THREE

A SANE RELIGION

IF YOU EXAMINE the definition of the word “religion,” you will find that it is derived from the Latin word meaning “to bind.” To bind with what? Obviously, to bind with God. Obviously, that which binds man with God is religion.

As you look around at the state of orthodox religions in the world today, would you say that they have succeeded in binding mankind to God? If you are frank and honest, you must admit that they have failed to do that. And, since they have failed, let us try to see why.

First, you must understand how religion develops historically. Religions originally centre around one man, one personality who receives in some way a revelation or an illumination from God.

Then he either writes this revelation or gives it out by word of mouth to a number of people—generally to many, because if he is aware of his mission as a prophet, he will try to interest as many as possible. Having reached all he can, he finds a few who understand him, and those few constitute his disciples and his apostles. The others, or the masses, are merely his followers.

When such a soul descends into the public view, he does so with a clear sense of the mission which has been given him by God, namely, to bring a new spiritual impulse to the world. He knows full well that it is not his own personal power or wisdom which is the motive factor, but that he is an instrument through which the Higher Power will flow. Knowing that, he can say, as Jesus said: “It is not I, but my Father which has sent me.” He becomes God’s messenger to mankind. If those who hear him are wise, if they are at all intuitive and understanding, they will accept him. If they are stupid, dense, or materialistic, they will reject him.

It is a peculiar thing that the force which embodies such a project of God is like a two-edged sword. It will either help those who hear him, or it will hurt them. If they reject him, they do so at their own peril. They will be punished, not by an arbitrary mandate of God, but by their own higher self.

If, on the other hand, they accept, then they will receive the blessings of God and the fruits of the Spirit. But that is no concern of the messenger. He has only to deliver the message: the world may take it or leave it. In accepting it, the message will bring many joys and blessings, and perhaps some dangers; but in rejecting it, there will be many hurts and many dangers. You have only to study history to find verification of this.

The special followers or disciples of a prophet will receive not merely the actual teaching which he gives them, but also what is behind the words, namely, the spirit which is flowing through him.

Hence, if the disciples have the right attitude of absolute faith which rejects doubts, they will receive their reward through the spirit which flows through the prophet and through his words, and this will bring them nearer to the fulfilment of the true purpose of incarnation. There is only one reason why we are here on earth, and that is to find our true Spiritual Self, our true Inner Being. Unless we do find this we come back again and again, and suffer until we do find it.

A prophet’s work really consists in the planting of seeds, the growth of which will be seen by later generations. When a prophet has completed his work he disappears, and then we see the beginning of organized religion. In his own lifetime the prophet is not interested in organization; he comes to give not any material thing, but that which will remain for centuries in the hearts of those who are sensitive enough to respond. Nor does he come to found any external organizations; these are started by his followers, and generally after his death. The disciples get together, as they did after the death of Jesus and of Buddha, and form a brotherhood, or a church, something to keep them together and give an outward expression to the Inner Teaching and Presence which they themselves have felt.

This is the beginning of every church and every external religion. In the days that are nearest to the founder, the religion is generally pure. It is expressing that which the prophet came to teach. As time goes on, however, it degenerates, and often becomes merely organized superstition. It begins to lose the spirit, and becomes stronger in the letter. The followers start to quarrel among themselves as to what he actually said, or what he meant by what he said. Gradually they have rifts, and subsequently they separate.

That is natural, because they are arguing over the body, not over the spirit. The real thing—the Inner Spirit—will remain for a time. It may last many centuries, and then gradually it will begin to fade away and ultimately disappear. No religion will endure forever. That which is behind religion alone endures forever and will always find new incarnations.

The original visions and revelations of the great sages have become mutilated by their ignorant followers or narrowed by their bigoted zealots. Yet we need not be disheartened if we find that religions tend to break up and disintegrate. This is inevitable. They rise, grow, and then fade. So if you understand that they are merely obeying a law of Nature, then you accept this, and know that when one religion dies away, another will come to take its place. If you look around the world today, you will see that most of the existing orthodox religions have begun to follow, more or less, the same downward arc. They are disintegrating and losing their followers. There is no doubt about it.

