I appreciate Pat Condell so much – as someone who gathers light and inspiration from (parts of) all religions – including Islam? Briefly, because it would be quite a long appreciation, he is energetically opposing the corruption I see in virtually all religions and, given his belief system, he is a quality of truth-teller almost entirely absent from those who inhabit religious communities. Not only that he also (seems to) possess, in good measure, the values, qualities and attributes that so many people of religion claim to have – but don’t. ‘Seems to’ because even truth-telling atheists have to walk the talk – but I suppose persistence in the face of dozens of death-threats means he most definitely is walking the talk.
The second addition to truth-telling in and around the human condition came from the MLIA – My Life is Average site. Now it would be easy to dismiss this because it is whimsical, trivial and of no great importance but I think it has struck, uniquely, a chord that belonged only to self-deprecating comedians – and its brevity, as with Twitter, is essential. Here are four examples at random;
Today, while voting on submissions, I stumbled across a story beginning with a “today” that was not capitalized. Offended, I clicked “no”. MLIA.
Today, Billy Mays yelled at me through the TV and told me to buy Oxyclean. I yelled back at him that I wasn’t going to. MLIA.
Today, I told my friends I needed to show them a hillarious Youtube video. I played it for them and when nobody started laughing I said, “Oh this is the wrong one.” Then I pretended like I couldn’t find the right one. MLIA
Today, I made a triple-chocolate sundae and I felt fat. So I topped it off with sugar-free hot fudge and I felt like I was making healthy choices. MLIA
How can I possibly mention in the same breath great human beings and this site of small happenings in the lives and consciences of the people on MLIA – many of them are youngsters?
Again I must be brief. Our moral lives are in the decisions we make. Most are minor ones, most are known only to ourselves. Many are to defend our self-image, or the self we would aspire to – if only we were a bit more courageous. But what of the bishops and popes and mullahs who are full of cant and deceit and pomposity, and worse still, lacking in compassion and fellow-feeling and a sense of justice?
Now in this time when many are rightly concerned about the rise and spread of extremist Islam I next want to re-tell a story about Muhammad.
One day a parent came to Muhammad to ask Him to verbally chastise their child who was prone to eat too many dates. To the surprise of the parent, given the task was small and the child was there, Muhhammad told the parent to return the next day. On the next day the child was told not too eat too many dates. When asked why a return that day was necessary Muhammad said that it was because on the previous day he had eaten (rather too many) dates!
The story may not be ‘true’ – but the truth of the story is true – and it would be true if it were in the tradition of Hausa people or Inuit or Jewish people.
Now I remain someone whose belief system is broadly-speaking that of a mystical humanist or humanist mystic or universalist. However I was never zapped by three such disparate ‘tellers of truth’ in quite the same way as in this most recent week – Pat Condell, the contributors to MLIA and the third of these disparate additions to truth-telling in my life the Saudi intellectual Abdallah bin Bakhit.
From Abdallah bin Bakhit I learned the true value of secularism for religious communities – as well as what it takes to be courageous in a state of maximum suppression. If you haven’t watched his video yet it’s here;
This is an intro to the work of Dr Rachael Kohn and to a particular Australian ABC transcript – SEE end of this i.e. MY COMMENT to go to source;-0-What’s required to foster better relations between Muslims and non-Muslims in the West? Two Muslims – Irshad Manji & Mehmet Ozalp – give their points of view.
Transcript
Irshad Manji is the author of The Trouble With Islam. She calls for change in Islam to conform with the values of Western democratic societies. Mehmet Ozalp is the President of Affinity Intercultural Foundation, which recently held a conference in Sydney on “Islam and Its Relations with the Other.”MUSIC
I’ll just give you a minute or two to pretty much observe the domes, observe the calligraphy, the Qur’anic verses, the patterns on the wall and so forth, just for you to have a bit of a look, and then I’ll start hopefully explaining some of them.
Rachael Kohn: An Open Day at Gallipoli Mosque in Auburn, New South Wales.Hello, and welcome to ‘Something’s Gotta Give: What does it take for Muslims and other Australians to foster a better relationship?’ This is The Spirit of Things on ABC Radio National, with me, Rachael Kohn.
With the dress requirements there is dress requirements both for males and females. OK, and I’m just going to go through the minimal requirements for both a male and a female. The minimal dress requirement for a male is from the navel to below the knee area; that is the minimal requirement for a Muslim male. The minimal requirement for a Muslim female is exposure of hands, face and feet. Now some say don’t include feet on that list, but you do have certain areas where opinions will differ. Now for a Muslim woman, she is required when she comes to a certain age, usually the age of puberty, to pretty much dress the way that I’m dressing, to start fulfilling the dress obligations, or the dress requirements that is expected of her. OK. Now one of the sole reasons why we do it, OK, which is probably one of the most commonsense reasons, is because it’s a commandment from God.
