What is Religion?

[Layman Pascal]

INTRODUCTION

This site is marked by the public inquiry "What paths lie ahead for religion and spirituality in the 21st century?"  When it comes to answering that question we find a lot of good work being done in the areas of novelty linguistics, the justification of participatory integral spirituality in the face of possible academic attacks & the search for conceptual allies.  All this work is excellent and while we may suspect that much of will turn out to be useless self-indulgence and academic busy-body routines we have no way of knowing which parts these may be.  

As the CEO in the old joke says, "I know that half my advertising budget is being wasted... I just don't know which half!"  

So it behooves to continue expanding rather than trying to pare down the discourse.  My contribution in this thread will be to introduce an ongoing personal concern relative to the future status of religion.

SPIRITUALITY VS. RELIGION

Spirituality is not yet religion.  That much we know -- or at least suspect.  By the word religion we have come to mean the possibility of a bio-cultural & historical movement armed with notable socio-moral or aesthetic force.  It is more collective, more monumental, more powerful (and so also more dangerous) than the individual life of spirituality.  What is the relation between the two?  We think religion is always attempting to incorporate the spiritual instincts of human beings.

In the 21st century, already, any good thinker has heard enough of "Spiritual but not religious" to suspect it of dubious ideological content.  What is this purified, universalized spirituality?  But that question is already too hasty.  It leans to heavily on the metaphysics of what something "is".  Rather we should do as Deleuze commended Nietzsche for doing, ask "Which one is it?"

So let us find at least two essences of spiritual-but-not-religious.  And they are readly at hand.  One stream, advocated by Slavoj Zizek and others, finds that spirituality is the denuded ideological "ground zero" of religion -- religiosity stripped of its wordly power and made generic, transformed into the domestic house pet of the incipiently anti-democratic hegemony of the global capitalist Order.  The other stream of interpretation takes this same "stripped down" religiousness as the starting point for a production of new religion energy and forms at the planetary level.  The similarity between these two interpretations is predictably strong.

If we wish to safeguard against the first, or to enhance the emergence of the second, we must anticipate some form of re-religionization of the spiritual instincts of planetary humanity.  We must reach toward religion in some sense.

DIVERSITY

We are painfully aware of the great diversity of beliefs concerning the nature of religion.  This is so whether we leave this diversity as a sprawling pluralistic field or whether we engage the work of organizing it -- along the axis of some vertical spectrum of inclusivity & emergence.

Yet in both approaches we thinkers face the danger that resides in our own tendency to use the historical and popular mass of inherited religious traditions (and their auxiliary modes of academic investigation) as if they were the primary material for our understanding.  I believe this assumption tends to suck up the oxygen in a room and so I will try to evade its constraints by speaking to my most personal and colloquial understanding -- keeping it safe from my voracious academic understanding.

In order to do this I must first defend/attack before making any claims -- in order to clear the field.

SOMEBODY ELSE'S RELIGION 

 

What is not religion?  I name "Somebody Else's Religion" as not religion.  

The implicit heteradox character which haunts most popular and academic discussions of religion acts as an ideological membrane of suppression -- always keeping us one step removed from the living, emergent and culturally vital novelty which produces and constitutes real religiousness.

Historically, must of our sense of "gods" and "faiths" derive from the inherently derogatory and distancing inquiries of Christians.  Post-Christian atheism, neo-paganism and mystical pluralism only extend this same approach to Christendom as well.  This inherent exclusionism of religious studies is neatly summarized in the well known tendency to refuse the word 'God' in reference to the Mohammedans and keep them outside the gates with their 'Allah' while justifying this as an act of cultural respect.  In an analogous manner most religious study evade the imminent character of religion by treating AS IF it were Somebody Else's Religion.

When we consider the problem of Religion or the potential validity of all the religions we are treating them as the potential belief assertions of an indiscriminate Other who cannot possibly tell us what religion is, now.

