GENERAL INTRODUCTION

WHEN people are seen to be bound together by common articles of faith or by patterns of behaviour in group life, we recognize what we call a religion, to which the belief and the behaviour belong together. To give an example, if some people go to church on Sundays, while others do not do so but prefer to go to their churches on Saturday, we are at once able to say that there is some difference in their religious behaviour. We could question them after observing this difference, to find if there are other specific characteristics by which we could classify their adherence to one or other of the various religious groups. We have no right to attribute to them characteristics that are neither observed in their behaviour nor known to form a body of beliefs belonging to such a group. Thus, Trinitarians will tell you that they believe in three aspects of divine manifestation. Unitarians will deny that, but would prefer to represent themselves as believing only in one aspect of divinity. We would be perfectly justified in not mixing these sects, and in treating them as belonging to distinct religious groupings.

One has either to be objective or subjective in fixing the specific characteristics of any religious expression. If one should say, "I believe in Christ, but I neither go to church nor behave in any way which is in conformity with this belief," we cannot classify him at all. We can at best recognize in him a pseudo-religionist.

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CLASSIFICATION OF RELIGIOUS GROUPS

Keeping in mind this method of diagnosing and classifying visible religious formations or believers in doctrines about some spiritual value dear to each religion, if we should look round and try to recognize the religious groups in this world, we could at once make the most striking of classifications of all religious people into two broad groups. There is no religion which does not offer some consolation or happiness to its followers. In other words, unhappiness cannot be held out as an ideal or end to be attained by any religion at all. Nobody aspires for unhappiness. It is impossible to think of such a negative value as motivating any serious group of religionists. We could of course find freaks who might insist on saying that they are aspiring for unhappiness. If we should admit happiness to be the common ideal or end in view motivating any religion whatsoever, it would only be deriving a corollary from this general statement to say that every religion has got some high human value on which it pins its faith. The Buddhist speaks in terms of nirvana, and the Christian in terms of a life eternal where one could be as perfect as the Father in heaven is perfect. Hindu salvation consists of escaping rebirth altogether, and the true believer in Islam wants to obey the will of Allah, the Most High, so that on the Day of Judgement Allah should be pleased with him instead of being angry. Jehovah and Jupiter or Zeus are also Most High Gods of other prophetic religions. The Prophetic religions are those that are concerned with an event in the future called the Day of Judgement, on which they have to face God and give a good account of themselves. There are religions which have got this apocalyptic touch more pronounced than others.

When this futuristic orientation is weak, we begin to recognize certain religious formations whose unity lies in merely following past habits and conventions. Members of such groups are often referred to as "pagans" or "un-believers," fit to be treated contemptuously by the parties who claim to be true believers.

Thus, we begin to recognize in religious life two dominant groups: those who believe in the Day of Judgement, and those who do not give importance to that event in the future. These are characterized by the terms "prophetic" and "pagan" respectively.

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FURTHER DIFFERENTIATIONS

After making this initial distinction between prophetic and non-prophetic or pagan religions, we could examine other items of belief or patterns of behaviour as implying some value conducive to the happiness of the group in question. Viewed in this way, we could distinguish other so-called pagans who do not believe in a god representing the side of light or intelligence, but who tend to substitute material objects or elementals in the place of the highest of intelligent principles. They go under the name of animists or materialists. The Ionian and Eleatic philosophers of pre-Socratic times belong to such a group. Pythagoras himself was not recognized by Athenians, and was treated contemptuously because of his glorification of mere mathematical entities or valnes. There were also those who were nearer to the side of matter than to the side of the spirit, who were classified philosophically as hylozoists. The values that they attached importance to in regulating their lives were not spiritual entities at all, but tended to glorify matter as against spirit. From Thales through Heraclitus to Empedocles of Agrigentum, we have a whole hierarchy of such animists or hylozoists who where essentially materialists, and who are thus to be ranged on the opposite side of what was respectable in the eyes of philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle. Thomism and Augustinianism had their origins in Dionysius the Areopagite, as also in Plotinus of the Alexandrian Neo-Platonist context. Abraham, the common ancestor of Christianity and Islam, laid down that idolatry was completely reprehensible - even as bad as stealing or murder. Hindus would certainly stand condemned completely in the light of such an uncompromisingly prophetic attitude. Unbelievers could be trampled under elephants' feet in the eyes of the teaching of the Quran understood in such a light. Many events in the history of India could be cited as examples of this kind of one-sided fervour. Hinduism, however, is not without its insistence on a god representing light or wisdom rather than the forces of darkness.

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SCEPTICISM AND BELIEF

Now, if we turn our eyes in the opposite direction and see what the scientific attitude has meant in the realm of religious belief, we can easily concede that there have been many martyrs on the side of scepticism, as well as on that of belief. Giordano Bruno and Galileo Galilei were martyrs to science as against the early Christians persecuted by Romans, who were martyrs to belief. If it is possible for martyrdom to exist on both the sides of scepticism and belief, we can easily see how they form a part of a human nature which accommodates them both together in accentuated forms in the same phenotype called homo sapiens.

Buddhism is a religion which is essentially theological, but this does not mean that rational or ethical values are not glorified and held up as absolute values, as dear to the believers in them as any other theological divinity could be. In other words, it is a high value conducive to happiness that is to be found within the essential content of any religion, whether theological or rational.

Each religion wants to avoid suffering and to promise happiness through some belief or behaviour. Seen from this perspective, even communism could be said to be a religion, or at least a surrogate of religion - only it promises, instead of heaven, a classless society or a dictatorship of the proletariat. It is possible in this way to compare all religions whether known as sceptic, rational, or as based on a belief in God.

