Depending on the mental makeup of that being, the mystery received through enlightenment can come through in 3 ways.
1 In the purest form. This is referred to as someone who has beheld the mystery and becomes a living link to the mystery.
A being who beholds and becomes a living link to the mystery is free from all cultural notions and can bring others to the realization of the mystery by whatever means that person needs it.
Christian Rozenkreutz and Martinez Pasqually for example both suggested that one should take up the dominant religion of the country wherein one resides. This is so that one may understand enough for the cultural symbols present in the mind of the locals so one may use those symbols and crutches in the guidance of these souls. It is measured work.
2 Strongly coloured by the social cultural, religious and psychological makeup of the individual. These people behold the mystery but are unable to see it in its entirety and interpret it from a point of view they are familiar with. This is naturally a degradation of the mystery as the nature of the mystery is that it is beyond cultural social and religious forms.
These beings sometimes become living links to the mystery and manage to fully understand it in time. Often they spend their life having created a new religion or a new form of an old one since that was the context through which they understood it and trying to help people to behold the mystery but only from the point of view from which they themselves saw it.
Ever wonder why Jesuits who have performed the spiritual exercises of Loyolla are so devoutly certain Catholicism is the way to go?
3 Beings that behold the mystery but have no bloody clue what they experienced. Sometimes they don't even have a cultural context to place it into.
People performing rituals or mystical practices without guidance, who do drugs and experience spiritual peak experiences all fall into this category.
They have seen the outer mystery, or one of the manifestations of the mystery.
These people often become enamoured by the technique or thing that got them there first.
A true spiritual master is a being from the 1th category who is guiding people there.
the 2nd category is most of your prophets and spiritual leaders
the 3rd category is your random practitioners, groupies, druggies and culties.
A fun way to talk about religion is to state that there is someone from the 1th group who sets out trying to teach someone else but for whatever reason the other person is a thick bastard, or the being dies.
So the person being taught thinks that just because the master was using jewish or hindu symbols to try and explain something, or a parable that the metaphor IS the message.
This way you have a traditional school formed where the true message is lost, where a religion, the set of rules, are followed but there is no enlivening spark.
Often the enlivening spark can be reinserted but unless done with enough fervor, the mystery will only come back slightly veiled and the people who behold it will interpret it through the symbols.
More dangerous is it when a being from the 2nd category who are already enmeshed in some socioploitic set of rules (religion) and then experience part of the mystery, don't quite get it and then assign universal validity to their specific interpretation of it.
Christians who through certain exercises become so convinced that Christ is god, not from a universal yeheshua, redeeming force point of view but a personal saviour evangelical point of view that they are happy to say, quote the pope who sent Crusaders against some cities and villages in europe "kill them all, god will know his own."
Crowley did the same when he received liber al. Congrats uncle Al, secret western orders have known for roughly 500 years, that we have historical evidence of, what you think is news in 1904, because you don't listen to one of the most important GD lessons> take everything gods, godesses and other astral crap say to you with a pinch of salt.
If Crowley wasn't in egypt and other astral forces were present and his mind would have been filled with different symbols, he would not haved received liber al the way he did. He would have channeled a tantric text, or a Christano Gnostic one, or maybe even an alchemical treatise, or if he was less full of himself he would have realised that he has a heavily veiled format of the mystery and that he should understand it in its pure form. But hey, not everyone can ttruly be enlightened. Karma and whatnot.
Example: Gnosticism is not Christianity. Gnosticism can be explained using the terms dreamed up around Constantins time. Yet in the middle ages we have neo gnosticism in the form of the Cathars.
When you experience something it needs to be a Universal experience. Your cultural interpretation is irrelevant.
This is why the true sages of old and now can talk to eachother and agree whereas the rabble are fighting over what type of pasta with which sauce the the prophet(ess) actually ordered the monks to eat and whether or not consumption of onions is Krishnaic or not
I could not agree with this post enough. It is the reason that when people ask me what religion i am, i generally will say i am Spiritual, and not Religious. The cultural biases kick up a ton of muck and kill the visibility in the waters.
SvaraRaderaThe real problem i believe occurs as you stated, when the 1st level of Master attempts to teach a path and explain the experience. The Master knows it was via a path they had taken, but recognizes it transcends this, but when they teach it with the same path, those following tend to focus on that very specific path. Even if the Master teaches that this is but ONE path of an infinite number of paths to the same singular truth, the students will still write down the path, mentally noting this lesson alone. 2-3 generations later (if even that long after) the lesson has become the path and the mental notes are lost, and only ONE true path leads to the ONLY truth.
Attempting to get others to see this leads to claims of blasphemy and sadness as they fear you are doomed because YOU are the one that doesn't get it.
Maybe "getting it" is part of the trial by fire to separate the wheat from the chaff?