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© Victor
& Victoria Trimondi
The
Shadow of the Dalai Lama – Part II – 17. Conclusion
17. CONCLUSION
We have now reached the end of our detailed
treatise on the Dalai Lama, Tantric Buddhism, and Tibetan history. The
first part of our study (Ritual as
Politics) was centered on the theme of gender, especially the sexual
magic exploitation of the woman in the androcentric
system of Vajrayana
for the mytho-political accumulation of power.
The derivation of Tibetan history and the Dalai Lama’s politics from the
cultic mysteries of Buddhist Tantrism (especially
the Kalachakra Tantra)
forms the content of the second part of our book (Politics as Ritual). In general, we have attempted to show
that, in the world view of the Lamaist, sacred
sexuality, magic, mysticism, and myth are united with his understanding of
politics and history.
Tibetan Buddhism primarily owes its success in the
West to two facts: first, the charm and brilliant self-presentation of its
supreme representative, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, and second, the promise
to lead people on the way to enlightenment. Although the tantric path to
enlightenment explicitly involves a dissolution of
the ego, it is at first the I of
the pupil which is addressed. “I would
like to overcome the senselessness and suffering of my earthly existence. I would like to experience
liberation from samsara
(the world of illusion).” When a western sadhaka is prepared to
sacrifice his “little self”, he certainly does not have the same understanding
as the lamas of the “greater self” (the higher self or Buddha
consciousness) which the tantric philosophy and practices of Vajrayana
offers him as a spiritual goal. The Westerners believe that enlightened
consciousness still has something to do with a self. In contrast, a teacher
of Tantric Buddhism knows that the individual identity of the pupil will be
completely extinguished and replaced by a strictly codified, culturally
anchored army of gods. It is the Tibetan Buddhas,
herukas, Bodhisattvas, deities, demons (dharmapalas)
and the representatives of the particular guru lineages who take the place
of the individual pupil’s consciousness. One must thus gain the impression
that an “exclusive club” of supernatural, albeit culturally bounded, beings
(Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, gods, etc.) has managed
to survive by time and again occupying human bodies anew (until these wear
out). Tibetan Buddhism is not aimed at the enlightenment of individuals but
rather at the continuing existence of a culture of superhumans
(yogis, gods) in the form of possessed people (the pupils). It is concerned
here to perpetuate a priestly caste that does not need to die because their
consciousnesses can be incarnated into the human bodies of their followers
again and again. This caste and their deities are considered sacrosanct.
They live beyond all criticism. Their symbols, deeds, and history are set
up as exemplary; they are the cultural inheritance which may not be
analyzed but must be taken on blind faith by believers.
For these reasons Tibetan Buddhism’s entire
promise of enlightenment forms a trap with which intimate and religious
yearnings can be used to magically push through the politico-religious
goals of the monastic clergy. (We are not discussing here whether this is really
possible, rather, we are talking about the
intentions of the Lamaist system.) This
corresponds exactly with what the Renaissance philosopher Giordano Bruno
describes as “manipulation”. Bruno, it will be recalled, indicated that a
masterly manipulator may not speak about his actual power-political
intentions. In contrast, he flatters the ego of the one to be manipulated
(the ego the masses), so that the latter always believes he is following
solely his own interests and pursuing his completely personal goals — but
in truth he is fulfilling the wishes and targets of the manipulator
(without knowing it). Applied to the Dalai Lama and his religion this means
that people practice Tibetan Buddhism because they hope for enlightenment
(liberation from personal suffering) from it, yet in reality they become
agents of political Lamaism and the Tibetan gods at work behind it. The
Dalai Lama is thus a particularly impressive example of a “manipulator” in
Bruno’s sense.
If people are used to serve as vessels for the
Tibetan gods, then the energy which directly powers the mysto-political
motor of the Lamaist system consists in the
sacred sexuality, the erotic love, particularly in the gynergy of the woman (as
fuel). Tibetan Buddhism is a mystery religion and its mysteries are the
driving force behind its political decisions. Reduced to a concise formula,
this means that sexuality is transformed via mysticism into power. The
French poet Charles Péguy is supposed to have
said that, “every mysticism ends up as politics”.
The dynamic of the tantric system cannot be better described. It is a
large-scale “mystic ritual machine” whose sole aim is the production of the
all-encompassing ADI BUDDHA and the establishment of his universal
political control.
