Still Running Off at the Keyboard

IF I'M NOT CATHOLIC, I DON'T KNOW WHO I AM

Faith is that basic. All of my choices are conditioned by my faith. I'm not unique in this. The same can be said for every member of the human race. As we believe, so we act. As we act, so we are. All that changes is the belief system chosen. When we speak of religion, we speak of the very center of our existence, of the reason why we are here and what we expect to accomplish in our alotted time.

Since our belief system is this foundational to our well-being, we tend to fight for it, even to the point of death in some instances. To threaten our faith is to threaten our very existence--our very sense of self.

And so conflict arises when belief systems clash. As the world shrinks, religions collide since we can no longer create a closed faith-world insulated from all others. Error--heresy--lives within our midst. There are no longer any uncharted territories to which we can run when religious intolerance becomes unbearable. Either we find a way to co-exist in peace or we die trying.

This is the central premise of Charles Upton's THE SYSTEM OF ANTICHRIST: TRUTH AND FALSEHOOD IN POSTMODERNISM & THE NEW AGE. As he says it:

It has become impossible effectively to defend a single religion against all others by declaring the rest anathema without exception; to persist in so doing...is a little like attempting to maintain the Ptolemaic system against the evidence of verified and verifiable astronomical facts. (p. 502)

But what is the alternative? Traditionalism is Upton's prescription for what ails us.

Traditionalism posits a core set of beliefs at the heart of all authentic religions--a Truth that we can no longer discern in its entirety--a Truth that is transcendent, that only God can completely comprehend. He sees a reflection of this Truth in Islam first of all since he states that he is a Sufi and writes from that perspective; but he claims that it is also there in Christianity, in Judaism, in Hinduism, in Buddhism. In the latter portion of the book he even makes convincing comparisons between the doctrines of these different faiths. And these comparisons are striking. There does seem to be a commonality between faiths, yet the differences are enormous and often irreconcilable, though Upton glosses over these differences, while at the same time denying that he does.

Upton is a consumate ecumenist. He believes in unity in diversity. As he says it:

...the outer expression of the 'esoteric ecumenism' of the Transcendent Unity of Religions, which understands the very uniqueness and particularity of the authentic religious traditions as the transcendent basis for their unity--is not a syncretistic amalgam or a diplomatic glossing-over of doctrinal differences, but a united front against a common enemy: that unholy alliance of scientism, magical materialism, idolatry of the psyche and postmodern nihilism which is headed, with all deliberate speed, toward the system of Antichrist. (p. 492)

I would suggest that what he proposes is just a version of Pluriform Truth, since we must be willing to accept that there are many truths, as all authentic religions are a reflection of Primordial Truth, even though they are in conflict. Yet believing in multiple truths requires that we adopt a schizophrenic approach to religion, an approach that will permit us to believe two opposing concepts at the same time. The alternative is to believe that God is a deceiver who pits religion against religion in some insane delight to witness conflict. Neither concept is acceptable.

Upton gets beyond this dilemma by proposing that each individual pick a path and stay with it. If you are a Christian, then BE Christian. If you are Muslim, or Jewish, or Hindu, or Buddhist, then BE Muslim or Jewish, or Hindu, or Buddhist. Focus up--on God--instead of sideways on your fellow man. He gives an example of this focus in his described difference with his wife over choice of faith paths:

I can look sideways from my Muslim doorway, and see my wife Jenny, kneeling in the light streaming through her Christian doorway, but that light will always be, for me, a reflected light. For her, Jesus is the Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, born of a virgin and destined to return at the end of the age to slay the Antichrist; but he is not the Son of God, since according to the Koran, 'He [Allah] neither begets nor is He begotten.' So do we then disagree about the nature of Jesus? If we spent our time looking 'sideways' in religion, we would have to disagree. Jesus would have to be either a great prophet, or the Son of God; he could not be both. But the essence of religion, which is the spiritual Path, does not move sideways. It travels only from whatever place on the circumference of our circle we happen to find ourselves, according to the imponderabilities of race, culture, religion, place of birth, individual psychology and personal destiny, and straight toward the Center, toward the One God. And that God is so great, so embracing of all conceptions of Him, and at the same time so fundamentally independent of all conceptions of Him, that every view of Him, if it is indeed directed toward the Center along an unbroken ray emanating from the Center, produces a unique and incomparable vision of God's Reality which, far from being relative to other views, is blessed and confirmed by the Absolute, and partakes of its nature; this is Schuon's doctrine of the 'relatively Absolute'. Each view of God--whether it be that of a revealed religion, or of an individual within that religion, or of a moment within the life of that individual--is unique and incomparable, since it is a vision of God the Incomparable, God the Unique. While I am contemplating that God, I have neither the time nor the perspective to compare my doctrine with that of another; while I am comparing and contrasting doctrine, I am not contemplating God. (p. 483)

All well and good until the birth of the first baby. Then the choice becomes "Your Path or mine?" Because we really do not believe in "relative absolute." What we believe in is the God that springs from our faith. A unique absolute. One that we wish to pass on to those we love.

