"THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY"

The discovery of a common reality behind the great religions of the world including a comparison and reconciliation of

 

How this book differs

“The Celestine Prophecy” differs from my proposal in that its core non-fiction teaching component exalts mystical experience as the supreme religious truth and ignores or belittles traditional theistic traditions whereas my non-fiction component regards each tradition as valid truth but incomplete without the other.

In “Sophie’s World” the teaching component is a potted course in classical and modern philosophy through the ages in the form of letters to Sophie. In mine there is a potted course in comparative religion, covering the material found in any university these days, in the form of lectures, interviews and verbal discussions.

“The Fifth Dimension”, by John Hick, and many of the books by Raimon Panikkar, including “The Unknown Christ of Hinduism: Towards an Ecumenical Christophany”, are similar to mine in that they seek the unity behind all world religious traditions. However, both authors in their most recent works have tended to favour the ineffable mystical experience as the ultimate reality behind all traditions thus relegating the western type worship of a personal God to an inferior position on the scale.

“The Marriage of East and West”, by Bede Griffiths, is the only recent book I know that is similar to mine in arguing for a balance of East and West, theistic and mystical. That is why I quote him in my book. However, he does not come up with an answer to the question, ‘How can the personal and the impersonal be equal?’ My book offers a solution in the form of ‘The Dual Paradigm Theory’ of time.

“The Rebirth of the Sacred” by David Spangler, works from within the New Age movement and starts from the other side of the debate but argues for a balance of mystical experience and ‘external acts of worshipas I do. Nevertheless he gives no theory as to how this could be explained.

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