INTERRELIGIOUS
INSIGHT
January,
2004 Edition
From
Interreligious Dialogue to Spiritual Humanism
Hasan
Askari
Affirming Religious Diversity
I have always looked at religious
diversity with a sense of wonder. The differences between religious beliefs and
practices have never bothered me, nor have their conflicting truth-claims
unnerved me. I was mystified by the fact of diversity itself. But the call to
tolerate and coexist with the other in mutual respect, however desirable, was
not enough for me. The intuition underlying the ancient saying, “the lamps are
many but the light is one,” gently led me on to look for a theological
affirmation and validation of more than one religion. What was lingering in the
depths of my soul came to the surface of my consciousness sometime in the
mid-1970s when I clearly realised that transcendental reality could not be
equated with any one religious form; otherwise a religion will become a god and
that would be utter blasphemy. The prospect of a religion reflecting the Absolute
absolutely would turn that religion into the most dogmatic and oppressive
belief system imaginable. Hence, there should be room between the religions for
mutual critique and complementarity. In turn, this should generate a religious
need for religious plurality and diversity.
Each religious form should then
express the beauty and the splendour, and the transcendence and the mystery, of
the Supreme One in terms of its own language and culture, framed in its own
historicity and reflected in the vision of its pioneers. To enter into dialogue
is to celebrate the splendour of the infinitely Supremely Good, in the unity
and diversity of our faiths. By the theological affirmation of religious
diversity, our coming together in dialogue becomes akin to an act of worship;
our exclusive witness is transformed into co-witness; our one-way mission is
replaced by mutual mission.
Co-witness
and mutual mission would replace the literalist approach to religious language
by a symbolic understanding of diverse and conflicting symbols and statements.
A real evangelist would be one who brings the good news of universal truths as
these are glimpsed through various religious symbols and philosophies. Then our
perception of the other as a spiritual being will achieve a real depth and we
shall apprehend underneath the outer differences and conflicts a shining unity
of mystical experiences. Our perspectives will expand: we shall not only notice
religious diversity as a spatial fact but also value the coming and going
through time of teachers and prophets, religions followed by religions - all
calling upon us to wake up and humbly bow in self-knowledge before the almighty
source of our souls. Then our conversion will be not to this or that religion
but to one God (speaking theistically), All Transcendent-All near, All
Freedom-Ever New!
In order to attain this perspective
I soon learnt that one had to give up the traditional scholastics and adopt a
hermeneutic approach by which a pathway to the fountain itself of such unity
and diversity could be opened. There was nowhere to look for its source except
in one’s own soul, for nature and culture, art and religion, philosophy and
science had emerged from the depths of the soul. Soul is thus the treasure
house of all the archetypes from where all our symbols and insights emanate. As
I once put it:
Without the unifying reality of the
soul we shall be wrecked in the multiplicity and conflict of the forms of life
and nature. The soul is the one-multiple being, one and divided at the same
time, fully one with itself possessing the vision of what is above. Unless we
postulate such a principle and revive the classical discourse on Soul, we
cannot rise above our divisions of body, belief and consciousness to a bodiless
and non-discursive reality.
Before we ask about the other out there, we should ask about the other in us,
our nobler and loftier companion, our Soul, which with one hand holds our body
and mind here on earth and with the other holds on to the Divine. With this
knowledge we can hope to pass from one hand to the other, from the lower to the
higher. Hence, to experience the truth about oneself and about the other is to
experience the reality of the Soul, which individualizes and universalizes us
all at once. First soul, then God!2
It is as if the soul possesses the vision of the Supreme One, and yet creates
countless forms in order to preserve that singular vision through such endless
multiple endeavour.
Soul as One and Many
I have outlined a double validation of religious diversity, from the
viewpoint of the theology of transcendence, and also from the perspective of
the gnosis of the soul as both one and many in her being and works. The point
of departure on the interreligious path is the very vision of our reality as
souls and the point of our arrival is our souls’ witness of the transcendence
and universality of one God.
Let no one imagine that her or his
soul is just her or his corporeal and social identity. Our soul is vaster than
our conscious and unconscious psyche put together. Soul is one and many, a
universal being. It is in souls of each other that we encounter each other both
individually and universally. We surpass the boundaries of our outer identity.
We seek our inner connections, as follows:
Do I recognize the other as my hermeneutic
kin, as an associate in awareness and being? I meet a so-called co-believer. I
do not recognize in him my inward kin. I meet a so-called other who belongs to
a different religious tradition, but I recognize in him my inward companion.
