Category Archives: Comparative Religion

Comparative Religion, Spiritual Practice, Sufism

The Five Klesas: A Complete program for Islamic ‘Tarbiya”(Training)

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People ask me why I think Comparative Religion is an important subject for all to learn.Here is a wonderful example!

Today, as I was doing my morning walk,on the fasting day of Arafat,I came upon the usual challenges that Muslims are confronted with during the summer months in North America.The Quran tells us to “lower our gaze” and yet we are challenged with lovely-looking, skimpily clad females all around us! Yes,even during the pandemic lol.

And then I had an inspiration(‘ilham’ in Arabic).Why this ruling of loweing the gaze?! These rulings are not just capricious or arbitary as some may think.Hasha,abadan,never! They come from wisdom.

And the wisdom is the following.If we do as Westerners are inclined,even urged to do,and “check out” the members of the opposite sex,then we are generating desire .And desire gets in the way of our path to Allah.It is a big distraction.

This thinking led me to reflect on the Buddhist teaching of the Five Klesas(Obstacles on our path to Enlightenment,in their way of thinking.) And what are these five obstacles?

1) Desire/Attachment

2) Aversion(Anger and Fear)

3) Laziness(and its sister procrastination)

4) Agitation(goals and ambitions) and finally

5) doubt( something often promoted by the scientific mind-set)

“What a wonderful formula for Islamic”tarbiya” I thought-succinct and comprehensive and even “actionable” as American politicians like to say lol.

Let us take them one by one;

1) Desire. Ramakrishna called them “women and gold”(There I go.More Comparative Religion lol).Yes,Sexual attraction to the opposite sex,or even,dare I say in this age of political-correctness, to the same sex.And greed-the love of money(and material possessions) symbolized by gold.

2) Aversion– a) Anger.Did the Prophet of Islam saws not warn us?! “Don’t be angry” he repeated three times to the man asking advice.And b) Fear– which comes from lack of Trust in our Lord(tawakuul.”Everything is in good hands,the hands of Allah”.He is the Controller,He is the Determiner of Affairs,He is the all-Powerful,He is the Provider.What is there to fear?!

3) Laziness-which is from the ‘nafs’ ego.Sheikh Nazim used to say: “The ideal of the nafs is to lie under a fruit tree and wait,without any effort whatsoever,for the fruit to fall into our mouths”lol. So instead,as seekers,we do “jihad-al-nafs”-the great struggle against our ego and its laziness.

4) Agitation; Which usually comes from self-will and self-direction;from thinking we can control things ,that we are in charge.That is a recipe for anxiety and stress and misery.If you don’t believe me, just look around you lol.It is every where-because we have been trained to think WE can control matters when mostly we can’t and we are better off surrendering to What is rather than shaping it.This leads us inevitably to the issue of the Will of God but that is a discussion for another time.

5) Doubt. Another Biggie! Doubt is cultivated from the first day we enter our schooling system.We are conditioned to trust our mind and our mind productions and the mind productions of our so-called experts but we are not conditioned to trust in the Only Truly Trustworthy one-the Divine,God,Allah.So most of us modern people have our work cut out for us on this one.Big struggle.(See my article”The Process of Deprogramming from the Cult of the Intellect” on this same blogsite)

How elegant and sublime?! Buddhism provides us with a road-map to become true Muslims.Put that in your pipes and smoke it O Wahhabbis ,Salafis and Ikhwanis.As Sufis,we have less of a problem with this as we have in common with the Buddhists the mystical quest-that is the quest for Ultimate Reality.(If you are concerned that I am losing my Islamic identity lol,you can read the Chapter in my last book  Understanding Life called”Unpacking Buddhism” to see where I disagree with the Buddhists).

After I shared this understanding with one of my students who has a knack for calling me out on my slips and my omissions,he said to me”What about ‘shirk'(idolatry).The Buddhists don’t have that ,do they.”At first,I just let it pass and then it came to me.Yes,there is plenty about “shirk’ in this model of Five Klesas.Let me explain.”Shirk” (idolatry) is the cardinal sin in Islam just as Pride is the cardinal sin in Christianity.Literally it means partnership.So Muslims are taught not to make partners with Allah.The idols of Mecca can be seen as partners as can all the gods of the polytheist pantheon.

