Quest Magazine

Originally printed in the July - August 2000 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Mills, Joy. "Seek Out the Way." Quest  88.4 JULY - AUGUST 2000): pg 128-31, 147.

By Joy Mills

Life is a journey. Yes, we've heard that before, and yet the metaphor is still a good one. A journey from here to there, from birth to death, from this room to that. Sometimes we have traveled as tourists, excited over the sights and sounds to be seen and heard, or bored by the long stretches of apparent wastelands.

Many years ago, I made a trip, driving from Seattle to Wheaton for the summer sessions at Olcott; two friends accompanied me on the journey. One sat in front with me as I drove, studying the map but never tiring of pointing out the beauty of the varied landscapes through which we were traveling. The other friend was content to sit in the back seat reading a book, lost in a fantasy world, and glancing up only occasionally when the first friend would excitedly demand that she look out at some unusual scene. My backseat friend reread the same book on the journey back to Seattle.

As tourists we often collect souvenirs of our travels, trinkets and oddments along with descriptive brochures and photographs. We burden ourselves and our suitcases with all kinds of mementos, so that we can regale each other with stories of our adventures. Tourists really love the excitement of going, and they often take pride in the number of places they have visited: twenty countries in ten days.

Then, of course, there have been times when we have traveled our journey as pilgrims. As pilgrims, we have experienced sacred times and sacred places or perhaps not so much places as spaces--sacred spaces in our lives. As pilgrims, we have been content with little, perhaps as small an icon as a stone picked up from the path or a flower to be pressed between the pages of our diary. Helena P. Blavatsky spoke of our entire existence as a pilgrimage, the pilgrimage of the monad, the essential Self. Pilgrims are not so much quantifiers as qualifiers. The importance of a pilgrimage is not the number of places visited, but the quality of the experience, its deeper meaning, its significance, a new way of looking at everything, a new way of being in the world.

Pilgrims are also questers. Poet Diane Ackerman said, "We are a life form that quests." We are a restless species. Our innate restlessness has led us to the outermost reaches of space, to the depths of the oceans, to the peaks of the highest mountains, to subterranean caves, and into the core of the earth. From the Arctic to Antarctica, we have explored our planet, and its few remaining unexplored regions call temptingly to the adventurer who is determined to go where no one has gone before. We are fascinated with the probes of Mars and Jupiter, and the question of whether the universe is infinite or finite continues to engage the finest minds of science and intrigues us all.

To be a quester means to have questions, though the questions may be different for each of us, and different at different times too. The questions I asked when I was 20 were not the questions I asked at 40 nor those asked at 60 and 70; they are not even the questions I ask today. But somehow each question seems to unfold into another question, and perhaps, if we are really pilgrims, we learn to live with the questions, realizing that the pilgrimage itself is the answer. Questions just set us on the way.

And so we come to the title of these remarks: "Seek Out the Way." That phrase comes from the book Light on the Path, the first of the three main Theosophical texts that offer guidance for the pilgrimage. The other two, in order of publication, are The Voice of the Silence and At the Feet of the Master. Countless members of the Theosophical Society, as well as numerous other seekers, have read those three little classics of the spiritual life and derived inspiration from them.

The phrase "Seek Out the Way," from the first of these spiritual classics to be published raises the question of what it means to be questers or pilgrims on this journey we are all taking. N. Sri Ram, in his book The Nature of Our Seeking, has pointed out that "the nature of our seeking would depend on what it is that prompts it." And he states further, "We often use the words "seeking' and "search,' but without enquiring deeply into their implications, the psychological process in relation to a Truth which is not of the same nature as the facts of the external world, but is a truth to be realized within oneself." He cites Annie Besant and Prince Siddhartha as genuine seekers. We might well add Arjuna, as well as Socrates, to the list, and of course there are many others who are authentic questers.

The first "rule" on the Path is to seek out the way, to discover the path that is one's own. The title for these remarks might well have been "Finding Shoes That Fit," for no one can walk properly in another's shoes. The first "rule" is found in that one word "seek." Unless we seek, unless we realize we are questers on this journey of existence, pilgrims not tourists, there is no way, no path, no road.