Why was it that the early Christians went so joyfully to their martyrdom? They were thrown to the lions—burned alive. How were they able to endure such sufferings?

They were so close to the time of Jesus that they had his sacred Presence as their support. This enabled them to endure their martyrdom, so that when they were faced with death itself, their consciousness was taken out of the body completely, and they had no sense of suffering; their minds were elsewhere. Their bodies were tortured, but they themselves passed away as in a trance, with no consciousness of physical suffering.

But, before they passed away from the body, their faith had to be tested, and if their faith was strong enough, a Higher Power came and released them by withdrawing their minds from their bodies. In hypnotism and under chloroform the mind is withdrawn from the body and the most drastic surgical operation is not felt. The Divine Spirit also gently withdraws the mind, and the same result is obtained.

Today, no one feels a call to be martyred for any religion. It no longer binds man to God, because it is no longer an instrument used by the Divine Power. It is now a mere man-made organization depending upon human instruments.

Ancient scriptures and philosophies are of inestimable value and should occupy a treasured place on our bookshelves, but this is not to say that Truth has spoken only to those vanished men.

It is impossible to live entirely in the past when we seek for Truth. The present is just as real, just as useful, on this quest. Therefore, we should use these ancient books, but not be used by them. We should subscribe to everything within them that passes a universal test of Truth, but reluctantly and hesitantly dismiss whatever cannot pass this test.

This does not mean that we set ourselves up through false pride above those ancient lights, but it means that we value Truth as a spirit and not its relics left in books. Therefore, we cannot slavishly accept everything merely because it was given forth by some illustrious person of the past.

For one thing, we know that those records have seldom come down to us in all their purity, but have been tampered with and interpolated by ignorant and prejudiced men. So we must take these ancient books and scriptures as valued helps on the quest, but refuse to be shackled to any one of them. For the real quest must finally lead us within ourselves and not into the printed pages of a book. We first have to lose faith in all bibles before we can really believe in them.

Spiritually we live in “the twilight of dubiety,” to borrow Charles Lamb’s phrase. Religion is a subject surrounded by mysterious shadows.

Nevertheless, we must have some sort of religion. If we cannot accept any orthodox cult, we have to work out some sort of relation between ourselves and God, and I would like to put forward a few thoughts and suggestions as to what seems to me a sane religion for the modern man.

First of all, religion must be a personal thing—a relationship between yourself as an individual, and God the Infinite Spirit—not between you and any organized institutions. The latter are man-made things, and they are not God. God is a spirit, so you must find God as spirit; it is a purely personal relationship that you have to seek—something that needs no external demonstration. No church, no temple is necessary. You can find it inside your own heart and in the secrecy of your most intimate feelings. It is not something to argue about or to discuss with other persons. They cannot help you.

The only way in which religion can be established is by worship, not by argument or discussion. You must worship God in your own private apartment; you must set up a certain attitude of thought and emotion toward the Infinite Spirit. What better attitude can you adopt than true worship, which is, first of all, to be humble, and to feel as a little child in the presence of that Great Being who is the Supporter of the Universe.

Humility, therefore, is the first step, not only in religion, but in every study that is worthwhile. As soon as a man thinks he knows all about a subject, or even half of it, he puts that much limitation between himself and the attainment of his goal. But if he adopts the attitude of a child who knows that it knows nothing, then he is teachable and it is possible for him to learn something.

Do not, therefore, go into worship with the idea of dictating to the Infinite Spirit what it shall do for you or what it shall teach you. Do not ask even for benefits. If the Infinite Spirit is wise, it ought to know what you need. You must give it credit for that much intelligence. If you know what you need, how much more should that greater Being know!

