Why Religion Does Not Have Any Explaination For Enlightenment In Holy Books??

[Mohsinuddin]

I know lot of Christians and grew up in Muslin Family. I talked to lot of religious people but nobody knew much about Enlightenment or believed it so why people just started to realize about enlightenment or we just didn't pay attention to this in Haman race? i didn't know anything about enlightenment until i watched Leo's videos. 

[Leo Gura]

Haha, they do! All religious books talk about is enlightenment. You just have to know how to read between the lines.

Remember that these religious books were written 2000 years ago. So they aren't designed to appeal to your modern intellect, but to the intellects and cultural traditions of 2000 years ago.

Modern mainstream society has misinterpreted the original texts, turning them into cartoons.

[Rufus]

Leo said it,
I would like to add as you mentioned that you grew up in a Muslim family, from the experience I can comment about this because I came from a Muslim background as well, although I was skeptical since early childhood and dropped religions long time ago, but later on after my spiritual discoveries, I opened my mind to investigate the essence of Islam, and I found so many matches hidden between the lines, accompanied with lots of horrible distortions, unnecessary stories, wars and political events, fear and violence and egoic threats. 
Most of the official story of Muhammad and the Quran has been dramatically distorted ,and probably lost for good, for so many reasons including political reasons and cultural differences and mistranslations, most of Muslims these days are brainwashed to never admit this fact, mostly because they are afraid of both the legal and the divine punishment that is mentioned in the distorted current common terms in Islam regarding questioning the religion, and I think that's the main reason why mainstream Muslims are difficult to open their minds to hear about other ideologies.
There are so many enlightened/conscious Muslims who are aware about the distortions, but they prefer to keep their mouths shut for their security and to avoid social troubles.

If you are interested in enlightenment but Islam is still valuable to you (and I completely understand), try to re-imagine Islam by re-defining the Islamic terminologies into New-age spiritual terminologies and surprisingly many things will awesomely fall into place, this will blow your mind. I can provide examples of this if you ask further.

For me I'm not bothering to investigate Islam any further, The dusty book is full of distortions, biases, and mental pollution so I'm not interested to spend my entire life re-studying or to try to fix it to myself or other people who are not willing to listen, I'm more interested in the modern spiritual movements. I guarantee the essence is one.. but less unnecessary stories and distortions, past is past, and we are in the modern world now, our conditions, needs, values and lifestyle are now much much different than how it was 2000/1400 years ago in the wild harsh deserts of the Middle East, not to mention when you are in the spiritual path you will understand Islam better than ever and you will be 100% capable of figuring the level of distortion happened throughout history yourself.. with a wide blissful smile in your face

Edited February 14, 2016 by Rufus

[Pierre]

The spiritual core of Islam is still alive in sufism, check it out.

[abrakamowse]

If you read the Bible you will see Jesus talked a lot about self enlightenment, but  the ego of those who interpret it didn't understand him. They prefer to "believe" he is the savior and he will save us without us doing nothing. 

He is the savior, but not in the way they think. When Jesus said "I am the way" it means he did the things to be enlightened and if you follow what he did you will be enlightened too. It doesn't mean that by believing that he is the savior and he died for our sins we will be saved. He talked about denying ourselves, that sounds like killing the ego to me.

All his life and dead on the cross is a symbol of the killing of our egos.

The people who goes to church and cling to religion still have fear, the religion is fed by fear. They will grow spiritually at some point if they are really meant to be enlightened. 

I think there's a lot of good people in church, but it's dangerous because you don't grow up there if you accept their dogmas.

Edited February 15, 2016 by abrakamowse
grammar

[Flower]

On 13 February 2016 at 6:16 AM, Leo Gura said:

Haha, they do! All religious books talk about is enlightenment. You just have to know how to read between the lines.

Remember that these religious books were written 2000 years ago. So they aren't designed to appeal to your modern intellect, but to the intellects and cultural traditions of 2000 years ago.

Modern mainstream society has misinterpreted the original texts, turning them into cartoons.

@Leo Gura Do you think that these books were written in metaphorical terms, or in such a way because the level of 'awareness' in the people at the time was such that they could only understand guidance in basic literal terms and that only people who could read between the lines would be able to extract the higher meaning from these scriptures? As over the last few years there has been a shift in human consciousness we can know begin to see what the essence of scripture really is and so of course it should not be interpreted literally?

Edited April 11, 2016 by Flower