Most of the major conflicts in the world over the last 1500 years have either been a result of religious intolerance or were supported by religious authority. This makes it the #1 cause or abetter of death and misery at the hands of man. Religion has also been central to the neurotic suffering of man, his lack of true self-love.
Something just doesn’t seem right here. I ask you, what should be the essential function of any religion? In the words of the angels who announced the birth of Christ, “Peace on Earth, goodwill toward men.” That about says it all.
And indeed, the mystical traditions of all three Abrahamic faiths - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - have an almost identical approach to their mission of leading man to be at peace with himself and his fellow man. They all teach that the true nature of man is peace and goodness. The religious establishments of the three religions, however, have pursued a different mission, with catastrophic (the word is not too strong) results for mankind.
The common teaching of the mystical traditions is that the God-essence and thus peace is our true self, not our ego. They further teach, however, that our true nature is unknown to us; it has been concealed from us. And so it is for us to rediscover it, to uncover it, and allow it to embrace us and transform us. (As an aside, this is also the teaching of Buddhism and Hinduism, as well as the classic secular Greek philosophies that speak to how we should live life.)
- Christian Gnosticism teaches that the human true self is a fragment of the divine essence, the “divine spark.” But we are “ignorant of our true origins and our essential nature” because forces cause us to remain attached to earthly things that keep us enslaved. It is this ignorance which brings about sin; man is not inherently sinful. Salvation from that ignorance is stimulated by the teachings of others, such as those of Christ, but man must ultimately find his own truth.
- According to Jewish Kabbalah, “every soul is pure in essence and the only salvation is to become enlightened (i.e. to remember the truth of who and what we really are). … Salvation is the process of clearing out whatever obstructs our manifestation of the concealed divine image. … Kabbalah leads to the conclusion that ultimately we must rely on ourselves - for we alone have the power to save ourselves.” It is to our heart we must look for guidance, not our ego-mind.
- Islamic Sufism is again about the journey of self-realization. Sufi means “unfoldment of the spirit towards its original condition.” That original self is the Divine presence in man’s heart. Our heart is love, faith, trust, compassion, wisdom, and peace. Insecurity is a product of the mind. When one truly knows oneself, one knows God. “He has to find God within himself, but He can only be found in a heart that has been purified by the fire of love [of God].”
When you look at these teachings of the mystical traditions, it is clear that we are all children of the same God. Regardless whether the messenger was Moses, Christ, or Muhammad, the message of the religion, the message of God, is the same. The road to peace within man and to goodwill among men is for man to reconnect with the divine-essence he was born with and free himself from his ego-mind, from which flow the seven deadly sins and all strife.
Indeed, the very word “religion” is ultimately derived from the latin, meaning “to reconnect.” (Note: The more common derivation given is the latin, religio, but that word itself is a compound derived from the latin words meaning “to reconnect” or “to rebind.”)
There is nothing in the mystical traditions that promotes one religion over another. There is nothing in any that says it is the only way to salvation, to God.
The teaching of the religious establishments of the three faiths, however, has been very different. Regarding relations among men, for most of their history each espoused that it was the only true way; that the others were false. That the others were threats to the true religion. For the powerful forces of Christianity and Islam, the others were to be dealt with as an enemy, at times ghettoized, at times killed in religious wars. While today the more liberal branches of the three faiths certainly do not espouse such teachings, the more orthodox ones still view the others, and even the more liberal sects of their own religion, as being infidels or traitors.
How did this perversion of religious thought happen? “Religion is usually started by pure, enlightened beings like Jesus whose aims are to help humanity understand higher spiritual truths and make the world a better place. Then sometime later the followers of those spiritual masters formalize, set forth, the teachings into a set of religious doctrine [the Bible, the Quran] and build institutions with seats of power to propagate the faith and control people.” A change in mission.
We know today without question that the writers of each of the holy books were not God or even the prophets. Even when the words are presented as spoken by the prophet or God, we have no way of knowing what words the prophet actually spoke and what words are the words of the writers, devoted religious men but lesser beings with possibly their own take on the prophet’s words.
As for the institutions, like many others, their survival (and so the faith’s) often overwhelmed the original purpose … here, the purpose of religion being to reconnect man with his divine essence and promote peace and goodwill among men … and so segregation, hatred, and prejudice were used to further the cause of the now one-true-faith.
The results of these teachings were religious wars, starting with the Crusades in the 11th and 12th centuries and the Reformation Wars of the 16th and 17th centuries down to the Irish “troubles” and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Granted, most of these conflicts were to a large extent secular fights for power, but the line between religious and secular was often blurred (or nonexistent) and the religious establishments lent a very essential and ready hand to support the secular contests. There was no religious voice saying, “This is wrong. We are all children of the same God. We should not be fighting each other.”
The same is true for wars that were not a result of religious intolerance. All the major wars of the 20th century were such … WWI, WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnamese War. Yet in each case, the religious establishments in the western countries mostly supported these secular wars of power. It was only outliers such as Father Berrigan during the Vietnam War who protested. It is the case, however, that much of the U.S. religious establishment did protest the Iraqi war. Why the switch? Probably because it was unavoidably clear to most people that the war in Iraq was not a “just” war.
As a result of these wars and conflicts, millions died fighting; civilian deaths were many times higher. Add to that those who were seriously wounded physically as well as those wounded mentally and the number would be staggering.
Then there are the human tragedies of genocide, slavery, and lynching, which are further examples of man’s inhumanity to man. And here again, the religious establishments were either supportive or silent. In one instance, the Spanish inquisition, the church was actually both instigator and implementer.
And let us not forget colonialism and its devastating impact on native populations. That form of oppression and religious/cultural intolerance was again supported by each country’s religious establishment. The white man’s “burden” was very much the view of the religious establishments, as they saw their mission as spreading the faith by saving the heathens.
But the even greater tragedy, although more subtle and hidden, has been the impact of the religious establishments’ teaching on man’s relationship with himself and those around him. Whether in the 16th century or in current times, the teaching of the religious establishment has not empowered man to live life well … which is to be at peace and happy.
For those religions that preach the doctrine of original sin, what a terrible label to place on man that he is born a sinner. The Catholic Church tries to have it both ways, saying that each man is born in the image of God, but his nature is inclined toward evil because of original sin; its practical emphasis, however, unfortunately is on man’s evil nature.
Even those religious establishments that do not espouse the doctrine of original sin still do not teach that every man has the divine-essence inside him. That the ego pulls him away from his true self causing him endless suffering. And that man’s salvation lies in reconnecting with his true self and releasing all desires and emotions, which are a product of his ego-mind, and embracing all aspects of his being and experience. They do not teach that the messages/urgings of our culture are the modern equivalent of the serpent in the Garden of Eden.
What a different world it would be if religious establishments saw their mission first and foremost as enabling us to see the God-essence in ourselves and bringing about peace on earth and goodwill toward men. Rather than preserving the institution and increasing its power through propagation of the faith and its hold on people. To the extent that religious leaders are more servants of their establishment and our culture than of God, their spiritual bona fides must be questioned.
I pray that religious leaders of all faiths lay down their rhetorical arms, embrace each other as equally valid representatives of God, and embrace all people as not just children of God but as having the divine-essence in them. I pray that all religious leaders return to the teaching of their mystical traditions and lead the way to saving mankind from himself.
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