Christianity, Islam and Judaism all insist that God is One. So prospective readers might think that Stephen Prothero, a professor of religion at Boston University, must be proclaiming polytheism in a book titled “God Is Not One.”
He does that, in a way, describing many different gods objectively and with touches of irony that the devout might find irreverent.
A subtitle outlines the large territory covered: “The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World — and Why Their Differences Matter.” He ends his account with a quiet agnosticism: “If there really is a god or goddess worthy of the name, He or She or It must surely know more than we do about the things that matter most.”
His rebuttal of the idea that all gods are basically alike starts with “All Religions Are One,” written by English poet William Blake. Prothero sees Gandhi, the Dalai Lama and Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code” as embracing the mistake.
“The Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century popularized the idea of religious tolerance, and we are doubtless better for it,” he writes. “But the idea of religious unity is wishful thinking nonetheless, and it has not made the world a safer place. In fact, this naive theological groupthink — call it Godthink — has made the world more dangerous by blinding us to the clashes of religions that threaten us worldwide.”
He cites the religious element in wars, clashes, murders and atrocities from a morning in Manhattan to civil conflict in Sri Lanka.
The book summarizes the problems Prothero considers as preoccupying five of the eight religions: Islam deals with pride, Christianity with sin, Confucianism with chaos, Buddhism with suffering and Judaism with exile. The book also covers Hinduism, Daoism — sometimes called Taoism — and the Yoruba religion of West Africa.
But first place in this book goes to Islam because of its impact on today’s world. “Islam is the greatest of the great religions. In terms of adherents, this tradition of justice and mercy and forgiveness and submission is growing far faster than Christianity,” Prothero writes. “To presume that the conversation about the great religions starts with Christianity is to show your parochialism, and your age. The 19th and 20th centuries may have belonged to Christianity. The 21st belongs to Islam.”
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15 quotations of mystics of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism. They are remarkable in the similarity of their message, although the words differ. The divine essence pervades all: on Earth, this Universe and beyond.
“One Nature, perfect and pervading, circulates in all natures. One Reality, all-comprehensive, contains within itself all realities.”
Yung-chia Ta-shih B
“To gauge the soul we must gauge it with God, for the Ground of God and the Ground of the soul are one and the same.” Meister Eckhart C
“Wherever you look…see that one unique Presence, indivisible and eternal, is manifested in all the universe. That is because God impregnates all things.” Anandamayi Ma H
“Behold the One in all things; it is the second that leads you astray.” Kabir I
“There exists nothing which is not united to Him and which He does not find in His own essence.” Moses Cordovero J
“One in all, all in One. If only this is realized, there is no worry about not being perfect.” The Third Patriarch of Zen [Seng ts’an] B
“Eternally, all creatures are God in God. So far as they are in God, they are the same life, same essence, same power, same One, and nothing less.” Henry Suso C
“For the Self [soul] is not the ego; it is one with the All and the One and in finding it it is the All and the One that we discover in our Self.” Sri Aurobindo H
“I went from God to God, until they cried from me, ‘O thou I.” Bayazid of Bistun I
“They are then actually united with the Divine Essence and, in all aspects, your soul is included with them.” Israel ben Eliezer [Ba’al Shem Tov] J
“The great path has no gates, thousands of roads enter it. When one passes through this gateless gate he walks freely between heaven and earth.” Zen poem B
“The soul lives by that which it loves rather than in the body which it animates. For it has not its life in the body, but rather gives it to the body and lives in that which it loves.” St. John of the Cross C
“Liberation cannot be achieved except by the perception of the identity of the individual spirit with the universal Spirit.” Shankara [Sankara] H
“I am He whom I love, and He whom I love is I. We are two spirits in one body. If thou seest me, thou seest Him. And if thou seest Him, thou seest us both.” Hallaj I
“A man should actually detach his ego from his body until he has passed through all the worlds and become one with God.” Maggid of Mezerich [Dov Baer of Mezerich] J
Other faiths have mystics, but you do not have to be religious to be a mystic. Your comments are most welcome.
(quoted from my ebook on comparative mysticism at http://www.suprarational.org )
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