It
is a curious paradox that the
more a religious tradition is oriented around providing its members
with actual spiritual experience
or gnosis (rather than mere belief,
ritual, and scripture), the more the surrounding society has tended
to suppress it, throughout the centuries. The reason is not hard
to discern. One's association with a belief-based tradition is often
rather casual. For example, people marry and give up "their
religion" to take on their spouse's, because their religion
just doesn't mean that much to
them. This is particularly true in contemporary materialistic western
culture, where one's actual belief
system (as demonstrated by one's actions rather than one's statements)
is, in fact, scientific materialism. But a religion that provides
actual spiritual experience changes one's sense of reality, and
most states throughout history consequently have viewed such religions
as a threat, because people with a radically different sense of
reality are much harder to control. Thus the belief-based, orthodox
sect of early Christianity won out over the gnostic tradition, because
the Roman Empire found the former less threatening. The Christian
gnostic tradition was forced underground, only re-emerging every
now and then in the great Christian mystics.
Many
of the new religious movements gain their force from a widespread
dissatisfaction with the mainstream religions, which many feel are
mostly "spiritually bankrupt" at this point. It is not
surprising that many of them emphasize spiritual practice and spiritual
experience, since they represent a kind of pendulum swing from the
belief-based traditions. But for this very reason, they draw the
centuries-old taboo against gnostic or experience-based religious
traditions down upon themselves.
Nowhere
is that taboo against gnostic traditions in force more than when
a genuine Spiritual Master is at
the core of a new religious movement, because it is well-understood
that such beings have always been the most potent source of the
spiritual revelation that enlarges and enriches one's fundamental
sense of reality.
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