The Mysterious Case of God's Non-existence

About the author Mark Craig lives with his family in Brisbane, Australia. He is a school teacher specialising in Religious Studies. Mark has a keen interest in spirituality and the overlap between religion and science in regard to describing and explaining the nature of God in post-modern context. Also by Mark Craig MAKING MEANING OF RELIGION IN POST-MODERN CONTEXT: TEACHING RELIGION IN A SECONDARY SCHOOL. GOD’S SHABBY CLOTHES: EXPLORING ULTIMATE REALITY. AWAKENING TO WHO WE ARE: THE DIVINE ART OF BEING. The Mysterious Case of God’s Non-existence Investigating the nature of the Real Mark Craig Copyright © 2014 by Mark Craig All rights reserved, Including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. A Mark Craig book first published on Amazon as a Kindle edition in 2014. Table of Contents Dedication i Preface 1 Introduction 2 Chapter 1 Can we know anything 17 Chapter 2 Finding common ground 45 Chapter 3 Finding better models 62 Chapter 4 Missing the forest for the trees 79 Chapter 5 Christian fundamentalism 92 Chapter 6 What is truth 109 Chapter 7 Knowing the unknowable 120 Chapter 8 Emptiness is experience of God 139 Chapter 9 Finding new words 153 Chapter 10 Who or what do we mean by God? 172 Conclusion 187 References 189 “God has no religion.” Mahatma Gandhi Dedication This book is dedicated to all those who have taken the time to consider that, maybe there is more to life than just what we can see, hear, feel, smell and touch. It is dedicated to you, the reader, for it is people such as you who incarnate for the world, in a special way, the God who is always there. May these pages provide support, comfort and empowerment so that you remain and continue to be this incarnation for the small patch of world you inhabit and influence so wonderfully. i ÀΩ Preface There are many intellectuals in today’s world who are very quick to dismiss the notion of God as pure nonsense, a fairy tale told to children much in the style of a Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. These sincere and well-meaning people genuinely believe their position to be factual and any other argument to the contrary as unintelligent and misguided. On the other side of the equation, there are those people who believe in God or some deeper metaphysical reality but who arguably represent this God or deeper reality in childish ways. These sincere and well-meaning people genuinely believe their position to be factual and any other argument to the contrary as unintelligent and misguided. Consequently, we have an impasse This book is an attempt to resolve this impasse and to address these two extremes. The central hypothesis it proposes is that the idea of God is not only reasonable to hold but also, to some degree, empirically observable as a real experience in the world. Each of the two positions outlined above reflect a tendency to see only one side of the coin: it is either heads or tails; it can’t be inbetween and it can’t be both. The position I would like to propose is that it is inbetween and it is both. It is heads and tails plus a little more. It would appear to me that both positions are equally right while simultaneously being equally wrong. They are equally right because the atheistic argument that God does not exist is quite correct, from a certain perspective, while the theistic argument that God is real is also quite correct. Unfortunately, it becomes an argument over semantics rather than substantive truth. Thenceforth, the intention of this book is to explore in greater depth, each side of the coin, so to speak, and what lies in-between. It will endeavour to demonstrate that what is at the crux of the impasse is a misunderstanding of and\or refusal to acknowledge the limits of language to articulate fully, the nature of reality. I have entitled the book, “The Mysterious Case of God’s Non-existence – Investigating the nature of the Real” as it captures succinctly the inability of language to demonstrate God’s existence; however, it is possible to conceivably illustrate, through language, the fundamental reality to which the word God ultimately points. It is this deeper reality, variously labelled by institutional religion and other forms of spirituality, and often alluded to by science that is the focus of this book. Introduction Within each person there is a desire to reach some goal that is not yet but that is deemed within reach and possible, this side of the grave. To be human, it would seem, is to experience a sense of needing more in order to render oneself more complete and one’s life more meaningful. Shared human experience would suggest, there is within each person a deep seated feeling of incompleteness, of not yet having made it in the world or of not having enough by way of material possessions. Thus, happiness is reduced to a commodity and rendered a phantasm forever eluding our grasp. It would appear that to be a human being in the world is to experience oneself as an unfolding process and never its culmination. We are always on journey without ever arriving at a final destination. If the feeling of not being complete or whole is the existential starting point for human experience, then, what is the origin of this feeling? Why is it there in the first place? Why do people continuously experience feelings of lack that give birth to and fuel emotional states like want and desire? What is the nature and source of wanting, driving humankind to transcend limitations, accomplish and conquer? Western religions like Islam and Christianity suggest the feeling of lack, of needing more, is an indication of not having yet discovered and experienced, at a significant level at least, the God-reality residing within. The feeling of incompleteness is rationalised as arising from a lack of connectedness to a deeper spiritual realm that is the source of ultimate fulfilment. Religious ideas Eastern religions, like Buddhism and Hinduism, would suggest the very feeling of being incomplete, of experiencing want and the need to add something, whether this wanting is directed toward a material, intellectual, psychological or spiritual thing is itself the problem. Eastern religion posits that only by overcoming wanting or desire does one ultimately find peace. Those who are not affiliated with either religion or religious sentiment would argue otherwise. People subscribing to an atheistic world-view may assert it is purely human nature, devoid of any need for a God, to want to improve one’s lot in life. It is the natural impulse of evolution to refine our survival skills and improve our ability to find more efficient means of ensuring an adequate food supply, hospitable shelter and to procreate. This increases the probability of personal longevity and the survival of the human species. Intellectuals of this ilk, like evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, would vehemently argue that we create our own meaning. The world has no intrinsic meaning or purpose apart from what we attribute to it. Meaning therefore, is imputed to an otherwise meaningless and absurd existence. Breakthroughs in scientific understanding provide for intellectual atheism what theological understanding and philosophy has traditionally afforded religious faith and belief. It offers a plausible rationale for supporting a particular belief, albeit one that cannot be proven conclusively. Secular ideas and religion The Darwinian notion of the survival of the fittest has compelled humankind to seek out bigger and better ways to live more comfortably and to better adapt to one’s environment or, as seems to be happening more and more, adapt one’s environment to suit humankind. The secular world-view would postulate, fulfilment of the need and desire for personal pleasure and satisfaction, accompanied by some sort of social stability, communal affiliation and the opportunity to contribute constructively to the wider world are among the key ingredients to remedy the feeling of lack. Accordingly, this particular set of cultural assumptions has created and continues to create the momentum, particularly within western culture, to develop technologies improving both the quality and quantity of life. Two key figures of the twentieth century, within the Roman Catholic Christian tradition, identifying the impact of this set of cultural assumptions on the lives of people generally, saw great promise in adapting the insights of science and secularism to religion. This was in order to make greater sense of the God-concept within a modernist paradigm,1 a God held to be simultaneously transcendent or beyond the influence of the world and immanent or deeply embedded within the world. These key figures were Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Karl Rahner respectively. Teilhard de Chardin was fascinated by scientific theories that sought to explain more comprehensively the nature of matter and cosmology. His idea of reconciling Christian thinking with secularism is evident in the notion of the incarnation having ultimate material and cosmic significance and figures in much of his writing. Teilhard de Chardin sought to 1 Modernism is a style of art, architecture, literature, academic inquiry and other pursuits that uses ideas and methods which are very different from those used in the past. It encouraged the re-examination of every aspect of existence, from commerce to philosophy, with the goal of finding that which was 'holding back' progress, and replacing it with new ways of reaching the same end. It held to the possibility of developing systems based on certain ideas that would potentially create a greater chance of utopia. demonstrate that materiality and spirituality were flip sides of the same reality and that consciousness was the unifying element. Rahner, by contrast, was more interested in the implications of the incarnation for human evolution and the possibility it promised for the realisation of our full human potential; a human potential, he claimed, had reached its zenith in the very possibility and emergence of Jesus Christ in the world. He argued, human existence is ultimately meaningful and inseparable from the world of the spirit. While these thinkers were somewhat shaped and conditioned by the Christian tradition in which their respective philosophy and theology are steeped, their thought breached denominational and religious boundaries. They are, arguably, first among many other notable Christian philosophers and theologians of the 20th century to make deep connections with secular scientific thought and so, a brief look at their thinking is in order before proceeding any further. Matter and Spirit entangled Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) was a French philosopher and Jesuit Priest. He trained as a paleontologist and geologist and took part in the discovery of “Peking Man” – one of several examples of Homo erectus – that was identified as a possible stage in the evolution of the human species. Teilhard de Chardin conceived the idea of the Omega Point (a maximum level of complexity and consciousness towards which he believed the universe was evolving) and developed the concept of the Noosphere (from the Greek νοῦ [nous] for "mind" and σφαῖ α [sphaira] for "sphere") (Grumett, 2005, p.238). For Teilhard de Chardin, the Noosphere is the third stage of cosmic evolution. The first two stages that preceded it were that of the Geosphere, whereupon inanimate matter emerged and transformed the planetary terrain, and the Biosphere, whereby life emerged and transformed the Geosphere. The Noosphere, the third stage, would subsequently emerge and transform the Biosphere. This would happen through the mass interaction of human minds constituting a type of global consciousness. According to Teilhard de Chardin, this third stage has grown in step with the exponential growth and organisation of the human race as it populates planet earth. As humankind organises itself even further, into more complex social networks, he conceived the Noosphere or interconnected consciousness of all life on earth would also grow in awareness. The Noosphere or global consciousness is growing towards an even greater integration and unification, and will ultimately culminate in the Omega Point, which he saw as the goal of history: the emergence of a shared consciousness having its origin in divine consciousness. In a sense, Teilhard de Chardin leant toward an idea that could easily be construed as the divinisation of the cosmos. His thinking is very much in line with that of Dean Radin and his work in the Noetic sciences. Dean Radin has been a Senior Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), in Petaluma, California, USA, since 2001, and his work with Random Number Generators (RNG) has revealed that human consciousness is far more integrated and unified than many scientists formerly considered possible. Some of his work provides an empirical basis to the theological and philosophical insights of Teilhard de Chardin, especially evident in the Global Consciousness Project (GCP). The GCP affords stunning evidence to support the idea of the Noosphere or an interconnected human