...the price that is paid for [our] consciousness is a heavy one: the fragmentation, the seemingly irreconcilable conflicts within us, the feeling that the universe has fallen apart and has no central core of meaning. We are conscious enough to be torn by the conflicts of life but not yet conscious enough to sense life's underlying unity. Yet, it is by this path that Nature becomes aware of its own existence by giving birth to its one witness: human consciousness.

"But why on earth," you may ask, "should it be necessary for man to achieve, by hook or by crook, a higher level of consciousness?" This is truly the crucial question, and I do not find the answer easy. Instead of a real answer I can only make a confession of faith: I believe that, after thousands and millions of years, someone had to realize that this wonderful world of mountains and oceans, suns and moons, galaxies and nebulae, plants and animals, exists. From a low hill on the plains of East Africa I once watched the vast herds of wild animals grazing in soundless stillness, as they had done from time immemorial, touched only by the breath of a primeval world. I felt then as if I were the first man, the first creature, to know that all this is. The entire world around me was still in a primeval state; it did not know that it was. And then, in that one moment in which I came to know, the world sprang into being; without that moment it would never have been. All Nature seeks this goal and finds it fulfilled in man.... Every advance, even the smallest, along this path of conscious realization adds that much to the world. (Jung)

Once we have stood apart, once we have brought the world into being by becoming conscious of it as distinct from ourselves, our task is still not finished. Each of us carries an intuition, a latent conviction that all this finally adds up to a meaning. There is a universal sense in humans that there is unity and cohesion at the heart of life, and that it is possible for us to be consciously aware of it. So far as I can discover, it is this awareness of the primordial and essential unity of the human psyche that most religions and philosophies have referred to as enlightenment.

Inner work teaches us one of the most important principles of the path toward the unified self. Many people believe they can achieve unity by going backwards, avoiding the conflicts, pretending they aren't there. Inner work, as a practical experience, shows us that we can embrace the conflict, embrace the duality, bravely place ourselves in the very midst of the warring voices, and find our way through them to the unity that they ultimately express.

We cannot go backwards. We can't retreat. We can't find our primordial sense of unity by canceling out consciousness and retreating to animal unconsciousness. Our evolution has taken a different path, and that path is built into us as surely as is the structure of our physical bodies. Our path leads straight ahead, not around the duality but through it to a consciousness of its underlying oneness. Our task is to find the fundamental unity and meaning of life without sacrificing our consciousness of our pluralism, our sense of ourselves as distinct and individual beings.

It is because the cosmos gets divided into heaven and earth, and because heaven and earth are in dialogue, that the universe has produced a Christ, a Buddha, a Mohammed, and the prophets. Each of them carries the archetype of the unified self and the message that the many are actually the one. It is because of the conflicts in our own personal lives—and our willingness to face them and convert them into constructive dialogue—that we grow toward consciousness.

It is our lot, if we are honest, to live in duality and paradox. The dialogue of those paradoxical elements is the stuff of life. Surprisingly it is also the surest path toward unity. Our dreams are its stage, its workshop and battleground. And Active Imagination is its superb language.

Most of the... arrows with which we shoot ourselves come from our beliefs. One basic problem that causes us to suffer is the idea that we are a separate self. This gives rise to the complexes of inferiority, superiority, and equality. As long as we have the idea of a self, we try to protect this self by running away from all kinds of threats and discomforts. If there is some loneliness, some anger, or some fear, we don't like it and we try to pretend that the suffering is not there. "It's nothing," we say, nervously trying to sweep all the feelings under the rug.

We create unnecessary pain when our reaction to an unpleasant event is to compare our self with other selves, reinforcing our illusion of separateness. We may feel a fleeting satisfaction when we tell ourselves, "I am better than he is. I don't care what he says." That's the complex of superiority. Or we may try to immunize ourselves from disappointment by thinking, "I'll never be as good as she is. There's no point in trying." That's the complex of inferiority. Most people think the best way to deal with these complexes is to maintain the belief, "I am their equal." But that is also a complex invented by the comparing mind.

Equality, when it refers to opportunity and access to resources, in other words treating everyone's needs and feelings with respect, is a good thing. But the constant effort to prove one's self equal to all others brings only short-lived relief from the pain of discrimination—and, ultimately, creates more suffering because it perpetuates our incorrect belief in a separate self. If we think, "I claim the right to be as good as he is," there is still the idea of a separate self, and therefore there will always be comparison. As long as you continue to compare, you suffer from the fear of coming up short; and, even worse, you keep yourself trapped in a constant, painful delusion of isolation and alienation.

