Just to be clear, my own view -- accepting of but unacceptable to almost everyone, I realize -- is that the reality of God is pretty much beyond our comprehension, so that when we encounter that reality it will tend to conform to our expectations. If we expect Jesus, we meet Jesus; if we expect Krishna, we meet Krishna. This view of mine, of course, is no less limited and human than the view of any particular religion; in fact, being so reductionist it doesn't come close to matching the profundities contained in other faiths. In some ways it feels like a kind of spiritual dead end... although I have faith it's not.

When I listen to or read Jews, Christians, Buddhists and others speaking of their experiences and insights, it's impossible for me to believe that there is only one true faith. Either all partake of Truth, or none does. (Their truth, however, is almost certainly not on the level of a historical person named Jesus being absolutely, unequivocally the Jewish Messiah, or of Mohammed being undeniably God's last prophet.)

I know for a fact that "reality" is in truth far richer than it appears to our ordinary, everyday consciousness, and I strongly suspect that it does not make sense, ultimately, to ask whether God really exists "out there" or just in our own minds. However, even if the distinction between individual mind and the universe were as solid as it seems and God turned out to be only an idea, the transformative power of faith would remain undiminished. (This, I think -- or rather, this, I speculate wildly -- is much more readily grasped in Judaism than in Christianity, especially Protestantism, where faith is much more of a life-or-death high-wire act; in Judaism, the life of faith -- of living the law and loving one another -- seems to be appreciated as its own reward as much as as a ticket to Heaven.)