consciousness able to affect measurable and concrete outcomes. Experiments have been conducted across the globe whereupon it has been revealed that people shared a moment of non-local consciousness. This shared moment then succeeded to create a non-local pattern in the world that was statistically improbable but, to some extent, measurable. This became evident in a level of coherence across a number of RNG readings. For instance, just minutes prior to the tragic unfolding of 9\11 and the bombing of the twin towers in New York, it was demonstrated empirically (through RNG outputs) that people, worldwide, shared a moment of heightened mental and emotional connection and coherence (Arntz et.al., 2005). As a theologian and philosopher, Teilhard de Chardin drew inspiration from the discourses of the physical sciences. Drawing on the work of some earlier scholars like Russian scientist, Vladimir Vernadsky, he came to see Christ’s presence in the substance of the Eucharist as a model for understanding the deeper essence underlying all matter. Just as Christ is believed by Catholics to be essentially present in the material elements of bread and wine, according to a Catholic sacramental theology, so too is the Cosmic Christ present in all created substances, sustaining them and constituting them into something far greater than raw matter. This is the essence of the teaching underlying the Noosphere; that all of material reality will be transformed into a higher material state through consciousness. In fact, consciousness is the transforming agent, divine consciousness inseparable from human consciousness. This insinuates a type of divine alchemy at work within the world and universe as the apex of evolutionary processes – the merging of the human and divine both metaphysically and physically. In the evolutionary process, Teilhard de Chardin envisaged Christ as presenting himself to the world as its Omega point: its plan, fulfilment and final end. He suggested that Christ, as Omega, binds together three distinct centres of evolutionary attraction: the natural centre of the world (all physical matter), its supernatural but still immanent spiritual centre (the deeper essence underlying physical matter), and its transcendent, triune and divine centre (the source of all matter). This Trinitarian understanding of how humans’ experience reality complemented his strongly Christocentric vision (Grumett, 2013; Teilhard de Chardin, 1955). Teilhard de Chardin, in contrast with Rahner, broadened his focus beyond the sphere of humanity and identified the spiritual centre underlying materiality is propelling the whole universe toward full realisation and actualisation. In a sense, all that exists will ultimately and universally be transubstantiated in the ciborium of cosmic consciousness to become fully divinised. Stated more succinctly, the cosmos is evolving into God. The Christian belief in God’s incarnation within the person of Jesus provided the metaphor and pattern for God’s incarnation within the entire cosmos. In contrast, Karl Rahner focussed upon the human rather than cosmological context and sought to explain, in anthropological terms, the implications of Jesus Christ as the incarnation of God in the world. His emphasis was on human rather than universal evolution. God and humankind entangled Karl Rahner, (1904–1984) borrowing ideas and concepts from anthropology, and within an evolutionary context, spoke of Jesus as the epitome of human development: the human being par excellence. In his famous work: Theological Investigations (1961), Rahner described a God who was the supreme mystery at the centre of human existence and Jesus as the prototype of what humanity was designed, by this supreme mystery, to become. In Jesus Christ, one sees the end product of humanity’s spiritual, moral, social and cultural evolution. Jesus Christ mirrors our evolutionary destination, at least for the committed Christian. The ‘Supernatural Existential,’ which refers to humankind’s absolute obligation to achieve this supernatural goal, is that which drives a person to evolve thus. The supernatural existential is the transcendent potential or openness to receive divine love prior to the actual offer of divine love. It is the point where the supernatural centre or essence of humankind merges with its transcendent centre or source. Human beings, accordingly, are ontologically formed to require connectedness with the divine and are thus positioned to existentially access divine love. This is accomplished by a simple act of acquiescence to the divine will. Consequently, the desire, drive or wanting to be more is essentially a supernatural impulse within each person to properly realise their essential identity within a transcendent source. This theological insight finds an empirical basis in the research of Dean Hamer and the God gene hypothesis. The God gene hypothesis proposes that a specific gene (VMAT2) predisposes the human being towards spiritual experiences. The idea has been postulated by geneticist, Dean Hamer, the director of the Gene Structure and Regulation Unit at the U.S. National Cancer Institute. He is the author of the groundbreaking text, The God Gene (2004). In order to identify some of the specific genes involved in self-transcendence, Hamer analysed DNA and personality score data from over 1000 individuals. He identified one particular locus, VMAT2, with a significant correlation. VMAT2 codes for a vesicular monoamine transporter that plays a key role in regulating the levels of the brain chemicals serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine. These monoamine transmitters are thought to play an important role in regulating the brain activities associated with spiritual experiences. Thus, Hamer shows, from an evolutionary perspective, how the human body may be genetically predisposed and open to transcendence, through natural selection and inheritance, so expediting experiences traditionally thought to be religious. Hamer’s research suggests a deeper connection between biology and spirituality than earlier thought feasible by the world of science. While some may cite Hamer’s conclusions as evidence to invalidate spiritual experience altogether, dubbing it nothing more than a biochemical process, it points to something far deeper I would contend. It suggests to be human is to be irretrievably a spiritual being whose transcendent essence is bio-chemically encoded in one’s genetic make-up. We are spiritual beings, first and foremost, having a human experience, as Teilhard de Chardin propounds, and our physiology reflects and embodies this truth. This affords evidential support to corroborate Rahner’s idea of the supernatural existential. We are biologically pre-programmed to access the transcendent potential within us and experience divine love. It is in our genetics. In stark contrast to theistic interpretations of the human experience of feeling incomplete and the mysterious attraction to self-transcendence, others like the linguistic philosopher Phillip Nietzsche, tell a different story. He proclaimed the death of God, asserting that only by accepting and even willing the death of God, in which all of our old conceptions of divinity had to die, could humanity realise its full potential. Only the good news of God’s death would free humankind from enslavement to a tyrannical transcendent deity that served only to limit humanity’s ability to become more. By rejecting God as the projection of humanity’s natural ability to transcend self-imposed limits, one could attain to heights never before considered achievable. Intellectual Atheism According to Friedrich Nietzsche, human beings projected onto a fictional deity their own unrealised potentialities. Hence, by jettisoning the idea of God people would be liberated from its shackles and free to develop these potentialities. While I do not fully agree with Nietzsche’s conclusions, I do agree that old conceptions of God no longer holding meaning for a contemporary audience need to be discarded. In other words, while the reality to which the word ‘God’ points must be acknowledged as real, certain ideas and metaphors associated with this reality need to be allowed to die naturally. The life support system of some doctrinal minutiae needs to be switched off. As Thomas J. Alitzer claimed in The Gospel of Christian Atheism (2002), Religion needs to look into the void that the death of God has left in its wake, and, in that dark abyss, allow the God-reality to emerge anew and unveil itself unencumbered by barnacles of human interpretation. By allowing the void of God’s death to be, a new language will inevitably emerge better expressing humankind’s ineluctable sense of incompleteness and how it may be addressed. The modern and post-modern mindset requires a new language enabling the God idea to live and breathe once again, becoming in a fresh way, meaningful in a post-Christian, if not post-religious world; a world that continues to seek answers to complex questions. The language of institutional religion is debatably floundering in this enterprise. Central to post-modern thinking, particularly in western culture, is a belief that thought is capable of understanding all there is to know about the world and known universe. This optimism began with the Age of Enlightenment and has obtained new momentum currently, with particular breakthroughs in the field of Quantum physics; albeit, the latter contains within it the seeds of a new spiritual revolution. Consequently, this belief has injected the atheistic spirit with new confidence. It has created an expectation within the intellectual community that answers to all questions, regarding the origin and purpose of existence, will eventually become known. The modern mindset was spawned in the 18th and 19th centuries when human knowledge became fragmented into a thousand pieces. The emergence of a host of academic disciplines, emerging out of renaissance thinking and the Age of Enlightenment is testament to this. Across the range of academic disciplines agreement was not always forth coming. Of note, during this period, was the conflict between the disciplines of religion and science. This conflict was drawn into sharp relief when Charles Darwin published his seminal work: The Origin of the Species (1859). This astounding scientific opus suggested various life-forms evolved and changed over time, developing specific characteristics in order to survive more successfully in their respective environments (Darwin, 1979). Darwin submitted, humanity itself had evolved from lower life forms and shared a common ancestor with other primates. This is borne out today by geneticists who have found that Chimpanzees, for example, share about 99% of the same genetic coding with the human race. Church authorities particularly, became unhappy with the notion humankind may have shared a common ancestry with monkeys and gorillas, evolving from mere amoebas into forms of marine life that later became amphibians and finally, bi-pedal land dwelling creatures. The inference could be that God was no longer required to account for the existence of life on planet earth. God was now redundant as human life, like all other life forms, was nothing special, the result of accidental and random processes rather than the intentional creative act of a deity. Science, unofficially, took the helm of the search for objective truth and declared itself to be the primary authority on matters pertaining to the physical order and the perplexing questions of human existence. Questions to do with the mechanics of the universe such as how phenomena occurred and when events transpired became its domain. Religion, on the other-hand, took the wheel of matters pertaining to the spiritual order and declared itself to be the official expert on questions to do with personal meaning – the who and the why of human existence. A divorce of sorts occurred between the two and the insight of French Philosopher, Rene Descartes, who two centuries earlier had uttered the famous line: Cogito ergo sum, “I think therefore I am,” helped seal the divorce (Skirry, 2008; Arntz et al, 2005). Human-thought was equated with human-being. Humanity’s very essence was deemed to be the intellect rather than the soul and as science was all about the intellect, in contrast to religion, which was all about the soul, then, humankind would be more likely to find answers to life’s questions within science than religion. While one may argue that, in hindsight, the emergence of science and religion and other fields of intellectual inquiry, such as anthropology and archaeology as discrete disciplines, was necessary (for their proper development) historically, it has not been without its casualties. Certainly science, anthropology and sociology in order to develop fittingly, needed to establish independence from what was largely an ecclesial-centric society whose values were predominantly Christian. In the late 17th and early to mid-18th century, new scientific insights such as Darwinian notions of evolution were often quashed by Church authorities and dubbed atheistic in essence. The medieval concept of learning whereby all forms of knowledge could be reconciled to a theistic worldview no longer held sway. Secular values and ideas, as espoused by humanism, influenced the curriculum of many universities in Europe and were a response to the explosion of secular knowledge. Academic inquiry needed independence from a system of thought built on religious and philosophical assumptions not wholly open to questioning.2 Particular fields of intellectual investigation, such as science, medicine and philosophy needed to have the freedom to test these assumptions and\or reject them altogether in order to develop as academic disciplines in their own right (Ruegg, 1992, pp. 453-459). The casualty however, is that historically speaking, particular knowledge systems such as science, theology3 (religious studies since mid-20th century) and anthropology have grown up in isolation from each other leading to a sort of ghetto mentality within the world of academia (Flood, 1999, p. 18). There was, until recently, a type of cold war between certain intellectual elites who considered other areas of study beside their own to have no mandate or authority to comment on their specific area of expertise. In the current intellectual clime it has become apparent, the fragmentation across fields of intellectual inquiry, while once necessary, is no longer required. There has grown a chasm between ideas able to be empirically validated and 2 Prior to the Renaissance and The Age of Enlightenment, most universities established in Italy, France, Britain and Germany were set up by Religious Orders or Monastic communities and so, there was assumed a level of subscription to a Catholic Christian ethos. 