Beyond Religion, Toward the Unity of Life
NV Paulose, Chairman, Global TV +91 98441 82044
There is a remarkable idea running through the history of human civilisation: human beings have always tried to understand the unity of life. We looked at the sky, the Earth, animals, plants, breath, birth and death, and attempted to give meaning to what we experienced. Before science developed its modern vocabulary, human beings expressed these understandings through stories, symbols, metaphors and religious traditions. In a recent conversation, Rev. Dr. Willy R. D’Silva reflected on this relationship between science, religion, language, nature and human life. His starting point was the work of physicist and philosopher Fritjof Capra and the movement from physics toward a systemic understanding of life.
Speaking about Capra’s engagement with Eastern thought, Rev. Dr. Willy R. D’Silva explained that the Chinese concept of Yin and Yang presents “opposites” within a larger unity. From this understanding, he connected Capra’s work to the idea of the Dao or Tao; the unity underlying apparent opposites. Capra’s first major book, The Tao of Physics, became an important expression of this attempt to bring modern physics into conversation with Eastern philosophy. But, for Rev. Dr. Willy R. D’Silva, the significance of this journey does not end with physics.
FROM PHYSICS TO THE PROCESSES OF LIFE
Rev. Dr. Willy R. D’Silva described a movement from physics and chemistry toward biology, and from biology toward human life itself. In this context, he referred to the work of the Jesuit thinker Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and his ideas of cosmogenesis, anthropogenesis and noogenesis. Cosmogenesis concerns the development of the cosmos. Anthropogenesis concerns the emergence and development of human beings. Noogenesis concerns the emergence of intelligence and knowledge.
Rev. Dr. Willy R. D’Silva noted that Teilhard, being a Christian and a Jesuit, also used the idea of Christogenesis and the Omega Point. But he suggested that if one moves beyond the specifically Christian formulation, the broader framework remains: the development of the cosmos, the development of human life, and the emergence of intelligence. The important point is the movement from seeing the universe as a static creation toward seeing it as a continuing process. The universe is becoming. Life is becoming. Human consciousness is becoming. And humanity is now capable of reflecting upon the process itself.
THE UNITY OF LIFE
This leads to one of the central ideas in D’Silva’s conversation: life is one. He returned repeatedly to the relationship between human beings, animals, plants and the atmosphere. Human beings breathe oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. Plants take in carbon dioxide and return oxygen. “There is this exchange,” he explained. That exchange is not a metaphor. It is part of the physical process that sustains life. If that exchange were to disappear, human and animal life could not continue.
For Rev. Dr. Willy R. D’Silva, this gives us a way of looking at religion differently. Religious symbols may be attempts to represent larger processes of life and nature. The mistake comes when we become attached to the symbol and forget the reality behind it. “All our gods are symbolic representations of the entire process of life,” he said. That statement provides a powerful starting point for understanding religion, not as a collection of competing claims, but as humanity’s attempt to give symbolic expression to the mysteries and processes of existence.
BREATH BEFORE DOCTRINE
The conversation then moved toward the idea of breath. Rev. Dr. Willy R. D’Silva connected the concepts of prana, prani, atma, spiritus and pneuma with the fundamental human experience of breathing and being alive. Whatever the precise linguistic history of these terms, his larger point was clear: across cultures, human beings repeatedly associated breath with life and spirit. Animals breathe. Birds breathe. Human beings breathe. Living beings share the fundamental experience of life. This gives a different meaning to the idea of prani: those who possess life-breath. The question then becomes: at what point does this direct experience of life become religious symbolism? And once it becomes symbolism, what happens to the original experience?
WHEN SYMBOLS BECOME DIVISIONS
For Rev. Dr. Willy R. D’Silva, one of the central problems in human history has been discrimination. He spoke of discrimination against women, poorer communities and working people, and of systems that placed kings, ritual specialists and powerful groups above others. The question is therefore not simply what a religion says, but what happens when religious institutions become associated with social power.
Rev. Dr. Willy R. D’Silva pointed to the symbolism of baptism as one example. Men and women enter the same water. Their bodily and social distinctions do not determine the meaning of the ritual. The deeper message, he suggested, is equality. The symbol points toward unity. The ritual is meaningful only if the moral principle behind it survives. This is why he wants religious ideas to be understood in a way that moves beyond ritual alone.
RELIGION AS A LANGUAGE OF METAPHOR
The conversation also examined the way religious language uses metaphor. Consider the expression that Jesus is seated at the “right hand of God.” If taken literally, the image creates an obvious physical problem: where is the left hand? Where are the feet? The answer is that it is a metaphor. D’Silva emphasised this point repeatedly: “It is a metaphor.” The right hand represents power or authority. The image does not necessarily describe a physical arrangement in space.
The same applies to traditional images of heaven above and hell below. Once humanity understands the Earth as a sphere moving through space, the absolute distinction between “above” and “below” disappears. What is above one person is below another. There is no universal physical “up” and “down.”
The religious image therefore needs to be understood symbolically rather than mistaken for a geographical description of the universe. The problem is not metaphor. The problem is forgetting that it is metaphor.