All religions must have a norm in which an absolute value is held up as the most important one within its system of reference. If this structural norm common to all religions, whether orthodox or heterodox, could be visualized in a true scientific spirit of open and objective criticism, it would be possible for us to establish a comparative study of all expressions involving a high value to which both sceptics and believers might happen to be equally attached. Religion would thus include all possible surrogates of religion, and even what passes for scepticism (which, as we have seen, claims its own martyrs). Scepticism is a form of negative belief which can be as intensely fanatic as any, other so-called belief, which mere label should not mislead us. There are believers who pass for sceptics, and vice versa.

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UNDERLYING STRUCTURAL UNITY

When we are able to take a normalized position between the extremes of the two major tendencies which the Bhagavad Gita calls the black and the white courses, distinguishing the two rival paths in spiritual progress throughout the long course of human history, we shall be able to see that every religion has at its core a promised value for which one avoids what is taboo and adopts what is recommended. What is profane in one religion need not correspond to what is taboo in another. To a Mohammedan eating pork is taboo, but to a Sikh it can be a qualification of some sort at least. Long hair is likewise laudable for a Sikh to wear, while shaving one's head is orthodox to the other of the two rival faiths, historically developing like bodies and antibodies in bacteriology. The same historical conditions can produce both the body and the antibody. Accentuating one tendency can result in sowing the seeds of another. Thus, idolotrous and iconoclastic tendencies add vim and vigour to each other, and fan feuds by ambivalent exaggerations when overstressed.

What we wish to achieve by these varied examples is merely to point to a way in religious life which avoids unilateral exaggerations or excesses. Pontius Pilate said, "What is Truth ?" Truth is not even a two-sided affair, but its polyvalence conforms to at least a four-dimensional quaternian structural pattern. All religions have premonitions of this verity distinguishable in one passage or another of their revealed or sacred books, which could be brought into view through the study of comparative religions. Modern science has brought us to the same structural pattern seen in terms of the four-dimensional universe which is at present being accepted from the side of physics. Even from the side of metaphysics, the same fourfold structural pattern prevails. A normative Integrated Science of the Absolute can alone fully reveal the common structural features underlying all religions, so that the believer in one religious formation could see eye to eye with his rival in the opposite camp, even as the blind men in the fable could reach agreement only when they could examine the totality of the elephant about which each of them had known only some particular aspect.

It is the total structure of the absolute value of Happiness implied in all religions - at least in structural outline - that can save the situation, avoiding by such Unitive Understanding all conflicts in the name of a high spiritual value representing the common aspirations of all human beings, however different they might be in temperament.

Viewed in this light, humanity can belong to only one religion, which is that of Absolute Happiness through an absolutist way of life. When the underlying unity of all religions is thus made evident to all intelligent men, holy wars will become outmoded as not in keeping with the dignity of the human race, which biology itself qualifies as being endowed with understanding by the term homosapiens.

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STRUCTURALISM IN WESTERN THEOLOGY

CURRAN A. DE BRULER

Aesthetics, art, and architecture belong to each other. In the domain of thought, it is equally true that there is something that is referred to as the "architecture of thought." This term has been used by Kant, who also contributed the notion of what he called schematismos, which refers to what has come to be known in more modern times as "structuralism" in connection with the epistemological revision of new physics as in the writings of Eddington. This term is seen to be repeated by modern speakers and writers. One hears of the "structure of society," the "structure of the atom," or the "structure of thought" itself, in more or less definite terms. Form and structure in logic have been known since the days of Aristotle, and when we come to modern mathematics, there are mathematical formalists like Hilbert who are able to postulate what they sometimes refer to as a "mathematical thing." In Gestalt Psychology: and in the Theory of Ensembles of Cantor, Galois and Fregge we have more tacit assumptions of what we might call configurations or structural elements that have a togetherness and a formation of their own.

This notion of structuralism has been given a further impetus in the special branches of disciplines that have seen the light of day in more recent times. We can only refer to them in summary fashion here. They are: thermodynamics, electromagnetics, cybernetics, quantum mechanics, the physics of relativity, and modern semantics and logistics. All these new disciplines hide a structural model at their core, and use various technical terms of their own to refer to aspects of this same structuralism. When they speak of such entities as matrices for example, as belonging to the context of propositional calculus, there is a four-fold structuralism employed as between the four limbs of the quaternion structure found in the Cartesian correlates.

Mathematical convention has added many more features to the use of these co-ordinates or correlates to analyze inter-relations and other characteristics when combinations of force factors come into interaction, whether in visible phenomena or in terms of pure thought processes. Thus we can give structural form to such terms as entropy or negentropy, evolution or involution, explosion or implosion, endosmotic or exosmotic processes, etc. The graph itself is a structural instrument that can be verified by a mathematical formula, and vice-versa. A right-angled triangle is a structural element that can be seen to enter into the very fabric of modern relativistic calculations in Post-Einsteinian Physics. When we remember that this physics has as its starting point the famous Michelson-Morley Experiment - not because it succeeded but, strangely and paradoxically, because it failed - we see the strange phenomenon of the same notion of structuralism entering as it were by the back door to take its present central position in modern theoretical physics. The mirrors which reflect light at right angles, which are the essence of this famous experiment that failed, still leave for the physicist what he prefers to call a "frame of reference." This is essentially a structural feature on which modern physics largely relies. There are physicists of the present day who speak of time and space , which are both amorphous elements, as fusing into what is often referred to in geometrical terms as the "fourth dimension" or the "four dimensional space-time continuum." One speaks of two-dimensional three-dimensional, or multi-dimensional patterns of thought. The final impetus to this kind of recognition of structuralism has been given by a new school of scientists working under the famous nuclear physicist de Broglie in the Paris University. Structuralism is thus seen to be more than what belongs to a mere journalistic jargon, as some might imagine as they come across this term in modern magazines or books.