3 The establishing of Religious Studies departments within secular universities in the United States of America and the United Kingdom during the decades that followed the Second World War marked an important shift in the way religion was studied. There was a movement away from theology, which was traditionally regarded as an insider discourse, to religious studies, which favoured a more academic and non-confessional approach to the study of religion. those which are not. The physical sciences as opposed to the metaphysical sciences have operated largely in separation from each other; nevertheless, this separation is beginning to be spanned. New scientific discoveries are suggesting notions once associated with metaphysics are now able to be empirically affirmed as real or, at least, scientifically plausible to some extent. At this point it is important to define what is intended by the term empirical. Empiricism, as used in the proceeding chapters refers not to its classical definition (that all knowledge is derived solely from sense-experience). Instead, it refers to a current understanding of the self-same term. This understanding involves the following three steps: a. The skill and knowledge of knowing how to obtain and collect important data via observation and research. b. Developing probabilistic models, which make rational sense from the data collected. c. Evaluating competing models and then, minimising an expression of the data within a particular model. To do this equal emphasis needs to be placed upon theory and data (Goldsmith, 2007). Hence, what is reasonable to explain the data theoretically is combined with relevant real world observations in order to arrive at a succinct model and explanation of it. This understanding of empiricism is behind much of the recent work in favour of the God hypothesis and is particularly evident in the work of people like Alain Aspect, Amit Goswami, and Stuart Hameroff. Therefore, the idea of God being real is finding new meaning thanks to empiricism and the incredible insights of Quantum physics. This is coupled with a shift in emphasis away from formal religion to spirituality4 when investigating questions traditionally associated with metaphysics. In consequence, dominion has been wrested from institutional religion when it comes to naming and utilising legitimate authoritative sources. Spirituality is not the property of any one religion and one finds many expressions of it beyond institutionalised forms with which it has usually been associated (Burkhardt, 1989, pp. 60-77). Therefore, an emphasis on spirituality 4 A broad, inclusive definition is: spirituality is that which gives meaning to one's life and draws one to transcend oneself. Spirituality is a broader concept than religion, although that is one expression of it. It includes prayer, meditation, interactions with others or nature, and relationship with God or a higher power. It includes any interpretation of reality not assuming materialism as its constituent element. freed from the constraints of formal religion is the focus of many contemporary spiritual thinkers such as Eckhart Tolle, Neale Donald Walsh and Deepak Chopra, to name only some. Telling from the popularity of such authors, one could deduce that while affiliation with formal religion and attendance at religious services may be declining in the Western world, interest in and hunger for meaningful spiritual content and connection is not. Thus, it is vital spirituality be reclaimed for the masses and identified as an intrinsic human quality and not some culturally bound condition or personal choice people either make or don’t make. Reclaiming spiritual truth The belief that secular disciplines such as science and sociology are more in tune with reality is a cultural assumption leading many in post-modern context to view religion as mere superstition with no empirical basis to support its worldview. Quantum physics is suggesting otherwise and is supplying profound insights into the nature of reality bordering on the fantastic and, dare I say, spiritual. The insights of Saussure (1959), Lyotard (1971) and Derrida (1982) in addition, provide a rationale for viewing the respective language systems of academia for expressing its insights as limited and inherently conditioned by socio-cultural and historical context. Various religions of the world and particular secular academic disciplines each possess a unique language for addressing the deeper questions of human existence, such as the origin of the universe and humankind’s place within it. The major world religions utilise a peculiar religious paradigm for exploring the deeper questions based upon a foundational experience and a mythological framework consisting of sacred stories and texts. On the other hand secular scientific disciplines, such as Physics and Biology, employ a very different linguistic framework representing a varied response by comparison. They each weave divergent stories around the data proper to their field of inquiry. Various systems of knowledge present their own unique meta-narrative or grand-story to explain human origin and purpose. The grand-story of science may call it the Big-bang or Inflation theory while religion may speak of Creation and a supreme deity or divine order to things. In isolation from each other, respective knowledge systems can only present a partial picture of the whole. Regrettably, some fields of academia have become so attached to their own specific language and symbol system that they have bracketed out the possibility that another system of knowledge may have something of value to contribute to the same question at issue. The word symbols meaningful to each discipline have become a direct focus of worship for its adherents. The signposts that point to a deeper truth or reality have been confused with the deeper reality itself – language has become an idol. The myriad fields of physical and metaphysical inquiry need to be cognisant of the fact that any words used to respond to the deeper human questions, especially those attempting to meaningfully explain the nature of Ultimate Reality, can only point to Ultimate Reality and are never identical with the reality itself. It is reasonable to postulate that cognitive uncertainty regarding the nature of ultimate truth is a given and not necessarily the byproduct of a fragile personal spirituality or poorly constructed theological or scientific framework. The word ‘God’ is not identical with some objective reality of ‘God’ out there – some independent reality in juxtaposition to us. The word itself has no meaning outside of a human context and is the product of socio-cultural and historical conditioning. God does not exist, except as a human thought. A rock, plant or indeed, a bird or racoon do not think the thought, ‘God,’ but this does not render what the thought may point to, superfluous. What the reality is that gave this thought inception is arguably real. In similar fashion one could argue, the word ‘Universe’, ‘Multiverse’ or ‘Metaverse’ has no corresponding objective reality out there. The word itself has no meaning outside of the human mind and so, a specific human context. They are all thoughts about a reality not literally corresponding to the word. This becomes evident when confronted with a number of competing probabilistic models regarding the nature of the universe. A case in point is the model of multiple or parallel universes, mooted by a selection of theoretical physicists and mathematicians as plausible. Michio Kaku from the City University of New York and Burt Ovrut from the University of Pennsylvania propose the feasibility of the parallel universe model. If the universe is shown to have not only three dimensions of space but rather ten, and one dimension of time, then, the model increases in probability requiring serious consideration as a scientific possibility. This model can be shown to be consistent with String Theory, which affords it additional worth and credibility. String Theory in order to be coherent as a scientific hypothesis requires there to be an eleven dimensional universe. When eleven dimensions of space\time are factored into the equation of super strings giving rise to the manifested universe, then multiple universe models work beautifully (Kaku, 2006). Nevertheless, while embraced by some scientists of note, this general model is rejected by others as too fantastic and far-fetched. Whether one is talking about science or religion, truth is not to be found in the words themselves but in the reality to which the words endeavour to point. An individual or group’s understanding of such words are naturally conditioned and shaped by their socio-cultural, political and historical context, and are thereby limited in their capacity to yield universal meanings that are trans-cultural and supra-historical. It will only be through a process of dialogue that the various stake-holders of theistic, non-theistic and secular academia will be able to arrive at a point of cross-disciplinary synthesis. This may engender a reworking of old word symbols and the construction of new ones capable of yielding a more meaningful response to questions surrounding Ultimate Reality. Investigative fields such as Physics, Chemistry, Biology Mathematics, Religion and the Social Sciences are each capable of addressing questions of ultimate concern; however, this will always be mediated by respective language and symbol systems distinguishing one discipline from the other. While human experiences may differ markedly and the language used to represent them, due to a multitude of socio-cultural and historical contexts, the deeper reality underlying each representation is arguably the same. This may provide a common starting point for linguistic invention that more effectively reflects the whole of reality. It is the task of this book to explore certain ideas associated with particular fields of intellectual inquiry, particularly mainline religion and science and to probe the underlying reality or field that connects them all. A field, I submit, is the veritable ground of all being, reflected and refracted through the prism of socio-cultural and historical context of which religion is but one shade or colour within a whole spectrum; one piece of a puzzle that requires many other pieces before the whole is apparent. This field could also be called spiritual consciousness delineated by the search for meaning and higher purpose. Whether one is talking about philosophy, religion or science, each are particular expressions of spirituality in their own right. Spirituality does not mean religious – tied as it is to historical context and culture. Spirituality transcends context and culture tapping into deeper archetypal forms common to all humanity. When so understood, one is freer to explore new meanings and, word and symbol systems to express those meanings. The idea of God is broadened beyond limited conceptualisations associated with religion – God is freed from the prison of the intellect in order to be God. Henceforth, God understood as a pointer to Ultimate Reality is not real in a linguistic sense, if we are reducing the reality of God to its many signposts; however, God is real in an experiential sense when we understand the signposts to be just that – pointers to an experience beyond the capacity of words to ensnare. God is real when we know so via the gut-brain and not the head-brain. God is real when we no longer require the