Three statements come to the heart of my thesis. The first is the most direct and simplest; it comes from the Inaugural Address of the President-Founder, Henry Steel Olcott, and sets forth beautifully in the most succinct manner possible the work of the Society:

"We seek, inquire, reject nothing without cause, accept nothing without proof; we are students, not teachers."

We state in our literature that we are a Society of seekers, a group of inquirers. Yet often it seems that once we have joined the Society, we cease to inquire or to question any of the ideas we have so enthusiastically embraced.

The second statement is from the second mahatmic letter addressed to A. P. Sinnett:

"The adept is the rare efflorescence of a generation of enquirers; and to become one, he must obey the inward impulse of his soul irrespective of the prudential considerations of worldly science or sagacity."

Two ideas confront us in that statement: first, to become an adept requires inquiry; second, we must follow our own "inward impulse" without regard to worldly concerns or the demands imposed by others.

The third statement is from Joseph Campbell's fourth volume of his series The Masks of God, devoted to Creative Mythology:

"Just as in the past each civilization was the vehicle of its own mythology, developing in character as its myth became progressively interpreted, analyzed, and elucidated by its leading minds, so in this modern world--where the application of science to the fields of practical life has now dissolved all cultural horizons, so that no separate civilization can ever develop again--each individual is the center of a mythology of his own, of which his own intelligible character is the Incarnate God, so to say, whom his empirically questing consciousness is to find."

Campbell adds, "The pathless way is the only way now before us." Implicit in Campbell's words are the two ideas found in the mahatmic communication to Sinnett: inquiry or questing, which Olcott emphasized at the founding of our Society, and the need to find our own way. It is truly a "pathless way," as J. Krishnamurti so often emphasized. There is no way until our feet have trod it. What is all important to the finding of that way is the seeking. Krishnamurti often said to his audiences as well as in his dialogues with small groups, "Inquire, sirs; you do not inquire."

Just what is it then to inquire, to have what Campbell called a "questing consciousness"? How do we seek? And what is it that we seek? To inquire—genuinely inquire—means that we are in earnest about understanding ourselves and the world in which we are living. It means that we are willing to clear away any and all excess mental and emotional baggage so that the mind is clear, transparent as it were. Only in such a mind, a mind that is without prejudice and preconception, a mind that is not entangled in its own net of favorite and passionately held convictions, a mind that is not shadowed by personal likes and dislikes, only in such a mind can the truth of a way, one's own unique way, arise.

The profound teachings communicated by the inner founders of the Society in their letters to A. P. Sinnett and A. O. Hume were the result of inquiries by those two men, their questions, earnest seeking for information and understanding concerning inner truths. On many occasions those adept teachers nearly despaired of their efforts because, as they pointed out, the minds of the two Englishmen were so cluttered with preconceived ideas, with their own sense of pride in possessing superior knowledge, with their conviction of rightness, that--to paraphrase the adept teacher--there was scarcely a niche into which a new idea might be inserted. Again and again, Sinnett and Hume were advised that it was only upon "the serene and placid surface of the unruffled mind," a mind open and free from the contamination of selfish interests and preoccupations, that the light of truth might shine. The inquiry, in other words, must be from an authentic openness, not the kind of seeking that already is convinced of the answer.

We may think that Sinnett and Hume were extremely obstinate men and wonder how they could have been so stubborn in their convictions that at times they seemed to argue with their mahatmic teachers! Yet are we not sometimes just as proud of our convictions, as stubborn in maintaining the correctness of our views? This is the way reincarnation works, we may say, or this is simply your karma, or this is how it is after death! Do we feel that the last word has been given to us on any of these subjects? On Theosophy itself?

We should be grateful to Sinnett and Hume for the questions they asked and remember that Sinnett produced out of the mass of material found in the letters those teachers wrote to him the first textbook of Theosophical ideas: Esoteric Buddhism. Hume also performed services for India, including the founding of the Indian National Congress, which elicited the gratitude of the mahatmic adepts. So, whatever one thinks of the faults of these two Englishmen, their persistent questioning, their endless inquiries, called forth that most magnificent work of our literary heritage, The Mahatma Letters.