But mostly,we no longer have concrete idols, in the Western world at least.But we do have many “idols of the heart”.What are these idols?! They are all there in the five klesas.The idol of money,the idol of sexual pleasure,in fact the idols of all sorts of pleasures.Anything that takes priority over our concern with our relationship with our Lord,becomes an idol.Laziness can refer to the “idol of recreation”for example.There are many,many people who believe that the purpose of life is to have as many good times as possible.A current tragic consequence of that mentality can be seen in the surge of Covid cases in the southern U.S.- linked to beaches and parties and bars.So these are not just abstract ideas.They have very serious consequences.

And lastly there is doubt! Broken down to its essence,doubt means that we trust too much in our own mind-productions.It is the opposite of Faith (Iman) and Trust in God(Tawakuul.)

There you have it .A complete Program for spiritual hygiene.Time to get to work,n’est-ce pas?! Salaams,Ibrahim

Comparative Religion, Modern Living, Psychology, Spiritual Practice

The Covid Pandemic: An Occasion for Educational Initiaves

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All over the world, but especially in America,we are hearing the same lamentation:”We need to open our schools.But how can we do that safely?!” Trump says the schools need to open.But the public health officials, including his own, say it’s not possible.

The reality is that we cannot open the schools as usual! They are designed as “concentration” camps”(yes,that’s exaggeration lol)for children.That is ,they are intended to house(baby-sit is the operative term)as many children as possible,as economically as possible for as long as possible-to allow their parents to work.That is not consistent with social distancing and spacing.Similarly,restaurants and bars cannot be profitable without crowding and intimacy.

We shouldn’t forget, as well,that schools,while they have a captive audience,use the time to ideologically program the children (brainwashing is probably a more apt term even though it would be more controversial).By the end of the program, the children leave with the official seal of Empiricism,Rationalism ,secularism and Humanism(the right-wingers are right on that one) called a graduation certificate.That way we produce the perfect workers and clients for our “democratic,industrial complex”!

The problem is that many parents are not really in agreement with this programming.They have other values-perhaps more religious,more conservative ,more creative.But by the time they realize their kids have been cloned,it is too late! Now they are stuck with ideological opponents-often for life!

Now,  some people think that the answer is religious schools.But the latter are only marginally different.Yes,they add an extra layer of morality and some teachings about obedience.But they don’t teach “seeing” and “hearing” and “feeling”. So the children don’t really understand the purpose of those rules and the purpose of obedience to them.Many of them end up rejecting the religious paradigm,others follow blindly or half-heartedly. Some even become fanatics.But very rare is the youngster who comes out a self-actualized,spiritually subtle or enlightened(“tanwir” as Ibn Ataillah calls it) being.At best they are religious clones.

So what are we proposing,then? This is the way it would operate,as I currently conceive of it.(For more ideas about the kind of teaching that would go on ,look at the two articles previously published on this blog called “Call to Action”. )The overall project could be described as “Collective Home-schooling”.It would be constituted by groups of 3-6 parents(the ideal number will have to be tested in practice).They would take on the teaching of all the children of these families in a cooperative effort for most of the teaching from elementary to Middle school.( Morally speaking, the years around puberty will probably be the most challenging.)When it comes to specialized,professional or even advanced academic education(God forbid lol) we will have to send them ,at least for now back to the Universities and colleges ,but by then they should be prepared to deal with it even if the process of transition may be painful.Personally I would prefer the professional and trade learning to be on a master/apprentice basis but that is a long way off-for now at least.

In the practical day-to-day teaching, the different parents who have skills in one subject in particular like those who excel in math and science and those who excel in literature and languages can take it upon themselves to teach those subjects.Many other more subtle subjects will be taught as well-as outlined in “The Call to Action”

This type of organization will allow working mothers and fathers to be able to continue much of their work with the help of the other parents.It will also prevent the traumatization of children being separated from their parents at day-cares and experiencing the anxiety and upsetness of entering a new school with large numbers of strangers at the beginning of elementary school or high school or after any other moves.The community of learners  should be relatively stable and seamless inshallah.The children will know the other parents and know most of the other children and be familiar with the community around them in most instances.

