To a limited mind, at a superficial glance, it seems that religions are different from one another - each has its own gods, sacred books, prayers, rituals, holy places and temples, as well as numerous rules by which believers should live. What is recognized as a virtue in one religion may be considered a sin in another. For example, killing a cow is a more serious sin for a Hindu than killing a person, while in some other religions it is customary to slaughter cattle on holidays.
It is forbidden to enter a synagogue and a mosque with a bare head, and in an Orthodox church, men are not allowed to wear a headdress. The Jews are not allowed to use the name of the Lord in vain, and the Hindus believe that the more often the name of God is pronounced, the better. For a Muslim, drinking wine is a sin, and Christians partake of wine in churches. Some differences between some religions may seem exactly the opposite, and there are hundreds of such examples.
What do all religions have in common? To answer this question, it is necessary to look at how each of them is "arranged". Any religion has a) a cult and b) a special worldview. A cult, or cult practice, implies specific actions of the believer (for example, prayer or visiting a temple). Worldview, or worldview, includes ideas about the world around us and people. The most important thing in a religious worldview is the idea of a supernatural, immaterial world.
Indeed, if we remove from each religion what distinguishes it from others, the essence, the “core,” remains the same for all religions. This essence suggests that the Universe is more complicated than it seems at first glance: in addition to the surrounding world, familiar to everyone, there is another, invisible world that affects what is happening around. And a person must take this into account, correlating his behavior with certain patterns. It was this knowledge that came from people who later began to be called prophets, messiahs, avatars, teachers, and served as the reason for the emergence of all world religions.
The founders of any religion spoke only of what was real to them, the result of their own experience. They did not have faith in what they were talking about, but direct knowledge of it. Direct knowledge is the result of direct perception. In the same way, a sighted person knows about the existence of the sun because he himself sees it, while a blind person can only believe in its existence from the words of the sighted person.
Therefore, in every religion an element of faith is required and, as a consequence, the various rituals of worship accompanying it. After all, ordinary people, attracted by miracles, sermons and the charisma of saints, themselves have never experienced anything like the experiences of saints. Therefore, for them, the only way to touch the Great Truth was faith and worship. Temples were built, prayers and rituals created - all this strengthened faith and helped worship.
However, there were always people who were capable of more. Thanks to special techniques of working on themselves, such people have improved themselves so much that they themselves have learned to experience what their teachers said. Self-improvement methods were passed from teacher to student, their number grew over time, forming whole schools.
So, each religion since its inception has developed in parallel in two directions. The first - well-known and massive - is external, based on faith and observance of religious precepts. Over time, this trend took shape in religious organizations with their own attributes, rituals and temples, where believers could worship. The second direction - small in number and closed to the uninitiated - is internal, based on secret knowledge and intensive practices. This is esotericism (from the Greek - "internal", "hidden"), which allowed its followers (esotericists) to practically change themselves in accordance with the ideals proclaimed by the creators of each religion. At the same time, esotericists, thanks to direct experience, cognized the deepest truths that underlie all religions.
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For esotericism, it is important to gain a mystical experience, and not to observe ceremonies and rituals that are based on certain religious norms and rules. Therefore, esotericists are also called mystics (from the Greek - "mysterious"). Mysticism is the expansion of the boundaries of one's perception beyond the material world. The mystic manages to directly touch the innermost secrets of the Universe and man, based not on faith, but on his own experience. Therefore, there have never been disagreements between real esotericists, and even less confrontation, although they could belong to different traditions and schools. After all, mystical experience depends on the deep, fundamental structure of man and the Universe, and these things are the same for any people and time.
