"Unfortunately, most people, the more they think, the more they believe themselves superior ... and many people believe that their way of thinking is the best; they cannot understand that there are always several ways of thinking about the same subject."

The first part of the spiritual journey should properly be called psychological, rather than spiritual, because it involves peeling away the myths and illusions that have misinformed us.

The great elemental secrets of life are so simple that few see them. People are complicated, intellects are complicated, not life. Tremendous teleological speculations are not necessary to understand the simple truths of the Spirit. Paul Brunton.

The minute you embrace a belief system you have entered a windowless cell, so to speak. You are required to leave your curiosity, intuition, will, choice and common sense at the door and are allowed to bring in only a mindless willingness to acquiesce to whatever you are told.

Whatever your concept of 'God' is, you can be absolutely sure of one thing......... it is wrong! 'God'........... is beyond human concept. Love, Beauty, Truth, Wisdom, etc, these are qualities of 'God'.........'God' can be believed in, but cannot be known, other than by Self identification. 'I' and my 'Father' are 'One'.

No man should be so narrow minded as to believe, that his own culture, is the only culture, capable of producing scripture.   Thoreau.

Religion is merely the doorknob to the Spiritual Life.  You need only to turn it to enter, and once inside you no longer need the knob.

" The spiritual is not something that descends from above, or comes from without in any way whatsoever. Rather it is an illumination that is to be discovered within. "

God is not found in the soul by adding anything, but by a process of subtraction. Eckhart.

Whoever deeply searches out the truth and will not be deceived by paths untrue, shall turn unto himself his inward gaze, shall bring his wandering thoughts in circle home and teach his heart that what it seeks abroad, it holds in its own treasure chests within. ~ Boethius (A.D. 480-524)

The 'Kingdom of Heaven' is within. Jesus.

Life is (or should be) a constant metamorphosis from one stage to another.

I do not prefer one religion or philosophy to another, I have no sympathy with the bigotry and ignorance which make transient and partial and puerile distinctions between one mans form of faith and anothers,....as Christian and heathen. I pray to be delivered from narrowness, partiality, exaggeration, bigotry.  To the philosopher all sects, all nations, are alike.  I like Brahma, Hari, Buddha, Tao, the Great Spirit, as well as God.  There is never a creed so wrong, but that faith can make right.  Thoreau.

There wouldn't be such a thing as counterfeit gold if there were no real gold somewhere.

When you want to test the depths of a stream, don't use both feet.

I deal with the truths which recommend themselves to me,....please me,....not those merely which any system has voted to accept.  You shall observe what occurs in your latitude, I in mine.  Some institutions,....most institutions indeed,....have had a divine origin.  But of most that we see prevailing in society to-day, nothing but the form, the shell, is left;  the life is extinct, and there is nothing divine in them....Thoreau.

"That which is called the Christian Religion existed among the ancients and never did not exist, from the beginning of the human race until Christ came in the flesh, at which time the true religion which already existed began to be called Christianity.".....St Augustine.

Only those can help in counsel or conduct, who have not made a party pledge to defend this or that creed.

It is remarkable that the highest intellectual mood which the world tolerates is the perception of the truth of the most ancient revelations, now in some respects out of date; but any direct revelation, any original thoughts, it hates like virtue.  So far as thinking is concerned, surely original thinking is the divinest thing.  We check and repress the divinity that stirs within us, to fall down and worship the divinity that is dead without us.

"To know oneself, at the deepest level, is simultaneously to know God: this is the secret of gnosis.... Self-knowledge is knowledge of God; the Self and the divine are identical."...... Gnostic principle.

When we have broken our god of tradition, and ceased from our god of rhetoric, then may God fire the heart with his presence.

Unbelief itself is a religion, with its own form of belief.

For man cannot find his true place in the great scheme of human life until he has ennobled and enriched his nature with the consciousness of his divinity.

If the individual can rise in the strength of his divine heritage, the power of his spiritual rights, then comes a clearing of the mind, a lifting of the veil that hides the truth.

Antiquated theories of religion and life are being discredited, long-settled beliefs and customs are being abandoned, and there has risen in the world a great compelling force which is demonstrating the poverty of man's religious life.

Every man worships his idea of power and goodness, or God, and the Westerner is just as much an idolater as the Oriental.

God builds his temple in the heart, on the ruins of churches and religions.

Religion cannot rise above the state of the votary. But is not indifferentism as bad as superstition?

In our large cities, the population is godless, materialized, -- no bond, no fellow-feeling, no enthusiasm.  These are not men, but hungers, thirsts, fevers, and appetites walking. There is faith in science, in meat, and wine, in wealth, in computers, in satellites, the stock market, jet propulsion, and in public opinion, but not in divine causes.