Thus, humility is the beginning of your worship. It is not necessary to pour out endless praises. God does not need this. And you are not to request anything unless it be spiritual—more light, more understanding, more strength. A peaceful life must also be a prayerless one. To have realized that all good is the hidden basis of existence, is to leave no room for requests.

By quieting the body and the thoughts, you prepare the conditions in which the Infinite Spirit will speak to you and manifest Itself to you. Your effort to do this is a form of worship, and God will come to you in that great silence. He cannot come to you if you are too busy thinking of your personal problems.

If you make an effort to silence your mind, that means you are beginning to forget your personal life. The personal ego is nothing but the totality of your thoughts. If you were to write down every thought that occurs to you during the day, and add them up, you would have an arithmetical sum, the total of which you might call your “personality.” If there were no thoughts there would be no personal ego. The silencing of thinking is the stilling of the personal self.

Before you can begin to worship God you must forget yourself, and before you can forget yourself you must learn to control your thoughts and silence your mind. It is a very difficult task to do this completely, but it must be done—at least to some extent. If you can still the mind only fifty percent you will have accomplished something. But you can make the effort, and after you have tried for a while, one day you will begin to succeed.

You will have fewer thoughts during your meditation periods. When God sees that you are making sufficient effort, He will come to you and you will gradually begin to feel His Presence. You will sense an atmosphere of divine stillness, and the few thoughts which remain will probably be exalted ones.

The Infinite Spirit is everywhere—why are so few people aware of it? Why is it that men seem so shut off from the Presence of God? The first and most obvious reason is that they have sunk so deeply into their bodies and intellects that they have lost the habit of remembering what they really are, and where they really belong. They have formed the habit of thinking of themselves as bodies and intellects. The Infinite is there, present in them, and everywhere, but, having lost the habit of remembering that they are really Spirit, there is no hope for them unless they can find some person to remind them of what they have lost.

Such persons play the part of ministers to mankind. If religion were effectively performing its function, every clergyman, every priest, would be a minister of God to remind man of what he really is. Preachers must become prophets before they can amount to anything worthwhile. The fact that humanity seems so hopelessly lost in matter is a sign that the priests are no longer cognizant of what they themselves are. And so we have blind leaders of the blind. That is the true reason why religion has failed today. The Infinite Spirit needs an outlet, a focus through which it can pass into the intellect of man if he is to be reawakened. The Spirit is everywhere present, but must be concentrated through some outlet to be effective. Electricity exists, but unless you can convert and concentrate it through the generator it will not flow through the wires and light your lamps.

Similarly with the Spirit. It must find a medium, a wire through which to flow and reveal itself to those who need light. If Spirit is to help human beings it must find an outlet through another human being. So, when God chooses to make His Presence felt, He usually does so by using some individual as His channel.

This brings us back to the third element in worship. We do need ministers, but they must themselves have found God. If they have not they cannot help us; if they have, then they are necessary to us, and become as links between ourselves and God. Thus, the third condition of worship is an intermediary between yourself and God who will be a focus until you yourself are sufficiently strong and illumined to do without outside help. When that time arrives the intermediary will humbly withdraw and leave you, because he does not wish to stand in your own light, nor between you and God. But until you can directly find God, he is there ready to help you. Therefore the third condition in true worship is an inner link with someone who has himself found God.

So, if you have these four qualifications: humility and a childlike attitude to begin with; forgetfulness of your personal life for the time of worship; mental quiet; and your own personal relation with some human intermediary who will help you to effect the connection with God until you are able to obtain it for yourself, then you are prepared to worship. You will have increasing forgetfulness of the personal life and increasing moments of the divine stillness when you will feel that within that silence there is a Higher Power descending upon you. That is the secret of true worship—the sense that you are being taken up by a higher power.

Do not look for anything psychic, or for marvellous manifestations of an occult nature. They may come, but do not value them above the divine. Those things will only prove a hindrance to your worship; they are sidetracks which will take you away from the path of true worship. If you follow them they will lure you into fascinating bypaths, but that is not real worship. When you find true worship, something within you will tell you—something impersonal, infinite, and nonmaterial, for you will during a brief interval lose the sense of your body.

