premjan

I think a religion or a spiritual philosophy is basically about finding an underlying uniting theme to everything. It occurred to me that there are basically three ways to unite everything.

1) Unite at the first cause: This is classical theism. God created the world and it was Good. God was the original self-existent, became lonely and created the world for company. Et cetera.

2) Unite at the substance level: God is the underlying substance of which the world is made. Or God is contained just underneath the surface in all things (immanence). Or God envelops the universe in an invisible layer a few inches thick (transcendence). This is basically monism of different flavors. Sometimes monism is more like pantheism: let's call the substance of which the world is made: God. The ether theory was probably a form of monism.

3) Unite at the disintegration level: All forms and things come to an end. The only constant is change and death and dissolution. Let's make dissolution into a uniting principle. Call it Nirvana. It's the one thing on which everyone can agree.

Then again someone can fill in the gaps and explain how science builds upon this sort of theme. I think science involves unity at the level of description (words) or convention.

premjan

I guess this would be at the "method" level. Science is about accumulating knowledge. Scientific dogma consists mainly of having a fixed means or algorithm for accumulating knowledge.

Yeshi

what you describe are partial broken-piece remnants (as they diffused towards the west) of the older understanding of the "whole".

The unifying principles of Religion or Yoga (remniscent of Mirce Eliade's book "Yoga") are that, although there might be "one truth", people will be only able to understand it according to their capacity. So the story about the "truth" gets told in so many ways as there are types of people.

Re-aligning (Religio) or Yoga (unifying) speaks about finding again the lost truth. So the unifying principle is that you go and search for the truth, or understanding. In the process, the concepts of god and soul are invented to simplify more complex concepts that rely on them. And inevitably, from the multitude and time of explanations, the noise/enthropy springs up and clutters/hides the clarity of the issues.

The unifying principle is that of finding (again) the lost truth.
In buddhist way of speaking, it is of finding your enlightened nature and of abiding in the contemplation (of it). In other religions, they would speak of unity with the god. So you could also say the principle is the search, or the Path of betterment. Unitiny everything is another word for UNDERSTANDING.

According to the old school of tibetan buddhism, there are 9 paths
(for the people of different capacities of understanding)

1) listener (pupil, that learns by hearing)
2) arhat
3) pratyekkabuddha
4) 5) 6) lower tantras - transformation vehicles - where "god principle" is outside of you on an altar
7) 8) higher tantras - transformation vehicles - where you already are in "god principle"
9) atiyoga - instantaneous understanding - in which you try abide.

premjan

not sure why the truth gets "lost" or what is exactly the "whole". Probably the way we look at things tends to be more disparate than need be, instead of integrated. It is like using a piece of software. Unless the different parts of the software share information efficiently, it is very clunky to use, rather than effortless or effort-reducing.

Anyway, there is more than one level at which disparateness exists and these uniting principles help to keep the threads of our thought simple rather than complex. Monism is a bit like object-orientation. Every thing in the world is of class "object" and thereby has some common properties.

Of course, science would say the thing that unites is our quest for understanding the relation between different parts of phenomenal reality. A disciplined and organized process of gathering facts and conclusions.

Yeshi

erm, the unifying religious principle cannot be the "god", as god is just a concept of depicting your ideal higher nature (as in lower tantras) outside of yourself in order to even recognize it.

But it carries inherent dualism in it. While the "god principle" stays on altar outside (and above) of you, you are left in western judeochristian religions at a level of a peon that strives but can never attain. Only the chosen can show you the way, and you slowly accept that you are a follower and tend to be passive about it (your search for truth).

Unifying principle - as names sake is - unifying your "lost" subjective view of the world with a harmonious "whole" that we all (idealists?) feel is reachable.
In your hindu jargon, atma-brahma unity etc.
Even the old american native religions like Navaho/Anasazi has "Hosson" (harmony) as their life ideal. So has buddhism which seeks nirvana as counterpole to dukkha (disjointment), etc.

So the unifying principle at the end of all religious paths is to attain that harmony and abide in it. To greet you in the american native way:

"May you walk in beauty"

premjan

we are talking about a coherent and efficient mental structure or picture.

Yeshi

can't speak for you, but YES in my case :P

premjan

why not just be a "scientist", seeing as how science provides a more efficient paradigm than philosophy? The problem with philosophy is its detachment from experiment. Science unites theory, observation and philosophy together in a single algorithmic framework.

Yeshi

oh, i am a member of NYSA and AAAS (or used to be until i stopped paying yearly dues)

what we talk about here is more the "border conditions" that determine your differential equation system solution: the postulates or the frames of your "model" determine the result (conclusion).

What i tried point out is that the unifying principle (of religions) cannot be a philosophical understanding (or accepting) of a postulated relation between God and reality. That would be more of a philosophical explanation of some sort.

premjan

actually what I was describing was the philosophical uniting principle of various types of religions (not sure exactly what you said was different).