The Western tradition in philosophy tends towards rationality, logic and a material understanding of the universe.  Although ostensibly Christian, the West has become increasingly secular in orientation since the Renaissance of the fifteenth century.  This is not to say that previous to this the dominant philosophy of Europe was Christian.  Christianity had had to struggle for preeminence with a range of competing forces.  The most notable being the Norse pantheon of Gods and the Celtic Druid tradition.  However, since universities were few, there is little documentation extant today recording the ins and outs of this ideological maelstrom – indeed it was not a battle fought at an intellectual level, but by roving missionaries, village priests and the armies who fought on the side of the Christian ideal and their adversaries.

These earlier traditions, indeed Christianity itself, tended towards intuition, mysticism and a spiritual world view typical of many societies which are centered around harmony with nature.  The growth of the urban life style, the incumbent economic transformation to mercantilism and the spread of the university tradition helped transform this milieu:  it promoted a vibrant and vigorous  intellectualism held aloft by a firmly established class of university educated intellectuals; and  it created a reified environment conducive to  abstract rational thought.

It gave rise to Baconian sense empiricism which laid the groundwork for modern Science. At the same time, Humanism fostered an outlook on life in which human achievement came to be viewed as the pinnacle of what it meant to be human.  Education, wealth and refinement were the sought after qualities of Humanist society.  Moreover, it set in motion a set of dynamics which would generated a series of philosophies which would take society further and further from the  intuitive traditions of earlier European experience.

Though the head of Europe remained nominally Christian, as it had before, its heart began to radiate the new qualities of soul.  Philosophy began to deal more and more with Science and material conceptions of the Universe.  Theology became more rationalistic in orientation.  Capitalism and its child, Urbanism, began to change the lives of the great masses of ordinary people.

 By the end of the eighteenth century, a group of French free-thinkers had introduced philosophies which rejected original sin and the Christian world view.  Science was seen as the hope of the future.  This philosophy was to become the driving force behind modern secular culture.  Its inability to cope with basic questions such as  life, death and meaning has resulted in an increasing turning towards intuitive philosophy, particularly Eastern traditions, in recent decades, in an attempt to find answers.

What is it then that attracts the human mind to  intuitive knowledge?  The answer to this is profound yet amazingly simple.  When we think, we rely on two pathways of thought:  intuition and logic.  Logic can only connect what intuition generates.  When we over emphasis logic, we are really closing the gate on intuition.  The search for the intuitive is really a search for answers which cannot be found within the dominant Western materialist tradition.  Intuition is creative, not limited by convention and cannot be restrained by boundaries; logic can only operate when all the knowns are given – in short, the logic of intuition is contradictory to the logic of rationalism.  Yet both are necessary for balance.  

Although there is an intuitive dimension to Christianity, this facet of  religious experience has tended to be underdeveloped in Western Christianity in line with the prevailing rationalist culture.  The Eastern religions, by contrast, have developed in a climate very different from the industrialized West.  They reflect more closely the pre- Renaissance intuitive traditions of Western Europe.

Belief is not something that needs to be defined – it is experienced.   The Semitic traditions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – focus on handing on Divine Revelation and keeping the message pure and intact.  Eastern religion focuses on an existential model of enlightenment.  The principles necessary for enlightenment lie within the human person.  External enlightenment is not essential.  In Christianity, enlightenment is conditional on receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit and being purified by the blood of the lamb – Jesus Christ.  It relies on  an active force external to self.