word ‘God’ to function as a pointer. Chapter 1 Can we know anything about God? Ethiopians say that their Gods are flat-nosed and dark, Thracians that theirs are blue-eyed and red-haired. If oxen and horses and lions had hands and were able to draw with their hands and do the same things as men, horses would draw the shapes of Gods to look like horses and oxen to look like oxen, and each would make the Gods’ bodies have the same shape as they themselves had. Xenophanes of Colophon (c570-c475 BCE) This poem, attributed to the ancient Greek poet Xenophanes, suggests that those who believe in the existence of a God or gods attribute to their respective gods characteristics that resemble themselves. This is particularly evident when Xenophanes muses, if oxen or horses had gods and were to represent them, then, these horse and oxen gods would resemble their adherents in shape and form. The implication is that people create their gods in their own image and likeness. The deity of each religion therefore, could be viewed as a projection of attributes valued by a particular group. The God of Christianity, for example, could be viewed as a projection of a human ideal onto some esoteric idea around metaphysics. On the surface, this poetic reflection may appear as naïve. Surely only primitive groups of people would attribute anthropomorphic characteristics to their deity in the absence of a more sophisticated understanding. The ancient Hebrew creation story is a good example of the tendency of a ‘primitive’ people to create God in the image of oneself. In Genesis 2:4b-3:25, for instance, God is mentioned as walking in the garden calling out to his\her children Ha-Adam and Ishshah, popularly known as Adam and Eve (Parales, 1998, p. 4). The Hebrew God is like a parent, strolling through the garden in search of his\her children. It may come as a surprise that this propensity to attribute to God human characteristics is also present within the more ‘sophisticated’ religions so called. The penchant of overlaying the idea of a transcendent God with other ideas, reminiscent of the local culture, is common. It is all part of a larger process whereby certain historical and geographical identities develop a set of beliefs, stories and rituals affording a sense of social, cultural and religious cohesion and meaning. Every human culture in every age has developed a set of ideas about God(s) or the supernatural incorporating elements important to those respective cultures. Every religion employs anthropomorphic images of its deity to a certain degree. As human beings we are consigned to filter all of reality through the screen of human experience. The central representation of God within Christianity is the God-man, Jesus Christ. Moreover, Christian representations of Jesus Christ will vary according to human contexts. Within an African context Jesus will resemble an African man, however in a Japanese context Jesus will look like a Japanese man. This is understandable and it stands to reason. These cultural expressions are not claiming, by doing so, that Jesus is literally an African or Japanese male person. Nonetheless, they all share in common the characteristic of depicting images of God (Son of God) as a living breathing human being situated within a specific time, place and culture. This characteristic indicates the natural human instinct, as described by Xenophanes, to construct God in our own essential image. With reference to the Christian notion of Trinity, not only is the second person of the Trinity anthropomorphised but so is the first and third person. God the Father represents a human father, patriarch or male elder while the Holy Spirit is often feminised. It would appear, the Trinity is modelled after the traditional human family (father, mother and child). The same propensity is evident within Islam as well. For instance, while artistic images of Allah are forbidden, the words and titles ascribed to God are anthropomorphic in nature. Among the 99 Names of Allah documented in the Qur’an and Sunnah the following titles appear: Allah the merciful (Ar-Rahim), Allah the compassionate (Ar-Raoof), Allah the creator (Al-Khaliq) and Allah the reckoner (Al-Haseeb). All of these titles are adjectival phrases reflecting human qualities. Similarly, across Eastern Religions a similar predilection persists. While religions like Buddhism appear to lean less heavily on anthropomorphic features to describe metaphysical reality, such features still predominate within its teachings. For example, the idea of God as a disembodied consciousness of some description still retains strong human connotations. Nirvana or the highest state of self-realisation for Buddhist adherents is God-consciousness. Ultimate Reality, understood as pure awareness or consciousness, makes no sense outside of the human experience of being a sentient or conscious being. It is a model of human consciousness superimposed upon metaphysical reality. In contrast, Hinduism quite overtly humanises its deities and this is evident in its pantheon of gods. The Trimurti (Hindu Trinity) of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva are depicted as male gods and each have their respective female counterparts, Saraswati, Lakshmi and Parvati. While religions, like Buddhism, and Christianity may have either evolved its language for describing Ultimate Reality or the concomitant understandings surrounding particular doctrines, it has simply moved from particular concrete anthropomorphic references and understandings to those that are more abstract and subtle. People create images of what they treasure in a manner that makes cultural sense to them; however, when these same images are called into service by them in an attempt to explore metaphysical realities, they are seldom literal in intent. Most Christians do not literally believe three divine persons literally inhabit some geo-metaphysical realm called heaven. These images or models are understood for what they truly are: limited representations of a deeper reality eluding capture in any single image or model. Why then, I wonder, is it that when various religions attempt to put words around the nature of divinity, language attributing to this divinity the characteristics of a human person are often deemed, maybe inadvertently, to be literally so? This is true at least for some. If “Ethiopians say their Gods are flat-nosed and dark [and] Thracians [say] that theirs are blue-eyed and red-haired” then who is correctς If Christians say their God is one in being yet three-persons and Hinduism that their Gods are many and varied, then, who is correct? God is obviously identified with neither of these representations in a literal sense, and yet all of these views are legitimate within their respective contexts. What makes them correct is not their literal truth therefore, but the meaning that each representation makes for the people to whom they have cultural relevance. Hence, one can conclude that whatever the word ‘God’ ultimately denotes, it is not literally what the words say about that God (particular connotations). The human image of God as ‘person’ has been one that has dominated mainstream western religions for much of their respective histories. In this fashion, to the adherents who are the passive recipients of religious faith, the connotation of God as person has become equated with what the word God ultimately denotes and this has led to great misunderstanding. God is not to be found in the words themselves but in the spaces between the words – what the words do not say is equally, if not more important than what they do say. God, whatever that word ultimately points to, is a mystery defying the power of words to encapsulate in some religious formula. The reality underlying the word ‘God’ is not the prisoner of other words utilised to describe it. When we can affirm and own that as real, then, what God ultimately denotes will reveal itself to us, irrespective of the words and images we may use or find helpful. God as person Ultimate Reality has traditionally been labelled by Western Religion as God while Eastern Religion has shown less inclination to attach a label. Based on alleged ‘divinely inspired’ sources, each religious tradition lays claim to a unique foundational experience, mythological tradition and continuing historical experience of Ultimate Reality as real and valid. Sadly, this claim has engendered negative experiences for minority religious groups existing on the margins of a dominant culture. In these instances, the minority religion’s foundational experience, mythological tradition and continuing historical experience of Ultimate Reality is often devalued. For example, Muslim religion in some Australian and American communities was bitterly criticised and attacked by some militant groups following the events of 9\11. In Brisbane Australia, several Islamic Mosques and even Buddhist temples were defaced; the latter would suggest an inability on the part of the vandals to distinguish between two very different religious traditions and this in itself is worrying. Many religions claim a level of doctrinal certitude regarding the nature of Ultimate Reality. Some Christians have gone so far as to claim that only through surrender to a literal God-man – Jesus Christ – is salvation possible. On the other side of the coin, some Muslims declare that surrender to Allah is the only sure ticket to paradise. The word ‘Muslim’ literally means the one who surrenders while the word ‘Islam’ denotes surrender. In contrast to Christians, Jesus is deemed by Muslims to be one of Allah’s many prophets and not the Son of God. I would strongly suggest, any claim to doctrinal certitude is ultimately flawed. This is because it obviates the reasonable counter-claim that no one single religion can declare, with absolute certainty, to have a more complete picture of Ultimate Reality or a superior religious meta-narrative than others. Human perception and experience of reality and the subsequent linguistic articulation of that reality is naturally limited by socio-cultural, political and historical context. All religions and their respective meta-narratives are the product of its Sitz im Leben or life setting out of which a narrative emerged. Consequently, its key component of sacred text and the doctrine, ritual and ethics that ensue are shaped and conditioned by a social context. The claim then to universality – of particular religious truths espoused by any one religion being absolutely correct – is inherently unsound. While the particular expression of religion in a specific human context and the image it presents of Ultimate Reality may be meaningful to adherents of that religion in that context, the same image could be quite meaningless when transplanted and situated in an alternative context. In fact, a re-reading of history, particularly colonial settlement in countries like Australia, America and Asia, would suggest that it is often quite destructive. Clashing perspectives Colonialism in the 18th and 19th centuries in Australia illustrates how indigenous people were forced into accepting an image of Ultimate Reality that was culturally meaningless. Coupled with this was the fact that the unique view of the same reality held by Aboriginal Peoples in Australia was devalued; it was judged to be at best primitive and at worst demonic. Australian Aboriginal Peoples and their unique understanding of Ultimate Reality, reflected in the Dreaming traditions of each tribal group, were held as superstitious mumbo jumbo by many well-meaning Christian men and women. Aboriginal children were often placed onto mission stations run by these well-meaning people where they were literally force fed Christian concepts. The Aboriginal People’s animistic perspective on the world was judged by the Christian majority to be a form of devil worship as there appeared to be no mention of God as creator or Jesus as redeemer. Hence, without a clear deity and saviour, any talk of ancestor spirits inhabiting inanimate places and objects was deemed to belong to darker realms. In retrospect one might postulate, the rejection of animism out right was due to these more ‘civilised’ and ‘enlightened’ views of God containing within them the cultural assumption of God as a divine person(s). The absence of a direct reference to a singular personified deity led many early colonialists to judge and assume Aboriginal spirituality as essentially atheistic. Whether the assumption of divine personhood being central to a correct spiritual understanding of the world was tacit or ostensible, it produced great negativity toward Indigenous expressions of spirituality nonetheless. The Christian majority of colonial Australia rejected an idea of divinity inextricably linked with the land, inhabiting both material and non-material forms (characteristic of animism). This idea constituted an assumption held by the Indigenous people. As a result, these two assumptions collided with each other and failed to establish connection. Ultimate Reality as purveyed by the English and Irish settlers contained limited meaning for Aboriginal Peoples while the Aboriginal concept