Rachael Kohn: In the larger community, you could say there’s a stand-off between Muslims and non-Muslims. Fear, disdain and ignorance have kept both sides at arm’s length. For Mehmet Ozalp, a second generation Australian Muslim, education is the answer. We’ll hear more from him later in the program.MUEZZINRachael Kohn: My first guest goes much further, in calling for a reform of Islam itself. Irshad Manji, a Canadian Muslim visiting Australia for the Melbourne Writers’ Festival, believes that it is not only Islam, but democracy, free thought and human rights, which are at stake. When I spoke to her earlier in the year about her book, The Trouble With Islam, Irshad revealed that her life had been threatened on many occasions for speaking out as she has. I’m pleased to say there was no need for bodyguards when she came to the ABC.Irshad Manji, welcome to The Spirit of Things.Irshad Manji: Thanks for having me.Rachael Kohn: It’s great to have you back on the show again. Six months ago, your book had recently come out, The Trouble with Islam; since then I think you’ve been interviewed all over the world, I doubt if you’ve been home for very long in Toronto. How many copies has the book sold?Irshad Manji: Well there are different countries in which it’s been released. I don’t have exact sales figures for any one of those countries; things change, but I’m really happy to say that the book made it to The New York Times bestseller list in the US; it has been on the best seller list for months in Canada, which is my home country, and by this time in September, it’ll be out in 20 countries, and I’m really happy to say, if I may just throw this in as well, that the book is being translated into both Arabic and Urdu, Urdu being the major language spoken in Pakistan. Now that doesn’t mean however that it’ll be published in the Arab world. No publisher has been found to touch this book with a 10-foot pole in the Arab world. So you know, it’s young Muslims from the Arab world who have said to me, ‘Forget the publishing powers-that-be, don’t let the vision be hidebound to them. You get the book translated into Arabic, you post that PDF on your website, make it free of charge to download, and Irshad, when you do that’, they’ve told me, ‘you will get an even bigger audience than you ever anticipated, because if we can read the book in relative privacy, then that means we can read it in relative safety and start discussing these ideas in a way that we couldn’t if we had the book in our hands and were harassed for doing so.’ Very interesting point.
Ultimately the only force that will contain extremist Islam is true Islam – and the same principle is true of all other forms of extremism.
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I wanted to share this resource – many transcripts and audio of programmes presented by Rachael Kohn for Australian ABC. This one is under the category of ‘Fundamentalism’.Go tohttp://www.abc.net.au/rn/spiritofthings/stories/2004/1188988.htm#transcriptto read the full program and to find many others.
Taufiq Rahim has an article in the Huffington Post.
He says, “As President Obama looks to foster a new dialogue with the Muslim world, I want to give voice to an Islam that is too often ignored in the media in both East and West.”
This is my reply as someone who shares Taufiq’s hopes.
Dear Taufiq
Thanks for your fine article.
I too, as a religious humanist, am inspired by the gifts of Islam. Who can fail to be moved by Rumi, Ibn-Al Arabi, the exquisite nature of the Alhambra, not to mention all of the science that is the foundation of Western ‘civilization’.
Every day I am the beneficiary of His Holiness Muhammad’s, Revelation, peace be upon Him, and the intellectual and spiritual truths discovered by those numberless great women and men who turned to Him.
But you skate over some very inconvenient truths.
I want to encourage you – and those who sincerely think like you – to try to get the ‘moderate majority’ in Islam to stand up and eliminate the hate-filled extremists who perpetrate such atrocities as 9/11.
Even one suspects that now hundreds or thousands are working towards the next 9/11 or much, much, worse. They are poisoned in their minds and paid for by Moslems in your part of the world – Wahabism or whatever. Only for as long as the security agencies are cleverer will the planned-for atrocities not occur. It is generally agreed that it is a matter not of if but when. (I know there is correspondingly much to be done to change the behaviour of Israel and the US.)
The extremists say they are your fellow believers. There’s the problem for non-Moslems. Is there a moderate majority? If there is why don’t they take control? Do all ordinary Moslems think the same as the extremists – and are simply less active? I know the difference between my friend who is a Quaker or my ex-neighbours who were Catholics and the crazies in the fundamentalist Christian pile. But I don’t know if there is truly a moderate majority in Islam.
I know the faith of sweet, ordinary people – of all faiths – is to be respected. I hear and believe what you say about those in;
the mountains of Tajikistan, the streets of Kabul, the alleyways of Damascus, the villages of South Lebanon, the madrasas of Uzbekistan, the towns of the West Bank, and even in corners of Riyadh.
But given what is happening in the name of Islam are they not victims just as much as the 3,000 who died in 9/11? Is such action not an insult to their faith? Are not more Moslems killed by fellow believers day after day after day? The only currency held in common seems to be hatred, all-consuming hatred. Lighten up. En-light-en up. It would be a relief if the extremists just loved other Moslems – the same of course is true of all fundamentalists.
I share with you the desire that the fruits of Islam be recognized world-wide and the pure faith of ordinary Moslems be honoured and respected as an example to us all. I shrink from the vile hatred so many other ‘believers in the Book’ heap upon Islam.
You say; My Islam is foremost about reason. It is about harnessing one’s capacity to understand the complexities of this world and beyond. The mind and the pursuit of knowledge are central to comprehending, to the extent that is possible, what is the divine. One also cannot make conscious decisions about right or wrong without exercising his own judgment. Blindly following the edicts of scholars, is not choosing a path except one that is not your own. When I refrain from consuming alcohol, it is not because I am backward, or uncultured. I refuse drugs because they hinder our judgment and our ability to reason, the trait that God endowed us with that distinguishes humankind from all other beings.