RELIGION AS THE EPITOME OF BIO-CULTURAL SURPLUS

Religion is the hum of the cultural machinery -- operating well & with its proper fuel.

It is the surplus cultural vitality which defies itself in many small and great acts of collective auto-apotheosis.  The Judeo-Greeks had the freedom and energy to incarnate their spiritual slogans and practices into the form of a Jesus who resembled themselves.  Augustus' invigoration of Rome was accompanied by the exaltation of City & Caesar into the heavenly pantheon. This is a healthy instinct. 

We could say that it does not matter much which forms of religion are used to integrate the biological, spiritual and cultural realms of a people but what does matter is that the conditions exist in order to permit a people to establish some amplified religious aesthetic which corresponds the realities of the historical moment.

Buddhism, Mohammedanism, Christianity, etc. should properly NOT be considered as religions.  They WERE religions.  They arise in times and places which are not this one.  They are Somebody Else's Religion -- even when we are raised in them and constrain our insights to be in resonance with them.  Such constraint is not the ancient and vital function of a religion.  Rather these inherited traditions are only place holders or, to be frank, the husks of religion.  We may use their forms, mutate them, fine. But in spirit they remain merely husks of religion.

And no "integrated" framework of husks will every capture the living worm.

THE FOUR ROLES OF RELIGION

1. Create the condition of surplus cultural energy

2. Make a place for todays mystics and philosohper and persuade them of this place
3. Produce an aesthetic.
4. Demonstrate, distribute and constantly invoke the surplus.

THE ENEMIES OF RELIGIOUS STUDY (GOING FORWARD)

• the timidity that says "Stalinism & Nazism MIGHT be considered to be religious movements"
• the banality which says "The essence and future of religion can be found in an broad integration of traditional beliefs and practices"
• the ideological ignorance which instinctively embraces the idea "all religious have basically the same message and value"
• the refusal seek the difference between pathology self-destructive and humanly toxic cultural practices from constructive, humanly flourishing cultural practices
• the mendaciousness with which ostensibly religious figures propose self-destructive ideologies while critiquing the forms of art and entertainment which are far closer to the emerging Spirit of the Times 

Enough!  Hopefully this will be useful or provocative.  At least it has temporarily relieved me of the burden of these thoughts.

[Balder]

Layman,

I appreciated this post for its provocativeness. Theurj was just talking about provocative writing, introducing 'interruptions' in expectation to prompt new thinking, and I read your post in that vein.

I share your skepticism regarding the refrain, "spiritual but not religious."  On the one hand, I appreciate the desire to break free of the retraints or "husks" of old religious forms, to find and follow some living current of spiritual inquiry, aesthetics, and relationship outside of dead or dead-seeming traditional enclosures; but on the other hand, I do not think any such "independent" stream is as pure or independent as it typically pretends, nor do I think religion is necessarily opposed to a living spirituality.  When it is opposed to living spirituality, I take it that is what you mean by "somebody else's religion": such a system or enclosure is no longer "religion."

However, in your discussion of this notion of "somebody else's religion," I do not follow some of your conclusions.  I agree that Christian exclusivist attitudes towards other faiths have influenced popular (and even post-Christian) thinking in our culture, but would not go so far as to label religious studies as "inherently exclusionist."  There's a great deal of critical and self-reflective work being done in this field, not only to critique and deconstruct past forms of exclusivism (or its sibling, inclusivism), but also to challenge the distancing and insulating trends within the field itself (where, as you say, religion is approached so-called objectively, AS IF it were someone else's religion) -- even to find in the forms of this practice itself new kinds of (previously unrecognized) religiousness.

When you say, "we are treating them as the potential belief assertions of an indiscriminate Other who cannot possibly tell us what religion is, now," I'd like to know who (what group of people) you are including in this "we."  I ask because the final part of your statement surprised me: the expectation that religious studies assumes an indiscriminate Other who cannot possibly tell us what religion is, now.  I don't think like this and can't think of anyone I know working in this area that does, so I'm just not quite sure what you're suggesting or seeing here.