Structuralism has been known to ancient scriptures, such as those of the Kabala or the Pentateuch. The four or multiple hands or heads of Hindu gods have structural implications. The ancient scriptures sometimes referred to as "apocryphal" contain many precious delights or hints based on structural visions of truth or of significant human values, as also those of the Sufi and Christian mystics. Thus we see that the four-fold structure of Truth or Reality, to which even the English poet Milton refers, is a notion that has haunted the heart of humanity from antiquity, the world over.

The probability curves on which sociological writers rely at the present day are perhaps the latest precise evidence of structural thought as an instrument of modern research. Even the latitudes and longitudes would have left the seas uncharted, and thus without navigability at all, if their use as structural frames of reference had not been recognized. Mathematical structuralism is even at the basis of the calculations that can guide satellites from the ground, however fast they are moving, with their television eyes relaying even colored pictures from the uttermost corners of outer space. The claim of structuralism in the present day are thus not negligible, and we would not be wrong in saying that structuralism is a fecund and beautiful instrument of research, with the help of which humanity could be expected to travel from one great discovery to another. It is therefore without apologies that we refer to a series of structural aspects in the papers that are going to be read in this session of the Conference.

The subject of this paper is structuralism as found in Western Theology. Time permits us to read only a few short quotations from the writings of Christian mystics and saints, and we have tried here to limit ourselves to those selections which would bring to light some of the more basic or fundamental aspects of the structuralism with which we are here concerned. Our first quotation is from a 2nd century text, the apocryphal Acts of John, which deals with the structural symbolism of the cross itself. It is a vision which is said to have been revealed to St. John at the time of the crucifixion of Jesus :

"This cross of light is sometimes called the word by me [Jesus is speaking] for your sakes, sometimes mind, sometimes Jesus, sometimes Christ, sometimes door, sometimes a way, sometimes bread, sometimes seed, sometimes resurrection, sometimes Son, sometimes Father, sometimes Spirit, sometimes life, sometimes truth, sometimes faith, sometimes grace. And by these names it is called as toward men : but that which it is in truth, as conceived of in itself and spoken of unto you, it is the marking-off of all things, and the firm uplifting of things fixed out of things unstable, and the harmony of| wisdom, and indeed wisdom in harmony. There are (the places) of the right hand and the left, powers also, authorities, lordships and demons, workings, threatenings, wraths, devils, Satan, and the lower root whence the nature of the things that come into being proceeded. This cross, then is that which fixed all things apart by the word, and separated off the things that are (above) from those that are below, and then also, being one, streamed forth into all things (or, compacted all into one)." ¹

The reader should note here that the Cartesian correlates, which we have already mentioned as essential to our notion of structuralism, are non-different from the cross itself, with vertical and horizontal axes or parameters representing ".... The marking off of all things .... and the harmony of wisdom, and indeed wisdom in harmony." Of this passage of St. John, Alan Watts writes :

"There is a glimpse here of God as a cross at once centrifugal and centripetal, whereby the opposites-including the angels and the demons are simultaneously set apart and reconciled," ²

We now pass on to indicate a more precise delineation of the two structural axes of reference - the vertical and the horizontal - as also to take note of the structural features of parity, ambivalence, reciprocity, complementarity, compensation, and cancellability of the elements belonging to the four limbs of the quaternion or the structural cross. These factors are brought out most explicitly in the following passage from the apocryphal Acts of Peter, a Greek text of the 3rd century, also dealing with the structural symbolism of the cross. St. Peter is the main speaker:

"Concerning which the Lord saith in a mystery (he now quotes Jesus): 'Unless ye make the things of the right hand as those of the left, and those of the left as those of the right, and those that are above as those below, and those that are behind as those that are before, you shall not have knowledge of the kingdom.'

"This thought, therefore, have I declared unto you: and the figure wherein ye now see me hanging is the representation of that man that first came unto birth. Ye therefore, my beloved, and ye that hear me and that shall hear, ought to cease from your former error and return back again. For it is right to mount upon the cross of Christ, who is the word stretched out, the one and only, of whom the spirit saith: For what else is Christ, but the word, the sound of God? So that the word is the upright beam whereon I am crucified. And the sound is that which crosseth it, the nature of man. And the nail which holdeth the crosstree unto the upright in the midst thereof is the conversion and repentance of man." ³

St. Peter has here clearly indicated the two main structural axes of reference : the "upright" or vertical represents the pure domain of the Word, conceptual in nature, while "that which crosseth it" representing the "sound" or "the nature of man" corresponds to the horizontal axis belonging properly to the domain of that which is perceptual. When all of the "things of the right hand....and those of the left......and those that are above......below...... behind.... (and) before" have been cancelled-out as indicated above by certain methodological processes proper to dialectics, what remains in structural terms is the point of perfect or absolute neutrality at the place of intersection of the vertical and horizontal axes. This point is indicated above as "the nail which holdeth the cross tree unto the upright in the midst thereof...," while "the conversion and repentance of man..." is nothing other than salvation itself.

In order to comply with certain requirements of the structuralism which is our subject here, as an aid to his understanding of it, the reader is now asked to imagine two cones placed base to base, the apex of one cone pointing upwards, the apex of the other pointing downwards. A logical parameter indicated as a line drawn from the apex of the upper cone to the apex of the lower would then be seen to be the vertical axis of reference, while the horizontal axis is revealed at the meeting of the two bases. These two cones would then correspond to a three-dimensional geometric figure, with the vertical axis passing through both of them representing the fourth dimension; the upper cone represents the world of concepts, the lower the world of percepts. Other pairs of conjugates which could be applied to the upper and lower cones respectively could be light and dark, male and female, positive and negative, metaphysics and physics, essence and existence, hypostatic and hierophantic, transcendent and immanent, etc. Mathematically, they would represent the numerator and denominator respectively of a simple fraction. On the Indian soil, we could use the terms "non-Self" (anatma) for the numerator side and "Self" (atma) for the denominator. In the following passage from Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, we find this 19th century French poet and mystic to be fully conscious of the structural factors involved in establishing an equation between the positive and negative aspects of the Absolute, which he here refers to as "the infinite outside of us" and "the infinite within us" in his analysis of prayer. These two infinites - and we shall see him objecting to even this last vestige of dualism-might also be called "God" and "soul." In the four or five chapters of his book which immediately precede what we shall read below, Hugo has condemned in the most downright and outspoken manner the practice by women of harsh and cruel austerities in Catholic convents in 19th century France. But he turns the tables on himself, as it were, by asking rhetorically what it is that these unhappy women do in the loneliness and solitude of their cells. He says, "They pray." We then read :