The most ancient esoteric schools known today arose about 7-10 thousand years ago. Some schools have disappeared, others are still a living tradition. Such schools were or are in Jainism (Digambaras), in Hinduism (many schools of Hindu tantra and yoga), in Bon (Yungdrung Bon), in Buddhism (Vajrayana, Dzogchen), in Taoism (“internal” alchemy, some schools of Qigong), in Judaism (Hasidism, Kabbalah), in Christianity (in Orthodoxy - hesychasm; in Catholicism - followers of Ignatius Loyola and Malabar Christians), in Islam (many Sufi orders), in voodoo, in the indigenous traditions of the American Indians (the lines described by Carlos Castaneda), among the aborigines of Australia, in the traditions of pre-Christian Russia. Many outstanding mystics (Empedocles, Pythagoras, Paracelsus, Jacob Boehme, G. I. Gurdjieff, R. Steiner,Osho Rajneesh and many others), for a number of reasons, it is difficult to attribute to any one tradition: they often created new traditions themselves.
Mystics have always kept their knowledge in secret, because if they are misunderstood or misused, you can harm yourself and others. But the majority of representatives of traditional religiosity have a very negative attitude towards esotericism, completely not understanding it, and therefore considering it harmful heresy. They are right: after all, they are not concerned with the search for perfection, but with the "protection of faith." Such "religious leaders" turn their religions into social organizations, aggressively fighting for power over minds and based on dead dogmas. As living words in the mouths of their founders, the original ideas were almost always quickly put to death by their followers, completely devoid of charisma, and therefore concerned about the spread of "true faith" and the creation of appropriate social institutions. Therefore, not a single brilliant master could fit within the framework of the traditions that existed in his time (since they were already dead), but created a new one, which, in turn, was successfully killed by his “followers”.
Esotericism is often confused with occultism or even with black magic, but it has nothing to do with summoning spirits or witchcraft. Often, prophecies about the future of the Earth, mysterious legends about the distant past, stories about invisible countries, etc. are called esoteric. Such stories often contain a myth about the continuous secret war of the "white" and "black" principles. Such theories usually lead a person to search for dark forces around him (while himself, of course, is referred to as representatives of "light" forces). Such teachings are sometimes called mesoterics (from the Greek - "middle"), that is, the middle teaching between ordinary knowledge - exotericism (from the Greek - "external") and esotericism. After all, if a person sees only a small part of the truth, then, naturally, he thinks out this part to the whole by virtue of his ideas about it. This is how mesotericism arose.
Thus, each religion is conventionally divided into two layers - external (ritual and ritual) and internal (esoteric). These two layers of each religion (in the ideal "healthy" religion) complement each other, as they allow different people to develop depending on their natural characteristics. For example, there are isolated cases when ordinary believers experienced deep mystical experiences during prayer. However, one of the tasks of esoteric practices is to teach a person to consciously and purposefully achieve such states.
Sometimes the external (ceremonial-ritual) part of religion is compared to the body, and its internal (esoteric) part is compared to the soul. The very same esotericism is like a huge iceberg, most of which is under water and hidden from the eyes of the uninitiated.
Evolution of consciousness in a multidimensional universe
Mystics of all times have seen approximately the same majestic picture of how the Universe works, lives and develops. According to their discoveries, the universe is multidimensional. In addition to the well-known material world, there are many other worlds that are not similar to this one. They are called spatial dimensions, spaces or planes. Spatial dimensions differ in the degree of their "density". So, there are more “dense” worlds, and there are more “subtle” ones.
Worlds exist within the same volume and are, as it were, nested within each other. In this case, the various plans usually interact weakly with each other. The most "dense" is the material plane, the most "subtle" is the highest spatial dimension, also called the Divine plane. Each spatial dimension is filled, “inhabited” by the so-called energies (not to be confused with the meaning of the word “energy” in physics) belonging to the given plan of the universe. Energies are constantly moving, interacting with each other and mutating. Everything that happens in numerous worlds, including ours, is conditioned by the movements of these energies.
Consciousness is also a special kind of energy. The Supreme, Divine, plane is filled with infinite consciousness, which is called the Divine Consciousness of the Universe. The universe can be compared to a person. The soul of the Universe is Divine Consciousness, and the body is all the worlds that exist in it. The life of the Universe, like the life of a person, consists of cycles. First, the worlds are created, then they live and develop (this period lasts for many billions of years), after which they disappear. Everything disappears, except for the Divine Consciousness, and at a certain period of time only it exists. Then follows the new creation of the worlds; everything repeats itself, and the next Universe is not similar to the previous ones. The present Universe, by the way, is at the beginning of its development (this is a grief for those who are inspiredly afraid of the imminent end of the world).