Regarding your claim that Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and so on are no longer living religions -- that they are only husks, suited to a former time and place -- I think I get your point, but am suspicious that it essentializes these traditions too much: as if there was some "pure" form of them in the past, but now we only have are fossils and dusty artifacts, which people still carry around and swap as an empty, anemic pasttime.  I am suspicious of the claim that there IS a "real Christianity" that we can clearly differentiate out and contrast with whatever counterfeits (or pinching, hand-me-down clothes) we have today.  What is the lifespan of a "real religion"?  How long does it take for a religion to become outmoded and no longer suitable to its times?  Couldn't this happen in a single generation, or less?  Is the Christianity of the early apostles the Christianity of the desert fathers or the Roman empire or the Reformation?  I suggest we can still call a religion a religion to the extent that it still shows life, that it is still evolving, that it still has the capacity to nourish new aesthetic insights and (r)evolutionary movements, etc.  And what do you do with those traditions which do not have an historical founder, such as Hinduism or some of the aboriginal traditions?  Without an origin, it is even harder, I expect, to identify an expiration date: there was never a single "form" that could ever pretend to be the final word.

In my view, the idea that the only "living" religious work is work that is being done in modern forms, outside of religious traditions, participates in the same notion of (temporal) purity that informs the Spiritual But Not Religious sensibility.  I definitely think that new forms of religiosity are emerging, and an Integral postmetaphysical spirituality needs to attend to this (even, or especially, where it shows up in unexpected areas and in possibly unrecognized or underappreciated ways), as it needs also to be careful not to fall into the trap of only accepting as religious what carries the venerable monikers of the "great traditions," but I would caution against the counter trap of assuming that anything happening within a given tradition is quaint and outmoded (even if creative) husk-weaving and not "real religious work" or an expression of the evolutionary energy of a modern culture.

Regarding "The Four Roles of Religion," I would recommend dropping the "the."  I'm not sure that list is exhaustive.  And regarding your identified enemies of religious study, yes, I basically agree that each is problematic in its own way.  In my own writings, I've focused mainly on points two and three.

All the best,

B.

[Layman Pascal]

Yes, my post is meant to be slightly hyperbolic with a focus on altering emphasis.  The imbalance it approaches is the sense that religious study pertains primarily to those things which we have "heard about" called Religion.  

Now, of course these Somebody Else's Religions are relevant (and just as obviously there are numberless agents of "religious study" who are productively and unproductively critical of that relevance and of the narrowing of study to conventionally mediated religiosity of this kind).  Yet --popularly presumed religion comprises the obvious bulk of the content on any library shelf devoted to this topic.  Perhaps it should be no more than half!

We know this.  It is a cautionary reminder.  Even those with the best intentions are always at risk of swaying into a collect-and-correlate-the-prominent-styles-and-common-features-of-what-people-call-religion mode.  

To be tempted by synthesis, fascinated by the mosaic, the grid, network, the parliamentary round-table (all these versions of collect-and-correlate) is one of the main impulses that strikes us when we wish to proceed integrally.  In this mode, regardless of our authenticity, we are vulnerable to overweighting the combined force of the popular designation of religion, the "heard about" religions, Somebody Else's Religion.  And just knowing this does not always protect us.

So when Hitchens writes 'God is Not Great' he is functioning as a religious theorist -- but his concept of religion is that of a force which is popularly recognizable in others but not in himself.  His experience of religiousness is mediated through the Other.  It is Somebody Else's Religion.  This would be true even if he were sympathetic and integral in his disposition rather than political, acerbic & dismissive.  This gap between himself a "those religions" goes a long way to defining the relationship of every believer to every other religion, of every agnostic to all religions, of every modern to every ancient religion -- individually and collectively.  It is this minimal differential between the student-of-religion & those who have brought forth and stand for "all religions" which I hyperbolically described as the "inherently exclusionist" character which infiltrates the majority of human religious studies.  Thus we are on the same page, apparently, when you refer to the challenging of the distancing and isolating trends within the field.  I am simply exaggerating it because I think this challenge must clear the space for the lion's share, or, say, "half" of all religious studies.