Sound good? Well, we need people with commitment and initiative who are willing to try this out-people who are willing to resist the social currents and disrupt their current lives to try something new.This will not occur automatically. People will have to move,as this cannot be done without physical proximity.We are talking “village” here. So lots of effort and optimism will be required. The alternative ,staying in the socially-determined track, is unhappy,miserable,stressed-out children with little sense of direction and lots of anxiety.That’s the norm! Is that what you want for your children?If not you can contact me on this blog or at jebrahim2@gmail.com. Ahlan(welcome). Sufi Ibrahim

 

Comparative Religion, Modern Living, Politics

The Democrat Illusion Incarnated

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House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearings.
Fascinating! You can see all the elements of “The Democratic Illusions”( I am tempted to call them “delusions” at this point but will abstain for fear of being accused of “horribilizing” lol).Four academics in front of us elaborating on the constitutional elements of the case It’s the
Brain Trust!- indicating what our society values most- brain power! Harvard,Standford,Yale – the whole ‘meguila’ as they say in the vernacular lol.I can’t help wondering how this would be if instead we respected spiritual wisdom and had instead a high- ranking Sufi sheikh,Orthodox Priest Hasidic Rabbi and Buddhist teacher( Dalai Lama? Golstein/ Kornfield) on the podium.I dont think it would take them long to arrive at a consensus lol
An hour or two at most!

Comparative Religion, Metaphysics, Psychology

Another “Democratic Illusion” Bites the Dust

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Aha! Another “Democratic Illusion”-that if you generate conflict by your words or behaviour you are doing the wrong thing! Wrong lol! Consider this..Jesus,Mohammed saws and Moses all generated considerable conflict in their communities by asserting Truth.Truth trumps superficial,hypocritical peace.Sorry folks-there’s no easy way.The promoters of falsehood and distraction are persistent and hard-working.We have to be as well.
.

biblegateway.com
Bible Gateway passage: Matthew 10:34-39 – New International Version
“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn “‘a man against…
Comparative Religion, Modern Living, Spiritual Practice

The Catholic dilemma around divorce

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Whenever one comes up against a religious edict that is unique to one tradition and not present in most of the others, or then again something that defies common sense,one has one has to begin questioning what has happened.The answer is almost always the same-a misinterpretation of the original scriptures.This applies to the absolute prohibition of divorce in Catholicism as well as the Buddhist denial of the individual soul,the Jewish ‘payees'(the absurd looking curled sideburns on Hassidic Jews) and the burqa in Islam.)All are aberrations of scriptural interpretation(the science known as hermeneutics or exegesis).

So for the current question ,the relevant text is the following:

Matthew 19:3-9 New International Version (NIV)

3 Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”

4 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’[a] 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’[b]? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

7 “Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”

8 Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. 9 I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

From this text,it is not hard to understand the Catholic position.However, several factors must be considered before jumping to such black and white decisions as do the Catholics here.

Firstly ,this statement was made to the Pharisees-an undisciplined and unruly lot ,it would appear.The context is vital here,as is the context in various citations of the Quran .In fact, in Islam ,there is an entire science called “Asbab al Nuzul” (literally the reasons for the descent-of revelation)dedicated to this question .Contextualization is often vital to properly understanding scripture!

Here,it sounds like the Pharisees are either looking for a “free ride” to divorce their wives whenever they want.Or then again ,they may be trying to trap Jesus in a position which he will have trouble defending in another context-a tactic familiar in contemporary politics-particularly with journalists l.ol So this statement of Jesus may be specific to the Pharisees and their evil intentions.

Let me elaborate here, albeit it in a hypothetical manner.Imagine this scenario .Instead of one of those cynical,provocative Pharisees let us imagine one of Jesus’ sincere followers coming to ask for a consultation.He says the following:’My master and Lord Jesus.25 years ago I got married.We were very attracted to each other early on but over the years we have grown to dislike each other in a very ugly way.I have consulted the Rabbis,I have had our families trying to intervene and I have prayed intensely for this to change but to no avail.It has gotten to the point where I have dreams of eliminating her by any means possible.I would,of course,never do that but the feelings are like that.Would you give me and her permission for a divorce?” Can anyone imagine jesus saying “Didn’t I tell you already that man cannot separate what God has united?Are you not listening to my teachings?!”.A priest or pastor or Imam might say such a thing but Jesus,never! Compassion is the basis of his teaching.I think we really need to take that into account!

