ISBN-13: 9781505682571 / Telugu / Miękka / 2015 / 310 str.
How much is the truth in organized religion? If there is truth in the religions, what is the result in terms of the evolution of man? It may engulf, enmesh truth, but the organized religion itself is not true. Therefore, organized religion is false, it separates man from man. You are a Muslim, I am a Hindu, another is a Christian or a Buddhist and we are wrangling, butchering each other. Is there any truth in that? We are not discussing religion as the pursuit of truth, but we are considering if there is any truth in organized religion. We are so conditioned by organized religion to think there is truth in it that we have come to believe that by calling oneself a Hindu, one is somebody, or one will find God. How absurd, sir; to find God, to find reality, there must be virtue. Virtue is freedom, and only through freedom can truth be discovered, not when you are caught in the hands of organized religion, with its beliefs. And is there any truth in theories, in ideals, in beliefs? Why do you have beliefs? Obviously, because beliefs give you security, comfort, safety, a guide. In yourself you are frightened, you want to be protected, you want to lean on somebody, and therefore, you create the ideal, which prevents you from understanding that which is. Therefore, an ideal becomes a hindrance to action.Organized religion demands a complete accounting of all its effects, especially its negative ones. Those negative effects are both psychological and social. Psychologically, all religions as fundamentally generative of illusion. Though they do provide solace, that solace is based on belief in something that is not actually seen as true, and therefore is fundamentally an escape. Our whole social and intellectual structure is based on the idea of gain, of achievement; and when mind and heart are held by the idea of gain, there cannot be true living, there cannot be the free flow of life. Isn't that so? If you are constantly looking to the future, to an achievement, to a gain, to a hope, how can you live completely in the present? How can you act intelligently as a human being? How can you think or feel in the fullness of the present when you are always keeping your eye on the distant future? Through our religion, through our education, we are made as nothing, and being conscious of that nothingness, we want to gain, to succeed. So we constantly pursue teachers, and systems. Religion, the etymological meaning of that word is not very clear, but it's generally accepted, religion to be that which is going on in the world, the Christian religion, the Muslim, the Islamic, the Hindu, the Buddhist and so on, with their temples and mosques and churches or cathedrals and all the rituals that go on inside them, and all the things that are in the temples, in the churches, in the mosques, and follow, having certain faiths, belief, and the repetition of certain phrases, doing puja, rituals and so on, the whole structure of superstitions that generally is what is understood to be religion And what happens to your mind and to your heart when you are merely imitative? Naturally, they wither, do they not? Therefore, emotionally, inwardly, there is no creation, there is no creative response, hence man feels only dullness, emptiness. The deepest crux of these negative effects on the individual may be summed up as a profound loss of freedom. By accepting a belief that one does not oneself actually see as true, the mind is thereby prevented from discovering truth as it actually is. If you discern the falseness of organized belief, that through any particular belief you cannot understand reality, nor through any authority whatsoever can intelligence be awakened, then you as individuals, not as an organized group, will free yourselves from this destructive imposition.