A "Nirvana," after
death, is not immortality in the sense of personal survival and in the
sense demanded by the religious consciousness.
The influence of Bergson's thought upon religion and theology may be put
finally as follows: We must reject the notion of a God for whom all is
already made, to whom all is given, and uphold the conception of a God
who acts freely in an open universe. The acceptance of Bergson's
philosophy involves the recognition of a God who is the enduring
creative impulse of all Life, more akin perhaps to a Mother-Deity than a
Father-Deity. This divine vital impetus manifests itself in continual
new creation. We are each part of this great Divine Life, and are both
the products and the instruments of its activity. We may thus come to
view the Divine Life as self-given to humanity, emptying itself into
mankind as a veritable incarnation, not, however, restricted to one time
and place, but manifest throughout the whole progress of humanity. Our
conception will be that of a Deity, not external and far-off, but one
whose own future is bound up in humanity, rejoicing in its joy, but
suffering, by a kind of perpetual crucifixion, through man's errors and
his failures to be loyal to the higher things of the spirit. Thus we
shall see that, in a sense, men's noble actions promote God's fuller
being. A Norwegian novelist has recently emphasized this point by his
story of the man who went out and sowed corn in his late enemy's field
THAT GOD MIGHT EXIST! [Footnote: The Great Hunger, by Johan Bojer.
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