" They pray,
" To whom?
" To God.
" Pray to God, what is meant by that?
" Is there an infinite outside of us? Is this infinite, one, inherent, permanent; necessarily substantial, because it is infinite, and because, if matter were wanting to it, it would in that respect be limited; necessarily intelligent, because it is infinite, and because, if it lacked intelligence, it would be to that extent, finite? Does The infinite awaken in us the idea of essence, while we are able to attribute to ourselves the idea of existence only? In other words, Is it not the absolute of which we are the relative?

"At the same time, while there is an infinite outside of us, is there not an infinite within us? These two infinites (fearful plural) do they not rest superposed on one another? Does not the second finite underlie the first, so to speak? Is it not the mirror, the reflection, the echo of the first, an abyss concentric with another abyss? Is this second infinite intelligent also? Does it think? Does It love? Does it will? If the two infinites be intelligent, each one of them has a will principle, and there is a 'me' in the infinite above, there is a 'me' in the infinite below. The 'me' below is the soul; the 'time' above is God.

"To place, by process of thought, the infinite below in contact with the infinite above, is called 'prayer.' ⁴

For our final example of structuralism in Western theology, we turn now to the writings of St. Theresa of Avila, one of the better known of the Christian mystics, and one whose name is held in grcat esteem in Roman Catholic circles. In the passage quoted below, entitled "The Four Degrees (or Stages) of Prayer," it should be noted that each of the four stages or degrees enumerated corresponds to one of the four limbs of the quaternion structure which is our concern here. The first degree could be called the "actual," belonging to the right or positive side of the horizontal axis of reference, while the second degree could be called the "virtual," and would be located on the left or negative side of the same axis. The third degree corresponds to the negative pole of the vertical axis; and the fourth stage, corresponding to the "all-fourth" (Turiya) state of Sanskrit contemplative literature, belongs to the positive pole of the same vertical axis. We close, then, with this selection from St. Theresa; the notion of a final cancellation of all of the elements or stages involved, implicit in the last line of the quotation, should not be missed:

"We may say that beginners in prayer are those who draw up the water out of the well; which is a great labour, as I have said. For they find it very tiring to keep the senses recollected when they are used to a life of distraction.

"... let' us now turn to the second method of drawing it which the Owner of the plot has ordained. By means of a device with a windlass, the gardener draws, more water with less labour, and so is able to take some rest instead of being continuously at work. I apply this description to the prayer of quiet....

"Let us now speak of the third water that feeds this garden which is flowing water from a stream or spring. This irrigates it with far less trouble, though some effort is required to direct it to the right channel. But now the Lord is pleased to help the gardener in such a way as to be, as it were the gardener Himself... The soul does not know what to do; it cannot tell whether to speak on be silent, whether to laugh or to weep. It is a glorious bewilderment, a heavenly madness, in which true wisdom is acquired, and to the soul a fulfilment most full of delight.

"In this state (i.e., the fourth state) the soul feels it is not altogether dead, as we may say, though it is entirely dead to the world. But, as I have said, it retains the sense to know that it is still here and to feel its solitude; and it makes use of outward manifestations to show its feelings, at least by signs.

"How what is called union takes place and what it is, I cannot tell. It is explained in Mystic Theology, but I cannot use the proper terms; I cannot understand what mind is, or how it differs from soul or spirit . They all seem one to me...." ⁵

REFERENCES

1. M. R. James (Tr.) The Apocryphal New Testament. Oxford 1924, pp. 254.255. Acts of John, 98-99. (Italics Ours).

2. Alan W. Watts, The Two Hands of God. Collier, 1963, p. 192.

3. Op. cit., M. R. James, pp. 334-335, Acts of Peter, 37 ad fin to 39.

4. Victor Hugo, Les Miserables, (Tr.) Charles E. Wilbour; Everyman's Library (Vol. I), pp. 494-495.

5. St, Theresa, The Interior Castle; (Tr.) J. M. Cohen; Penguin.

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ONE WORLD RELIGION

MARK ALBERT

INTRODUCTION

One faith in another's view is low, and
the doctrine

Cardinal as taught in one, in another's
measure, lacks;

Know that confusion in the world shall
prevail so long

As the unitive secret herein remains
unknown.

THIS verse of the sage Narayana Guru we take as the key to our enquiry into the subject of religion. It should be evident to all who have only glanced at the recorded history of mankind that rivalries and debates, and even wars between the followers of different religions have never been finally resolved or ended. The usual one-sided approach of comparing or contrasting faiths, and the tendency to argue and even go to battle for one's own religious affiliations, appears to be natural to man. This natural instinctive tendency has eternally separated man from man. History reveals that the apparent differences in religious ideologies have been responsible for the bloodshed of crusades, inquisitions and martyr doms, perhaps even more than geographical and other kinds of barriers that divide one man's domain from that of another. The generality of men have remained eternally blind to the unitive secret here referred to by Narayana Guru, which alone can properly unite religions of diverse cultures and nations.

In the forty-fifth verse of the Atmopadesa-Satakam, the Guru reveals that as long as men look at their own and others' faiths from the usual mechanistic approach of external comparison of names, doctrines and practices, they will forever remain confused. By reference to "the unitive secret herein," the Guru implies that at the central core of any religion lives the same essence, truth or meaning which can be found hidden inside all religions, and that only from this universal seed can real Unitive Understanding grow between men.