of Ultimate Reality was just as meaningless to European settlers, or invaders, depending on one’s politics. While the intentions of the latter may have been good – to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to the heathens and civilise them in the process – history reports the impact upon a sense of Aboriginal identity and self-worth was devastating. A colonial policy of separation and protection of Aboriginal Peoples saw the establishment of protectorate systems in the 19th century. Reserves were created whereby passive enculturation of the indigenous became a key strategy. Later, in order for Aboriginal children to become absorbed into white culture, it was deemed necessary to forcibly remove them from their tribal communities and train them in the European ways (National Centre for Religious Studies, 1997, p. 39). On Missions, Aboriginal children were forbidden to speak their native tongue and practice their own religious rituals and tribal ways. Passive absorption became more active and aggressive with the forcible removal of Aboriginal Peoples. This is an infamous period in Australian history known as the “Stolen Generations.” The Stolen Generations denotes a policy that was in general practice from 1910-1972. The idea was that through increased access to education Aboriginal People “would be transformed into labourers or semi-skilled workers who could contribute to the benefit of the colony” (Groundwater-Smith, Cusworth & Dobbins, 1998, p. 30). Interestingly, the forcible transfer of children is now considered to be an act of genocide, according to international law (Prevent Genocide International, 2008). The policy around the forcible removal of Aboriginal children in Australia later dovetailed into and was buttressed by the development of assimilation policies. In 1937 assimilation policies were adopted as it was judged children needed to be “saved from the corrupting influences of Aboriginal culture” (National Centre for Religious Studies, 1997, p. 40). White Australia, at this period and time, viewed aboriginality as a setback to further advancement and introduced policy and legislation to systematically remove it. The Protection policies of the 1830s and onwards, and the effects of assimilation policies prior to and following World War II saw many Aboriginal People dispossessed of their land, deprived of learning their tribal ways and expressing their religious beliefs. These policies of assimilation and integration, while providing further educational access for Aboriginal Peoples, was undergirded by an assumption that indigenous cultures and traditions were inferior to white Australian cultures and traditions. Consequently, Aboriginal Peoples were forced to conform to the standards and practices of white civilisation (Ashman & Elkins, 2012, p. 34). In view of that, it is no real surprise that the language and cultural practices of so many Aboriginal tribal clans in Australia have been lost to posterity. Arguably, this was a form of genocide too, as it attempted to destroy the culture and heritage of an entire indigenous group. As well as signifying a direct attempt to exterminate an ethnic group by forcible removal and killing, genocide is, by broader definition, the destruction of a group’s way of life and culture. Raphael Lemkin, in his work, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe (2005, p. 79) defined genocide as follows: {Genocide is} a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national {or ethnic} groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups. When one examines closely this definition, one notices many instances of its application in the Australian context. This is particularly so in regard to the attempted destruction of Aboriginal language, culture, religion and particular social institutions during the colonial phase of development. As Aboriginal culture was so successfully quashed in many regions of Australia (Tasmania for example), sections of the Aboriginal community today do not know where they fit in. They lack a sense of indigenous cultural identity and are not equipped to cope with the demands and cultural expectations of mainstream Australian society, where a sense of belonging is sadly missing too. Many young indigenous people have become dislodged from their past and appear lost between two cultures – one Aboriginal the other European. This has arguably led to higher rates of alcoholism, substance abuse, mental illness and criminal behaviour among Australia’s indigenous population, more so than any other ethnic group. A failure to appreciate, within aboriginality, another way of being human, due to a unique understanding of Ultimate Reality and the traditions associated with this understanding, has contributed to a social reality of separation. It reinforced a misguided cultural assumption that Aboriginal religion was inferior to mainstream Christian religion as it was thought to be premised on a pantheistic world-view, rather than a monotheistic one. From one perspective it is true that Aboriginal religion shares some ideas associated with pantheism; however, from another perspective this view is limited and misleading. While the cultural expressions of Aboriginal religion, represented in a language of dreaming spirits creating the land and its people, then residing in the land and its people, are different from other cultural expressions, the essential reality underlying them is the same. This essential reality is that underlying the manifested is the un-manifested, underlying form is the formless; inherent in all materiality is a deeper non-materiality. This non-material reality is a unity, variously labelled and understood. Unfortunately, European settlers failed to see this and so, did not come to appreciate this shared core truth within Aboriginal religion. Today we have the opportunity to once again reclaim this shared understanding. In a way, all religions agree on the most elementary level – the invisible dimension of the metaphysical realm is real and is more fundamental than the visible dimension of the physical realm. Particular understandings of non-material reality are, however, contingent upon a specific cultural context for the language it employs to describe this reality. Regrettably, the potential commonality and synthesis possible between Aboriginal and Christian views was lost in Australia’s colonial history and this cannot be undone. Luckily though, there is opportunity to reverse this trend not only in Australia but globally. The potential synthesis between diverse religious perspectives and understandings of Ultimate Reality, such as those presented by monotheism, pantheism and animism, is not only possible but is being reclaimed in some of the new spiritual insights available to us. This is transpiring via the repertoire of a post-modern and post-religious vocabulary. Alternative words and images for God Process theologian, Vaughan McTernan (2002) advocates, images of Ultimate Reality are constructed within the boundaries of historicism established by culture and experience and, as a consequence, there is no fixed foundational or normative location from which to develop truth claims about God. What we say about God doctrinally has relative, not ultimate importance therefore. This is corroborated by Edgar Towne who views Ultimate Reality as evolving alongside the Cosmos. Towne (2001) applies the label “The concrete aspect of God” to the natural and historical processes that constitute the universe and suggests empirical knowledge is an actual probing of the unfathomable depths of Ultimate Reality. When exploring the natural world and universe we are indirectly exploring its author and creator simultaneously. This insight is strongly reinforced and further developed by Amit Goswami (2008; 1995), a professor of physics at the University of Oregon (now retired) and Ervin Laszlo (2007), a Hungarian born scientist and philosopher whose ideas we shall discuss in greater detail later. For now though, we may pose the question: Does this suggest a type of pantheism? No, would be the short answer. All that is material and has form is, in essence, an expression of the deeper formless reality traditionally referred to as God. The observable universe and all it contains is a concrete expression of divinity itself. This however, is not to equate God with the sum of physical objects and processes constituting the cosmos. Consistent with ideas promulgated by process philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead (1929), the idea of God as an atemporal objective reality, while simultaneously immanent or present within the material world is highlighted. Whitehead’s insights on what he termed “actual entity” provided scope for a new way of imagining God. God, he argued, while objectified in each temporal actual entity in the world is not an eternal object isolatable within the world. God is neither an object nor a subject therefore. Instead, there is a circularity of sorts: the transcendent is immanent in the very world it transcends. And, by so transcending makes possible immanence. As there is no resolution to this circular thinking there is no room for a divine-human duality; there is no matter-spirit duality or creator-creation duality. Duality requires a subject object split, however, in this paradigm the non-objective (transcendent) participates as subject and object (immanent) while transcending both only to emerge as both. Astonishingly, Quantum physics goes some distance in assisting to resolve this circularity, rendering this paradox comprehensible. This shall be discussed at length in chapter ten. For the time being, one could hypothesise thus: God is an abstraction of the material order while the material order is God’s concrete expression. God is the “abstract aspect” of the material cosmos and all it contains (Towne, 2001). Just as a thought is an abstraction of an individual as an historical entity in the world, this same thought is inseparable from the historical entity that gave rise to it. God and the cosmos, mind and matter are indivisible from each other (Whitehead, 1929). In a fashion, God and the cosmos are occasions of experience of the same fundamental reality, albeit, from very different perspectives. This is not too dissimilar to the essential meaning underlying animistic notions of Aboriginal religion and suggests that some of its rich insights were ahead of their time. Perhaps this bespeaks a high level of religious and philosophical sophistication hitherto unnoticed within indigenous spirituality. Animism encompasses the belief that there is no separation between the spiritual and physical (or material) world, and souls or spirits exist, not only in humans, but also in animals, plants, rocks and geographic features such as mountains or rivers, or other entities of the natural environment. The whole of existence is saturated in spiritual presence and nothing is ultimately disconnected from other things in the world. The idea of no ultimate separation betwixt physical objects demonstrates a level of profound spiritual intuition and insight. It was prevalent amongst Australian Aboriginal forms of religion over 40,000 years ago. As Christianity relied on the assumption of both physical and metaphysical separation to make sense of reality (a heaven above, the physical world and hell below) the perceptiveness of Aboriginal spirituality was overlooked. The Dreaming of Australian Aboriginal Peoples affirms the notion of no ultimate separation between the spiritual and physical world while retaining some sense of their relative independence. In many stories of the Dreaming, the Ancestor Spirits came to the earth in human form and as they moved through the land, they created the animals, plants, rocks and other forms of the land that are known today. One might conclude, such thinking is evocative of Christian incarnational theology. For example, Uluru in Australia’s Northern Territory was purported to have been created in the ancient Dreamtime by about 10 Dreamtime spirit people. Once the ancestor spirits had created the world, they changed into trees, the stars, rocks, watering holes or other objects. Reminiscent of John’s Gospel this concept is reflected in the Biblical idea of the logos or divine principle becoming flesh; a divine entity who became one with material existence and dwelt among us (John1:14). The logos (abstract aspect) merged with the physical order (concrete aspect) and became indistinguishable from it. The places where Ancestor Spirits now reside constitute the sacred places of Aboriginal culture and are believed to have special properties. Because the Ancestors did not disappear at the end of the Dreaming, but remained in these sacred sites, the Dreaming is deemed as never-ending, linking the past and the present, the people and the land. The beauty of Aboriginal Dreaming is the nondualistic premise upon which it is built. It is only now that the profundity and depth of this spiritual understanding is being understood and discovered anew. A salient reason may be a shift in paradigm; a shift from an understanding of spirituality determined and articulated by