Huston Smith calls it the “God-war” in his contribution to this issue of Parabola: the bitter clash between belief and disbelief being fought today in the media, especially in bestselling books, where the idea of God and the worth of religion have been put on trial. Passions run high on both sides. And at the same time, real war continues to rage among believers. It’s estimated that nearly a billion people have died from religious conflicts throughout history, and not all long ago.

The root of these disputes must lie in the reality that for we humans, as Charles Upton writes in this issue, “God in His Essence is ultimately unknowable.” Approaching God, we are like the blind men feeling the elephant; our understanding is incomplete and imperfect. So, too, is our response, turning easily to fear and hate. Nor can science help, despite the claims of the writer-scientists rebuked by Huston Smith. As Walter T. Stacy says here, “To ask for a proof of the existence of God is on a par with asking for a proof of the existence of beauty. If God does not lie at the end of a telescope, neither does he lie at the end of any syllogism.”

How, then, are we wisely to approach God? In his opening essay, Rabbi David Cooper wrestles with this question from within the Jewish tradition. About Ultimate Reality he writes, “Nothing about it can be differentiated. Nothing at all can be said or conceived about it.” But, he suggests, one can come into more proper relationship with it. To do this he recommends a way adopted by all traditions: sitting in silence. As we quiet the mind, he suggests, perhaps then “we can recognize a mysterious connection between our own inner light” and the light of higher consciousness.

And perhaps then, too, we can listen more closely to conscience, that higher faculty that, as G. I. Gurdjieff says within these pages, is “the representative of God in any individual…that which tells him how or what God would do in any situation.”
    
Regular readers of this magazine will note a major change in our look. After 129 issues and nearly thirty-five years of displaying the world’s most meaningful art in black and white, Parabola, beginning with this Summer 2008 issue, will be illustrating the wisdom of the traditions in full color. We are excited by the possibilities, and hope that the magazine and our readers benefit from this change.

Jeff Zaleski