Maliha wrote something the other day (in a comment on her post, "Black and White Truth," which she says she wrote partly as a result of her dialogue with me) that has resonated with me since. She wrote, "Belief in a certain religion is a willing choice that a person has to make."
One reason this has resonated with me, I'm sure, is that in my reading of R.W.B. Lewis's biography of the James family (The James: A Family Narrative), I've been struck powerfully by philosopher William James's psychology of the will, and also by his writings, first as the Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh in 1901-02, which he worked into his masterpiece book, The Varieties of Religious Experience. For example:
Religion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men [and women] in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine [James's own emphasis].And what in religions is called "God" (or "Allah" or whatever), William James identified as "a more":
Let me then propose, as an hypothesis, that whatever it may be on its farther side, the "more" with which in religious experience we feel ourselves connected is on its hither side the subconscious continuation of our conscious life.Readers familiar with some of my earlier thinking may appreciate the power with which this strikes me. And they probably know about my use of a muse. Well, of course, and as I understand, that muse is my "subconscious." But by calling it a muse as though it were an independent entity I acknowledge that in some sense it transcends me, certainly transcends my consciousness.
Anyway, the nub of all this is the notion that we are all, through our consciousness and our subconsciousness, directly linked to...God/Allah/what you will call it. This isn't a new notion for me, but a rediscovered old notion, so that I am experiencing a rebirth of religious understanding or belief. (I mentioned something akin to this earlier in a comment to Victor on my post "Monday Musings.")
Maliha's remark about will encourages me to be reminded that I can simply will to believe this again.
And Friday I listened to a podcast from Yale University on reconciliation between Christianity and Islam. I was struck perhaps most of all by the realization (or another reminder, actually, for I already knew this) that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all Abramaic religions. One speaker emphasized how important it is today for there to be dialogue among individuals who really believe their religion (whichever of the three it is), not among politicians who say they represent the religions....
But what I got from the podcast, personally, was the vision that a set of encompassing tenets could be shaped to define a single religion for Jews and Christians and Muslims to congregate within. I was thrilled to think that I could will to believe such a set of tenets. Jews would somehow have to reconcile with Jesus Christ, and Christians would somehow have to reconcile with Muhammad. Muslims seem to have already pretty much reconciled with Moses et alia and Christ (if I understand Islam aright).
Please let me know, if you would, what you think about the notion of a consolidated Abramaic religion.
Whew! Me is just the tiniest bit tired from readint this and Maiha's post as well as the comments that followed.
ReplyDeleteA consolidated Abramic religion?
You seem to be toying with a utopian concept here, Mr. Moristotle. It seems to me that the basic tendancy of religion and those who hold religious beliefs is to splinter into sects rather than commune under a single umbrella. Human existance, composed of experience, thought and imagination, consistently forces one to view the beliefs and ideas we hold and inerpret them into a system that makes livable, workable sense to us as an individual. This may be why there are so many different flavors to choose from when it comes to religion and why within those beliefs we choose to adhere to some "laws" and not to others. This "systemizing" produces smaller groups of those with similar interpretations. All variations on a basic theme yet nontheless seperated by the indelible semantic differences with which they accept the holy scripture.
A question Me has always tried to figure out is: What is the purpose of religion (all religions)is it to find God or to find a way to improve society and relations with those we share the world with? Maliha touched on this thought when she spoke about more action less discussion.
Hope me makes sense. Me feels a little out of me league when it comes to religious matters
Dear Scary Monster, I trust that you are rested now and recovered from the exhaustion of all that reading! <smile>
ReplyDeleteI have to say I agree with your doubts, for I had already been wondering, What was I thinking? You are exactly right about people's splintering into differing religious groups. My momentary vision of a "consolidated religion" was likely motivated by a desire "to find a way to improve society and relations with those we share the world with," as you put it, or to find a way for currently unreconciled groups to "come together now, love one another right now," to quote the Beatles. Pie in the sky.
And what made me think that anyone would sign up for "a consolidated religion"?! That's as naive a hope as the one I had as an adolescent, that all we need to do to gain another person's agreement is to "reason together" about the facts. That empty hope rested on the false assumption that everyone can see the facts the same way. Alas, disagreement goes much, much deeper, to the assumptions, values, agendas that powerfully control how we perceive the world (and the "facts") in the first place.
The desire or need for each individual "to find God" (as you say) will have to be each individual's project and struggle. I momentarily lost sight of that, which has been as core a belief of mine as regards religion as I have. I think I must have been drunk to imagine that I could "will to believe...a set of encompassing tenets," me who only recently decided not to continue to try to believe in the special divinity of Jesus Christ! And me who eschews dogma, the very thing that "a set of encompassing tenets" surely amounts to!
What a short-lived fantasy this was, Scary Monster: My proposal of a consolidated, Abramaic religion!
You're right to be exhausted. What a suspect notion to spend words to try to propose.
The only part of the post that I think really sticks, for me personally, is James's idea that our own subconscious is the "hither side" of the "more" that is God.
Thank you for your forthright, astute comment. I think we're on the same wavelength.