The Mystical Core of the Great Traditions

http://www.centerforsacredsciences.org/traditions.html

Six great religions have shaped the major civilizations that exist today:
the three Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam)
and the three Eastern religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism/Confucianism).
These religions seem to be quite at odds with each other when we look at their outer, or exoteric, forms. Not only do they have different rites, rituals, prayers and precepts, but in many cases their most fundamental doctrines about the nature of Reality appear to contradict each other. For example, Judaism's "Thou shalt have no other gods but Me" seems to stand in direct opposition to Hinduism's exuberant worship of three million gods. Christianity's Triune Deity contrasts sharply with Taoism's amorphous Way, while Islam's central tenet, "There are no gods but God," appears completely antithetical to Buddhism's insistence that there is no God at all.

If we dig more deeply, however, we find within each of these religious traditions an inner, or esoteric, stream of teachings given by their mystics those men and women who claim to have had a direct Realization, or Gnosis, of the Ultimate Nature of Reality. Moreover, if we compare the testimonies of these mystics about the Nature of this Reality, we find that, despite vast separations in time, place, language, and culture, they are strikingly similar so much so that many scholars have come to view their teachings as constituting a single perennial philosophy which, like some irrepressible flower, keeps blooming again and again in the human psyche.

One of the primary goals of the Center for Sacred Sciences is to preserve and promote the teachings of these mystics and to show exactly what it is they have in common. Here, for example, are nine points agreed upon by mystics of all the great traditions, together with a sampling of quotes which demonstrate this agreement.