The process of creation is as follows. Some part of the Divine Consciousness is condensed so that it consistently forms from itself all the worlds up to the material. Another part of Consciousness is scattered in the created Universe for the subsequent formation of individual souls. Most of the Divine Consciousness remains unchanged and dwells in the highest spatial dimension.
After the creation of the Universe, the process of evolution of consciousness begins. The entire Universe is like a "field for the cultivation of consciousness." On planets like our native Earth, the scattered energy of the Divine Consciousness settles in the form of clots in solid rocks on their crystal lattices, thus forming the embryos of future souls - individual units of consciousness. Thanks to them, stones have memory.
Millions of years pass, and the stones collapse. But the tiny souls formed in them are incarnated into plants. Being in the bodies of plants, clots of individual consciousness develop and grow. Plants have not only memory, but are also able to experience emotions - joy, fear, etc. (recall the experiments of K. Baxter). When a plant dies, consciousness passes into the next plant, continuing its growth and development. So, gradually improving, the consciousness is embodied in the bodies of plants many times.
Having exhausted the possibilities of development in plants, consciousness is embodied in the body of an animal. There the soul gets much more opportunities for further improvement. This is due to a complex organism that allows the consciousness in it to grow intensively, as well as due to the abundance of various situations in which the animal finds itself during its life. Animals have not only memory and emotions, but also the rudiments of intelligence (there are animals that have more of these rudiments than some people).
Each time the individual soul is embodied in the body of a more highly developed animal. Finally, consciousness first incarnates in the human body and becomes a human soul. This moment is connected not with the number of previous incarnations, but with the growth and development of consciousness. But this is only the beginning of the next big stage. In addition to memory, emotions and intellect, a person has the ability for conscious self-improvement.
The goal of the evolution of individual consciousness is its merging with the infinite Divine Consciousness, that is, the return to its Source, but not as an embryo of the soul, but as a perfect consciousness, identical to the Divine Consciousness. Interestingly, one of the translations of the Latin word "religion" means "return to the source." The word "yoga" is translated from Sanskrit in the same way.
For a person's consciousness to become perfect, many lives and enormous efforts are required to develop it. Having reached the state of perfection, consciousness dissolves in the endless ocean of Divine Consciousness and no longer incarnates. When the Universe comes to the end of its existence, all worlds with all their contents, starting with the material, gradually disappear. They turn into higher energy, which is absorbed by the Divine Consciousness. This also happens with those individual consciousnesses that have not yet managed to reach the state of perfection.
The mystics of antiquity noticed that during life in the body, the human consciousness can both evolve and degrade. Most people evolve slowly. Evolution can take place in two directions at once. Consciousness can grow - to increase its "mass", that is, the amount of energy of consciousness; this is how the consciousness becomes “stronger”. This is possible due to the absorption of energy from the outside, its processing and assimilation in the process of life. At the same time, the quality of consciousness can change, it can become more developed, highly organized, perfect, fluid, refined. However, the consciousness of a person, for example, falling into anger, loses its "mass", previous achievements and degrades.
As a result of evolution, the amount of energy of consciousness can increase due to three sources. Some of the energy comes from food. In the body, this energy is separated from the food substance and keeps the body alive. But a certain portion of this energy can, changing, pass into the energy of consciousness, feeding a growing soul. The rest of the energy comes from the inhaled air. This type of energy is more easily transferred into the energy of consciousness. Another source of energy is the impressions received during life.
The energy contained in impressions is directly assimilated by the consciousness, the growing soul. What the impressions are, this is how the growing consciousness becomes: if they are gross, the consciousness becomes gross. An important discovery of the mystics was the following: it turns out that the quality of impressions depends not on what a person sees or hears, but on how he perceives it and what he gets from it. And the latter depends on the state of consciousness.
In esotericism, the main difference between people from each other is determined not by the age of their bodies, not by nationality or gender, but by the state of their consciousness, soul. The state of the soul depends on what qualities and to what extent it possesses. The more times consciousness was embodied, the more time and opportunities it had to develop certain qualities. Thus, the state of the soul depends on its age.
