We need to understand the essence of religion in the context of the time of its origination. In a world where there was no concept of authority and no rules of law for the human society, wise people assigned the concept of authority to an unseen entity, called God, and rules of law as commandments of religion. Religion was introduced to unite, organize, and lead people in a direction, deemed to be right at the time.
As people started to become enlightened, they also realized that God and religion can be exploited to gain authority. That's when man stated to pushed God in the background to attain authority through religion.
Today, religion is one of the most powerful means of uniting, mobilizing and leading people in a defined direction. As a result, behind each religion, there is an almighty pied piper to lead the parade of the foolish people to a defined direction of his choice.
Jiten Roy
On Monday, May 26, 2014 10:55 AM, "Musa Ali qurisl@gmail.com [mukto-mona]" <mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
We should understand what is religion for then we will know who is
truly religious and who is religion trader. This new message seems
interesting. Religion is indeed a mystery! A mystery for good reason,
God only knows!
--
Dr Musa Ali (PhD)
The New Message on Religion
As revealed to God's Messenger
Marshall Vian Summers
on July 20, 2009
in Boulder, Colorado
At this time and place, it is important to speak about the purpose of
religion. Religion is part of the human experience, and any attempts
that have been made to eradicate it or to minimize it have proven to
be unsuccessful. For you cannot deny the reality of the human spirit.
You cannot deny the fundamental reality that there is a greater
spiritual need in people that must be expressed. But like all things
in the world, that which is natural and essential can become
distorted, misaligned and misused, allied with other purposes,
particularly when these natural impulses become connected with
governments and powerful forces in society.
Simply said, the purpose of religion is to cultivate the desire and
the capacity to experience the Divine Presence in one's life. All
teachings and rituals, whether within large institutions or within the
privacy of one's home, [are] for this purpose. And the desire and
capacity to experience the Divine Presence [are] to bring one to the
power of Knowledge that the Creator of all life has placed within each
human heart.
Yet when you look about, either at home or in foreign lands, you will
find there is a great poverty, a great poverty in that people's lives
are not demonstrating this Presence and the power of this Knowledge.
The look of disappointment and dissatisfaction, the sense of regret in
the older people, the sense of hopelessness and discouragement in the
young [are] evidence that this Power and this Presence are not being
experienced. Religion has become now a yoke and a harness for people,
requiring them to believe along certain prescribed lines of thought
and to behave along certain prescribed lines of behavior. But this is
far from the essence of what religion is really for.
To require, either through inducement or threat, for people to adhere
to a certain system of belief does not represent the essence and
purpose of religion. Yet that is what is so manifest in the world
today. Religion has become another form of government--a form of
government that seeks power and domination, a form of government that
seeks to overcome its competing rivals, the competing agendas of other
religions and faiths. And so there is a contest and a kind of war
exerted between the most radical elements of these systems of belief.
But this is not what religion really is.
The Creator of all life has initiated all of the world's religions,
but they have all been altered by people and governments, by cultures
and traditions and by the competition for power in the world. That is
why there are so many people today in the world who, though they have
genuine spiritual needs and yearnings, are so put off by the
manifestations of religion as it has become. Where can you find the
cultivation of one's inner life? Where is the emphasis on recognizing,
following and embracing the power and the presence of Knowledge within
the individual? Where is the emphasis on developing and encouraging
the individual's capacity and desire to experience the mystery of the
Divine Presence--a mystery that defies all religious teachings and
conventions? Where are such things being encouraged for the
individual? You visit the church or the temple or the mosque and what
is presented but an emphasis on upholding the ideology of religion,
the institutions of religion [and] the demands of religion? This
emphasis is out of context and out of relationship with the essential
purpose of religion.
In essence, all religion is to teach The Way of Knowledge, to bring
the individual into the direct experience of Knowledge, the deeper
mind beyond the intellect, the mind that God has provided each person
to guide them, to protect them and to lead them to a greater life and
expression in the world. But you do not hear this emphasis. Instead,
there is the encouragement to believe, to adhere, to follow the
prescriptions of a religious tradition, however illogical and
unreasonable those prescriptions may be within the context of modern
life. And this is called "the Word of God," God's will for humanity.
Of course, there is great competition between competing powers over
who has the ultimate and final claim of God's will and prescription
for humanity.
