Yes, the situation is exactly as you describe it. You may remember my article where I argued this very same thing, while trying to establish the core of tenets of ancient (now I would say “Aryan”) non-dual philosophy that is the core of Bible and is known as Ten Commandments ;)
This is one of those things that fall into the category of “things starting to make perfect sense” as I’ve said at the end of the first part of this historic excursion — only Abrahamic tradition goes as far as actually ban non-dual understanding under the threat of death.
Well, if I was a priest on a power trip holding the keys to “holy storehouse” in ancient Levant, I would not want people to know that we are equal. Not on an animistic level (heresy of paganism, which however is actually incomplete knowledge — traditional religious cure is conversion), and certainly not as an observable fact (if you realize you are It, you are guilty of heresy and can be put to death).
It’s a very clever ploy. On one hand you have the way to the Truth intact and are encouraged to follow it. In case you successfully awaken, you are in a real mortal danger. This is the stick — you have basically moral and meek population and if someone “escapes” by pure chance, they will think more than twice about being a “Messiah” and cause insurgence, or even be in any way vocal about the discovery (look through what hoops went some Christian saints/mystics). This is enough to keep everyone in place without a need for elaborate caste system.
Eastern cousins in India went with the carrot. You can awaken to your heart’s content, but you can do so only at the fringes of society. And that priestly handwriting is clearly visible in the fact that the case system goes: brahmins (priests) > kshatryas (warriors) > vayshias (merchants, owners) > shudras (workers) > “untuochables” (tribal people, sadhus, ascetics, etc.). Here priests simply apply socio-economic pressure. So, people go through the motions and think twice to even attempt “liberation”.
In both cases they are promised heaven for obeying the rules (literal, or in the form of favorable rebirth, which are both utter bullshit and which people realize only at death bed when it’s already late, but, from the standpoint of system, safe).
Now, it’s not hard to see the allure of reformers like Buddha and Christ.
No wonder one was sentenced to death because he claimed to be God, and the other one was probably under regular attacks — in Buddhist cannon there are mentions of people attacking the first Buddhists sangha as hobos (first documented persecution of Buddhists by brahminic Hindus took place around 200 BC, though I guess that happened for different reasons — plain money and power grab). Also, I’m not very familiar with Indian culture, but, as it seems, they are no strangers to religious pogroms to this very day (see Hindutva persecution of Muslims).
In the end, neither Buddhism nor Christianity, exactly as the animism and “Aryan non-duality” before them, could escape the “priestly treatment”.
However, the more I think about it, the more the reality turns from poetic to prosaic.
When you look at our closest relatives, chimps, they are pretty egalitarian within their own tribe, but otherwise enormously violent, and they don’t “take prisoners” when they expand their territory.
So, the neolithic cultures were most probably not as idyllic as I would like to believe.
As for encounters of pastoral tribes and farmers (i.e. arrival of Aryans into Levant), one does not have to look any further than current-day Africa and observe how violent farmer-herder conflicts can get, especially when people are short of resources. After all, migration does not happen for fun, but almost exclusively because of lack of food (real or only perceived).
This one is however more complex, because in Levant the Aryan culture obviously stuck, while the population got pretty mixed. When you compare the various creation myths that survived to this day and which are tied to civilizations (Aryan, Indian, Sumerian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman), they are all almost identical (pantheons, cosmologies, even some particular stories). On the other hand, when you look at Aboriginal Dreaming or some Native American myths they are quite different (obviously one can find common traits there as well as all myths describe the same universe).
And another factor to consider — if Aryans (as things suggest) really were the ones who discovered non-dual nature of universe, it does not guarantee that it was a widespread practical knowledge among all Aryan tribes and its members. As I wrote in the article, the majority of Aryans simply might have taken it on a very superfluous level. Then again, we are talking about ca. 1000 years of transition from egalitarian animism to full-fledged organized hierarchical theocracy of Arslantepe and Uruk.
That would go fairly well with Castaneda and his idea that Flyers came to earth because they sensed an “evolved awareness”, it would explain why Hitler was so obsessed with Aryans, and it would also fit the Biblical story about snake and apple.
And it would be definitely pretty ironic that our most important discovery about universe and our place within it, also brought us the most horrendous time in our history. As if we, at large, cannot escape the duality no matter what :D :D :D
But personally I would say it’s simply evolution. And the direction in which it goes is clear and inevitable ;)
