OUR WORLDLY LIFE IS a journey in darkness to a visionary destination glimpsed in the heights of aspiration but not illuminated by rational light. It is therefore not to be wondered at that most intellectuals adopt a distinctively sceptical attitude towards the question of meaning in life. They deride all intuitions of a greater glory to be revealed in mankind as childish wishful thinking undertaken to escape the unpalatable fact of the disintegration of the whole personality that awaits us all when the body dies. Religion is seen to be a means of escape from the harsh reality of man's mortality into an ethereal world of personal comfort. The only faith that an atheistic humanist has is that of the potential raising of human endeavour and performance to ever higher standards of excellence. But since, in this type of approach, human consciousness is limited to the physical body, the fate of the individual is one of complete obliteration once earthly life is over. The atheistic view of human destiny is even more depressing than that of the most exclusive religious sects, who at least look for the preservation of a selected group of believers in an after-life state. "Where there is no vision the people perish". The vision of those who cannot see God cannot help man to attain his own full development as a person.
The religionist, by contrast, has a lively faith. This may be grounded in the teaching of a particular scripture, or the tradition of a church, or even the message that emanates from an inspired source. In the theistic tradition God is seen as revealing Himself to mankind on certain momentous occasions. This revelation has to be accepted absolutely if our life in God is to proceed. The plethora of authoritarian groups that have arisen since man first became aware of the transcendent reality that is called God, is a living testimony to the will to believe that is such an important part of human personality. The mutual exclusiveness of many such groups must make the seeker after truth doubt the authenticity of any of their teachings. But the simple folk who require a dogma to live by, even if they do not understand its real meaning, often become enthusiastically responsive to sectarian "faith". Many receive strength by a narrow faith, but few rise through it to a fullness of personality. It is evident that we proceed into the unknown by faith, but that blind faith in a metaphysical position can truncate the full personality.
Faith is not a short cut to salvation. It is to be seen as the guide of the personality on its path to healing. Faith is a gift of God. Like love it can never be evoked from the personality. It can only be invoked by prayer. Faith is implanted in the spirit of man. It is a tiny light that leads us through the darkness that encompasses and defeats the reasoning mind. "I would not seek thee had I not found thee," says Pascal with profound insight. Faith is the movement of the personality towards that integration which is accomplished by the spirit of the soul. To choose the nobler of two ways of life, to exalt the good above the mean or the beautiful above the meretricious is an act of faith. The soul lies revealed when we move by faith, for we are leaving behind the categories of intellectual knowledge based on past experience, and are treading an unknown path.
The spiritual quest is a continuous act of faith, a faith that spiritual experience is the most real thing in human life and that all other categories of experience are subordinate to the fact of God. To move in fear and trembling through the dark tragedies that punctuate human life with the inner knowledge that all will be well at an indeterminable future period, is the pinnacle of faith. This acceptance of the fundamental goodness of the universe despite all rational indications to the contrary is the faith that saves. It bears a close relationship to the love that comes to us from God when we are empty enough of conceit to receive it.
The most important quality of real faith is its tendency to integrate the personality and make the person more mature in all his attitudes. It does not demand a surrender or denial of the body, the reasoning mind, or the emotions. A faith that diminishes one's power of private judgment and forces one, beyond all reason, to accept a dogmatic teaching on trust, is not likely to integrate the personality. On the contrary, by denying a most important part of the personality, the reason, it diminishes the person and makes him a puppet forced to accept various propositions for his own "salvation". This is the criticism of authoritarian religion: it imprisons the person so that his intellectual growth is stultified. If through imposed faith a person cannot face the various facts of life honestly and without prejudice, that faith prevents the full maturing of his personality. Far from bringing Christ to the individual, it replaces Him with some finite theological proposition or material image. It prevents that total giving of oneself in real selfless faith, a giving that is the precursor of the divine revelation within the soul.
