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Why not defend all
religions and end the deep divisions between them?
From:
jagbir singh <www.adishakti.org@gmail.com>
Date: Fri Dec 3, 2004 11:30 am
Subject: Why not defend all religions and end the
deep divisions between them?
Dear Danny,
Please could you send the following message to Jagbir;
Dear Jagbir,
Thank you for your comprehensive and forthright replies to
my questions. There are a few comments I'd like to make to
you on some points if possible; 'No religion has any
monopoly over this Divine
energy.'
'For each of them, when scrutinised closely, is blackened
with sufficient failure to prevent any thinking man from
believing in them. And above all, all three persevere in
making a claim that cannot
possibly be valid and true; that they are, each single one,
the true religion.'
Over the centuries, though, we have seen that the Divine has
made its presence felt in each religion. Each religion has
had miracles and unexplainable events that it can be proven
happened. Does this not mean that the Name of the Divine is
not the most important thing , nor the method of worship?
The Divine has made Itself known and felt to men of all
faiths from time to time. Yet in contradiction, each
religion has had martyrs who have died for refusing to deny
their faith. They died believing that their religion was the
atrue' religion and that the others were false.
Not much has changed if we look at the situation today.
People are still prepared to die for their specific
religion, and to defend it bitterly. Even people who are
able to acknowledge that the God worshipped in all three
religions is the One same God, are reluctant to give up on
their specific religion and all the associated culture that
is attached with it. It would seem therefore that religion
does not only fulfil a
spiritual need, but at the same time creates a social system
to live daily life by. To think of changing one's religion
therefore means much more than just changing of the concept
of what is the Divine. It means turning one's back on
everything that has brought one up to this day, and
beginning everything over again.
What will happen in society if there is a demise of the
present day religious regimes? How can the Truth that the
'last Judgement and Resurrection is not the doomsday End,
but an age of great spiritual
renaissance and the demise of all religious regimes'
be possible without chaos resulting from freedom from the
bonds of cultural restraint imposed by these regimes? Will
these regimes and the apparent security they offer not
have any place at all?
We feel secure about things that we know and are afraid of
the new
and unknown. The very word 'change' can inspire stress and
fear and reluctance. If someone accepts the Truth as you
have stated openly
and clearly, and begins a new life with Self-realisation in
Sahaja yoga, what changes will he face in his life? What are
his new responsibilities
and duties? What will be left behind?
'Sahaja yoga is special because it is the integration of all
religions into a harmonious One. The Great Event for
humanity ensures that all religions and messengers are
accepted and embraced unconditionally.'
Jagbir, you also say that ' religion is a mental thing that
conditions and divides humans.' The Divine essence of
each religion will be united
and the restrictions of the regimes imposed by man on each
religion will be separated and left behind. This would be an
ideal situation, but the nature of man may stand in the way
of this.
As much as religion is a mental thing conditioning and
dividing humans, it also creates a group entity with
boundaries, in which humans take refuge in. Humans seem to
need to belong to a group with specific boundaries. The
paradox of humanity is this, that
while wanting freedom, we need to create constraints and
this is what has happened with religions. How will people be
able to overcome this?
'It bestows on its followers what no religion or guru has
the power to initiate ie; participation in the Last
Judgement and Resurrection that promises both bodily
resurrection[ Kundalini awakening] and spiritual immortality
[moksa]. That is why SY is special. Try it and experience
for yourself what I am talking about.'
I realise that however much is explained to me, nothing can
take the place of personal experience. You are right, to
achieve inner peace I will have to overcome my fears and
trust in my own experience of
what you are describing. Jagbir, thank you for your honesty
and courage.
Best wishes,
Jimmy
Dear Jimmy,
There will be no end to your questions because they are
based on your religious upbringing and conditioning. (You
must always remember that all Christian denominations and
sects today trace their roots from the Catholic Church.)
Just five centuries ago you would have sworn that the Earth
is flat at a time when Eastern mystics had advance knowledge
about the infinite universe, many centuries earlier. While
Christians were seeking the Kingdom of God far, far away the
mystics were exploring it within themselves.
i can continue on and on to expose the glaring ignorance of
religious organizations throughout the dark ages, a tiresome
task that i have no wish to indulge as the are a number of
excellent books on this subject. The one i liked
exposing the Church is Peter de Rosa's, Vicars of Christ:
The Dark Side of the Papacy:
"After Peter, the centuries roll by, full of controversies,
any one of which today would involve immediate recourse to
Rome for a decision ... We have already noted that not a
single Father can find any hint of a Petrine office in the
great biblical texts that refer to Peter. Papal supremacy
and infallibility, so central to the Catholic church today,
are simply not mentioned. Not a single creed, nor confession
of faith, nor catechism, nor passage in patristic writings
contains one syllable about the pope, still less about faith
and doctrine being derived from him.”
