Hello Paul and all,
"I find myself (at that particular time) unable to accept those
claims."
The way I've personally dealt with this conundrum is to view all such
claims, as well the revelations behind those claims, in the same
manner: as genuine human efforts to express what is in reality
ineffable.
The religious experience is common to all of humanity and manifests
itself within the cultural constraints of the individuals who undergo
these religious experiences. For instance a Amazonian shaman's
personal religious experiences are going to be profoundly different
from the religious experiences of an Iranian nobleman. The vital
question that we need to ask ourselves is: are the spiritual
experiences of one man's intrinsically superior to those of another's?
A true appreciation of the broad spectrum of human spiritual
experience needs to closely examine these considerations.
To my mind this is the only true path to a reconciliation between
religions, between the multifarious spiritual paths that exist in our
world; not that any one path rule over all others as being superior to
all others but a shared appreciation that all such spiritual paths
have arisen from a common human instinct. The human instinct to choose
a manner of living which will facilitate human progress and harmony.
This common human effort must as well take in to account non-
religious efforts on the path to human progress. Religionists tend to
disregard the efforts of secular humanists, the efforts of those who
choose not to believe in their particular god or guru. This to my mind
is one of the greatest failings of religion: an exaggerated and
exclusivistic sense of their own worth and a deliberate devaluing of
the worth of all others paths which do not recognize the particular
claims of their own religion.
Until religions out grow this tendency they will, IMHO, continue to
be as Abdu'l-Baha' himself stated: "the most harmful agency on this
planet".*
Cheers
Larry Rowe
*Thus religion which was destined to become the cause of friend****p
has become the cause of enmity. Religion, which was meant to be sweet
honey, is changed into bitter poison. Religion, the function of which
was to illumine humanity, has become the factor of obscuration and
gloom. Religion, which was to confer the consciousness of everlasting
life, has become the fiendish instrument of death. As long as these
superstitions are in the hands and these nets of dissimulation and
hypocrisy in the fingers, religion will be the most harmful agency on
this planet. These superannuated traditions, which are inherited unto
the present day, must be abandoned, and thus free from past
superstitions we must investigate the original intention. The basis on
which they have fabricated the superstructures will be seen to be one,
and that one, absolute reality; and as reality is indivisible,
complete unity and amity will be instituted and the true religion of
God will become unveiled in all its beauty and sublimity in the
assemblage of the world.
(Abdu'l-Baha, Divine Philosophy, p. 161)
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