formal religion, to an understanding of spirituality which is global and non-denominational. Whitehead’s process philosophy, to an extent, is simply an elaboration on what has been known by ancient peoples for many thousands of years. Whitehead’s non-dualistic paradigm, which ostensibly had its precursors in animistic religious traditions, refers to the material universe as the body of God. Divinity, like the dreaming spirits of Aboriginal religion, is present within the material order. Similar to Teilhard de Chardin who envisioned the Cosmic Christ as inseparable from the physical cosmos, so too is the material order inseparable from non-materiality which gave rise to it. The words of Jesus ring true here when he states, whoever sees me sees the one who sent me (John 12:43). They acquire new depth when understood in this light. Whoever sees the world of concrete material forms is seeing the nonmaterial – Ultimate Reality, the un-manifested, manifested. The abstract aspect or integral order undergirding the material order, one could label the Godmatrix. Matrix is a helpful word as it indicates an interconnected whole and, when combined with the word God, suggests God is not some independent reality ultimately separate from the whole; the world is the substance in which God is embedded, the leaven that makes the whole rise and become itself. This matrix, however, is not experienced directly. Rather, it is experienced indirectly through human intuition. We experience a God we cannot see, touch and smell except through the world of appearances, intuited in the depths of being. Intuition Intuition is a profound inner sense that something is real in the absence of any direct sensory data. Bereft of physical proof, intuition knows with certainty what remains cognitively uncertain. For example, it is experienced when one is driving and has an overpowering urge to slow down, only to discover later that this action averted a serious accident. It is not to be confused with a ‘hunch’ which tends to denote a feeling or guess based on an intuition. A hunch is more in the realm of a thought process rather than an impression-feeling process. Impression-feeling is more subtle than thought, suggesting connection with a deeper form of knowing. It is a knowing superseding cognition. Human intuition, I would contend, is a human faculty in its own right, a coalescence and emergence of the spiritual dimension into the material dimension. It provides opportunity for an indirect experience of the God-matrix. It is indirect because, even though it may feel like a direct knowing in the mind and\or body (without being able to fully articulate this knowing), it is a deeply felt sense in the body. It is more profound than physical sensation and emotion, however. Therefore, while intuition appears to be a direct experience it is, nevertheless, mediated via our physicality. It could alternatively be described as profound psycho-spiritual impressions felt in the body and acknowledged through mind, albeit beyond the confines of the body and power of mind to articulate. Jennifer Howard (2013) in her book, Your Ultimate Life Plan refers to intuition as a form of “unmediated thought” and includes it within four human faculties provided by Isabel Briggs-Myer and Katherine Briggs. Within the context of a broader theoretical structure of personality, the following group of human faculties are proposed and constitute a general assumption of the now famous Myer-Briggs personality test. These faculties are sensation, feeling, thought and intuition. While this model provides a helpful structure for understanding personality difference, I would disagree with the notion of intuition as something separable from the other three faculties. It is juxtaposed with thought (suggesting an extension of it) rather than identified as a deep spiritual impression mediated via one’s physical existence in the world. Intuition, I would suggest, underlies and infuses the other three faculties of sensation, feeling and thought while simultaneously transcending them. It is God’s thumb print in our lives; divine consciousness breaking through into human consciousness. It is non-locality, omnipresence, becoming localised via human presence. Psychology and philosophy similarly, equate intuition with thought. Philosophy links intuition with a belief or opinion prior to direct experience. It hints that it is a type of cognitive inference relatable to experience while not directly observable as experience (Pust, 2012). Belief and opinion inform and shape experience; they are the result of one’s contextual conditioning. However, to link intuition with thought and beliefs and leave it there is to miss its essential nature. Intuition may give rise to beliefs and opinions but is prior to them. It is an a priori experience. It is a knowing without direct experience of the thing known. A brief analysis of the word itself may afford greater clarity and render fresh insight. If we break the word ‘intuition’ with a hyphen (in-tuition), the prefix (in) denotes what is inner while the word proper (tuition) denotes teacher or learning. Intuition then could be judged as the inner teacher or inner sage, a non-empirical wisdom arising out of a more fundamental awareness or consciousness to the thinking mind. The centre of intuition, as defined here, is not the brain per se and therefore, not the equivalent of a more refined thought process. Intuition or what some have labelled “Spiritual Intelligence” does not emanate from the head-brain bur rather from the gut-brain. We think not only with our heads but with our bodies and with our spirits (Zohar & Marshall, 2000, p. 43). Even our neural messaging system attests to this. The gut brain The second brain (gut-brain) contains some 100 million neurons, more than in either the spinal cord or the peripheral nervous system (Hadhazy, 2010). Consequently, it is a deep source and network of information affecting not only biological processes but emotional and spiritual processes as well. Every day emotional well-being may rely on signals from the brain below to the brain above. For example, electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve5 (extending from the brain stem to the abdomen) may be responsible for mimicking the signals associated with emotional wellness and spiritual experience. This technique has proven to be a useful treatment for depression. Hinduism has known this for a very long time while Western medicine and science is just beginning to catch up In Patanjali Yoga, the gut is considered the centre of the body-universe and through it a yogi gains knowledge of body constituents. Recent research reveals there is a tremendous amount of information flow from the gut to the brain via the vagus nerve and this flow is largely a one-sided affair. The reverse interaction – from the brain to the gut – is noticed when we get hunger pangs and the brain tells the body to get food. It is also evident when something goes wrong in the gut, such as diarrhea, necessitating medicines for its cure. Scientific evidence also indicates that chemicals and nerves in the gut probably influence a big part of our emotions. For instance, 95 per cent of the body's serotonin is to be found in the gut. Serotonin is an important neurotransmitter that contributes feelings of wellbeing and is associated with the state of euphoria. Thus, it is connected with spiritual experience and the feelings said to originate as a result of certain spiritual practices: peace, calmness, a sense of overall well-being and safety. 5 The Vagus Nerve is one of 12 cranial nerves. It extends from the brain stem to the abdomen, via various organs including the heart, oesophagus and lungs. Also known as cranial nerve X, the vagus forms part of the involuntary nervous system and commands unconscious body procedures, such as keeping the heart rate constant and controlling food digestion. Hinduism often calls this state of spiritual connection Samadhi. 6 The ancients and mystics throughout the ages knew about the gut-brain connection. This is particularly evident in and demonstrated by the colon cleansing process of Ayurveda (natural enema) and the gut wrenching exercises of Nauli in Hatha Yoga. These assist in cleaning the gut and increasing the feeling of wellness. In the yogic practice of Mayur Asana, the body is balanced on the navel. The pressure stimulates the vagus nerve; helping improve the brain-gut connection. There are also many instances of people experiencing extrasensory perception (ESP) after colon cleansing has occurred. One reason could be that a clean gut frees its neurons to help the brain increase its processing power. The extra neural power may help the brain process more information facilitating the experience of Samadhi. Though gut neurons are used mostly for gut activity, they also interact with the brain via the vagus nerve (Rajvanshi, 2011). This thinking reinforces the validity of the Hindu chakra system and its relevance for people today. Hinduism identifies seven energy centers or chakras in our body wherein energy flows. These are as follows: the root chakra, the sacral (also called splenic) and solar plexus chakras, the heart and throat chakras and the third eye and crown chakras. Blocked energy in any one of these seven chakras can often lead to illness. The gut-brain, it could be posited, is identifiable with the second and third chakra in this system (the sacral and solar plexus chakras), a veritable portal to the God dimension (Doran, 2013). The gut-brain chakras are, in turn, connected with the head-brain chakras – the third eye chakra and crown chakra – and together, they regulate intuitive processes. I would purport, the sense of connection to a deeper spiritual reality, experienced as intuition, is facilitated by this chakra network and may unfold in the following manner. The person first senses in their gut-brain chakras an a priori metaphysical impression. This is the initial moment of spiritual connection and precedes thought. It is a deeply felt is-ness underlying the what-ness and that-ness of one’s life situation in a given moment. The third eye and crown chakras then endeavor to put thoughts, words and concepts around the experience and this constitutes an a posteriori experience. The mind ponders it thus, reasoning and seeking to understand the nature of the initial impression received. It essays to plumb its cause providing a rational explanation. 6 Samadhi is a non-dualistic state of consciousness in which the consciousness of the experiencing subject becomes one with the experienced object. In Hinduism, samādhi can also refer to videha mukti or the complete absorption of the individual consciousness in the Self (Atman or God) at the time of death. This is usually referred to as mahasamādhi. FIGURE 1. A diagram of the Chakra system. Retrieved January 5, 2014 from http://www.elizabethlocey.com/free-stuff/the-chakra-system/ The gut brain and head-brain chakras enable the transcendent to emerge as immanence in the world and this is the experience of genuine intuition. It is a bridge between the physical and metaphysical, reminding us they are not separate but entangled; both are an indivisible unity. The two brains (head and gut) linked to this chakra system mediate and enable one to connect with the deeper unconscious self. This self is the true self, identifiable with and indivisible from divine consciousness. One could say our deepest level of unconsciousness is the God within, in peaceful slumber anticipating awakening. The following poem expresses it well: The moon shining in darkness symbolises intuition And knowledge within the deep unconscious The artistic type draws creativity from deep within From beyond his\her own conscious ego From a source of knowing that is beyond (Zohar & Marshall, 2000, p. 147). This “deep unconscious” giving birth to intuition, the source of knowing from beyond, is what religion has traditionally attempted to understand and express through its respective systems of metaphysics. It has laboured long and hard in the fields of academic inquiry hoping to harvest a yield of doctrinal certainty. Alas, such certainty inevitably eludes. Nonetheless, what never elude are the indirect (a priori) experiences of Ultimate Reality intimating our deepest identity; an identity that is perpetually free and never the thrall of words, no matter how eloquent. Experiencing Ultimate Reality If one experiences the God-matrix only indirectly, then, no single experience or total sum of human experiences can be said to mediate God directly in the world. Rather all experience is God’s medium and functions to reveal God to us in a relative sense. If this is so, then human identity, having its ultimate provenance in God (our essential identity) has no direct counterpart in the world. We cannot encounter even ourselves except through a mediator – the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual parts comprising us. For that reason, we only know ourselves as a relative or unessential identity. We do not experience our essential self or ultimate identity directly. From a psychological standpoint, human identity in