Metaphysical Religion

I was reading the review of Keys of Gnosis by Robert Bolton on the Integral Tradition Publishing site, and it had an interesting insight. That insight was what is called Metaphysical Religion. Here is the section of the review that spurned my interest, “For a long time now, religion in the West has been polarized between a democratic kind of faith meant for simple believers, and divine mysteries so high that hardly anyone can claim to know much about them. The vital connecting link between them, that of metaphysical religion, is all but lost…”.

What he exactly means by this, I do not know entirely because I have not read the book, but nevertheless has given me ideas, and also strongly interested me in this purchasing this book. Even though Robert Bolton seems sympathetic to a sort of Platonic-Christian outlook, I assert that there is a problem in Christianity that comes from accepting an idea of a “metaphysical religion”. Christianity is a positivistic religion, and by that I mean that its focus is on supposed events in history and the dogma associated with them. Christianity asserts that man fell from grace through the sin of a historical figure called Adam, and that a historical figure called Jesus died on a cross, and rose from the grave three days later, and faith in this Jesus figure forms the essence of this faith. This is asserted in the Bible itself, “And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain”, from 1st Corinthians 15:14, and “And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins”, from 1st Corinthians 15:17. Also it seems that a very literal belief in the creation story is needed, because of Adam’s role in all of this, “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned”, from Romans 5:12. This creates a religious outlook which is so superstitious that it is tantamount to extreme credulity. There are many epistemological problems associated with miracles. There is no criteria to determine the veracity of them, since they go against what we know of the laws of nature, and since miracles are common in many religions, there is no reason to believe the Jesus miracle over others, except if you were to create the epistemological conditions centered around supposed Christian history, and thus be engaged in horrible question begging. There is also no reason to believe that our original ancestors were Adam and Eve over those purported in other creation myths, and the creation story in Genesis is ridiculous, but necessary to believe in for this Adam character to be given the necessary significance. I can go further into this, but for the sake of brevity, I feel my point has been made. This is where I like the idea of a “metaphysical religion”.

From the perspective of Advaita Vedanta, it is the metaphysical principles of Maya and Avidya which are the foundation. From the perspective of Buddhism, the metaphysical and phenomenological outlook in the paticca sammupada correlate very strongly with the Transcendental Idealism of Kant and Schopenhauer, which is far superior to the materialism that is still the common viewpoint. The runes of Nordic mysticism can be seen as extra dimensional principles which manifest themselves into this reality through natural processes. The only possible critique would be of speculative metaphysics, but then everybody outside of Hume could be accused of this, and that form of skepticism leads into many problems. The reality is that these metaphysical principles allow our consciousness to grow and develop; our consciousness is in the process of always appropriating more and more knowledge, rather then coming up to the roadblock of superstition and credulity that is in the Christian religion. This I believe is the reason for the interest in Eastern and pagan religions, that being religions based upon metaphysical principles that the intelligence of man has an affinity towards rather than supposed historical events that clearly are absurd, and repulsive to the intelligence of man.