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herded the natives like cattle, split up their families, tore
them off the land that was their soul, and placed them in
reservations that were little better than prisons. And, most
strangely, they thought in this cruel process that they were
actually civilizing the natives and giving them the chance to become
good Christians!
The pre-Christian Greeks gave
us Plato and Aristotle or Western philosophy, on which mooring later
Christian theology, without much appreciation, built its
foundations. They gave us a great mythology full of deep and complex
meanings with their great Gods and Goddesses from Zeus to Apollo,
from Aphrodite to Hera. Great ancient European mystics like Plotinus
or Apollonius of Tyana were not Christians and didn’t require a
church or a book to mediate between themselves and the Infinite. And
they looked to India for inspiration not to the Bible.
The Celts had their bards and
seers; the famous Druids that even the inimical Romans looked to as
wise and noble. The Druids had an oral tradition of poetry, along
with rituals or yajnas much like the Vedas. They knew the land and
its spirits, the mists and the hills. They had their medicine,
astrology and philosophy. The Egyptians gave us great pyramids and a
monumental artwork that reflects cosmic consciousness and a profound
knowledge of the occult. Even today we are in awe of their
accomplishments and cannot reduplicate them.
It is the very nature of credal
religions to denigrate, if not demonize different beliefs. For
example, the Muslims of the Middle Ages prided themselves in
destroying the idols of the evil pagans. Their word for idol was Bud
for Buddha. The people they vilified as the terrible and hedonistic
pagans were often merely pacifistic Buddhist monks!
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