Upton describes the multiplicity of religions as the spokes of a wheel which all lead to the hub which is God. (p. 482) How long would the whole wheel remain intact if one spoke were 5 inches long and another 12? Yet that is what we are talking about here. All religions, unlike the spokes of a wheel, are not equal.

Upton even admits that. There are only a limited number of spokes. There are some gods he does not admit to the structure. Like Guenon Upton casts New Age Paganism into the outer darkness:

The false ecumenism of Neo-Pagan, New Age culture is the seed-bed for that 'world fusion spirituality' in which fragments of every spiritual tradition are promiscuously thrown together, to their mutual corruption. (p. 492)

Along with New Age and Paganism one would then place Theosophy and its brainchild, United Religions Initiative, seeking as it does to create a world scripture.

Presumably taking Transcendent Unity one step further by stating what that unity consists of apparently would be anethema to Upton. Yet to a limited extent, that is precisely what he does in a large part of the book, by comparing one religion to another. Somewhere there must be an arbitrary line in Upton's mind. Go this far and no further on the comparative religion road. He does not indicate where that line is drawn.

He lays out his refutation of New Age doctrines beginning on page 149 where he states:

I do not intend this refutation of New Age doctrines as in any way a judgement upon the sincerity or spiritual attainments of those who believe in them; since the state of someone's soul is a matter between the individual and God, I have neither the right nor the power to look into it. Christ's parable of the Good Samaritan was not intended to invalidate doctrinal orthodoxy, since 'I come not to destroy the law but to fulfill it.' But it was intended to present the state and destiny of the human soul first of all in terms of 'by their fruits ye shall know them.' (p. 149)

Here he does not argue from Sufi doctrine, but rather he argues as a Christian.

If the "spiritual attainments" of New Age cannot be judged as bad, why exclude New Age from the Transcendent Unity of Religions? Yet exclude them he does, saying:

The channeling of 'spirit guides' is perhaps the most central manifestation of the New Age spiritualities. It's a practice which, while not always strictly evil, is profoundly dangerous; the majority of these 'entities', when they are not simply figments of the individual imagination, are at best ambiguous, and in many cases actual demons, whose demonic nature is more clearly revealed with each passing year. And by no means the least destructive aspect of this channeling is that it represents not a simple delusion, but a counterfeit of traditional doctrine. (p. 149-150)

Counterfeit according to what standard? By what criteria does Upton claim that New Age channeling is beyond the pale? By the standard of the Transcendent Unity which is known only to God? How then, can he invoke it against channeling? I would suggest that the only way to make a judgment call on any religious practice is to do so from within another religious practice which condemns it. But if there is no absolute Truth, there is no standard by which any spiritual practice can be condemned. Yet Upton clearly condemns them:

Not every fish in the sea is a shark--but beware of sharks. Frithjof Schuon and Seyyed Hossein Nasr speak of magic, for example, as a traditional science and Schuon will allow that there is such a thing as white magic, which is interaction with 'those Jinn who are Muslim' for the purpose of doing good, though he also cautions against becoming involved with it. ...Traditional practices such as exorcism do show certain affinities with white magic. True exorcism, however, applies Spiritual power to the psychic plane, where as white magic pits beneficent psychic powers against evil ones--something which should never be attempted outside a traditional context such as veridical shamanism, supposing that any of us possess the criteria by which true shamanism could be distinguished from its degenerate or counterfeit rivals. (p. 150)

Catholic cosmology has no problem with this. We call them angels and devils. The "psychic plane" of Upton's statement is the angelic realm. But it is from the Catholic cosmology that Upton's statement makes sense. It is not traditional white magic. It is the spiritual power of God active in an exorcism. That is not shamanism, which is much closer to channeling than it is to exorcism because prayer is not shamanism. One would get the impression from the above quote that veridical shamanism would be welcome in the Transcendent Unity of Religions, though he does not say that. He does say this:

The Abrahamic religions, whatever differences they may have had among themselves, and whatever lapses in the direction of Paganism they may have fallen into, shared a clear and deliberate opposition to it [Paganism], just as the Pagans, by and large, opposed the Abrahamic religions. The two different camps believed different things, knew it, and said so. (p. 153)

Now it would appear that we are getting somewhere. That we can apply some criteria to include and to exclude. That there is, afterall, some absolute Truth and a place for anethema in spiritual practice. But wait--he continues:

On the other hand, the Abrahamic religions share with the Egyptian religion, and with the archaic Orphic-Pythagorean roots of classical Paganism, a relationship to what Guenon and the Traditionalists call the Primordial Tradition. (p. 153)

In other words, the Abrahamic religions are not all that far removed from New Age. So much for a basis of sound judgment.