The mystics have discovered that consciousness develops its qualities in a certain sequence, and the development of one quality can sometimes even take several lives.
In a number of incarnations, this process looks something like this. In the beginning, man is a "disciple" and "doer". At this stage, he learns to live in the material world. At the same time, only the material plane is reality for him. Everything outside it is unreal, abstract for him. In specific life situations (not always pleasant), a person develops the ability to love and compassion, hones his mind, and develops determination. Having acquired independence and independence, he begins to feel that besides the material there are other plans of the universe. Religious truths for him are becoming more and more real and gaining significance.
In the end (maybe after many, many lives) a stage comes when a person devotes all of himself to conscious self-improvement. Esotericists have established that this does not require isolating oneself from people and stopping social activity. On the contrary, they believe that such extremes take a person away from real life and do not allow him to develop a number of necessary qualities.
When a person dies, his consciousness is freed from the body and for some time remains in one of the spaces outside the material world. Then another incarnation follows. At the same time, consciousness retains all the qualities that were developed during past lives (for example, a developed mind, will, the ability to selfless love or greed, cowardice, laziness, etc.). However, the situations in which the development of these qualities took place are erased from memory. Thus, the memory of a past life does not complicate another new life.
After the soul is incarnated into a new body, it is necessary that the developed qualities are manifested and realized. Usually this time is approximately equal to the time of reaching physical adulthood (real, not legal). Then the development of new qualities begins, the further improvement of a person.
Since some are experiencing one of their first incarnations in the human body, while others have already had many such incarnations, it will be relevant for all of them to develop different qualities with the help of different situations. Therefore, each person has his own destiny. But who determines which body a person should incarnate into, who knows what qualities he needs to develop now, who creates all situations?
One of the great discoveries of the ancient esotericists was that everything in the universe is interconnected. This connection is carried out due to the energy that fills and permeates all the worlds. When a person in the process of life performs some actions, he thereby affects the world around him. From this, the world changes a little and in turn affects a person, changes the circumstances of his life. Sometimes it seems to a person that some rational force affects his life, then rewarding, then punishing. But this is not the case. A person determines and programs his future by specific actions. Some actions immediately affect the fate, others - after many years, and there are those that affect only future lives.
For the mystics, it is obvious that actions are not only what a person does in the material world. Thoughts, emotions, desires, moods are special types of energy. When consciousness produces them, it performs actions in other spatial dimensions. And these actions also affect the outside world and the future fate of a person.
What is usually called a sin, in esotericism is considered simply ignorance. A sinful person is an ignorant person for two reasons. First, he is not aware of all the negative consequences of his behavior for himself. Secondly, he does not know how to put in order those internal energies (most likely he does not even feel them), which by his movement make him commit sinful acts.
However, as the ancient mystics discovered, sometimes an outside force interferes with a person's life. This power comes from the Divine Consciousness and manifests itself only when additional energy is required for the further evolution of a person. In no other cases does the Divine Consciousness manifest itself. It does not have the qualities of a person or a judge that punish or reward. Never, or in human understanding, do they come from the higher plane of the universe.
Esoteric methods
Esotericists discovered that in the process of his development, a person must bring certain qualities to perfection. These include love for everything that exists and compassion, a clear mind, as well as inner strength with its main aspect - will. There are two groups of self-improvement methods. The former include exoteric (external, open), that is, all situations that a person encounters in his daily life. Situations can be both ordinary, ordinary, and extreme, stressful.
One of the findings of the mystics was that one can perceive all situations as educational. From this point of view, any situation in which a person finds himself changes him to one degree or another (even if he is not aware of it). In the event that a person realizes this, he gets much more benefit from each situation, and his development goes faster. It has been found that the more complex, difficult or unfavorable a situation is, the more you can learn from it. Some qualities can be developed only while in special conditions, therefore esotericists specifically looked for or created the necessary situations. In doing so, they sometimes even had to risk their lives.
