SOUL, GOD AND RELIGION III

There are those who teach that this can be gained by the mumbling of words. But no great Master ever taught that external forms were necessary for salvation. The power of attaining it is within us. We live and move in God.

Creeds and sects have their parts to play, but they are for children, they last but temporarily. Books never make religions, but religions make books. We must not forget that. No book ever created God, but God inspired all the great books. And no book ever created a soul. We must never forget that. The end of all religions is the realizing of God in the soul. That is the one universal religion. If there is one universal truth in all religions, it is in realizing God. Ideals and methods may differ, but that is the central point.

God is something behind this world of sense, this world of eating and drinking and talking nonsense, this world of false shadows and selfishness. God is that beyond all books, beyond all creeds, beyond the vanities of this world and it is the realization of God within us. One may believe in all the churches in the world, he may carry in his head all the sacred books ever written, he may baptize himself in all the rivers of the earth, still, he may have no perception of God.

 Another may have never entered a church or a mosque, nor performed any ceremony, but if he feels God within himself and is thereby lifted above the vanities of the world, that person is a holy person, a saint, call him what we will.

As soon as one stands up and says he is right or his church is right, and all others are wrong, he is himself all wrong. He does not know that upon the proof of all the others depends the proof of his own. Love and charity for the whole human race is the test of true religion. This does not imply the sentimental statement that all men are brothers, but that we must feel the oneness of human life.

Hopefully all sects and creeds are all helping humanity towards the real religion, oneness with God. It is good to be born in a church, but it is bad to die there. It is good to be born a child, but bad to remain a child. Churches, ceremonies, and symbols are good for children, but when the child is grown, it must discharge the church and realize God for himself, he must not remain a child forever. It has been stated that all religions are essentially the same; yet we need to acknowledge that they are made up of a varieties of forms, produced by dissimilar circumstances among different nations. We must each have our own individual religion, individual so far as the externals of it are concerned.

There is the story of a great sage, a very holy man. He spoke to his disciple about a revealed book, like the Bible and of revealed books in general. At the close of talk talk, this good man asked the disciple to go to the table and take up a book; it was a book which, among other things, contained a forecast of the rainfall during the year. The sage said, "Read that." And the disciple read out the quantity of rain that was to fall. He said, "Now take the book and squeeze it, “the disciple did so and he said, "Why, my boy, not a drop of water comes out. Until the water comes out, it is all book, book. So until our religion makes us realize God, it is useless.

Shall we kneel down and cry, "O miserable sinners that we are?" No, rather let us be reminded of our divine nature.

Let us always remember that if the room is dark, do we go around beating our chest and cry, "It is dark, dark, dark!" No, the only way to get the light is to strike a light, and then the darkness goes. The only way to realize the light above us is to strike the spiritual light within us, and the darkness of sin and impurity will flee. We need to think of our higher Self, not of our lower nature.