A Shared Communion with the Sacred (extract from my paper 'Common Humanity from a religous-philosophical perspective', presented at Oxford, 19/09/09)

All major religions, namely Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism and Islam share the need to experience the sacredness as the only way to find peace and happiness, and they are adaptations of a same ultimate truth in order to fulfil the needs of complex human beings with different levels of understanding and spiritual development. Thus, the there is a shared commitment to the sacred which needs to be stressed so the differences in how to accomplish the ultimate goal cannot continue to diminish that compassionate idea of experience the sacredness through religious life and converts a transcendental goal, the nectar of religion, in a short-termed ideal of uniqueness of the truth that only leads to exclusion, violence and war.
The nectar of religion is that element of sacredness that leads to our understanding of our own nature, is the boat that takes us to the shore of the ultimate state of realization, an eternal communion with the sacred, an all-encompassing hierophany where the distinction between the sacred and the profane disappears in order to let us become one with the Ultimate Reality represented in every religion, each with different form but of the same nature. In light of this, “the sacred” is that part of our existence that reminds us that we are connected with a power beyond our physical body, senses and thoughts; is the representation of our true nature that we have forgotten: a formless, immortal and transcendent non-self. Thus, religions can be seen as the guardians and teachers of this ultimate truth.
But then, what went wrong? Why religion instead of dispel the suffering from the world, have contributed to perpetrate it? What happened to the shared-nectar of compassion? Have it disappeared in plurality? John Hick argues that the differences in the key or revelatory experiences that unify a stream of religious life are what constitute the largest difficulty in the way of religious agreement.[1] The claims of truth about the revelation of the truth have made a big gap between religious traditions. This gap of intolerance have led to the exclusivist approach where only the ones who share the same revelatory claims can be regarded as brothers and sisters while the ‘others’ are some kind of lost souls in the sea of sin. The gap had still gone wider due to the intent of some semi-inclusivist groups who try to interpret the ‘alien religion’ using ‘home religion’ categories and beliefs. This gap between religious communities is due to the absolute claims of one god, one truth, one religion. When the shared need for the sacred, a transcendent spiritual one, is covered and obstructed by greed, hatred and anger, the result is a momentary amnesia of our common nature. Even more, when these emotions are socially shared in an intersubjective consensus of fear and selfishness some institutions, even the religious ones, perpetrate violence towards others who does not share their views of reality. Thus, plurality of religious philosophies and doctrines became violent and problematic.
With this, we can see that the plurality of religions and religious communities is not a consequence of religion itself (even less of the share sacredness) but the qualities of the user, the believer who is a human being. So, there is a chance to make a compassionate use of religion in plurality and stop making the plurality of religion a justification for separateness, violence and suffering. There is a chance to build bridges of dialogue and understanding between the different religious communities’ islands by recognizing that they share the same foundations, soil, elements and, ultimately, nature that makes them possible to exist. The plurality is just an expression of different manifestations of human complexities, which is based in a common ground of human nature and, even more, a common transcendent union in the sacred.

[1] John Hick, of Religion (4th ed.; New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1990), 115.