Again, we so commonly undervalue the deeper aspects of the human psyche that we hold self-examination or preoccupation with ourselves to be almost morbid. We evidently suspect ourselves of harbouring rather unwholesome things all too reminiscent of a sick-room. The physician must overcome these resistances in himself, for who can educate others while himself uneducated? Who can enlighten his fellows while still in the dark about himself, and who can purify if he is himself unclean?

The step from educating others to self-education is demanded of the doctor in the stage of transformation. It is the corollary of the demand that the patient transform himself and thus complete the earlier stages of the treatment. This challenge to the doctor to transform himself in order to effect a change in the patient meets with scant popular approval, for three reasons. First of all it seems unpractical; secondly, there is a prejudice against being occupied with ourselves; and thirdly, it is sometimes very painful to make ourselves live up to everything that we expect of the patient. This last is the strongest reason for the unpopularity of the demand that the doctor examine himself; for if he conscientiously "doctors" himself he will soon discover things in his nature which are completely opposed to normalization, or which continue to haunt him in the most disturbing way in spite of exhaustive explanations and thorough abreaction. What will he do about these things? He always knows what the patient should do about them—it is his professional duty to do so. But what will he in all sincerity do about them when they involve himself or perhaps those who stand nearest to him? If he examines himself he will discover some inferior side which brings him dangerously near his patient and perhaps even blights his authority. How will he handle this tormenting discovery? This somewhat "neurotic" question will touch him on the quick, no matter how normal he deems himself to be. He will also discover that the ultimate questions which oppress him as well as his patients cannot be solved by any amount of "treatment." He will let them see that to expect solutions from others is a way of remaining childish; and he will see for himself that, if no solutions can be found, these questions must be only repressed again.

Someone asked, 'But how do we know what is in keeping with our character?'

Well, how does the bull realize its own strength, rushing out to protect the whole herd when a lion attacks? The possession of a particular talent is instinctively sensed by its owner; so if any of you are so blessed you will be the first to know it. It is true, however, that no bull reaches maturity in an instant, nor do men become heroes overnight. We must endure a winter training, and can't be dashing into situations for which we aren't yet prepared.

[Joseph] CAMPBELL: ...Life is, in its very essence and character, a terrible mystery—this whole business of living by killing and eating. But it is a childish attitude to say no to life with all its pain, to say that this is something that should not have been.

[Bill] MOYERS: Zorba says, "Trouble? Life is trouble."

CAMPBELL: Only death is no trouble. People ask me, "Do you have optimism about the world?" And I say, "Yes, it's great just the way it is. And you are not going to fix it up. Nobody has ever made it any better. It is never going to be any better. This is it, so take it or leave it. You are not going to correct or improve it."

MOYERS: Doesn't that lead to a rather passive attitude in the face of evil?

CAMPBELL: You yourself are participating in the evil, or you are not alive. Whatever you do is evil for somebody. This is one of the ironies of the whole creation.

MOYERS: What about this idea of good and evil in mythology, of life as a conflict between the forces of darkness and the forces of light?

CAMPBELL: That is a Zoroastrian idea, which has come over into Judaism and Christianity. In other traditions, good and evil are relative to the position in which you are standing. What is good for one is evil for the other. And you play your part, not withdrawing from the world when you realize how horrible it is, but seeing that this horror is simply the foreground of a wonder: a mysterium tremendum et fascinans.

"All life is sorrowful" is the first Buddhist saying, and so it is. It wouldn't be life if there were not temporality involved, which is sorrow—loss, loss, loss. You've got to say yes to life and see it as magnificent this way; for this is surely the way God intended.

MOYERS: Do you really believe that?

CAMPBELL: It is joyful just as it is. I don't believe there was anybody who intended it, but this is the way it is. James Joyce has a memorable line: "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." And the way to awake from it is not to be afraid, and to recognize that all of this, as it is, is a manifestation of the horrendous power that is of all creation. The ends of things are always painful. But pain is part of there being a world at all.

MOYERS: But if you accepted that as an ultimate conclusion, you wouldn't try to form any laws or fight any battles or—

CAMPBELL: I didn't say that.

MOYERS: Isn't that the logical conclusion to draw from accepting everything as it is?

