| | This is a fascinating area and has been an interest of mine for many years, it’s an incredibly complex subject which continues to intrigue me; it’s basically like trying to find a Unified Theory of mysticism, which is what Aleister Crowley appears to have been trying to do with the Thelemic model. In fact, Crowley’s “777” may be of interest to you as a reference for how certain concepts and experiences line up across different traditions.
As far as I can tell, based on my own studies and experience, there appears to be some basic conceptual similarities between every tradition; each of them, in their own way and usually in symbolic language or through pictograms and geometric representations, describe certain fundamental aspects of human experience. For example, the symbolism of a trinity is always present in some way: “the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit” of the Christians, “Wotan, Odin and Friga” of the Scandinavians, and “Isis, Osiris and Horus” in the Egyptian pantheons, seem to refer to the same archetypal concepts. The same goes for the four elements, although the specifics in their definitions can make them seem unrelated; experiential knowledge of what they refer to clears it up in a way that description cannot.
Something to bear in mind is that all over these experiences, ideas and concepts have been described in language by human beings, which, to me at least, indicates that they must refer to some experience possible through those six points of sensory input we call the senses. Even in a PCE the senses continue to be where experience occurs for this body, the body is what allows the senses to operate and seems to be the only way in which a human can experience the world.
Realistically though, without considerable effort to practice sincerely within each tradition, record your results until you’ve gone as far as you can and then switch to another tradition and repeat the process over and over, it’s likely to be based on speculation. I’ve spent a long time involved in the process I’ve just described so I do have some practical knowledge of this stuff, but nowhere near enough to offer a definitive answer.
What then complicates matters further is the nature of communication between human beings, and the inherent difficulty in ensuring that others are understanding your words as you intended them to be understood. On top of that there are issues with language being translated over time, there are often centuries between the writing of the text in it’s original language, in specific social, economic, religious and political conditions which are often overlooked but are likely to have influenced the way in which that language was used. Further still, the nature of symbolic representations, even something as seemingly simple and universal as the crucifix, which predates Christianity by a long shot, means that their “true” meaning depends entirely on context; for Christians, a crucifix represents the death of Jesus for their sins, but to a Hindu it’s basically God’s cock. Add a rose to it, a’la Rosicrucianism, or a circle, a’la Celtic Paganism and it’s the God and Goddess (who are also Shiva and Shakti) locked in Divine intercourse, i.e. a symbol of the combination of opposing forces in union, aka the end of the subject/object division...which is also, just to keep you on your toes here, what the “Great Work” of the magician is aimed at, as well as the discovery of the “Philosophers Stone” for the alchemist. In fact, language is responsible for so much shit over the years that it’d be nice if a less ambiguous, more specific and universal mode of communication could be developed for this purpose.
As you can see, it gets very complicated very quickly and that’s before we’ve even started talking about “God”, “relative experience” and what any of these words refer to phenomenologically! In my experience, it’s an enjoyable area to study and can lead to some interesting insights which could be overlooked by continually thinking in a fixed way about things, which is always a possibility if you’re entirely immersed in the belief system, or conceptual model you’re working with, and then forget that you actually put yourself there. |