02/12/2025
WORLD VIEWS or WORLD IMAGE
All of the world's great religions and spiritual philosophies have of course had different complex and sophisticated approaches to ‘the meaning of life’. However, Oswald Spengler thought that each civilization had a single ‘master image’ behind it. (Eg Infinite Space for the modern ‘faustian’ world.) Could the same be identified for each world religion?
I played with some ideas and this is what I came up with. Neoplatonism seemed to have two very different images– the Cosmic Spheres and the Cave. Early Buddhism and late Buddhism likewise seemed to require two very different images.
Let me know what you think – I'm interested in alternative suggestions…
ANCIENT CHRISTIANITY:
The world was originally a blissful garden – God's perfect creation – which was corrupted by the original sin of Adam and mankind's continued fallen state. Soon however, by the power of Christ's sacrificial death, sin will be wiped away and a new paradisal earth will be established.
MEDIEVAL CHRISTIANITY
The world as a divinely created cosmic sphere, or rather an intricate system of concentric spheres, vast but hierarchically ordered and bounded, created by God to manifest his glory. The upper levels are pure but the lowest level of Earth is corrupted and ensnared by the devil. Nevertheless by the grace of Christ and the intercession of the Church believers may ascend to Heaven (beyond the stars) after death.
GNOSTICISM
The world as a dark prison or dungeon created in error by a malign or deluded demiurge. However, sparks of the Divine are trapped within at least some human beings and by secret knowledge or passwords we may escape the prison.
NEOPLATONISM
The world as an imperfect copy -– a cosmic sphere or cave of shadows. A middle path between the Gnostic and Christian world views. Here the cosmos of nested spheres is a copy or shadow or outpouring of an eternal divine original – as perfect as it could be given the limitations of time and the corrupting influence of matter itself. However, from the point of view of humankind, existence is a dark cave, in which we only perceive the shadows of real things, and which we need to escape.
ANCIENT VEDIC INDIA:
A cosmic dance or flowing pattern of real elemental energies in which the harmony of the cosmos is mirrored by the harmony of the stratified social order. The actual dance image is post vedic but it sums up well the worldview, and the key part played by the highly choreographed ritual sacrifices required to maintain the cosmic order.
CLASSICAL VEDANTIC INDIA
The world as illusion or maya. Everything is Brahman. Differentiation is an illusion. All is one. All is good ultimately. The core of the individual, atman, is identical with the Cosmic unity – Brahman. The goal of life is to be liberated from the cycles of reincarnation.
BUDDHISM
The world as endless cycle or wheel – ‘like an illusion’. Mankind is trapped in an endless cycle of rebirths produced by the delusion of grasping at identity. Liberation is to pass beyond the Divine into the Unconditioned. A middle way between Vedic realism and Vedantic illusionism. The conditioned world is neither fully real nor fully unreal – it is like a magician's illusion where a rope (conditionality) is seen as a snake (things and selves).
VAJRAYANA BUDDHISM
A mandala, or cosmic pattern of Enlightened energies. This Buddhist worldview has some resonances with both the Vedic and the Vedantic worldviews. Ultimately, there is no difference between the round (samsara) and Nirvana. The world can be seen as in fact a mandala or a play or a dance of Enlightened non-dual energies – which unenlightened folk misinterpret as 'the world'!