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
De Rosa ( Prayers for Pagans and Hypocrites ) is an angry
Catholic. In the worst proselytizing tradition, this devil's
advocate overstates familiar arguments, bludgeoning the
reader with his dossier against the Church. Among De Rosa's
tamer charges: Jesus renounced possessions, but his vicars
celebrate high mass garbed in cloth of gold; the Church has
never lifted strictures against usury, yet the Vatican
operates a bank. De Rosa sweeps through Church history to
parade popes who begat children, popes who fornicated on a
grand scale, popes who married. Then in the second half of
this polemic, he addresses Church teaching, conjoining the
"immaculate conception" doctrine to decrees governing birth
control, abortion, celibacy. The doctrine of papal
infallibility is dealt with, as is Church anti-Semitism
through the ages leading to the Holocaust silence of Pius
XII, the "one man in the world whose witness Hitler feared."
And in wrapping up his catalog of "the sins of the papacy,"
De Rosa virtually dismisses internal reform: "It is not
Catholics but other Christians who chiefly can make the
papacy what it ought to be."
Reed Business Information, Inc.
Bute2
"This book
had me shaking with laughter and trembling with rage—rage
at the misdeeds of the papacy, not the book. It brilliantly
recounts the endless crimes, hypocrisies, errors,
indecencies, murders, debaucheries, illogicalities, idiocies
and fanaticisms of the papacy from the "first pope" to the
present. It is written in a highly engaging and breezy
journalistic style, with more than a dash of humour and wit.
For the most part the author lets the deeds (or rather,
misdeeds) of the Bishops of Rome speak for themselves,
although his own dim view of his subject is abundantly clear
throughout. He is himself a former priest (educated at the
Gregorian University in Rome) who unfolds the theologial
groundlessness of the office of Pope itself, the ethical
depravity of a depressingly high percentage of its
occupants, the religious zealotry of many Popes, and the
laughable absurdity of so many Roman Catholic doctrines such
as Papal Infallibility. The overall effect of this is
devastating for the Papacy, which emerges from the pages of
this book as one fo the most hypocritical, malevolent and
unjustifiable institutions in human history—which is saying
a great deal. The book is the perfect antidote to the awe in
which the office of Pope is held today, and a very welcome
reminder of the dark history of a powerful institution built
on a mountain of absurdities and atrocities that we
all-too-easily forget. De Rosa has done his readers a great
service in putting that history into a single volume without
mincing his words of pulling his punches. Read it and weep."
Bute2 - May
12, 2004
Why Christianity must change or die - A Bishop Speaks
Why Christianity must change or die - Review by Peter A.
Young
Jimmy, read the above two posts to understand what is so
wrong with Christianity. You will learn far more of Lord
Jesus from Shri Mataji than you will ever from all churches
combined. Yes, i mean what i just said - all churches
combined! As long as you do not have your self-realization
and experience kundalini awakening for yourself there will
be no end to your questions, fears and doubts. Again i quote
Swami Vivekananda:
"Religions of the world have become lifeless mockeries. What
the world wants is character. The world is in need fro those
whose life is one burning love, selfless. That love will
make every word tell like thunderbolt. ...
If there is ever to be a universal religion, it must be
one which will have no location in place or time; which will
be infinite like the God it will preach, and whose sun will
shine upon the followers of Krishna and of Christ, on saints
and sinners alike; which will not be Brahminic or Buddhistic,
Christian or Mohammedan, but the sum total of all these, and
still have infinite space fro development; which in its
catholicity will embrace in its infinite arms, and find a
place for, every human being, from the lowest groveling
savage not far removed from the brute, to the highest man
towering by virtues of his head and heart almost above
humanity, making society stand in awe of him and doubt his
human nature. It will be a religion which will have no place
for persecution or intolerance in its polity, which will
recognize divinity in every man and woman, and whose whole
scope, whose whole force, will be centered in aiding
humanity to realize its own true, divine nature.
What I want to propagate is a religion that will be
equally acceptable to all minds; it must be equally
philosophic, equally emotional, equally mystic, and equally
conducive to action. And this combination will be the ideal
of the nearest approach to a universal religion. Would to
God that all men were so constituted that in their minds all
these elements of philosophy, mysticism, emotion, and of
work were equally present in full! That is the ideal, my
ideal of a perfect man. Everyone who has only one or two of
these elements of character, I consider"one-sided"; and
this world is almost full of such"one-sided"men, with
knowledge of that one road only in which they move; and
anything else is dangerous and horrible to them. To become
harmoniously balanced in all these four directions is my
ideal of religion. ...
