Synopsis
The author, a retired clergyman and university teacher of theology and philosophy, now identifies himself as a panentheist, universalist, liberal Quaker. He proposes that faith can be experienced through mysticism. He rejects all authoritarian views of scriptures, doctrines, and creeds and replaces the common image of “God” as an anthropomorphic “super-man” with the concept of impersonal “Divine Energy.” That Energy creates and sustains all that exists, and all beyond existence.
God (Divine Energy) is in everyone. Jesus must have been a marvelous, charismatic healer and teacher, but the author rejects all theories of his unique divinity. We all share his divinity. Much of the descriptions of Jesus’s life and teachings in scripture and doctrines were derived from pagan, mythological legends of the dying and rising god-man, superimposed upon the man Jesus. Jesus can be known mystically. God can be experienced mystically. Scripture and doctrines are attempts to define what cannot be explained in human terminology. Through meditation we can experience mystical revelations of Divine Energy (God) in all of existence.
