The faces of spirit in world religions

The religious or spiritual impulse in man appears at the beginning of man's prehistory, before etchings on stones, drawings, cave paintings or cuneiform tablets would be used to record man's belief in a spiritual world and his participation in it. Spirits, non-material images with consciousness and feeling, with thoughts and imaginations, were probably discovered when men and women began to dream of their lost and dead. The spirit stood apart from the world, could travel from one place to the other instantly, could fly in the heavens and hide beneath the ground. All world religions, including Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism have their origins in man's discovery of the essence of a human, the spirit within the man.

Of the major world religions, all but Buddhism maintains a spiritual world that consists of a major or master spirit and an uncountable number of small spirits subordinated to the master spirit, also known as God. For example, Hinduism calls God Brahma, a spiritual entity with infinite dimensions whose consciousness brings into and maintains inferior spirits, the Atman, in a world of illusion, of Maya. As in all world religions, the spirit is given a purpose. The purpose of the Atman is to release itself from the illusions that surround it and to come into oneness with the Brahman's universal consciousness, to become God. Some Hindus believe the work set before the Atman is that of coming into association with Brahma, but not becoming him. As one sage put it, he would rather taste sugar than become sugar.

Among the world religions, Buddhism is most like Hinduism in its view of the world as illusion and of the spirit as part of a greater spirit from which it has been separated by the passions that adhere to the human soul and give rise to the illusory world. Like the Hindu, the Buddhist is charged with freeing the spirit from the illusion through the cancellation of desires, desires which cause misery and rebirth. However, unlike the Hindu Brahma, the great spirit is not universal consciousness of something, but universal consciousness of nothing. Freed from all passions, the enlightened spirit of the Buddhist does not give rise to the objects of its desires. The spirit is there, but only as a useless passion.

The world religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam all believe that man is a spirit within a soul, within a body. For people of these faiths, God is creator, sustainer, and ruler of his kingdom. Man is created with a spirit and a body, but through the spirit, may commune with God and stand in a relationship of love or contempt to him. For these believers, the purpose set before the spirit of a man is to come into right relations with their heavenly king through their love for him and their obedience to his commands. The effort will ultimately by judged by God and the righteous human spirit rewarded with the joy of being eternally in the presence of God, a member of his heavenly and earthly kingdom. For those who fail to come into righteous relation with God, who disobey his commands, a hell of eternal punishment is the sinner's destination.

Different expressions of the same belief in an individual spirit and a great spirit from which all spirits come, world religions continue to acknowledge the spirit and to explain the purpose of man's life in the world in terms of the spirit and the spirit's place in God's grand design.