Conversation with a Believer (2): Original Sin

 Q:

There are actually two common themes that run through every religion--but the one that is present in 90% of them is that people must be saved by their own deeds or righteousness.  Catholics do penance, Buddhists make merit, ascetics meditate, and so on.  The opposite extreme is that God will save everyone with absolutely no participation on their part--just a "Santa Claus" religion where people will go to Heaven simply for asking.  Neither of these is correct.  Taoism seems to sense this by trying to find a "middle way," a path between the extremes--but even this favors the works concept.

 

According to the Bible, the only text that uses the word "religion" says that "Pure religion, and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." (James 1:27)

A:

From what I've learned and experienced, I think what all religions and spiritual philosophies have in common is the acknowledgement of a subtle world that is beyond the material world. The word 'religion' comes from the latin word religio, to bind again (man and Divine). Every religion started with one person who had gained this bond with God, and tried to share it with others. 

The 'original sin' is forgetting that we always have this bond with God, even right now. Hence the re in religio. This 'sin' is perpetrated in our life with every choice, when we either walk a path towards the Divine or away from it. I believe that we will be our own judge once our consciousness is freed from the limits of the body. Many near death experiences talk about a review of one's own life, seeing certain important moments in our life simultaneously from different points of view, and ultimately understanding and accepting the role in the big universal dance of life. 

Highly spiritually evolved people (Paramahansa Yogananda, the Dalai Lama, Ramana Maharshi, Sri Aurobindo, Ramakrishna, Pierre Tailhard de Chardin,  just to name a few) would never claim that their way is the only way. Because it isn't! 

The concept of God, Brahman, Allah, or whatever you want to call the ultimate source of all being, is indescribable in words, even for the holiest of prophets or wisest of gurus.

What you get are approximations and descriptions that are not even close to the real thing. 

How one can claim to hold the only truth is beyond my understanding.