It is as if the unreligious have taken over the business of religion
for their own purposes. Never having realized its essential purpose
and meaning, they have turned it into something else. It is like now a
political party, and of course religion has political aims as well.
This is so far apart from God's initial impulse and intention for
religion--to keep Knowledge alive in the world, to teach The Way of
Knowledge, to encourage human responsibility and ethical behavior, not
simply as a prescript or as a requirement for admission into Heaven or
some other exalted future state. It is really a denial of the natural
integrity and natural ethics that will arise with the person who has
experienced this power and presence of Knowledge and is guided by its
wisdom and its grace.
These individuals, no matter what part of the world they reside, no
matter what tribe or group or culture they come from, will all uphold
the same values because these are the values of Knowledge. And so you
have a world that seems deeply religious, but is not practicing and
emphasizing what religion is really for. And given the submission and
oppression of peoples throughout human history, whatever sacred intent
has been maintained has been maintained only for the elite, for the
monastic, for the adept.
As a result, God's true Messengers have had to break the chains of
convention, have had to teach in opposition in the face of the
prevailing religious beliefs and attitudes. They have had to become
rebels and reformers, counteracting humanity's tendency to turn what
is sacred into what is profane. What is the intent of the true
Messenger but to evoke the spiritual fire in the individual and to
bring them in contact with the deeper conscience that exists within
them--a conscience that is not the product of social conformation or
social expectation, but a deeper conscience that is innate and
essential to the human life?
So you have a world that is religious, but knows not of religion. You
have a world where religious institutions and their advocates clash
and compete with one another, not realizing that the source of their
faith is the same. They will have people demanding and expecting
adherence to ideas and beliefs and admonitions, but who themselves
have never received the real initiation into the mystery and the power
of the Presence.
Religion has become concrete. It has become political. It has become
an economic and social power that seeks to preserve its status and its
power at whatever cost. So those who are truly responding to
religion's true purpose now find themselves in exile, now find
themselves heretics and visionaries following the Mystery--a Mystery
that has been lost to so many in the religious orders and
institutions. It is as if religion has become the enemy of what
religion is really for. It is now the religion of the state, religion
of tradition, religion of history, religion of fixed ideas, fixed
beliefs and exclusive claims of authority. So far this is from the
desire and intent of the Creator to keep Knowledge alive in the world.
In certain cases, religion has become the enemy of Knowledge,
declaring that only God has Knowledge and that people are foolish and
must be corralled like animals, must be programmed and conditioned to
believe--to believe things that are incredible and impossible, to
believe things that run counter to the deeper experience that people
have, things that are apart from the real mystery and the profound
experience that is the essence of what religion really is.
Throughout the ages, the mystics, the wise amongst them, have kept
this Power and this Presence alive, but they were the outcasts, at the
margin of religious institutions. They were the rebels and the
reformers who, though disapproved of or distrusted by their
authorities, actually gave life and substance and meaning to the empty
religious practices that prevailed in human society.
So what does this mean for you? This means that there is a greater
power in your life, a greater mystery in your life, and that your
connection to God is through Knowledge--the deeper intelligence that
God has placed within you, an intelligence that is beyond the realm
and the reach of your intellect. This power is calling to you, and
your response to it represents the deepest need of your soul--a need
that is deeper than the need for survival and gratification, for
education and opportunity, for friendship and partnership.
To find this need, you must realize that what the world is providing
is inadequate. It meets social and psychological needs. It meets
practical needs. But it does not meet the real need of the soul. That
requires an engagement of an extraordinary kind.
The Creator of all life of course understands this predicament--that
religion has become the problem and not the answer, that religion has
become the impediment and not the pathway, that the true purpose and
emphasis of religion has been lost in so many ways, that now only a
very wise and exceptional teacher within a faith tradition can speak
to the mystery and the power and refer to the deeper conscience within
the individual. But such teachers are rare. They represent the
minority of those who claim ecclesiastical powers and authorities. For
how can you be allegiant to the church or to the mosque or the temple
if your greatest allegiance is to Knowledge, which represents your
allegiance to God? And if God is not bound by human thought, human
philosophy and human theology, then you as a follower of Knowledge
will not be bound by these either. This makes you free and
uncontrollable. This makes you perceptive and more incorruptible. This
makes you question the value of religious authority and the ethics and
behavior of religious institutions--all things that religious
institutions are prone to resist and to repress.
