Why have different sages and religions taught different philosophies?
Ultimate Truth is Ultimate Truth and it never changes just because someone comes up off the street and says it is something different. However, Ultimate Truth, Brahman, is impossible to describe faithfully in words. If someone gives you a sweet and asks what it tastes like, you will only be able to describe for certain what it does not taste like. It doesn’t taste like chicken, it doesn’t taste like fish etc. However, if you are called upon to give a positive description, what can you say? You can say that it tastes sweet. What does this mean? Sugar is sweet, chocolate is sweet, an apple is sweet, as are other sweets. If pressed further, everyone will give a different description. Explanations are simply insufficient to describe an experience. For the questioner to understand, he must taste the sweet, he must experience the samadhi for himself.
Explanations also differ because of varying depths of samadhi experienced by sages. Nirvikalpa samadhi, the highest samadhi, in which Brahman is realised without a second, is an extremely rare state, which many famous sages have never experienced, and, although they were still wise, they did not have the highest qualification to talk about Truth.
Great sages often teach different levels of philosophy according to the listeners’ capacity to understand. This can be observed for example in the teachings of Buddha and Jesus Christ. When Jesus was talking to simple rural people, he taught a simple dualistic philosophy. In a dualistic philosophy, there is an eternal separation between God and us, and the best we can do is make Him pleased with us and so receive His favour. You just be good, do good and worship God, and He will be pleased with you and let you go to Heaven. To such simple folk it was not important that the philosophy of a God sitting on a cloud, dishing out rewards and punishments is intellectually unsound. The point is that it motivated them to do the spiritual practices so that Truth would eventually come out of their own hearts. In the Dark and Middle Ages in Europe, priests tended to give hellfire sermons, because that was the only language that such a savage populace could understand. The best that the priests could hope for was that they could frighten people into not robbing and murdering each other. Today, though, the world has moved on, so such teachings are no longer appropriate. The most intellectually correct philosophies are non-dualistic. This means that all is one and the world is an illusion. The philosophy that has been presented in these articles is non-dualistic. Jesus' disciples were of a higher intellectual calibre, so could understand non-dualism and were motivated to do spiritual practices because they saw it was logical. They would probably not have been motivated to do any if Jesus had presented them with his dualistic philosophy, as they would have thought that he was trying to fool them. Likewise, if Jesus had taught non-dualism to the uneducated rural folk, they would not have understood it, would have thought it dry and boring and also would not have been motivated to do spiritual practices. All genuinely spiritual philosophies teach that, ultimately, Knowledge comes from your own heart and not from the intellect, so if the philosophy teaches you to do spiritual practices, and you do them, you will eventually get the Knowledge anyway, with the result that there is no question of being cheated by being taught an intellectually unsound philosophy.
There are two different levels of truth, the intellectual and the spiritual. Intellectual truth is always correct on paper, whereas spiritual truth is not always correct theoretically, but it always has a good effect. If you tell a weak man that he is weak, that is true on paper, but the effect is negative as it will only make him weaker. However, if you tell a weak man he is strong, that is intellectually false, but it will make him stronger. As there is a positive practical effect, and life is, after all, a practical discipline and not an armchair one, it is the higher truth.
Truth is the point in the centre of a circle. Everyone is standing on the edge of the circle, each person in a slightly different place. The correct path to Truth for a person is a straight line to the centre. If someone tries to travel someone else’s path, he must first cross over to that person’s starting point, which would be difficult and a waste of time. Sages often give teachings directed to certain types of mind, which can be intellectual, devotional, mystical (inclining towards yoga) or practical (inclining towards work). This, however, does not necessarily mean that the sage believes that a teaching geared to a certain type of mind is universally appropriate; the kind of teaching he gives often depends on who is sitting in front of him. Although everyone’s path is slightly different, national and religious groups tend to be close to each other, so one religion, designed for a certain type of people, is often appropriate for most people in a country, and then they try to bring up new generations in line with their religion.
Although Brahman, Ultimate Truth never changes, appropriate paths to It do, because the world does, as do people, their religious views, intellectual development, society, culture and therefore the kinds of spiritual teachings they would react well to. For this reason, in India, every few generations since time immemorial, a sage has restated Truth and introduced a new path to It for the people.
If a great saint taught only the very highest truths, no-one could touch him, and he might as well be speaking gibberish. When you have attained to the very highest level and want to be understood, it is necessary to come down to the level of normal people, though this time you will be at their level with Knowledge as opposed to ignorance, and pull them up from there.