You ask "When you say, "we are treating them as the potential belief assertions of an indiscriminate Other who cannot possibly tell us what religion is, now," I'd like to know who (what group of people) you are including in this "we."  I ask because the final part of your statement surprised me: the expectation that religious studies assumes an indiscriminate Other who cannot possibly tell us what religion is, now.  I don't think like this and can't think of anyone I know working in this area that does, so I'm just not quite sure what you're suggesting or seeing here."

The "we" is not accusatory or discriminatory, it is nebulous & self-critical.  It certainly includes myself on many occasions.  I suspect it includes most popular and academic theorists of religions.  It characterizes (frames) the majority of the references to religion which I come across.  And I would not be surprised if it represents a habit of temptation among many serious investigators who can otherwise freely assert that they understand this concern and share it.  So this "we" is like the we who eats too much.  It is the "we" who makes political assessments with inadequate knowledge.  I.e. most of us, most of the time.

Is there a "real" Christianity, or Buddhism, or Islam which could be vital in a past context and husk-ified in the current context?  That is wide open to debate.  One the one hand we always risk essentializing a pure form in our discourse... on the other hand we also risk failing to acknowledge and isolate the thematic and structural elements which may well distinguish the living heart & commonality of a particular cluster of religions.  Personally I often treat Pure Land Buddhism and Messianic Islam as forms of Christianity, and Meister Eckhart's Christianity as a form of Buddhism.  There is a lot of personal choice involved in treating these topics -- and there are risks one takes moving in any definite direction.   

Admittedly it would ridiculously difficult to try to trace the lifespan of a religion prior to its use as a husk. Unless we were to discover a particular manifestation which indicated vitality we have no hope of reconstructing the life-cycle of ancient religions.  The critique of their huskification operates primarily to turn our attention to the question of the vitality and function of religions.  But this is like asking, "What are cultural highpoints in history?"  An absolutely key question when trying to understanding our future possibilities on this planet but it is an extraordinarily fluid issue.  So much intuition is involved!

Perhaps we will come a little closer to my personal opinion on this subject if I say that, like Nietzsche, I regard the Borgias (both specifically but also as a general indicator of the Renaissance popes) as living religious figures who arranges the conditions for the revitalization and flourishing of Christendom in contradistinction to, say, John Paul II who more closely (but obviously not exactly) resembles the "spiritual but not religious" orientation.  

When I say that religion is the hum of the surplus of the bio-cultural machinery in full operation I mean that we should look to certain approaches to social organization which produce religious energies and forms.  We are not looking into the religion for evidence that its essential character is alive in a certain epoch but rather we are examining the epoch to see if it is productive of religion (and not merely productive of spirituality or of people who claim to be religious).

As for "the four roles of religion" I will most certainly NOT drop the "the" -- given that (a) mild hyperbole is the flavor of the pieces, and (b) i am reasonably confident that I could fit any additional points into one of those existing and very flexible four items... and if not... THEN it is time to make it five points.  But I shouldn't like to waste any of our precious time on anticipatory self-presentation of non-exhaustiveness!  There are so many other important ways to waste our precious time...

All the best, etc.

[Balder]

Layman Pascal:  We know this.  It is a cautionary reminder.  Even those with the best intentions are always at risk of swaying into a collect-and-correlate-the-prominent-styles-and-common-features-of-what-people-call-religion mode.  To be tempted by synthesis, fascinated by the mosaic, the grid, network, the parliamentary round-table (all these versions of collect-and-correlate) is one of the main impulses that strikes us when we wish to proceed integrally.  In this mode, regardless of our authenticity, we are vulnerable to overweighting the combined force of the popular designation of religion, the "heard about" religions, Somebody Else's Religion.  And just knowing this does not always protect us.

