Jan Nicolaas Kind – Brazil
His Holiness the Dalai Lama with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican, November 27, 2003
In her introductory to The Secret Doctrine HPB tells us:
“The Wisdom Religion” is the inheritance of a-ll the nations, the world over……
…..-Esoteric Philosophy reconciles all religions, strips every one of its outward, human garments, and shows the root of each to be identical with that of ever other great religion.
For almost two thousand years the leaders of Christianity, whilst they were constantly mutilating its teachings, philosophy and scriptures, didn’t want to know anything about any kind of underlying root or Truth. Christianity has set itself up in the past as the only true religion, which has alienated many from this religion. Nowadays, representatives of orthodox Christianity still bluntly reject the validity of any other religion. This phenomenon is very visible in certain states of the USA and even in some parts of Europe. In some Christian circles a polite dialogue with those who think otherwise appears to be possible, but it is always made very clear from the beginning that only the Christian faith offers a road to what they call ‘salvation’, through Christ, and that all other roads to ‘self-salvation’ ultimately are dead ends. Although he communicated with those who believe differently, in his book Across the Threshold of Hope, Pope John Paul the Second, literally states that he considers Buddhists ungodly and indifferent. In a certain way Buddhists indeed are ungodly, they admit that even, but obviously this is a very one-sided representation and this becomes clear when we take a closer look at the religious ideals of eastern religions for example.
Here we find that ‘enlightenment’ is the counterpart of the Christian doctrine of ‘salvation’. The ‘enlightenment-perspective’ through self-salvation, is gaining ground also in the west now, and this widens our horizon.