Face...Place...Space
Religions center around a person's teachings... experiences that the person has discovered on their own. These discoveries were found thru their inward journeys... Gautama, Jesus, Mohammed - examples of three people that had self-discoveries - enlightenments that they spoke of. They spoke of their experience for all to hear, not limited to race, creeds or sects, but the whole of humanity.Followers were attracted to these people's preachings of what they themselves had found on their inward journeys. The preachings weren't the final realizations but the essences of that flower that bloomed within.
These preachings in turn became teachings... how to arrive at what they had seen... witnessed on their own intimate, inward discoveries.
The followers, or disciples, in turn attracted many other followers thru what these first disciples had gained from the enlightened one's preachings... they were able to put those preachings into words that other followers were able to understand.
The followers became preachers and from their own followers places were needed to gather together to talk about their own respective Master's words. These gathering places became spaces that were eventually called churches, mosques, ashrams, synagogues...depending upon what the followers were called.
What they were called were named after the original preachers... Gautama the Buddha (Buddhists), Jesus the Christ (Christians), Mohammed's Islam (the readiness of one to take God's orders) begot Muslim (one that takes God's orders).
Of course I'm not including any branches within... that complicates the oneness of all considerably. Each religion rules out another's religion. (the Judeo/Christian bible is combined because Jesus was born in a Jewish family)... not necessarily thru any deliberate intent on many followers, it''s just that we are all human and have only so much attention span, that we can even follow one religion is up to debate.
However, since we are human we have this propensity to place the face into a space that we define as 'holy' , which is not totally untrue, but misunderstood... the 'holiness' is the 'wholeness' of the original Master from which the religion sprang.
Gautama used no Temple to teach his message. Jesus used no Church to preach his message. Mohammad had no Mosque to spread his message. All these places were built later to make a statement for their followers that gave them a communal identity of sorts. These spaces dedicated to their Teachers are symbolic gifts to those whose teachings they follow.
These architectural spaces also limit the vastness of their Prophets words - putting them within walls, confining them in one area... each church having it's own name to distinguish it from the others. It becomes more and more a separation from the origin... the original message of the Master now fractured into different pieces, scattered across the country, across Nations, across the globe... bits and pieces of 'the Message' blown about by the egos of followers who have lost the intent of the enlightened ones.
These enlightened ones did not confine their message to a limited number of people. Their message is universal... for all who like and accept their placement of words describing the oneness of their inward journeys... but all their journeys, and thousands that have had the same revelations, are all about compassion (the highest form of love), giving and understanding... the complete acceptance of now, with no desire for a past that is gone nor for a future that is always on the distant horizon.
But humanity, in its eagerness to attain the states of mind that their religious leaders have taught from past leaders on down to the original Master, has succumbed to the one failure that all Masters have spoke against - desire. Humanity has desired to achieve the same enlightenment as the ones t worship.
All those Masters, regardless of the name of the religion named because of them, have become enlightened from their own journeys, their own battles and struggles, because they, too, are human.
Their message is meant for all but unfortunately is understood by few. We all have the divine within, and each Teacher's words are but unique footprints from their own return of their Self-realizations of the Oneness of All.
The first commandment in essence says that there is but one God and there shall be no other before him. All religions are guilty of placing many idols of various descriptions before the Oneness. That Oneness is within all, not outward, not inside statues, not inside books, not bound within walls and roofs... the Oneness is not a place or a face or a space... it is the alpha/omega, the yin/yang... the absence of any thing which contains every thing... wholeness.
Freedom from All, Freedom for All
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cecil
25 May 2008
[originally written 04 July 2004]
Wisteria in a Tree against a Blue Sky
photo: Cecil
i love reading your work. thank you
hah!). Seriously tho, what you wrote here was, back in my days we called, 'right on!' Again, thank you for stopping in and taking time to reply. You know I appreciate it.