There is another way of framing this discussion.If one takes into account the Islamic understanding that Allah is the “muqallib al qulub”(the controller of human hearts) then when a man turns against his wife or vice-versa when a woman’s heart turns against her husband (in a stable ,permanent manner rather than a reactive,frivolous one)this is now an act of God! So it is no longer an act of man causing the separation,but rather an act of God! Thus divorce becomes a practical option-one that is recognized in every other tradition besides Catholicism.

Notice here,that we are not trying to make light of divorce.It is a painful,hurtful and disruptive event on many levels including the effect on any children involved.Almost no one starts out a marriage with the intention of arriving there.However,sometimes,it is the best of a series of bad options.The fact that Jesus mentions the hard-heartedness of the people of Moses echoes clearly  the modern era where hard-heartedness has become the norm.So the example of Moses granting divorce to one of the Children of Israel is all the more relevant.

There is one more important point I would like to raise here.I believe that, despite what I have said above,if someone follows the Catholic principle of not divorcing or the Jewish dress code or the Islamic one even though it is based on scriptural misinterpretation,they will nevertheless be rewarded for their intention of piety.Such is the nature of our paradoxical relationship to the Absolute.May God help us all to acquire His pleasure in all our actions!

Comparative Religion, Modern Living, Spiritual Practice

Jesus (Isa Ibn Maryam a.s.)

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18 mins

Appreciating the sayings of Jesus(Isa Ibn Mayram) more and more these days.“Seek ye the kingdom of heaven and all else shall be added unto thee” Ajib.I realize that most people, including most of the so-called ‘believers’, are operating on the opposite principle: “Seek ye the kingdom of Earth( optimize your worldly conditions) and  heaven (well-‘being)  will be added unto you” No wonder we are in such a mess!

Comparative Religion, Metaphysics, Spiritual Practice

Spiritual Methodology

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As I study the non-dualists i.e. the people who express most clearly the Ultimate Spiritual State(we call it fana and baqa in Sufism) one thing becomes apparent.None of the teachers I have studied came to their Realization by the methods they themselves are espousing ! Intriguing! So Ramana Maharshi had a sudden “fear of death” and a feeling of a “force or current” that he identified as the I. Nisardgadatta Maharaj describes his “opening” at the hands of his guru(so it was guru Yoga or transmission from the teacher),Eckhart Tolle was in the midst of a psychological,suicidal crisis when his enlightenment occurred and Adyashant ,one of the popular California types, gave up on his intense Zen Buddhist practice and felt he was dying  when he”arrived”! So none of them came by the same method they are proposing! Intriguing.

So what do we make of this?! Rick Archer (“Buddha at the Gas Pump” guy) quotes some sage as saying”Enlightenment is an accident;we do spiritual practice to make ourselves accident prone”! Very clever,even eloquent but is it True?!

Personally, and I believe this is true for all Believers,there are no accidents.Not only do the revealed Scriptures tell us so but so do the n.d.e. experiencers.There are no accidents.That is an agnostic,atheistic idea.Everything is from the Will and the Wisdom of God.That is my personal conviction.

So what can we conclude from that .Firstly that” there is no set methodogy for Enlightenment”! IMHO even the Sufis,my preferred spiritual orientation,get that one wrong! Just because the Master arrives at his opening through certain practices is no guarantee that his disciples will do likewise.I have seen that over and over again on the spiritual path!

So what do we do?The only thing we can do is pray! So,like in everything else in life,pray for what you want and rely on God(tawwakkul) to give you the most suitable result.And if you really want to be “accident-prone” ,be on your best possible behaviour- relative to God and your fellow man-an age-old technique called Virtue lol

Comparative Religion, Metaphysics, Spiritual Practice

Advaita Vedanta/The Non-Dualist Approach-An Analysis

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The Advaita Vedanta /Non-Dualist Approach-An Analysis

 

Recently, I have been exploring an increasingly popular spiritual approach known as  Non-duality or Advaita Vedanta.  Although the tradition has roots going back millenia, the traditional  modern representatives of this tradition are people like Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta and Papaji. More recently still the tradition has been revived by people like Krishnamurti, Eckhart Tolle and Rupert Spira . Eckhart Tolle has been particularly popular writing some bestseller books like “The Power of Now” and being interviewed on the Oprah Show. Other names associated with this movement are Richard Rose, Brad Marshall, Douglas Harding, Fred Davis and my favourite Richard Adams. All of these people, very different in character one from the other, have some genuine spiritual attainment and authentic spiritual experiences. None of them, from the Sufi point of view, look quite right. Mostly this is because they have fallen for the Indian subcontinent distortion which puts too much emphasis on the transcendent and not enough on the right and blessed way of being in the world. But more about this later.