Therefore, it is necessary that you come back to what is essential, to
the initial impulse and power of religion--not the religion of the
state, not the religion of the traditional institutions necessarily,
but to something much purer that can exist within them and beyond
them.
Beware of beliefs that seem set in stone. Beware of proclamations of
exclusive privilege or authority by religious leaders. Recognize that
there are people who are freedom oriented and there are people who are
control oriented. And the control oriented are afraid of freedom, and
they are afraid of Mystery because they do not believe in the
essential goodness of the human spirit. They have lost their faith in
humanity and have placed all their faith in their ideology and their
prescriptions that they believe have come from God. But God has only
given recommendations through the great Teachers, not
rules--recommendations for living, guidelines for living to help people
orient their lives correctly and productively and beneficially.
Therefore, to find your real connection, you must come to learn The
Way of Knowledge, for at the heart of every religion, there is The Way
of Knowledge. This is not the way of belief. This is not the way of
obedience. This is not the way of blindly following [the]
prescriptions and precepts and admonitions of religious leaders and
institutions. It is finding the power and the presence of Knowledge
within you and learning over time and through instruction how to
discern this Power and Presence from the other impulses and
compulsions that exist within you as an individual.
God's purpose in the world is to keep Knowledge alive so that human
freedom, human justice [and] human compassion may be kept alive in the
world. God's purpose is not to exalt religious leaders or
institutions, or to crown one over another. These are human creations
and not God creations, and they are fallible and prone to corruption
as a result.
God has provided a New Message into the world to clarify this picture
and to provide a clear pathway for those who seek to have the real
experience, and they can have this experience within their religious
traditions or outside of them.
God's New Revelation may conflict with political ideology and
longstanding beliefs, but that is what happens when what is pure is
contrasted with what has been altered and adapted. God is not bound by
human creations, human beliefs and admonitions. God only provides what
is real and essential to ignite the human heart and to give each
individual a foundation for being inner directed rather than outer
directed. Here your imam or your rabbi or your priest can help you if
they are guided by Knowledge. But they will hinder you if they are
not. You must learn to see the difference.
Religions are institutions that have to be maintained and protected.
They are in competition with each other, so none of them that exist in
the world today can really foster human peace and human unity, for
they all claim special privileges, and only those few individuals
within them that support a great ecumenical movement and the
acceptance of all world's religions can counteract this competition,
which is inherently divisive and destructive.
In these words, we speak to the human heart, not to the intellect that
wants to have everything figured out and wants to adhere to its
notions, its beliefs and its traditions. There is nothing wrong with a
tradition if it fulfills the basic purpose of religion, which is to
inspire and expand people's desire and capacity to experience the
presence of God and to connect them with the deeper intelligence that
God has placed within them that will be essential for their success
and their well-being in the world. This is much more important than
the teachings of the founder of a religious tradition. It is much more
important than the religion's official declarations of belief or
doctrinaires.
People celebrate and worship and repeat endlessly the lives of the
great Teachers, but can they really live the lives that these Teachers
promoted? It is not merely human behavior that is important, for
people can behave well for all the wrong reasons. People can fall in
line with each other for social advantage, for economic advantage and
to achieve social status and acceptance, but this is not religion.
You who seek to know your greater purpose in the world and the greater
meaning of your life are a religious person. Whether you belong to a
church or a mosque or a synagogue or any other religious organization,
that is secondary. Promoting a religious ideology in the world does
not represent supporting God's will and purpose here. It is only if
this ideology and system of belief can meet the basic requirements of
religion that they have real and lasting value and produce real
benefit for people.
Likewise, no religious teaching should promote war and attack upon
other groups. This represents competition for power between these
groups, but this is not what religion is. Religion is bringing you to
God and to what God has placed within you to guide you, to protect you
and to lead you to your great accomplishments in life. Anything beyond
this is an invention--a human invention, an adaptation. People will
have to figure out what this means in terms of the application of law
and the running of societies.
God is not here to run societies or to carry out the intricacies of
jurisprudence or the administration of the law. God is pointing you to
the Mystery, not to the manifestation. God is calling you to the
Mystery, not prescribing the manifestation. If you want to have more
saints in the world, if you want to have truly inspiring individuals
in the world, if you want humanity to have a higher standard that is
born not out of an oppressive regime, but out of a natural
understanding, then you must guide people to the power of the Mystery.
