Something from the comment section that deserves to be its own article:

My problem with Buddhism used to be that its scripture is basically stupid. There’s a combination of reliance on the intellect and, simultaneously, trivial dogmatic conclusions that intellect is supposed to lead to – oh, things of the world produce suffering, you need to remove yourself from that. That’s just stupid, not to mention weak. Sure, suffering is bad, but there are worse things. What kind of a eunuch would avoid suffering that leads to some magnificent goal – for instance, the evolutionary vipassana method implies suffering as a method of transforming karma and growing one’s spiritual body. Should one avoid suffering implicit in the process and thus choose spiritual stagnation?
Sacrifice of Jesus is said to have produced great spiritual outcomes. It included a great deal of suffering. Should this suffering have been avoided as well? So Buddhism has that fundamental problem that it expects everybody to shit themselves at the mention of suffering like abject cowards, and yet expects disciples to patiently and calmly face and endure suffering in the process of karmic purification and evolution. To me, the argument that there’s suffering and one should thus renounce the world always looked idiotic, which it in fact is. Suffering is not the problem, it’s the symptom, the way pain is not the problem, but symptom. The problem is the design of the world which inhibits the perception of God’s presence, and removes all kinds of normal states of spiritual sovereignty and autonomy of the soul. It also introduces ignorance, by blocking spiritual insight which is otherwise normal, and so on. So, let’s see why the beings suffer. Some suffer because they are separated from God by the world. Some suffer because they are separated from their loved ones by death. Some suffer because the world makes them feel powerless and ignorant. And, also, all suffer because their body in this world is prone to sickness, injury and degradation. However, the true question is that of a worthy goal. If there’s no worthy goal to be achieved here, then the suffering is meaningless and pointless. If there’s a false perception of a worthy goal, then suffering is propagated by voluntary decision to partake in this. So there are all kinds of valid questions, and one could attack this problem from those positions, but buddhist texts as a rule don’t, and instead they endlessly spam you with “oh, the suffering; I better renounce the world”.

To elaborate on that, I prefer how both Hinduism and Christianity view suffering. In Hinduism, bliss is one of the essential aspects of God, and suffering – well, it means you’re not there. Other than that, sure: pleasure, or kama, is seen as a worthy goal… unless it stands in the way of artha (financial benefit), or dharma (righteousness, or correct action), or moksha (liberation from the world illusion), essentially putting it on the bottom of the ladder of values. This, essentially, means that suffering should be accepted instead of pleasure if anything of value is to be attained. If liberation is to be attained, hardships imposed by yoga and renunciation are to be accepted. If righteousness is at stake, one should always be ready to sacrifice oneself and endure hardship rather than commit sin. Even if financial benefit is at stake, one should prefer hard work and hardship in general if it is beneficial. In essence, Buddhism tries to appeal to frustrated hedonists, who try to obtain pleasure from the world, fail, and then tuck tail between their legs and exit whining like defeated dogs. Hinduism, on the other hand, feels very much like Christianity: if liberation, righteousness, or even financial benefit are at stake, calmly endure hardship and even get yourself crucified if the goal is worthy enough; choose to endure suffering willingly, because we’re not here for the fun and games. Sure, if fun and games are available, you have nothing better to do, it doesn’t harm anyone, and it doesn’t stand in the way of your spiritual practice, by all means, enjoy yourself and avoid pointless suffering. But the argument of Buddhism that tries to convince people to accept it – “oh, the suffering!” – will result in laughter or incredulity if used on a Hindu or a Christian, or any kind of a wise person in general. A worthy argument would be “The all-magnificent and wonderful God is all around us, and we fail to perceive it because we are deluded, and this is absolutely unacceptable”, and this would recruit every worthy person. Or, “injustice is inflicted upon the innocent, and we need to defend God’s children from evil” – that would also recruit virtuous people to the cause. But “there is suffering in the world, and that’s terrible”, that’s the argument for recruiting eunuchs.

There’s been an interesting comment under one of the recent articles, and I think it needs to be addressed more thoroughly than the comment section format would allow.

The comment itself was this:

Buddhism is very interesting due to an unusual perspective—namely, I don’t believe that anyone, except perhaps populations originally surrounded by authentic Buddhist yogis (e.g., Tibet), can truly begin working with the qualities and characteristics of “their” deities.

This of course opens up the question whether some revealed deity is “true”, or whether something revealed in the NDE experiences is “true”.

The usual definition of truth is that it is a state of alignment between a statement and reality. Essentially, when I say that Earth has a breathable atmosphere, or that 2+2=4, those are truthful statements. However, it’s more complicated than that. Sometimes, it may appear that something is in alignment with reality, but only because our understanding of reality changes. For instance, “scientists” used to claim that margarine is healthier than butter, based on their understanding of cholesterol, however it quickly turned out that the trans fats in the margarine are much more harmful, while nutritional cholesterol might not be at all related to the elevated blood cholesterol that causes life threatening scenarios. So, you can say that a scientist recommending margarine lied, but what he said was actually what he thought was real. This is what is meant by the difference between lying and saying something that is untrue. Those are not synonyms, because in order to lie you must know that what you’re saying is not true. Also, having in mind how much our perception of reality might be flawed, the concept of truth as something that is based on reality might be completely out of reach.

The other definition of truth is something I derived from Vedanta: the absolute truth is Brahman, the transcendental Absolute. In the relative, “truth” is only that which leads consciousness away from illusion and toward self-realization of Brahman.

So, basically, truth is that which is useful for attaining liberation from maya, and that’s the meaning of one statement I heard being attributed to Lahiri Mahaśaya, that kriya is the truth, and everything else is illusory. More generally, that would define truth as yoga, as practice intended to result in kaivalya, deliverance from maya.

This understanding of truth is not intuitive to people who believe that they live in a real universe, or that mathematics can give them absolute truths, but it is very intuitive to the kind of person Tibetans would call a dubtop (don’t hold me to the transcription, I remembered it from a Serbian translation of a, likely, French translation of a Tibetan text), basically someone of above-average intelligence, where intelligence is defined as the ability to see through the illusion of the world. To a dubtop, it is intuitive that truth is only attainable in liberation from this illusion, and the best we can hope for while in illusion are things that are useful for liberation, and thus definable as pointers towards the truth, and truth is something that we can only directly experience by dereferencing such pointers.

I will again invoke St. Augustine, who is, at least to my knowledge, the first one in the West who understood scripture in such a way, basically stating that God put all kinds of “breadcrumbs” in the world that will lead us to Him, in the eternity beyond space and time, if we properly understand and accept them. In essence, trying to find solid truths in this world is something he himself understood as the Manichean arrogance, when the Christians humbly admitted that the truth itself is squarely beyond their reach, and the best we can hope for are the pointers that dereference to some aspect of the transcendental, eventually leading to God in eternity. Here, again, it is stated that the best we can hope for in this world is a process, a yoga, that allows us to be transformed in ways that lead to God.

So, this lengthy introduction is necessary in order for me to explain how I perceive visions of deities and experiences of afterlife. They are true if they are manifestation of transcendence that transforms your consciousness in order to lead you to greater transcendence. They are false if they are manifestation of some narcissistic aspect of human psyche that wants to create “objective” reasons for self-importance. Which is the case, only the fruits will show, as Jesus rightly pointed out. Anyone can claim to have any kind of experience. I am quite sure that schizophrenics have all kinds of experiences, but I hope we can agree that those are not of the kind spiritual people should aspire to have. 🙂 If something is “true” in the Vedantic/Augustinian sense, it will lead the soul to God. If it is “false” in the same sense, it will lead the soul to greater delusion and, possibly, to ruin.