IMHO, which I feel sure is shared by many on this board, true spirituality is the real goal of human existence; religion is the social expression of like-minded believers in what Introspection has so accurately called an "answer club." Look at the JWs for instance. If you want to be a member in good standing in their answer club, you've got to profess a belief in each and every detail of each and every answer, or you've failed to pay your club "dues." You fail to display the required uniformity and you are kicked out. An extremely immature level of spirituality, as we've all agreed elsewhere and about the spirituality of which we've all voted with our feet.
Religion does very little in my opinion to answer Introspection's questions, many of which are as old as the human race.
Spirituality, on the other hand, can and does answer those questions for those who have acquired a level of spiritual maturity and insight. The Master did indeed say that, "the kingdom of heaven is within you." So then the process of spiritual maturation consists in fostering and conserving a real and living link with that inner "kingdom" or inner presence of God (and you must know I don't mean Jehovah). When once you have touched this inner presence, when you have "seen the light," the living luminosity of the indwelling spirit of God, then there is an immediate and direct knowing. The symbols and analogies and indirect knowing of answer clubs is replaced by a timeless certainty and from this comes gnosis and with it "peace that passes all understanding" and awareness of the Infinity of the Love of God for each of his children of evolutionary origin.
When once a seeker after spirituality has touched this reality, s/he can communicate the experience with others who have had the same experience virtually without words. The details of their experience may be different, but the two people are in unity regarding the experience. So that with someone of like experience, no words of explanation are necessary; with someone who has not had that transcendent experience, no amount of words would suffice. It is a sad thing, among all the other sad things regarding JWs, that they so thoroughly misunderstand and confuse the differential meaning of the words uniformity and unity. They have done so much harm to so many by thinking these two words mean the same thing.
And now, sneaking up on my point, I merely mean to say that no answer club can address Introspection's plaintive questions. The questions deal with transactions beyond the physical realm of life and of knowing, and penetrate the borderland of the spiritual. When a person has become a measure more spiritualized as a result of even the briefest contact with the indwelling spirit of God, answers to the subject questions seem so obvious. And obvious, too, becomes the meaning of the observation that we now "see through a glass darkly" but can expect to see clearly the actual reality of the truth and meaning of all that The Master said.
So this is my opinion about an approach to Introspection's question. I hope it did some good to someone. I realize it may come across as a smidgen arcane, but I've thought an awful lot about his questions myself over the years and this is the best I can come up with.
Oh, and by the way, have any of you reading this had the experience with the indwelling spirit to which I have alluded? I'd certainly like to know if you have.
francois