Religion, you see, does not have an answer for every social and
political problem, but it does give people access to the deeper
intelligence that can guide people effectively in meeting all these
needs. Religion must be free of the state; [it] must be free of
politics, which will only taint and corrupt it to the point where
those who claim to be holy men will call for the execution of people.
This is the degree of distortion and aberrancy that has been
established in the world today, and that is why there is a New Message
from God--to restore the clarity and the purpose of religion, the
meaning of spiritual practice and the nature of the Divine Revelation
that must happen within each person. It is not enough to celebrate a
great Teacher's revelation if you cannot find access to your own. It
is not enough to worship a great teacher or emancipator unless you can
find this power and this presence within your life, which will apply
itself in far more mundane and simple day-to-day circumstances.
Here the contrast is significant. Here the contrast is significant and
must be comprehended. If you want religion to be a thing, you will
lose its essence and its meaning and turn it into something that it
was never meant to be. If you want to turn religion into a set of
ideals or beliefs or a complex theology, you will lose what religion
really is and what it is for. To argue whether Jesus or Mohammed is
the greatest Teacher or provides the final word for humanity is so
utterly ridiculous and so far from the nature and intent of religion
as God intended it to be that it represents a kind of pathetic
diminishing and distortion of what religion really is.
To think that Mohammed gave the final Revelation is to misunderstand
God's purpose and presence, for God has many more things to say to the
world, particularly at this great turning point when humanity is
facing a declining world, a world of declining resources, when
humanity is facing the reality of contact with intelligent life in the
universe--two great events that none of God's previous Revelations are
meant to address or that can address sufficiently [and] reasonably.
Religion has become overlaid with ideas, beliefs, institutions, laws
and requirements that have become repressive to the people or
abhorrent to people who are more freedom loving. They do not meet the
deeper need of the soul. That is why you must come back to what is
essential, to what is real.
The temple, the mosque, the church and the tribal place of worship are
the places to honor the Mystery and to evoke the Presence and the
Power.
The Way of Knowledge, which is at the heart of all the world's
religions, must become its essential teaching, instead of a focus for
clerics and monastics and exceptional individuals only. This is the
challenge before you, or religion will be part of the problem for
humanity and not its essential means of reconciliation, inspiration
and a high ethical awareness. Let this be your understanding.
Link: www.newmessage.org/the-new-message-on-religion
truly religious and who is religion trader. This new message seems
interesting. Religion is indeed a mystery! A mystery for good reason,
God only knows!
--
Dr Musa Ali (PhD)
The New Message on Religion
As revealed to God's Messenger
Marshall Vian Summers
on July 20, 2009
in Boulder, Colorado
At this time and place, it is important to speak about the purpose of
religion. Religion is part of the human experience, and any attempts
that have been made to eradicate it or to minimize it have proven to
be unsuccessful. For you cannot deny the reality of the human spirit.
You cannot deny the fundamental reality that there is a greater
spiritual need in people that must be expressed. But like all things
in the world, that which is natural and essential can become
distorted, misaligned and misused, allied with other purposes,
particularly when these natural impulses become connected with
governments and powerful forces in society.
Simply said, the purpose of religion is to cultivate the desire and
the capacity to experience the Divine Presence in one's life. All
teachings and rituals, whether within large institutions or within the
privacy of one's home, [are] for this purpose. And the desire and
capacity to experience the Divine Presence [are] to bring one to the
power of Knowledge that the Creator of all life has placed within each
human heart.
Yet when you look about, either at home or in foreign lands, you will
find there is a great poverty, a great poverty in that people's lives
are not demonstrating this Presence and the power of this Knowledge.
The look of disappointment and dissatisfaction, the sense of regret in
the older people, the sense of hopelessness and discouragement in the
young [are] evidence that this Power and this Presence are not being
experienced. Religion has become now a yoke and a harness for people,
requiring them to believe along certain prescribed lines of thought
and to behave along certain prescribed lines of behavior. But this is
far from the essence of what religion is really for.
To require, either through inducement or threat, for people to adhere
to a certain system of belief does not represent the essence and
purpose of religion. Yet that is what is so manifest in the world
today. Religion has become another form of government--a form of
government that seeks power and domination, a form of government that
seeks to overcome its competing rivals, the competing agendas of other
religions and faiths. And so there is a contest and a kind of war
exerted between the most radical elements of these systems of belief.
