Theology has not, as a matter of fact, had a very distinguished record in promoting the
 study of other than the Christian religion. And this is rather puzzling. Most study of
 comparative religions that goes on in theological schools has historically been missionary-oriented.
 To find out the weird ideas of the prospects so as to be able to undermine them. Because
 you see, if you know in the first place that you have the true religion, there really is
 no point in studying any other one, and you can very quickly find reasons for showing
 them to be inferior, because that was a foregone conclusion. They had to be. And therefore,
 all arguments about the respective merits of various religions, especially where Christianity
 is involved and often where Judaism is involved, and sometimes Islam too, all of which are
 essentially imperialistic religions, in all such discussions the judge and the advocate
 are usually the same person. Because if, for example, you get into discussions as to whether
 Buddha was a more profound and spiritual character than Jesus Christ, you arrive at your decision
 on the basis of a scale of values which is, of course, Christian. And in this sense, the
 judge and the advocate are the same. And I really do marvel at this Christian imperialism
 because it prevails even among theological liberals. And it reaches its final absurdity
 in religionless Christianity, the doctrine that there is no God and Jesus Christ is his
 only Son. Because you see, there's some anxiety here that even though we don't believe in
 God anymore, somehow we've still got to be Christians, and obviously because we have
 a very curious organization which must be understood. The inner meaning of the Church,
 as it works in fact, a society of the saved, you see, necessarily requires outside it a
 society of the not-saved. Because if there is not that contrast, you don't know that
 you belong to the in-group. And in this way, all social groups with claims to some kind
 of special status must necessarily create aliens and foreigners. And St. Thomas Aquinas
 let the cat out of the bag one day when he said that the saints in heaven would occasionally
 peer over the battlements into hell and praise God for the just punishment visited upon evil-doers.
 Now, as you know, I'm not being very fair and very kind to modern theology, but there
 is this strange persistence of insisting that our group is the best group. And I feel that
 there is in this something peculiarly irreligious, and furthermore it exhibits a very strange
 lack of faith. Because I believe that there is a strong distinction between faith on the
 one hand and belief on the other. That belief is, as a matter of fact, quite contrary to
 faith. Because belief is really wishing, it's from the Anglo-Saxon root "leif," to wish,
 and belief, stated, say, in the Creed, is a fervent hope that the universe will turn
 out to be thus and so. And in this sense, therefore, belief precludes the possibility
 of faith, because faith is openness to truth, to reality, whatever it may turn out to be.
 I want to know the truth. That is the attitude of faith. And therefore, to use ideas about
 the universe and about God as something to hang on to, in the spirit of Rock of Ages
 cleft for me, you know, hymnal imagery is full of rocks. A mighty fortress is our God.
 In vain the surge is angry shock, in vain the drifting sand. Unharmed upon the eternal
 rock the eternal city stands. And there's something very rigid about a rock. And we
 are finding our rock getting rather worn out in an age where it becomes more and more obvious
 that our world is a floating world. It's a world floating in space where all positions
 are relative and any point may be regarded as the center, a world which doesn't float
 on anything, and therefore the religious attitude appropriate to our time is not one of clinging
 to rocks, but of learning to swim. And you know that if you get in the water and you
 have nothing to hold on to, and you try to behave as you would on dry land, you will
 drown. But if, on the other hand, you trust yourself to the water and let go, you will
 float. And this is exactly the situation of faith.