the world is generally understood to be derived from certain concrete experiences – a personal history of some description; however, if our essential identity resides in God, who is an abstraction of concrete experience, then no single experience or the sum of them encapsulates our essential or ultimate identity. It simply reflects our relative identity in the world. One could postulate therefore, human identity is not reducible to one or even a series of concrete experiences. Each of us is more than the sum of personal experiences. Life experience is a kaleidoscope of images and appearances unable to define us. What all of these experiences have in common is experience itself. Identity abides in experience – the pre-existential breaking through into the existential, the metaphysical renting the veil between it and the physical. It does not reside in the one who is experiencing. We are simultaneously who we are, essential identity, and a symbol of who we are. This indicates validity to a belief arising from intuition, that our material existence is a concrete expression (immanence) of Ultimate Reality (transcendence) in the here and now. This belief or hypothesis can be tested empirically to some degree. For instance, if we were to set about naming one single experience or even a set of experiences that define us, we would soon discover, whatever their nature and no matter how compelling, all of these experiences were contingent upon another experience or set of experiences prior. The experiences traditionally associated with personal identity would not exist devoid of a broader context or network of experience. Hence, the self I think I am is dependent on a field of experience wherein ‘my-life’ arises. No single experience ever arose independent of another experience. Every human interaction or activity occurs not in isolation from but in relationship with the broader context of the experiential. Moreover, this web of interconnected human experience connoting relative identity is causal in nature and, logic dictates, must trace its origin to a beginning or first cause. This first cause is the pre-existential (what is prior to existence) emerging as existence. It is the very birth of the occasion of experience in space-time. Sam Harris, in his book: Free Will would argue, we are composed of an indefinite number of experiences, with no single experience claiming responsibility for our essential identity. If “Unconscious neural events determine our thoughts and actions – and are themselves determined by prior causes of which we are subjectively unaware,” then, where does the self essentially reside (Harris, 2012)? Whitehead (1929) suggests, we are the occasion of an indefinite number of experiences in the world. Thus, we have no core identity separable from experience. It would seem experience constitutes a representation of essential identity mediated via the structure of relative identity. It stands to reason therefore, our essential identity transcends relative identity or the sum of our experiences in the world. This is the paradox of human being – we are in the world but not of the world. We are ourselves while being something much greater. True identity If our essential identity is not bound up in any number or combination of human experiences, then, what is the nature of essential identity? If we are a symbol of ourselves participating in the field of human experience while pointing beyond ourselves, who or what is the something else to which we point? Intuition would indicate we are the occasion (emergence) of experience itself – its cause and not the content (stuff of) experience. The ‘I am’ emerges in space-time, within the confines of an ego-identity, as the ‘me’ and the ‘you.’ The ego-identity is relative reflecting the sum of our experiences. It could also be called unnecessary identity. This is because even though it is, it need not be. If I had never existed as the ego-based entity I discover myself to be, the world would still be, even so. I am not necessary to the world as the particular occasion of many experiences. I am unessential as the person I am known by my ego-self and others, to be. This is quite different from essential identity which is necessary. Essential or necessary identity is what remains when unnecessary identity has been stripped away. While there is no dualism, there is a distinction. Without necessary identity there would not be the emergence of unnecessary identity in the world. Without essential identity there would be no ‘me’ or ‘you.’ Intuition is connection with essential identity. It could be described as innate knowledge without content. It is a knowledge that arises when we experience connectedness to what is in the moment. It is pure experience – necessary identity – without thought (the source of relative identity). This essential identity is not tantamount to ego-identity and is the very momentum of human experience. Essential identity could be described as the dynamic impulse animating material existence. Experience, when framed in these terms, has no beginning and no end. It is an open-ended unfolding of being in the world. When we connect with essential identity we connect with God. Point of fact, it would be more correct to say, that, at this moment we are one with and indivisible from God. As intuition is without specific content it is unable to be empirically and objectively measured. Empiricism relies on some object, some content in order to measure. It cannot therefore, be used to validate Ultimate Reality as something real. Empiricism can only validate Ultimate Reality on the personal subjective level through a deep inner knowing. This knowing is not based on any object, whether abstract or concrete and is unable to be experienced outside of the subject doing the experiencing. Thus, the very event of experience is proof that Ultimate Reality is real not the words we weave around the idea of Ultimate Reality. To know God as real is a profound personal encounter with the depths of the self. Consequently, one is unable to prove the reality of this experience or validate this inner knowing to anyone else as we are the truth we seek to explain. Each person is the event of Ultimate Reality emerging as experience. Ultimate Reality is not an object ‘out there’ consequently, but an experience ‘in there’ inseparable from us, as it is us. One cannot prove God is real, one can however, intuitively ‘know’ that God is real through the experience of God as oneself. This type of experience is what the mystics yearned for: an immediate consciousness of the transcendent beyond perceptual or intellectual apprehension, accessible by subjective experience. One can know God as experience itself, incarnated in the life-worlds we each inhabit. To put it another way, God could be described as the occasion of ego-less experience within each and every human being. God emerges in us when we, as a relative identity, disappear. This is why meditation and contemplation are so important Only through a contemplative attitude to life can we learn the skill of disengaging thought and the ego mechanism associated with it. Contemplation allows us to notice emptiness as the backdrop to existence. To those locked in mind this emptiness appears as meaninglessness while to those free of mind it is Life itself. It is liberation from the little self, the relative unnecessary self. We are then empowered to access a deeper experience, the source of all experiences. In order to allow and facilitate this experience, we need to unlock meanings hitherto held prisoner by a religious language waning in its capacity to make meaning and nurture spiritual growth. This language may have assisted in the past to find the general location of the Well but it has not succeeded in getting people to draw from it. Thenceforward, a new language needs to emerge capable both of leading people to the Well and showing them how to slake their thirst by drinking from it. Reimaging God Ultimate Reality is a movement with two aspects, one concrete and the other abstract. The unfolding of this movement outward is the material realm while the essential quality of this movement inward is the non-material realm. The cosmos is God exhaling, as it were and its in-breath is God pervading and giving life and being to all that is. The outward is the unnecessary while the inward is the essential and necessary. Yet, one cannot conceive God in isolation from materiality; nonetheless, God is not contingent upon or identifiable with materiality. If the unnecessary exists then that which gave rise to the unnecessary does not exist; nevertheless it is; otherwise how could it be. This is the mystery of Ultimate Reality. In breathtaking simultaneity immanence and transcendence embrace in sweet communion. The former need not be but is while the latter must be but is not. Ultimate Reality is the metaphysical qualia7 sustaining the outward unfolding of the cosmos and all it contains. The word qualia is used in reference Qualia: singular form: quale (Latin pronunciation: [ˈkwaːle]) is a term used in philosophy to refer to individual instances of subjective, conscious experience. In the sense used here, the term derives from a Latin word meaning for "what sort" or "what kind." Examples of qualia are the taste of wine, or the redness of a flame. It distinguishes objects according to subtle properties differentiating one from another. 7 to Ultimate Reality and refers to an intrinsic non-representational property, nevertheless a consciously accessible property distinctive of ego-less experience (Tye, 2013). It is awareness without thought, knowledge without content, profound and intrinsic connectedness without the extrinsic conditions typical of connectedness. The purity of divine encounter is rooted in time and space, however, the deeper reality of that encounter is garbed in language and concepts attempting to represent what are non-representational. This is so in order to capture the so-called essence of it and possess it, at least intellectually. Knowledge about and knowledge of There is a tacit belief within many formal religions that the essence of God, divine truth, can be transmuted, through doctrinal formulae, into its intellectual property. Culturally then, it is evident in some religious contexts that knowledge about Ultimate Reality is often confused with knowledge of (knowing) Ultimate Reality. In grammatical terms, the preposition of expresses the relationship between a part and a whole, as in the following sentence: “The man (part) is a member of the Murray people (whole).” In philosophical and spiritual terms, to know of God is to likewise express a relationship between the part and the whole. To know of God is to know God (the whole) as intrinsically related to oneself (the part) and inseparable. The idea of God has no meaning apart from human consciousness which conceives it. The wave (part) has no meaning or existence apart from the ocean (the whole). This is because the ocean is full of waves and without waves the ocean is not. To know of God is to know God as oneself. We are waves breaking upon the shores of existence indivisible from the ocean of God. In terms of ultimate identity, God and I are indistinguishable. This communion or indivisibility from God does not apply to relative identity though. In regard to relative identity, God and I are not one and any knowing on this level is a knowing about. Thenceforth, when dealing with knowledge about God, representational properties are attributed to that for which no representational property can be attributed. This is so as the former (knowledge about) is cognitive, associated with information and concepts while the latter (knowledge of) is intuitive, transcending information and concepts. Knowledge about Ultimate Reality can be accumulated in the mind as a type of intellectual possession. On the other hand, knowledge of Ultimate Reality is a deep knowing unable to be accumulated as a body of knowledge. It is pure awareness itself unidentifiable with the one for whom awareness is a representational property. It could be postulated that formal religions like Islam and Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism often differ on the level of knowledge about Ultimate Reality while each religion’s knowledge of the selfsame is identical. Formal religions have, through mind, split the one reality into dual realities, a physical and metaphysical one. Unlike animistic religion they have lost contact with the original experience that gave birth to them and attempt to couch in intelligible terms what is ultimately unintelligible, nevertheless, truly accessible via experience. Institutional religion, particularly in the West, created dualism to deal with the unavoidable paradox of the human experience and continues to cling to it as a central paradigm. Buddhism however, eschews dualism and acknowledges quite openly the natural limits of mind and its representation – language – for expressing the nature of Ultimate Reality while affirming its undeniable realness. Buddhism Similar to Islam, Judaism and Christianity, Buddhism acknowledges Ultimate Reality is a singularity, a metaphysical unity and asserts all of material existence is profoundly connected to and inseparable from this unity. It calls into service a very different conceptual framework for describing this experience of unity however and how one may be better attuned to it. Instead of The Five Pillars of Islam, The Decalogue of Judaism or the Beatitudes of Christianity, Buddhism identifies The Four Noble Truths as the pathway leading to communion (common union) with Ultimate Reality. 