Another group includes methods of improvement, which are called esoteric, that is, closed to the uninitiated. To understand how they work, you need to know the multidimensional structure of a person. Thousands of years ago, mystics established that man is a consciousness that lives in the body, and the human body is as complex and multidimensional as the universe. In addition to material organs, the human body has special, non-material, located within the body, but in other spatial dimensions. In these "organs", or energy centers, energies circulate, ensuring the life of the whole organism and the existence of consciousness in it.
An important discovery of esotericists was that energy centers affect the state of consciousness. If the work of some energy center changes and it begins to generate other energy, then the state of the person immediately changes. To understand how this happens, you can use this example. A person, whose mood is neutral, looks out the window and sees a fine autumn rain. As a result, his mood may deteriorate: the weather affects his mood.
Likewise, the state of consciousness is influenced by the "weather" inside the body. And this "weather", that is, the state of energy inside the body, depends on the work of the energy centers of the body. The mystics have discovered that the energy center, which works for a long time in one mode, fixes the corresponding state of consciousness. These states can be love or fear, determination or anger, calmness of mind or confused thoughts, and much more.
It turned out that the positive and negative qualities of a person are often associated with the serviceable or malfunctioning of these centers. Having discovered this, the ancient esotericists learned to use their energy centers for self-improvement. To achieve this, they had to master the art of managing their work.
Esoterics have found a lot of ways to influence the work of energy centers, and through them - on the state of their consciousness and the development of the qualities they need. For this purpose, they use special methods of concentration, breathing, movement, utter sounds (mantras, names of gods, prayers), listen to special music, give their body the right positions, use special smells, contemplate some images, use individual rituals, dreams, stay in special places and much, much more.
Such practices help the mystic not only to eliminate his own shortcomings, but also to develop virtues that correspond to religious ideals. This happens "by itself", that is, in a natural way. Furthermore. Thanks to special techniques, in moments of the highest ecstasy, you can experience such heights of the spirit, when you cease to exist as a separate being, dissolve in the ocean of the Divine and feel only the flow of Eternity in infinite bliss.
In some esoteric schools (for example, in Hindu Tantra, Yungdrung Bon, Taoist schools of "internal" alchemy, in Dzogchen, in the indigenous traditions of Africa and ancient Russia, etc.), the most prominent mystics achieved such a deep transformation of their consciousness that it even affected their physical body. The matter of the body, as if saturated with a consciousness that had reached Divine perfection, returned to its original state of pure energy. The mystic left this world, dematerializing his body. It could look either as a gradual process, during which the body became more and more transparent and slowly disappeared, or as an instant flash of light, after which there was nothing left. Sometimes this happened as a slow decrease in the body over several days until it completely disappeared (with only hair and nails remaining) …
The main method of mystical practices is meditation, that is, a special state of consciousness in which the mind is silent, it is not, and attention is maximally sharpened - the consciousness is awake. This means that the thinking process is stopped, the mind is empty, there are absolutely no thoughts, but only perception and awareness.
During meditation, consciousness is aware of itself. So, left to itself, unoccupied and cleansed of everyday activities, consciousness enters its real being, usually obscured by thoughts, memory, dreams, emotions. Consciousness, as it were, “remembers” its original origin from the ocean of Divine Consciousness and approaches it, reaching ever higher states. Real meditation should not be confused with the now quite widespread “meditation” as a means to “calm the nerves”, cheer up, or achieve social success.
Another important method is being in the here and now. Whatever the esotericist does, he tries to be "here and now" and concentrates only on what is happening in him and next to him. In him - it means in the entire system called a man - in his body, thoughts, emotions, moods: up to that formless depth, which is rooted in the endless ocean of Divine Consciousness. This state is called the state of presence.
Work in any esoteric school always begins with a radical revision of your previous life and awareness of the most important ethical principles. Without a deep study of these stages, the student is never allowed to further work.
If this rule is not observed, at the next stages of work, the student's health may be upset and the psyche may suffer, or subsequent work leads to the cultivation of selfish character traits. Sometimes, before starting work in some esoteric schools, it is customary to study the ritual and religious part of the corresponding religion, going through this stage as a monk or a religious layman.