Encounter is now a prelude to lasting friendship and union.3
“Know thyself” were the words
written on the Gate of Entrance to the ancient Temple of Delphi. The prophet of
Islam categorically made self-knowledge a pre-requisite to knowing God when he
said, “Whoever knows his self knows his Lord.” As such, the gnosis of our soul
and self, our real being, has thus been the goal of all our mystical and
religious life. The classical discourse on soul from ancient India and ancient
Greece, and from various Gnostic traditions requires to be revived, for it is
also the cornerstone of interreligious spirituality. Dialogue becomes a vision
of the magnificent utterance, “Here I am”! Reflectively, we all become
co-present to one another - not as one exclusive identity, but as one who says
to the other, I am both me and you and you are both you and me, and together we
stand on holy ground.
Spiritual Humanism
Interreligious dialogue requires not only a theology of transcendence but
also a spiritual anthropology. The movement from interreligious dialogue to
spiritual humanism is natural. It also involves a philosophical conviction
about the human soul as a universal principle, which itself is a source of both
our diversity and unity and calls for its concrete expression in social and political
life. Spiritual humanism then appears not only as a mystical vision but also as
the ideology of a new world order.
The Christian sponsored
interreligious dialogue seems to have failed in all problem areas from the
Indian subcontinent to the Middle East, from Ireland to Central Europe,
because, firstly, it has not been accompanied by a clear articulation of the
anthropological vision of one spiritual humanity and, secondly, because there
had been a gap between interreligious dialogue and society at large. There was
no connecting point between the spiritual hope expressed in the movement that
promoted interreligious dialogue and the social situations which, at various
points on the globe, had degenerated into sheer ethnocentrisms and religious
obscurantism. The rising tide of exclusivist doctrines and identities seems to
have overrun the complacent confidence of the advocates of democracy and
secular humanism. Then there are those who criticise people like me that we do
not honour the specificity of each religion sufficiently. To them I would say
that without honouring the universality of God and the universality of the
human principle as a soul, there remains no grace about the so called
specificity of any religion, nor any hope for the survival of humanity.
We can act at least at 3 different
levels together:
- At the academic intellectual level, to revive the
classical discourse on soul and to cultivate the theology of transcendence
as integral to a multireligious spirituality.
- At the ideological and pedagogical level, to replace
exclusivist religionism and secularism with spiritual humanism.
- At the prophetic level, to confront all those forces
which enslave and cripple the human spirit.
Before I explain what I have in view
by the prophetic role of spiritual humanism let me reflect on the reasons for
the current mutation of religious consciousness, which are threefold:
A. Loss of transcendence with
respect to the supreme reality, which turns our ideas of God into idols – we
all become disbelievers in the disguise of our collective and self absolutised
beliefs!
B. Loss of Gnosis of soul which leads us to regard our outer form and our
separation as constituting our total reality.
C. Loss of transcendence with respect to both God and soul narrows the self down
to bodily ego, practical reason and literalisation of symbols and myths – so we all become materialists
in the guise of religious dogmas.
Had we remembered the higher Gnostic
grades in our soul, namely the contemplative and intuitive, which bring to us our
transfiguration as universal soul beings, we could have given birth to a new
humanity through our inner expansion and enlightenment.
Interreligious dialogue urgently
requires the revival of the classical discourse on soul.
The Threefold Need to Revive the Classical Discourse on Soul
a) Theological Need
The materialists are right in
refusing to believe in God, for neither the physical eye nor practical reason
can bear witness to a metaphysical absolute. The knower of metaphysical reality
should be a metaphysical being oneself. Therefore, as it has been said already,
“Whoever knows his soul, knows his Lord.” As for interreligious dialogue, it is
only on the basis of the unity of the human soul that we can confidently hold
dialogue between various languages (religions) of that one very same soul.
b) Philosophical Need
The philosophical need for discourse on the soul is for both cosmological
and epistemological reasons. If our knowledge is based only on sense perception
and empirical reason, it will always remain subjective. The truth as objective
reality will always elude us. But soul is both an objective and a subjective
reality. The proof of this is our facing each other as we meet when we are both
subject and object for each other. This miracle is possible because of our one
common soul. When what we are and what we seek, as Plotinus used to say, are a
unity, then our philosophies and religions are not in vain. Then there is a
kinship between the knower and what he seeks to know. Soul, being diverse, is a
seeker, and Soul, being one, is the sought after. Having thus known herself,
she yearns for the one who is the source and lord of her one being. All our
spirituality is that yearning of the soul.
c) Psychological Need
Modern psychology requires the rediscovery of the classical discourse on
soul in order to transcend the dichotomy of the conscious and the unconscious
sectors of the psyche, on one hand, and of the psyche and matter, on the other.
