Every tradition examined in this study answers three linked questions: who or what made the world, what the world is made of and whether that stuff is good, and where time is going. Part 17 opens by setting these answers…
Part 17. Comparisons and Synthesis
The final Part compares the material directly. Its chapters set side by side cosmologies and world-ages, the one, the two, the three and the none in conceptions of the divine, the saviour figures from Saoshyant to Kalki and Mitra, the afterlife, and sacred time, including 21 December, 25 December and Nowruz.
Chapters 167–174
- In the Beginning: Cosmologies, Creation Narratives and the Cycles of World-Time Compared
- One, Two, Three or None: Dualism, Monotheism, Trinities and Nondualism Across the Traditions
- The Awaited One: Saoshyant, Messiah, Christ, Mahdi, Maitreya, Kalki and Mitra Compared
- After Death: Bridge, Scales, Resurrection, Rebirth and Their Rivals
- Sacred Time and the Initiate: Ritual, Mysteries, Initiation and the Calendars of 21 December, 25 December and Nowruz
- Law, Clergy and Power: Ethics, Priesthoods and the Organisation of Belief Compared
- Five Thousand Years of Gods and Rulers: A Master Timeline (3000 BCE to Today) and the Co-Evolution of Religion and Politics
- The View from Outside: Keshe and Heisman Measured Against the Whole Study, and the Open Questions
Chapter 168. One, Two, Three or None: Dualism, Monotheism, Trinities and Nondualism Across the Traditions
Counting the ultimate principles is one of the oldest ways to classify religions, and also one of the most contested. Issitt and Main warn that the categories leak: “Within all polytheistic religions, there is still a belief in an ultimate…
Chapter 169. The Awaited One: Saoshyant, Messiah, Christ, Mahdi, Maitreya, Kalki and Mitra Compared
Nearly every tradition in this study that counts time toward an end also expects a person who will close it. Chapter 166 covered the scenarios of the end. This chapter is about the figure: his birth, his forerunners, his enemy,…
Chapter 170. After Death: Bridge, Scales, Resurrection, Rebirth and Their Rivals
The traditions of this study give three families of answer to what follows death: one life, judgment and bodily resurrection (Zoroastrianism, then Judaism, Christianity and Islam); a chain of lives under karma (the Indian religions, Orphic-Platonic thought, the Cathars, the…
Chapter 171. Sacred Time and the Initiate: Ritual, Mysteries, Initiation and the Calendars of 21 December, 25 December and Nowruz
Religions mark out sacred action (sacrifice, meal, washing, initiation) and sacred time (the feasts that set the year). Both carry power. Grades of initiation create hierarchies, and calendars belong to whoever can fix them. This chapter first compares ritual systems…
Chapter 172. Law, Clergy and Power: Ethics, Priesthoods and the Organisation of Belief Compared
Every religion in this study says how people should live, and nearly every one has a body of people who decide what that means and enforce it. This chapter compares the two sides. The ethical side runs from the Zoroastrian…
Chapter 173. Five Thousand Years of Gods and Rulers: A Master Timeline (3000 BCE to Today) and the Co-Evolution of Religion and Politics
This is the study’s reference chapter. Its first half is a single dated table, from the Egyptian god-king to the Keshe Coin. Each row is keyed to the chapter that discusses it and to the source that gives the date.…
Chapter 174. The View from Outside: Keshe and Heisman Measured Against the Whole Study, and the Open Questions
The owner asked this study to weigh two systems against every topic it covers. They stand outside the traditions they describe. The first is Mehran Tavakoli Keshe’s Knowledge Seekers teaching, preserved in the library as several hundred workshop transcripts and…