CAMPBELL: That is not the necessary conclusion to draw. You could say, "I will participate in this life, I will join the army, I will go to war," and so forth.

MOYERS: "I will do the best I can."

CAMPBELL: "I will participate in the game. It is a wonderful, wonderful opera—except that it hurts."

Affirmation is difficult. We always affirm with conditions. I affirm the world on condition that it gets to be the way Santa Claus told me it ought to be. But affirming it the way it is—that's the hard thing, and that is what rituals are about. Ritual is group participation in the most hideous act, which is the act of life—namely, killing and eating another living thing. We do it together, and this is the way life is. The hero is the one who comes to participate in life courageously and decently, in the way of nature, not in the way of personal rancor, disappointment, or revenge.

Contrary to orthodox sources, which interpret Christ's death as a sacrifice redeeming humanity from guilt and sin, this gnostic gospel sees the crucifixion as the occasion for discovering the divine self within. Yet with this different interpretation, the Gospel of Truth gives a moving account of Jesus' death:

... the merciful one, the faithful one, Jesus, was patient in accepting sufferings... since he knows that his death is life for many.... He was nailed to a tree... He draws himself down to death though eternal life clothes him. Having stripped himself of the perishable rags, he put on imperishability...

Another remarkable Valentinian text, the Tripartite Tractate, introduces the Savior as "the one who will be begotten and who will suffer." Moved by compassion for humanity, he willingly became

what they were. So, for their sake, he became manifest in an involuntary suffering.... Not only did he take upon himself the death of those who he intended to save, but also he accepted their smallness... He let himself be conceived and born as an infant in body and soul.

Yet the Savior's nature is a paradox. The Tripartite Tractate explains that the one who is born and who suffers is the Savior foreseen by the Hebrew prophets; what they did not envision is "that which he was before, and what he is eternally, an unbegotten, impassible Word, who came into being in flesh." Similarly, the Gospel of Truth, having described Jesus' human death, goes on to say that

the Word of the Father goes forth into the all... purifying it, bringing it back into the Father, into the Mother, Jesus of the infiniteness of gentleness.

A third Valentinian text, the Interpretation of the Gnosis, articulates the same paradox. On the one hand the Savior becomes vulnerable to suffering and death; on the other, he is the Word, full of divine power. The Savior explains: "I became very small, so that through my humility I might take you up to the great height, whence you had fallen."

None of these sources denies that Jesus actually suffered and died; all assume it. Yet all are concerned to show how, in his incarnation, Christ transcended human nature so that he could prevail over death by divine power. The Valentinians thereby initiate discussion of the problem that became central to Christian theology some two hundred years later—the question of how Christ could be simultaneously human and divine.

Without wonder, the world of men turns into compulsive activity and self-sealing systems of thought and social organization, and men, at best, become experts and efficient professionals and, at worst, puppets and functionaries of assorted institutions.

[One part] of the heroic journey involves a rebirth of wonder because our eyes and our perception of the world change as the result of the disillusioning experiences of the inward journey. A man who penetrates beneath his facade loses the illusion that he is a conqueror of life. He no longer sees the world as an arena for his triumph, or nature as a thing that can be controlled.

It is ancient wisdom that true virility is rooted in wonder. The best of men have always sung praises to this fundamental disposition toward life. Plato and Aristotle: "Philosophy begins in wonder." Jesus: "Unless you turn and become like children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." Kant: "Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me." D.H. Lawrence: "The sense of wonder, that is our sixth sense. And it is the natural religious sense." Dag Hammarskjöld: "We die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason."

To wonder is to open ourselves to the gift of being with a sense of gratitude. Before we can act with integrity, before we can think with respect, we must pause to wonder. Over the last three hundred years men switched their stance from wondering to "knowing." We became know-it-alls, take-charge guys. Do we have the wisdom to be the architects of destiny? Do you trust Lee Iacocca with the future? No question about it, he is a smart man. But is he wise? Maybe what's good for General Motors isn't good for the country, the biosphere, or the future of the planet. To continue the modern masculine habit of using intelligence without wisdom and technology without wonder is a formula for certain disaster.

The virtue of wonder also protects us against the spiritual claustrophobia of living in an overdomesticated world within a narrowly defined self-image. The achievements of science notwithstanding, ultimately neither the world nor the self are knowable. We live within a mystery, at once terrifying and fascinating, that always exceeds our understanding. Any definition of who we are is too limiting. I should approach myself like a country that will always contain unexplored wilderness and unfathomable seas. Who am I? More than I can ever know.

