Most religions and spiritual traditions share the idea that our “normal” state of mind is impaired by a fundamental imperfection, the aforementioned disorder. But there is a second insight, or the good news, which is the possibility of a radical transformation of consciousness. In Hindu messages this change is called enlightenment; in the teachings of Jesus, of salvation; in buddhisms, of the end of suffering and or also of enlightenment in some cases. Other terms used to characterize it are liberation and awakening.
The greatest achievement of humanity is not the works of art, nor the inventions of science and technology, but the identification of its own disorder, of its own madness. In the distant past, some individuals even made this recognition. It is likely that a man named Siddhartha Gautama, who lived 2,600 years ago in India, was the first to see this issue with absolute clarity. Afterwards, the title of Buddha was bestowed upon him. Buddha means “one who has awakened”.
Recognizing one’s own madness obviously marks the emergence of sanity, the beginning of healing and transcendence. A new dimension of consciousness was then beginning to emerge on the planet, the first attempt at flowering. Those rare people addressed their contemporaries talking about sin, suffering and illusion. They said, “Watch your way of life. See what you are doing, the suffering you are causing.” Then they indicated the possibility of awakening from the collective nightmare of “normal” human existence. And they showed the way.
The world was not yet ready for these masters. However, they were a crucial and indispensable part of the human awakening. Inevitably, most of the time, they were not well understood by their contemporaries or the following generations. His teachings, while simple and effective, ended up being distorted and misinterpreted, in some cases even in the way they were written down by his disciples. Over the centuries, many things were added that had nothing to do with the original messages and were a reflection of a basic misunderstanding. Some of these sages were mocked, insulted, or killed, while others came to be worshiped as gods. The teachings that pointed the way beyond the disturbances of the human mind, the exit door of collective madness, were distorted and became themselves part of insanity.
Thus, religions, to a large extent, have established themselves as divisive rather than unifying forces. Instead of bringing about an end to violence and hatred through an understanding of the fundamental oneness of all life, they engendered more violence and hatred, more separations between individuals, religions, and even ruptures within the same creed. They became ideologies, belief systems that people could identify with, and they used them to emphasize their false sense of self. Through these beliefs, they classified themselves as “right” and called others “wrong”. Thus, they defined their identity before the enemies – the “others”, the “non-believers” or “mistaken believers”-, and sometimes, they considered themselves in the right to kill them. Man made “God” in his own image. The eternal, the infinite, the nameless was reduced to a mental idol that people had to believe in and that was to be worshiped as “my god” or “our god.”
And yet, despite all the ravings perpetuated in the name of religions, the Truth they indicate does not cease to shine in its essence, however dimly, through many layers of distortion and misinterpretation. It is unlikely, however, that anyone will be able to perceive it unless he has already had glimpses of the Truth within himself. Throughout history, there have always been rare individuals who have experienced a change of consciousness and thus have detected in themselves what is pointed out by all religions. To describe this non-conceptual Truth, they used the conceptual framework of their own religious beliefs.
Through some of these men and women, “schools,” or movements, developed within all major religions and represented not only a rediscovery but, in some cases, an intensification of the light of the original teaching. This is how Gnosticism and mysticism became established in early Christianity and medieval Christianity. So was Sufism in the Islamic religion, Hasidism and Kabbalah in Judaism, advaita vedenta in Hinduism, and Zen and Dzogchen in Buddhism. Almost all of these schools were iconoclast. They opposed numerous layers of conceptualization and weakened mental structures. For this reason, most of them were viewed with suspicion and hostility by established religious hierarchies. His teachings, unlike the doctrines of the main religion, emphasized understanding and inner transformation. It was thanks to these esoteric schools that the most important creeds regained the transformative power of their original precepts – although in most cases only a few people had access to them. These movements never expanded enough to exert a significant influence on the deep collective unconsciousness that prevailed. Over time, some of these schools have become too rigidly formalized or conceptualized to remain effective.
Source: A New World – The Awakening of a New Consciousness – Eckhart Tolle.