Transforming the negative/positive of traditional religion

"Emptiness" or sunyatu and Nirvana of Buddhism, and the Father Within and Heaven of Jesus are similar in being a negative/positive sort of hedonism. We can feel the bliss of emptiness leading to Nirvana and the Father Within by stopping or blocking the material drives which cause the pain (and pleasure) of life, as we were instructed to do by both Buddha and Jesus. The pleasure and even bliss that can come from this severe ascetic discipline is felt because the material drives are blocked or stopped from which pain can come from. This is not a non-material experience. It is not God we are feeling but a symbolic experience of Godhood.

The next stage in religious development is to take that bliss we can feel from the Inward Path of ascetic practice and apply it in the Outward Path of material evolution to supermaterial Godhood. That is the Twofold Path of theological materialism, where traditional religion is retained but transformed. We are in the world and of the world, and the sacred task is to find a way to evolve in the material world to real supermaterial Godhood. That is where life wants to go. That is the drive within life itself which works along with the ups and downs of natural evolution---and we can aid in that sacred biological and cultural goal.