This unitive secret has been known throughout the ages only to the few wise men and sages, while it has remained hidden to the generality of men. It is of this age-old secret which we wish to speak in this paper, using the language which makes meaning today, and beginning in the broadest and most general terms. By starting out in such a general and, as it were, axiomatic manner, some critical readers will perhaps be offended. We can only plead for patience from such sceptics, as we shall try to define, and support with examples, the details of the method of the unitive approach employed in this paper and in the papers that follow on this subject presented annually.

We admit that this global absolutist approach is not easy to understand immediately, for it requires that one go against the natural tendencies of relativistic thinking, which as we have seen so often, create division, disruption and confusion among men of rival faiths.

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THE UNITIVE APPROACH

The secret referred to by the Guru is no other than the unitive approach of reasoning. It is a secret because it is discovered only by those few individuals who are able to reverse the natural tendencies of thought to divide and find differences, whether in the world of facts, ideas or values. The unitive approach is an ancient method of dialectical reasoning which, in the wisdom context, could be called absolutist, as against the usual relativistic approach. It is a contemplative way of solving the problems and conflicts of life. Using a quaternion structural imagery that we will find useful in all disciplines, we could say that there is a vertical and a horizontal approach to all problems. The horizontal approach tends to divide and differentiate, while the same problem approached vertically on unitively finds a solution to conflict through cancellation of counter parts. In India, this non-dual unitive approach has been known as Advaita Vedanta. If this secret could be taught in modern scientific terms, we could expect a more universally tolerant attitude to develop, even in the mind of the common man, which would tend to minimize rivalries and bring greater peace to all.

In practical terms, the methodology of the unitive approach begins by correctly distinguishing the two sides implied in any problem, and by seeing their paradoxical relationship. By structurally finding the dialectical relationship between the two sides, we can then discover how they interact and participate together, so as to arrive at the single unitive view which encompasses both perspectives at the same time. By correctly bringing the two sides together in this approach to problems, a global and unitive perspective which dissolves all differences is the end result of great value.

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THE STRUCTURAL FRAME OF REFERENCE

"A picture is worth a thousand words" This is known by even the most common people, but the reason behind this wise folk saying is forgotten by all. The reason is due to the structure and development of the mind. Just as perception precedes conception in the two-sided circulation of the thought process, so the picture precedes the word and lies closer to the core of the mind where meaning resides. Thus the non-verbose proto-language of the picture has more "meaning content" than the meta-language of descriptive verbosity.

Thought itself has a structural scheme, and the unitive approach is based on the understanding of this geometry of the mind. Descartes, Kant, and Bergson are some of the progressive thinkers who have used this scheme of thought as the basis of their philosophies. By the impact of the philosophies of these thinkers, on modern thought, it is impossible to disregard the schematic approach.

It will be found that the common use of structural language, with its basis in a quaternion scheme, gives our words a more visualizable and meaningful content. Indeed, the words of all languages anywhere have their meaning hidden below, as it were, in this quaternion structural proto-language. By visualizing this common mathematical basis of all language, we can delve below the surface of apparent horizontal difference between jargons to discover the same vertical meaning in every language. A word and its meaning have, then, a common structural relationship.

On close examination of any language, it will be discovered that all people everywhere use the structural frame of reference tacitly whenever they begin to abstract and generalize even to the smallest degree. Regardless of language differences, all religious men everywhere will agree that heaven is above and good, while hell is below and bad. It would indeed be difficult to find a single exception in this matter. In modern times scientific thinkers have discovered this principle of the quaternion structure in their conceptions about the nature of the physical world. Cartesian coordinates have proved a most valuable tool in science and in almost every other discipline as well, and in more theoretical realms this same fourfold structure is found in the theory of imaginary numbers and in the post-Einsteinian physics of Sir Arthur Eddington and others. Where indeed would science and mathematics be without the right angle? Finally it is this same fourfold proto-linguistic structuralism that has been in the minds of the long line of wisdom teachers and seers of ancient India, where we can plainly see it in the Vedas and Upanishads, in the poetry of Kalidasa and in the writings of Shankaracharya and Narayana Guru. In fact we could even say that without this tool of the mind, the meaning of all these writings remains completely obscure. What else indeed is the meaning of the verse in the Mandukya Upanishad which states so directly;

All here is the Absolute (brahman) indeed;
this Self (atma) is the Absolute; this same
Self (He) is four-limbed (chatushpad).

Keeping in mind such a quaternion structural scheme with vertical and horizontal axes crossing each other at right angles, each with its positive and negative poles after the manner of the Cartesian correlates as employed in analytical geometry, the unitive approach can be visualized to help our understanding of its special epistemology, methodology, and axiology. We approach any problematic situation as a whole by first distinguishing the opposing sides, which apparently make up the problem, as positive and negative. By delving deeply into this opposition, we take a cross-section, so to speak, of the inner situation to find the inner ascending and descending tendencies of thought which are hiding within the conflict. When the opposing tendencies are properly labelled and related, the problem becomes clearer in our minds. Then, by increasing our abstraction and generalization of the problem, we shift the opposing tendencies so that they cross each other at right angles, by saying that the negative tendency acts horizontally and the positive tendency acts vertically. Visualizing tendencies in this arrangement, it becomes still clearer in the mind that the opposition is not of the order of gross contradiction, but the two "sides" are indeed complementary modes in the circulation of thought. They are acting not only "against" each other, but through each other, for each other, and by each other. At this final stage in our reasoning the problem is burst and remains only as a structural outline.

Approaching any problem by such a structural perspective allows us to see the ground on which we can shift our thought from horizontal mechanistic "right/wrong" reasoning to a vertical intuitive reasoning. The resulting solution is a unitive understanding which brings happiness to the one who knows this.