It follows then that the spiritual life proceeds by faith in the gifts bestowed on us by God. These gifts are first of all the glory of the world round us and the people whom we love. But apart from such tangible evidence of God's grace, there are also the intimations of divine reality that come to us from the unseen world. These lighten the burdened heart and revive the flagging spirit within us. These give us assurance of God's concern even when we are feeling at our worst. The supreme gift of mystical insight is an extension of this assurance of personal validity and meaning into a realm of eternity. Thus does the intimation of the glory to be revealed in us first impinge on our awareness, and start a quiet transformation of the personality. The positive polarity of faith is accepting these intimations with gratitude and working through them towards that change of heart which is the measure of spiritual integrity. But, as we already noted in connection with prayer, these sudden flights from the stultifying world of everyday life into a new way of release must be studied carefully with the critical faculty of the reasoning mind. A ray of light in a dark atmosphere must always be acknowledged, but its guiding tendency must be carefully assessed. This is the negative polarity of real faith. It is a passionate agnosticism which endeavours with all ardour to gauge the truth and meaning of the revelation.
The distinction between a life-enhancing experience of God and a self-enhancing experience can be extremely difficult, and in some instances acknowledged mental instability adds a further complication to the assessment
It is a well-known psychological principle that ideas implanted into our mind can produce corresponding physical effects. Thus a true therapeutic relationship between doctor and patient or between analyst and analysand can produce beneficial effects apart from any positive treatment that may be given. The old fashioned bedside manner, now greatly derided by a scientifically orientated generation, undoubtedly helped many ill patients towards recovery. Of course, this close relationship in a healing undertaking is no substitute for scientific accuracy, and is rightly suspected by all intelligent observers. Indeed, it is well recognised that inert material masquerading as a powerful drug can have a remarkably ameliorative effect in many chronic diseases, but in due course the benefit wears off and the patient relapses once more. The powerful effect of one personality on another is the basis of suggestion, and it can sometimes become attached to a drug, a technique, or a religious ritual. While no one would deny the power of this primitive type of "faith" in the healing of various disabilities, there can be no doubt that it does tend to diminish the personality of the seeker inasmuch as it interferes with his own powers of discernment. In a true healing relationship-and this is the basis of paranormal, or psychic healing-there is not simply a blind subservience to the personality of the healer but rather an outflow of psychic energy from the healer to the afflicted person. This energy comes from the soul and enters the soul whence it is directed to the entire personality. We know far too little about man's psychic constitution to make definite statements about healing on a psychic level, but it seems that a relationship is the key to the healing act. Suggestion acts rather on the mental than the psychical level, but it too plays an important part in all forms of healing.
The recitation of phrases that emanate "positive thinking" is recommended by some practitioners of the various types of "new thought". While the sentiments contained in many such repeated phrases and sentences are admirable, they sometimes tend to dull the person's own self-awareness and exalt him far above his true station in the spiritual life. The automatic repetition of self-inflating material does no final good, but a meditation on some great theme or sentence from the Bible (or other scripture) may help to calm the mind and make us more integrated than we were before. Thus the uncritical recitation of material, however noble it may appear, takes the centre of being away from the person himself, and focuses it on an external source of authority. Nevertheless, this type of exercise can be of the greatest value to those in severe mental distress who are so imprisoned in a web of self-denigration and gloom that they are quite unable to see the light of God's glory in the world around them. To such people the recitation of a great sentence from the Bible can be an anchor-hold of sanity in the shifting sands of material life. Thus we should never adopt a destructive attitude towards means of self-development that may help others through particularly difficult periods of life. But we must also, in due charity, see the limitation of this approach to truth, and in due course move beyond it. Suggestion is in fact a first-aid treatment for those near breaking-point. At least they can grasp on to a tangible object of security. But they should not identify this object with God. And in due course they should move beyond reliance on an external aid to the source of inspiration within themselves.
If religion were doing what it purports to do, it would lead man to an encounter with God. In fact, in the world around us there are many spiritually aspiring people who have, through bitter experience, dispensed with the services of all organised churches and have joined in the larger communion of man dedicated to God's service. This is a sad state of affairs, for membership of a church ought to lead one to worship God in the fellowship of other believers. Instead, the whole approach of much conventional religion tends to obscure the fact of God with man-made rituals and theological niceties. While the experts retreat into their own doctrinal preserves, the mass of humanity is left to find God on its own.
