There's no doubt,
as you suggest, that "we need to go beyond pathetic and
pathological religious, racial, ethnical, gender or nationality
centered consciousness" in order to tackle "the problem of human
divisiveness" which is a cancer of "not only Islam but all other
religions [as well]." Of course our discussion has "moved
a little away from mysticism"
-- as when you mention the issue of "divisiveness" which,
strictly speaking, is not an issue of "if
there were no Islam,
would humans have lived without violence?" or
about the fact that "divisiveness is not limited to
religion [alone]."
You enumerate "nationality,
ethnicity, gender and other territorial [imperatives]"
as if these are vital criteria for human emancipation before
asking some hard-nosed questions: (i) "If [the]
whole world [ad]opts [the]
practice of mysticism,
would divisiveness fade away?" and
suggest that we "would
create new mystical reasons to fight against each other."
(ii) "Where is the core of
violence?" (iii) "Can
we change our consciousness?"
It would be erroneous
to contemplate if divisiveness would fade away were the whole
world to adopt the practice of mysticism. Already there are
myriad schools of mysticism, starting with the Abrahamic zohar
and kabbalah to the forbidden offshoots of Sufism and what have
you, not to mention the various forms of meditation associated
with the process of enlightenment.
The problem is not with the
world but with the individual -- that is, you and I
together. As soon as the collective I-me-my mechanism
of the self sees the Light, the cookie of artificial culture and
tradition crumbles right before one's eyes. That is the first
step to wisdom, to be able to see the phoneyness of our beliefs
based on our historical and geographical conditioning.
I would like to
recommend to Dr Qazi and others a fairly recent book by
a Toronto-based cancer specialist, professor, author,
broadcaster and passionate humanist who believes that religious
convictions, especially human beliefs concerning God, are the
cause of untold human suffering. In his book, Can We Be Good
Without God?, Dr Robert Buckman argues strongly that the
human brain is "set up to tell us that there is an external
deity" and that the need for a relationship with something
called God is "hard-wired into the human brain."
St Augustine, some
say, proposed this theory, in almost the same terms, nearly 1700
years ago but Dr Buckman maintains that experiencing God (say,
for example, by way of mysticism) is not proof of His existence.
We humans delude ourselves.
That is why we cannot discard our ideas concerning
divinity, scripture or tradition
or to embrace a sense of collective and mutually assured
survival paradigm, as you would
like.
The "triumph
of reason over irrationality"
that you hope to see is the eternal dream of the ages.
