 137. Religions (Cults) |
"The Truth of All Religions"
The living God is simply and eternally "present." The living God is self-revealing, or always shown. The problem is that human individuals are not themselves always or profoundly "present" (the true and most prior reality the, here and now of consciousness) to the "living reality." Human individuals are commonly involved in a chaos or self-conscious motives and self-possessed distractions. Therefore, if we fail to be intuitively and directly-present to the moment to moment revelation of the living God, we will also fail to be truly religious or spiritual in our understanding of human existence and our participation in the higher way of man (mankind).
-Franklin Jones
All religions are alternative religions because they are founded on the thought "concepts" of the separative psychological egoic mental structure which is separative from God-self-realization.
GOD realization, and SELF realization (the same thing) is not a religion. Being "natural" is not a religion. Being "sane" is not a religion.
True and False Religion
People who irrationally accept various religious beliefs and so adhere exclusively (and often fanatically) to a particular historical cult of belief are engaged in false religion. This is not true merely of the so-called "cults," or non-establishment religious groups, that characterize one aspect of the contemporary scene. Rather, it is true of all conventional religious institutions, and it is especially true of the broadly based "establishment" of religious institutions that proliferate in the entire world.
True religion is not a matter of uninspected belief, or fanatical adherence to an historical system of objective beliefs that excludes all other systems of belief from the right to Truth. True religion is a higher human process. It is a process enacted in the body-mind of the individual and in the communities of all individuals who are consciously involved in that same process. It is a process that can only begin if it is founded on profound self-critical consideration and insight, followed by conversion, or release, of the entire body-mind into the Life-Power, the All-Pervading and ultimately Divine Energy, that may be directly and bodily experienced and also clearly revealed to the intuitive mind.
True religion is the mechanism in Nature whereby Man evolves and transcends himself, both individually and collectively (as a species and as a cultural and social order). Therefore, true religion transcends the chaos of conventional and exoteric cultic beliefs. It transcends even all of the sects and offshoots of the so-called "great religions," such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism.
The False Viewpoint of Religious and Spiritual Cultism
I don't believe there is stupidity, delusion, and casual ill-will manifested anywhere more than in the domains of religion and spiritual cultism. Those who would truly live as a sacrifice in God must struggle every day to maintain a level of wit and good humor in the face of ceaseless disheartening confrontations with believers and aspirants in the various traditions. There is a righteous kind of sheer and pious madness that seems almost always to infect those who soul be the enlightened minds and friends of mankind.
The reason for this is that religious and spiritual persuasions do not commonly require intelligence, freedom from illusions, or a fundamentally moral relationship to the world. Most often, just the opposite is true. Religious and spiritual cults and institutions typically thrive on human neurosis, fear, gullibility, childishness, amoral self-possession, and the need for fascinating experiential consolations of either a bodily or mental kind. The conventional religious and spiritual point of view is oriented toward the primitive egoic search for indefinite independent or personal survival. It is the preservation and glamorization of self that is commonly served by the conventions of institutional and mystical grace. Wisdom barely enters into the whole affair, and the