 This is surely all implied in the New Testament. When, for example, Jesus began to foretell
 his own death, his disciples were very disturbed, because it is written in our law that the
 Messiah does not die. And he replied, "Unless a grain of corn fall into the ground and die,
 it remains isolated and brings forth no fruit." Or rather, "But if it die, it brings forth
 much fruit." And on another occasion he said to the disciples, "It is expedient for you
 that I go away, for if I go not away, the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, cannot come to
 you." But we have reversed all this. Jesus, to me, was one of those rare and remarkable
 individuals who had a particular kind of spiritual experience, which in terms of Hebrew theology
 he found most difficult to express without blasphemy. "I and the Father are one." In
 other words, "I am God." And that is something, of course, if you are a Hindu, that is a rather
 natural statement to make. You see, in our culture, which has Hebrew theology in its
 background, anyone who says "I am God" is either blasphemous or insane. Because our
 image of God—and the image, don't forget, has far more emotional power than any amount
 of theology and abstraction. It is our Father which really influences us as a conception
 of God, not necessary being or Tillich's decontaminated name for God, the ground of
 being, or Professor Northrop's undifferentiated aesthetic continuum. These aren't very moving,
 even though subtle theologians prefer this kind of thing, and will tell us that when
 we call God the Father, we don't have to believe literally that there is a cosmic male
 parent, and still less that he has a white beard and sits on a golden throne above the
 stars. Nobody, no serious theologian, ever believed in such a God. But nevertheless,
 the imagery affects us, because the image of the monotheistic God of the West is political.
 The title "King of Kings" and "Lord of Lords" is the title of the emperors of ancient
 Persia. The image of God is based on the pharaohs, the great rulers of the Chaldeans, and the
 kings of Persia. And so, this is the political governor and lord of the universe, who keeps
 order and who rules it from, metaphorically speaking, above. So anyone who would say "I
 am God" is therefore implying that he's in charge of everything, that he knows all
 about it, and therefore everybody else ought to bow down and worship him. But in India,
 if you say "I am God," they say "Congratulations, at last you found out." Because the image
 is quite different. See, our image of the world is that the world is a construct, and
 it's very natural for a child to say to its mother "How was I made?" as if, you
 know, you were somehow put together. But that goes back to the imagery of Genesis, where
 God creates Adam and makes a clay figurine, and then he breathes the breath of life into
 the nostrils of this figurine, and it comes to life. So there is the fundamental supposition
 which even underlies the development of Western science, that everything has been made and
 then someone knows how it was made. And you can find out, because behind the universe
 there is an architect. This could be called the ceramic model of the universe. Because
 there's a basic feeling that there are two things in existence. One is stuff, material,
 and the other is form. Now material, like clay by itself, is stupid. It has no life
 in it, it has no intelligence. And therefore, for matter to assume orderly forms, it requires
 that an external intelligence be introduced to shape it. And therefore, with that deeply
 embedded in our common sense, it's very difficult for people to realize that this
 image is not necessarily for description of the world at all. Indeed, the whole idea
 of stuff is completely absent from modern physics, which studies the physical universe
 purely in terms of pattern and structure.
 But the Hindu model of the world, and I'm speaking of Hindu mythology, the popular imagery,
 I'm talking about the popular imagery on both sides. I'm not at the moment getting
 into theological technicalities. The Hindu model of the universe is a drama. The world
 is not made, it is acted. And so behind every face, human, animal, plant, mineral, there
 is the face, or non-face, of the central self, the Atman, which is Brahman, the final reality,
 which is not defined, because obviously that which is the center cannot be made an object
 of knowledge any more than you bite your own teeth or lift yourself up by your own bootstraps.
 It's what there is, it's the basis. And you are it, which is a colloquial translation
 of the Sanskrit adage "Katram asi," "that art thou."
 The idea being, you see, that the nature of reality is a game of hide-and-seek, because
 that's really the only game there is. Now you see it, now you don't. All nature is
 vibrating, it's a wave-like motion of crest and trough, pulse and interval, pulse and
 interval. Only we don't always notice that, because our senses respond slowly, say, to
 light, and light appears to be a continuous energy without interval.
 So the idea goes like this, that for endless cycles of time, the supreme reality, the self,
 plays hide-and-seek with itself. That for a period of a kalpa, which is 4,320,000 years,
 the self is awake to itself, and knows that it's it. But for another kalpa, it gets
 lost. It says to itself, "Man, get lost," and pretends that it is a vast multiplicity.
