A Connection Between Ancient and Modern Mysticism

Comparative studies often reveal similarities between greatly different cultures, even if those cultures are geographically separated by thousands of miles or historically distinct by thousands of years. This has been especially true in religion, where similar ideas have been propounded by tribes or clans which have on the surface no contact-historically or geographically--with one another. For the phenomenologist this kind of transcultural link or synchronicity is important because it raises the question of how religious ideas emerge and develop over time. Are religious ideas part of an innate, biological, developmental sequence which manifest over the course of human evolution? Or are religious ideas simply the product of historical transfusion, played over the course in time where one tribe touches another tribe thereby transforming concepts in a very material and socially determinable way?