I got interested in this non-dualist approach because they seemed to have a more direct method to Ultimate Reality than most of the schools of mysticism I have been involved in. The Sufi, Buddhist and Christian contemplative ways require long and arduous years of practice and abstinence. Even then, in the majority of  cases, they fail to bring their adherents to the final station. So I wondered if this way might not be a simpler, more direct path. A path called Self-Inquiry.

The name for this Ultimate state varies from path to path. In Hinduism, it is called Samadhi, in Buddhism Nibbanna, in Zen it is Satori and in Sufism we call it fana and baqa.All of the descriptions of this end-point are similar. One gets to a place where the ego is effaced and the Divine luminous truth with Love and Compassion shines through. But for those of you have have made serious efforts in this direction, you know that this is no easy matter. Most of the gurus and masters and Shuyukh who make claims of getting you there most often fail-even if they, themselves, have arrived. So the question becomes: ”Is there a better way?” That is what I have been exploring recently.

Let me backtrack here a bit and explain my own learning process. I like to use the analogy from our Biology 101 course of the one-celled organism called the amoeba. The amoeba sends out a pseudopod to trap a food particle. It then takes the food particle into its body and metabolizes it to become part of itself. That is my own learning model. I explore things and then integrate what seems true and useful and expel the rest. So recently I have been having a feeding frenzy with material from the non-dualists. In that “frenzy” I went through audiotapes, videotapes, articles and books on Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta, Papaji, Richard Rose and finally Robert Adams who became my point of reference. The Gretsky or Michael Jordan of the non-dualists lol. I had previously been through much of the material of Krishnamurti who I visited in 1975 and Eckhart Tolle when I read and listened to most of his material several years ago . I should include Byron Katie whose seminars I attended twice a long time ago and can also be considered a non-dualist.

To be clear at this point, I am not only speaking purely intellectually and theoretically on these issues. I have had my own personal experiences of one-ness with the Absolute. Although they never remained for long, they did shape my understanding of Existence. And I still get subtle flashbacks on a fairly regular basis(sometimes in the form of what I call ‘the pristine state’-free of all thoughts and at other times with the feeling that all is right in Existence, something Robert Adams and the non-dualists mention often) although not enough to keep me in a state of permanent satisfaction. So I keep trucking along as they say.

As I explored the subject of Advaita Vedanta ,the field narrowed more and more until I found Robert Adams, a man of undeniable spiritual attainment and unlike many of the others ,a man of unquestionable integrity. So I decided he was the one to learn from. Unfortunately ,he died in the 1990’s so I was left learning from his writngs and his audiotapes and his Association-The Infinity Institute. I am still working with his spiritual practices and will write an update as the results unfold.

What I realized, however, was that there was a systematic, cardinal mistake in the point of view of the non-dualists! Philosophically the way we can frame the mistake is as the confusion between phenomenology(experience) and Ontology(Actual Existence or Existences).We could also describe this as “a Dimensional Confusion”.I will elaborate further  on this issue by taking Robert’s Four Principles and commenting on them(from his major book “Silence of the Heart”).

1)Principle Number One: The realization that everything you see, the universe, people, worms, insects, the mineral kingdom, the vegetable kingdom, your body, your mind, everything that appears, is a manifestation of your mind.” Wrong! Now if, in Reality, you are speaking from the position of God, it could well be argued that all of Creation is a manifestation of His mind. The Quranic and Christian point of view may be more that everything we see is a manifestation of His will.”Kun fayakun” says the Quran. Be and it is . So everything comes from His word which could be said to come from His mind. But it certainly doesn’t come from our minds .So this statement can create a lot of confusion. It is a product of an altered state of Consciousness where one is fused with the Divine mind. Thus it is only true experientially but not so in Reality. I hope the reader is beginning to understand what I mean by “Dimensional Confusion”. In reality (the Buddhists are not going to like this one lol) there is a Creator and a Creation. And actually(this comes from experience, not theory!) the Creator does not dismiss His Creation as non-existent. He loves His Creation! And I have seen that!

