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• Saturday, October 4, 2008 06:28 AM

  Throw out the bath water; keep the baby

  I basically agree with Bill Maher; standard brand orthodox religion is a crock and the oldest con game on the planet. On one point I do differ. There is a type of mature spirituality,

  as represented by Buddhism and Vedic Hinduism in their advanced,esoteric forms and Gnostic Christianity as well. However, these are not religions in the commonly understood sense; more accurately, they are methodologies for a realization experience of a consciousness which is transpersonal in nature.

  This consciousness is said to exist not just by Buddhists,

  Vedic Hindus or Gnostics. Some advanced quantum physicists, such as David Bohm, Itzhak Bentov and Jack Sarfatti, have said the same thing, comng from a scientific orientation. The search for the ultimate particle of matter has led them to that conclusion. The problem with the ultimare particle theory is this: no ultimate particle of matter could ever be observed or described. Why? Because if some ultimate bit of stuff is the source of all matter, it cannot have any constituent parts or distinguishable features. If it does, then it must be comprised of some other more basic material.

  This leads to an infinite regression that ends with... what? These scientists say it can only lead to a non-material source of all manifest existence: consciousness. Now, this consciousness is not personal and is NOT a god by any definition.

  Granted such a consciousness exists. How can we know it? Through a disciplined use of a methodology that leads us into a realization experience of it. It can only be experienced, not known as an idea or dogma. In the Upanishads, the Vedic Hindu writings, which are the oldest on the planet, it has been written that one can read scripture from one end to the other but unless one experiences what is described, one has nothing but a lot of empty words.

  Literalized, fundamentalist relgion makes the mistake of taking the symbol or metaphor of God, or Jesus, as being actually real. The referent of all such synbols or metaphors cannot be literalized or captured in language. Certain kinds of language, like mystical aphorisms or poetry, can point toward the referent, but that's all language can do. I say use religious scripture in the one way it can be useful in terms of spiritual realization: as symbol and metpahor for meditation. That way we don't throw out the baby (being born to higher consciousness) with the bath water (remaining dead in literalized fantasies). By the way, this is not some New Age babble; what I am talking abouut has been known and discussed for centuries, in one form or another. Aldous Huxley's wonderful book, THE PERENNIAL WISDOM, covers the whole history of mystical insight.

  We live in a universe of high and low energies, energies that can manifest as three dimensional, sense verifiable things or objects and much more subtle energies, such as consciousness. It all exists,as Ken Wilber has written, on a spectrum of consciousness. When we human beings realize a transpersonal consciousness, we are are released from fear and desire. That release is what is actually meant by being born again. There is no one way of getting there. Choose your methodology--Buddhist, Hindu, Gnostic, native American or speculative quantum physics--any way that works for you is fine. The Gnostic, Paul of Tarsis, put it well: "When I became a man (read grown up), I put away childish things."

  —Traveling Light Read Traveling Light's other letters
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