Just how closely intertwined Lamaism sees sexual
magic and politics to be is demonstrated by the dual nature of the Kalachakra Tantra.
The sexual magic rituals, the cosmology, and the political program of the Shambhala myth are tightly interwoven with
each other in this document. For a Western reader, the text seems unintegrated, at odds with itself, and contradictory,
but for a Buddhist Tantric it forms a seamless unity.
Tantric rituals are thus politics, as we have
described in the first part of our study. But in reverse, politics is also
a ritual, i.e., every political event, be it the flight of the Dalai Lama
from Tibet, the vandalistic actions the Chinese Red Guard, the death of Mao
Zedong, or a film like Scorsese’s Kundun, they all — from a traditional
Tibetan and not from a Western point of view — form a performance along the
Kalachakra
master’s progress toward the throne of the ADI BUDDHA.
If we judge the politics of Lamaist Buddhocracy from a Western point of view, especially
those of the Kalachakra Tantra
and the Shambhala myth, then we arrive at the
following nine assessment points:
- The politics of the Time Tantra is
“inhuman”, because it is conducted by gods and yogis, but not by
people. These gods possess in part extremely destructive
characteristics. They are nonetheless sacrosanct and may neither be
criticized nor exchanged or transformed.
- The goal of this tantra is the establishment of an androcentric, undemocratic, despotic monastic
state headed by an autocrat (the ADI BUDDHA).
- The Buddhocratic
state is structurally based upon sacrifice: the sacrifice of the
loving goddess, the woman, the individual, the pupil, the king, the
scapegoat.
- Buddhocracy skillfully manipulates several models of temporary anarchism in order to in the end turn them
around into an authoritarian system.
- In a Tibetan-style Buddhocracy, the state and its organs do not
shrink from using black magic rituals to get political opponents out
of the way.
- Buddhocratic politics are aligned not towards democratic decision-making
processes but rather towards divine commands, especially the
pronouncements of oracles, of whom Pehar, the pre-Buddhist
war god of the Hor Mongols, assumes the
leading role (of state oracle).
- The tantric state is pursuing an
aggressive policy of war and conquest (the Shambhalization
of the world).
- The Shambhala myth contains an apocalyptic
vision borne by a “fascistoid” warrior
ethos, in which the faithful (the Buddhists) brutally annihilate all
non-believers (above all the Moslems).
- Tantric Buddhism manipulates the
western masses with falsified images of peace, ecology, democracy, a
pro-woman orientation, social justice, and compassion.
In this connection we would like to (in warning)
mention once more the significant influence that both Buddhist Tantrism in general and the Kalachakra Tantra
and Shambhala myth in particular have had over
fascism and German national socialism, and continue to exert. In chapter 12
we reported on Heinrich Himmler’s occult interest in Tibet, about the former
SS member Heinrich Harrer, the tutor of the young
Dalai Lama, and about the significance of Vajrayana for the fascist
ideology of Mussolini’s confidante, Julius Evola.
But at the center of this chapter stood a detailed analysis of Esoteric Hitlerism, the world view
of the Chilean diplomat and author Miguel Serrano who closely follows
Buddhist Tantrism and combines it with occult
doctrines of the Nazis. Most clearly of all, Serrano shows what awaits
humanity if the Kalachakra Tantra
were to gain control over the world: a racist autocracy of androgynous
warriors who celebrate real female sacrifices as their supreme mystery and
worship Hitler’s SS as their historical role-model. In warning, we would
indicate that it is not a coincidence
that His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama has maintained contact with
these fanatic worshippers of the SS and the German “Führer”
since his flight from Tibet (in 1959), but rather because his tantric
tradition corresponds with many of their ideological and visionary aspects.
Where Serrano’s Shambhala visions have up until now remained speculations, they have
taken on a horrifying reality in the figure of the Japanese sect leader,
Shoko Asahara. The world held its breath in the
case of Asahara as he ordered the carrying out of
a gas attack on Tokyo’s overfilled underground railway system in 1995 in
which there were numerous injuries and several people died. It was the
first militarily planned attempted murder by a religious group from an
industrialized country which was directed outwardly (i.e. not against its
own membership). The immense danger of such insidious attacks, against
which the masses are completely unprotected, is obvious. For all the depth
of feeling which the act stirred up among the international public, no-one
has until now made the effort of investigating the ideological and
religious bases and motives which led Asahara to
commit his crime. Here too, the ways lead to Tibetan Buddhism, especially
the Shambhala myth of the Kalachakra Tantra. Asahara saw himself as an incarnation of the Rudra Chakrin,
the raging wheel turner, who destroys one half of the world in order to
(literally) rescue the other half through his Shambhalization plan. Not only was did he practice Vajrayana, he was also a “good friend” of the
Dalai Lama, whom he met five times in person.