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THE TWO POLES OF RELIGION

Religions have two poles or sides which could be called the prophetic and the pagan. This primary distinction is based on two opposing tendencies of thought which, in this context, we could denote as hypostatic and hierophantic. In making such a broad generalization we have the support of many thinkers, both ancient and modern, who realize that the distinction of tendencies within human thought in general applies also to religious thought. Such a twofold distinction in religion can be seen even in the titles of such modern books as The Two Sources of Morality and Religion by Henri Bergson and The Two Hands of God by Alan Watts. A prominent Christian theologian, Paul Tillich, also makes such a broad twofold distinction in the same structural terms we are using when he speaks of the "vertical and the horizontal" aspects of Religion. Using our structural frame of reference, we say that prophetic religion is the result of positive hypostatic tendencies, while pagan or non-prophetic religion is the result of negative hierophantic tendencies of the mind.

God can be thought of in many ways, but when we apply a structural analysis to all the possible viewpoints, we see two broadly distinct tendencies in religious thought. These two contradictory poles have long been distinguished in theology as the transcendent and the immanent, which correspond respectively to the conceptual and the perceptual sides of the thought process. In the structural relation of concepts and percepts, we can call the conceptual side positive and the perceptual side negative. The antinomial adjectives of positive and negative will be found to be used, tacitly or overtly, as figures of speech in all religious and theological literature. These terms are never themselves explained, but rather they are always used to explain or simplify the meaning of more complicated ideas or doctrines of a given religion. We wish in this paper to reveal that finally the meaning of all religious words is structural, and that by understanding the nature of opposing tendencies of the mind by a structural approach, we can then begin to truly understand the reasons for apparently diverse religious expressions. By fxuch a unitive understanding, disputing factions of rival faiths might be able to at least understand the raison d'etre of an apparent enemy faith, and hopefully remove the potential danger of such situations.

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BELIEF AND PRACTICE

The definition of religion is not agreed upon by scholars or religious people. This is due to the lack of a unitive approach to the subject of religion as a total knowledge-situation. The Latin word religere means "to bind". Distinguishing both its vertical and its horizontal dimensions, we can say that religion is a wholehearted relationship binding man vertically with an unseen value factor, or horizontally with his fellow men. We might incidentally add here that, at a glance, this definition of religion appears almost identical to the word Yoga in the context of Indian wisdom, whose Sanskrit root yuj means "to yoke, join, fasten or harness."

We see in all attempts to compare religions that there are two factors by which all religions can be most easily distinguished and described. These are belief and practice, or more precisely, articles of faith and patterns of behaviour. Why these two factors are inextricably bound together is not discussed by most authors, but nevertheless these two conjugate factors are inevitably distinguished in writings on Comparative Religion, such as the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, and the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Religions. Some authors use different terms, such as "thought and life" or "doctrine and experience," but these same two factors are obviously being denoted.

If we apply to these two conjugate factors the structural frame of reference, with its conceptual side above and its perceptual side below, we find that every religion has its own conceptual articles of faith or doctrine and its own perceptual patterns of behavior, with a dialectical correspondence between these two sides.

A structural analysis of the actual worship of any religion will reveal that all worship consists in bringing together the opposing tendencies of hypostatic beliefs and hierophantic practices into a final point of meaning which we call the Absolute. The differences between kinds of worship can be considered as only emphasis on different levels of the vertical axis between hypostatic and hierophantic tendencies. The circulation of thought between the hypostatic and the hierophantic aspects of worship reveals that the meaning or value of any religion lies at the central meeting point where concepts and percepts cancel out, as it were, into the Absolute, which lies at the core of all religion. This central point called the Absolute serves as a neutral normative notion for all scientific and unbiased studies of religions.

The use of the schematic approach in distinguishing the factors that make up any religion can be of great value in understanding one's own religion or in resolving disputes between fellow members or factions within a religion. When applied to comparison of rival religions, the relative merits of each will be able to be seen and the emphasis of tendencies will be visualizable, and thus perhaps the nature of the conflict between the two will become apparent. Finally in the comparison of all religions treated together, each religion can be seen to deserve a rightful place in the scheme of understanding the highest Value or Truth or God which all men everywhere seek. Such a simplified view of the total scheme of religion should not offend religious people once everyone is agreed that every religion is only different in its expression of the same ultimate truth or meaning which lies at the central core of all religions and is none other than the neutral normative Absolute.

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THE PROPHETIC AND THE PAGAN

No one can deny that for some reason certain religious communities clash more often with certain other rival religious communities. Whether such enmities arise due to differences or even similarities in religious practices of worship, it will be seen again and again that, in all such struggles, seldom does one religion win over another. In fact, there is often a strange reverse effect of strengthening the religion which is attacked by a more aggressive positive religion, in the same way as pruning a tree causes a proliferation of regrowth. I More will be said of this phenomenon in our discussion of dialectical revalution in the history of religion.

Narayana Guru uncovers this subtle law in warning religious people about the futility of religious struggles. He says in the forty sixth verse of Atmopadesa-Satakam:

To vanquish (a religion) by fighting is not
possible; no religion
Can be abolished by mutual attack;
the opponent of another faith
Not remembering this and persisting to fight,
His own doom shall he in vain fight for,
beware!

The Guru is alerting all religious people to beware of fighting for their own religion by attacking another religion. He positively states that no religion can be overcome by another religion. The history of religion has proved that the cause of any religious growth is hidden in the deep-seated values of a particular culture and its ecology, like the strong invisible roots of a very great tree. The conflicts that arise daily between rival religious communities and nations begin in the minds of men, when they do not understand the operation of natural tendencies in religious expression and the resulting interdependence of religions.