It is noteworthy that the three friends whom I mentioned in an earlier chapter had no connection with any church. Though they were all brought up in the Christian tradition, the breadth of their sympathies and the range of their minds made the limitations of any one religious system unbearable. I feel that this was sad from the point of view inasmuch as the love of a congregation of like-minded people could have supported them in their lonely journey and also acted as a centre of constructive criticism in regard to their work and general attitude to life. For no one is so self-sufficient as to be beyond the help of other people. But their absence from the organised church was even sadder from the point of view of traditional religion. These souls, true prophets of the coming age, could have been of immeasurable value in broadening the minds of the all too smug conventional churchgoer and heightening the vision of the church.
A church of whatever religious tradition should be the place where the tension between traditional values and prophetic insight is experienced and resolved, and a new synthesis established. In fact it is usually a place of the "establishment", bent above all else in maintaining the status quo (which is usually wrongly equated with orthodoxy) and fearful of any manifestation of the Holy Spirit, whose work it is to lead us all progressively into greater understanding of the truth. Jesus Himself is recorded as saying that there were many things He could not tell the disciples, for they could not, in their present state of understanding, bear to hear them. It was the function of the Holy Spirit to continue this work of leading people into the truth.
Through the centuries the Holy Spirit has performed this life-giving work, and He has chosen all manner of people to be His agents. Not only has he worked through the saints and theologians, but He has also been the inspiration of the artists, scientists, psychologists, and philosophers who have led men into a greater understanding and control of their environment and especially of themselves. Quite a number of those whom the Holy Spirit has inspired have not been religionists at all, and a few have been militant atheists! Indeed, some of the images of God that have been constructed by the theistic religions are so harmful to human progress that it has been necessary for God to destroy them. God's professed enemies are of small account, but His devoted friends have so little faith in His own omnipotence that they seek all too often to bolster Him up with vain theologies, often repulsive to human nature. The terrible wars and persecutions undertaken in the name of religion-and they are with us even today-testify to the demonic aspect of man's search for God. It is noteworthy also that the Western theistic tradition had an infinitely more horrible record of cruelty in this respect than has the Hindu-Buddhist tradition, which being mystically aware, can see beyond personality to ultimate reality.
The religious quest is for truth. In the name of truth people will not only sacrifice their lives but also calmly destroy others whom they call heretics. This tendency to heresy hunting has departed to a great extent from the realm of organised religion (which is at present a comparatively weak force in the world at large, though there are important exceptions), and is more the preserve of political and economic ideologies that have evoked so much emotional fervour that they could be regarded as new religions. Marxism and its variants come clearly into this category. To be in possession of the whole truth is man's final ideal. Since in God the qualities of truth, goodness (or love), and beauty merge and find their ultimate manifestation, it is commendable, at its very least, to seek after truth. The scientist searches on a material level, the psychologist on a mental one, and the religionist looks for the consummation of all truth in God.
There is one certain quality of truth. It illuminates the reason by broadening its range. It shines on the intellect, increasing the scope of the mind and raising the personality to the awareness of the soul within us. Indeed, truth, far from being a finite point of destination, is the open-ended way that leads to God. It is the way of perfection, and as a new aspect of truth is revealed to us, so the past view that we believed was the final truth has to be reviewed and modified according to the new information. "I am the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14.6). The path, the destination, and the will are all one in God.
Clement of Alexandria saw a threefold movement of the human soul towards the truth that is God. We start in faith, progress to knowledge, and ultimately proceed by love. Love is the most exalted knowledge, for it is unitive. It transcends the separation of men and establishes a communion between them, with God as the centre point as well as the totality of the relationship. Thus faith in any finite presentation of the truth is divisive and illusory, for other people will be guided to see other aspects of the same truth. And each view of the truth, being exclusive in its claims of absolute authority, will war with the other. It follows that a faith dependent on an intellectual or theological position is never complete, and as we grow in spiritual stature, so the faith broadens. The spiritual life makes the aspirant increasingly tractable to the Holy Spirit, who leads us into the truth of God through the cosmic Christ.