 

Yes, I think this is a good point.  In past discussions and writings, I've addressed this, in part, as the latent or even overt "inclusivism" that still informs a lot of Integral thinking.  To the extent that it places the "transcend and include" movement at its center as one of its primary explanatory models and drivers, I believe it will continue to inspire such "collect-and-correlate" activities.

 

Layman Pascal:  The "we" is not accusatory or discriminatory, it is nebulous & self-critical.  It certainly includes myself on many occasions.  I suspect it includes most popular and academic theorists of religions.  It characterizes (frames) the majority of the references to religion which I come across.  And I would not be surprised if it represents a habit of temptation among many serious investigators who can otherwise freely assert that they understand this concern and share it.  So this "we" is like the we who eats too much.  It is the "we" who makes political assessments with inadequate knowledge.  I.e. most of us, most of the time.

 

Okay, you answered the question I asked, but I guess that really wasn't what I was trying to get at.  What I was wanting to ask was, What do you mean when you say (or why do you say) that we posit an Other "who cannot possibly tell us what religion is, now"?

 

Layman Pascal:  When I say that religion is the hum of the surplus of the bio-cultural machinery in full operation I mean that we should look to certain approaches to social organization which produce religious energies and forms.  We are not looking into the religion for evidence that its essential character is alive in a certain epoch but rather we are examining the epoch to see if it is productive of religion (and not merely productive of spirituality or of people who claim to be religious).

 

Can you clarify your distinction between being "productive of religion" and being "productive of spirituality or of people who claim to be religious"?  What marker(s) would set the former apart from the latter?

 

Layman Pascal:  As for "the four roles of religion" I will most certainly NOT drop the "the" -- given that (a) mild hyperbole is the flavor of the pieces, and (b) i am reasonably confident that I could fit any additional points into one of those existing and very flexible four items... and if not... THEN it is time to make it five points.

 

All right, well, I'm open to seeing how you use these points, then.  Religions are often associated with, and promise or seek to effect, various forms of soteriology.  Where does the soteriological focus of religions fall within, and/or relate to, your four points?

[Layman Pascal]

Okydoky,

We shouldn't underestimate the potential political savvy which informs transcend-and-include.  Though obviously we can't risk becoming intellectually beholden to such social pragmatism.  

And if "inclusivism" shifted emphasis from presumed & asserted perspectives toward enacted perspectives, carefully protected against pathological and ideological distortion, then it might have a different significance for us.

Why do I say that "we posit an Other who cannot possibly tell us what religion is, now"?  

This only restates the current theme.  In every moment we are responsive to the orthodoxy of "who" is religious -- the Others-supposed-to-believe -- we are less responsive to a naturalistic observation or the ways in which human religions instincts are actually, currently showing up.  

As long as we think "those Mohammedans believe in Allah" we manipulate the Others in order to miss something about what our word "God" means.  Likewise, when the Hebraic term for Mankind is rendered into English we can experience Genesis as a truly mythic summary tale -- but, untranslated, "Adam" is the cartoonish hero of a fairy tale.  The word which "Adam" conceals is not for us -- it is for another, for an Other-supposed-to-believe.  Thus, the other believer functions for us as an inaccessibility relative to the intellectual & emotional dimensions of the "religion".  

Our access to the nature of the religious is limited through our separation from those Others who are supposed the referents of the faith and from who we presumably inherit "traditions" -- whether we treat these as homogenous, fractious, relativistic or integratable.