By applying the structural frame of reference to the problem of rival faiths, we see that all religions can be distinguished broadly as prophetic and pagan, by structurally analyzing their beliefs and practices together. In order to clarify these two opposite tendencies in religious thought, we can contrast some of the specific characteristics of the prophetic and the pagan religions: In thinking of these two sides of the total religious situation, the reader might keep in mind certain examples of the two sides. On the positive side we place the prophetic religions such as Islam, Judaism and Christianity. On the negative side we place the non-prophetic or pagan religions, such as Hinduism, Pantheism and the Animism of the pre-Socratic times.

Prophetic religions tend towards monotheism, while pagan religions tend toward what is generally called polytheism. It is perhaps this single difference in thinking of God that has aroused the most animosity, both in theological speculation as well as in terms of actual bloodshed, between men of different faiths. The prophetic turns toward a single transcendent "most high" God, while the pagan side sees God in many forms, often represented by a plurality of divinities. This contradiction between "the one and to many" has never been resolved by the generality of men who have used only ordinary relativistic reasoning, and it has resulted in numerous inquisitions, crusades and martyrdoms inflicted by over zealous believers of the prophetic religions.

Prophetic religions see God as a single transcendent and supreme intelligence and as a high value beyond all pictorial representation, while pagan religions want an actual concrete image or idol as a representation of value. Thus we see, for instance, that Islam Allows no picture or statue of God or his prophets, while Hinduism abounds in countless pictures and idols for the purpose of worship. When viewed structurally, we find that Islam wants a positive conceptual God; while Hinduism wants a negative perceptual God for worship.

In prophetic religion doctrine is given the highest value, while pagan religion may have only a nebulous doctrine but places its highest value on the personal practice of worship. The prophetic side tends to adopt dogmas and uses the written word or law to convey its meaning, while the pagan side tends more toward the ritual using concrete images and objects of worship to convey its meaning.

The prophetic side could be called essentialist, having an invisible teleological God, while the pagan side could be called existentialist, having visible forms of an ontological God. In the context of Indian wisdom, this distinction has long been known as namarupa, or the conjugates of name and form, which are represented by the mythological figures of Shiva and Shakti.

In terms of the time factor in life, we find that the prophetic religions turn toward the future or prospective side of the time scale, while the pagan religions turn in retrospect toward the past be placing value on conventions and habits of ancestors. Thus prophetic religions usually emphasize the importance of the coming doomsday; such as "the Last Day" in Islam, while pagan religion tend to worship past events and personages. In ancient Indian religion this distinction has been made in the Bhagavad Gita between the two forms of worship called devayana (worship of gods) and pithriyana (worship of ancestors), which represent respectively the positive Aryan and negative Dravidian cultures.

In terms of colour, the prophetic God could never be dark in colour as a bright intelligent principle, like an Allah or an angry Jehovah or a Zeus hurling thunderbolts. But the gods of Hinduism are generally dark. Krishna literally means black, dark, or dark blue. In south India the dark colour of the rain cloud is worshipped as the form of a merciful Goddess.

In terms of sex, the prophetic religions tend very definitely toward the masculine side, while the pagan religions usually admit equally of the feminine side and often place more value on the side of the mother. Allah is certainly not a female, though in the pure terms laid down by the Koran, He is not finally supposed to be given any anthropomorphic qualities; still the personal pronoun He is used in translations and never She. When seen together schematically, the prophetic side tends to see God as a teleological Father. while the pagan side believes equally or more in an ontological Goddess or Mother.

These opposing tendencies can be seen to influence the characteristics of prophetic and pagan cultures. Prophetic cultures will be seen to create a patriarchal society or brotherhood, indeed "a man's world", where women are seldom seen in public, or at least the functions for men and women are very distinct. On the side of pagan cultures, women can be equal to or even more prominent, than men in the social structure, even being the legal inheritors of the land, and wealth. Where women might be seldom seen in public in prophetic cultures and when seen are completely covered as in the purdah of Muslim society, in pagan cultures the women may be a bare-breasted and appear very strong and confident at home as well as in the market place. One can easily observe these diverse characteristics in India where Muslim and Hindu villages are in close proximity, and the differences are really quite striking.

In terms of the ecology, or the historical, geographical and biological setting of different religious growths, we can also see an obvious scheme of correlation. Where natural water is scarce, the positive tendency of the prophetic side appears to express itself most strongly, while where there is much rainfall and easy availability of water, the negative tendency of the pagan side tends to be prominent. The prophetic religions generally originate from desert regions, while pagan religions seem to grow from the most lush regions.

It is obvious that in regions where agriculture can be only minimal, meat-eating, nomadism and certain businesses such as trading would predominate naturally, whereas when agriculture is easy due to plentiful water, the abundance of vegetation would be conducive to vegetarianism as the keen skill of hunting would become unnecessary. Thus we can see how the interdependence of man's lifestyle and his environment strengthens the opposing tendencies which create opposing trends in culture; and how the prophetic religions grow out of more aggressive meat-eating cultures while the non-prophetic religions grow out of more leisurely vegetarian contexts.

These are some of the interesting characteristics arising from The opposing tendencies of man's mind in search of God. The reader can see that by viewing these opposing tendencies within a structural frame of reference, the differences between apparently opposing religions take on new value and meaning. Seen in their proper perspective, their opposition appears to complete a whole picture, which gives us an intuition of the oneness of religion. It is this intuitive understanding of the complementarity and interdependence of such apparently opposite tendencies in religion that we wish to achieve in this paper.

If the members of one religion could only see that the particular aspects of religious expression of their own faith, are complemented rather than contradicted by those of other seemingly opposite faiths, we could expect that the resulting understanding would bring greater peace to all the sides involved.

