The Religion of Tomorrow: A Vision for the Future of the Great Traditions – More Inclusive, More Comprehensive, More Complete

Spirit-in-action has itself moved and evolved well beyond the forms in which it presented itself to humans thousands of years ago, and it has been moving forward ever since, driving new discoveries in science, art, morals, education, politics, economics, and, yes, even religion and spirituality. However, the latter two fields suffer from arrested development, as it was believed that the original forms of spiritual presentation were somehow cut in stone, never to be changed or improved on again, and not to believe in their original forms was the equivalent of heresy, blasphemy, and horrid disbelief. Thus, the effects of Spirit-in-action were listened to in virtually every other area of human activity—from science to morals to medicine to economics—except in religion and spirituality itself, perhaps history’s greatest (and saddest) irony.
And remember, the discovery of this ultimate Reality is said to be not only the groundless Ground of all Being “out there” but also “in here”—it is the discovery of your own, truest, deepest Self and Suchness, the utterly most central and most real Reality of your own being, the discovery of which constitutes directly your own Awakening, your own Enlightenment, your own Metamorphosis:
Some have declared that it lies within our choice to gaze continually upon a world of equal or even greater wonder and beauty. It is said by these that the experiments of the alchemists of the Dark Ages…are, in fact, related, not to the transmutation of metals, but to the transmutation of the entire Universe. This method, or art, or science, or whatever we choose to call it (supposing it to exist, or to have ever existed), is simply concerned…to enable men [and women], if they will, to inhabit a world of joy and splendour. It is perhaps possible that there is such an experiment, and that there are some who have made it.5
Well, there is such an experiment; and men and women for thousands of years have made it; and all have returned to tell a remarkably similar tale of what they saw and witnessed first hand, of the ultimate Reality to which they were introduced and that changed them deeply and forever. This is humanity’s one and only discovery of something that, once experienced, individuals almost unanimously claim to be an ultimate Reality, an Absolute Truth, the most real and most certain experience that they have ever had. This is the precious jewel that we must not let perish. This is the treasure we must not let go uncovered. This is the Truth that we must not let die.

heresy, blasphemy, and horrid disbelief

The “eye of mind” is a higher-level development than the eye of flesh, and the lower cannot prove the higher. Likewise with the “eye of contemplation”—a higher level yet, which cannot be proven either by the eye of flesh or the eye of mind (senses, reason, or logic). The eye of contemplation is the eye with which a human has authentic spiritual experiences, and just as sensory experiences are the foundation for the natural sciences, and mental experiences are the foundation for mathematics and logic, so spiritual experiences are the foundation for Waking Up realizations—for Enlightenment, Awakening, metamorphosis, gnosis, jnana.