Man is like the universe. The mystics used this fact by applying to their inner world truths about the outer world. External truth, understood esoterically, becomes spiritual instruction.
It is known that when the Prophet Muhammad entered Mecca, he destroyed the idols around and inside the Kaaba. For the mystic, the meaning of this story is as follows: a person must remove all idols from his soul, cleanse it of everything that is not God. The Kaaba is a symbol of the soul, idols are a symbol of everything that takes inner attention, distracting it from the search for perfection.
Mystics often used a special language to describe esoteric practices and mystical states, understandable only to initiates. In some esoteric schools (alchemical), the initial state of a person was called lead, and the final state of perfection was called gold. Moreover, all the intermediate stages of the conversion of lead into gold were designated as alchemical reactions of the transformation of some elements into others. Therefore, if some alchemical texts are taken literally, then they may seem illiterate due to the impracticability of the chemical reactions described in them. However, if you know what these symbols mean, “inner” alchemy becomes the science of spiritual transformation of a person.
World ethics
Existing religions can be compared to buildings of various architectural styles. The appearance and shape of buildings varies, but any building has a foundation, load-bearing structures and a roof. Likewise, many religions, striking in abundance, variety of rituals, different structure and decoration of temples, have similar components: "foundation" and "supporting structures" presented in the doctrine.
The “foundation” of most religions is the same - it is a mystical experience. Mystics and prophets of all times and peoples tell about their mystical experience often with the same words. In them, the Highest Reality appears as an all-understanding, loving, space filled with light and bliss.
As for the doctrine, here, too, the basic "supporting structures" are often uniform principles. The structure of the outer and inner world of man, the paths leading to God and Liberation, have common features. Many religions recognize as the only path to God the path of abandoning their selfish aspirations, the path of love, and their followers are prescribed to follow ethical rules similar to the New Testament commandment: "… turn away from evil, stick to good" (Rom. 12.9).
If we consider the main principles of ethics of the main directions of Christianity, Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism and other religions, it turns out that all of them in one way or another complement each other. For example, the New Testament says that "God is love"; the Sanskrit sutras recognize God as “the source of all knowledge and all love”; Taoism notes that "Tao is a gentle being"; and the Qur'an states: "Allah is Merciful, Merciful." This implies that Divine Love is at the origins of being, and one can approach God only by developing more and more perfect love in oneself. “Continuously develop bodhicitta in yourself” (that is, perfect compassion for all living beings), Buddhist monks urge. "These things I command you, that you love one another" (John 15.17), - taught Jesus Christ. And for the mystics of Islam, the Almighty "is Love, Lover and Beloved."
Many religions offer detailed explanations on how to cultivate perfect love. This happens as a person learns to love the whole world around him and to see in every person and event a manifestation of the Will and Love of God.
Other precepts and rules that follow from this major covenant of many religions are also very similar. They include principles similar to the commandments of the New Testament, that is, the prescriptions "Thou shalt not kill," "Thou shalt not steal," etc. Thus, in Hindu and Buddhist traditions, the principle of "Thou shalt not kill" corresponds to Ahimsa (not harming all living beings neither in thoughts, nor in words, nor in actions), and the principle “do not steal” - asteya (lack of desire to possess other people's things), etc.
However, in addition to this approach, which is commonly called the gradual path of human development, there is a non-gradual path. Examples of the non-gradual path are dzogchen, advaita and zen. They are based on the doctrine that a person already possesses all perfect qualities and is divine in essence ("possesses the nature of Buddha"), nothing needs to be developed. The practitioner needs only to stop clinging to that which blocks the light of Truth from his direct experience. You just need to stop self-identification with the mind and its duality. Stop identifying yourself with the person, the ego. Just as a wave ceases to imagine itself as separate from the ocean, so the practitioner begins to see water behind the waves - the omnipresent Divine consciousness.
The gradual path is the path of personal effort, the path of ego effort. The non-gradual path is the cessation of any efforts, the relaxation of all tensions of consciousness and total surrender.