But to return to the question posed by the word "seek," Jacob Needleman in his book, The Heart of Philosophy, says, "Philosophy is no answer to anything." And he continues, "The function of philosophy in human life is to help man remember. It has no other task." We might substitute "Theosophy" for "philosophy" in those statements. It is often said that Theosophy answers all the questions of life, but really it does not answer any questions or solve any problems. We ourselves answer the questions; Theosophy just helps us to remember—it awakens us to right memory. But to be awakened we must ask the right questions, we must seek, probing deeply into matters. We have indeed forgotten something. And life calls on us to remember--to remember who we are, because when we remember who we are, we have found the way.

"The magic of real philosophy," Needleman wrote, "is the magic of the specifically human act of self-questioning--of being in front of the question of oneself." This is really to seek. It is what Socrates, the greatest questioner in western philosophy, demanded. It is the demand of the Upanishadic teachers of ancient India, and the demand of Krishna in awakening Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita. To stand in front of the question of oneself--that is to remember our authentic Self.

William James wrote, "The deepest question that is ever asked admits of no reply," but demands instead what he termed a resolute "turning of the will." That "turning of the will" may be equated with what the Mahatma KH called "the inward impulse of the soul," which then must be obeyed. Out of the seeking, out of the questioning, the inquiring, comes the way--a way that is both a path and pathless. It is a road "steep and thorny," as Blavatsky told us. It is "narrow" and "few there are who find it," as the Master Jesus declared. It is "narrow as a razor's edge," as one of the Upanishads states. But for those who truly seek, as Light on the Path reminds us, there opens out before us "the mystery of the new way," when "the star of your soul will show its light."

Genuine seeking, then, involves a question that lies at the core of our being, which is never satisfied with easy answers, but that carries us both outward and inward toward true knowing. Its answer demands that "turning of the will" of which William James wrote and which Plato called "eros," love in its essence. Because of the nature of love, one does not approach the question with the scientific-scholarly mind alone. One stands before the question, as Socrates demanded of his listeners, one gives attention to the question, stripped--as Plato might put it--of all but love itself. In such a condition, one remembers, which is to reassemble a primal knowing. There is no other way, no other path; and because there is no other path, it is essentially and always a pathless way, for until each one of us has done it, no path exists.

In the truest sense, this is what it means to be a Theosophist, not simply a member of the Society, but an authentic Theosophist, a knower and a lover of wisdom, of truth, of beauty. It is to seek, to ask the really big questions, the central questions of human existence, and never be satisfied with answers until we have probed, inquired, ever more deeply.

One of the Upanishads says:

"As a pot with cracks shows light within, so the hidden light of Atman shines out through cracks in the mind-body complex."

Questioning, seeking, inquiring produces cracks. And if the seeking makes us "crackpots," so much the better for us. We need ever-widening cracks in our psychological nature, cracks in the "mind-body complex," if ever the light of Atman is to blaze forth in all its splendor. Perhaps the world needs more "crackpots" like us. Certainly we need to shatter the molds of our mental-emotional encasements and let shine forth the light of Atman, the One Self. That is to "seek out the way."

Joy Mills is past president of the Theosophical Society in America and past vice president of the international Society. A world traveler and lecturer, she will be director for the fall term of the School of the Wisdom at Adyar, India. Her most recent work is Entering on the Sacred Way: A Psychological Commentary on Light on the Path (Wisdom Tradition Books, 2000).

Originally printed in the July - August 2000 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Pym, Willamay. "Theosophy: Changeless Yet Always Changing." Quest  88.4 JULY - AUGUST 2000): pg 132-39, 149.

By Willamay Pym

A paradox is a statement that seems contradictory but is nonetheless true.

Our culture has trained us to see things as opposites: either right or wrong, good or bad, true or false—"either-or." But there is another way. The opposite of a truth need not be a falsehood but rather may be another truth. A simple example is the story of the five blind men who were trying to determine the shape of an elephant. One felt the trunk; one, an ear; one, a leg; one, the torso; and one, the tail. Each one's description was quite different from all the others, yet all were in part true. The key is the phrase "in part." So Theosophy is in part changeless, and in part always changing. But which part is which?

Changeless Theosophy

Since the Oneness of all existence is the basis of the entire Theosophical view of life, this concept is clearly changeless. Knowledge of this truth has been possible as long as humanity has been around, although comparatively few people have "known" it in the sense of having its wisdom infuse their lives.

The timeless existence of such understanding is a theme in Helena P. Blavatsky's major book, The Secret Doctrine, based on the ancient "Stanzas of Dzyan," which begin:

"The eternal parent, wrapped in her ever-invisible robes, had slumbered once again for seven eternities.