The atavistic pattern of Tibetan Buddhism
Despite all these problematic points, the image of
Tibetan Buddhism as the best of all religious systems and the Dalai Lama as
the gentlest (!) of all beings continues to spread successfully. One of the
latest high points in this glorification has been the cover story on Buddhism in the German news magazine
Spiegel (April 1998). In the case
of the Dalai Lama this magazine, well-known for its critical stance towards
religion and anti-church articles which often did not shy away from a sharp
cynicism, let itself be used as a propaganda
instrument by an atavistic, autocratic religious system. The author of the
euphoric article, Erich Follath, was like so many
of his colleagues completely captivated by the god-king’s charm after a
visit to Dharamsala. “I show old friends like you
around my garden!”, the Kundun had smiled at the Spiegel editor and shown him his
flower beds (Spiegel, no. 16,
April 13, 1998). The journalist Follath
gratefully accepted this personal gesture by the divine charmer and in the
same moment abandoned his critical awareness and his journalistic
responsibility. His article is an embarrassing collection of historical
distortions and sentimental celebration of the Kundun, his country, and his
religion. [1]
If we were to characterize the obvious
self-presentation of His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama on the world
political stage, we would soon recognize that he strictly abides by (a)
four positive rules and (b) four negative ones which proves him to indeed
be a masterful manipulator:
1. (a) In public, always argue using the
terms of Mahayana Buddhism. Refer to compassion, love, and peace. (b)
Never mention the sexual magic mysteries and power-political obsessions of Vajrayana.
2. (a) Lead all arguments that could in
any manner be directed against Buddhism into the “emptiness” (shunyata) and
in public “shunyatize” even your own religious approach:
“nothing has an inherent existence” — that is, everything comes from
nothingness and everything ends in nothingness.
(b) In contrast, never mention in public the Tibetan gods, demons, and
spirits (the Nechung
oracle) or their power-political program (the Shambhala myth), who sink into this “emptiness” only to push through
their “Buddhocratic” interests and tantric
ideology globally.
3. (a) Apparently take on all progressive
currents within western culture (democracy, freedom of opinion, human
rights, individualism, women’s rights, ecology, humanism, and so forth). (b)
Never mention the autocratic clerical intentions of the tantric system, and under no circumstances the establishment of
worldwide control by the androcentric Buddhist
monastic state which can perpetuate itself via the doctrine of
reincarnation.
4. (a) Smile and always appear friendly,
ordinary, modest, humble, and human. Always play the gentle “Lord of
Compassion”, the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara.(b) Never display annoyance or pride in public, and
thickly veil the destructive aspects of those gods and demons (herukas)
whose emanation on earth you are. Be silent about the cruelty of Lamaist history.
The smile and the friendly words of the
“living Buddha” are only the outer facade of his many-layered personality.
But it is not what the Dalai Lama says, but rather the religious system
which stands behind him and what his gods command that determine the
politics of Tibetan Buddhism, as we have shown in the course of our study.
It is not the new pseudo-Western constitution of the Tibetans in exile
which counts, rather it is in the final instance the “political theology”
recorded in the Kalachakra Tantra
and Shambhala myth and the sexual magic practices
prescribed there for the accumulation of power which are decisive. It is
not the relaxed and friendly relations between His Holiness and western
celebrities which are a problem, but rather his close contacts with occult
sects like Shoko Asahara’s AUM cult and with
representatives of “esoteric Hitlerism” like Miguel Serrano. The reason
they are extremely problematic and very dangerous is because both
occultists (Asahara and Serrano) have placed the
philosophy and practice of Vajrayana and the warlike Shambhala myth at the center of their destructive world view. It is not
the conflict between the Dalai Lama and Beijing which poses a threat for
the West and the world community, but rather in contrast a possible future
cultural conquest of the “Chinese dragon” by the “Tibetan snow lion” (of
Lamaism). The Shambhala myth provides the optimal
ideological foundations for an aggressive, pan-Asian superpower politics
and for the unleashing of a Buddhist jihad
(holy war). It is not the gentle downward-looking Avalokiteshvara and the
“simple monk” from Dharamsala, but rather Yama the god
of death and Kalachakra
the time god with his woman-destroying cult which are the problem, since
they are likewise incarnated in the figure of the Dalai Lama. It is not
that the Dalai Lama privately seeks advice from an oracle that is
problematic, but rather that a Mongolian war god speaks through the state
oracle. It is not the popularity that Hollywood has lent the Kundun which
should be criticized, but rather the use of these media giants to distort
historical facts.
