SOUL, GOD AND RELIGION II

It is hard for any nation to understand the unfamiliar customs of other people. How much more difficult was it for Europeans to understand the Jewish customs after being exposed for centuries to changes from Greek, Roman, and other sources! Through all the myths and mythologies by which it is surrounded it is no wonder that the people get very little of the beautiful religion of Jesus, and no wonder that they have made of it a modern shop-keeping religion.

To come to our point, we find that all religions teach the eternity of the soul, as well as that its radiance has been dimmed, and that its purity is to be regained by the knowledge of God.

What is the idea of God in these different religions?

The primary idea of God was very vague. The most ancient nations had different Deities, sun, earth, fire, water. Among the ancient Jews we find numbers of these gods ferociously fighting with each other.

Then we find Elohim whom the Jews and the Babylonians worshipped. We next find one God standing supreme. But the idea was differed according to different tribes. They each asserted that their God was the greatest. And they tried to prove it by fighting. The one that could do the best fighting proved thereby that its God was the greatest. Those races were more or less savage.

But gradually better and better ideas took the place of the old ones. All those old ideas are gone. All those religions were the outgrowth of centuries; not one fell from the skies. Each had to be worked out bit by bit.

Next came the monotheistic ideas, the belief in one God, who is omnipotent and omniscient and omnipotent, the one God of the universe. But we find that the tribal gods have disappeared for ever, and the one God of the universe has taken their place: the God of gods. Still He is only an extra-cosmic God. He is unapproachable; nothing can come near Him. But slowly this idea has also changed, and at the next stage we find a God immanent in nature.

In the New Testament it is taught, "Our Father who art in heaven" — God living in the heavens separated from men. We are living on earth and He is living in heaven. Further on we find the teaching that He is a God immanent in nature; He is not only God in heaven, but on earth too. He is the God in us.

In the Hindu philosophy we can find a stage of the same proximity of God to us. But they do not stop there. There is the non-dualistic stage, in which man realizes that the God he has been worshipping is not only the Father in heaven, and on earth, but that "I and my Father are one." One realizes in his soul that he is God himself, only a lower expression of Him. All that is real in me is He; all that is real in Him is I AM. The gulf between God and man is thus bridged and we find how by knowing God, we find the kingdom of heaven within us.

In the first or dualistic stage, man knows he is a little personal soul; call him John for all eternity, and never anything else. John is a sinner, but as time goes on, John vanishes from earth and if lucky joins the second Adam Jesus and lives forever.

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Can we see God? Of course not. Can we know God? Of course not, if God can be known, He will be God no longer. Knowledge is limitation.

But I and my Father are one: I find the reality in my soul. These ideas are expressed in some religions, and in others only hinted. In some they were outcast. Christ's teachings are now very little understood; they have never been very well understood.

We go through different stages of growth during our life. These stages are absolutely necessary to the attainment of purity and perfection. The varying systems of religion support the same ideas. Jesus says the kingdom of heaven is within. Again he says, "Our father who art in Heaven." How do we reconcile the two sayings? We can do so by realizing that he was talking to the uneducated masses when he said the latter, the masses who were uneducated in religion.

 It was necessary to speak to people in the language they understand. The masses want concrete ideas, something the senses can grasp. A person may be the greatest philosopher in the world, but a child in religion. When one has developed a high state of spirituality he can understand that the kingdom of heaven is within him. Thus we see that the apparent contradictions and perplexities in every religion mark but different stages of growth. And as such we have no right to blame anyone for his religion. There are stages of growth in which forms and symbols are necessary; they are the language that the souls in that stage can understand.

We must learn to realize, that religion does not consist in doctrines or dogmas. It is not what we read, or in what dogmas we believe that is of importance, but what we realize. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God," yea, in this life. That is salvation.