Bravo – no religion has given more to the modern world than the massively enhanced re-presentation of the Ancient World’s knowledge. I know that whilst Europe was literally and metaphorically in the Dark Ages parts of the Islamic world had street lighting and the first university – al hamdulillah!
You say your Islam is about the equality of women, tolerance, compassion, humility. I know all you say about these is true of the real Islam – but will the real Islam please stand up!
Equality of women, tolerance, compassion, humility? – tell that to the 74 year-old widow Khamisa Sawadi, convicted and sentenced recently to 40 lashes for meeting with her late husband’s nephew i.e. he brought her shopping! Is this the Saudi version of ‘meals on wheels’ for the elderly?
In actuality, globally, Dear Taufiq your version of Islam is a fantasy. Your version would be called, by those who dominate Islam, a Western-corrupted perversion. Wahabism rules – you don’t! That’s the world’s plight. You are a) just a minority b) part of a group unwilling or unable to become the dominant majority.Transformation lies in the activation of Islam as a 21stC religion.
It’s not about numbers its about which version of Islam dominates globally – and yours doesn’t because as yet the moderate majority, if they exist, are not willing to say, “Enough, no more!”
No one else is going to restore Islam to its rightful place other than moderate Moslems. Not even the sweet charm of Obama, let alone the insane machinations of Bush’s crowd.
The world, including most of the Islamic world, was held in sympathy for a short time because of 9/11. Had America then raised 3,000 scholars of Islam instead of 3,000 cruise missiles, the world could soon have been at peace.
The possibility is still there – but only if moderate, modernized Islam moves to the dominant position.
What are you, and those moderate millions you refer to, going to do to ensure the good guys win? We Kafirs will not be the ones to bring about the change from 8thC Islam to 21stC Islam.
As I write it seems as if Iran – and the rest of the world – is doomed to more craziness.
At least the US has made an effort in electing Obama.
ACCEPTING – “You are accepted!” … accepted by that which is greater than you and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask the name now, perhaps you will know it later. Do not try to do anything, perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything, do not perform anything, do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted. – – Paul Tillich
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AMBIGUITY – The awareness of the ambiguity of one’s highest achievements (as well as one’s deepest failures) is a definite symptom of maturity. – Paul Tillich
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ANGER “Anger is a noble infirmity; the generous failing of the just; the one…”
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ART AS SUBJECTIVITY – Since the last decades of the nineteenth century, revolt against the objectified world has determined the character of art and literature. (Paul Tillich)
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ASTONISHMENT – Astonishment is the root of philosophy. (Paul Tillich)
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AUTHORITY – The passion for truth is silenced by answers which have the weight of undisputed authority. – Paul Tillich
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AWARENESS – The awareness of the ambiguity of one’s highest achievements (as well as one’s deepest failures) is a definite symptom of maturity. – Paul Tillich
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BECOMING AS FULFILLING PERSONAL DESTINY – Man is asked to make of himself what he is supposed to become to fulfill his destiny. (Paul Tillich)
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BEING AVOIDANCE – Neurosis is the way of avoiding non-being by avoiding being
~ Paul Tillich
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BEING GRASPED – Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of a meaning of our life. – Paul Tillich
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BEING RELIGIOUS – “Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt.” – Paul Tillich
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BOREDOM – Boredom is rage spread thin. (Paul Tillich)
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CONCERN – Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of a meaning of our life. – Paul Tillich
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COURAGE – The courage to be is the courage to accept oneself, in spite of being unacceptable. – Paul Tillich
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COURAGE TO BE – The courage to be is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt. (Paul Tillich)
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CRUELTY – Cruelty towards others is always also cruelty towards ourselves. ~ Paul Tillich
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CYNICISM – Cynically speaking, one could say that it is true to life to be cynical about it. (Paul Tillich)
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DECISION-MAKING – Decision is a risk rooted in the courage of being free. (Paul Tillich)
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DEPRESSION – Depression is rage spread thin. – Paul Tillich
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DEPTH – He who knows about depth knows about God. (Paul Tillich)
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DOING SMALL THINGS – We can do not great things – only small things with great love. (Paul Tillich)
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DOUBT AS FAITH – “Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is one element of faith” – Paul Tillich
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FAILURE – He who risks and fails can be forgiven. He who never risks and never fails is a failure in his whole being. – Paul Tillich
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FAITH – Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned. – Paul Tillich
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FAITH AS BEING GRASPED – Faith is an act of a finite being who is grasped by, and turned to, the infinite. – Paul Tillich
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FEAR – Fear is the absence of faith. – Paul Tillich
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FEAR v ANXIETY – Fear, as opposed to anxiety, has a definite object, which can be faced, analyzed, attacked, endured… anxiety has no object, or rather, in a paradoxical phrase, its object is the negation of every object. (Paul Tillich)
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FREEDOM – Decision is a risk rooted in the courage of being free – Paul Tillich
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GOD – Faith consists in being vitally concerned with that ultimate reality to which I give the symbolical name of God. Whoever reflects earnestly on the meaning of life is on the verge of an act of faith. – Paul Tillich
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HELP – There is no love which does not become help. – Paul Tillich
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HUMAN BEING – The character of human life, like the character of the human condition, like the character of all life, is “ambiguity”: the inseparable mixture of good and evil, the true and false, the creative and destructive forces – both individual and social.- – Paul Tillich
