388 becoming more human by becoming more godlikeOur joys, although they may be intense and rather strengthened
than undermined by refl ection, are short- lived and as mysterious as
our long- standing tribulations. We know, even as we undergo them,
that they will never be accompanied by any solution to the enigma of
reality and that all surfeit and fecundity of experience will end in death.
It is against this background, variable according to the vagaries of
fortune but constant in its basic elements, that we must conceive and
implement the hope of entering into the fuller possession of life. Th e
rule of contingency and constraint can be circumscribed both by the
reor ga ni za tion of society and by the re orientation of the individual.
Th ere are certain recurrent incidents or turning points in human life,
no less universal than the irreparable fl aws in the human condition.
I previously presented the moral agenda of the religion of the future
as a doctrine of the virtues. I now restate it as a conception of our re-
sponse to these points of infl ection in human existence. Th e two state-
ments are meant to be convergent and complementary.
Early in childhood, every human being fi nds out that he is a distinct
self and that this self is not the center of the world. He discovers that
there are other human beings and that he is one among many.
Th is discovery occurs so early that it seems to be coeval with the
birth of consciousness. For consciousness has two fundamental as-
pects. One aspect of consciousness is mindfulness about the body, or
rather the body lived as mind. It is this fundamental feature of con-
sciousness that led Spinoza to make his exaggerated claim that the
mind is the idea of the body. Every modulation of our bodily condition
is present to us as immediate experience, that is to say, as conscious-
ness. It is only through this presence of the body as mind that we enjoy
sensation and perception, encountering the world.
Th e other aspect of consciousness is the experience of a boundary
between each of us and other people. Many metaphysical doctrines,
especially those associated with the overcoming of the world, have de-
nied the ultimate reality of the distinction among minded selves and
affi rmed the existence of unifi ed and universal mind or being. For
many of these doctrines, the conscious life of an individual human be-
ing is an ephemeral piece of universal mind.
We should distinguish in these doctrines an element of truth and an
element of falsehood. Th e falsehood is so intimately mixed with the