“God is Not One” by Stephen Prothero: SPI Faculty Opinions
April 29th, 2010
BY RABBI RAMI SHAPIRO on
“God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World—and Why
Their Differences Matter” is a refreshing antidote to the too easy
notion that all religions say the same thing. They don’t. Indeed, they
are often mutually exclusive.
While Dr. Prothero suggests that all religions begin with the notion
that “something has gone awry.” After that, however, they differ as to
what is wrong and what to do about it. Fair enough. This is what is
sometimes called the medical model of comparative religion: each
religion has its own diagnosis of the human condition, prognosis of
the disease, prescription for its cure, and medicine to cure it. Using
this model is both easy and informative, and I employ it each time I
teach Comparative Religion.
My own sense is that there is a disease underlying all diseases: the
realization that we are going to die. Since mortality offends the
ego’s sense of being entitled to immortality we invent a variety of
ways to make mortality go away: heavens, hells, rebirth,
reincarnation, becoming gods ourselves, and moving from plane to plane
in search of more knowledge are all ways of defeating death, if only
in our own minds. Perhaps the reason why so many religious people are
willing to kill and be killed for their religion is that dying is
really what religion is all about.
I think the point of Dr. Prothero’s book is to challenge the cheap
unity that passes for serious discussion of religion in the popular
media. Anyone who thinks Buddhism and Catholicism are the same thing,
for example, has never compared an image of the meditating Buddha with
the Crucified Christ. This isn’t a matter of apples and oranges, but
of apples and road kill.
Does honoring differences preclude real dialogue and
interspirituality? Not at all. If religious differences are simply a
matter of tomato/tomahto then dialogue is unnecessary, and if
religions are each unique and complete unto themselves then dialogue
is impossible.
Dialogue is the willingness to step out of what we know to meet one
another in the space between, the space of not-knowing. This happens
only when you are willing to be addressed by another, to be
transformed by the other. If I leave a dialogue unchanged I never
really entered into dialogue in the first place. If my encounter with
other religions leaves my Judaism untouched, I never really
encountered them.
Dialogue rarely happens. Most people are too afraid of meet an other.
Most of us are too busy running from mortality to stand still and “die
before you die.”
In my own experiences with the faculty of the Spiritual Paths
Institute true dialogue is known to happen. But only when we push one
another. When my love for my friend leads to a love for what my friend
loves then dialogue can happen, and then we can move beyond what we
love to love itself.
Dr. Prothero doesn’t preclude this kind of transformative dialogue, he
just insists that we don’t cheapen it.
One of Kabir’s books is in my bibliography: The Knowing Heart / A Sufi Path of Transformation, by Kabir Helminski (Published by Shambhala 2000); another is by his wife: Women of Sufism / A Hidden Treasure>/i>, selected by Camille Adams Helminski (Published by Shambhala 2003).
Also, a quote from Rumi: [on the diversity of religions] “The lamp is different, but the light is the same. Love alone can end their quarrel. Love alone comes to the rescue when you cry for help against their arguments.” Rumi [Mawlana] I
Just reading each of these commentaries constitutes a short course in InterSpirituality !!
Orthodox, institutional religions are quite different, but their mystics have much in common. A quote from the chapter “Mystic Viewpoints” in my e-book at http://www.suprarational.org on comparative mysticism:
Ritual and Symbols. The inner meanings of the scriptures, the spiritual teachings of the prophets and those personal searchings which can lead to divine union were often given lesser importance than outward rituals, symbolism and ceremony in many institutional religions. Observances, reading scriptures, prescribed acts, and following orthodox beliefs cannot replace your personal dedication, contemplation, activities, and direct experience. Preaching is too seldom teaching. For true mystics, every day is a holy day. Divine revelation is here and now, not limited to their sacred scriptures.
Conflicts in Conventional Religion. “What’s in a Word?” outlined some primary differences between religions and within each faith. The many divisions in large religions disagreed, sometimes bitterly. The succession of authority, interpretations of scriptures, doctrines, organization, terminology, and other disputes have often caused resentment. The customs, worship, practices, and behavior within the mainstream of religions frequently conflicted. Many leaders of any religion had only united when confronted by someone outside their faith, or by agnostics or atheists. Few mystics have believed divine oneness is exclusive to their religion or is restricted to any people.
Note: This is just a consensus to indicate some differences between the approaches of mystics and that of their institutional religion. These statements do not represent all schools of mysticism or every division of faith. Whether mystical experiences vary in their cultural context, or are similar for all true mystics, is less important than that they transform each one’s sense of being to a transpersonal outlook on all life.
To Cynthia:
Please pick up a copy of Edwin Newman’s “Strictly Speaking,” and read it.
To the Rabbi, with all due respect: I know that there is something bigger than us upon which this planet is based. I know it because I have experienced it in my life. That’s the only way anyone can know it, is to pursue it and put it into action in your life. So maybe “life after death” is an illusion in that this body won’t continue, nor will “I” continue in the current state, but my spirit will continue as a wave in the ocean of that which first breathed life into me.