1) Life is unsatisfactory and so a source of suffering (Dukka). 2) Desire (Tanha) or an endless craving for more is identified as the cause of suffering. 3) To overcome suffering one must first overcome desire. 4) The eight fold path is the strategy to achieve this. Ultimately, observance of The Four Noble Truths through faithful adherence to the ethical imperatives of the eight fold path, will reach its pinnacle in liberation from suffering and the experience of Nirvana, the Buddhist synonym for Ultimate Reality. Irrespective of the particular tradition of Buddhism one follows, The Four Noble Truths are, generally speaking, standard Buddhist doctrines central to its understanding of the world and one’s place within it. Within Buddhism there are two mainstream but divergent traditions of which other forms of Buddhism like Zen, popular in Japan, and Lamaism, once dominant in Tibet, are derivatives. These two traditions are Mahayana and Theravada. Mahayana Buddhism acknowledges the spiritual presence of Bodhisattvas or heavenly beings that assist one in reaching the state of perfection called Nirvana (Cowell, 1969). Theravada Buddhism, conversely, has no belief in the existence of heavenly or divine beings and conceives of Ultimate Reality as a non-objective reality – God is not equivalent to some eternal object inhabiting a heavenly sphere. Words like emptiness and nothingness are used to describe this non-objective non-entity. In this sense, Theravada Buddhism is non-theistic. This is not to be confused with atheism however, which has been the mistake made by some prominent religious leaders around the world. The misunderstanding that non-theism is equivalent to atheism is a common criticism levelled at Buddhism by other religions. Pope John Paul II in his book: Crossing the Threshold of Hope stated that while Buddhism is to be praised for its promotion of peace and harmony in the world, it “is in large measure an atheistic system” (1994, p. 86). This is clearly not the case. Theravada Buddhism acknowledges a cosmic impulse or life-force present within the material realm, however, unlike some western religions, it refrains from labelling it. Buddhist doctrine recognises Ultimate Reality cannot be encapsulated by language and avoids a use of words that may give the impression it can. It speaks in the negative (apophatic) tradition and identifies Ultimate Reality by what it is not. Words like God, The Creator or The Almighty are avoided and instead, other words such as emptiness or nothingness are employed to refer to Ultimate Reality. Saying what Ultimate Reality is not rather than what it is allows words to assume their rightful place. They point but never possess and allow paradox to be. Only in paradox, according to Buddhist teaching, can language effectively point beyond itself to divinity (Thomas, 2013). For instance, the term nothingness points beyond itself to a deeper reality that is no object able to be isolated, observed, named and categorised. Thus, when it is clear what Ultimate Reality is not, then, we are left with what it is. What it is cannot be named but it can be known (of). Notwithstanding which tradition, Buddhism generally teaches the primary goal of existence is detachment from material things through overcoming one’s desire for them, and this includes attachment to any sense of individual being (Anatta). Attachment to individual being (relative identity) needs to be relinquished through dissolution of the ego if enlightenment is to be attained. This is due to attachment being the cognate of Tanha, inevitably leading to more wanting and more craving. The essence of Tanha is the illusion we can add to ourselves and create permanence. This brings with it the experience of fear: if we fail to add to ourselves then we become less permanent and less real. Hence, we are confronted with our mortality. By adding more to who we think we are the mind believes it can become more real, more permanent and even immortal. This is the great illusion providing momentum to materialism. The great illusion of materialism is that through adding more we are more and, conversely, by having less we are less. This is the source of social stratification and class structure – the belief that money, possessions and power render us of higher or less value. It becomes obvious then, this belief is false and illusory as it negates essential identity altogether, the only source of genuine meaning and worth. The desire to be more, through adding ‘things,’ cannot be fulfilled except through its transcendence. Personal existence is illusory and anything one desires is also illusory, when cut-off from essential identity. The object of desire never delivers genuine happiness and peace as it has relative realness and not ultimate realness. All forms will pass away including humankind (relative or unnecessary identity). Buddhism calls the fleeting nature of human existence Anicca. On the contrary, the formless, Nirvana, will never pass away (essential or necessary identity). That which is permanent is not an object and so cannot be possessed. Only through surrender to impermanence (the unreal) does permanence (the real), our essential identity, reveal itself to us. Only then can one be truly at peace and content. Thought does not comprehend this paradox; however, intuition does. All ‘things,’ including us, are not real in the relative sense but only in an ultimate sense. Material forms, in their multitudinous array, are simply a collection of energies or cravings deceiving us, the subject, into thinking relative identity can be rendered real due to them. The irony is we do not have to do anything or add anything in order to be more real. The fact we are here is proof that we already are permanent and real in the fullest sense. Existence is deemed illusory by Buddhism because of this. It is not saying our human lives are a dream having no substance. Our lives are relatively real and so experiences have a temporary solidity. Instead, it is saying we have, as human beings, no permanent abode in the physical domain. Our abode is in the metaphysical domain, permanence itself and this is what the idea of Nirvana points to. Subsequently, to be human is to be caught up in a cosmic process oriented toward ego-extinction and self-annihilation (acknowledging impermanence) so that we may dissolve in the sea of divine consciousness (permanence). This is obviously a very different language for describing Ultimate Reality in contrast with other religions. Ultimate Reality is not specifically labelled by non-theistic Buddhism due to its apophatic style of description. Christianity, like Islam, operating from the cataphatic tradition ventures to give Ultimate Reality a label. While the experience of Ultimate Reality is no less valid for Buddhists as it is for Muslims, Christians or any other religious group, the way in which this experience is couched differs. Each tradition, consequently, could lay claim to knowing of God within the particularities of their respective socio-cultural and historical context. The experience of ‘knowing’ as an a priori intuitive event remains constant across religious traditions. However, the concepts that are accrued and utilised to describe this a priori intuitive event are not. The specific language and symbol structure used to describe and transmit to others an understanding of this shared experience is markedly diverse. Hence, disparities arise on the level of knowing about Ultimate Reality without compromising the knowing of. Christianity Christianity functions from the positive tradition and seeks to say what God is rather than what God is not. It is cataphatic and, as a consequence, uses an assortment of descriptors to put words around the nature of Ultimate Reality. Being a monotheistic faith it employs the word God or a set of synonyms; for example, The Almighty, The Creator and the Alpha and Omega. The proper name for deity ‘God’ is used, generally speaking, and denotes what is deemed a superior divine being responsible for the creation of all that is. This divine being calls each human person into intimate and loving relationship through Jesus Christ “the only mediator between God and humankind” (2Cor.5: 11, 16-20). The concept of relationship is widely used to describe the God and human interface. It is a helpful model for acknowledging the divine-human connection as well as providing a language for addressing dualism. Even so, it is an anthropomorphic paradigm. It would seem that despite, in post-modern context, people generally agreeing God is not equivalent to the anthropomorphised images associated with deity, it is difficult to conceive God outside of such images. Maybe it is because of this that there is crossover in understandings of God across mainline world religions. In agreement with Islam and Buddhism and emerging out of a unique foundational experience, the essential character of Ultimate Reality is understood to be a unified whole. Unlike Islam and Buddhism, Christianity elaborates extensively on the unique seminal experience that witnessed its inception. It describes this one unified whole as a God who is single in being yet triune in personhood. It presents a God who is Trinitarian in nature. All mainline Christian churches, including Roman Catholic, Anglo-Catholic, Lutheran and a selection of other protestant traditions, agree upon the creedal statement formulated at the Council of Nicea in 325CE. The Nicene Creed, declared, unequivocally, God to be a trinity of persons, and sternly warned “those who say [otherwise are to be anathematised by] the Catholic and Apostolic Church” (Stephenson, 1987, p. 366). Surprisingly, a Trinitarian understanding of God is not completely irreconcilable to notions of the divine as presented in Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam when viewed from the perspective of knowledge about Ultimate Reality. Hinduism shares a Trinitarian understanding of sorts in its concept of Trimurti – there are three major gods in its pantheon: Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. In addition, Mahayana Buddhism possesses its own Trinitarian structure called Trikaya. It is said that the Buddha is defined by three bodies of enlightenment: the dharmakaya, the body of Ultimate Reality; the sambhogakaya, the body of joy; and the nirmanakaya, the Buddha’s conditioned, human body of flesh and blood. Islam too, has a Trinitarian element of its own albeit more subtle. The three key elements of Islamic religion are Allah, Allah’s word (Qur’an) and Allah’s messenger (Muhammad). Remove any one of these three elements and the religion falls over. Hence, on the level of knowledge about there appears to be a common thread. Across all four religious traditions one could postulate: Ultimate Reality has three dimensions as well as an overall unity of being. Historically, the temptation has been to make judgments about varying metaphysical frameworks for expressing the divine-human interface and to assign to one doctrinal system pre-eminence over others. This has, unfortunately, led to sectarianism and religious conflict. Armed conflicts in Ireland (Protestants and Catholics), Bosnia Herzegovina (Christians and Moslems) and Israel and Palestine (Judaism, Islam and Christianity) over the last half century or so are testament to this fact. If one adopts a less literal approach to the various beliefs respective religions purport to be true, then, one soon discovers, at the most elementary level, a shared truth. When knowledge about God is not equated with knowledge of God then fundamental agreement is possible. Contrariwise, when knowledge about God is equated with knowledge of God then fundamental disagreement occurs and peaceful coexistence is rendered impossible. When the signposts pointing to God are confused with God, then, it is easy to see how conflicts arise between religious groups. Often when people criticise religious beliefs they are critiquing, first and foremost, the effectiveness of the religious belief (signpost) to point beyond itself and identify with a deeper spiritual truth. They are rejecting, in other words, an idea judged ill equipped to make meaning for them in the here and now. They are rejecting words (knowing about) which get in the way of experience (knowing of). Words get in the way of the essence or deeper truths to which religion points. In the final analysis it needs to be acknowledged, no matter how persuasive, wise and insightful a set of religious teachings may appear they will only ever be a dim reflection of the deeper reality about which they speak. For now we see in a mirror only darkly what shall be unveiled in its fullness (1Cor. 1:12).