Yet the atavistic and mythic pattern of Tibetan
thought and Tantric Buddhism is completely ignored by people in the West
(as long as they are not converted Buddhists). If it were to be examined,
one would inevitably reach the conclusion that there is absolutely no
freedom of opinion in the Lamaist culture of
Tibet, and hence no real criticism either, since the Tibetan people have
always been administered autocratically, and even in exile have no
democracy, having “ opted” for a constitutionally
fixed(!) Buddhocracy instead. Further, since
doctrine has it that the highest ruler of the country, the Dalai Lama, is
not a state president but a living “god” (an incarnation of Avalokiteshvara
and the Kalachakra
deity), his will must always be valued more highly than that of his
subjects, even should they have a seat in the exile Tibetan government.
Additionally, Tibet has no ordinary history but
rather a sacred one, with the Shambhala myth
at its center and as its goal. For this reason, every political act of the Kundun and
the Tibetans in exile must be subsumed within this eschatology. Lamaist culture is in its essence undemocratic,
fundamentalist, and totalitarian, and sees nothing bad in this — in contrast, it holds itself to be the best system of all.
Thanks to the doctrine of reincarnation, the ruling clerical elite views
its absolutist exercise of power as unlimited even by death.
Every reform policy, every affirmation of
democratization, every profession of peace remains a lie for as long as the
Dalai Lama has not renounced the tantric ritual system, especially the Kalachakra Tantra.
At heart this rests on the magic transformation of sexuality into power and
ultimately aspires to the militarily enforced enthronement of a
sacred/political world king. Nonetheless, without even the slightest
concession and headed by the Kundun, all
schools of Lamaism continue to hold fast to the — as we believe we have
demonstrated them to be — extremely destructive and humanity despising
rites and associated political ideology.
Even if the Tibetan clergy were to relinquish its
political privileges for a time in a “liberated” Tibet, the idea of the
hegemony of a patriarchal monastic dictatorship as the supreme goal would
remain, as this is the core of the entire tantric ritual system. The
theocratic system that can be found in all the past cultures of the world
only survives today in Tibetan Buddhism and parts of Islam. In both cases
it demands worldwide recognition and distribution. Among the Tibetans in
exile it does so — grotesquely — from behind a mask of democracy, human
rights, the ecumenical mission, and the protection of nature.
However, when they not in public, the Tibetan
Gurus do not shrink at all from talking about their mystic envisionings, plans for conquest, apocalyptic battles,
or the worldwide expansion of a Buddhocracy. In
their followers’ circles the Shambhala myth
has long since become a power-political factor. Yet it is not even
mentioned in the world media. The lamas tailor their outwardly presented
depictions of Tibet to their audience. If the tenor of an academic
conference is one of sober discussion, then the arguments of the Tibetans
in exile are likewise sober, analytic, and critical. If another meeting is
more emotional and esoteric, then the very same people there subscribe to
the fantastic historical myths of the eternally peaceful and mysterious,
occult highlands (Shangri La)
which at the first conference they claimed to be the invention of a errant “western orientalism”.
In turn, at the congresses of “committed Buddhists”, the Tibet of old is
built up as the sanctuary of all those values which are gaining ground in
postmodern society. „Tibetan exiles”, Toni Huber writes, „have
reinvented a kind of modern, liberal
Shangri-La image of themselves”, in that they adopt images from the protest
movements of the industrialized West „which are now transnational in scope
and appeal: environmentalism, pacifism, human rights, and feminism” (Huber,
2001, p. 358). Yet Western
values, like the separation of ecclesiastical and secular power, equality
before the law, the rule of law, freedom of expression, social pluralism,
political representation, equality of the sexes, and individualism, had no
place in the history of Tibet.