What kinds of things might distinguish between situations productive of religion vs. those productive of spirituality and/or nominal religiosity?  Here we are not looking, I think, for marks upon people but for factors which make distinguish one cultural scenario from another.  Things like:

• Is the culture rife with a sense of excessive "liberation" enjoyment among those who are "merely participating in the society" -- or is this enjoyment being primarily sought in isolated personal circumstances?  
• Are the "churches" readily uptaking the variety of bio-cultural energies -- high and low?  Or are they trying to distance themselves from the direction in which the society is moving?  
• Are public institutions taking a majority of "chakras" into account or is there fragmentation and specialization of human energies?  
• Are there institutions and events which are regularly bypassing class, racial, economic divisions in the society?  Or is there increasing sequestering and stratification?  
• Is there more demonstration of faith or discussion about beliefs?  
• Do prominent religious speakers talk in terms of harnessing all parts of the culture or in terms of minimizing parts of the culture in favor of hypothetical or historical alternative modes?

And what about salvation-ism?  

Where does it fit into my "four points" (generative, incorporative, aesthetic & promulgative)?  

It is present in all four.  

Soteriology, so-called (or perhaps anti-suck-ology), describes the ways in which human dissatisfaction are organized relative to the possibilities of accessing increased harmonious energy.  So the conditions which enable this bio-cultural surplus are those conditions which empower people to collective imagine a "glowing" (surplus) state of being.  Religion must attract those who have a relationship to this surplus and organize them together in relationship to the existing worldly conditions.  It takes over their seeking and their glimpsing.  It provides implicit & promisory access to surplus experience.  And the hybrid of implicit and promisory which is the transcendental suggestion of immanent heavenly experience.  The style which is produces corresponds to appropriate ways in which people can envision the interiority of the cultural surplus for their time and place and also indicates ways to enjoy the implicit surplus here and now.  And then the attempt to make the world live up to the surplus, to invite more people, to sacralize phenomenon, to link bodies, brains, cities, monuments, artwork, mountains, teachings, to this excessive dimension of contentment.

How's that?

[Balder]

A beginning of a response...

We shouldn't underestimate the potential political savvy which informs transcend-and-include.  Though obviously we can't risk becoming intellectually beholden to such social pragmatism. 

And if "inclusivism" shifted emphasis from presumed & asserted perspectives toward enacted perspectives, carefully protected against pathological and ideological distortion, then it might have a different significance for us.

Right -- I don't intend to dismiss the notion of transcend-and-include altogether, only certain limited applications of (or excessive reliances upon) this concept in popular Integral thinking.  I agree that an inclusivism growing from an enactive, postmetaphysical perspective would be a different sort of animal: here, the inclusiveness is more of an aspiration, a cultivated and exhorted broadness of perspective and engagement, rather than the hegemonic presupposition of intrinsic completeness, comprehensiveness, and finality of one's tradition (in relation to other traditions) that has typically informed traditional or modernist forms of religious inclusivism.

Why do I say that "we posit an Other who cannot possibly tell us what religion is, now"? 
This only restates the current theme.  In every moment we are responsive to the orthodoxy of "who" is religious -- the Others-supposed-to-believe -- we are less responsive to a naturalistic observation or the ways in which human religions instincts are actually, currently showing up. 

I agree that a narrow definition of what constitutes religion -- or "who" qualifies as religious -- will likely encourage us to miss or disregard other (novel, unexpected, newly emergent) forms of religiosity.  If there is any suggestion here that "real religion" for our modern age will not be found in so-called "traditional" religious contexts or lineages, however, I don't agree.

I'm out of time for posting this afternoon, so will continue in my next post this evening or tomorrow.

[Layman Pascal]

Well, I thought I could append a more concise addition on the soteriological question -- but that is apparently the opposite of what I did!

So if have dared to trade in our new socks (they're the worst!) for some hyperbole & say something like:

 

THE FOUR ROLES OF RELIGION

1. Create the condition of surplus cultural energy

2. Make a place for todays mystics and philosohper and persuade them of this place
3. Produce an aesthetic.
4. Demonstrate, distribute and constantly invoke the surplus.