And although the gradual path is based on the efforts of the ego, these efforts lead at the end of the path to the disappearance of the ego. The non-gradual path is an instant exit beyond the ego, beyond the mind. The similarity of the basic religious moral precepts leads to the fact that many philosophers, theologians and religious scholars begin to talk about a single world ethics, "cosmic ethics", to one degree or another, represented in the moral code of one or another religious tradition. The well-known religious reformer of the 20th century, Swami Vivekananda, compared the one who rejects all religions except his own to a dog that does not recognize its beloved owner, who has changed into different clothes.
True
The source of all religions is one and constant, although the teachings of different religions seem at first glance to be completely different, inconsistent with each other … The sage knows that the main basis of all religions and beliefs is one thing - Truth. Truth has always been covered with two garments: a turban - her head, a cloak - her body. The turban is a mystery known under the name of mysticism, and the cloak is morality called religion … Those who saw it [Truth] without any veil, no longer know reason and logic, good and evil, high and low, new and old - in other in words, they cease to distinguish all names and images. The whole world for them is only Truth. In their understanding, Truth is one, but, appearing to human eyes, it takes many forms, and the difference in ideas about it arises due to its manifestation in different places and times.
Truth can be likened to a fountain that gushes upward in one stream, and falls downward in many drops at different times and in different places. (From the book of the famous Sufi master Inayat Khan "The Sufi Message on the Freedom of the Spirit".)
Know yourself
Know yourself - this was the first principle and the first requirement of the ancient esoteric schools. We have memorized these words, but have lost their true meaning. We think that knowing ourselves means understanding our characteristics, desires, tastes, abilities and aspirations, while in reality it means knowing our mechanism, i.e. knowing the structure of our own machine, its parts, the functions of various parts, the conditions of their work. and so on. If we talk about an ordinary car, then we do not know it until we study it. This must be remembered with regard to ourselves. We must study our body like a machine. This study is self-observation. There is no other way, and no one will do this work for us. We have to do it ourselves.
(From the book of P. D. Uspensky, a student of the famous mystic G. I. Gurdjieff, "The Psychology of Possible Human Evolution".)
Dematerialization in the 20th century
In India and Nepal, the immortal Babaji from Haidakhan (Uttar Pradesh state) has been known since 1800. XX century Babaji in the presence of the King of Nepal and many people, having walked along the surface of the river to its middle, turned into a pillar of light and disappeared. Before this, the saint told the king that the time had come for him to leave this world and that his body had served its purpose (although it looked very young). The works of the American esotericist Carlos Castaneda repeatedly describe how his teacher don Juan Matus and his companions dematerialized their bodies: “At the top of the mountain, they lit themselves with an“inner fire”and, flaring up like dazzling stars, disappeared.”
The renowned contemporary dzogchen master (supreme practices of continuous full awareness) Namkhai Norbu, in his book The Crystal and the Path of Light, says that in 1952 an old man lived in Tibet. In his youth, this man for several years was either a servant or an assistant to one dzogchen teacher and he heard many instructions. But for the rest, this man led a very modest life, carved mantras on the stones, which gave him the means to feed. This went on for many years, and no one noticed anything unusual about him and did not realize that he was a dzogchen practitioner.
One day this man announced that he should die after seven days and sent a note to his monk son. The monastery spread the news widely, and many people gathered. Representatives of all the great monasteries arrived, and even members of the Chinese administration and the military. In the presence of many people, the room in which the old man was locked seven days ago was open, but his body was not found there. All that was left in the room were the clothes that were lying in the place where the saint was sitting, as well as his hair and nails.
In the same way, both root teachers of Namkhai Norbu left this world - his uncle Togden (by the way, he was mentally ill in his youth) and Changchub Dorje. Changchub's daughter Dorje also dematerialized the body.
Several examples of mystical practices
Hesychasm (from the Greek - "inner silence") is a mystical practice of Orthodoxy, originating from the Apostle John. The followers of hesychasm experienced the real existence of God. To do this, they in a special way combined breathing with special positions of the body, while saying a prayer, not with their lips, but with a “spiritual heart,” so that it would sound silently in the chest, revealing in a person Jesus' love for the whole world. Hesychasts also practiced "shining with Tabor Light" - entering the stream of pure light and grace of the Holy Spirit. In the late XIX - early XX century. separate settlements of Orthodox hesychasts were located in many places in Russia and in the Caucasus.