But it is not just a result of pure naïveté when
government sources in Europe and America express the opinion that
autocratic Lamaism is compatible with the fundamentals of a modern
constitution. Behind this also lie the tactical politics of power with an
“impending” Chinese threat. Washington in particular is most interested in
making use of an oppressed Tibet as an argument in discussions with China,
the USA’s greatest competitor.
This dangerous antagonism between the two
superpowers (China vs. the USA) is efficiently stirred up by their
respective internal politics, and Dharamsala does
not let a chance pass without pouring gas on the flames. The Kundun with
his loud and “heartfelt” criticism of China is a
American king-piece in the political chess game between Washington and
Beijing. In it, official posts in the USA are thoroughly informed about the
“true” history of the old and the new Tibet as well as the “undemocratic”
circumstances in Dharamsala. They are advised by
such objective scholars as, among others, A. Tom Grunfeld
and Melvyn C. Goldstein. In public, however, the State Department has until
now followed the pro-Tibetan arguments of the Hollywood actor and Kalachakra
initiate, Richard Gere.
“Clash of Religions”: The fundamentalist contribution of
Lamaism
In the last fifteen years, the West has to its
great surprise discovered just how much political explosiveness religiously
based strategies for world domination (like the Shambhala myth) and magic/mystic practices (like the Kalachakra ritual) have been able to develop
today, on the threshold of the third millennium. Catching the western
cultures unprepared, theocratic (and Buddhocratic)
visions of the most varied schools of belief have burst forth explosively
from the depths of the human subconscious, where they have survived in
hiding since the bourgeois Enlightenment (of the 18th century).
Events in Iran, the country where the mullahs established the first
smoothly functioning Moslem religious state of the modern era, triggered a
culture shock in the West. All at once the atavistic attitudes and rules of
violence, the warrior ethic, racism, intolerance, discrimination against
women, the dictatorship of the priesthood, the persecution of nonbelievers,
inquisitions, visions of global wars and the end of the world, etc., with
which theocratic (and Buddhocratic) systems are
associated were once more (as in the Middle Ages) were very current issues.
In a widely respected book, Clash of Civilizations, the American political scientist Samuel
P. Huntington, has indicated with convincing arguments that the
confrontations which await the world of the 21st century primarily have
neither economic, class conflict, nor nationalistic causes. In their search
for identity, people have since the eighties been grouping themselves
around “cultures”, but most especially around religions.
Surprisingly, all religious traditions have in the
meantime overcome their opposition to technology. “The West” and
“technology” are no longer identified with one another as they once were.
Even the most radical fundamentalists use high-tech gadgets and the latest
means of communication. It is the students from the faculties of
engineering and the natural sciences who fell particularly drawn to
religious ideas. According to Huntington, social conflicts (rich against
poor) are also no longer a primary factor in the causes of war. Cultural
spheres, such as that of Islam for instance, can encompass both extremely
rich and extremely poor countries at the same time. The critical factor is
the common religion.
The West and its values, Huntington argues, is becoming increasingly weak as a central power, while
other cultural power blocs are crystallizing. Of these the two most
significant are Islam and China. Its universalistic claims are increasingly
bringing the West into conflict with other cultural spheres, most seriously
with Islam and China. ... Islam and China embody grand cultural traditions
that are very different from those of the West and, in the eyes of these
cultural spheres, vastly superior to them. The power and self-assurance of
these two spheres are increasing in comparison to the West, and the
conflicts of interest and values between them and the West are becoming
more numerous and intense (Huntington, 1997, p. 19). Wars, under certain
circumstances world wars, are for Huntington hardly avoidable.
If we take Huntington’s suggestion seriously, we
have to ask ourselves whether the Kalachakra Tantra and Shambhala myth
of the Dalai Lama do not represent an extremely dangerous ideological bomb
which could set the whole world aflame. As we know, the Time Tantra predicts an eschatological apocalyptic war with
Islam. In the year 2327, the prophecy says, Rudra Chakrin, the “wrathful wheel turner”
from Shambhala,
will lead his army into battle against the Mlecchas (Moslems). A
contribution from the Internet has thus rightly compared the vision of the
Time Tantra with the idea of an Islamic holy war
(jihad). “The Kalachakra initiation”,
writes Richard P. Hayes, “seems to have been a call to the Buddhist
equivalent of jihad ... the Kalachakra was
interpreted externally as a call to Holy War (to preserve the Dharma
against its enemies)” (Hayes, Newsgroup 11).
