Human Origins and Destinies According to the Great Religions of the World

Human Origins and Destinies According to the Great Religions of the World

Martin Lings asks what the great religions teach about where human beings come from and where they are going. He begins with creation as divine manifestation, then considers the relation between the human being and the cosmos, the origin of evil, and the heart as the center of spiritual knowledge. A recollection of C. S. Lewis’s lectures on medieval thought leads into al-Hallaj’s account of seeing with the eye of the heart.

1. 0:00 — Human origins and the meaning of religion
2. 3:12 — Creation as manifestation
3. 5:02 — Macrocosm, microcosm and the divine essence
4. 8:12 — Evil and distance from the divine
5. 12:45 — C. S. Lewis and the medieval faculties
6. 16:21 — The eye of the heart
7. 20:01 — Human destiny and purification
8. 34:45 — Prayer for the dead
9. 37:10 — Samsara and the human state
10. 45:41 — The two paradises and the return to God

Martin Lings — 2 recordings in the archive.

Related reading: Ancient Beliefs and Modern Superstitions by Martin Lings.

Now ladies and gentlemen, this speaking about human origins and human destiny. Religions are of course unanimous in agreement about these two points, human origins and about human destiny. But in this lower world, as you know, appearances are deceptive. And the word religion means [snorts] a restoring of the ligament, the the the leg in religion is the ligament which joined man to God. and which joined human intelligence to the world of the hereafter. And [unclear words] really of course means restoring something which has been broken. rebinding the human intelligence, the human soul to knowledge of the divine which he had lost at the fall of man. But here below, I repeat, appearances are are deceptive. And once a person has ceased to practice any religion, it does not take long for the appearances to triumph. What seems to be the most real of all things is the material world. The soul also must be real because we are conscious of it. But all beyond that becomes questionable and even improbable. And that is the state of affairs which seems to prevail by a large major in a large majority of people in the modern western world. But man was created with the certitude. This is according to all religions that the invisible beyond is supreme reality and all religions are in agreement as to human origins that man was created by God in his image. The words, the word creation is often replaced by the word manifestation to to make clear that the world is God manifesting himself [snorts] at a lower level. In fact, in most religions, [snorts] not only Hinduism, which is the oldest living religion, but the other esoterisms of Christianity and Islam, for example, and Dowoism, they tend to prefer the word manifest because that expresses the truth that it is God. Things come into existence through God manifesting himself. There is a beautiful saying which is attributed to the prophet of Islam. I mean it is almost certainly from him. That's what the Sufis say. It is not officially counted as a a saying of his but as an expression of wisdom. and this is God speaking in the first person. I was a hidden treasure and I loved to be known and so I created the world. now the world consists of macrocosm and microcosm. That is the greater out…