LANGUAGE MATTERS
The conversation then moved into the relationship between language and religious meaning. When religious ideas travel from one culture to another, symbols are translated. But translation is never simply a matter of replacing one word with another. The cultural meaning surrounding the word may change. D’Silva gave examples from Konkani and other Indian languages to illustrate how religious metaphors and terminology can become mixed with local cultural traditions. This raises an important question: when a religious symbol enters another language, does it retain its original meaning? Language, therefore, is not merely a vehicle for ideas. Language shapes the way ideas are understood.
As Rev. Dr. Willy R. D’Silva put it: “Language is important. Extremely important. And that meaning behind the words has to be extremely well put.” For a project concerned with wisdom, this is crucial. If words are misunderstood, the wisdom contained within them can also be misunderstood.
KNOWLEDGE DID NOT BEGIN IN UNIVERSITIES
The same principle applies to knowledge. Human knowledge existed long before modern universities and scientific institutions. Farmers, fishermen, artisans, healers, cooks, builders and other communities developed knowledge through generations of observation and experience. Much of this knowledge was transmitted orally. Some of it was eventually written down by scholars. But writing it down did not create the knowledge. The knowledge already existed in the community.
Rev. Dr. Willy R. D’Silva’s discussion of Hortus Malabaricus illustrates this point. He referred to the great work on the plants, food, medicine and natural knowledge of Malabar and emphasised the role of local people in supplying the knowledge recorded within it. Konkani-speaking communities, Malayalam-speaking communities and others possessed knowledge of plants and their uses. Different languages and scripts were used to record this knowledge. The written work therefore represents not simply the work of scholars but a meeting between scholarly documentation and local knowledge. The question for our own time is simple: Should this knowledge disappear, or should we gather it and make it public?
PRESERVE THE KNOWLEDGE OF PEOPLE
This question is particularly important today. Modern society often separates “scientific knowledge” from “traditional knowledge.” But both are products of human observation and experience. The difference is often the method of transmission. One may be recorded in scientific papers. Another may be transmitted through a community. One may be expressed through equations. Another may be expressed through a plant name, a farming practice, a recipe or an oral tradition. That does not automatically make one form of knowledge valuable and the other worthless. Rev. Dr. Willy R. D’Silva’s argument is for preservation.
Gather the knowledge. Translate it. Document it. Make it accessible. And recognise the people who carried it. This becomes part of the larger responsibility of a wisdom project: not merely to collect famous ideas, but to preserve the knowledge of ordinary people whose experience has contributed to human civilisation.
FROM RELIGIOUS UNITY TO PLANETARY UNITY
The ideas of Capra and Teilhard therefore meet at an important point. Capra moves from physics toward systems and the interconnectedness of life. Teilhard moves from cosmogenesis toward the development of life, humanity and consciousness. Rev. Dr. Willy R. D’Silva connects these ideas with a larger ethical question: what should human beings do with this understanding? If the cosmos is interconnected, then human beings cannot treat nature as something completely separate from themselves.
If human beings depend upon plants for the atmospheric conditions necessary for life, then the destruction of nature is ultimately self-destructive. If all human beings participate in the same life, then discrimination becomes difficult to justify. If different cultures have accumulated different forms of knowledge, then destroying those traditions impoverishes humanity as a whole. The next stage of human development therefore cannot be merely technological. It must also be ethical. It must be planetary.
THE REAL TEST OF RELIGION
Perhaps the deepest question arising from Rev. Dr. Willy R. D’Silva’s conversation is this: What is religion for? Is it for defending rituals? Is it for proving that one community possesses the truth? Is it for establishing authority? Or is it for helping human beings understand how to live? D’Silva’s answer points toward the last possibility. He wants religion to return to the preservation of life, the preservation of the universe, the preservation of human beings and the removal of discrimination. “Life is one,” he says.
That sentence is simple enough to be dismissed as philosophy. But it becomes much more serious when we consider its consequences. If life is one, then the atmosphere connecting human beings and plants matters. If life is one, then discrimination against another human being is not simply a social problem; it is a denial of our common existence. If life is one, then the destruction of nature is not external to humanity. If life is one, then knowledge should be shared rather than used merely as an instrument of power.
BEYOND THE SYMBOL
Perhaps humanity does not need to abandon its religious traditions. Perhaps it needs to learn how to read them again. We can preserve the symbol without confusing the symbol with reality. We can preserve the metaphor without turning it into literal geography. We can preserve tradition without preserving discrimination. We can respect religious identity without allowing identity to become a reason for conflict. And we can bring science into conversation with spirituality without forcing either one to become the other. The task is not to destroy religion. The task is to understand it.
WISDOM IS WHAT CONNECTS
At the heart of the conversation with Rev. Dr. Willy R. D’Silva is a very old idea expressed in a modern context: Life is one. The universe is connected. Living beings are connected. Human beings are connected. Knowledge is connected. And the different languages, religions and traditions through which humanity has tried to understand existence are also part of this long human search for meaning.
Perhaps wisdom begins when we stop asking which symbol belongs to which group and start asking what the symbols are trying to teach us. Perhaps it begins when we stop using religion to divide human beings and begin using it to understand our common life. And perhaps the future of religion is not another doctrine, but a deeper responsibility toward the life that all of us share.
As Rev. Dr. Willy R. D’Silva put it, the purpose is ultimately the “preservation of the whole universe, preservation of life, preservation of human life, removing discrimination.” That is not merely a religious proposition. It is a proposition about the future of humanity. Life is one. The question is whether we are wise enough to live as though it is.