 That's exactly what you would do if you had the privilege of dreaming any dream you wanted
 when you went to bed at night. This would enable you, of course, in one night to dream
 seventy-five years of clock time. And what you would do, first of all, you would have
 marvelous adventures. You would have every conceivable delight, and satisfy every wish.
 And then as time went on, that would get a little boring, and you would get more daring.
 You would have adventures, you would rescue princesses from dragons. And then you would
 get even more daring, and you would dream that you weren't dreaming. And then you'd
 get into really serious messes, because wouldn't it be a surprise when you woke up? And eventually,
 you would be dreaming that you were sitting here in this auditorium listening to me. You
 would eventually get round to that, for your sins.
 So, well, maybe that's what's happening anyhow, you see. And in Sanskrit, this dream
 is called maya, but it's a word that means more than dream or illusion. It means creative
 power, magic, skill, art, and measurement. Laying down the foundations is making a maya.
 So then, the world is a big act. It's play. Not in the sense of something trivial, but
 in the sense of a stage play. Hamlet is a play. You play the organ in church, that's
 not trivial. And so the actor of this play, being the best of all possible actors, takes
 himself in totally, almost. Because everybody knows in the back of their mind that there's
 something funny about being a self.
 So you see, when you go to the theatre, you know of course that the proscenium arch tells
 you that what's going on behind this arch is not for real. But somehow the actor almost
 persuades you that it is real. He wants to get you sitting on the edge of your chair.
 He wants you laughing, crying, he wants you in a state of anxiety, so that he almost persuades
 you. But you see, if the actor is as good as the Supreme Self, the audience is taken
 in thoroughly, and they believe the play is real. What skill! How marvelous!
 But you see, in all acting, there is behind the stage a green room. Out on the stage,
 the Lord does not come on as the Lord. He comes on as you and I, heroes and villains.
 But off-scene, he assumes his true nature and doffs his mask, which in Latin is his
 persona. In classical drama, the persona was the megaphone-mouth mask worn for the open-air
 theatre. And by a curious degradation of words, the word "person" has come to mean the
 real individual. And when Harry M. Merson Fosdick wrote How to Be a Real Person, the
 real title of his book should have been How to Be a Genuine Fake.
 Well now this image, this model of the universe, is disturbing to Christians. What is particularly
 disturbing is the element in it of what's a very special theological cuss word called
 pantheism. The feeling that if every part is being played by the Supreme Lord, then
 all the real distinctions between good and evil are obliterated. Now that is the biggest
 nonsense ever uttered. Distinctions between good and evil do not have to be eternal distinctions
 to be real distinctions. It is really to say that a distinction which is not eternal is
 not real is a highly unchristian thing to say, and certainly a very un-Jewish thing.
 Because one of the fundamental principles of the Hebrew attitude is that all finite
 things that have been created by God are good. And therefore, a thing that doesn't have to
 be infinite to be good, all finite things come to an end. Furthermore, to invoke the
 authority of heaven in matters of moral regulation is like putting a two million current through
 your electric shaver. It ended in the final assininity of the notion that if you went
 against the will of God, since evil is eternal, you would fry in hell forever and ever and
 ever. And as the Chinese say, "Do not swat a fly on a friend's head with a hatchet."
 Like all kinds of judicial torture and harsh justice, such ideas bring law into disrespect.
 And such a fierce God and such an unbending attitude resulted in the fact of people disbelieving
 in God altogether, and shall we say, throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
 So this is, among many reasons why people are saying God is dead. It's very inconvenient
 to have the kind of God who is this authoritarian boss of the world, prying down over your shoulder
 all the time, knowing your inmost thoughts and judging you. It's a very uncomfortable
 feeling and everybody's happy to be rid of it.
 It has never significantly improved anybody's behavior. In the so-called ages of faith,
 people were just as immoral, if not more so, than they are today. Because, you see, all
 this fixed notion of God is idolatry. "If thou shalt not make to thyself any graven
 image of anything that is in the heaven above," etc., the most dangerous and pernicious images
 are not those made of wood or stone, nobody takes those seriously. They're the images
 made of imagination and conception and thought.