2)Principle Number Two: You are not born, you have no life, and you do not die. Clearly wrong! Of course, you are born, you have a life and you die! The One who is not born and does not die is God! That is true. But you are not God except experientially during a mystical state. This problem is not confined to Vedanta. There is an iconic Sufi story of Mansur-al-Hallaj who went around the public squares of Baghdad claiming: ”An Al Haqq”.I am the Realty. He was executed as a heretic and his teacher Junayd al Baghdadi did not dispute the judicial decision. In fact he had warned al-Hallaj not to make these statements publicly because it sowed confusion in the public. Fortunately for the non-dualists of today ,they are not living in a traditional Christian or Islamic or Judaic society or they too would be executed!

3) Principle Number Three: The egolessness of all things; everything has no ego. Tell that to Trump lol. But humour aside, there is only one Absolute Being. But there innumerable individual relative beings. You and I are but two of those!  Btw, I wrote an article that will be published in my upcoming book on “Proofs for the Existence of the Individual Self”. This was written in response to the Buddhist idea of ‘anatta’-no self- but applies equally well to the non-dualists. The followers of Ibn Arabi in Sufism had a similar idea called “wahadat al wujud” the singularity of Existence but this idea was challenged by many scholars and Sufis most notably Ahmad Sirhindi and has never received the same general acceptance in the Islamic community as Advaita Vedanta did in the Hindu world.

4) Principle Number Four: You can only know Absolute Reality by knowing what it is not(net-neti). Maybe… That is certainly one possible way, although many people have been led to Absolute Reality without that step including, ironically, Robert Adamas himself if you study his biography. So that is not necessarily true.

So where does all of this leave us? We first have to realize that we cannot accept the Aqida (articles of Faith or Theology) of Advaita Vedanta at face value. We DO exist, life does exist, problems do exist and perhaps most important of all good and evil do exist and we have to manage our lives accordingly. However the non-dualists may well have one of the best methodologies for experiencing Absolute Truth. We need to explore that further. It is incumbent on us to do so. But we must not throw out the baby (Divine Realization) with the dirty bath-water(wrong conceptions about our worldly life). God and His Mercy be with you. Salaams, Joel Ibrahim Kreps

 

 

Comparative Religion, Metaphysics, Sufism

Marifat(Knowledge of God)

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Marifat(knowledge of God) actually has three sections. 1) Experiential knowledge of God as separate from us.This can only happen outside of bodily consciousness-i.e. in the other world.Otherwise we would be knocked down unconscious as were the people of Moses when they asked to see God.All of the religions have had mystics who had this experience,but the most accessible accounts are those in the n.d.e. literature (near-death experiences).Check it out.

2) Experiential knowledge of God as identical to our innermost self.This has various names (fana,samadhi,satori,Nibbana etc.etc.)and is the central tenet of the Buddhist and Advaita Vedanta traditions and

3) Knowing what God is getting at in the unfoldment of events in the World.The Buddhists and Advaita Vedanta people, so focused on Oneness, don’t have the foggiest idea of this dimension.”Karma’ is a very inadequate,mechanical explanation.They believe that only the stated number 2 function(enlightenment) is important.The Quran and the Bible are very useful tools  to understand this dimension.We can see that it requires Revelation- not Enlightenment! Then if we are fortunate enough to have an elevated teacher or if we are given the gift of deep intuition(rare) into this interaction, we may be able to ferret out the details as to what is happening on a moment to moment basis in this world and its interaction with the Creator..It is ALL meaningful!

Comparative Religion, Metaphysics, Modern Living

Spirituality vs. Religion-a Modernist Delusion

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Religion cannot be separated from spirituality any more than the body can be separated out from worldly experience.All spirituality comes from the bedrock of religion and is intimately tied up with it.Yes,even Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta- both of which are variants and updates of the Hindu religion just like Christianity is a variant and update of Judaism.So all the marketers of the trendy slogan:”Spirituality is good;religion is bad” should seriously re-examine their conclusions.This is another modernist delusion!