Why was the classical West so far behind in religious/spiritual development?

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Ned
Sik, thanks for reiterating this point to Johnc. He doesn't seem to understand that the all the IndoEuropean religions have a common root. In a related post, he was suggesting that the Western polytheistic religions of Greece and Rome came from Mesopotamia!!!

Yea, I saw that too. While there might have been some influence I don't see that much, in large part because Mesopotamia had little to offer IE civilizations religiously and was in decline by the time the IE's became civilized themselves.

[Dr Strangelove]

Eastern religions were corrupted by politics also. Buddhism is a strictly pacifist religion, yet the first major ruler to convert to Buddhism, Asoka undertook a gigantic bloody campaign to subjugate the rest of India. His empire was the first to unite India under one government. Throughout history Buddhists have been no more reluctant to engage in warfare than have been rulers of any other religion.
The people of China and Japan have at times worshipped their rulers in the same fashion as the ancient Egyptians and the Romans. In that respect western (non- judeo-Christian-Islamic) religions were utterly on par with eastern ones.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by General Ludd
I thought you just said imperialism = technology =bad.

I was asking if that was what YOU claimed.

What are you, a clairvoyant? How can you possibly guess what the east would or wouldn't be "without us"?

common sense? They weren't changing much before the imperialists came, and they probably wouldn't have started during the time of imperialism, had the imperialists not come, so they would probably be pretty much right where they were then.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
Eastern religions were corrupted by politics also. Buddhism is a strictly pacifist religion, yet the first major ruler to convert to Buddhism, Asoka undertook a gigantic bloody campaign to subjugate the rest of India. His empire was the first to unite India under one government.

Actually only really northern India/Pakistan.

[RGBVideo]

Yeah. We're more pragmatic than they and while we have wasted billions of hours studying crap like how many angels dance on the head of a pin, that's not all that we have done... unlike the Easterners, we did spend some of our time developing a civilization that spans the globe and is capable of feeding billions.

JohnT
JohnT's opinions

[johncmcleod]

I also agree with Speer. Indians had the concept of zero, the Europeans didn't get this until the 14th or 15th centuries.

The Mesopotamian religion had a much greater influence on the West. The Indians were cut off, they had the Himalayas to worry about. I believe they did have some influence on the Persians, hence Zoroastrianism. But as for the Mesopotamians, they had great influences on the West, especially in their image of a wrathful God.

From everything I have been taught and read, the reason Christianity was so revolutionary was that the common person in the Western world had absolutely no sense of morals or spirituality. So Christianity really caught on.

This contrasts the East, where even commoners had notions of morals, and the East had monasteries even before Jesus. Though Hinduism was full of worldliness, if you look at the basic philosophies, it is much different than what most people in West believed. And the spiritual exercises, such as meditation, that they came up with were so much more advanced than anything that Westerners did until a few centuries after Christ.

[Al B. Sure!]

Boshko:

AS: that's true of early Greek philosophy but by the time of the Roman Empire things had changed drastically and influences came in from all over the place and what you are saying no longer applies so much.

and yet the Romans still didn't have any concept of Zero... the latter Roman Empire only further strengthens my point. their insistance on disbelieving the concept of Nothingness, after so many centuries, not even have a symbol for the mathematical nothingness of Zero, is very telling. The Romans systematically refused to ponder Nothingness and their spiritual development stagnated because of it.

The Zero didn't enter Western languages until the 13th century and it was often fought bitterly... at that point, there was suddenly a great deal of pondering of Nothingness in the West, particularily God's relation to Nothingness. Many were branded as heretics for their inquiries into this. Look up Roger Bacon's or Walter Burley's inquiries into the existance of vacuums.

In the late 13th century, the Church finally allowed the concept of Nothingness, breaking with Aristotle, on the grounds that God could do anything so Nothingness was possible. God could make 2 plus 2 equal 5 so therefore, God could make Nothingness. Those who stuck to the Graeco-Roman tradition were branded as heretics.

This was the first time that the West had largely admitted the possibility of Nothingness, and did so to reconcile God's power with Aristotlean logic, the Church siding with the former.

[Ned]

Here is a a summary of Indian religion. You will note that the most ancient of the Indian religions, summarized in the Vedas, is the same as Western religions because it was the religion of the IndoEuropeans, the same people as the Persians, Greek, Romans, Germans and Slavs. The development of the idea of reincarnation is where Indian religions depart from the West.