But this is not what religion really is.
The Creator of all life has initiated all of the world's religions,
but they have all been altered by people and governments, by cultures
and traditions and by the competition for power in the world. That is
why there are so many people today in the world who, though they have
genuine spiritual needs and yearnings, are so put off by the
manifestations of religion as it has become. Where can you find the
cultivation of one's inner life? Where is the emphasis on recognizing,
following and embracing the power and the presence of Knowledge within
the individual? Where is the emphasis on developing and encouraging
the individual's capacity and desire to experience the mystery of the
Divine Presence--a mystery that defies all religious teachings and
conventions? Where are such things being encouraged for the
individual? You visit the church or the temple or the mosque and what
is presented but an emphasis on upholding the ideology of religion,
the institutions of religion [and] the demands of religion? This
emphasis is out of context and out of relationship with the essential
purpose of religion.
In essence, all religion is to teach The Way of Knowledge, to bring
the individual into the direct experience of Knowledge, the deeper
mind beyond the intellect, the mind that God has provided each person
to guide them, to protect them and to lead them to a greater life and
expression in the world. But you do not hear this emphasis. Instead,
there is the encouragement to believe, to adhere, to follow the
prescriptions of a religious tradition, however illogical and
unreasonable those prescriptions may be within the context of modern
life. And this is called "the Word of God," God's will for humanity.
Of course, there is great competition between competing powers over
who has the ultimate and final claim of God's will and prescription
for humanity.
It is as if the unreligious have taken over the business of religion
for their own purposes. Never having realized its essential purpose
and meaning, they have turned it into something else. It is like now a
political party, and of course religion has political aims as well.
This is so far apart from God's initial impulse and intention for
religion--to keep Knowledge alive in the world, to teach The Way of
Knowledge, to encourage human responsibility and ethical behavior, not
simply as a prescript or as a requirement for admission into Heaven or
some other exalted future state. It is really a denial of the natural
integrity and natural ethics that will arise with the person who has
experienced this power and presence of Knowledge and is guided by its
wisdom and its grace.
These individuals, no matter what part of the world they reside, no
matter what tribe or group or culture they come from, will all uphold
the same values because these are the values of Knowledge. And so you
have a world that seems deeply religious, but is not practicing and
emphasizing what religion is really for. And given the submission and
oppression of peoples throughout human history, whatever sacred intent
has been maintained has been maintained only for the elite, for the
monastic, for the adept.
As a result, God's true Messengers have had to break the chains of
convention, have had to teach in opposition in the face of the
prevailing religious beliefs and attitudes. They have had to become
rebels and reformers, counteracting humanity's tendency to turn what
is sacred into what is profane. What is the intent of the true
Messenger but to evoke the spiritual fire in the individual and to
bring them in contact with the deeper conscience that exists within
them--a conscience that is not the product of social conformation or
social expectation, but a deeper conscience that is innate and
essential to the human life?
So you have a world that is religious, but knows not of religion. You
have a world where religious institutions and their advocates clash
and compete with one another, not realizing that the source of their
faith is the same. They will have people demanding and expecting
adherence to ideas and beliefs and admonitions, but who themselves
have never received the real initiation into the mystery and the power
of the Presence.
Religion has become concrete. It has become political. It has become
an economic and social power that seeks to preserve its status and its
power at whatever cost. So those who are truly responding to
religion's true purpose now find themselves in exile, now find
themselves heretics and visionaries following the Mystery--a Mystery
that has been lost to so many in the religious orders and
institutions. It is as if religion has become the enemy of what
religion is really for. It is now the religion of the state, religion
of tradition, religion of history, religion of fixed ideas, fixed
beliefs and exclusive claims of authority. So far this is from the
desire and intent of the Creator to keep Knowledge alive in the world.
In certain cases, religion has become the enemy of Knowledge,
declaring that only God has Knowledge and that people are foolish and
must be corralled like animals, must be programmed and conditioned to
believe--to believe things that are incredible and impossible, to
believe things that run counter to the deeper experience that people
have, things that are apart from the real mystery and the profound
experience that is the essence of what religion really is.