In order to make exclusions, there must be a foundation Truth on which to build an exclusion, yet the Primordial Tradition looked to by the Traditionalists will not provide such a foundation.

Upton disagrees with himself in this way throughout the book. Sometimes he argues as a Catholic. Sometimes as a Sufi. Sometimes he speaks admiringly of doctrine in other religions. It would seem that Upton has rejected his own advice--that he has not chosen a path and stuck with it. Upton does not seem to know what he believes nor even that he believes opposing truths at the same time. Ultimately I came to the conclusion that Upton believes in the religion of Charles Upton...that Upton has become his own god.

There is no "Transcendent Unity of Religions" though there does appear to be borrowings. There is truth and there is falsehood.

What the Traditionalists are doing has been done before. They have merely lifted a page from Albert Pike's book of wisdom. MORALS AND DOGMA is over 800 pages of comparative religions which finds similarities between a great variety of beliefs.

In Chapter XXV, "Knight of the Brazen Serpent", Pike speaks of Osiris, Isis, Horus, Cybele, Adonis, Venus, Maimonides, Seth, Job, and more. In chapter XIV, "Grand Elect, Perfect, and Sublime Mason" the reader will find:

Masonry labors to improve the social order by enlightening men's minds, warming their hearts with the love of the good, inspiring them with the great principle of human fraternity, and requiring of its disciples that their language and actions shall conform to that principle, that they shall enlighten each other, control their passions, abhor vice, and pity the vicious man as one afflicted with a deplorable malady.

It is the universal, external, immutable religion, such as God planted in the heart of universal humanity. (p. 219)

On page 576 Pike says:

While all these faiths assert their claims to the exclusive possession of the Truth, Masonry inculcates its old doctrine, and no more:....That God is ONE...that all evil and wrong and suffering are but temporary, the discords of one great Harmony... (p. 576-577)

In Chapter XXVII, "Knight of the Sun, or Prince Adept, Pike writes:

Bal, representative or personification of the sun, was one of the Great Gods of Syria, Assyria, and Chaldea, and his name is found upon the monuments of Minroud, and frequently occurs in the Hebrew writings. (p. 590)

In Chapter XVII, "Knight Rose Croix", Pike writes:

In no other way could Masonry possess its character of Universality; that character which has ever been peculiar to it from its origin; and which enables two Kings, worshippers of different Deities, to sit together as Masters... (p. 276)

And further:

Chrishna, the Hindoo Redeemer, was cradled and educated among Shepherds. A Tyrant, at the time of his birth, ordered all the male children to be slain. He performed miracles, say his legends, even raising the dead. (p. 277)

The similarity with Christ is obvious, though unsaid.

Speaking of the Hindu Vedas, Pike quotes from it:

"He whom Intelligence cannot comprehend, and He alone, say the sages, through whose Power the nature of Intelligence can be understood, know thou that He is Brahma; and not these perishable things that man adores." (p. 279)

adding one more god to the pantheon.

In the same chapter Pike rejects judgment:

To be trustful, to be hopeful, to be indulgent; these, in an age of selfishness, of ill opinion of human nature, of harsh and bitter judgment, are the most important Masonic Virtues, and the true support of every Masonic Temple. (p. 288)

In fact there are countless examples throughout MORALS AND DOGMA of the same sort of comparison of religions that Charles Upton has written. The Primordial Truth or Transcent Unity of Religions is reflected in Pike's claim "Before the world grew old, the primitive Truth faded out from men's Souls." (p. 583) It can be seen again on p. 598 where Pike refers to the "pure, primitive, undefiled religion," and again with this passage:

These were the ancient ideas as to this Great God, Father of all the gods, or of the World; of this Being, Principle of all things, and of which nothing other than itself is Principle,--the Universal cause that was termed God.

As irony would have it, that last quote appears on page 666 of MORALS AND DOGMA.

On page 213 Pike admits Masonry is a religion: "Every Masonic Lodge is a temple of religion; and its teachings are instruction in religion."

It is small wonder that Grand Orient Lodges are comfortable with Traditionalism. It is their own philosophy, Masonic Universalism wrapped up with a brand new bow. Idries Shah is correct in claiming that Sufism--assuming that Upton correctly describes Traditionalism as Sufi in origin--is a forerunner of Freemasonry. Sufism too, as Guenon and Upton present it, adheres to this same philosophy of universalism. It is sad to see that under the guise of ecumenism it appears to be finding a home in Orthodoxy via Bishop Kallistos Ware, and is making inroads into Catholicism via Huston Smith.

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!