I like what Essalen founder Michael Murphy said in the opening words of “The Future of the Body”.
“We live only part of the life we are given. Growing acquaintance with once-foreign cultures, new discoveries about our subliminal depths, and the dawning recognition that each social group reinforces just some human attributes while neglecting or suppressing others, have stimulated a worldwide understanding that all of us have great potential for growth.
“Unfortunately, however, professional specialization and divergent beliefs systems, along with the information explosion, make it difficult to bring such knowledge into a single purview. Like the unassembled pieces of a great jigsaw puzzle, discoveries about our developmental possibilities are scattered across the intellectual landscape, isolated from one another in separate fields of inquiry…”
For me, it seems clear enough that religions tend to “emphasize some aspects while neglecting or suppressing others.” The way I see it, the Buddha underwent his own Crucifixion — and I don’t think seeing it this way cheapens anything — indeed, I think it clarifies the meaning of intercultural encounter.
And in an age when there are far too many excuses for indulging in misunderstanding, I’d say we need a strong clear push to identify and clarify an authentic foundation for unity. So I agree — to see the elephant, let’s turn on the lights….
“Love God more than you love your religion…”
It seems to me that the fundamental “truth” which lies behind all of the religions, or perhaps I should say behind the founders of the religions (as well as the many saints and realized beings who have walked and the founder’s path, at times even expanding it),is the truth of the existence of a Path which leads to an an enlightened state of consciousness, a state with greater expansions of love, compassion, and wisdom, and eventually, and this is important, a state where negativity no longer exists, and one is in a mysterious way aware of his/her unity with Ultimate Reality. When we explore the words of saints and sages, from vastly different cultures, religions, and time periods, we again and again discover this same story. It’s power is in the fact that it is a universally true story…a story for humanity.
It may be that the various paths that have sprung up to help bring one into this state of union develop certain qualities in unique ways, and therefore bring with them a uniqueness into that enlightened state…but fundamentally all are proclaiming that human beings have an ability to get there…and here are some ways to help us along. Differences beyond this are at a surface level, and revolve around an improper understanding of religious teachings…for all our “practices” and “beliefs” only have meaning in as much as they help us along in our spiritual maturity.
I suppose we could discuss the different divine qualities that different religious perspectives develop, but it just seems so much more important to me to first agree upon and universally declare the existence of a Path, the ability for humans to walk it, and that various techniques have been developed to help us walk it (which could include religious dogma for some, but eventually refers to the “spiritual technologies” that have developed throughout human history).
I wonder if emphasizing differences before we have recognized the underlying unity is dangerous…
Peace,
Rory
Too bad this learned professor confuses “same” and “one:” a “lower left” axiomatic mistake of his Western (apparently Roman) cosmovision that any good post-modernist ought to be able to spot instantly. Also, he seems to have little appreciation for what Wilber calls the “line/level fallacy” and apparently buys into the assumption that levels of understanding within a single tradition are monochrome, accurately expressed by dogma…. A romp through Wilber 101 and Panikkar’s notion of “homeomorphic equivalency” would be good soap for him to wash out his mouth with.
Cynthia
OK, so let’s get engaged and challenging. I find Rami’s response quite interesting. Especially, the paragraph:
My own sense is that there is a disease underlying all diseases: the
realization that we are going to die. Since mortality offends the
ego’s sense of being entitled to immortality we invent a variety of
ways to make mortality go away: heavens, hells, rebirth,
reincarnation, becoming gods ourselves, and moving from plane to plane
in search of more knowledge are all ways of defeating death, if only
in our own minds. Perhaps the reason why so many religious people are
willing to kill and be killed for their religion is that dying is
really what religion is all about.
If I read it correctly, he’s saying that the spirituality offered to us by the original founders of various religions, as well, of course, as the less enlightened followers of those religions, are an egoic attempt to compensate for the fact that we will eventually all die. We have to include the originators of these religions because they, too, have proposed salvation, enlightenment, levels of reality, return to our origin, etc. Therefore these prophets and so-called enlightened beings, as well as “we” who are involved in these spiritual projects, delude ourselves and kill each other in an attempt to attain an imaginary immortality or enlightened state.
But maybe there’s another explanation why almost every culture on earth has some form of supernatural belief in a reality that transcends this mortal, three-dimensional world of the senses, which some are so afraid of leaving. Maybe it’s because we are not just creatures of this material world but are actually rooted in a deeper reality which the great majority of people at least dimly sense, and which a few can actually perceive and function in. Maybe these longings are a hint that we have faculties of knowing that correspond to the true nature of a reality that is more fundamentally spiritual than physical.
How often have we heard the proverbial story of the blind men and the elephant. This has become one of the post-modern myths. Each “blind” person can only touch one part of the elephant and hence the differing descriptions of what the elephant is. This may accurately describe our post-modern situation, but it is not faithful to the original Sufi story. In the original tale, the reason these people offer different descriptions of the elephant in the room is because the light is not turned on!
Kabir