So you say that Buddhism is like PHD while other religions are like college or school or even kindergarten. You also laugh at New Age saying it’s just healing and commerce and nonsense. I feel I need to explain my own view, which I think is the right view, because essentially it’s based on non-duality.
Every religion says it’s the right one. Every school of Buddhism claims it is superior. This makes it harder for materialistic people to adopt any religion and only causes further spread of western consumerist culture. Also, isn’t this a group version of egoistic thinking “I’m right and everybody else is wrong”?! Over thousands of years this attitude did not make anything better, only worse. Now is time to stop this and acknowledge that all rivers have the same water in them. Furthermore, we should not think “school X is for people with higher mental capacity” because mental capacity is not a single dimension that can be simply measured as “higher” or “lower”. Some people are better at left-brain thinking, some people at right-brain, and within each of these two there are infinite number of variations, talents, and capacities. Therefore we can only speak about “karmic affinity” to this or that religion. Yes, some religions get closer to the truth in terms of theoretical understanding, or in terms of immediate experience or in terms of faster realization, but if you enter the religion you’re not aligned with, you will still waste time even if it is a “better” religion. So, yes, “God is illumination”, whether you like that or not. Of course the God is void, just like Buddha is void or Dharma is void or any other subtle form.
Now, regarding New Age. Everybody laughs at New Age. Regular materialistic people laugh at New Age. Buddhism laughs at New Age. Every classic religion laughs at New Age. Actually, New Age is just a name stupid people use. What is New Age? It is the age we leave in now. You can’t say that current age is Old Age. At any time, 500 BC or 2010 AD, the current age is always the New Age.
In reality there are two phenomena that can be called New Age. One is the “popular” new age. This is what we refer to when we laugh at regular householders playing Shamans, Indians, and Buddhists like children play doctors. They make big eyes, bye colorful clothes, burn incenses and go for healing sessions. You call this kindergarten, and you’re right, but while this is a child’s play, it is still “better” than western materialistic culture, or communism, or making war.
But there is second New Age which is never spoken about. This second New Age people never call themselves New Age, maybe only to ridicule themselves. You can laugh at this second New Age too, but the truth is, these are the people who grew up amongst Soviet Communism and American Materialism, without any mountains or Gurus around, but against all odds they find books, they find mountains, they don’t learn many words, and although they drink wine or smoke marijuana or swear bad words they have intuition of the Path in their hearts. They may not be philosophically educated but they surely stay away from the worldly things, The Babylon as they call it. Most importantly, w/o any teachings they know the essence of all religions and they never say any religion is better than any other.
As one song says (forgive my bad translation, in reality it’s much more beautiful)
When I am with them I’m ceasing to die,
They have open arms and colorful words,
They breath the grass and they are indifferent to everything,
And they’re always together since beginning of times.
This is many words, but I wrote them not to enjoy myself but to make this important point. May the energy of this understanding spread around the world and enter the minds of other people.