It can therefore be said that the most real religion is that which brings fullness of being to the person. Instead of making him rely on externally imposed doctrines and formulations, it inspires his soul to a clearer vision of the ultimate truth of God. Whatever is said or taught about Him is a mere commentary on His being, which is experienced in love, not ratiocination. "By love may he be gotten and holden, but by thought never", says the writer of The Cloud of Unknowing. We love as we become more receptive to God's love, which flows most fully into the integrated, cleansed personality. A personality full of intellectual blockages based on dogmatic views of God's nature and purpose excludes the divine marriage within. Nothing is easier than to exclude God from our being by identifying Him with dogmatic statements or credal formulae.
The value of a religious tradition is that it balances the insights bestowed upon the believer by the Holy Spirit with the past experience of the human race down the ages. Not every insight is divinely inspired. As already noted, some revelations are of unconscious material flooding into consciousness, and others are of indeterminate psychic origin that varies considerably in its degree of inspiration. A well-trodden path of spirituality has been preserved for us by the saints and prophets of all the major religious traditions. Only a very rash person will ignore the witnesses of the cosmic Christ down the ages. But no past teaching or experience is to be regarded as final. Substance becomes shadow as a greater substance lies revealed. And the greatest substance is that which is beyond limitation, whose being is the void in which all creation occurs and proceeds to eternity. This is the God to whom the whole created universe moves in eager expectation.
As, in faith, you allow the Holy Spirit to lead your progressively integrated personality into a greater understanding of truth, so the eternal meaning of the world's inspired scriptures will become more plain. There is one truth and that is the fact of God. Scriptural inspiration (or revelation, as some would prefer to call it) is a testimony to the divine indwelling in the souls of those great men of a past age. Their witness speaks not only of the eternal Godhead but also of the human conditions, which though it varies according to the period of time and the cultural tradition in which it finds itself, is also essentially the same throughout all ages. Since human life began man has always been confronted with the fact of his own immortality and the living changelessness of the Most High. Man's response to this, his faith, and his hope of immortality vary in form from age to age, but the substance remains unaltered. The validity of the highest religious teaching impresses itself directly upon the liberated soul. "Beloved now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3.2). It is thus that a free faith leads to a proper discernment of spirits.
In assessing religious truth the two pitfalls to be avoided are a dogmatic fundamentalism which accepts a literal view on "faith" despite the protesting groans of the reasoning part of the mind, and an obsessive modernism which tries above all else to be "with it". Such an attitude to religious truth becomes subservient to current scientific and philosophical trends to the extent that it is ashamed of its own witness and dubious of its validity. Spiritual truth never denies or contradicts reason. It extends rational thought by new intuitive insights. Thus the healing power of Jesus and other great figures in religious history is neither to be seen as a special miraculous revelation of God nor as an aspect of pre-scientific superstition. It was rather a testimony to the power inspired by the Holy Spirit into a fully integrated personality under the direction of the spirit within.
The creeds and sacraments of the church need therefore not be dismissed as relics of pre-scientific thinking or old-fashioned superstition. They express eternal truth, but they are not static formulations. They are the repository of mystery-the ineffable encounter between God and man-and when approached in awe they may yield to the humble soul priceless spiritual riches. But all higher religion is to be seen as God's gift to man. Jesus said that He did not come to destroy the law but to fulfil it. He also declared that that most sacred of Jewish institutions, the Sabbath, was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. If we follow the way of tradition with a receptive soul and an actively responsive reason, we will be enabled, through the Holy Spirit, to distill what is really vital from the past while discerning that which is questionable. This latter is, to a large measure, the accretion of a later period when the religious genius had decayed, and faith was replaced by superstitious fear and arrogant exclusiveness.
The spiritual man's faith will lead him into all truth, as he moves with fear and trembling-and yet at the same time fearlessly-into the unknown day's work ahead of him. The humble heart, the adventurous spirit, the questioning mind, the vibrant body-these are our instruments of fulfillment. The faith to proceed is given to us as we work in dedication to the great quest. Externally enforced systems are at the least redundant, and often frankly harmful to the spirit of man. "Quench not the Spirit," but have the wisdom to discern its origin.