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The
religious pilgrimage as fake pilgrimage
Fundamentally, pilgrimage to a religious goal is a
fake pilgrimage. That’s because the religious pilgrim seeks to copy and
perfect a ‘given’ identity (made real in the past). In short, the religious
pilgrim follows another to her or his Self, rather than creating and
perfecting her own Self. The religious identity (indeed, any identity
‘given’ rather than invented, such as, for instance, the identity provided by
an educational system or the parental home) offered to, though most often
forced upon the pilgrim, though initially helpful, eventually fails her on
three counts. Firstly, the religious goal (and which is, lastly,
a religious identity), no matter how universally useful it might initially
appear, is a relic, usually from a very primitive past and whose problems it
was designed to resolve. However, since then times have changed and with it
have the problems and the means of their resolution. Secondly, being repeated, the ‘given’ (hence
religious) goal/identity suffers from sameness. It cannot provide certainty,
therefore realness producing contact since it lacks difference. Only
difference makes a difference. Thirdly, the given goal (i.e. the relic of the
past) distracts and so prevents the pilgrim originating her own goal, i.e.
her own True Self, thereby either cutting her off or impeding her from
attaining the latter and experiencing perfect self-realisation and freedom. Given goals, religious or secular, serve (because
fundamentally political) to lock the pilgrim into a particular state,
sometimes for the benefit of the pilgrim, sooner or later however for the
benefit (to wit, power, status and wealth) of those who lock her in (e.g. as
the horrible, murderous histories of all religions, indeed of all political
systems demonstrate). However, the function of the true pilgrim is to
create a new state (i.e. a new True Self), that is to say, a new, hence
wholly identifiable state and which alone can make real and give new life. If the pilgrim uses the ‘given’ (i.e. religious or
secular state/identity) as a means (i.e. as a stop-over or oasis in the
desert) rather than as an end, then the ‘given’ functions as a whole-making
support and ceases to be a fake (pilgrimage goal). However, perfect completion of a religious
pilgrimage, that is to say, perfect identification with the goal of a
religion (or of the founder’s, such as Christ’s or Buddha’s personal
qualities) will pay off with the experiences of completion, therefore of
perfection (i.e. of becoming an identifiable fact), namely absolute certainty
of identity (or wisdom deriving from that architecture of that identity), the
sense of absolute realness and the release into total freedom (albeit within
a dispensation, though not experienced as such), the latter being interpreted
as an almighty rush of rapturous joy. In short, the perfect fake is true; that is to say, the fake perfected pays off in
the bounty derived from perfection and not from that which has been
perfected. |