The Neo-platonic discourse is coming back and will reflourish in the 21st
century to provide the foundation for a unified theory of physical and
metaphysical reality.
Only by knowledge of the soul can we
know the immortality of our essence, by which we are filled with courage to
confront and conquer oppression and injustice - by which our life is both
within and beyond bodily limits and by which we are both individuals and
universals, residents of both this world and hereafter.
The
soul is one multiple being, fully one with herself and also many, possessing in
her unity the vision of the supreme one. Unless we postulate such a principle
we cannot rise above the divisions of our body, belief and ego, to a spiritual
and non-discursive reality. Neither friendship nor love could be possible nor
the universal validity of our mystical experiences.
Universal Validity of Mystical Experience
There are some who question the universal validity of mystical experience
as an expression of one universal ultimate reality. But we do not normally
question the universal presence of life, beauty and love which inspire diverse
forms of art, music, song and poetry. Nor do we normally question the universal
presence of intellect which is the common foundation of different and
conflicting theories of science and philosophy. But why is it that as soon as
we refer to the universal validity of mystical experience people leap upon us
from all sides insisting that mystical experience is subjective experience
determined by one’s culture, theology, and personal psychological history. In
every other case they seem to remain unperturbed by the co-presence of the
objective and the subjective, the universal and the particular – as, for
example, in regard to the human body, where there is one objective science of
human anatomy and physiology upon which the entirety of medical science is
based, and yet there are individual variations as to the state of health and
nature of sickness. It is obvious then that the tendency to object to mystical
experience’s claim of its inherent universal validity is influenced by a bias
that if it is conceded, the next step would be to admit that there is a
universally objective source of religious revelations. The objection is
motivated by unphilosophical reasons. But it does not mean, however, that all
mystical experiences are valid, and that there are no influences from the
subject’s milieu and psychic constitution towards the experienced mystical
state.
Criteria of Mystical Experience
With mystical experience, whether it
be a transformed state of consciousness or an ecstatic utterance, there is the
need for guidance in order to discern whether or not the experience in question
is really transcendental. Hence, in the scriptural expression within Islam,
there is on one hand the Qur’an as the recital of the divine word, and on the
other, within the recital, is the Furq’an as the guidance to know truth from
fantasy, knowledge from conjecture. Every spiritual teacher aspires to
epistemological clarity. It is this clarity which is a pre-requisite for
initiation into a mystical order.
Experience and guidance to interpret
it descend together. The experience itself is on certain occasions a response
to prayer for guidance. However neither a mystical experience nor a belief is
always an authentic experience or a right belief. Therefore, consultation among
seekers and dialogue between different believers should go on in pursuit of
truth, our common beloved!
Mystical experience does not entail
the suspension of rationality. Nor does it surpass the intellect which is
itself a divine light. Let the soul always be lightened by the sun of
intellect, the lamp of divine consciousness.
Within our soul are three Gnostic
grades – Contemplative, Intuitive, and Discursive. What the contemplative eye
has seen the intuitive would hold in its cognition, and what the intuition has
cognised in all its totality reason would conceptualise and communicate in
logical stages, and in such a harmony reason itself will be transfigured,
becoming self-luminous as light upon light, as the light of the parable upon
the light of our common understanding.
Religious Diversity as Mystical
Experience
I have already touched upon the
religious validation of religious diversity, preserving with the different
religions their transcendental dimension. But when it all began for me in the
mid-sixties in India it was more like a vast swing in my soul by which I lived
all the diversity of the Indian civilisation - as if I were a worshipper in
every house of worship, as if all rites of worship were within me. Religious
diversity was thus for me a deep religious experience and now I know it as the
experience of my soul itself, my soul in its universal dimension. I did not
arrive at this point of affirmation by first philosophising about the necessity
of interreligious dialogue on spiritual and social grounds in search of
understanding and peace. Valid as they are, those reasons were extraneous to my
inner being. My inner experience of religious diversity not only blossomed into
my thought and writing, but also attracted, as a magnet, people from far off
lands, knitting them into lasting friendships.
In order to bring this open-ended
and universally harmonising outlook to the world at large we have yet to go a
long way. The loss of a sense of transcendence from our consciousness, and the
accompanying loss of the gnosis of soul, have led first to the degeneration of
religion and eventually to the despiritualisation of politics and science.
