CHRISTIANITY AND THE N E W AGE
is essentially a doctrine of salvation—a social and earthly salvation, it is true, but nevertheless a salvation which is essentially religious and related to the eternal life of God. Again, Buddhism seems to leave no room for God and to put the whole emphasis of its teaching on the second element—deliverance. Nevertheless, it is based, as much as any religion can be, on the idea of Transcendence. Indeed, it was an exag-gerated sense of Transcendence that led to its negative attitude towards the ideas of God and the Soul. ” We affirm something of God, in order not to affirm nothing,” says the Catholic theologian. The Buddhist went a step further on the via negativa and preferred to say nothing.
Now, a concentration on these two specifically religious needs produces an attitude to life totally opposed to the practical utilitarian out-look of the ordinary man. The latter regards the world of man—the world of sensible experience and social activity—as the one reality, and is sceptical of anything that lies beyond, whether in the region of pure thought or of spiritual experience, not to speak of religious faith. The religious man, on the contrary, turns his scepticism against the world of man. He is conscious of the existence of another and greater world of spiritual reality in which we live and move and