Time was not, for it lay asleep in the infinite bosom of duration.

Universal mind was not, for there were no celestial beings to contain it.

The seven ways to bliss were not. The great causes of misery were not, for there was no one to produce and get ensnared by them.

Darkness alone filled the boundless all, for father, mother, and son were once more one, and the son had not awakened yet for the new wheel and his pilgrimage thereon."

As the Stanzas progress, we are taken from the One, through the development of a new manifestation, down to our present state of existence. To guide readers to an understanding of these Stanzas and the book based upon them, HPB wrote a "Proem," including three Fundamental Propositions, of which she said, "Reading the S.D. page by page as one reads any other book will only end in confusion. The first thing to do, even if it takes years, is to get some grasp of the 'Three Fundamental Propositions'."

Those propositions, which have a fair claim to being changeless aspects of Theosophy, can be summarized as follows:

The Secret Doctrine establishes three fundamental propositions: (a) An Omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless, and Immutable Principle on which all speculation is impossible, since it transcends the power of human conception and could only be dwarfed by any human expression or similitude. It is beyond the range and reach of thought, "unthinkable and unspeakable." . . .

Further, the secret doctrine affirms: (b) The Eternity of the Universe in toto as a boundless plane; periodically "the playground of numberless Universes incessantly manifesting and disappearing," . . . . "The appearance and disappearance of Worlds is like a regular tidal ebb, flux and reflux." . . .

Moreover, the secret doctrine teaches: (c) The fundamental identity of all Souls with the Universal Over-Soul, the latter being itself an aspect of the Unknown Root; and the obligatory pilgrimage for every Soul--a spark of the former--through the Cycle of Incarnation (or "Necessity") in accordance with Cyclic and Karmic law, during the whole term.

These Fundamental Propositions are the changeless aspects of Theosophy, from which all other important concepts can be derived. They are tenets that have been taught as long as humanity has been on the planet, to those who have been desirous of learning and whose minds have been open to all possibilities. They provide a framework within which to live our lives. It takes daily dedication and concentration to keep us focused on their importance to our growth. Of course, total success in following them is another matter. It would be nice to have conquered all the hurdles, but even without this accomplishment, it can be satisfying to be aware of what we are striving to achieve. We are told that our reach should always exceed our grasp.

Always Changing Theosophy

HPB agreed that the only thing that never changes is change itself. The truth of a changeless reality does not contradict the fact of ceaseless change. The Fundamental Propositions refer to laws of nature or rules of the game, which do not change and are not open to democratic voting for their validity. What do change are how we view these laws and apply them—how we play the game of life governed by the rules. We need only look at all the external changes during our own lifetimes to know how full of alterations the process is.

Change in our lifetimes has been most apparent in technology, especially transportation and communication. That change, which has greatly enhanced our physical well-being, also has a downside. We become so overwhelmed with each new discovery that we lose sight of what its effect may be on the overall quality of life. The computer, for example, offers so many new possibilities for the performance of daily routines that we are totally enchanted with it. It is too early to know what effect it will have on our interrelationships with each other. Personal, face-to-face contact is basic to how we treat one another. A massive decline in this contact is bound to change our lives—how, we do not yet know. The rules of the game for how humans develop have not changed, but how we apply them is in a constant state of flux.

At the time the Society was started, the powerful basic ideas of the Fundamental Propositions were largely unknown to Western cultures or were considered to be nonsense. For that reason and because a basic purpose of the Society was to integrate Eastern and Western philosophy, HPB decided at the outset that she needed to gain attention by producing phenomena. She and Henry Steel Olcott had been assigned the task of getting these ideas out to the Western world but were given no directions about how to proceed.

The challenge of leading a Theosophical life appeared early. We know what the goal was: awareness of the universal brotherhood of humanity, implicit in the first Fundamental Proposition; but the creativity and intuition to reach that goal had to be devised day by day. By producing phenomena to demonstrate the existence of nonphysical realities, HPB and her colleagues hoped to convince materialists that such realities needed consideration for their hidden implications and fundamental importance. Later in her life, however, she questioned the wisdom of their early procedure and regretted the practices she had employed. We will never know what would have happened had she not used her powers of clairvoyance, ability to materialize objects, and other parapsychological powers to show that everything is not necessarily what it seems.

