I intend the title "Entire Dilemma" to mean the existential dilemma we each face. In the 1960s I experienced an intellectual revolution of thought and especially religious thought. I had just walked away from the Catholic Church, and joined the Unitarian Church. My friend Dr. Erle Fitz introduced me to--Bugenthal, J.F.T.1965. The Search for Authenticity: An existential-analytic approach to Psychotherapy. Bugenthal's book focused on the existential dilemma we each face. This dilemma is: we are, finite, able to choose and act, and exist in relatedness to others. There is no more. No one has ever come back after dying to tell what the experience is like on the other side of the death-threshold. Existence is a mystery, or, existence is mystery. Freud referred to organized religion, as “mass delusion," and Marx referred to it as an “opiate of the people.” Those portrayals may seem a bit harsh and cynical, but, nonetheless, it is puzzling that people believe in the literal interpretation of the Bible since there is no evidence to support such a contention. People believe in the Bible because they have an emotional need to do so. Many scholars, including Albert Schweitzer, have searched for an historical Jesus without success.

Maxine Hong Kingston in The Woman Warrior tells what I refer to as--the allegory of the knot:

“Long ago in China, knot-makers tied string into buttons and frogs, and rope into bell pulls. There was one knot so complicated that it blinded the knot-maker. Finally an emperor outlawed this cruel knot, and the nobles could not order it anymore.”

Kingston says that if she lived in China she would have been an outlaw knot-maker. We are blinded by fear so we pretend that we know where we will go when we die. Let's keep the knots simple and pass these simple knots on from generation to generation.

You might ask in Burkard fashion, "What's your point?" My point is: it is a mystery.