Traveling to a New America - Portland, Oregon

EL CERRITO, Calif. - Aug. 16, 2016 - PRLog -- James Hilgendorf, author and speaker, presented a talk August 7, 2016, to the Eastrose Fellowship Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Portland, Oregon.

The talk was part of his "Traveling to a New America" campaign, of meeting people and giving talks in towns and cities all across America.

Hilgendorf is a filmmaker, speaker, poet, and the author of ten non-fiction books that are opening the way to a new vision of ourselves, a new dream of America, a new religion for the world.

The talk in Portland began with a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, who, in 1840, wrote in his journal:

"In all of my lectures, I have preached one doctrine, namely, the infinitude of the private man."

Hilgendorf went on to elaborate on this:

"Who are we?  What is our connection to the world and universe around us?

"There's no doubt, with the rise of science over the past four hundred years, that the worldview of our major religions have been shaken to the core.  We live in an incredibly vast universe - 200 billion stars in our own galaxy, and hundreds of billions of other similar galaxies reaching out into inconceivable space and time - a universe never even imagined by our ancestors back through time, and what are we doing here, apparently alone, on this inconceivably tiny speck of stardust in all of this immensity?  Billions of people still adhere, in whatever degree, to the fundamentals of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and their views of life and death; but increasingly, many others have abandoned their religions altogether - atheists, humanists, and other secular believers.  Roughly 25% of the population in our own United States is now unaffiliated with any mainline religion, and their ranks are growing, especially among the youth.  They accept the revelations of reason and science, discarding any theism or outside power or God, while attempting to live a moral life within this single limited earthly existence.

"Why religion at all? they ask.

"But interestingly, science itself has shattered also the classical concept we hold of a vast universe sitting out there somewhere beyond ourselves, somehow running on its own laws, and disconnected to our own personal lives.

"There is another universe out there.

"Full of surprises, unbelievable.  This is the quantum world, uncovered at the beginning of the twentieth century."

Hilgendorf then brought in ideas from different sources, including the near-death experience research of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and Dr. Kenneth Ring, passages from the writings of Leo Tolstoy, Joseph Campbell, and physicist John Wheeler, that expand our ideas, in a seemingly overwhelmingly vast universe, of who we really are, and the potential we hold within our lives to live happy and meaningful lives in the here and now.

Hilgendorf has been practicing Buddhism for over forty years with the Soka Gakkai International, the largest Buddhist lay organization in the world now, with 12,000,000 members in 192 countries and territories around the globe.

Of his book, "Life & Death: A Buddhist Perspective", one reviewer wrote:

"If I were to teach a basic college-level course in religion, philosophy, or metaphysics - call it Spirituality 101 - this book would be required reading.  In fact, it would be the first week's assignment.  Having read all or parts of nearly a thousand books dealing with spiritual matters, I cannot recall another that so simply and effectively blends the fundamentals of religion and science." - Michael E. Tymn, Journal of Religion and Psychical Research.

For more information on James Hilgendorf and his books, and to contact him to schedule speaking engagements, go to his website at: http://www.jameshilgendorf.org