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HU-MAN-ITY – Man is asked to make of himself what he is supposed to become to fulfill his destiny. – Paul Tillich
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KNOWING GOD – He who knows about depth knows about God. (Paul Tillich)
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LANGUAGE, LONLINESS & SOLITUDE – Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word solitude to express the glory of being alone. – Paul Tillich
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LISTENING – The first duty of love is to listen. (Paul Tillich)
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LONLINESS – Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the word “loneliness” to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word “solitude” to express the glory of being alone – Paul Tillich
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LOVE AS HELP – There is no love which does not become help – Paul Tillich
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LOVE AS THE BLOOD OF LIFE – For love … is the blood of life, the power of reunion in the separated.- Paul Tillich
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MEANING – Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt. – Paul Tillich
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MEANING OF EXISTENCE – Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt. – Paul Tillich
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MEANING SEEKING AS FAITH – Faith consists in being vitally concerned with that ultimate reality to which I give the symbolical name of God. Whoever reflects earnestly on the meaning of life is on the verge of an act of faith. – Paul Tillich
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NEUROSIS – Neurosis is the way of avoiding non-being by avoiding being (The Courage To Be) – Paul Tillich
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NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION – We can speak without voice to the trees and the clouds and the waves of the sea. Without words they respond through the rustling of leaves and the moving of clouds and the murmuring of the sea. – Paul Tillich
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PHILOSOPHY – Astonishment is the root of philosophy. – Paul Tillich
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QUEST FOR MEANING – Faith consists in being vitally concerned with that ultimate reality to which I give the symbolical name of God. Whoever reflects earnestly on the meaning of life is on the verge of an act of faith. – Paul Tillich
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QUESTIONING – Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt. (Paul Tillich)
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RAGE – Boredom is rage spread thin – Paul Tillich
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REALITY – Faith consists in being vitally concerned with that ultimate reality to which I give the symbolical name of God. Whoever reflects earnestly on the meaning of life is on the verge of an act of faith – Paul Tillich
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REFLECTION AS FAITH – “Faith consists in being vitally concerned with that ultimate reality to which I give the symbolical name of God. Whoever reflects earnestly on the meaning of life is on the verge of an act of faith.” – Paul Tillich
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RELIGION AS ULTIMATE CONCERN – Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of a meaning of our life. – Paul Tillich
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RISKING – He who risks and fails can be forgiven. He who never risks and never fails is a failure in his whole being. (Paul Tillich)
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SINGING YOUR SONG – If my tongue were trained to measures, I would sing a stirring song. (Paul Tillich)
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SOLITUDE – Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the word “loneliness” to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word “solitude” to express the glory of being alone – Paul Tillich
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SPEAKING OF GOD – I hope for the day when everyone can speak again of God without embarrassment. (Paul Tillich)
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SYMBOLIC EXPRESSION – Man’s ultimate concern must be expressed symbolically, because symbolic language alone is able to express the ultimate. (Paul Tillich)
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ULTIMATE REALITY – Faith consists in being vitally concerned with that ultimate reality to which I give the symbolical name of God. Whoever reflects earnestly on the meaning of life is on the verge of an act of faith.” – Paul Tillich
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WORK AS PLEASURE – The joy about our work is spoiled when we perform it not because of what we produce but because of the pleasure with which it can provide us, or the pain against which it can protect us.- Paul Tillich
It’s always great when a new idea bursts in your mind – or simply a new slant that puts in focused place long-held but vaguer ideas.
This for me was such an idea;
‘What you do is what you you’ve got’.
It came from here;
With Eckhart Tolle however I would say that having, knowing, being and doing have more than complex interactions, they have the context of silence – from which their truths arise.
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True achievement, success and happiness lie in being fully and positively human –
through our caring our creativity and our criticality –
developed via service to the communities to which we belong.
All postings to this site relate to the central model in the
What's the difference between spirituality and religion?
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How do you answer the question above?
Below is how far I have got with this issue.
Spirituality is how we relate to the unknown and unknowable – to Ultimate reality – and the meaning and motivation we derive therefrom.
Our worldview, as a consequence, is how we ‘read’ the world. Our worldview includes that of which are conscious, plus that which derives from enculturation. Becoming more fully conscious of Oneness, and acting accordingly, is our purpose.
Religion is the agreed set of relationships, teachings and customs held in common with any religious group of which one has membership.
Progress in spirituality is measured by regularly bringing oneself to account – in relation to the standards of your spirituality, world-view and religious group/s (if any).
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Etymological issues:
The English word “religion” is derived from the Middle English “religioun” which came from the Old French “religion.” It may have been originally derived from the Latin word “religo” which means “good faith,” “ritual,” and other similar meanings. Or it may have come from the Latin “religãre” which means “to tie fast.”
Doing your own research:
A very good starting point is provided by the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance. See HERE
The definitions I like best from this source are;
George Hegel: “the knowledge possessed by the finite mind of its nature as absolute mind.”