There are all kinds of theological differences between a Christian, a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Moslem, and a Jew. However there are absolutely no differences between a devout Christian, a devout Hindu, a devout Buddhist, a devout Moslem, and a devout Jew. There is never a creed so wrong but that faith can make it right.

The religion which is to guide and fulfill the present and coming ages, whatever else it be, must be intellectual.   "There are two things," said Mahomet, "which I abhor, the learned in his infidelities, and the fool in his devotions." Our times are impatient of both, and specially of the last.

The multitude of false churches accredits the true religion.  It is my belief that it is entirely unimportant what God one worships, monotheistic or polytheistic:  what is important is that belief should produce the true spirit of devotion in the life of the worshiper.  In modern terms, what is important is that religion be "efficient," that is, that it produce results, and I may say that modern monotheism is less efficient than when men believed in the spirituality of trees and rocks, and mountains and rivers.

The effect of every action is measured by the depth of the sentiment from which it proceeds.

It is a sad reflection, that many men hardly have any religion at all; and most men have none of their own: For that which is the religion of their education and up-bringing, and not of their judgment, is the religion of another, and not theirs.

This one thing you must learn; there are no hard and fast rules, what is right for one person or culture or generation, etc, is not necessarily right for another, and the same applies to wrongness.

The true definition of 'Spirituality' is 'Reality'; There is the least amount of reality, where the senses report the most, and vice versa!!

"In our definitions, we grope after the 'spiritual' by describing it as invisible.  The true meaning of 'spiritual' is 'real'; that law which executes itself, which works without means, and which cannot be conceived as not existing."

Europe has always owed to oriental genius, its divine impulses.

Form the habit of fronting the facts, and not dealing with it at second hand, through the perceptions of somebody else.

Most religious adherents are trained to believe, not to know. Belief can be manipulated.... but knowledge is dangerous.

If Nature is our mother, is not God much more?  God should come into our thoughts with no more parade than a light breeze to our ears.  Only strangers approach him with ceremony.

The Orientals are more serenely and thoughtfully religious than the Hebrews.  They have perhaps a purer, more independent and impersonal knowledge of God.  Their religious books describe the first inquisitive and contemplative access to God;  The Hebrew bible a conscientious return, a grosser and more personal repentance.  Repentance is not a free and fair highway to God.  A wise man will dispense with repentance.  It is shocking and passionate.  God prefers that you approach him thoughtful, not penitent, though you are the chiefest of sinners.  It is only by forgetting yourself, that you draw near to him.  One cannot too soon forget his errors and misdemeanors; for to dwell long on them  is to add to the offense.  Not to grieve long for any action, but to go immediately and do freshly and otherwise, subtracts so much from the wrong.

The calmness and gentleness with which the Oriental philosophers approach and discourse on forbidden themes is admirable.

The Vedas contain a sensible account of God.

The religion and philosophy of the Hebrews are those of a wilder and ruder tribe, wanting the civility and intellectual refinements and subtlety of the Orientals.  With the Orientals, virtue is an intellectual exercise, not a social and practical one.  It is a knowing, not a doing.

Beware the man of one book....St Thomas Acquinas.

Just because something is tradition doesn't make it right.

Tradition is what you resort to when you don't have the ability or the courage to think for yourself.

A cult is a religion with no political power.

Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.--Mark Twain

The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths the mind travels.  How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the the ruts of tradition and conformity.

The way of the rugged and simple man is no  more the Divine Way than that which fits the needs of the highly cultured and aristocratic spirit.  In fact when it comes to the final showing, the real 'snobs' in this world are not the highly cultured and aristocratic people, but a certain only partially finished group who feed their own pride by glorifying crudity, and insist that the crude way is the best way.  The spiritual teacher will do what is necessary to meet all people, and if they require crudity, he will manifest through crudity, but this does not mean that he despises finished and polished workmanship nor those who prefer that truth should be offered in a beautiful setting.

In the final analysis worship becomes recognition, one glimpses the source.   Glimpsing the source leaves no doubts.  You re-.....cognize your SELF.   I and my Father are one.

Rather let the breath of new life be breathed by you through the forms already existing. A whole popedom of forms, one pulsation of virtue can uplift and vivify.

We should learn something new every day, even if it is the discovery that what we learned yesterday was wrong.

Truth will never be the result of a majority vote, all great truths began as blasphemies.

The smallest acquisition of truth or of energy, in any quarter, is so much good to the commonwealth of souls.

