Religionism, New Age, and Tibetan Buddhism

I'm inspired to speak about how New Age and Tibetan Buddhism are close together, both merging three of the four religion-types. Commonly, attributes of the four are mixed into each other, clouding things up, so it's best if we define what we're looking at.

Animism, Pagan gods, Revealed one-god beliefs, and Enlightenment-seeking. These are the four main religion types. 

    Animism is a healthy direct connection with nature, animating the elements, feeling the wind talk and the fox telling stories.  Sometimes pantheistic, nature as god.

    Pagan Greek gods is personifying archetype, much more intellectual.  This god did that, that god does this. 

    Enlightenment-seeking from the Indo subcontinent gave us paths to follow, for people themselves to reach for a higher godlike state.  This is an experiential religion, although like all religions, it always contains components of the other religion-types.

    Revealed religion is the last of the big four, based on Believing in Beliefs, and only secondarily with their content.  Revealed religions are most insidious because the believing-in-beliefs is hidden behind the content of the beliefs -- which content most believers will report as the real thing.  Only Islam openly states that being-a-believer is the essential thing.  Some revealed religions' belief-contents are the denial of all the gods except for one particular god, and believing the veracity of one person who said god spoke to him -- revealed Himself.  Only one Revealed religion has been successfull and can be found in three branches, Jewish self-absorption, Christian freedom, Islamic oppression.  Other newer revealed religions fail when the founder is shown to be an idiot, while Moses and Jesus and long gone and exist only in child-like imagination.  Oppostion to entrenched revealed religion is extremely difficult as the target mysteriously switches from the Belief methodology to the content and then back again, oscillating.   Judaism initiated beliefs-as-one-god-revelation, Catholicism developed salvation, and Islam went the next step and locks it all down, forbids inquiry, all become nothing to god.  Turning humility into humiliation, Islam returns us full-circle to barbarism in the name of the Allah.  Judaism tries to *live* the revealed laws, Chistianity tries to believe in unbelievable beliefs and Koran recommends killing anyone who merely stops believing,  the summit of Revealed religionism. Islamic way, most dramatically martyrdom operations, is the final natural progression of believing in belief systems.

I'm going to leave off Judaism because (outside Zion's Palestinian killing fields) it pretty much leaves the world alone. Animism, including night spirits and other critters (I wonder if UFOism is Animism, expanded to include outer space) is also of little use to Westerners as it only shows up in New Agers, who have no affect on society, nor can I influence you away from it, since superstition, pretty or not, is an affliction with no known cure. Greco-Roman many-gods is more useful than one-god religions, if the gods are used as resource for understanding via archetypes. An atheist doesn't believe in one god, while a one-godder Muhammad or Christian doesn't believe in hundreds of gods, probably getting himself in hundreds of times more trouble than an atheist if the god thing were actually real.

But today I'll speak of Revealed religions. “Revealed” indicates that, “Oh hey, look at this, some guy says there is only one god and He talked to him.” People who report more than one god, say walking down 42nd Streeet, that's too much for anyone else to follow, so that person is crazy.  All Revealed religion depends on someone convinced of the following dialog and then convincing the rest of us. 

“How do we know there is only one god?”

“God says.”

“How do we know other gods might say something else?”

“There aren't any other gods.”

“How do we know that?”

“God says.” on ad infinitum, ad nausea.

All we have to do is believe in two little things and then all else will be, er, um, revealed. Simple. Straight forward. And loony. Six or eight guys lost in the middle of a tiny desert for twenty years believed someone's hallucination -- and we've been at it ever since. Thought is evolutionary and while it might have started loony, in time it evolved enough characteristics to have great power when infecting other, ripe, cultures.

For one, Revelation used beliefs, not as something to play with, “Lets bless the water spirits for a safe passage,” but things to enforce, “God is great and if you don't believe it, here's a curved-edge proof!” slash!

We could look at how the progression of revealed beliefs took over social intercourse in so much of the world, but that would be an academic exercise I can't undertake, at least here now. What is easier to look at in short space is the current situation here in the West.

Fundamental Christianity, “I don't need to think,” go-stupid mode:

You have to understand this there are a multitude of people that can be considered an Anti-Christ, Like most segment of the Jewish religion.... And many of the people that practice witchcraft, and those that are devil worshiper, Or those that practice paganism.... And a ton of other religion, Like the Buddhist.... There are million if not billions of Anti-Christ out there..........