What does this mean?  And what does it mean for the soteriological concerns which are a basic conventional category of religious study?  Well, let's take salvation-ism and run it through these four functions:

1. Generative
2. Incorporative
3. Aesthetic
4. Promulgative  

It is commonly said that religion proposes various technologies of salvation.  This means that they have stories about why life sucks (existential dissatisfaction, ranging from the proliferation of overt suffering to the fundamental un-ease of the born entity in its felt separation from either the non-dual immersion of Being -- or from the nourishing bio-semantic energy field).  And they have a proposal about how to evade, embrace or exceed this suckiness of life.

1. An explanation of existential dissatisfaction is a cultural device which allows the psychological organism to organize, privately & mutually, their displeasure and separateness into a more artistic whole.  Meaning is produced as a kind of surplus potency connected to the effective harmonizing of our reactions to the limitation-feelings associated with human life.  This is one example of the general phenomenon in which a cultural organization of living experience succeeds in such a manner as to cause the blooming of a pleasurable significance.  A kind of psycho-social machinery, akin to Marx's thoughts about the production of surplus value, creates the experiential "glow" around organizing ideas, events, images, figures, teachings, etc.  A gestalt, even a gestalt of our miseries & seekings, gains something more than the sum of its parts which then suffuses certain cultural forms.  This is analogous to the way a painter arranges paints to suggest an attractive image OR the way in which a "good" arrangement of scenery and minerals (and whatnots) may make a mountain seems to vibrate with an abnormal intensity of refreshing vitalism.  The sacred is being produced and located somewhere.  And some of it is located implicitly in the jouissance of participation (proud to be an American!).  And some of it located in the promise of another state, stage, place, etc. (enlightenment, salvation, heaven, acceptance, mutation, bliss, et al)  Both the projected salvation and the imminent satisfaction are produced as the hum of bio-cultural systems functioning properly (given that we tautologically define proper functioning AS the production of this effect in various emergent ways).

2.  Now the deepest, most imaginative, most mystical, most psychic, more profound people are always exploiting their own multi-dimensional psycho-physical apparatus in order to enter into superlative and evolutionary states -- full of glimpses and insights which orient toward their own most optimized potentials.  Religion can thrive and function only if it can persuade these people to enter into mutual dreaming with each other.  The bio-cultural machinery, so-called, has to assimilate the spiritual lives of people and "yoke" them together with other dimensions of life.  This means linking their deepest experiences to the appropriately established symbols, linking their spirituality to the rest of the domains of life (integrating them with as many of their own energy frequencies and social domains as possible) and getting them to work as a creative team of collective intelligence with other people.

3. In order to correlate their own inner seeking attempts (personal soteriology) with each other, appropriate to the world they inhabit, an aesthetic must begin to emerge.  To some degree this is the natural overflow associated with people accessing their cultural surplus.  To some degree it creates, and to some degree reflects, the immanent use of the surplus pleasure.  It is also tasked with making the empowered forms and collective story about salvation into vital, provocative, glorified and interesting artistic forms.  It grows a style or cluster of styles which will linger in people's minds and always suggest that there might be an "essential form" of the religion lurking at the root of all this idiosyncratic aesthetic manifestation.  

4. It must continue, export, extend.  It will do this if it truly lives -- growing from both the roots and the branches.  This means that it must (overtly or slyly) suggest its own form of imminent and promisory access to bio-psycho-cultural surplus energy to others.  It is a little or a lot messianic.  It announces, re-iterates and advocates this anticipated path while also demonstrating its implicit enjoyment of the existing situation.  This is amplified wherever the "religious" can improve part of the world -- generating more of this particular sense of excessive harmony.  Help the poor, feed the starving, heal the blind, stitch up soldiers, build cathedrals, put minds at ease, hold festivals -- all these and more are ways of shewing the efficacy of the religious as a generator and coordinator of the precise "substance" which makes all forms of salvation look attractive.