In 1534 in Paris, Catholic Ignatius Loyola founded the Jesuit Order "Society of Jesus", in which the main mystical practice was "eight-day spiritual exercises." They involved identifying with Jesus Christ during the last week of His life. The experiences of the practitioner were sometimes so vivid and real that stigmata appeared on his hands, feet and body - the bleeding wounds of Jesus.
In Tibetan Buddhism, the most saturated with mystical practices are the Nyingma and Kagyu schools. Their followers often practice the six yogas of Naropa, named after the great saint of the X-XI centuries. Naropa discovered tummo, the yoga of mystical warmth, when he spent several months without fire in an ice cave covered with snow. This yoga generates so much energy that in winter, practitioners can melt blocks of ice with their naked bodies overnight. Guillau-lus - yoga of the illusory body - makes it possible to comprehend the illusory nature of everything in the Universe, including your own body. Mi-lam - yoga of dreams - allows you to maintain awareness in a dream and control your dreams. With the help of odsal - yoga of clear light - one can see the Mother-Clear Light, that is, the Divine Consciousness of the Universe. And the bardo - yoga of death - makes it possible to use death,to attain Liberation or to choose a body for future incarnation.
Pho-va - yoga of the transfer of consciousness - allows the practitioner to withdraw his consciousness through the crown and move it freely in space. The art of john-jig - entering a dead body - is associated with pho-howl, which allows one to infuse one's consciousness into the body of a just-dead person or animal. Tales of many peoples of the world (for example, the Russian folk tale about how Ivan Tsarevich turns into a gray wolf, and then again into a Tsarevich) are distant echoes of real events.
Immortal Saints
The origin of some Sufi orders is associated with the Prophet Muhammad, others - with even more ancient times, believing that Islam served as a fertile ground for the manifestation of already existing Sufism. Sometimes the main Sufi is called saint al-Khadir (Khizr), one of the first people, a mysterious immortal righteous man. Khizr sometimes appears to the heads of the Sufi orders, giving new instructions and techniques. Another immortal, Idris, plays a similar role. It is interesting that he is identified with the biblical character Enoch and the founder of Egyptian esotericism Hermes Trismegistus (Thrice-Greatest), who brought this knowledge to Egypt from Atlantis.
Sanatana Dharma
The immortal Indian saint Babaji, who for the last time publicly materialized his body in 1970 in the Himalayas and left it there in 1984, preached sanatana dharma - "the eternal religion", which is the source of all religions. Sanatana dharma is the spiritual essence of the universe. The founders of various religions touched this essence and called it Tao, Brahman, Allah, Mother-Clear Light … Babaji mentioned that one of his favorite disciples was Jesus, who spent nine years with him. In several ancient libraries of Ladakh (Himalayas), records of Jesus' stay in India and Tibet have been preserved to this day.
Babaji said that all religions lead to the same goal and are like rivers flowing into one endless ocean - sanatana dharma. Sanatana dharma has no rituals, and it has only three principles - truth, simplicity, love - that are the basis of all religions.
What is Shambhala
The emergence of esoteric Buddhism is often seen as the return of knowledge that Buddha once passed on to the kings of Shambhala and Oddiyana … Mystics argue that Atlantis, Lemuria, Oddiyana, Shambhala are not geographical places on Earth, but the names of subtle spatial dimensions consciousness), from which the great saints of the past drew their wisdom and knowledge.
Mystic and Science
Science and esotericism complement each other. Science studies the phenomena of the external world, mysticism - the phenomena of the internal world. Science not only gives us knowledge about nature, but also helps to use its powers in our interests. Mysticism helps not only to cognize the inner world, but also to merge with it.
Science cognizes the external world with its laws and connections, and esoterics - the internal world, where the center is the knower himself.
Author: Andrey Lapin
