The churches’ narrative of salvation in the West, through the assertion of a paradise (heaven), also finds an analogous example in Eastern religions.
As proof, we take the alleged promise of Buddha Amithaba, one of the 5 Dhyani Buddhas.
His followers claim that invoking his name five times will bring about salvation from the wheel of reincarnation.
There are other similar promises of salvation, some of which have their origin in Tibetan Buddhism. The esoteric Buddhist method practised by the Dalai Lama, as contained in the Kalachakra teachings, is also said to enable liberation within a single earthly life.
Both the Western and Eastern teachings that contain such promises as paradise or liberation from the wheel of reincarnation find no basis in the teachings to which we refer. Both the teachings given by the Tibetan master through Alice Bailey and those transmitted by Mahatma Morya through Helena Roerich contain detailed descriptions of the path whose gradual progress extends over a long series of incarnations. As a result of this long path, there is an accumulation of liberating initiations within a few incarnations.
To accomplish this in one lifetime, one would have to be totally focused on this goal. This is practically impossible under normal and everyday living conditions. Liberating initiation is always the result of a harvest of many previous lives in which the teachings were taken up and an ethic of benevolence was practised.
If a spiritual seeker nevertheless tries to achieve the goal of liberation in one lifetime, he must fend off all other obligations and such a total focus takes on a distinctly selfish tinge. It is the undisputed prerequisite for liberation from the wheel of rebirth not to live predominantly selfishly. If the goal of liberation becomes the exclusive content of the incarnation, the actual goal is blocked in this paradoxical situation. In contrast to such a failure, our given mantra, to greet the spiritual light in the soul of other people, has no selfish paradoxical reference, because it puts the fellow human beings in the foreground. The practice of the mantra can be regarded as spiritual work.
In any case, the question arises as to what kind of activity would be pursued in a promised heaven or paradise. An eternal, idle doing of nothing?
From the Agni Yoga teachings, we add the following explanatory quotations:
‘The monasteries were originally founded to support weak minds.’
‘The most fundamental condition (for a fulfilled life) is work, both mental and physical. In this movement, energies are collected from space. We must understand work as the natural fulfilment of life. All work is therefore grace, and the superstition of inaction is most harmful in the cosmic sense. Loving the infinity of work is already a significant initiation, it prepares the victory over time. The state of victory over time enables a step into the subtle world, where work is just as indispensable as in the body.’
