My own religious outlook has been hugely influenced by the ideas of Alan Moore, who manages to neatly reconcile rationality and heavy-duty mysticism. A few samples from my quote file, all taken from his lengthy interview by Dave Sim back in the day:
"As a ready example, I could cite the death of a loved one: the physical presence is gone, broken down to its constituent chemicals, its constituent atoms. That person does not exist physically anymore as a discrete physical entity. The Idea-Presence of that person cannot die, however. It hangs around and wakes you up crying at four in the morning. Five years later it taps you on the shoulder while you're doing the washing up and it makes you smile."
"...things that are more like language, or embedded codes, than they are like life, although they live. Things that are no more than an eternally reiterated acting-out of their own primal legends, things that /are/ their own stories. Which stories our own apparently individual thoughts, identities, and actions can only reiterate and repeat. Deities, or sections of the fundamental text whereby are our lives scripted, all of them. The reason that all stories are true is that there is only one story."
"...do I believe that I have actually spoken to a trans-physical four thousand-year-old entity first mentioned in _The Book of Tobit_? No. Do I therefore believe that I have /not/ truly conversed with the aforesaid entity? No. I see no particular imperative for me to believe or conclude anything. Meeting the demon Asmodeus was an apparent experience I had. Getting out of bed this morning and having breakfast was another apparent experience. I do not choose to grant either the status of 'reality.'"
"Now, the rationalist view of all magical encounters is probably that all apparent entities are in fact externalised projections of parts of the self. I have no big argument with that, except that I'd hold the converse to be true as well: /we/ are at the same time externalised projections of /them/."
"Also, to me, Magic is not a strange and alien planet that we visit, so much as a new set of eyes to look at /this/ planet through, a new language by which our ordinary lives can be expressed more luminously. For a Magician, walking down the street to buy a pack of cigarettes at the corner shop is a Magical experience. Anything from the licence plates of cars to the candy wrappers in the gutter to the casual remarks of passers-by is a potential source of information or inspiration. The Magician is reading things according to the rules of a different grammer, but he or she is reading the same book as everyone else."
no subject
"As a ready example, I could cite the death of a loved one: the physical presence is gone, broken down to its constituent chemicals, its constituent atoms. That person does not exist physically anymore as a discrete physical entity. The Idea-Presence of that person cannot die, however. It hangs around and wakes you up crying at four in the morning. Five years later it taps you on the shoulder while you're doing the washing up and it makes you smile."
"...things that are more like language, or embedded codes, than they are like life, although they live. Things that are no more than an eternally reiterated acting-out of their own primal legends, things that /are/ their own stories. Which stories our own apparently individual thoughts, identities, and actions can only reiterate and repeat. Deities, or sections of the fundamental text whereby are our lives scripted, all of them. The reason that all stories are true is that there is only one story."
"...do I believe that I have actually spoken to a trans-physical four thousand-year-old entity first mentioned in _The Book of Tobit_? No. Do I therefore believe that I have /not/ truly conversed with the aforesaid entity? No. I see no particular imperative for me to believe or conclude anything. Meeting the demon Asmodeus was an apparent experience I had. Getting out of bed this morning and having breakfast was another apparent experience. I do not choose to grant either the status of 'reality.'"
"Now, the rationalist view of all magical encounters is probably that all apparent entities are in fact externalised projections of parts of the self. I have no big argument with that, except that I'd hold the converse to be true as well: /we/ are at the same time externalised projections of /them/."
"Also, to me, Magic is not a strange and alien planet that we visit, so much as a new set of eyes to look at /this/ planet through, a new language by which our ordinary lives can be expressed more luminously. For a Magician, walking down the street to buy a pack of cigarettes at the corner shop is a Magical experience. Anything from the licence plates of cars to the candy wrappers in the gutter to the casual remarks of passers-by is a potential source of information or inspiration. The Magician is reading things according to the rules of a different grammer, but he or she is reading the same book as everyone else."