Many of the ideas the Society presented in its early days were viewed as mysterious and esoteric, a view that was not necessarily a compliment then, any more than it is now. One of those was the existence of spiritually evolved teachers who sponsored the organization. The path by which such beings develop has been the subject of much Theosophical study, including the Olcott summer sessions of 1999, entitled "The Path--Rules of the Road." The existence of such adept teachers and the role they play in the ongoing evolutionary process is basic to Theosophical thought and is implicit in the concept of spiritual evolution alluded to in the third Fundamental Proposition.

In the early years of the Society's history, when there was personal contact between those teachers and some Theosophists, their stature and its significance were integral to the Theosophical view of the goals of humanity, and individuals were concerned with how they could play a useful part in achieving those goals. As years went by, members tended to shift their attention to matters with which they felt more closely connected. Today most members seem more interested in applications of Theosophy to daily life than in how its concepts came to the modern world or how to serve the work of those sponsoring teachers.

Applied Theosophy

Because our human family at present is experiencing so many problems, most of which seem to be a direct result of human behavior (how we are "playing the game"), maybe we Theosophists should realize that our time calls for extra consideration of the big picture and that assistance to prevent us from destroying our so-called civilization is badly needed. In this changing world, we seem to have forgotten how to link ourselves with a greater, more potent force, which we know is available. Maybe we need to develop a modern day version of spiritual practices that will restore this link. To help that restoration, we can offer our services directly to those beings who are continuously striving to help in the process. If we assume that we are not at the top of the evolutionary chain, beings or forces greater than we must exist and be available for our support. Many would say, "But I don't know how to do that. I can't contact them (if they do exist)!" We will never know, if we don't try.

I am not suggesting that we should seek personal contact, but that whatever energy we can contribute toward the alleviation of suffering can and should be offered for use by the great Teachers of humanity (Christ, Buddha, or whatever embodiments of Wisdom and Love we prefer to image). If we send positive energy freely for the good of humanity as a whole, it will be accepted and used. The power of thought is tremendous.

Undoubtedly we have all had the experience of entering a room where there is such a heavy, oppressive air that we want to turn and run or, on the other hand, where the atmosphere is so beautiful that we immediately wonder at its source. In both cases, the thoughts and emotions of those present are responsible, though often they do not realize the effect they produce. If unconscious acts have such results, think what we can accomplish by purposeful dedication.

Each day we can afford to devote a few minutes of meditation to this end. By taking the great Teachers of humanity into our daily thoughts and once more acknowledging them as the vital force in the life scheme, we can realize that the Society exists to carry on their work.

Another sort of change is implicit in the third Fundamental Proposition: "the obligatory pilgrimage for every soul . . . through the cycle of incarnation . . . during the whole term." We are all progressing, and progress requires change and cooperation. Many people's focus is on personal gain. They have been taught to ask, "What's in it for me?" Theosophy can show that there is often much deeper satisfaction from the accomplishment of a group than from that of an individual, the latter tending to isolate the achiever.

If we look carefully, we can see that it is better—and more fun—to share with others than to be alone. For the last few years, "team building" has been a well-touted management tool. Even business has acknowledged that the creative power of the group exceeds that of most individuals. As awareness of how interdependent we are on each other increases, the oneness of all life can be better understood. Modern scientific discoveries are reinforcing our awareness, for example, of what is happening on earth ecologically as a result of our destruction of the rain forests and pollution of the air.

Whatever change we experience is involved with karma: the law of action and reaction, of cause and effect, of spiritual dynamics, of compensation (as Emerson called it), of ethical causation (as The Secret Doctrine refers to it), or of balance. Sometimes we think of karma in a fatalistic way: "There is really nothing I can do about this circumstance, it's just my karma." All of our circumstances are really opportunities to plant seeds for future accomplishments, not retribution or reward for some past behavior. By learning from the experience, we alter the karma we are building for the future. Instead of saying, "Why did this happen to me?" or "I really don't deserve to suffer this way," a more positive approach would be, "What can I learn from this situation?'' This is a very difficult attitude to take when we are hurting or angry, but the long-range result will be amazingly more productive.

