Religion? No. Spiritual path (machine translation)
The concept of “spirituality” is usually associated with religion. And in the case of the Teaching, this association is strengthened by the fact that it uses terminology, partly and in fact drawn from a religious vocabulary. A person who has glanced at our texts and other materials sees that it speaks of the Creator, the gods, afterlife, rebirths, revelation, and he may get the impression that he is dealing with religion. However, this impression will be erroneous.
Teaching calls the Creator a creature that has transformed its body into what we know as our Universe. He is not a supernatural being, not an omnipotent God. But how, if not the Creator, can we call the one who created the Universe? Even if he created it from himself, and did it not with the help of supernatural powers, but thanks to the abilities acquired during an unimaginably long evolution. The Creator is the Creator. The Gods of Teaching are, in fact, the laws of Nature. Rather, the energetic components of these laws, which have a peculiar form of reason and, in a sense, are individuals. We can say that they are a life form not yet known to science. The same applies to afterlife and rebirths. Science does not yet have in its arsenal of devices capable of detecting a person’s energetic essence that continues to live after physical death. She is not able to trace the path of such an entity from a dead body to a connection with a new body. However, this does not mean that rebirth is a religious myth. It is a reality, it happens according to the natural laws of Nature, and one day it will be open and, if possible, studied. As for revelation, this word in the Doctrine denotes an information message received by a person from any of the gods. This is also a natural phenomenon, albeit extremely rare. There is nothing supernatural that one form of life communicates with another. Another thing is the fact that, due to the rarity and enormous significance of these contacts, each such case is unique and surprising. The religious worldview could not consider them otherwise than as a miracle, the intervention of supernatural forces.
Religious terminology is used by the Teaching simply for lack of the best. Behind these terms are quite real concepts and natural phenomena that have not yet been discovered and described by science. And since it rejects belief in the supernatural, it does not contain everything else that makes religion a religion: worship of “higher powers”, prayers, rituals, priesthood or priesthood, etc. That is, there is no cult. Both religious-mystical perception of the world in itself and its practical expression are alien to the doctrine.
Those who consider the concept of “spirituality” referring exclusively to the religious sphere to be mistaken. I would say that it refers to the life of the soul in the moral, moral and ethical understanding of this life. But morality does not appear out of nowhere and does not hang in the air. She needs support; so to speak, the soil on which it could grow. In other words, she needs a complex of concepts about good and evil. Such a complex can only be built on the basis of a worldview that gives an idea of the structure of the world and the place of man in it. And that means giving criteria for determining what is good and what is evil, and the ability to make an informed choice between them. In such conditions, the moral evolution of the personality takes place, a change for the better of its moral qualities, that is, improvement of the soul. Any worldview that gives such an opportunity is a spiritual path – be it a religion, a speculative philosophical system, or social doctrine based on scientific data.
The teachings of the One Temple are neither the first, nor the second, nor the third. It is based on revelation – but this revelation is not from a supernatural source, but from Nature itself; and it does not reveal mystical secrets inaccessible to scientific knowledge. Yes: the information that it reports is not scientifically confirmed. Not yet confirmed. This is yet to come – something in the near future, something in a rather distant one. We can say that now this knowledge is given to us through the head of science, ahead of it. And although the Doctrine is not a religion, it is also impossible to call it materialistic, in the usual meaning of this word. Just because the Universe is not limited to the material world. Science itself has come close to understanding this. One fine day, it will cease to be purely materialistic. But this will not mean a turn to mysticism. Science will begin to perceive the world as it is already being perceived by its Doctrine.
UEH tells how the Universe is arranged, why it exists, what is the role of intelligent beings in it, including man. It gives a definition of good and evil, shows the importance of the right choice between them. It says that it is this choice made by people and other rational people that is a key factor in the evolution of the Universe. It helps to gain the understanding necessary to learn how to make this choice, and to make it consciously and freely. That is, the moral and ethical moment occupies a central place in the Teaching. It represents a spiritual path in which the acquisition of knowledge is inextricably linked with their practical application. According to the Teaching, practice is not meditation, working with energies, performing ritual actions, etc., but life itself. You need to know the world and people so that through understanding you can become better yourself and make them better. One must learn to live in such a way as to be for the Universe, not evil, but good.
At the first acquaintance with the Teaching, a misunderstanding may occur. And even two, mutually exclusive. To the advocates of science, the Doctrine may seem too similar to religion, and the advocates of religion may not like it to deny the realm of the supernatural. In fact, the Teaching reconciles science and religion, showing that what science considers to be non-existent actually exists, and that religion considers supernatural, in fact, has a rational explanation. If the Doctrine is similar to religion, then it is superficial, purely external. It is not a purely scientific concept. It is the spiritual path.
© Atarkhat, 2016