Paul Tillich: “Religious is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern”
Others are;
The Religious Tolerance group tell us that David Carpenter has collected and published a list of definitions of religion, including:
Anthony Wallace: “a set of rituals, rationalized by myth, which mobilizes supernatural powers for the purpose of achieving or preventing transformations of state in man or nature.”
Hall, Pilgrim, and Cavanagh: “Religion is the varied, symbolic expression of, and appropriate response to that which people deliberately affirm as being of unrestricted value for them.”
Karl Marx: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”
Don Swenson defines religion in terms of the sacred: “Religion is the individual and social experience of the sacred that is manifested in mythologies, ritual, ethos, and integrated into a collective or organization.”
Paul Connelly also defines religion in terms of the sacred and the spiritual: “Religion originates in an attempt to represent and order beliefs, feelings, imaginings and actions that arise in response to direct experience of the sacred and the spiritual. As this attempt expands in its formulation and elaboration, it becomes a process that creates meaning for itself on a sustaining basis, in terms of both its originating experiences and its own continuing responses.”
He defines sacred as: “The sacred is a mysterious manifestation of power and presence that is experienced as both primordial & transformative, inspiring awe & rapt attention. This is usually an event that represents a break or discontinuity from the ordinary, forcing a re-establishment or recalibration of perspective on the part of the experiencer, but it may also be something seemingly ordinary, repeated exposure to which gradually produces a perception of mysteriously cumulative significance out of proportion to the significance originally invested in it.”
He further defines the spiritual as: “The spiritual is a perception of the commonality of mindfulness in the world that shifts the boundaries between self and other, producing a sense of the union of purposes of self and other in confronting the existential questions of life, and providing a mediation of the challenge-response interaction between self and other, one and many, that underlies existential questions.”
My final question – “Why are there so many religious intolerance groups?”
To read the full article by the Religious Tolerance group go HERE
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True achievement, success and happiness lie in being fully and positively human –
through our caring our creativity and our criticality –
developed via service to the communities to which we belong.
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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the
1) Like your lives my life, (in a modest way), has (for the last 45 years), been dedicated to;
‘the advancement of education in the consideration of the basic unity of all religions, in particular by the provision of courses to provide an understanding of the relationship of man to the universe, the earth, the environment and the society he lives in, to Reality and to God.’
and right now the global and local opportunities, and dangers, strike me as unparalleled.
2) The great challenge seems to me to concern ‘the how’ of getting wider acceptance of Oneness and oneness as in Perennial Philosophy and the The Golden Rule – raised consciousness that will positively affect decision-making in all of the vital arenas of human concern.
3) A great shift in consciousness is taking place.
The great shift in consciousness is evidenced by two events.
Firstly in just the last few years what was esoteric is now open and freely available to to all.
Secondly millions are responding – in some way shape or form.
I have in mind especially the work of Ken Wilber, Karen Armstrong and most recently Eckhart Tolle.
Tolle’s writing is highly accessible – in the UK most Sun and Daily Mirror readers could handle it.
Of course functional literacy and level of consciousness and not directly correlated! But eleven million had by Week 3 tuned in to Tolle’s course run by Oprah Winfrey – see HERE
….. Oprah went further with Eckhart Tolle than she has ever gone with a previous author picked for her book club. She chose to present, with Tolle, a 10-week series of “webinars” – online seminars – with one chapter of the book (which she puts on the bedside table of all of her guest rooms) discussed each week. In the first webinar, transmitted on 3 March, Tolle led Winfrey and the millions of viewers who logged on in several different countries in silent meditation; viewers were then encouraged to submit questions to Tolle via Skype. By the third week, 11 million people were logging on.
This surely has no parallel in the whole of humankind’s spiritual history. The course is HERE
Not only are ‘the books open’ but there is more than Maslow’s 2% willing a new earth.
The question is how can their energy be harnessed and focused for the common good – or do we have to wait until the first nuclear war, simply because those who ‘know’ can’t find ways and means to influence those who actually ‘do the doing’ and make our world as it is.
4) We need to be thinking ‘outside of the box’. The old ways may not be sufficient. Keeping the candles of light and hope and truth is something that the precious few have done down through the ages, but now the challenge is to shift up to a larger stage.
For example inter-faith dialogue may well be effete (and for some cunning PR) compared to the people who really operate at the ‘hot interfaces’ – e. g. diplomats and business-people.
5) Absorbing and responding to this fact seems to me to be the challenge that might bring forth balm for suffering being borne by untold millions.
A sufficient proportion of America has said ‘Yes we can’ but even more critical than the decisions Obama will be making over the next 4 or 8 years is how can the light of Oneness be brought into the darkened hearts of religious haters and racists. That Oneness is the Tipping Point. The
‘tipping-point’ is realization of that Oneness – and it needs more than abstract assent.
6) My personal experience has led me to realize that individuals need something real and living and breathing through which to connect with ‘foreign’ wisdom traditions.
I believed in the oneness of religions long before I came across
a) Jane Clark’s article on Ibn al-Arabi – which created for me a living connection to Islam – and
b) the Bhagavad Gita Chanted in English HERE using a text of the Bhagavad Gita in English HERE
NB Try listening to the chanting whilst reading the text – wonderful! – transporting!
These gave me a living connection to Hinduism.
7) Starting points:
Perhaps looking very closely and deeply at ‘reverse fundamentalism’ is the way to generate programmes of positive action.