In man's life his time is a mere instant, his existence a flux, his perception fogged, his whole bodily composition rotting, his mind a whirligig, his fortune unpredictable, his fame unclear. To put it shortly: all things of the body stream away like a river, all things of the mind are dreams and delusion; life is warfare, and a visit in a strange land; the only lasting fame is oblivion.

What then can escort us on our way? One thing, and one thing only: philosophy. This consist in keeping the divinity within us inviolate and free from harm, master of pleasure and pain, doing nothing without aim, truth, or integrity, and independent of others' action or failure to act. Further, accepting all that happens and is allotted to it as coming from that other source which is its own origin: and at all times awaiting death with the glad confidence that it is nothing more than the dissolution of the elements of which every living creature is composed. Now if there is nothing fearful for the elements themselves in their constant changing of each into another, why should one look anxiously in prospect at the change and dissolution of them all? This is in accordance with nature: and nothing harmful is in accordance with nature.

We may console ourselves about our historical demotion from the status of cosmic heroism by saying that at least we know what true religion is, whereas these cosmic creators lived according to childish magic. I'll admit that our historical disenchantment is a burden that gives us a certain sober worldliness, but there is no valid difference between religion and magic, no matter how many books are written to support the distinction. As Hocart pointed out so succinctly, magic is religion we don't believe in, and religion is magic we believe in. Voilá tout.

What Huizinga did in Homo Ludens was show that primitive life was basically a rich and playful dramatization of life; primitive man acted out his significance as a living creature and as a lord over other creatures. It seems to me like genius, this remarkable intuition of what man needs and wants; and primitive man not only had this uncanny intuition but actually acted on it, set up his social life to give himself what he wanted and needed. We may know what we lack in modern life, and we brood on it, but twist and sweat as we may we can never seem to bring it off. Perhaps things were simpler and more manageable in prehistoric times and had not gotten out of hand, and so man could act on what he knew. Primitive man set up his society as a stage, surrounded himself with actors to play different roles, invented gods to address the performance to, and then ran off one ritual drama after the other, raising himself to the stars and bringing the stars down into the affairs of men. He staged the dance of life, with himself at the center. And to think that when western man first crashed uninvited into these spectacular dramas, he was scornful of what he saw. That was because, as Huizinga so well argued, western man was already a fallen creature who had forgotten how to play, how to impart to life high style and significance. Western man was being given a brief glimpse of the creations of human genius, and like a petulant imbecile bully who feels discomfort at what he doesn't understand, he proceeded to smash everything in sight.

Gos is like the behemoth and the leviathan; the fruitful nature giving forth abundance,—the untamable wildness and boundlessness of nature,—and the overwhelming danger of the unchained power.

But what has destroyed Job's earthly paradise? The unchained power of nature. As the poet lets it be seen..., God has simply turned his other side outward for once; the side which man calls the devil, and which lets loose all the torments of nature on Job, naturally for the purpose of discipline and training. The God who created such monstrosities, before whom the poor weak man stiffens with anxiety, truly must hide qualities within himself which are food for thought. This God lives in the heart, in the unconscious, in the realm of metapsychology. There is the source of the anxiety before the unspeakably horrible, and of the strength to withstand the horrors. The person, that is to say his conscious "I," is like a plaything, like a feather which is whirled around by different currents of air; sometimes the sacrifice and sometimes the sacrificer, and he cannot hinder either. The Book of Job shows us God at work both as creator and destroyer. Who is this God? A thought which humanity in every part of the world and in all ages has brought forth from itself and always again anew in similar forms; a power in the other world which man gives praise, a power which creates as well as destroys, an idea necessary to life.

Our culture therefore must not omit the arming of the man. Let him hear in season that he is born into the state of war, and that the commonwealth and his own well-being require that he should not go dancing in the weeds of peace, but warned, self-collected and neither defying nor dreading the thunder, let him take both reputation and life in his hand, and with perfect urbanity dare the gibbet and the mob by the absolute truth of his speech and the rectitude of his behavior.