A related concept is dharma. Its most common definition is "duty," but there is much more to it than that. Other definitions include "righteousness" (the ethical standards by which we live), "self-transformation" (the process of discovering ourselves), "religion" (reverence and awe of natural law and knowledge of the cosmic significance of moral law), and even "yoga" (the search for rejoining what is fragmented). Dharma is our duty in that it contains all of our potentialities for accomplishment, but it is also the entirety of our present life. If karma is what got us where we are, dharma is what we do about it.

How we make our choices and define our goals indicates how clearly we see all the possibilities of our actions and their effects on the world around us. Whether we fulfill our dharma or do not is a result of our understanding. As we continue to grow in awareness, we will more naturally live every day in line with our duty to humanity and thus be the most we can be. This is certainly a practical aspect of Theosophy, especially if we are looking for purpose in life. Every experience offers a learning opportunity, and our dharma will lead us to correct decisions if we continue with our quest for growth and understanding.

Threefold Theosophy

That quest has three aspects: study, meditation, and service. Study provides us with concepts for an understanding of life and its purpose. An important point in this aspect is discrimination. We need to learn what is most worthy of our attention and what is less important. This is not always easy, because each person's path is individual. We do not all learn the same things at the same time or with the same speed. But whatever we learn by study has to be absorbed and applied, and that takes us to the next two aspects.

Meditation is just as important as study. As with study, there is no single right way to meditate, so each individual must find the best approach through trial and, sometimes, error. The basic purpose of meditation is to change our center of awareness. Meditation is the path to self-awareness and self-understanding. It is a method of applying what we have learned in our study to ourselves and our roles in life. It is getting in touch with that aspect within each of us which is part of the Oneness of all manifestation. Some of us do well to devote ten or fifteen minutes a day to a concentrated effort; others manage at least two or three periods of complete quiet during their routines. One definition of the goal of meditation is to be completely aware at every moment of what we are doing and thinking—and why.

The third aspect, service, probably receives the least attention from most people. We are so busy with our own problems caused by life's complications that we tend to ignore what is happening to others. We may be full of sympathy but fail to see any need for direct involvement. Yet, if life is truly One, what happens to each of us is happening to all of us and involvement is essential. Obviously, we can't all be a Dalai Lama or a Mother Theresa, but every day presents us with chances to help someone or something, and, no matter how small the act of service may seem, it is important. H. P. Blavatsky said:

'True Theosophy is the "Great Renunciation of SELF" . . . It is ALTRUISM . . . "Not for himself, but for the world, he lives" . . . He who does not practice altruism . . . is no Theosophist!'

One final consideration of change is Krishna's statement to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita: "However men approach Me, even so do I welcome them, for the path men take from every side is Mine." Truth has many sides (remember the blind men and the elephant). Theosophy teaches that life is a continuous learning process, and to cease in our search for wisdom would be to deny our need for continuous striving and to assume that growth has been completed. Our philosophy has both changeless and changing aspects. We need to try to see what they are as we continue our journey on the Path.

Willamay Pym is a second-generation Theosophist who, at various times, has filled most of the offices of Seattle Lodge, worked at Camp Indralaya on Orcas Island (where as a child she saw its founding), served as National Secretary of the Theosophical Society, Director from the Northwest, Second and First Vice President, and is currently organizing the national archives. In her spare time, she worked as Registrar at Shoreline Community College for fifteen years

Originally printed in the July - August 2000 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Somerville, James M. "From Exclusivism to Convergence - Part 2." Quest  88.4 JULY - AUGUST 2000): pg 136-139.

By James M. Somerville

Faced with the fact of divergence in the religious traditions of the world, some believers in a particular tradition are exclusivists, rejecting all other traditions as errors. Other believers are inclusivists, recognizing other traditions as lesser or imperfect forms of truth. As possible responses to religious diversity, there remain two other approaches: pluralism and convergence.

Pluralism

Shouldn't we regard the various spiritual traditions of the world as roughly equal? Isn't one as good as another, depending on the needs of ethnic people? What suits a Hindu villager, surrounded by temples with gongs, bells, erotic images, and grotesque statues representing different aspects of God, may repel a European or American urbanite. Yet the Hindu peasant's religion can lead to the practice of the highest moral virtue with boundless trust in the promise of the sanatana dharma, or eternal doctrine. By the same token, the Hindu would probably find the externals of Western religion not only unfamiliar but indescribably dull and depressing.