For historical reasons Islam has proven itself to
be the most culturally aggressive counterforce to western culture. The
struggles between the Christian Occident and the Islamic Orient are part of
a centuries old tradition. With their explicit hostility towards Islam the Kalachakra Tantra
and Shambhala myth are thus stirring up a fire
which is already glowing fiercely on the current world political stage and
has even spread to the center of the greatest western power (the USA).
According to Huntington, China will very soon be
the West’s most potent economic and ethnic challenger. The country will
develop into the core state and magnet of a Sinitic
cultural sphere and will culturally dominate all its neighbors; the entire
East Asian economy will be centered around China.
Unification between the People’s Republic and Taiwan is just a question of
time. Huntington sees the “Middle Kingdom” as the one power that could one
day cast doubt on the global
influence of the West.
In contrast to Islam, the philosophy (which can
hardly still be described as communist) currently dominant in China, that
terms itself the “inheritance of Confucian thought” both on the mainland and
in Taiwan, is not outwardly aggressive and oriented towards conquest. On a
general level, the Confucian ethos stresses authority, hierarchy, a sense
of family, ancestor worship, the subordination of the rights of the
individual to the community, and the supremacy of the state over the
individual, but also the “avoidance of confrontations”, that is, wars as
well.
We must nevertheless not forget that in the course
of its history China has never been free from external ideological
influences. Buddhism in its various forms, as well as Christianity and
communism are cultural imports and have at times
had a decisive influence on the politics of the country. In the 14th
chapter of Part II of our study we thus posed the question of whether the
Chinese might not also be susceptible to the Shambhala myth’s global visions of power. The “Middle Kingdom” has
always had spiritually and mythically based claims to world domination.
Even if it has not tried to impose these militarily, the Chinese Emperor is
nonetheless revered as a world king (a Chakravartin). As we have
demonstrated in our detailed portrait of Mao Zedong, such a claim survived
even under communism. The Fourteenth Dalai Lama is most aware of this. For
a good five years now his missionary work has been concentrated on Taiwan
(Nationalist China). We have quoted several prophecies from his own lips
which foretell a decisive codetermining role for Lamaism in shaping the
Chinese future. Taiwan, which — according to all prognoses — will sooner or later
return to the mother country, can be considered the springboard from which
the Tibetan monks and the new Nationalist Chinese recruits ordained by them
could infiltrate the Chinese cultural fabric.
Return to rationalism?
Why is the West so helpless when it encounters the
“battle of cultures”, and why is it surprised every time violent eruptions
of fundamentalist religious systems (as in Islam for instance) occur? We
believe that the reasons for this must be of a primarily epistemological
nature: Since the time of the Enlightenment, the occidental culture has
drawn a clear dividing line between the church and the state, science and
religion, technology and magic, politics and myth, art and mysticism. This
division led to the assessment of all state, scientific, technical,
political, and artistic phenomena purely according to the criteria of
reason or the aesthetics. Rationalism unconditionally required that the
church, religion, magic, myth, and mysticism have no influence on the
“scientific culture of the Enlightenment”. Naïvely, it also projects such
conceptions onto non-Western cultural spheres. In the issue of Tibet, for
example, the West neatly separates Tantric Buddhism and its mysteries
(about which it knows as good as nothing) from the
political questions of human rights, the concept of democracy, the national
interests of the Tibetan people. But for the Dalai Lama and his system,
politics and religion have been united for centuries. For him and for
Lamaism, power-political decisions — of whatever kind — are tactical and
strategic elements in the plan for world conquest recorded in the Kalachakra Tantra
and Shambhala myth.
Since rationalism does not take the
power-political effectiveness of myths and religions seriously enough, it
refrains from the outset from examining the central contents of religious
cults (such as the Kalachakra Tantra for
example). The mysteries of the various religious orientations have never
been more hidden and mysterious than in the Age of Reason, for the simple
reason that this has never examined them.