Towards all this external evil the man within the breast assumes a warlike attitude, and affirms his ability to cope single-handed with the infinite army of enemies. To this military attitude of the soul we give the name Heroism. Its rudest form is the contempt for safety and ease, which makes the attractiveness of war. It is a self-trust which slights the restraints of prudence, in the plenitude of its energy and power to repair the harms it may suffer. The hero is a mind of such balance that no disturbances can shake his will, but pleasantly and as it were merrily he advances to his own music, alike in frightful alarms and in the tipsy mirth of universal dissoluteness. There is somewhat not philosophical in heroism; there is somewhat not holy in it; it seems not to know that other souls are of one texture with it; it has pride; it is the extreme of individual nature. Nevertheless we must profoundly revere it. There is somewhat in great actions which does not allow us to go behind them. Heroism feels and never reasons, and therefore is always right; and although a different breeding, different religion and greater intellectual activity would have modified or even reversed the particular action, yet for the hero that thing he does is the highest deed, and is not open to the censure of philosophers or divines. It is the avowal of the unschooled man that he finds a quality in him that is negligent of expense, of health, of life, of danger, of hatred, of reproach, and knows that his will is higher and more excellent than all actual and all possible antagonists.

Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good. Heroism is an obedience to a secret impulse of an individual's character. Now to no other man can its wisdom appear as it does to him, for every man must be supposed to see a little farther on his own proper path than any one else. Therefore just and wise men take umbrage at his act, until after some little time be past; then they see it to be in unison with their acts. All prudent men see that the action is clean contrary to a sensual prosperity; for every heroic act measures itself by its contempt of some external good. But it finds its own success at last, and then the prudent also extol.

Self-trust is the essence of heroism. It is the state of the soul at war, and its ultimate objects are the last defiance of falsehood and wrong, and the power to bear all that can be inflicted by evil agents. It speaks the truth and it is just, generous, hospitable, temperate, scornful of petty calculations and scornful of being scorned. It persists; it is of an undaunted boldness and of a fortitude not to be wearied out.

What is characterized as God in the Abrahamic account is the spirit that eternally says, in essence, even to the unwilling, "You must leave the comforts of your tent—your home and family—and journey into the terrible world." God is that which compels us outward.

...

What does it mean that God calls Abram to journey [to the land of the Canaanites]? It means that every sojourner called forth by the spirit of adventure will suffer exposure to the full gamut of human sin and cruelty, and that such exposure must somehow be managed—even turned into part of the adventure. This point is repeated when the hero of our current story journeys into the absolute depths of depravity characterizing the doomed cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Why is this all necessary? Because the world is fallen. Because the world is real. Because man has something genuine to do. Where there is no challenge and no limits there is no impetus upward, no growth, no development—even nothing real. The meaninglessness of such situations signifies exactly that. Obstacles make things real. Limits, constraints, and dangers make things real. Maybe death itself is necessary to make things real. Then the question arises: If the cost of reality is death, how might reality manifest itself to justify that price? That is the ultimate question, with the paradisal dream providing the impossible answer. God provides an intimation, with the initial call. If the requirement to strive forward in the world is accepted, the reward is limitless: a life well-lived, the establishment of a genuine and stellar reputation, the founding of a nation, and a blessing on the entire world. Is that sufficient to pay for death? There is no a priori answer. That is the curse of the true existential dilemma. Is it worth it? You are fated to find out along the way.

What way?

That is the eternal question.

...[In] the contemporary world of cross-cultural communication, where the minds of men, leaping the local fences, can recognize common fields of experience and realization under alien forms, what many priests and sociologists regard as eight distinct deities, the comparative mythologist and psychologist can take to be aspects of one and the same. The nineteenth-century saint and sage Ramakrishna stressed the psychological—as opposed to ethnological—orientation when he spoke of the ultimate unity of all religions.

"A mother prepares dishes to suit the stomachs of her children," he said. "Suppose she has five children and a fish is brought for the family. She doesn't cook pilau or kalia for all of them. All have not the same power of digestion. She prepares for some a simple stew; but she loves all of her children equally....Do you know what the truth is?" he asked. And he answered his own question:

God has made different religions to suit different aspirants, times and countries. All doctrines are only so many paths; but a path is by no means God himself. Indeed, one can reach God if one follows any path with wholehearted devotion. You have no doubt heard the story of the chameleon. A man entered the wood and saw a chameleon on a tree. He reported to his friends. "I have seen a red lizard." He was firmly convinced that it was nothing but red. Another person, after visiting the tree said, "I have seen a green lizard." He was firmly convinced that it was nothing but green. But the man who lived under the tree said, "What both of you have said is true. But the fact is that the creature is sometimes red, sometimes green, sometimes yellow, and sometimes has no color at all."