Hindus accept every religion, praying in the mosque of
the Mohammedans, worshipping before the fire of the
Zoroastrians, and kneeling before the cross of the
Christians, knowing that all the religions, from the lowest
fetishism to the highest absolutism, mean so many attempts
of the human soul to grasp and realize the infinite, each
determined by the conditions of its birth and associations,
and each of them marking a stage of progress. We gather all
these flowers and bind them with the twine of love, making a
wonderful bouquet of worship.
Religion is realization; not talk, nor doctrine, nor
theories, however beautiful they may be. It is being and
becoming, not hearing or acknowledging; it is the whole soul
becoming changed into what it believes."
Jimmy, if
all this does not make you comprehend what centuries of
organized religions have done to divide and control humanity
for their own power and survival i don't see what can
..................... and i have acted in your best
interest. There are other paths to follow, paths that
deliberately avoid meeting each other. In Sahaja Yoga you
have to follow all paths so that their mystical unity and
harmony is revealed. And what is mysticism?
"Mysticism,
in general, a spiritual quest for hidden truth or wisdom the
goal of which is union with the divine or sacred (the
transcendent realm.) Forms of mysticism are found in all
major religions, by analogy in the shamanic and other
ecstatic practices of nonliterate cultures, and in secular
experience.
Although mysticism is often set over against theology and is
said to be more authentic or more subjective or more
impassioned, the two forms of religious thought have in fact
existed side by side, frequently in the same individual. But
this is not the same as saying that a reduction of the
mystical experience to its theological implications does it
justice. On the contrary, the mystical theologians have been
most explicit in their insistence that no theological
systematization can capture or explain the unique experience
of mystical purgation, illumination, and union.” (1994-1998
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.)
In the words of Ramakrishna,
"With
sincerity and earnestness one can realize God through all
religions. The Vaishnavas will realize God, and so will the
Saktas, the Vedantists, and the Brahmos. The Mussalmans and
Christians will realize Him too. All will certainly realize
God if they are earnest and sincere.”How can one ever go
wrong by accepting all religions, understanding all
scriptures and following all prophets? Aren't SYs with
sincerity and earnestness realizing the same God Almighty
through all religions? Can you name me any organization that
does just that?
According to www.hindunet.org the "Hindu view of the
Ultimate Reality is expressed in the following revelation of
the Rig Veda, the oldest Hindu scripture:
"Ekam sat vipraha, bahudha vadanti." "Truth is one, the wise
call It by various names."
This doctrine recognizes that the Ultimate Reality possesses
infinite potential, power and intelligence, and therefore
cannot be limited by a single name or form. Thus, Hindus
view the Ultimate Reality as having two aspects: impersonal
and personal. The impersonal aspect of the Ultimate Reality
is called Nirguna Brahman in Hindu scriptures. Nirguna
Brahman has no attributes and, as such, is not an object of
prayer, but of meditation and knowledge. This aspect of the
Ultimate Reality is beyond conception, beyond reasoning and
beyond thought.”
The same Supreme Divinity or Brahman resides within all
humans! The Gospel of John 17:20-26 reflects the same
Oneness that is the foundation of Hinduism:
Jesus prayed for his
disciples, and then he said. "I ask not only on behalf of
these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me
through their word, that they may all be one. As you,
Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us,
so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The
glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they
may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that
they may become completely one, so that the world may know
that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have
loved me. Father, I desire that those also, whom you have
given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which
you have given me because you loved me before the foundation
of the world.
"Righteous Father, the world
does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you
have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will
make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me
may be in them, and I in them."
1. Mundaka Upanishad 1:1:7-8
As the web issues out of the spider, and is withdrawn;
As plants sprout from the earth,
As hair grows from the body,
Even so, the sages say,
This universe springs from the deathless Atman [=
Brahman].
The source of life.
2.
Shvetashvatara Upanishad 4:5
From
Brahman's divine power comes forth
All this magical show of name and form;
Of you and me,
Which casts the spell of pain and pleasure.
Only when we pierce through this magic veil
Do we see the One who appears as many.
3.
Shvetashvatara Upanishad 4:11
Know
Brahman to be the supreme magician
Who has become boy and girl, bird and beast.
4.
Mundaka Upanishad 3:1:2-3
As
long as we think we are the jiva,
We feel attached and fall into sorrow.
