World Religions and The Transpersonal View of Life

The word "tradition" comes from "tradere" that means transmitting or sending. So as religious traditions we can understand the various religious doctrines and practices passed on throughout the centuries by words and examples taking knowledges about the spiritual evolution of human being and his relationship with the universe. They embody different doctrines as Christianism, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islamism, etc, that keep up enchanged though some distortions introduced by the time and the history.

There are some important points to take on account when we think about religions. First of all, everyone is composed by a general part, e.g.,universal principles related to what belongs to the mankind mixed with each cultural singularity, generating varied compounds of rites and legends, that is, the symbology that ratifies those universal precepts for each people. While the first part is in a certain way easy to clarify, the second requires us to submerge in each particular culture to avoid misunderstandings that occur if we try to decipher a foreign symbol from our own cultural frame.

From this point we have two possible paths to study religions, depending on what aspect - general or singular, we emphasize. If it's the general one, we'll center our study on their values and metaphysical truths winnowed from their historical contexts. If it's the singular aspect that which we wish to approach, we'll examine their social roots and stories, that is, their processes of constructing and feeding their institutions seen as tools of intervention in the society.

Perhaps it would be worth to develop both studies in the way we can absorb the great wisdom of human being and separate it from human institutions with its virtues and vices.

On the other hand, we should avoid ways of belittling religions, for example, when we study them by their contributions to other people's life or to art. As a result religions become to us a kit of habit without any meaning to our own life. Instead of this, we can profit from their wisdoms, making bridges between their truths and our particular way of being in the world, our inner challenges and personal evolution. By this approach religions become present and alive, giving us a support and spiritual tools to work with our selves and to deal with the daily reality in a better way. This must be the ultimate goal of the different religions, founded as they are on the same human nature, on a common humanity that lies in our depths.

As we can be aware by an etmological analysis, the word "religion" comes from "religare" that means "connecting again", e.g., the main function of religion is to open and reconnect the human beings with the subtle energy of the cosmos in the way they can be able to use their best capacities and inner power towards their spiritual evolutions. This is the transpersonal aspect of religions - to help us to overcome our limitations and to expand our consciousness, transcending our individual self for integrating us with the cosmos'wisdom.

At the same way, knowing a different religion from a foreign culture is a manner of catching up the soul of its people, their vision of life, their feelings and values. So religion is also a way of connecting people around the world, depending on our openness to other religions and cultures.

As a second step, it's worth to throw bridges between these foreign worlds and ours. This is not for evaluating or criticizing other religions and people but for profiting from their wisdom and constructing an wider view of world besides a more discriminated perception of our own reality.

There is a law of human perception that says we perceive things by the differences. So we do need the differences - of sounds, colors, feelings, attitudes, etc. As French people say: - "Vive la différence !".

There are different ways to reconnect with the wise energy of universe outside and inside ourselves. All are valid paths. To choose one depends on our temperament, view of life and cultural values. However it's important to take in mind that they are possible paths, not the goal.

Otherwise, by the comparative study of religions we can also notice some similarities among them in the ethical realm, for example, according to some behariors that should be avoided as murder, thieving, lying and adultery, and related to the basic virtues that must be improved as humility, charity and veracity.

In respect to the vision of reality, the different great wisdom traditions point the same three basic characteristics of the universe as unity, worth and mystery. They see the reality as an integrated and integrating totality so immense that we are not able to perceive the whole with our limitated awareness and self-conditionated view, neither the relationships among some apparently isolated parts and events. And consequently its meanings are lost to us.

Once more the religion appears as a way of reconnecting parts trying to show us the whole in its beauty and harmony. As the human being is part of this unity, he takes in his self the same qualities of universe as his true nature or his "Buddha nature". And the more we know about the reality, the more we realize there are things we don't know. As we deepen in the universe, it appears wider and deeper for our human awareness.

Besides that, the great wisdom traditions present the spiritual path coming from suffering and difficulties to a special joy and an wise understanding of universe, underlying on this path the worth of listenning to each other with love and respect to improve mutual understanding and commitment in the human community, replacing fear, suspicion and prejudice for compassion.

We can also set some important relationships between religions and science seen as two ways of human knowledge. While religion turns the human being to his self to become aware of some truths feeding his inner spiritual life, science goes to the reality outside, searching the unknown and creating new theories.

Science contributes for the objectivity of reality while religion works on values, questioning the human acts in their intentions and consequences for catching up the deepest meaning of reality that empirical science is not able to hold. As a result, after some centuries of scientific advances, the mankind faces an enormous crisis with unbalances in different areas of human life. A bird can't fly with only one wing.

Fortunately the new Physic, penetrating in the essence of material, found out energy and then discovered this energy was related to consciousness - the same truth set by the eastern religious traditions many centuries before.

It seems that the subatomic Physic reconnects us with the unity, worth and mystery of reality as religion has been trying to do.

In short, religion and science correspond to complementary kinds of consciousness, belonged to the right and left hemispheres of the human brain respectively. While the subjective Orient developed the main religions emphasizing the spiritual path by inner work and self-transcendence, the objective Occident worked on controling and transforming nature by an empirical science.

We must retake the path of great wisdom traditions hearing what they tell us about our self, about life and the universe, reflecting on our purposes and values, throwing bridges between their truths and ourselves in the way we can improve and use science in harmony with our inner life and the universe.