"The Vedas
In the Vedas, which predate the Upanishads by centuries, there is no doctrine of reincarnation; in the Vedic religion, the next life involves an ascent to the heavenly world, or to the depths of an underworld as a result of the actions one takes in the material life. Hope of spiritual advancement in death.
Brahmanic religion
Developed as a priesthood attempting to empower itself. Earlier concepts of salvation by trust and faith in God were replaced with sacrifice and ritual. Page 1028, 2nd & 3rd indented paragraphs
Transmigration of souls -- an endless round of non-progressive perpetuation of selfhood as incarnation in human, animal or vegetable forms.
One soul in the cosmos; individual existence is an illusion and salvation lies in eliminating the illusion of individual existence and becoming absorbed in the Atman (the all-soul).
The Urantia Book -- page 1030, section 3
The Upanishads develop the concept of reincarnation of individual existences while retaining a single-soul concept. (In the Upanishads, the illusion of individuality is more permanent than the fleeting manifestations of individuality known to Brahmanism.)
Jainism -- belief in multiple souls -- freeing the soul from the bondage of continuous rebirth into material existence -- important conceptual advance from transmigration to reincarnation.
Goal of existence is to transcend attachment to the world of matter -- self-mortification to learn how to transcend attachment to matter. The laws of karma are a part of the material universe -- the problems of karma are material problems and relate to one's actions. Injuring other living beings has deleterious effects on one's karma. Esoteric knowledge and gaining favor with the Gods is important. Morality is seen as a means of progressing toward liberation.
Buddhism -- for the Buddha, karma was a psychological force (rather than the material force of the Jains and Brahmans) which was maintained by desire.
The laws of karma are a psychological problem and relate to one's thoughts. Therefore the psychological elimination of desire would free the individual from the cycle of rebirth. Some branches of Buddhism, notably Tibetan Buddhism, introduce a concept of reincarnation expanded to include a sequence of celestial worlds.
Page 1035; 2nd indented paragraph thru last complete paragraph on the page.
The Amitabha Scripture (4th century AD) -- salvation can be had by simply calling upon the name of Buddha Amitabha. (Buddha Amitabha is a Bodhisatva)"

http://www.urantiabook.org/archive/studyaid/reincarn.htm

[Al B. Sure!]

I don't know if this thread has died or not, but, at the risk of getting too ahead of the time period in question, the debates between Pascal and his opponents, the Cartesians, with respect to the existance of vacuums and God's relation to them are significant to this regard.

The Cartesians founded their arguement on Aristotle, claiming that a vacuum, by being the manifestation of Nothingness, could not be reconciled with God so therefore, vacuums do not exist. "Nature abhores a vacuum" sort of stuff.

Pascal's experiments, however, indicated that a vacuum could be created and the fact that the height of the mercury in a barometer would decrease with greater altitude meant that the weight of the air around the earth eventually dissipated to a point, beyond the atmosphere, where there was no air, and therefore, there was only a vacuum... there was Nothingness. The Aristotlean-minded Cartesians, however, claimed this was impossible as the existance of Nothingness complicated Pre-Creation and Creation. Why would God create Nothingness? Could something be created from Nothingness? Could God and Nothingness exist simultaneously?

this determined refusal to accept the possibility of Nothingness, going back to the ancient Greeks with their telling lack of a symbol for mathematical zero, retarded Western spiritual development until the 18th century when scientific discoveries, ironically, proved the existance of the vacuum, allowing for the deep philosophical inquiries of the perspectivists and existentialists.

of course you may ask why is Nothingness important to spirituality? Spirituality, of course, is the concern with that which is the antithesis of the physical or the material. The Greek refusal to comprehend the non-physical, due to their logical way of thinking, was why the West was so behind in spiritual development.


That made sense, right? Did I answer the question?

[Bosh]

Ned: why are you quoting a cultist website???

[Al B. Sure!]

Urantia is the name given to our planet on the Local Universe registry of inhabited worlds

[johncmcleod]

AS: I guess I agree with what you are saying, but I still am not sure about the concept of nothingness being so interconnected with spirituality. I don't see how the Hindus having the concept of zero enabled them to come up with spiritual exercises such as meditation, whereas Westerners couldn't. And I don't see the concept of nothingness being a major part of Hindu philosophy. I know it is there, but I can't see how one person, understanding such a concept, would be more spiritually inclined than one who doesn't. I guess I just need you to elaborate on part of it.

And what about the Chinese? Did they understand the concept of zero? Taoism is very spiritual, moreso than Western religions of the time, and I am not aware of zero being important to their beliefs.

Ned-I see that the Hindus were Indo-European, yet the philosophy and spirituality of the religion was so much different than any religion of the west.

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
Eastern religions were corrupted by politics also. Buddhism is a strictly pacifist religion, yet the first major ruler to convert to Buddhism, Asoka undertook a gigantic bloody campaign to subjugate the rest of India. His empire was the first to unite India under one government. Throughout history Buddhists have been no more reluctant to engage in warfare than have been rulers of any other religion.
The people of China and Japan have at times worshipped their rulers in the same fashion as the ancient Egyptians and the Romans. In that respect western (non- judeo-Christian-Islamic) religions were utterly on par with eastern ones.

You forget the most crucial fact about Ashok - that he converted to the pacifist Buddhism after being disgusted by the amount of bloodshed he had to undertake to achieve that empire .

[Al B. Sure!]

johncmcleod:

The synonyms for zero in sanskrit have a number of double-meanings, including abhra (atmosphere), akasha (ether), bindu (a point), gagana (canopy of heaven), purna (complete), randhra (hole), vishnupada (foot of vishnu), etc.

Nothingess is a state of non-being, that which is not created. it is akin to hindu and buddhist concepts of nirvana. Meditation is related to zero because meditation was used to achieve a state of non-being (through inaction and seperation from the world)... a state of nothingness... a state of zero... and as the double-meanings of zero indicate, it was a state associated with the divine.

[Al B. Sure!]

what? did i answer the question so we're done here or am i so out of the ballpark that yall are too flabergasted to say anything?