Axial Age 800 200 BCE 1 Axial Age

Axial Age 800 -200 BCE 1

Axial Age: th 6 Century BCE Radical Changes in Basic Religious Concepts 2

Axial Age: A Fresh Beginning 3

Axial Age: 500 BCE A New Cultural and Social Order Great Religious Leaders Rose to Prominence 4

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Axial Age: Common Insights Reciprocity, compassion, love, altruism, ending suffering for all human beings, all sentient life or perhaps all life is the proper central orientation of human life 9

Axial Age: Common Insights Preoccupation with god or gods, metaphysics, theology, belief systems, or other esoterica is not useful 10

Axial Age: Common Insights Right practice, actions, and intentions can lead to true religious understanding rather than the other way around 11

Axial Age: Common Insights Emptying oneself, eliminating craving, giving up the need for control, opening one's heart, embracing the void, losing oneself in perfectly performed ritual, sensing the shared tragic in life through communal theater are all pathways to compassion and the extinction of ego. 12

Axial Age: Common Insights Each person must find her or his own religious truth; formulas, authority, tradition do not work 13

Axial Age: Common Insights Diversity among people is natural and to be honored 14

Axial Age: Common Insights The point of religion is therapeutic, practical, and about this world - not some other invisible world. 15

Axial Age: Common Insights The point of religion is therapeutic, practical, and about this world - not some other invisible world. 16

Axial Age: China Confucius – Lao Tse – Mo Tzu Confucianism – Daoism - Jainism 17

Axial Age: India Buddha – Mahavira Socio-Political and Intellectual Transformation 18

Axial Age: Jerusalem Elijah – Isaiah – Jeremiah Deutero-Isaiah Law and Moral Code 19

Axial Age: Mesopotamia 20

Axial Age: Greece Socrates – Plato – Aristotle Discover the Principles of Existence More Philosophical than Spiritual 21

Axial Age: Cultures Reinterpreted Previous Cosmologies Reject Concept of gods as Larger-than-Life Human Beings 22

Axial Age: Second Spiritual Transformation Christianity - Islam 23

Axial Age: Reason Became the Tool to Search for the Ultimate Reality And Human Destiny 24

First Millennium BCE Production of Agricultural Surplus Worship of Universal God Concern for Social Injustices 31

The Axial is Born New Values – New Views of Life • Recognized the spiritual freedom and independence of the individual • Asserted the unity of mankind and the universe • Asked fundamental questions about the meaning and purpose of human existence • Adopted a rational view of natural processes 32

Consequences of the Axial Age 33

People have become conscious of themselves and of their limitations. Their view of their position in the world changed fundamentally 34

Philosophy, and science emerged. People still think within the fundamental categories born in the Axial period. 35

Attempts at reordering the world developed in most spheres of human existence, within competing worldviews 36

• Drastic Changes in Religious Traditions • Collapse of Previously Established Systems of Belief 37

The major world religions, which humans still follow, were established. Each is unique in their own way 38

• Emergence of Religious Proselytizing • Causing Religious and Doctrinal Intolerance • Religious Orthodoxies Emerge 39

• New Accountability to a Divine Law • “King God” Replaced by Secular Ruler • Deity Expressed in Poetic – Allegorical Language 40

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