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We have examined these three systems of thought in their essence as separate systems and have noted a few crossover themes.  Now we need to see how they have become deeply intertwined in our time and the reason for their coming together – found in an explanation that is both ancient and surprisingly contemporary.

In Romans 1:25, the apostle Paul makes a simple yet profound statement.  He states that there are only to types of spirituality: (1) worship and service of nature-creation, which is monism, everything shares the divine nature, and all is therefor one, and (2) worship and service of the Creator, which is Biblical, this emphasizes two kinds of existence, that of Creator and that of the creation.  Into these two possibilities, if Paul is right, all human systems can be eventually fitted.

Certainly all the world’s non-Christian religions can be fitted into Paul’s scheme, because they believe themselves to hold the same beliefs – as the Parliament of the World’s Religions, mentioned earlier in this study, affirmed --- and have a name for it:  The Perennial Philosophy. Peter Occhiogrosso, author of the 600-page encyclopedia on world religions called The Joy of Sects, shows that behind the many seemingly antagonistic expressions of the world’s religions, there is a deep level of agreement “which is not spoken of by their mainstream purveyors.  “This is the level,” he says, “sometimes referred to as the Perennial Philosophy.”   He goes on: “Under and through each of the great traditions runs a stream -, … a single stream that feeds each of these traditions from a single source, … the Perennial Philosophy.” Aldous Huxley, inventor of the term Perennial Philosophy, describes it as a belief system that recognizes

a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality; the ethic that places man’s final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being – the thing is immemorial and universal. Rudiments of the Perennial Philosophy may be found among the traditional lore of primitive peoples in every region of the world, and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of the higher religions.

Huxley calls this “the Highest Common Factor,” which holds al the religions together.  Stephan Hoeller, as bishop of the Ecclesia Gnostica of Los Angeles, places Gnosticism within this large category when he observes:  “In his 1947 work The Perennial Philosophy, Aldous Huxley promulgated a kind of gnosis that was in effect a mystery reserved for elites, revealed at the dawn of history and handed down through various religious traditions, where it still maintains itself in spite of its ostensible incompatibility with the official dogmas of those traditions.”

Not only Gnosticism but the great Eastern religion of Hinduism can be added to this perennialist tradition.  The religion scholar Philip Goldberg, documenting how contemporary America is turning to Hindu spirituality, justifies the religious synthesis taking place in our time by setting it precisely in the context of perennialism.  He states that “perennialism arose from the frequent observation that the esoteric or mystical components of religious traditions – as opposed to exotic ritual, doctrine, ethics and the like – call forth strikingly similar descriptions of reality, across cultures and regardless of era”  The common factor, says Goldberg, is the mystical experience of oneness.

Before we go on:

  1. Read Romans 1:25. What two kinds of spirituality are described in this verse? What is the key distinction between them?