In that moment when you feel that you are being taken up by a higher power, the answer has come to you, and then you are really worshipping. When you feel this, you must let yourself go; do not resist or hinder it by making any effort of your own. Just let yourself go and let this Power take you wherever it wishes. It will not take you to any place, but it will take you out of your personal self, and partly out of your physical body, and to a large extent out of your intellect.

It is possible that at such times—not always, but perhaps occasionally—you will see a Light, a great Light which envelops you and which appears to extend into fathomless space. It will seem to permeate you. You will apparently float into and become one with it, so that you will not know whether you are the Light or whether that which you were has disappeared.

If this experience comes to you, do not be afraid to let yourself—your personality—go. There is nothing to fear. You may feel that you are going to vanish into space—that there is a danger of death. Even if there were danger of death, it would be worth dying for such a revelation. But you will not die; this is only a temporary experience. It will not come to you often, so accept it gratefully when it does come.

That Infinite Universal Light is as near as you will ever get to seeing God. You will never “see” God otherwise than as Light; God is infinite and is Spirit. He can only appear to you in an infinite way, with no apparent finite limits. The nearest thing to Infinity that we can know is space. You cannot see to where space extends. You think you see the horizon, but if you try to approach it you will find that it always recedes into space. Space and light are the only emblems by which God can manifest Himself to you. Light is the form of God, space is His home.

If God reveals Himself to you as Light, be thankful. It is a blessed and beautiful experience. It will not come to you often. There is an explanation as to why you cannot expect to have this great vision frequently.

If you were to see God as the great Universal Light, you would see Him as something other than yourself—that is, as something outside of yourself, although still inside your mind. You might feel yourself as part of this Light, but it would really be outside yourself, and so, you would still be seeing that Light. In other words, there is a relationship of duality; God is regarded as something apart from your own self. To see—whether it be an angel or a material object, or even God Himself as Light—is to see something outside of yourself. The very act of “seeing” connotes two things—a “see-er” and that which is seen—which means duality.

If God has rewarded you by giving you the vision of His Substance, and if you continue your efforts to worship Him, He will wish to lead you a step farther. He wants you to attain the Highest which it is possible for man to attain. And what is the Highest? It is to discover and know that you, yourself are spirit. To see God “outside” of yourself is still seeing Him as apart from you. The vision of the Light which you have is a vision which takes place within your own body. When you see the Light, you are still on the highest mental plane. You must rise higher.

Therefore, after He has shown you the Light, God withdraws Himself, as such, as Light, and leaves you free to find your real self. You must then no longer look for God as Light, but as your own self. You must find God henceforth not as something in vision, but as being—as something which you are. You are a ray of God. To know God is to be God, not to see God. To see implies duality, the relationship of one who sees and that which is seen, but to be implies no relationship whatsoever, only the fusion of the ray with the Sun. This is the highest state of spiritual unity to which you can attain.

When you find your real self, then you are truly worshipping God. But you cannot reach this state through your own effort; it can only be reached by grace—maybe through the help of a teacher. When you have proved yourself completely devoted, and your mind has matured sufficiently, you may earn that grace, and then you will find the Sun from which emanated the ray that you are.

When, therefore, you have fulfilled the fourfold condition—childlike attitude of humility, forgetfulness of self, stilling of mind, and connection with some human intermediary who is competent to lead you to God—then you may worship, and your worship will be in silence and secrecy. The Voice of the Silence is better than the voice of the priest!

“Noise is unpleasing to God. Men! pray in silence,” was the admonishment of one of the sacred books of Amun-Ra, the Sun God.

Let go of your dearly held dogmas, enter into the sublime Silence, and wait for the dawning of Light. It is useless to use verbal prayer, excepting under stress of great emergency; ordinarily your worship must be conducted in silence. This is true worship which will bind you to God, and because it binds you to God it is real religion.