Throughout the ages, the mystics, the wise amongst them, have kept
this Power and this Presence alive, but they were the outcasts, at the
margin of religious institutions. They were the rebels and the
reformers who, though disapproved of or distrusted by their
authorities, actually gave life and substance and meaning to the empty
religious practices that prevailed in human society.
So what does this mean for you? This means that there is a greater
power in your life, a greater mystery in your life, and that your
connection to God is through Knowledge--the deeper intelligence that
God has placed within you, an intelligence that is beyond the realm
and the reach of your intellect. This power is calling to you, and
your response to it represents the deepest need of your soul--a need
that is deeper than the need for survival and gratification, for
education and opportunity, for friendship and partnership.
To find this need, you must realize that what the world is providing
is inadequate. It meets social and psychological needs. It meets
practical needs. But it does not meet the real need of the soul. That
requires an engagement of an extraordinary kind.
The Creator of all life of course understands this predicament--that
religion has become the problem and not the answer, that religion has
become the impediment and not the pathway, that the true purpose and
emphasis of religion has been lost in so many ways, that now only a
very wise and exceptional teacher within a faith tradition can speak
to the mystery and the power and refer to the deeper conscience within
the individual. But such teachers are rare. They represent the
minority of those who claim ecclesiastical powers and authorities. For
how can you be allegiant to the church or to the mosque or the temple
if your greatest allegiance is to Knowledge, which represents your
allegiance to God? And if God is not bound by human thought, human
philosophy and human theology, then you as a follower of Knowledge
will not be bound by these either. This makes you free and
uncontrollable. This makes you perceptive and more incorruptible. This
makes you question the value of religious authority and the ethics and
behavior of religious institutions--all things that religious
institutions are prone to resist and to repress.
Therefore, it is necessary that you come back to what is essential, to
the initial impulse and power of religion--not the religion of the
state, not the religion of the traditional institutions necessarily,
but to something much purer that can exist within them and beyond
them.
Beware of beliefs that seem set in stone. Beware of proclamations of
exclusive privilege or authority by religious leaders. Recognize that
there are people who are freedom oriented and there are people who are
control oriented. And the control oriented are afraid of freedom, and
they are afraid of Mystery because they do not believe in the
essential goodness of the human spirit. They have lost their faith in
humanity and have placed all their faith in their ideology and their
prescriptions that they believe have come from God. But God has only
given recommendations through the great Teachers, not
rules--recommendations for living, guidelines for living to help people
orient their lives correctly and productively and beneficially.
Therefore, to find your real connection, you must come to learn The
Way of Knowledge, for at the heart of every religion, there is The Way
of Knowledge. This is not the way of belief. This is not the way of
obedience. This is not the way of blindly following [the]
prescriptions and precepts and admonitions of religious leaders and
institutions. It is finding the power and the presence of Knowledge
within you and learning over time and through instruction how to
discern this Power and Presence from the other impulses and
compulsions that exist within you as an individual.
God's purpose in the world is to keep Knowledge alive so that human
freedom, human justice [and] human compassion may be kept alive in the
world. God's purpose is not to exalt religious leaders or
institutions, or to crown one over another. These are human creations
and not God creations, and they are fallible and prone to corruption
as a result.
God has provided a New Message into the world to clarify this picture
and to provide a clear pathway for those who seek to have the real
experience, and they can have this experience within their religious
traditions or outside of them.
God's New Revelation may conflict with political ideology and
longstanding beliefs, but that is what happens when what is pure is
contrasted with what has been altered and adapted. God is not bound by
human creations, human beliefs and admonitions. God only provides what
is real and essential to ignite the human heart and to give each
individual a foundation for being inner directed rather than outer
directed. Here your imam or your rabbi or your priest can help you if
they are guided by Knowledge. But they will hinder you if they are
not. You must learn to see the difference.
Religions are institutions that have to be maintained and protected.
They are in competition with each other, so none of them that exist in
the world today can really foster human peace and human unity, for
they all claim special privileges, and only those few individuals
within them that support a great ecumenical movement and the
acceptance of all world's religions can counteract this competition,
which is inherently divisive and destructive.
In these words, we speak to the human heart, not to the intellect that
wants to have everything figured out and wants to adhere to its
notions, its beliefs and its traditions. There is nothing wrong with a
tradition if it fulfills the basic purpose of religion, which is to
inspire and expand people's desire and capacity to experience the
presence of God and to connect them with the deeper intelligence that
God has placed within them that will be essential for their success
and their well-being in the world. This is much more important than
the teachings of the founder of a religious tradition. It is much more
important than the religion's official declarations of belief or
doctrinaires.
