April 2025
Philosophy offers pathways through which we can explore the nature of faith, reality and our being. Open-ended enquiry is essential and through refinement in thinking can result in a mind that is free of judgement, free of the ‘mote in the eye’ that St Paul speaks of.
We begin, then, by seeing the unity of life. Even though the great force of life manifests itself in millions of forms, and that diversity of manifestation is glorious, beyond these manifestations we seek to realise that life is one. The moment we recognise this unity – that life is totally interconnected and interdependent – our burden is lifted. We see the world not in fragments but as an integrated whole.
Fragmentation and separation lead to materialism. The moment we say this is ‘my country’, separated from yours, it is ‘my religion’, separate from another, this is ‘my body’, separate from yours, we begin to focus on superficial appearances; we become possessive and exclusive. This leads to division and conflict. Philosophy helps us to see that our planet is part of a sacred Universe and we are all part of a sacred unity, a oneness.
The power of self-consciousness or self-reflection is natural to the human being. A human is the being who reflects on being; the being who experiences the cosmos and who wonders at the truth of things. This is the very nature of the human mind, as distinct from any other species. This consciousness of the whole and self-consciousness belong together. Only the self-reflective being can reflect on the whole, and in a sense it is the ‘whole’ that makes us conscious of ourselves.
Since, for the human, the Creation reveals truth, it is ‘real’. So also is the intelligence that sees it. The concern is how to discern what is true, how to understand what is real. Within this context we can reflect and enquire into the true or the good.
The root of religion is concerned with man’s response to all this. What is my responsibility in all this? How should I live rightly? It soon becomes clear that there is this immediate world to respond to and Eternity beyond the world. We stand before both. That is the human situation and what defines us as human.
It is a religious situation and we are ethical beings.
David Brazier