But realize that you are the Atman,
And you will be freed from sorrow.
When you realize that you are the Atman,
Supreme source of light, supreme source of love,
You transcend the duality of life
And enter into the Unitive State.
5.
Taitiriya Upanishad 2:7:1
When
one realizes the Atman,
In whom all life is one, changeless, nameless,
formless,
Then one fears no more.
Until we realize the unity of life we life in fear.
For the mere scholar who knows not the Atman,
His separateness becomes fear itself.
6.
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 2:4:12
As a
lump of salt thrown in water dissolves
And cannot be taken out again,
Though wherever we taste the water it is salty,
Even so, beloved, the separate self [= the jiva] dissolves
In the sea of pure consciousness [= the Atman =
Brahman], infinite and immortal.
7.
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4:4:5
The Atmanis indeed Brahman.
But through ignorance people identify it with
Intellect, mind, senses, passions [= the jiva],
And the elements of earth, water, air, space, and fire.
This is why the Atman is said to consist of this and
that,
And appears to be everything.
8.
Chandogya Upanishad 6:2:2-3
In the beginning was only Being [= Brahman].
One without a second.
Out of himself he brought forth the cosmos
And entered into everything in it.
There is nothing that does not come from him.
Of everything Brahman is the inmost Atman.
He is the truth; he is the Atman supreme.
And you are that, Shvetaketu; you are that (tat tsam asi).
9.
Kena Upanishad 1:3:4
Brahman our eyes cannot see, nor words express;
He cannot be grasped even by the mind.
We do not know, we cannot understand,
Because he is different from the known
And he is different from the unknown.
Thus have we heard from the illumined ones.
Sahaja Yoga is about realizing Nirguna Brahman through
meditation and knowledge since the Ultimate Reality is
beyond conception, beyond reasoning and beyond thought.
Since this mystical Kingdom of God (Sahasrara) is within you
can never attain Nirguna Brahman in external Hindu temples,
Christian churches, Muslim mosques, Buddhist pagodas, Sikh
gurdwaras and Jewish synagogues. If God is One why then have
they been fighting and killing each for millennia?
The Adi Shakti has revealed that He is One and the same. The
Great Event ordained for all humanity compels those taking
part that the Divine is One and the same.
warmest regards,
jagbir
"So
the Time has come for all of us to understand that all
religions are One. They are part and parcel of One God and
that all Incarnations are supporting each other, nourishing
each other and caring for each other. There is complete
concord between them. There is no way you will see they will
oppose each other. Never!“
Shri
Bhavanagamya Devi
Delhi, India — February 3,1983
Bhavanagamya [113rd]: Realised by mental effort (called
dhyana
"Sahaja
Yoga is more concerned with the Mahalakshmi Power,
evolutionary power, which also integrates all the three
powers at the point beyond the Brahmarandra
(top of
the head).
With this integration, the Sahaja Yoga discovery proves that
the human being is a perfected instrument, a computer built
in various period which, when put to the mains, starts
giving information.
It proves that all religions are living flowers on the tree
of life
and they describe the Truth. All Incarnations are true. All
this
can be proven at the time of Kundalini awakening. It creates
a human awareness, which can have a dialogue with the
Unconscious.“
Shri
Mataji Nirmala Devi
London. October 12, 1976
"If
one considers the absurdity and the implications and the
after-effects of many otherwise apparently rational
conclusions, one has to say that rationality, though we are
very proud and boast of it, it is not such a responsible
vehicle for wisdom. In view of the unreliable results of
applied rationality, it is clearly wrong to have such firm
ideas and beliefs based solely on rational theories. There
is no final answer to fundamental questions through the use
of rationality alone, because discussion shows that each
view might be partially right. One definitely cannot say
that this one is fully right and the other is fully wrong.
In our wisdom, we must understand that the Truth in effect
is absolute and not relative or variable as we commonly
experience it, like the six blind men
(a Jew,
Christian, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist and Hindu)
describing an elephant from six different angles: one,
holding the trunk, says: "It is long like a snake.";
another, feeling a leg, says: "It is massive like a tree."
Each has a very firm and indeed justified faith in the
correctness of what he has found, but each contradicts the
other, because each has only a partial and relative view.
Of
course, rationality is not even as firmly anchored in
Reality as the blind man's perception and who may not even
be in contact with the elephant, but perhaps indeed the
trunk of a tree, a piece of hanging rope, or a poisonous
snake. Unless you have access to the Absolute Truth, which
is a totality, unless you can see the whole elephant, how
can you decide whether your view is the right one?“
Shri
Mataji Nirmala Devi
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