Such people don't even understand that antichrist is not at all necessarily against, Christ. They think that Baptist, Lutheran and Catholic are separate religions, not sects and wouldn't understand that Buddha is God by another name and instead confuse him with pagan personifying of ideas and animists animating nature.  It's like their saying, "witchcraft doesn't exist, but it's evil if you practice it." The ignorance of revealed religionists is a demand, not a by-product. One of the reasons it works is because the everyman and everywoman don't need to do any mental work, but just follow beliefs hammered into them.  Easy.  Ignorance is especially helpful, and the decline of religionism in the west can be seen, traced back, to the advancements of The Enlightenment.  Society made a ponderous slow turn away from dogma, leaving Christianity to children, uneducated grandma's and the particularly weak.  While raised on the stuff of religion, in early adulthood we see it was some kind of good-dooby metaphor and merely retain the Golden Rule, ten Commandments and such handy childhood lessons.

But I'm looking at this stuff as if it matters. But! To whom does it matter? Theorists? Us? New Agers? I suspect that it is interesting to some people because we are advanced thinkers, but not because of much else. We'll finish this, and thinking, “Well that was interesting,” we'll move on. Almost reduced to entertainment. *smile*

Now I'm left with two points.

1. that Islam is an ignored flood and the enemy of enlightenments, both Western philosopher and Eastern introspective enlightenments. In previous jihadic times, Islam, unlettered talibans, flooded across northern India and killed hundreds of thousands of monks and destroyed thousands of monasteries. Northern India is still today only three-quarters Hindi and is a wasteland of former, peace-loving, Buddhism.

2. that New Age-ism is combining aspect of

A. animism, “Let's put on angel costumes,” mother-earth (Gaia), environmental

B. enlightened, buddhistic and appreciation of Hindu, (yet turning a blind eye to paganism and animism in Tibetan Buddhism) 

C. enlightenment of the western variety is hidden behind it's origin in our own culture of Descartes et al informing all, and how, we think. Only a person of New Age level or above could even be able to consider all this. Yes, I know it's hard slogging if the imagination hasn't been captured. (But if you think it's hard going, imagine how it is for true religionists, this wouldn't make the least bit of sense no matter how hard they tried. It's outside the realm of understanding; for them, truth is truly incomprehensible.) (and a fundamentalist would say, “That's evil! Don't read it!” and I accept, it says here, the pat on my back, and would be proud of myself for the condemnation.)

Tibetan Buddhism's special popularity among New Age is due to it's mix of 1. buddhic seeking, 2. other lesser gods and 3. nature spirits – the first three religions without the fourth, revelation, which happily the west already “had enough of that!” Tibetan Buddhism did the same thing to religion as New Age is today, combining everything in sight into a mad mix. The Chinese turned the oppressive lamas into victims overnight, victims who suddenly remembered their buddhic side instead of their godly (controlling/totalitarian) side and became instant hits to lively people like me.

Opinion. While the idea of “combining all religions” seems a clever and wonderful idea, it has been tried before, , many times and doesn't work. The reason it doesn't work is always the same, religionism itself is a stifling, through control of beliefs. No belief is worth the cost of demanding it, and that is the conclusion of all enlightenment, “forget all beliefs!” Collecting New Age beliefs is exactly like collecting murderous beliefs (“martyrdom operations”), it's no better or worse, it always leads to shit, shit and more shit, just at different rates.

The Issue. Just because wonderful things can happen, does not mean that the beliefs tagged-on were the cause. My message, if I have one, is that everything can be done without beliefs. And while New Agers collect beliefs on one hand, when we finish exploring them, the other hand seeks to dump them. We are treading water, getting nowhere, in this New Age sea of old religionism.

Solution? Perhaps evolution of spiritual quest is possible and we are now about to surpass the limitations of beliefs and instead value truly experiential, spiritual, not-I enlightenment. Integrative Awakening (Body, Mind, Belief, Spirit) and the Avatar Course (penultimate beliefs-create-reality, so manage your beliefs deliberately) both are a step forward, just as this talk/article hopes to be, into a new awareness of what we are doing, what we might do, and doing everything as source beings, free from past religionism. You, take it from here.