To be successful, however, a critical analysis and
evaluation of an ancient world view must fulfill three conditions:
1. First of all it must be able to immerse
itself in the world view of the particular religion, that is, it must be
capable of perceiving the world and the universe through the eyes and
filters of the religious dogmata to be examined. Otherwise it will never
learn what it is all about. In the specific case of Tibetan culture, this
means that it must familiarize itself with the sexual magic and
micro-/macrocosmic philosophy of the Kalachakra Tantra
and the political ideology of the Shambhala myth so
as to be able to understand the politics of the Dalai Lama and his
executive at all.
2. Only after obtaining exact knowledge about
the basis, goals, and history of the religion in question should it compare
these with western values so as to then make an evaluation. For example, it
must relate the “female sacrifice” and the absorption of gynergy
through yoga practices in Buddhist Tantrism to
contemporary demands for the equality of the sexes. The West cannot
overcome the myths by denying their power. It has itself had to experience
their unbroken and enormous presence even in the twentieth century. In the
case of national socialism (Nazism) the
mythological world view developed an all but superhuman potency. Only if
investigative thinkers risk entering into the heart of the religious cult
mysteries and are prepared to engage with the innermost core of these
mysteries can such “religious time bombs” be diffused. For this reason,
3. the requirements for a critical
reappraisal of the cultures are that their mystery cults and their contents
be brought into the arena for public discussion — a procedure which is sure
to send a shiver down the spines of the majority of fans of the esoteric
and fundamentalists. But such an open and public discussion of the mystery
knowledge is not at all an achievement of our liberal-democratic age. If,
for example, we consider the critical and polemic disputes of the fathers
of the Christian church with the various religious currents of their times
and the rejoinders of the latter, then we can see that between the 2nd and
the 5th centuries there was — despite the very primitive state of
communication technologies — a far larger openness about fundamental
questions of how the world is viewed than today. These days, religions are
either blindly adopted or rejected per
se; back then religions were made, formed, and codified.
As absurd as it may sound, “western rationalism”
is actually the cause of occultism. [2]
It pushes the esoteric doctrines and their practices (the New Age for example) into the social
underground, where they can spread undisturbed and uninhibited, and lay claim
to one mind after another unnoticed, until one day when — as in the case of
national socialism in Germany in the 30s, the Mullah regime in Iran in the
80s, and perhaps the Shambhala myth in Asia in the
??s — they burst forth with immense power and draw the whole of
society into their atavistic wake. [3]
On the other hand, the “critical descent” into the
mystery cults of the religious traditions makes possible valuable learning
processes. We did not want to reach the conclusion in our analysis of Buddhist
Tantrism that everything about traditional
religions (Buddhism in this particular case) ought to be dismissed. Many
religious teachings, many convictions, practices, and visions appear
thoroughly valuable and even necessary in the establishment of a peaceful
world community. We too are of the opinion that the “Enlightenment” and
western “rationalism” alone no longer have the power to sensibly interpret the world, and
definitely not to change it. Man does not live on bread alone!
Hence, in our view, the world of the new
millennium is thus not to be demythologized (nor dis-enchanted
or re-rationalized), but rather humans have the power, the right, and the
responsibility to subject the existing myths, mysteries and religions to a
critical examination and selection process. We can, may, and must resist
those gods who exhibit destructive conceptions and dualist thoughts and
deeds. We can, may, and ought to join those who contribute to the
construction of a peaceful world. we can, may, and
perhaps should even seek new gods. There is, however, a great danger that
the time for a fundamental renewal of the religious process will disappear
if the atavistic/warlike world views (with western help as well) continue
to spread further and are not replaced by other, peaceful depictions of the
world (and myths). The existing traditions (and the deities and mysteries
behind them) may only be of help in such a process of renewal in as far as
they adhere to certain fundamentals like mutual respect, peaceableness, openness, equality of the sexes,
cooperation with nature, charity, etc.
The cultural critic Samuel P. Huntington rejects
from the outset the idea of a universal culture, a new world culture as
unrealistic and unwanted. But why actually? The general interconnection,
the technologization, the interlacing of the
economy, the expansion of international travel have like never before in
the history of humankind generated the communicative conditions for the
discussion of a global cultural beginning. This is, at least as far as
certain western values like human rights, equality of opportunity,
democracy, and so forth, already encouraged by the world community (especially the UN) with more or less large
success. But on a religious level, everything remains the same — or will
there be new mysteries, oriented to laws of human harmony without a need to
sacrifice intercultural variety and colorful splendor?
Footnotes:
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