u/YahshuaQuelle

I was more or less atheist because my parents didn't teach us any religion and although surrounded by Christian neighbours I embraced rationality and a scientific outlook and distrusted the irrationality in religions.

So this never changed but around the age of 15/16 I started searching for a philosophy or worldview that I felt represented reality. Without finding it myself, it found me at the age of 20. Which is when I began meditating and gradually turned into a panentheist.

So, although I still don't fit into the sphere of religion, I'm no longer an atheist or agnostic.

I spotted quite a lot of criticism in a number of discussions regarding modern movements such as Brahma Kumaris because they are perceived as deviating too much from true Hinduism.

But how do most Hindus here view what are the qualifications for genuine Hindu traditions? What should be the minimum requirements?

Should they be connected to Hindu temples and priests? Should they have at least one or more Puranas as their scriptures? Should they revere Vedic scriptures as holy or without mistakes? Should they accept at least some Hindu rituals as their practices? Should they reject the idea that some or many Hindu deities may be mythologised?

Some Christians and perhaps more Muslims are against critical scholarship analysing the complex origins of their scriptures and religious ideologies. Should Hindus reject this kind of scholarship if it becomes integrated into new traditions?

Critical scholarship helped me a lot to find out more about the early syncretic development of Christianity and how the New Testament scriptures were formed in several phases.

The fundamentalist Christian apologists can clearly not win in that scholarly arena.

But there is another arena, that of understanding and discussing the earliest spiritual instructions and philosophy going back to Jesus. This is an arena where both the critical scholars and the apologists refuse or are unable to engage.

So I'm kind of (though not really) squeezed between the two positions. I believe in God and the spiritual status of Jesus but I do not believe in the early Christian mythical rendering of that status nor am I a fan of the dry often atheistic approach of critical scholars that seems to go nowhere at all.

I have clashed with both groups, so I'm kind of squeezed out of their debating arena it seems and seen as insignificant or just weird.

I cannot find everything but have often found stuff that is harder to find for most people (you get more skill over the years) so I can give it a try. I can also help to read Dutch documents for you.

I cannot find anything but have often found stuff that is harder to find for most people (you get some skill over the years) so I can give it a try. I can also read Dutch documents.

This is how I presently see dharma and religion throughout history.

The Indo-Aryan ritualistic religion of the Aryans inside India was increasingly influenced by indigenous Tantra (introspective spiritual practices).

Lord Shiva reacted against the fundamentalist ritualistic practices of the Indo-Aryan religion of His days and established a modernised introspective tradition focussing on following human dharma and uniting followers away from their earlier tribalistic warfare.

Lord Krishna reacted in His own time against the renewed loss of focuss on human dharma in society and fought to again strengthen it by newly refocussing on introspective practices.

Lord Buddha reacted against the dogmatic fundamentalist side of ritualistic Hinduism, stripping away the rigid caste sytem, Hindu ritualism as well as refocussing on introspective practices in a similar way as Lord Shiva and Lord Krishna had done in their own times.

The Jewish religion had evolved by borrowing from Zoroastranism (Persion religion) and by gradually moving from ritualistic practices to more introspective practices.

Christianity placed itself as the better version of ritualistic Judaism, syncretically merging the teachings of Jesus with ideas taken from Jewish scriptures and Hellenic religious projections.

Islam placed itself as founded by the 'latest' Abrahamic type of prophet who sort of (syncretically) replaced the need for (the still incomplete) Judaism and Christianity.

Sufism syncretised Islam with introspective mystic practices away from dogmatism.

In a similar way Chaitanya Mahaprabhu reacted against the fundamentalist aspects of Hindu traditions, re-focussing on practices centered on Lord Krishna.

The Sikh guru's reacted against the fundamentalist side of Islam and ritualistic Hinduism, syncretising them into a new introspective path.

The Bahai religion placed itself as founded by the 'latest' prophet Baha'u'llah, breaking with the idea that Mohammed was the final prophet as well as suggesting that mystic teachers from India may have also helped humanity evolve spiritually.

Lord Anandamurti reacted against all fundamentalist dogmatic religious divisions and syncretically modernised introspective practices while also combining the major strong aspects taken from Hindu philosophy, Buddhism, Jainism, Christianity and Islam, even adding a modern socio-economic system and a neo-humanistic philosophy.

So many syncretisms and reforms took place over the millennia. The two poles however have always been between introspective (esoteric) spirituality and ritualistic (exoteric) spirituality, often involving animal sacrifices and ritualistic prayer.

Why were all these reformers so heavily opposed, why were they persecuted, poisened and attacked or even in some cases murdered? I'm especially interested in what Bahai's think.

Although early Christianity soon diversified in a very heterodox way, the later victory of a specific form of syncretic orthodoxy did eventually fixate it anew into a specific way of religious thinking tied to an institution that was only mythically pseudo-connected to the historical Jesus and his real mission.

When you try to deconstruct your way out of that specific wat of religious thinking formed by Christian orthodoxy you cannot simply reverse that history even if that is your goal. The process of syncretisation towards early orthodoxy was simply too complex to be able to disentangle and reverse it neatly.

I noticed that very few people approach deconstruction in that way although many do use the scholarship that analyses how the real development of Christianity differed from the Christian myth about its origins.

I guess most people who deconstruct themselves out of Christianity don't see its earliest spark in the mission and teachings of the historical Jesus as something fundamentally different from early Christianity let alone as something worth studying as very valuable and useful.

The fact that most people who deconstruct are only trying to rid themselves of their old religious views (brainwashed into them) and then soon get separated into many different ways of thinking, makes deconstruction into a lonely affair.

Eventhough the teachings of the original (pre-Christian) Jesus are very simple, direct and trans-religious, using the specialised scholarship hardly ever leads you to go (back) in that direction, it scatters rather than unifies.