ABSTRACT
Religion commits the believer to a group of absolute postulates—and to the many consequences which follow from them—which then act as principles of absolute separation from the similarly absolute postulates of other religions. Religion means an intimate dependence on a certain set of truths—and its impact on conduct and thought—although it is often the case that the religious authorities relax this discipline either under external pressure or following their own reinterpretation of dogma. The God-man problem, redefined on the cross, presented philosophy and religion with an open-ended debate. The religion of the mystics is another vast domain, centering on the fusion of God and the soul. The immediately available substitute for religion and philosophy is oriental wisdom. It possesses great assets for Western man in search of the absolute, but no longer willing to find it in the monotheistic God.