Every student of comparative mythology knows that when the orthodox mind talks and writes of God the nations go asunder; the deśī, the local, historical, ethical aspect of the cult symbol is taken with absolute seriousness and the chameleon is green, not red. Whereas, when the mystics talk, no matter what their deśī, their words in a profound sense meet—and the nations too. The names of Śiva, Allah, Buddha, and Christ lose their historical force and come together as adequate pointers of a way (mārga) that all must go who would transcend their time-bound, earth-bound faculties and limitations.

The Authoritative Teaching, another [Gnostic] text discovered at Nag Hammadi, also offers vehement attack on catholic Christianity. The author tells the story of the soul, who originally came from heaven, from the "fullness of being," but when she "was cast into the body" she experienced sensual desire, passions, hatred, and envy. Clearly the allegory refers to the individual soul's struggle against passions and sin; yet the language of the account suggests a wider, social referent as well. It relates the struggle of those who are spiritual, akin to the soul (with whom the author identifies), against those who are essentially alien to her. The author explains that some who were called "our brothers," who claimed to be Christians, actually were outsiders. Although "the word has been preached" to them, and they heard "the call" and performed acts of worship, these self-professed Christians were "worse than... the pagans," who had an excuse for their ignorance.

On what counts does the gnostic accuse these believers? First, that they "do no seek after God." The gnostic understands Christ's message not as offering a set of answers, but as encouragement to engage in a process of searching: "seek and inquire about the ways you should go, since there is nothing else as good as this." The rational soul longs to

see with her mind, and perceive her kinsmen, and learn about her root... in order that she might receive what is hers...

What is the result? The author declares that she attains fulfillment:

...the rational soul who wearied herself in seeking—she learned about God. She labored with inquiring, enduring distress in the body, wearing out her feet after the evangelists, learning about the Inscrutable One.... She came to rest in him who is at rest. She reclined in the bride-chamber. She ate of the banquet for which she had hungered.... She found what she had sought.

Those who are gnostics follow her path. But non-gnostic Christians "do not seek":

...these—the ones who are ignorant—do not seek after God.... they do not inquire about God... the senseless man hears the call, but he is ignorant of the place to which he has been called. And he did not ask, during the preaching, "Where is the temple into which I should go and worship?"

Those who merely believe the preaching they hear, without asking questions, and who accept the worship set before them, not only remain ignorant themselves, but "if they find someone else who asks about his salvation," they act immediately to censor and silence him.

Second, these "enemies" assert that they themselves are the soul's "shepherd":

...They did not realize that she has an invisible, spiritual body; they think "We are her shepherd, who feeds her." But they did not realize that she knows another way which is hidden from them. This her true shepherd taught her in gnosis.

Using the common term for bishop (poimen, "shepherd"), the author refers, apparently, to members of the clergy: they did now know that the gnostic Christian had direct access to Christ himself, the soul's true shepherd, and did not need their guidance. Now did these would-be shepherds realize that the true church was not the visible one (the community over which they preside), but that "she has an invisible, spiritual body"—that is, she included only those who were spiritual. Only Christ, and they themselves, knew who they were.

In every school of Christianity, we see people who follow the same spirit, who do not want to speculate on what cannot be speculated about. "Negative theology" is an effort and practice to prevent Christians from being caught by notions and concepts that prevent them from touching the living spirit of Christianity. When we speak of negative theology, the theology of the Death of God, we are talking about the death of every concept we may have of God in order to experience God as a living reality directly.

A good theologian is one who says almost nothing about God, even though the word "theology" means "discourse about God." It is risky to talk about God. The notion of God might be an obstacle for us to touch God as love, wisdom, and mindfulness. The Buddha was very clear about this. He said, "You tell me that you are in love with a beautiful woman, but when I ask you, 'What is the color of her eyes? What is her name? What is the name of her town?' you cannot tell me. I don't believe you are really in love with something real." Your notion of God may be vague like that, not having to do with reality. The Buddha was not against God. He was only against notions of God that are mere mental constructions that do not correspond to reality, notions that prevent us from developing ourselves and touching ultimate reality. That is why I believe it is safer to approach God through the Holy Spirit than through the door of theology. We can identify the Holy Spirit whenever it makes its presence felt. Whenever we see someone who is loving, compassionate, mindful, caring, and understanding, we know that the Holy Spirit is there.