It is not then necessary for you to subscribe to orthodox religions or go to church. You may do so if you wish, if you think it will help others by setting an example to those who need this form and for whom it may still be necessary. It is left to your discretion. Religion is intended to loosen man from his material desires, to cause him to work not only for material things, but for super-physical things. When the real religion has been found, everything else will only be a substitute and even a degradation. Real religion will bind you to God, and that is the true essence of worship.

How will this work out in your own inner reaction toward life? First of all you will adopt the attitude of goodwill to all men, because you will know that everyone has sprung from a common origin. We are rays from that Unknown Sun, and when you understand that every living creature, man or animal, is a ray from the Primal Light, and has therefore in essence just as much of the divine as you have, you will treat it with respect and reverence; and because that is so, no matter how people may act, or what they may say, or how much they may have forgotten their spiritual nature and origin, or how beastly their behaviour, you will realize that they only do this from ignorance.

You can have only one attitude toward your fellow men, and that is to understand who and what they are and to see them as that, behind the temporal personalities which they are expressing. You can have only pity for their ignorance, and a desire to help them if only one step ahead toward the recovery of what they have lost—their divine memory.

The best way for you to help others is to know that they are essentially divine. The only way you can do this for the masses who do not understand direct spiritual terminology, is through goodwill. No matter whether it be the worst criminal or the greatest saint, both are equally deserving of your goodwill. That is the first active expression of true religion. Goodwill will not be limited—you cannot reserve it for the good and hide it from the bad. Therefore the second manifestation of real religion is tolerance.

Tolerance means understanding the plan behind the universe. And that plan involves the evolution of all creatures. Just as matter has evolved out of Primal Light, so human beings themselves must grow and evolve amid stumbling and falling. They are all standing on different rungs of a ladder, and if they are on the bottom rung today, they will later be at the top. So we must be patient. Nature has tremendous patience. She waited millions of years to bring you into being as a human, and she is willing to wait millions of years to make you perfect.

So, if Nature, which is only an expression of God, has such tremendous patience, you can begin to copy her in your relations toward your fellow human beings, and no matter how they may act toward you, try to have a little of that patience which is tolerance. Tolerance should extend to everything, but this does not mean that we should say: “All right, if this town is being managed by a gang of criminals, let them manage it; we shall be tolerant of them.” If fate has put you in a position where you have a public service to perform, whether it be the humblest duty of voting or whether it be acting as governor of a state, you must do your duty and see that order and justice are available for all. Goodwill and tolerance must be combined with common sense.

The third essential is hope. Hope means that you know, or at least have a tremendous faith, that behind the worst conditions and circumstances there is still a divine plan working. You know, amid the blackest despairs of yourself and mankind, God’s will is being done. Browning said: “God’s in His Heaven, all’s right with the world.” All’s right with the world—yes, in the highest interpretation, because God is everywhere; He has not deserted us, and whatever happens is for the ultimate evolution of mankind.

If you have faith in a divine plan in back of all things—which includes your own life as well—you will maintain an unbroken hope. No matter how desperate things may seem with yourself or with the world, still you must hope and hold on, knowing that the wheel will turn. It must turn. The worst experiences are sometimes means of completing unseen good, and the hardest sufferings have a positive and constructive element behind them.

Our life is simply a spiritual education, and suffering is part of this. We must keep up hope, whether we suffer or whether the world suffers, and realize that nothing can endure permanently. All suffering must come to an end, as night ends when dawn arrives.

Hope also means believing in the presence of a divine power which is here to help you if you want it. If you want divine power you must look for it. It may not always help you in your own way, but you may be sure of this: if you approach it rightly, without dictating, it will help you.