Karen Armstrong as you probably know is being given the opportunity to raise up the principle of the Golden Rule via her ‘Charter for Compassion’ campaign see HERE
Perhaps making celebratory programmes free to all on the internet…..
Perhaps Golden Rule materials free online for Heads and school…….
Perennial philosophy and the ‘federal’ Golden Rule – the ‘world language’ to be taught, in addition to their own religions, so that all can communicate with those of other faiths ……
What do you think?
We who have striven to keep the candles alight have to contribute to ways and means of reaching a sufficiently wider audience to get established some of the foundations for a new earth.
All blessings on the further development of your work.
The campaign Charter for Compassion are asking for contributions for the final charter. Here is my first draft contribution;
Compassion and Peace: ten ways to bridge and transcend racial and religious hatred
1 See the Golden Rule as the equivalent to a language in addition to your own – “My ‘mother tongue’ is Islam/Christianity/Buddhism etc but I also speak ‘the Golden Rule’ – so that I can be a sister/brother to peoples of all religions and none.
2 Implore people like Barack Obama to spend money on deepening cultural understanding – say 10% of the military budget switched to Arabic/Islamic, Chinese and Russian studies. Generate an ‘open data-base’ of experience learned.
3 Encourage all countries to massively increase exchange programmes. Send everyone with a ‘We’ve got these problems how are my host country dealing with them’ pack – and require a thorrough de-briefing upon return to home country – we must see that the most important problems are held in common, and that we must pool answers.
4 Use the knowledge as a data-base for university and school respect for other cultures courses – instead of allowing our societies to continue falsely claiming that the mad fundamentalist minority = the reality of the whole communuity.
5 Get celebrity goodwill ambassadors for the GR – include business people , they have more interchange with ‘foreigners’ than any other group. Get pop groups talking and singing about it.
Get Barack Obama talking about it – and Nels Mandela, and Archbishop Tutu etc.
6 Start teaching the Golden Rule – one school at a time – everywhere.
7 Generate badges, widgets and bling for websites, windows, clothing that conveys messages such as – ‘I speak oneness and diversity’. ‘We support the GR’, etc (Get some adverstising agencies working on it).
8 Support studies of fundamentalism – focus on ways and means antidotes and prophylactics. The best writers on fundamentalism may not be in obvious academic fields – the best I have found is
9 Look for ‘out of the box’ solutions such as brilliant comedians such as Omid Djalili and Shazia Mirza.
If you don’t like strong comedy don’t go – but I suspect that Omid, and the others have ‘lanced more religious boils’ for the general population than all of the politicians and academics put put together!
10 Support ways and means for deeper applications of the Golden Rule – we need courses from nursery to university epecially based on the brilliant writings and work of a) Eckhart Tolle, b) Ken Wilber and c) Karen Armstrong.
Do photographs live in the now? If so how - where and when and with whom?
My chosen favorite quotations for December and mainly about enlightenment, ‘now’ and the importance of living in the now. They are not by Eckhart Tolle – but by an extraordinary variety of writers, even though Tolle is the outstanding teacher about now-ness. My thanks espcially to two of the very best sources of quotations online WisdomQuotes and the Quote Garden
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RUMI
1 Into my heart’s night / Along a narrow way / I groped; and lo! the light,……. – Rubaiyat of Rumi
ANON
2 Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want. – Anon (?)
VIKTOR FRANKL
3 “The last of the human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.” — Victor Frankl
W.B. YEATS
4 “Man can embody the truth but he cannot know it.” – W.B. Yeats
MARK TWAIN
5 ‘Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.’ Mark Twain
BUDDHA
6 “Anger will never disappear so long as thoughts of resentment are cherished in the mind. Anger will disappear just as soon as thoughts of resentment are forgotten.” (Buddha)
SENECA
7 “The greatest remedy for anger is delay.” (Seneca)
KEVIN KELLY
8 There is only One machine.
The web is its OS.
All screens look into the One.
No bits will live outside the web.
To share is to gain.
Let the One read it.
The One is us.
Kevin Kelly (see YouTube)
KAREN ARMSTRONG
9 “Like poetry, religion is an attempt to express the inexpressible.” – Karen Armstrong
M SCOTT PECK
10 Love = “The willingness to extend myself for the spiritual growth of myself or another”. (From “The Road Less Travelled”).
ANON and ECKHART TOLLE
11 The voice of God is silence
ANON and GHANDI
12 He/She/It has no religion.
ANAIS NIN:
13 The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was the miracle.
ANAIS NIN:
14 We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.
ANNE FRANK:
15 How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
ARTHUR MILLER:
16 The word now is like a bomb through the window, and it ticks.
BRENDA PETERSON:
17 The Hopi Indians of Arizona believe that our daily rituals and prayers literally keep this world spinning on its axis. For me, feeding the seagulls is one of those everyday prayers.
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN:
18 Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time. We are in it now.
CORITA KENT:
19 Love the moment. Flowers grow out of dark moments. Therefore, each moment is vital. It affects the whole. Life is a succession of such moments and to live each, is to succeed.
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING:
20 Light tomorrow with today!
GWENDOLYN BROOKS:
21 Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies.
And be it gash or gold it will not come
Again in this identical guise.
