The Eternal Question

By Jeffrey S. Durham

Is there a common core to human spiritual traditions? Do different traditions carry different kinds of wisdom? Is there one school that is the right path for me?

Comparative Symbology and Religion addresses questions like these by exploring ancient symbol systems. This discipline is a powerful method of consciousness growth that belongs to no tradition and all traditions, allowing us to recognize and thus awaken capacities we may have only dreamed we possess. Comparative Religion trains the mind to think beyond the flat and the literal. In so doing, we can learn to tap and use the power condensed in ancient symbol systems we study. And perhaps the best way to see how it works is to ask what is very much a taboo question for many people, even in the modern world: do we humans discover or create spiritual symbol-systems?

From the perspective of a religious literalist, specific symbol-systems are revelations from an equally specific intelligence that transcends the human. Under these circumstances, to explore one's own symbol-system is to make direct contact with absolute truth. To explore those of others is an exercise in anything from futility to failure.

From the secular humanist perspective, on the other hand, we make symbol-systems. They are cryptic expressions of hidden cultural or psychological issues. Under these circumstances, to explore symbolic systems is to discover disguised social or personal conflicts – whether the system explored is one's own or someone else's. Here, futility and failure come precisely from accepting the idea that there is anything beyond the human condition as we experience it through our senses and rational mind.

But is there a third, mediating perspective here? Because if there is such a point of view, it might be just what we need in the modern world: a bridge over the abyss between religious literalism and secular humanism. This perspective might even reveal that symbol-systems involve come from both the experience of the sacred and the formulation of that experience in symbolic terms. And any procedures associated with such a perspective would be fundamentally experimental and artistic at the same time. Where might we find such a strange and potentially powerful third point of view?

As it turns out, both the 'third perspective' and its associated methods actually exist. They have been in continuous operation since very early days of human spiritual history. They generated the great pantheons of Egypt, Greece, and the Americas. They guided the meditative systems of yoga, Buddhism, and the Hebrew Qabala. And today, it is reaching full self-consciousness through the theory and practice of Comparative Symbology and Religion – a discipline perhaps uniquely capable of revealing the hidden order behind the flux of the sense-world.

Comparative Symbology and Religion can be learned quickly and effectively, whether your goals involve metaphysical exploration or consciousness expansion. The basic procedures of Comparative Symbology can be mastered in generic form in Workshop settings. More intensive and regular training in how to think like a symbologist is available through our regular Programs or individualized Comparative Symbology programs tuned to your specific needs and interests.

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