It is, indeed, a question whether the great corporate religious organizations have not been more of a curse than a blessing with the respect to the mission of the very Saviours in whose names they are formed.  There is no great religion that has not effected such damage in greater or less degree.  So there is an ever-recurrent need for new Lights and new Saviours to arise who reaffirm that ancient and unchanging Truth, but who, first, must needs tear down the extraneous and weedy growth which chokes the real message of earlier Sages and Saviours.  Then the message must be dressed in a new garment and sent forth to leaven the hearts of men until, in time, it too suffers the old fate and is obscured in turn.

With few rare exceptions, spirituality both in the east and the west is doubtless decadent.

Our religion vulgarly stands on numbers. Whenever the appeal is made, no matter how indirectly, to numbers, Proclamation is then and there made, that religion is not. He that finds God a sweet, enveloping thought to himself, never counts his company. The faith that stands on authority is not faith. The reliance on authority measures the decline of religion, the withdrawal of the soul.

But should not a society of clergymen, for example, or ecclesiastical synod, or a venerable presbytery, be entitled to commit itself by oath to certain set of doctrines, in order to secure for all time a constant guardianship over each of its members, and through them over the people? I reply that this is quite impossible. Any contract of this kind, is absolutely null and void, even if it is ratified by the supreme power, by Imperial Diets, and the most solemn peace treaties. One age cannot enter into an alliance on another, to put the next age in a position where it would be impossible for it to extend and correct its knowledge, particularly on such important matters, or to make any progress whatsoever in enlightenment. If it now asked whether we at present live in an enlightened age, the answer is: No, but we do live in an age of enlightenment. As things are at present, we still have a long way to go before men as a whole can be in a position (or can even be put in a position) of using their own understanding confidently and well in religious matters, without outside guidance.

To aim to convert a man by miracles, is a profanity of the soul. A true conversion, is now, as always, to be made, by the receptions of beautiful sentiments.

When people cease to experience God, they are forced to believe in him, implied Tillich – and belief is a commodity subject to loss. The inner sense of God is a quality of the deeper psyche – and not of reason. With the ascendancy of reason over the psychological awareness of archetypal truth, the way for rationalism and ultimately for materialism and atheism became wide open. Thus, say Jung, and agrees Tillich, the West was lost.

Religion has become a crutch.... in place of.... the experience of God.

My problem with science is it's inability to generate moral, ethical, and spiritual values, and to fathom the source of these values.

God has granted to every nation a prophet in his own tongue.

Religion is like a candle inside a multi-colored lantern. Everyone looks through a particular color, but the candle is always the same.

God is like a mirror. The mirror never changes. But everyone who looks at it sees a different face.

"Seeing death as the end of life, is like seeing the horizon as the end of the ocean."

To be disrespectfull in any way to another persons form of religion, simply displays how little you have got out of your own.

Ultimate reality has many appearances and it is characteristic that each of the religions of mankind takes one of these characteristics and develops it, finds in it a truth, a particlar value, and then goes further......and this is where the evil comes in.....says that this is the only way, this is the whole truth; and out of that there has grown many wars and religious wars.....the cause of much if not most of the evil in the world. Now it is entirely possible that there has never been a religion that had its influence upon mankind that did not have a certain truth in it, but it is also true that when any religion is regarded as exclusively valid it becomes a source of evil. Franklin Merrell-Wolff.

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.Buddha.

The spiritual is inclusive. It is the deepest sense of belonging and participation. We all participate in the spiritual at all times, whether we know it or not. There's no place to go to be separated from the spiritual, so perhaps one might say that the spiritual is that realm of human experience which religion attempts to connect to, is through dogma and practice. Sometimes it succeeds and sometimes it fails. Religion is a bridge to the spiritual ~ but the spiritual lies beyond religion. Unfortunately. In seeking the spiritual we may become attached to the bridge rather than crossing over it.

As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world… as in being able to remake ourselves. Mahatma Ghandi.

The spiritual journey does not consist of arriving at a new destination where a person gains what he did not have, or becomes what he is not. It consists in the dissipation of one's own ignorance concerning oneself and life, and the gradual growth of that understanding which begins the spiritual awakening. The finding of God is a coming to one's self. Aldous Huxley.

There is nothing that will not reveal its secrets to you.....if you love it enough. (this includes God.)

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and the sun and the animals; despise riches, give alms to everyone who asks; stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others; hate tyrants; argue not concerning God; have patience and indulgence toward the people… re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book; dismiss what insults your very soul, and your very flesh shall become a great poem. ~ Walt Whitman

The spiritual journey is individual, highly personal. It can't be organized or regulated. It isn't true that everybody should follow one path. Listen to your own truth. ~ Baba Ram Dass

The man of contemplation walks alone. He lives desireless amidst the objects of desire. The Atman is his eternal satisfaction. He sees Atman present in all things. ~ Shankara

RELIGION an excellent overview.

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