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I believe that the source of all of all religions has to be the same because it is about experiencing God. The direct experience that is achieved by many enlightened beings in greater and lesser amounts of revelation. All of these direct-experiencers are channels and filters for the One Light.
The religions and rituals that are developed to commemorate these direct experiencers and experiences, become more and more diverse and different from each other and as they get father and father away from the source, they become competitive and even hostile to each other. If we can get back to the direct experience of the Divine and first recognize that it is accessible and available, and then experience it ourselves, our view of the religious experience would be different.
We'd be looking at it from the inside rather than just from the outside. That's why I think that silence and meditation are important especially for western minds. All the different personalities in the Bible, and all the different names, and rituals and practices, and prayers are in the realm of thoughts and images - Binah, left brain - where one sees how things are different. The western mind, Jews and Christians and Moslems are really into this realm. With all the saints and images and halachot and conversations where you talk about many different ideas and feasts where you eat a lot of different kinds of sacramental foods... And stories of war and blood... This realm is very competitive because it stresses the differences.
The One Source of all religions is the realm of the direct experience. It's the biggest possible common denominator. When we get out of the realm of our own separate thoughts and images, and into simpler modes of consciousness like just breathing and being, - Chochmah, right brain - we get closer to the One Light which is the Source. This is more general and simple and there is plenty of room for everyone in the Infinite Light.
Here we look for similarities rather than differences. Because this is the direct experience it is empowering by itself and there is no need to be great at the expense of anyone else. No need for competition and conflict. No need for winners and losers. In the source with the One Infinite God everyone wins.
The only Torah giant that I know that actually says it in the way I tried to express above is Rabbi Kook. The Ramchal also says it but not as explicitly. He clearly states that the ultimate purpose of human history is to evolve to a state where everyone will easily achieve Divine Inspiration. According to him, the ultimate level of Divine Inspiration is Prophecy. He defines this as a direct conscious attachment to the Divine. He speaks of the spreading of this consciousness throughout the world is a gradual process of learning to embrace love and unity rather than judgment and separation. From what I know, I feel that Rav Kook is a stronger expression and has the advantage of being almost contemporary, being in the 20th century.
Anyway, what we need now is an even stronger message. One that's for the 21st century.
So, if universalism is such an important aspect of what is needed in our generation, why be Jewish? I think that someone who is born in a Jewish family, or embraces Judaism willfully, is already so embedded in the morphic field of Jewishness that no matter what practices they do or even what beliefs they have, they are already very affected by the Jewish "fields". Someone who is born Jewish literally carry in their blood DNA that has flowed through many, many "fields" of Jewishness. How many family trees have refined this DNA? How many human dramas? How many celebrations and how many tragedies? I think all of that has an awful lot of psychic energy that affects each of us so deeply and so uniquely.
Someone who embraces Judaism also feels a pull in their souls that bring the to associate with other Jews and vibrate with them in their cultural - religious energy field. Usually, Jews like this are drawn to study and find out as much as they can about the Torah and the Jews, etc. And even those who are drawn by falling in love with a Jewish person, that's also a powerful resonance with the "Jewish morphic energy field". All of these things resonate in an extremely complex and multi-faceted way, that has tremendous effects upon us.
On the other hand, if one only resonates with the Jewish morphic energy field and not the universal or cosmic energy fields, they are still just vibrating with a relatively local phenomenon (however vast the entire Jewish field may be). Like Rav Kook wrote that only being concerned about the Jewish Nation suffers from an excess of love for oneself. It's never going to be as great as possible for "us", until it's as great as possible for everyone else too. That's why we should want that which is the best for everybody rather than just for us.
And being universalistic also greatly influences what we are as Jews. That's why I think we shouldn't get so uptight about it because that is the national morphic field in which we are embedded. And this field takes its place among all the other national morphic fields that comprise the morphic field of the human race. Which is also embedded in the morphic field of all life on the planet.... which is embedded in an even larger field, etc. etc.
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