Beautiful Sunset In June of 2006, Dr. Huston Smith, world-renowned expert on the world’s religions, spoke in Lexington, Ky., at the “Unity in Diversity, Diversity in Unity” conference, hosted by the Kentucky Center of Psychosynthesis. Dr. Smith’s stories and wisdom on the topic of “Human Growth, Religion, and Psychology” addressed numerous issues and brought several sighs from the audience.

John Overbeck, of Fairfield, Ohio, attended the weekend conference. “At age 93, Dr. Smith has achieved the status of a guru of comparative religions, and offered us the distilled wisdom of his life,” he said. Below is a sample of questions asked by the audience.

Audience: What is your ultimate goal in life?

Smith: A genius of a man said, “Happy is the man who can have written on his tombstone, ‘Here lies no one.’” It’s only the body that housed an ego, but during the course of his life, he transcended his ego and became no one.

Audience: How do you listen to God and your own soul to know which is speaking?

Smith: This is going to sound glib and a cop out, but I don’t think it is: Attend.

Audience: What advice would you give a young person looking for purpose, meaning in life?

Smith: Turn to the great wisdom traditions of the world. My day begins with a three-fold practice of mind, body, and spirit. My body (work) used to be Hatha yoga. Now I do physical therapy. Same thing. For the mind, I read a few pages from the great religious tracts of the world. The bulk of it is from the Bible, but it ranges. And the pendulum swings between prayer and meditation.

Audience: Lots of people are disillusioned with religion. Do you see this changing? Is there a difference between religion and spirituality?

Smith: We have to make a very sharp distinction between authentic religion and hijacked religion. Authentic religion is a message of peace. No variation. And they all say the same thing. Islam has been hijacked on both sides for political purposes. The difference between spirituality and religion is easy. Religion is organized spirituality.

Audience: How do you reconcile the exclusivity of Christianity with the truth of other religions?

Smith: We usually think of different civilizations having different religions. But the truth is, different revelations resulted in different civilizations. The Koran says, “Had We willed, We could have made of you one people. As it is, it is better this way, so vie among yourselves in good works. In the end it will all be revealed to you.” So we have many civilizations; we have many religions. Now it stands to reason that one God, a single God, must speak to different peoples with their different languages and different idioms. Therefore, we have the sacred texts of the religions and they differ in idioms.

Globalization is a new phenomenon. During most of history, the civilizations and religions lived just to themselves. But now that globalization has occurred, they are rubbing shoulders. This places upon everyone a religious demand: how to be faithful to one’s own tradition, without shutting out others; fidelity to our own, and openness to others.

All religions are exclusive. They all have their boundaries. However, the exclusivity can be ameliorated by generosity toward others.

I have a little quatrain that I like very much, “He drew a circle that drew me out… But love and I had the wit to win. We drew a circle that brought him in.” I think the glue is to recognize the other as valid, a complete revelation of the one God in a different idiom. But you have to speak your own language, and mine is Christianity.

Audience: What are your beliefs about death?

Smith: We now know that consciousness is the most fundamental reality. Matter, from the scientists’ view, fundamentally, cannot be destroyed. It can change form, from corporeality into energy and back from energy into corporeality, but it cannot be destroyed… I am absolutely persuaded that life continues. What the image will be when we die, nobody has a clue.

Audience: Do you believe in reincarnation?

Smith: Ram Dass said, “It’s there when I need it.” There is no hypothesis ever developed that deals better with the injustice of the world and human beings than that theory.

Audience: What about the successor to replace His Holiness?

Smith: At the close of an interview with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, a visitor asked him, “Is there anything in your life you would like to have accomplished before you drop the body?” His Holiness said, “I would like to be enlightened. But the burdens of my people are so great that I have only meditated two hours a day, and there’s no way to become enlightened when you have only meditated two hours a day.” And then my friend heard him sigh softly and say, almost to himself, “Well, maybe enlightenment isn’t very important after all.” There you get a measure of the man. What is important is doing his duty. Enlightenment is just a personal phenomenon; not important.

All the faithful Tibetans expect him to reincarnate. An outsider asked him point blank, “Are you going to reincarnate?” He said, “Well, there may no longer be any need for me because my people, my land, have been taken away and the survivors are scattered all around the world, and there may no longer be any place for a Dalai Lama.”

The person pressed the question, and said, “When will you decide?” And he said, “Not yet. As I come closer to dropping the body, then I will have to decide whether to come back.”

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