The ultimate goal of all ancient religions concerned man’s awakening to what precisely animated his corporeal body, considered as spiritual light, which had, on account of his ignorance of it, become incorporated or rather combined with flesh.
Man’s senses, as a result, went only as far as seeing the corporeal world and other corporeal beings which came in many different forms. His own body was that of an animal into which he found himself trapped since birth, unable to escape from this horrific bondage which was always more or less painful.
Mankind’s world is thus one of spiritual darkness, a world bereft of divine animative power which was innately present within him but, nevertheless, remained ever hidden and ungraspable by his senses.
He could find no way to the other side of this darkness being, it seems, always penned in by his animal-like existence and the demands this body placed upon him in the way of thirst, hunger and lust. It was only the awakened, i.e., the Buddha, the rishi-bull (Vimanavatthu 16) who found the hidden animative light (rishi in Pali is īsi, the seer, who goes beyond the mundane world).
There were few rishis in the world like the Buddha but sufficient numbers, nevertheless, to teach people how to look within by means of meditation and find this animative light. This is not to say that everyone who studied the teachings of the Buddha were convinced that he found the way to the other side of this darkness—many were not persuaded.
Gradually, over time religion turned into something it was not meant to be. It became literal and external. It had lost the inner path and created in its stead an outer path made for the senses and imagination. But this outer path could only deceive and so true religion fell back into the very darkness it endeavored to escape from.
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