Talk:Religion

Peter Russell in (Lazlo, et. al., 1999: 39)

Religions, as we have just said, have always started from individuals, or sometimes from groups of individuals, who have had a deep personal experience of liberation. In some way or another they have woken up to the truth, and sought to pass that realization on to others. That is how the teachings originally arose.

Unfortunately, the teaching is never received in the same state of consciousness as that in which it is given. The teacher is talking from an enlightened point of view, while the disciple is trying to understand from a less enlightened consciousness, and inevitably something is lost. So long as the teacher is around, he or she can try to correct errors and ensure that the discipline receives the teachings correctly. But once the teacher has died, the teachings are passed on from one person to another. Each time something is lost or not fully understood, or something is added that was not in the original. It is a bit like the game of Chinese whispers in which a message is passed around a circle of people. Each time a slightly different message gets passed on, and by the time it arrives back at its starting point it may be completely different from the original.

The same occurs with spiritual teachings, but on a much grander scale. The message is being passed not just from one person to another, but from one generation to another, from one culture to another, and it is often translated from one language to another. Each time bits are lost and bits are added, and the version that reaches us may bear little resemblance to the original. It is what I sometimes call "truth decay." It is the same reason why the major spiritual traditions appear so different. Yet they all began from very similar experiences. We need to discover the Common Core, rather than worry about differences.

This is why it is important not to resuscitate previous spiritual traditions. We would inevitably be resuscitating a corrupted version of the original. Our challenge is to get back to the source, the living sourced based on personal experience, rather than doctrine and dogma, and to live that experience in our own lives.