People celebrate and worship and repeat endlessly the lives of the
great Teachers, but can they really live the lives that these Teachers
promoted? It is not merely human behavior that is important, for
people can behave well for all the wrong reasons. People can fall in
line with each other for social advantage, for economic advantage and
to achieve social status and acceptance, but this is not religion.
You who seek to know your greater purpose in the world and the greater
meaning of your life are a religious person. Whether you belong to a
church or a mosque or a synagogue or any other religious organization,
that is secondary. Promoting a religious ideology in the world does
not represent supporting God's will and purpose here. It is only if
this ideology and system of belief can meet the basic requirements of
religion that they have real and lasting value and produce real
benefit for people.
Likewise, no religious teaching should promote war and attack upon
other groups. This represents competition for power between these
groups, but this is not what religion is. Religion is bringing you to
God and to what God has placed within you to guide you, to protect you
and to lead you to your great accomplishments in life. Anything beyond
this is an invention--a human invention, an adaptation. People will
have to figure out what this means in terms of the application of law
and the running of societies.
God is not here to run societies or to carry out the intricacies of
jurisprudence or the administration of the law. God is pointing you to
the Mystery, not to the manifestation. God is calling you to the
Mystery, not prescribing the manifestation. If you want to have more
saints in the world, if you want to have truly inspiring individuals
in the world, if you want humanity to have a higher standard that is
born not out of an oppressive regime, but out of a natural
understanding, then you must guide people to the power of the Mystery.
Religion, you see, does not have an answer for every social and
political problem, but it does give people access to the deeper
intelligence that can guide people effectively in meeting all these
needs. Religion must be free of the state; [it] must be free of
politics, which will only taint and corrupt it to the point where
those who claim to be holy men will call for the execution of people.
This is the degree of distortion and aberrancy that has been
established in the world today, and that is why there is a New Message
from God--to restore the clarity and the purpose of religion, the
meaning of spiritual practice and the nature of the Divine Revelation
that must happen within each person. It is not enough to celebrate a
great Teacher's revelation if you cannot find access to your own. It
is not enough to worship a great teacher or emancipator unless you can
find this power and this presence within your life, which will apply
itself in far more mundane and simple day-to-day circumstances.
Here the contrast is significant. Here the contrast is significant and
must be comprehended. If you want religion to be a thing, you will
lose its essence and its meaning and turn it into something that it
was never meant to be. If you want to turn religion into a set of
ideals or beliefs or a complex theology, you will lose what religion
really is and what it is for. To argue whether Jesus or Mohammed is
the greatest Teacher or provides the final word for humanity is so
utterly ridiculous and so far from the nature and intent of religion
as God intended it to be that it represents a kind of pathetic
diminishing and distortion of what religion really is.
To think that Mohammed gave the final Revelation is to misunderstand
God's purpose and presence, for God has many more things to say to the
world, particularly at this great turning point when humanity is
facing a declining world, a world of declining resources, when
humanity is facing the reality of contact with intelligent life in the
universe--two great events that none of God's previous Revelations are
meant to address or that can address sufficiently [and] reasonably.
Religion has become overlaid with ideas, beliefs, institutions, laws
and requirements that have become repressive to the people or
abhorrent to people who are more freedom loving. They do not meet the
deeper need of the soul. That is why you must come back to what is
essential, to what is real.
The temple, the mosque, the church and the tribal place of worship are
the places to honor the Mystery and to evoke the Presence and the
Power.
The Way of Knowledge, which is at the heart of all the world's
religions, must become its essential teaching, instead of a focus for
clerics and monastics and exceptional individuals only. This is the
challenge before you, or religion will be part of the problem for
humanity and not its essential means of reconciliation, inspiration
and a high ethical awareness. Let this be your understanding.
Link: www.newmessage.org/the-new-message-on-religion
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Posted by: Jiten Roy <jnrsr53@yahoo.com>
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Mukto Mona plans for a Grand Darwin Day Celebration:
Call For Articles:
http://mukto-mona.com/wordpress/?p=68
http://mukto-mona.com/banga_blog/?p=585
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"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
-Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 190