 And that is why, in the fundamental approach to the Godhead, both the Christian--I mean,
 both the Hindu and the Buddhist, and for that matter the Taoist, take what is called the
 negative approach, which used to be known long ago in the Middle Ages as apophatic theology.
 As St. Thomas Aquinas said, "To proceed to the knowledge of God, it is necessary to go
 by the way of remotion, of saying what God is not, since God by his immensity exceeds
 every conception to which our intellect can attain."
 So then, when of the Godhead the Hindu says, "All that can truly be said is neti, neti,
 not this, not this," and when the Buddhist uses such a term for the final reality as
 shunyata, which means voidness or emptiness, then textbook after textbook on comparative
 religion that I've read by various theologians say, "This is terrible negativism. This is
 nihilism." But he doesn't realize that it's nothing of the kind.
 If for example, you have a window on which there's a fine painting of the sun, your act
 of faith in the real sun will be to scrape that off, so that you can let the real sunlight
 in. And so in the same way, pictures of God on the window of the mind need scraping off,
 because otherwise they become idolatrous, they become substitutes for the reality.
 Now I'm hoping that this sort of understanding will issue from God is Dead theology. I'm
 not quite sure whether it's going to. Because as a matter of fact, there are precedents
 within the Christian tradition for an intelligent God is Dead theology, for what I would call
 atheism in the name of God, or agnosticism in the name of God. The word agnostic has
 a curious history. It's based on the Greek word agnosia, which we used to translate into
 English as "unknowing." And there's a very interesting mystical treatise of the 14th
 century called The Cloud of Unknowing, showing how the highest form of prayer, contemplative
 prayer, was that in which all concept of God had been left behind. Where, in other words,
 one completely let go of clinging to God. And this was the supreme act of faith. So
 that you don't any longer need an image, because this gets in the way of the reality.
 But the moment you insist on an image, then you have the Church as a huge, imperialistic,
 vested interest organization. After all, if the Church is the body of Christ, isn't it
 through the breaking of the body of Christ that life is given to the world? But the Church
 doesn't want to be broken up by Joveno. It goes around canvassing for new members. See,
 the difference between a physician and a clergyman is this. The physician wants to get rid of
 his patients, and he gives them medicine, and he hopes they won't get hooked on the
 medicine. Whereas the clergyman is usually forced to make his patients become addicts,
 so that they'll pay their dues. The doctor has faith in turnover. He knows that there
 will always be sick people, and the clergy also need faith in turnover. Get rid of your
 congregations. Say, "Now, you've heard all I've got to tell you, go away. If you want
 to get together for making celestial whoopee, which is worship, all right." But don't—I
 used to, when I was a chaplain in the university, I used to tell the students that if they came
 to church out of a sense of duty, they weren't wanted, they would be skeletons at the feast.
 It would be much better if they went swimming or stayed in bed, because we were going to
 celebrate the Holy Communion, and I meant celebrate.
 But somehow or other, you see, we take religion in a kind of dead earnest. I remember when
 I was a boy at school how wicked it was to laugh in church. We don't realize, as G.K.
 Chesterton said, that the angels fly because they take themselves lightly. And as Dante
 said in the Paradiso, when he heard the song of the angels it sounded like the laughter
 of the universe. What are those angels doing? They're saying "Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah,"
 which doesn't really mean anything. It's sublime nonsense. And so in the same way there
 are Buddhist texts and Hindu texts, which are the chants of the Buddhas or the divine
 beings, which don't mean anything at all. They never did mean anything. They are just
 glorious lallying, glossolalia. So the point that I wish to make most strongly is that
 behind a vital religious life for the West, there has to be faith which is not expressed
 in things to which you cling, in ideas, opinions to which you cling in a kind of desperation.
 Faith is the act of letting go, and that must begin with letting go of God, let God go.
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