Thomas Merton, when he visited the giant Buddha images at Polonnaruwa in Sri Lanka, approached them reverently, barefoot, transformed by the peace emanating from those extraordinary faces. It was as though they had seen through every possibility, "knowing everything, rejecting nothing." Here was the peace "that has seen through every question without trying to discredit anyone or anything."

Who can say whether the Cistercian monk, Thomas Merton, became a pluralist in those last days before his accidental electrocution. But it was a good way to die, away from home in a foreign land, on the verge of seeing that truth is not bound or confined in any set of theological formulas. God's reach is not shortened. There are saints and sinners in all the great traditions, and who can say "who is greatest in the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 18.1)?

St. Teresa of Avila strove to make it plain that her mysticism was grounded in Christ and that in her most lofty ascents he was always present. This may have been true also of St. John of the Cross, but in his poetry he does not speak explicitly of Christ. Basing much of his verse on the Song of Solomon, his stanzas are universal enough to be understood and treasured by a Sufi, such as Rumi, or a Hasidic Jewish mystic in the tradition of the Baal Shem Tov. Meister Eckhart's apophatic mysticism all but leaves behind every trace of Catholic dogma, an omission which, among other things, earned him a condemnation after his death by Pope John XXII. "His notion of God," writes Urban T. Holmes, "is more the Neo-Platonist One than the Trinity."

Regardless of how pluralistic one may become, most of us are born into a religious or an a-religious culture or household. We all begin somewhere, and most of us stay there. One is reminded of the story about the husband who, returning to his house unexpectedly, found a man who had been courting his wife hiding in a closet. Opening the closet door, he shouted to the man inside, "What are you doing in there?" to which the embarrassed intruder replied, "Well, sir, I gotta be somewhere." This is just another way of repeating what was said at the start. We've "gotta be somewhere." Most people live and die in the religion into which they were born and raised. Most will hold that it is the right religion for them, even the only true one. Few have the urge or the energy to look elsewhere. If they have to be somewhere, they might as well stay where they are.

Each religion has its own mythos, which is familiar to its adherents from childhood. It feels right and comfortable, whereas other religions, even denominations within the same faith, seem strange. And certainly, at the level of systematic belief and practice, religions vary greatly. The real issue is whether at the highest level Christian trinitarianism can be reconciled with the strict monotheism of Judaism and Islam; whether, in spite of the similarities between Buddhism and the Hinduism from which it diverged, the anatta, or no-self teaching of Buddhism, can be reconciled with the atman, or supreme-self doctrine, of Hinduism. It does make a difference when one faith holds that there has been only one incarnation (Christianity), while a second holds that there have been several (Hinduism), and a third denies that there have been any at all (Islam).

Some commentators try to weasel their way into reconciling differences by redefining what they understand by the divine, by incarnation, by what constitutes uniqueness. Since these are all merely doctrinal matters, what really matters, say the modern mystics (and not all of them are new-age types)is that, in the mystical "Cloud of Unknowing," beyond all images and conceptual structures, all doctrinal differences fall away in a direct experience of divine union. Maybe. But since few students of mysticism have actually had this kind of transforming experience themselves, they are reduced to taking someone else's word for what it is like. Reduced to faith in another's experience and not having had that kind of adventure themselves, most pluralists are loath to try to reconcile the differences among the various religions. They prefer to leave them in their otherness.

Convergence

Another approach to ecumenism plays with the idea of convergence. At their best and most authentic level, the major religions are, as Frederick Franck has said, like fingers pointing to the sacred. You get a sense that they are all moving toward the goal of transcending the limitations of image and speech, each trying through its peculiar story to communicate by the use of symbol and myth a sense of the Ineffable. Do not even presume to utter the divine Name, say pious Jews. But this very reluctance testifies to the conviction that the heart and source of all reality does exist, though it cannot be reduced to words or concepts. Each religion, beginning with its own story or myth, is capable of eliciting in its adherents a longing for transcendence and a desire for the infinite.