The "blast" and "counter blast" of opposing religions interacting and even warring with each other can be seen as the essential element in the process of the history of religion. This is precisely that historical situation portrayed in the Bhagavad Gita, whose approach is the same dialectical non-dual method that we are employing here. This process of "dialectical revaluation" was first described in the West by Prof. Mircea Eliade in his Traite d'Histoire des Religions (Paris, 1949), and many modern thinkers are now thinking in terms of this bipolar explanation of the historical process in religion. It could also be seen that canonical spiritual literature is built upon the previous historical literature, such as the New Testament on the Old Testament, the Upanishads of the Vedanta on the older Vedas, Sufi works on the Koran, etc. Sages and saints could be called dialectical revaluators of previously revealed truth, only restating it in the language of the day. This interesting subject could be developed with many examples in future papers on One World Religion.

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THE UNITY OF ALL RELIGIONS

Every man at every time makes effort in
every way
Aiming at his Self-happiness; therefore,
in this world
Know faith as one; understanding thus,
Shunning evil, the inner Self into calmness
merge.

This forty-ninth verse of the Atmopadesa-Satakam of Narayana Guru we take as our axiom to understand the ultimate unity of all religions. All faiths may appear to be different in their beliefs and practices, but when ordinary reasoning is verticalized to a higher absolutist intuition, these apparent differences are dissolved in the essential value common to all religions. That truly universal value is here revealed by the Guru to be Self-happiness. It is only this high value which every man anywhere can agree upon as the final meaning of his own religion. No one aspires for pain or unhappiness. Even in austerities, which appear to be suffering, men aspire for a happiness as distinct from mere pleasure. All humanity in this sense can be said to seek the supreme felicity implied in Happiness, with a capital letter. Happiness, then, refers to the supreme human value which gives unity to human purpose and brings all faiths under its single sway. Only by the use of such a normative notion as the truly universal value can the dream of every religionist become established in the world.

Happiness is not a thing nor a thought, but a value. The science of human values and preferences, called axiology, can be seen to have two distinct dimensions under which values can be broadly classified. Our twofold definition of religion was conceived on the basis of this possibility. Horizontally, a man is related to his fellow men when, through common belief or patterns of behaviour, he belongs to the same religious body. It is in this horizontal social realm that closed and static orthodoxies can exaggerate the differences between "believers" and "non-believers," resulting in inquisitions, martyrdoms and crusades. When, on the other hand, a man is correctly related to a universal and unitive value factor, such as is common to all religious expressions, he may be said to have a vertical orientation. The distinction herein is an important one. Differing religious practices, when viewed unilaterally, tend to conflict with and to repel each other, resulting in endless strife. When, however, they are seen as being mere horizontal manifestations of ambivalent and complementary notions of a high or dear spiritual value, and as thus consisting of essentially the same unitive value content, the contradiction imagined as existing between them is seen to be resolved. If the former orientation could be characterized as space-like, the latter could be thought of as time-like as conceived in terms of pure duration.

In the vertical dimension of the value of religion, the negative pole would represent the religious man, who could be called the "subject" of religion or faith, while the positive pole of such a relational situation would represent whatever is dear to him, as the "object" of his faith. Religion is thus a bi-polar relation between the aspects of the Self and the non-Self, respectively. Approaching religion from this bi-polar fashion, where in a man and his faith are treated as dialectical counterparts, is in truth approaching the subject of religion unitively, and is consistent with the non-dual or absolutista way of thinking which we have termed Unitive Understanding.

Taking a unilateral approach to religion is as absurd. As speaking of food without the hunger that refers to it, or of a medicine without the patient concerned. The man and his faith must be treated together. All religion is for some kind of happiness or satisfaction of the individual or group concerned. A man and his faith may be said to condition each other reciprocally, in the same subtle way as when we say that "the dress declares the man." It is in this sense that the Bhagavad Gita states the law of bi-polarity implicit in all religion in the following words:

Shaped according to one's true nature
the faith of everyone happens to be, O Bharata
(Arjuna); man is made of his faith; of what
faith a man is, even that he is. (17:3)

Some sort of satisfaction or happiness is the goal implicit in all the religions of the world. Thus Self-happiness can be placed in the center of the relation between any man and his faith as the common central value around which the whole subject of religion takes turns. By this common central value all men can be said to belong to the same religion, where every individual and his faith cancel out in the central normative Absolute of all religion. This approach further implies that the notion of the Absolute lies neutrally as the central principle of correlation as a scientific norm for our discussion. The vertical and horizontal aspects of religion meet in this central normative principle called the neutral Absolute.

Whether a religion tends toward the prophetic side or towards the pagan side, these two axiological dimensions enter into the make up of each in different proportions and combinations, depending upon historical and other circumstances of the origin and growth of each religion. When we come to know that such differences are only incidental and not fundamental to the faith as such, we can then recognize the underlying unity of all religions, without which it would be impossible even to compare one religion with another. All differences between religions, then, are to be treated as only individual variations of the one Religion of Mankind. It is in such a unitive light that we have to understand the famous dictum of Narayana Guru:

"One of kind, one of faith, and one in God is man."

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Atmopadesa-Satakam: One Hundred Verses of Self Instruction by Narayana Guru. Translated from Malayalam with a Commentary by Nataraja Guru Varkala, Kerala State: Gurukula Publishing House, 1969.

Bergson, Henri, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion. tr. R. A. Audra & C. Brereton. New York; Doubleday & Co., Anchor Books, c. 1935.

Bhagavad Gita; A sublime hymn of dialectics composed by the antique sage bard Vyasa. Tr. & Comm, Nataraja Guru. Bombay; Asia Publishing House, 1961.

Encyclopaedia of Religion And Ethics, ed. J. Hastings. Edinburgh; T. & T. Clark; New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1967.

Encyclopaedia of Religion And Religions, ed. E. Royston Pike. New York Meridian Books (ML 9), 1958.

Nataraja Guru, "A Unitive Approach to Religion and Theology," Values Vol. 4, No. 4, pp. 107-128 (Jan. 1959).

Watts, Alan, The Two hands of God: The Myths of Polarity. Toronto: Macmillan Co., Collier Books ed., 1969.

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