HENRY FORD:
22 History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.
HUGH PRATHER:
23 To live for results would be to sentence myself to continuous frustration. My only sure reward is in my actions and not from them.
THICH NHAT HANH:
24 Life can be found only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life..
JOANNA RUSS:
25 Faith is not contrary to the usual ideas, something that turns out to be right or wrong, like a gambler’s bet: it’s an act, an intention, a project, something that makes you, in leaping into the future, go so far, far, far ahead that you shoot clean out of time and right into Eternity, which is not the end of time or a whole lot of time or unending time, but timelessness, the old Eternal Now.
KALIDASA:
26 Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!
Look to this Day!
For it is Life, the very Life of Life.
In its brief course lie all the
Verities and Realities of your Existence.
The Bliss of Growth,
The Glory of Action,
The Splendor of Beauty;
For Yesterday is but a Dream,
And To-morrow is only a Vision;
But To-day well lived makes
Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,
And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.
Look well therefore to this Day!
Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!
MARGARET BONNANO:
27 It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day to day basis.
MATTHEW ARNOLD:
28 Is it so small a thing
To have enjoy’d the sun,
To have lived light in the spring,
To have loved, to have thought, to have done…
PEMA CHODRON:
29 Now is the only time. How we relate to it creates the future. In other words, if we’re going to be more cheerful in the future, it’s because of our aspiration and exertion to be cheerful in the present. What we do accumulates; the future is the result of what we do right now.
ROBERT FROST:
30 Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON:
31 The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life’s plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life.
The branches of a tree don't make war on each other!
I added this post to an earlier piece but I think it is worth posting and developing because it contains an idea that is new to me! The difference is that I place it here in the discussion concerning the recent massacre in Mumbai.
The suggestion is that the idea of federalism – politically it works well in many countries – could and should be popularized as a key to the peoples of the world relating more successfully at the religious ideological level. Perhaps this could be termed ‘Federalism of spirit’ – the harmony that cherishes diversity.
How can we prevent massive amplification of hatred? What would be a starting point forward? The teaching of the Golden Rule in all schools would be a great step forward – (SEARCH articles on the Golden Rule on this site). But I’m suggesting that we teach, step-by-step, a Universalist world-view in addition to whatever is the majority religion. Just as I am British, Chinese or Kenyan I am also first and foremost a human being. Similarly I am proudly and faithfully a Christian/Moslem/Buddhist, or whatever, but I can also be a Universalist through recognizing;
1) The Golden Rule,
2) the essential Oneness of the mystical core of religions – Perennial Philosophy – and that
3) we are simply all emanations of one Source.
The deal at the moment for many is this – if I have a strong faith I am compelled because of ‘exclusivity of truth’ to hate all deemed to be ‘other’. If we all were Universalists as well as being of a particular tradition we could dialogue more profitably instead of killing each other. Federalism works – even without oceans of blood as precursors.
Of course there are other elements and needs in the mix – the need for greater political justice, the prevention of plain old crime etc. but shifting the world’s mind-set through teaching the Universal alongside the particular would improve matters enormously.
Eckhart Tolle is probably the most accessible proponent of Perennial Philosophy – the United nations should emply him and Karen Armstrong as Goodwill Ambassadors!
Perennial Philosophy, or mysticism, in one sentence
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“We can be happy, and serve others well,
if we realize our true Self
by detaching ourselves from the egotistic lower self –
through our step-by-step becoming aware
of the stillness beneath the noise.”
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This is the mystical core of all of the great world wisdom traditions.
If you don’t have the time to delve deeply into one or all of the religions read Eckhart Tolle’s The New Earth and do this course presented by Oprah Winfrey – HERE
Spiritual maturity, as related to religion, is a function of two things.
Firstly the degree toward which the ‘believer’ manages to de-anthropomorphise God, and gain a grown-up understanding of Ultimate Reality.
Secondly the ability to feel and think and do without attachment to ‘thumb-sucking’ supports – they vary with each individual.
The pay-off? We consequently learn to live with justice as the conditioning influence of all we see, think and do – we come to see through his own eyes and not through the eyes of another.
God of course by definition is undefinable.
Here is one definition that defies that indefinablity AND manage to capture the essence of the combined immanence and transcendence of the theological position known as panentheism;
“God is a circle whose centre is everywhere, whose circumference is nowhere.”
Anonymous, ‘The Book of the Twenty-four Philosophers‘ (12thC)
Here are some other attempts -less satisfactory;
To define God is to limit Him. Still it seems inevitable that man should do that in order to get some edge to which his mind may cling. – Heywood Broun
When I was fifteen years old or so I came up with a definition of God to which, in my old age, I come back more and more, I would call it an operational definition. It reads as follows: God is the partner of your most intimate soliloquies. – Viktor Frankl
God is the experience of looking at a tree and saying, Ah! – Joseph Campbell
We know God easily, if we do not constrain ourselves to define him. – Joseph Joubert
God… a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man’s power to conceive. – Ayn Rand
A stimulating, and largely satisfactory phenomenological definition of God is;
The philosopher Michel Henry defines God in a phenomenological point of view. He says: “God is Life, he is the essence of Life, or, if we prefer, the essence of Life is God. Saying this we already know what is God, we know it not by the effect of a learning or of some knowledge, we don’t know it by the thought, on the background of the truth of the world ; we know it and we can know it only in and by the Life itself. We can know it only in God.” (I Am the Truth. Toward a Philosophy of Christianity).