Now we come to the fourth and last of the determinants of real religion, and that is service. Not in the sense that we should run about and fuss and make ourselves a nuisance to everybody. We must reach an inner dedication, a desire to be constructive in life, and to do something worthwhile for mankind, no matter how small the service be, how limited the scope. You must learn that we are all one in origin and you should express this on the material plane through goodwill and an inner attitude of service. I deliberately say “inner,” because it is for each individual person, according to the circumstances in which destiny has placed him, to find out how or whether the material expression will have to come; but the inner attitude will be the same for all, and that is dedication to the higher powers to serve mankind.

What form the outer service may take does not matter. You may be a labourer, and your field of usefulness very limited. If you have the right spirit you will find that it will not matter what you do, but how you do it, because the attitude you take toward your work and the efficiency with which you try to do it will be the expression of your religion. You may be hired help or the president of a republic, and still your inner attitude will be the same.

Whether you have a big canvas to work on or a small one is not your affair. That is given to you by destiny. But the inner attitude is your affair. This self-reliance is the only true worship for mankind. All other religions are but ladder rungs leading up to this supreme knowledge.

We are living today in an age wherein the psychic forces and the mental forces which are hidden behind the scenes of evolution, are extremely active in stirring the strong emotions and passions of mankind. Because destiny has ordained that the accounts of nations shall be settled, these accounts have to be paid off, and whether they are paid off in full or only partially depends entirely upon them. By a change of heart and mental attitude, half of the evil destiny could be swept away at once. But if we cannot change or do not understand the need of a change, then the blind forces of destiny must go on and do their work.

To achieve this settlement of destiny, everything which is hidden is being brought out, everything that is at the bottom is coming to the surface, and we see some things in the soul of mankind which are fine, but also many things which are ugly and even ghastly.

Because this is a closing period, a transition from one age to another, the psychic forces for good and for evil are more active and more open than ever before. So you may see many things that you will disapprove of, and people may say or do things that you intensely dislike. The pressure on the mind of humanity today brings about either active like or active dislike, love or hatred, and it almost forces mankind into two camps, each actively hating the other.

The blind psychic forces are trying to reproduce their own conditions on this material plane; they have created a world divided into these two camps, each actively hating the other. It does not matter what political names they give to these camps. What is important psychologically is that half of mankind is being urged to hate the other half.

How can we be tolerant, you may ask, under such conditions? Here again, we must use common sense, and above all wisdom. Jesus once said, “Be ye harmless as doves, but wise as serpents.” He definitely meant this to apply to conditions such as those under which we are living today. When you find yourself face to face with an individual or with a group who represents the destructive forces in Nature, you must then apply the second half of Jesus’ counsel and be as wise as a serpent. When you are with those who represent the constructive side, then you can afford to be as harmless as a dove.

Always be tolerant inwardly, understanding that the hidden forces are expressing themselves in the only way in which they can express themselves. They are blind and destructive because life and experience have brought them to that point. So you must pity them in their ignorance, and to that extent be tolerant. But if duty of any sort forces you into active relationship with them and you must come to some decision and action, then you must be as wise as a serpent, and do what your good sense dictates. In this way you will not do violence to your tolerance, but within your tolerance you will resolutely perform your duty.

If you realize what the essentials of religion are, you will find all that you need to know. If you must play your part in society, or go through the rituals of orthodox religion, you may do that. But the real religion is beyond these things. It is not only real but sane, because it demands nothing from you which intelligence cannot accept. It demands no blind adherence to dogmas which even the merest schoolboy senses to be untrue, nor does it demand allegiance to customs and habits which are antiquated, futile, empty, and unreasonable. Therefore it is sane and rational, practical religion.

Something within us is unsatisfied and calls for a higher existence. We must seek our own spiritual experience instead of living on the results of others. We must pray, not for more truth, but for more will to live out the truth we already have; not for God to love us, but for ourselves to love God more and to help Him by letting Him act through us, through our bodies. Within the heart dwells the supreme divinity; often we are made to know that it reigns supreme; but unless we live out the will of that divinity in our daily outward lives we are not true disciples of it.