The vision of bringing about a Holistic Religion over an increasingly globalising world order is not new,and the principle is not at all an unhealthy one,especially when one questions the contemporary relevance of the existence of a varying multitude of religions when every other aspect of human life is getting globalised by the day.Yet the idea gets pegged back by a few factors that still predominate sociological dynamics.Man,despite all the advancements taking place in stride with evolution of universal consciousness,has not been able to come out of the escapist comfort and security which religion offers to him in the face of increasingly unstable and volatile social profile-an after-effect of the same process of rapidly accelerating globalisiation.
A theologist might not like it if I attempt to peel away the accretions of the myths,dogmas,and sacraments that cloud the origins of his chosen faith.He may be liable to accuse me of syncretism,of trying to combine all religions into one big holistic ocean of faith,and for the orthodox theologist that is as anathema as the idea of a single global government is to the extreme political right.When one seeks common threads among the world's religions(which I would prefer to rephrase as spiritual doctrines),he may be chided for following a 'cafeteria' approach-a little from this,a bit from that.
It is true enough that some New Age belief systems do little more than uninspired devotional dabbling,backing off quickly whenever a spiritual discipline becomes too incompatible for one's lifestyle.(One cannot really be a part-time Budhhis any more than a self-described Christian can purchase salvation with one hour a week in Sunday church).Yet the irrefutable truth is that at the heart of each great religious tradition lie three small words: God is One.
The common ground of all great faiths is to be found in their essence:mystical insight and introspection.Insight,by its very nature,is experiential.It cannot be effectively taught or preached except through analogies and allegories,and bit clumsily,dogmas.But the testimony recorded by the mystics seems convincing enough.Whatever the religion may be,if one gets down to the level of religious epiphany,the experience seems to be the same: dissolution of egos,a merging of the observer and the Observed,a Union with the primal source of all.Contrary to the prevalent scientific bias that tends to paint mysticism with metaphysical vagueness,the universal mystical experience itself is evidently of great clarity;otherwise how could so many from such diverse schools of religion describe it in such similar terms?
The philosopher-scientist may personally disagree but science as an official philosophical subject,seems to cringe at the mere mention of mysticism.Yet with each new discovery in quantum physics,and disciplined insight into both the micro and macrocosm,science is backing into the cosmic sea. The more the scientist penetrates to deeper levels of reality through quantum physics,he seems to come across an undivided totality,an "Emptiness" that is,paradoxically,full.The more he learns,the clearer it becomes that the precepts of mysticism differ those of modern physics mainly in linguistics and methodology.This continuously whips up a relentless questioning-could it be that experience of the mystics has an analogue in the "unbroken wholeness" of quantum physics?
The greatest obstacle to the reconciliation of science and philosophy has been the Personification of God.The prophets and the priests of all religions have historically offered their followers a wide latitude in their depiction of the Almighty.They realised that man has tremendous difficulty in conceptualising things beyond the pale of his own senses,and they have traditionally kept the "secret" to themselves,that God is not a person or a symbol which man may worship,but abstract.And at one point of time,even the priests fell prey to their own sleight-of-hand and began to believe their own press,just as the mathematicians have too often mistaken their elegant equations for the truths they represent. Einstein famously remarked that science has grown out of refinement of our own thinking.In its infancy,science was a close cousin of philosophy.Nweton's Principia bears the title "The Mathematical Principles Of Natural Philosophy".But ever since Relativity Theory and Quantum Physics described a reality strikingly at odds with our perception,physics has become the province of mathematicians predominantlyThis is because Mathematics furnishes the only vocabulary to precisely describe this reality
Can't man find a way now to appreciate the reconciliation of Science and Spiritualism?We will be more closure to the Truth then,I believe.
I hope the discussion continues…
No comments:
Post a Comment