This Life is not biological life defined by objective and exterior properties, nor an abstract and empty philosophical concept, but the absolute phenomenological life, a radically immanent life which possesses in it the power of showing itself in itself without distance, a life which reveals permanently itself. A manifestation of oneself and a self-revelation which doesn’t consist in the fact of seeing outside of oneself or of perceiving the exterior world, but in the fact of feeling and of feeling oneself, of experiencing in oneself its own inner and affective reality.
As Michel Henry says also in this same book, “God is that pure Revelation that reveals nothing other than itself. God reveals Himself. The Revelation of God is his self-revelation”. God is in himself revelation, he is the primordial Revelation that tears everything from nothingness, a revelation which is the pathetic self-revelation and the absolute self-enjoyment of Life. As John says, God is love, because Life loves itself in an infinite and eternal love. See HERE for more
The Baha’i view is also panentheistic;
In the Bahá’í Faith, God is described as a single, imperishable God, the creator of all things, including all the creatures and forces in the universe. The connection between God and the world is that of the creator to his creation. God is understood to be independent of his creation, and that creation is dependent and contingent on God. God, however, is not seen to be part of creation as he cannot be divided and does not descend to the condition of his creatures. Instead, in the Bahá’í understanding, the world of creation emanates from God, in that all things have been realized by him and have attained to existence. Creation is seen as the expression of God’s will in the contingent world and every created thing is seen as a sign of God’s sovereignty, and leading to knowledge of him; the signs of God are most particularly revealed in human beings.
The above two are more less long-winded – why not just say with the blessed Anonymous from the 12thC “God is a circle whose centre is everywhere, whose circumference is nowhere.”
Each of us, each and every part of Creation is a ‘sunbeam’ shining out of the Whole. All is Spirit. Spirit with a capital ‘S’ is the Whole, the ultimate Oneness, Mystery, ultimate Reality……God (not anthropomorphised) if you prefer.
All that isn’t Spirit per se is spirit-as-emanation, emanation set aside in each case for a special purpose. The rock is spirit-as-emanation set aside for the purpose of manifesting the rockness of a rock. The tree is spirit-as-emanation set aside for the purpose of manifesting the treeness of a tree. The human being is spirit-as-emanation set aside for the purpose of manifesting the positive and noble humanness of a human being.
What would be a starting point forward? The teaching of the Golden Rule in all schools would be a great step forward – SEARCH articles on the Golden Rule on this site. But the Universalist world view, including the panentheistic perspective enables something much more importanta federalist position. Just as I am British, Chinese or Kenyan I am also first and foremost a human being. Similarly I am proudly and faithfully Christian/Moslem/Buddhist or whatever but I am also a Universalist through recognizing
1) The Golden Rule,
2) the essential Oneness of the mystical core of religions and that
3) we are all emanations of one Source.
Probably no idea has more power to overcome the seemingly endless capacity for suffering and creating suffering than this; ‘There are many paths to the summit but only one summit’.
He has impacted on my life as he has on millions of others. In addition to his general spiritual illumination of our lives and of reality I am interested in how he can illumine specialist areas of life including teaching, parenting and management. However this first post is an attempt to separate what he is doing and saying from what he isn’t. Why? Well take a look at the cistern of hate and mis-representation that has poured out from ‘Christians’ and others on YouTube and elsewhere.
1 He is not a religionist.
2 He has not started a religion.
3 He is not speaking from the point of view of inter-faith but meta-faith or pan-faith and beyond.
4 He doesn’t speak from within a religion, or about others’ religious beliefs.
5 He avoids religion, and thereby teaches the purest heart of religion.
6 His life has been in three stages.
7 Before the age of 29, there was extensive ‘dark-night-of-the soul’ experience.
8 At the age of 29 he had a transformative experience.
9 The subsequent 35 years, his life’s work, has simply been a commentary on that transformative experience.
10 The 35 years is itself split into two phases, the first of which was 30 years processing the experience – via reflection, study and articulation.
11 The writing of his few books, has been over the last half decade, and the meteoric rise in their and his popularity over just the last year or two.
12 He is a Universalist, and one who most of the time avoids the trigger words that set off fundamentalists and ‘exclusivists’ and other professional haters. (That hasn’t stopped a rag-bag of fundamentalists and ‘exclusivists’ and other professional haters from attacking him, especially since Oprah gave him a platform!)
13 He is existentialist by tone and direction.
14 He is not a theologian (thank God), but he is closest theologically to panENtheism.
15 He avoids scholarship (thank God) as one of many ego-traps that potentially ensnare any of us.
16 He is quintessentially the doer as opposed to the talker – but via talking about non-talking and non-duality!
17 He is quintessentially a Universalist.
18 He is directly in the tradition(s) of all of the great mystics.
19
20
I haven’t decided on the 18th and 19th – which ones would you add to the list?
Living in this post-modernist time one of the problems is knowing who the bad guys are. I’m sure fundamentalism is a bad thing – because it bears bad fruit.
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Soul Needs - One Garden 