Greetings to all,

and give thanks for the reasoning, which has managed to deal with lofty issues without (so far) and sort of slide into name calling etc....

i&i appereciate the wise resonings posted between those that have aleady spoken. gman, you managed to say far more eloquently what i would have said as well, and bantu kelani and others have responded with the perfect questions and challanges.

My question is this. is it possible to have a religous/mystical/spiritual system without recourse to some kind of 'context' to make it more legible for new followers/seekers? It would seem that a bit of a pattern forms around these movements. The first part is that a person or group of folks have the big realisation, overstand the need to move beyond form and approach god(or whatever choice or word you would like to use here) directly. All is well and good unitl they have to explain what they are experiencing, at which point they must of necessity use words and symbols that their listeners will understand. The trouble is that by couching this new perspective in old expressions misunderstandings become almost inevitable. A tension seems to build up between those that have seen past whatever 'literal' truths were expressed and those who see the message as being important rather than the 'way'. Christian, muslim, buddhist, hindu, rasta, all of these paths seem to show the same basic pattern.

So my question is this, is it possible to have the 'message', or some set of ideas about re-connecting with the godhead without giving it a form, a name, or a label? Do you need these things for a spiritual lesson to make sense?

love and life
paul