The so-called five proofs of God's existence have never carried as much conviction as the personal encounters with God which religious people have claimed to have. 'Dieu d'Abraham, Dieu d'Isaac, Dieu de Jacob, non des philosophes et des savants.' So said Pascal. And it is significant that all the great religions do appear to stem from some shattering personal experience. The Buddha achieved enlightenment as he sat in meditation beneath the Bodhi tree. As a result, he believed that he had found the cure for all human sufferings and dissatisfactions. The Old Testament prophets had experiences which, they alleged, told them profoundly important things about God — even suggesting that what passes for religion can be a bar to finding him. There is always this gap between the religious founder and what the faith has become. We see it in Jesus's denunciation of the religion of his day, in contrast with his own sense of intimate closeness to the Father. One cannot read the Upanishads, the main source of Hindu doctrine, without feeling the writer's sense of union between the self and the Holy Power. And it was alone in the desert that Muhammad received his call to preach. True, these key figures quickly gathered round them a band of disciples, and other elements, such as a sense of common purpose and a sense of fellowship, accrued. Religion ministers to the group mind as well as to the individual. For all that, what has been said about literature may equally be said about religion in its essence: 'The best in each kind comes first, comes suddenly, and never comes again.'
Is it the same basic experience that all religions are seeking to interpret? Making every allowance for the divergencies of time and place, it would seem a strong possibility. A study of so-called primitive people may offer useful clues. Their world is alive and shot through with elemental unseen power. This power is thought to take possession of certain of their chieftains, priests, and medicine men. One group of special interest are the shamans. In Siberia an aspiring shaman has to pass many hours in a cabin of snow, contemplating his own skeleton. He ends, we are told, by obtaining the 'flash' or 'illumination' — 'a mysterious light that the shaman suddenly feels in the interior of his head'. He is now able to discern things hidden from other human beings.
Is the experience of conversion, as we know it in the West, so very different? Problems of language make it hard to judge. Here is a witness, quoted by Rudolf Otto: 'The more I seek words to express this intimate intercourse, the more I feel the impossibility of describing it by any of the usual images.' However, William James analysed it as consisting of two elements — an uneasiness and its solution. Carl Jung said that 'it gives a human being that sense of wholeness, which he had as a child, but loses when he leaves his parents'. And its common characteristic is a sense of something not earned, or even asked for — a sense of something 'given'. This led men naturally to infer a Giver, and therefore the postulation of a 'Someone', not ourselves, wholly other, out there in the void, and may be directly connected with the origin of religion.
The human race, on the whole, has found no difficulty in filling that void with an endless variety of deities. Considering that no one could really have supposed that they had been seen by anybody, it is amazing the number of forms these gods have taken — from Rongo, the Polynesian god of agriculture, to Shiva, the Hindu lord of the dance, and from the Zeus of Greek mythology to the Jehovah of Michelangelo. From earliest times man has sought to establish some sort of working relationship with these powers that be — some enlistment of their aid against the evil all round him. The many and bloody sacrifices which the Hebrew prophets denounced were believed to open up communication between the sacred and the profane, and the idea of sacrifice has not yet ceased to be an important element in religion. Men have also believed that 'mercy and not sacrifice' was what was required: that personal values count, when it comes to being right with God. Religion has always been closely linked with morality — even though it has given rise to some curious anomalies. Today the questions are still being asked. Is celibacy, or virginity, really demanded of us, if we are to be numbered among the saints? Are there absolute standards of conduct, applicable at all times and in all places? Or is everything relative?
As to our ultimate chances and the possibility of judgement after death, these remain beyond our logical apprehension. But Jung has suggested that our unconscious, which is free from the categories of space and time, may be the part of our make-up that 'knows' about these matters. Responses are set up in the unconscious by the use of certain symbols. Rituals give a sense of 'timeless moments', and myths of flight and ascension suggest escape from one mode of being to another. The rites of spring around the world celebrate the rhythm of rebirth. Jung has furthermore maintained that the crisis of the West is in part due to the fact that the Christian myths and symbols are no longer lived by. They have become fossilized and irrelevant to most of the population. To some extent this must be true of Eastern religions as well — despite all their genuine holy men and all their various techniques for quieting the mind. A recent traveller to Bodh Gaya, where the Buddha was enlightened, was disheartened to see so many Buddhists, in his opinion, missing the point. If the truth lies within the self, why so much noisy ceremonial?
What then of the future? The 20th century was certainly a crisis for mankind. The sheer achievement of science has caused modern man to claim that 'what no God did for his worshippers in thousands of years, he has by his own efforts succeeded in bringing about'. For authentic existence from now on, so the existentialists say, we shall have to face up to the absence of God. Nobody can give us directions. We are alone in the cosmos. But the history of religions shows that they have an uncanny capacity for revival, even when they have seemed to be most dead.
Hinduism was at a low ebb at the time of the establishment of the British Raj, and it was thought that the educated Indian would soon reject it. But far from rejecting it, he has done much to reinstate it. Its strength lies in the recognition of different levels of spiritual development, and it has a special attraction for men alienated from the religion of their own society. One of the great texts of the Upanishads is: 'God does not proclaim himself. He is everybody's secret.' An old prophecy says that after 2,500 years Buddhism will either fade away or enjoy a renaissance. It does not involve belief in God, over which many Westerners today have intellectual difficulties, and is undogmatic and experimental. One day a Zen master may deliver a sermon. Another day, if a bird begins to sing, the master will say nothing, and everyone will listen to the bird. Islam has been steadily increasing in influence and numbers, till there are over 817,065,200 Muslims at the latest count. In Christendom, the Roman Catholic Church is by far the largest, with 872,104,700 members. Its discipline is stricter than that of the Protestant Churches, and its appeal lies in its unbroken tradition. Protestants, by comparison, have broadened their outlook, yet they continue to preach to an anxiety-ridden world that 'sin' means separation from the ground of one's being, and that, as a matter of urgency, wholeness must be restored.
It is hard to be objective where religion is concerned. Objectivity suggests lukewarmness. It is easy for the agnostic to be objective, for there is nothing much at stake for him. It is very difficult for the man who claims that he has been vouchsafed a vision of the truth. 'Woe is me! for I am undone ... for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.'
(Published 1987)
See also humanism.
— The Revd. O. J. W. Hunkin
- Bibliography
- Eliade, M. (1960). Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries.
- James, W. (1902). The Varieties of Religious Experience.
- Jung, C. G. (1933). Modern Man in Search of a Soul.
- Macmurray, J. (1961). Reason and Emotion.
- Otto, R. (1923). The Idea of the Holy.
- Pascal, B. (1670). Pensées.
- Smart, N. (1971). The Religious Experience of Mankind.
