WHY RELIGION?

     To begin with, I must insist that religion represents the dry bones of the spiritual quest.  Religion is the materialistic leftover of a non-materialist exploration, experience and mystery.
     Despite this, religion is very important today for at least the following five reasons.
     First, thought forms.  As science claims an ever larger percentage of brain time, our language includes more and more scientifically based words and concomitant thought -- thought forms -- including a powerful bias towards a materialistic view, despite surprises from quantum discoveries.
     Other thought forms grow out of economics, marketing and advertising, public media, literature, cybernetics, the art of war and violence, the wars of gender, domination, deliberate manipulation and even religious models.  Internet memes.
     Religion gives us yet another language, yet another paradigm (model) upon which to draw; one which is not so beholding to the other models.
     Unfortunately, zealots are fighting to make religion a political adjunct, destroying its usefulness.
     Second, some of the sciences, psychology, brain physiology, neuroscience, and more, are concerned with what the brain is and how it functions and whether or not there is a real field called mind; questioning whether mind is just bio-electric chatter or a field that can pull itself free of all the forces, language and thought-forms and memes and so on.
     Thanks to religion and the reminders that grow out of the creation stories and stories of the invisible world, we are constantly urged to look beyond the material bias and the parameters of conventional thought, even trenchant thought of considerable probity.
     Third, we are still babes in the woods as far as our own development is concerned.  We know so little about awareness and consciousness.  We know so little about our own evolution.  We are going somewhere.  Do we determine the direction, or are we dust in the wind?  The story of higher beings urges us to look up, urges us to think seriously about our observations of "realized beings" who demonstrate exceptional integrity of mind and heart.  Can we classify the true shamans, the genuine healers, the people who demonstrate parapsychological abilities, and/or the stories of people who, under pressure, suddenly demonstrate great strength or astonishing insight?  There are thinkers and observers like Tesla, Rupert Sheldrake, Terence McKenna who speak of fields of consciousness beyond what the nets of our contemporary science can catch.  Perhaps Jesus was just a step ahead of us and urges us to practice purity of mind and heart so we or our offspring can attain to the next step.  Perhaps our language is not prepared to speak of the next higher function of mind.
     We have failed observably to mature as a species.  We are capable of some great tricks, but our planet is degrading rapidly, peace is a rare prize, corruption is rampant, inhumanity is becoming commonplace ... and right along with this decay angry voices are raised against religion when religion is saying Look beyond this, Look beyond this, Look beyond this ...
     Fourth; language and our artificial means of memory are temporal.  All efforts to record an age stiffen and die.  Who can comprehend the feelings and meaning of the Assyrian codices?  The stories we tell, the understood consensus of the age, is all that will reach the far future.  Long-term memory.
     The fifth use is by far the most important: a reminder, lessons, and training for the Chosen.  I know the experience occurs, but beyond that I am quite ignorant.  Most of what follows is second-hand knowledge.
A Calling, the true spiritual experience, is rare -- I am guessing at this number -- occurring perhaps  for 1 in 1,000.  The Bible says, at Matthew 22:14, "...many are Called, but few are Chosen."  There is no way to offer evidence of this to skeptics.  It seems to be invisible to the average person, although there are historically quite a few people who autobiographically describe having some form of the experience.  Kabir, Baba Ram Dass, Billy Graham, a number of Native American medicine men, and even to some who are dedicated atheists such as Barbara Ehrenreich.  Where these "enlightened" ones exist, true initiation, a ceremony of substance, can transform a man.
     The Chosen are not specific to any religion.  The Buddhists I believe refer to an intermediary, teacher, guide, inspiration, who may appear in one of eight forms: parent, sibling, teacher, student, friend, lover, stranger or ...  I cannot recall the eighth.  The fact that only a few of the many Called are Chosen means we, as those whose purpose is to "swell a scene", should do all we can to offer no stumbling block to believers, although the experience is individual.
     And, honestly, I do not know if religion is of use to the Called, but it does provide a path, at least of language, between the mundane, acculturated world, and the transformative experience.