by Richard Dance

Created on: February 25, 2007   Last Updated: May 11, 2007

The practitioners of any religion should continually monitor the actual potency of their chosen system of faith. If it begins to lose its elastic (not emotional) and inspirational (not sentimental) effect on people, then the tribe should let the circumstances that exist transform that religion into a new system of activating symbols, even if this radically changes the original doctrine and message. We must remember that the typical religion has rarely lasted beyond a few thousand years, and then completely dissolves or transforms into something new. And given the increasingly compacted time density we experience today, we should not be surprised if we witness a religion arise, spread, and then fade into obscurity in a matter of a few hundred years.

Finally, whenever we see a return to fundamentalism in any religion, be it the Isis or Attis cults of the ancient Mediterranean, or the evangelical Christianity and radical Islam of the late 20th century, we should be wise enough to recognize such phenomena as the beginning stages of the end of those traditions. Aging stars always exapnd massively before going supernova into obliteration.

It is crystal clear that the next necessary step in the evolution of consciousness is an absolute recognition of the universal principle of impermanence-the impermanence of all phenomena, be they stars, human beings, gods, or religions. Indian and Chinese philosophy brought this idea to the fore 2500 years ago but only near the middle of the twentieth century did anyone in the West put significant attention on it.

Affirming impermanence requires a shift in one's prime identity away from theistic or secular (e.g., Christian or Capitalist) canons and toward-for lack of a better term-the Ground of Being, from which they and all other doctrines arise. This strange landscape, though conceptually unknowable to the logical mind, is fully understood by the intuition to be the ultimate source of all that is. It can never be objectified as other, but only directly experienced. Eventually, one realizes that at the bottom, one IS IT. This isomorphic realization is neither egomaniacal nor pious, but a plain awareness that evokes a simple nod of the head.

When this happens, the lens through which one views the world refracts its visual input into a flowing stream of fleeting appearances. Accordingly, religions, sciences, civilizational histories, loved ones, and the drugstore errands you ran yesterday, all become a phantasmagoric kaleidoscope that

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