The Brahman

Heard a very interesting interview on the radio with Karen Armstrong, a scholar of religion and author. Now, normally I would instinctively recoil from religious discussions, but Armstrong quickly caught my ear - she was actually making sense!

To paraphrase, she asserts that while our thinking about scientific and technological issues is quite advanced, the way we think about religion and god is very primitive. God is not a he or she, god does not have a "personality," and most certainly God is not just some larger, better version of us. God is not a being, god is being. Drop this childish notion of god as some big guy in the sky, looking down on us from above and caring about our lives. God is much, much deeper than that - beyond our lives, beyond caring about us, beyond not caring about us, but within everything. To try and limit god to some kind of being with personality, who talks to you, who manages the weather and day to day life, is like playing a Brahms symphony with kazoos. You are missing out on so much depth, so much power, and stripping a lush harmonic landscape of its richness and beauty. To reduce god to a fish bumper sticker is utter travesty.

But whatever god is, we can touch it. We can experience it. Surprisingly, I'm not talking about anything mystical at all. Just in the act of perceiving existence, we touch it. Just in the act of being, we can feel it. Religion should be about seeking out new states of mind, new states of feeling, and exploring that which words are utterly powerless to explore. God is far beyond our petty day-to-day debates, and he is even very far beyond our deepest political and moral debates. Why have we turned this beautiful concept into a kindergartner's crayon drawing?