Human development through religion

Some aspects of how this subject has been approached are touched on here.

1. Religion reveals the ultimate, eternal reality in whose unity and completeness there is perfection. Humanity is imperfect. Religion provides the means of overcoming the separation between the perfect and the imperfect, whether by human initiative or divine grace, or more usually by both, the one arising in response to the other.

2. The individual is not an absolute entity – "No man is an island" – everyone is essentially associated with something beyond himself. There is a feeling of psychic incompleteness in one's self while at the same time a consciousness of a relationship with something beyond the self which may be obscured by everyday life and current opinions.

3. It may be argued that it is perfectly possible to lead a happy and successful life without a religion; but the question "why do I need religion ?" is countered by another question "what is life, existence, for ?". It is this question which sets a seed of doubt into complacency and takes life to a level where everything else is meaningless except the search for a meaning, the ordinary mode of being is broken through; and it is here that religion becomes a necessity. Often it requires a serious event – coming face-to-face with death, for example, or the death of someone much loved - which makes the questioning arise. This questioning is specific for each individual. But as questioning continues, the underlying unity of all things in reality – "to see the world in a grain of sand" – demonstrates the unreality of separation; in reality subject and object are indissolubly part of the greater unity.

4. Although things in the external world are thought of as real they are rarely experienced as real but simply observed, with the relation of observed to observer as external to internal, with a division between the two. Even internal thoughts and feelings are rarely experienced; these also are usually observed, with separation between the self observing and the feeling being observed. This division results in a mechanistic view of the world, each ego entirely separate and surrounded by lifeless matter. There is a need to return to see life as a whole, lived through all living things with psychic sympathy between all living things.

5. The search for meaning and the answers arrived at depend upon the individual's level of development and his cultural and religious experience; different faiths have different practices; but ultimately all imply a theory of reality, and "a man's religion, if it is sincere, is that consciousness in which he takes up a definite attitude to the world and gathers to a focus all the meaning of his life" (E Caird).

6. The supreme reality, God, is that mighty being whose consciousness transcends the manifested universe. Jung considers God a mystery knowable only to God. All man can do is to speak in terms of images; the God-image in each person is the self (distinguished from the ego). Religion is then an attitude of consciousness when changed by experiencing the numinous.

7. God has created man and man can never be at peace until he finds his rest in God (St Augustine). Thus the individual is the willed creation of a loving creator and is subject to Him. He rebels against this subjection only at his own peril since he then cuts himself off from the very source of his creation. In Christian terms, this rebellion led to the fall in the Garden of Eden (this may be a literal or symbolic account). Religion is the search to restore the fallen position but can only be achieved by God taking the consequence of mankind's disobedience – death – upon himself and, by overcoming death, releasing mankind from sin.

8. Although different views of religion may appear contradictory they are all views of one reality and of one attainable vision of that reality. Just as different languages have different words to describe one and the same phenomenon, so different cultures have different ways of approaching God. Although the pathways up the mountain may be different, they all approach the same summit. Perhaps it is best that each individual follows the path prescribed by his or her own culture. Awareness of the goodness and truth of all religious traditions is the highest wisdom. This is the view of Ramakrishna and his disciples.

9. Despite widely diverse concepts of God, there is a characteristic conviction of a personal relationship with some external, transcendent power, this power being intimately involved in the person's needs, behaviour and interests at every level. Different religions and cultures will typically have different deities or aspects of the deity to deal with the same functions. Moreover, these concepts of God will satisfy emotional and spiritual needs and supply role models in individual development.

10. As a reflexive cultural system, religion provides models of and for self and society, the pattern behind all patterns. It is an interpretation of existence which may itself be interpreted. Myths, rituals and sacred symbols re-enact comprehensive ideas of order and paradoxical and ambiguous related disorder. Reflexive religious practices enable withdrawal from the world and a turning inward towards the self.

11. Rather than an outburst of irrational spirit, religion enlightens rationality. Purification through faith in the fundamentals of one religion and endeavour to achieve the goal set by that religion will be transformed into universal faith, since differences between faiths are superficial. The one religion of which all faiths are facets is based on love.

12. Different aspects of different religions may co-exist and complement each other. This is particularly true in China, where Confucianism provides a set of ethics for public life and the rites of passage within it; Taoism shapes attitudes to the natural world and the related festivals, and deals with healing; and Buddhism deals with the cares of the world, with death and its rituals, and with salvation in the afterlife. In total, there is joy and meaning in life and death which can be shared in a social context.

13. The mentality of a particular country or region may have a marked effect on the way religion is lived. Teilhard de Chardin indicates three spiritual modalities in the Far East: In India the attitude is of a mysticism of God. There is emphasis on the One and the divine, with an awareness of the unreality of all phenomena and of the invisible as more real than the visible. These leads to a pantheistic or theistic attitude even within Buddhism and to a conception of unity within Hindu theism. In China the mysticism is of the individual faced with and coming to terms with the world; emphasis is on harmony and equilibrium of an established order. There is a naturalist or humanist attitude, the tangible is supreme in both Taoism and Confucianism; and this is reflected in Chinese Buddhism with Bodhisattva Amida being substituted for Nirvana. Japan considers the mysticism of the social, and the humanistic attitude centres not so much on the individual as on the group, on movement, on conquest.

Thomas Keating, in a description of the work of the Monastic Interfaith Dialogue, list eight points common to the world's religions:

1. The world religions bear witness to the experience of Ultimate Reality to which they give various names: Brahman, Allah, Absolute, God, Great Spirit.

2. Ultimate Reality cannot be limited by any name or concept.

3. Ultimate Reality is the ground of infinite potentiality and actualization.

4. Faith is opening, accepting and responding to Ultimate Reality. Faith in this sense precedes every belief system.

5. The potential for human wholeness – or, in other frames of reference, enlightenment, salvation, transformation, blessedness, nirvana – is present in every human person.

6. Ultimate Reality may be experienced not only through religious practices but also through nature, art, human relationships and service of others.

7. As long as the human condition is experienced as separate from Ultimate Reality, it is subject to ignorance and illusion, weakness and suffering.

8. Disciplined practice is essential to the spiritual life; yet spiritual attainment is not the result of one's own efforts, but the result of the experience of oneness with Ultimate Reality.

On the last point, Thomas Keating lists ten practices common to most major religions: compassion; service to others; practising moral precepts and virtues; training in meditation techniques and regularity of practice; attention to diet and exercise; fasting and abstinence; use of music, chanting and sacred symbols; practice in awareness (recollection, mindfulness) and living in the present moment; pilgrimage; study of scriptural texts and scriptures. Other practices used in some traditions only are: relationship with a qualified teacher; repetition of sacred words (mantra, japa); observing periods of silence and solitude; movement and dance; formative community.

Other points of agreement include: extension of formal practice of awareness into all aspects of life; the need for humility, gratitude and a sense of humour; prayer as communion with the Ultimate Reality, whether seen as personal, impersonal or beyond them both.