Hence, there is a prophetic role for spiritual humanism to take a stand against
the following three massive threats to the very essence of our humanity:
1.
Self
- Idolatry of Religions
2.
Self
-destructive Militarism of the States
3.
Self
-hypnosis of Materialism
of the Sciences.
Racism and ethnocentricism accompany
religious exclusivism; absolutisation of ideological divides and the cult of
supremacy of power provide the political and psychological bases for the
self-destructive militarism of the state, while the self–contradictory argument
in favour of nuclear armament for the sake of national security passes unnoticed
with the gravest consequences for the survival of life itself; and the
abolition of the spiritual dimension from every walk of life in the name of
pragmatism and scientific materialism allows a free hand to the demigods of
nationalism, consumerism and sensationalism.
The schools are fast emptying the
souls of our children of the light and warmth of universalism and idealism. A
hollow functionalism and obsession with mechanical proficiency dominate our
school curricula. The soul thus emptied of all vision is dead – what is a human
soul without its universal stature, and which is the fountain of our ideals and
aspirations? Emptied from within, our youth grab their own outer husk to defend
themselves against the loss of their real identity. Through our education, through our media, through
our politics, through our militarism we are leading the youth into a wasteland.
Their anger expressed on our streets, irrespective of the occasion, is their
loud desperate cry for recognition, for a vision of their greater self which
includes not only themselves, but also all humanity.
The language of critique and protest
is replaced by the language of social conformism. The language of socialism is
being made taboo by those very people who were until yesterday the leaders of
socialist movements. Another wind is blowing and striking at the roots of all
idealism: the wind of postmodernism, by which all universalist and metaphysical
terms of reference are to be suspected. There is no ideological foothold for
our next generation. 150 Years ago Karl Marx gave the call, “Let the workers of
the world unite!” The call meant a universal sense of belonging to the rest of
humanity, by which one could transcend religion and race and nation. When there
is neither socialist nor spiritual–humanist language made available, under what
banner would our youth unite?
The mere rule of law is not enough.
The call to democracy requires people who can hope, not just to hear the empty
promises of the politicians. The call for more productivity is not enough; more
jobs are not the answer. Nor is less inflation the remedy. Those who give such
calls know that they stand upon the unstable ground of the global market. They
can no longer refuse to see the unruly crowds in their cities which their
soulless education and politics have begotten. What we need is not laws. Law,
however just, has to punish somebody, lower him in his own eyes. We do not need
laws, we need self-realised individuals, mutually forgiving, mutually
supportive, mutually educating, who can hold each other, who can rise together
hand in hand. So with nations, my dear comrades of the spirit! No cause, no
ideology, no national interest, is worth a war that destroys newly born
children. As Martin Luther King once said, “After Nagasaki the choice is
between non-existence and non violence.”
We have first to wake up from the
spell which our collective identity, whether it be of race or of religion has
cast upon us, and see the sun of awareness rising in the horizon of our souls,
in whose light the hidden grace in each one of us would become visible to the
other. As we bow to each other as soul beings, we bow before God who is both in
us and above us. What can then prevent us from saying to each other that my
soul and your soul is one soul, that our God and your God is one God?
We shall
then abolish fear, and then our greeting of peace will be a perfect greeting!
NOTES
- A part of this text was first published in a German
volume, In Einum Haus zu Haus, Interreligiosus Leben Inter Religious
Spiritualitat, Evangelical Acadamie, Loccum, 1999.
- Hasan Askari, Spiritual Quest: An Inter-Religious
Dimension, Pudsey, UK: Seven Mirrors, 1991, pp. 138-139.
- Ibid., p. 138.
Books for consultation in relation
to this article:
John Hick and Hasan Askari, Eds., The
Experience of Religious Diversity
Vermont: Gower Publishing Co., 1985.
Hasan Askari and Jon Avery, Towards
a Spiritual Humanism
Pudsey, UK: Seven Mirrors, 1991.
Hasan Askari and David Bowen, Eds., Seers
and Sages
Pudsey, UK: Seven Mirrors, 1991.
Hasan Askari, Alone to Alone:
From Awareness to Vision
Pudsey, UK: Seven Mirrors, 1991.
Dr.
Hasan Askari is one of the pioneers of interreligious dialogue from within
Islam. He has taught and at several universities, including in India, Lebanon,
Germany, Holland, Britain and the United States. His book Spiritual Quest: An
Inter-Religious Dimension (1991) has been an important text for interreligious
thinkers.