No religion, of course, can deliver the Absolute or the Infinite to order. That would be like trying to get back to the 10^-35 second after the Big Bang and before the cosmic inflation began. At that point all the known laws of physics break down. Anterior to that moment is the pretemporal state, whose laws, if they exist, are unknown to us. Analogously, though all the various religions converge toward Omega, none ever manages to bring us all the way. Spiritually and psychologically, what we would encounter "there" is emptiness, emptiness of all form. In the idiom of Nicholas of Cusa, Nothingness and the All coincide. But where they coincide is beyond where the lines of convergence can reach. Religion can bring us to the verge, to the brink, but like Moses, who led his people to the Promised Land, but could not enter in, there is no place for religion in the world to come. Religion is our vehicle for the journey. Once arrived, it will be left at the door.

Convergence saves us from the frustration and inconclusiveness of relativism. It recognizes the abiding reality of the Absolute, but by approaching it in conscious creaturehood, those who opt for convergence keep both poles of the creator-creature relationship intact. This enables one to acknowledge the limitations of all religions and thus to avoid turning any one of them into a Golden Calf.

Conversion and Ecumenism

Exclusivism, in its fundamentalist dress, has sometimes degenerated into bullying: either convert or be killed. Jews have repeatedly been faced with the choice of death or conversion. Short of threats to life and limb, a gentler form of terrorism is the policy of the true believer to frighten potential converts with visions of what will happen to unbelievers in the world to come. They will surely be lost unless they are baptized and are washed in the blood of the Lamb. Since they know they are right, exclusivists are known to wave aside every nonconformist element in their domain. They often use democratic means to take over the leadership of a denomination, as well as its seminaries and educational institutions, then oust all the well-trained faculty members who do not agree with their inerrantist literalism. Exclusivism does not always take this form, but the historical record shows that it very often does.

Inclusivism can admit the value of traditions other than its own and can even learn from them. But when pressed, it "knows" that its own tradition is best and truest, not just relative to the ethnic needs of its devotees but absolutely best and true. It therefore relativizes all the rest by making itself the judge and bar before which all the others are to be evaluated. It reduces, then, to a variety of exclusivism.

Pluralism, for all its good intentions, by allowing for the separate but rough equivalence of all religions, leaves itself open to the charge of relativism. Unless manyness has a focal point, even a receding one, we are left with a collection of radically independent worlds or universes with no unifying principle. As Kurt Gödel pointed out in mathematics, to account for the unity of any collection of items, one has to go beyond the set in order to find a principle of unification that is not a member of the set. Pluralism, to the extent that it leaves out transcendence as the goal toward which all religions are moving, has given up trying to address the problem of the coexistence of the one and the many.

Those who opt for convergence view the receding horizon of transcendent unity as the stimulus that animates all the religions of the world. Their starting points and some of their theologies may be irreconcilable when viewed separately. But none of the major religions is static; otherwise they would not have lasted for centuries. They are like the spokes of a wheel that converge toward the hub. Though, on the analogy, the hub may be invisible, the fact that the spoke-religions do converge means that the hub is not merely an invisible, external goal but an intrinsic, dynamic, guiding principle whose action is already inwardly operative in impelling the devotees to seek the hub.

Conversion to another religion is sometimes to the earthly advantage of the converted. If conversion frees individuals from slavery or an oppressive caste system, they may be better off joining the religion that liberates them or, in some cases, assures them of superior educational opportunities. People do not always have disinterested reasons for abandoning one religion and joining another. As for the trans-temporal advantages of conversion, who can say that a person's lot will be better hereafter for having changed from one religion to another?

All religious adherents do well if they are able to give a reasonable account of their faith to others. They also do well if they are prepared to listen patiently and attentively to what others have to say about their faiths. That is what ecumenism aims to achieve: not conversion but conversation. Where good will is at work, theologies turn out to be less important. What matters is the kind of faith which, in the Letter to the Hebrews (11.1), is defined as "the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of the reality of things not seen." But the dynamism does not stop there with a solipsistic "alone with the Alone." There must be a return movement, back, down to earth, whereby the fruits of devotion are turned into the service of others. The test of any true religion is the way it leads us to treat one another.

James M. Somerville taught philosophy for many years at Fordham University, where he was chair of the department and co-founder of the journal International Philosophical Quarterly. He is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy from Xavier University in Cincinnati and a Quest Book author (contributing to The Goddess Re-Awakening, 1989). His most recent book is The Mystical Sense of the Gospels (Crossroad, 1997).