CHAPTER 1
Consciousness, Ultimacy, and Religion
"Consciousness is both the most obvious and the most mysterious feature of our minds." —Daniel C. Dennett
Ultimacy precedes all, succeeds all, surrounds all, permeates all, is all.—Anonymous
"Religion is at best a tool to helpyou train your mind."—The Dalai Lama
The function of religion is to facilitate fundamental transformation in our personality, our character, our inherited sense of who we are, the most basic element of our beingness, in a word, our very nature as human beings. Religion that does not actively foster human transformation—by means of transcendence—is little more than a social convention. If it does not regularly and consistently promote individual change, growth, development, transformation, it fails to operate out of its true base and center. Such religion forfeits its primary purpose and becomes indistinguishable from other noble features that make up social life. By not basing and centering itself in that which is unique to itself, religion loses its authenticity and becomes only one more enterprise among the many that make up society—cultural, educational, recreational, political, commercial, etc.
Generic Religion
An initial understanding of the nature of religion can be gained by considering the Latin word from which it is derived, religio. Scholars believe that religio in turn is derived from either religare or relegere. Religare means 'to re-connect', 'to bind to'. Religion is thus a means of rejoining what has become separated. It is the means by which we become re-rooted in that from which we draw our existence; it is the rediscovery of our Source. In most religious traditions, this is understood as returning to God, to the divine. T.S. Eliot, locating the religious thrust in the nature of man to reach into the unknown, may have had this etymological sense of the Latin root, religio, in mind when he wrote in the Four Quartets:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
In this sense, religion represents an essential impulse or orientation in the very core of our nature as a human being.
The second possible root for the word religion, relegere, indicates a way out of the widespread, virtually universal way that we humans unwittingly restrict our engagement with life. A great deal of evidence supports the view that we typically live in self-created, mental- emotional boxes of ideas, thoughts, expectations, fears, desires, etc., that shape and limit our experience of life and the role we play in it. We tend to ignore or deny whatever comes before us that challenges or contradicts our familiar view of self, other, and world. To feel safe, to avoid uncertainty and confusion, to maintain some degree of contentment and happiness, we typically resist whatever disturbs or threatens. Or we do not even allow it to engage our awareness. Through selective attention, we unconsciously filter out much that would disrupt our nominal sense of well being. This second root, relegere, means 'to attend to', 'to observe carefully'. Accordingly, religion is the process of paying close attention to whatever presents itself—emotionally, intellectually, physically, relationally, etc.—without prior evaluation, without closing down or shutting out. If we do not arbitrarily exclude what does not fit our pre-established worldview, if we remain open to new input in the course of life, even when it threatens, we may discover a power and mystery and wonder in life greater than anything previously imagined.
The Chinese are fond of noting that danger is also opportunity, that when we feel threatened by something we are being given an opportunity to engage life more openly and realistically. The letters making up the word 'fear' may be seen as an anagram which means "forever evading another reality." By staying open to life as it unfolds on its own terms, we may in fact experience what the German scholar, Rudolf Otto, calls the mysterium tremendum et fascinans, the awe-inspiring, power-filled mystery known as the Holy. Any encounter with the divine that is likely to effect transformation must of necessity entail some degree of apprehension, perhaps even anxiety and trepidation. Only by relinquishing the "tried and true" and venturing into the unknown, with all the uncertainty and fear that this inevitably entails, is it possible to experience the power that transforms. Relegere suggests a sensitive awareness and ready willingness to embrace life on its own terms, as it presents itself to us, without expectation and without denial. Only then is discovery and insight possible. Nothing is revealed to the one who is closed, to the one who thinks he or she already knows.
Both of these Latin roots locate the religious thrust in human nature itself, as if to say: to be human is to be religious. Contrary to naive and simplistic views, authentic religion is not rooted in fear, whether the fear of pain, loneliness, punishment, insecurity, or death. Those who engage religion authentically face these and other exigencies of life with courage and acceptance, seeing personal trials as opportunities for growth and realization. At the same time, it would be foolhardy to deny that many are drawn to religion out of a desire to avoid the perplexities and sufferings of life. Religion does offer explanations and give consolation. But escapist religion, all too common within the ranks of conventional religiosity, goes even further. This is religion marked by unreflective belief, doctrinaire rigidity, shallow emotionalism, and fanciful hope, the kind of religious orientation that is far removed from standing open and attentive to life as it unfolds, accepting and venturing into the unknown as it arises each ongoing moment.
Even as the root meanings of the word religion give no support for an attitude of avoidance, they give no support to a religion of mere conventionality or tradition. A great deal of religion is little more than custom—routine, habitual, repetitive—more concerned with security, comfort, and the status quo than with the adventure that leads, often by way of uncertainty and disruption, to personal discovery, growth, and realization. Destiny places most of us in a specific tradition, with all the limitations that inevitably characterize an established way. Only inertia, however, keeps us bound to the customary. To recognize the merely conventional is to glimpse the vital and the authentic beyond the usual and formal. To embrace the newly sensed—however, subtle, elusive, or threatening it may be—is to relinquish infantile and adolescent perspectives and embark on the...
