Up to this point I have tried to report factually everything that I have learnt, or - if I have been unable to do so as factually as I might wish - at least, with such an abridgement as may be thought still credible.
   From this point, however, I intend to be speculative; and what I presume to speculate about is why religions fail.
I shall add very little that is new. Ever since the great religious wars within Christianity itself and against other faiths did so much damage to people and the world, wiser minds than mine have been explaining the reasons why religions fail to unite people, but far more commonly divide them and bring them to conflict.
   I shall, however, reverse the usual pattern of these explanation, for, whereas most have largely explained the behaviour of people by referring to the beliefs, aims, ambition, curbs, laws and limitations of their culture, and of course to their culture's historical and material circumstances, and, inevitably, to whatever religion they have developed or had imposed upon them, I shall try to show that it is very largely the need, beliefs, aims - and the great majority of cases - the frustration of the individual's spiritual hopes that drive religions to war. If, then, I may be able to show a way how anyone can avoid that frustration - without, incidentally, ever admitting that they are suffering from it - I may do a little to prevent future religious wars just as great and as harmful as in the past.
   I am not, I believe, in any way unusual. I am not unusually intelligent, accomplished, or successful; and I have tried to make this obvious in everything I have written so far. I am, however, formidably stubborn: and this to a degree that has been almost self-destructive.
   Very stubborn people very often experience depression, and I am no exception to this unhappy rule. It was in the depths of one of these episodes that I made the final discovery that I have just related. Once I had learnt the astonishingly simple fact that the world-given identity - which might be more simply called the social identity - and the intrinsic identity - the I am that I am - which I believe is in all of us are not at all the same, I found that grace was not only easier to experience within the time that I had been accustomed to set aside to strive for it - but that it was even available at any time, and I no longer needed to strive for it all. It came to me.
   I have also written that once I had learnt this practice, it never failed. This is true: but it did develop; at first becoming stronger, then more gentle. Now that I am almost always aware of, my usual request - that is, my request to my intrinsic identity - is answered by only the gentlest inflow of security and joy, but is still perfectly perceptible.
   This grace, as I understand it, is God's attention. Knowing the distinction that has to be made, it is at once apparent why the effort necessary in trying to attract attention to one's social identity is so great. It is simply a two-fold consequence of the latter's irrelevance.
   First, and foremost, the social identity is not, and never can be, the intrinsic identity. Second, the social identity has learnt to project itself and its importance, together with its socially determined concept of the sacred, as the reason to be recognised. 'Notice me, me, me!' - its owner cries, and may indeed sweat like drops of blood with the effort this requires: usually to be disappointed; very often to come to believe that something - sin, for example; or some others - of different faiths, for example, is disturbing and weakening the perfection and strength of its social identity.
   Now the difference and the explanation should be clear. The intrinsic identity does not attempt to project itself. It has no need to do this. It has only to open a channel of mutual recognition within itself: for God is precisely that I am that I am which cannot separate from itself.

Colin Hannaford,


28/07//05

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