by Doug Mcmillan

Created on: April 06, 2007   Last Updated: May 11, 2007

How can anyone find the right religion if they don't begin by asking the question "What is the meaning of the word religion?" In his exceptional book "A Guide For The Perplexed," bestselling author and Philosopher E.F.Schumacher points out that religion is the re-connection (re-legio) of man with reality, whether this reality be called God, Truth, Allah, Sat-Chit-Ananda or Nirvana is not the vital point here. The vital point is that while an individual chooses to live through his or her belief system they will never have direct knowledge of the truth of life on earth. They will only have a belief/opinion. When an individual re-connects with reality they no longer need to believe because they now have direct knowledge.

To believe or re-connect . . . that is the question?

You only believe in something when you don't have the direct experience of it. You don't say that you "believe" that it is raining when you can see full well that it either is or is not. Through direct experience you KNOW, you don't believe as this story indicates . . .

"There was once a man who lived on the coast and he decided to get away from it all. So, naturally enough, he went on holiday to experience the heat and the great expanse of the desert. While he was there he met another man who lived in that very desert and who had never lived anywhere else and had never even left his home to discover if anything else beyond his desert existed. Well, as you can imagine, they got chatting and when our holiday maker told his new friend all about his homeland and the great sea he lived next to, our sand-walla was astonished. It had never occurred to him that anything other than his own little life existed beyond his desert. Surely only desert existed beyond his desert?"

"His visitor did his best to describe the taste of the salty sea and just how vast it is, what it feels like to swim in and all the fish and creatures that live in it . . . but the man didn't know whether to believe him or not. After all this was all so new to him and it sounded all so impossible. For him the only reality he knew was the desert and there was very little water there. So the holidaymaker offered to take him back with him, to show his new friend what existed beyond his little life in the desert, but it wasn't to be. The sand-walla decided to stay with the life he already new and understood . . . in the desert."

If you ever meet someone who lives in a desert, and they have never heard of or seen the sea, you will have three

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