Religion

1. Repeating the name of God, meditation, worship, offering libations in sacred fire, penance--all these are for bringing forth renunciation. The efforts of those who have not attained renunciation are like those of a man who is pulling at oars all the while that the boat is at anchor.

Conversation with Priya Nath Sinha. Recorded in Bengali. Complete Works, 5: 395

2. The only God to worship is the human soul in the human body.

3. Realise religion. That is all there is to do.

4. Real religion is one, but we quarrel with the forms, the symbols, the illustrations.

5. Thinking of God, some weep, some sings, some laugh, some dance, some say wonderful things, but all speak of nothing but God.

6. All who have actually attained any real religious experience never wrangle over the form in which the different religions are expressed. They know that the soul of all religions is the same and so they have no quarrel with anybody just because he or she does not speak in the same tongue.

7. Morality exits first; later religion codifies it.

8. External practices have value only as helps to develop internal purity.

9. Do not criticize others, for all doctrines and all dogmas are good; but show them by your lives that religion is no matter of books and beliefs, but of spiritual realization.

· Only those who have seen it will understand this; but such spirituality can be given to others, even though they be unconscious of the gift.

· Only those who have attained to this power are amongst the great teachers of mankind. They are the powers of light.

10. God is in everything, where else shall we go to find Him?

11. Do not disturb the faith of any. For you must know that religion is not in doctrines.

12. He is in everything, He is everything.

13. We can have no conception of God higher than man, so our God is man, and man is God.

14. GOD is to be worshipped as the one beloved, dearer than everything in this and next life.

15. None but men of great renunciation, none but mighty giants among men, have a right to that Love Divine.

16. Where can we go to find God if we cannot see Him in our own hearts and in every living being.

17. "I am the thread that runs through all these pearls," and each pearl is a religion or even a sect thereof. Such are the different pearls, and God is the thread that runs through all of them; most people, however, are entirely unconscious of it.

18. How can religion or morality begin without renunciation itself?

19. All who have actually attained any real religious experience never wrangle over the form in which the different religions are expressed. They know that the soul of all religions is the same and so they have no quarrel with anybody just because he or she does not speak in the same tongue.

20. It is impossible to find God outside of ourselves. Our own souls contribute all the divinity that is outside of us. We are the greatest temple. The objectification is only a faint imitation of what we see within ourselves.

21. God comes to you in the blind, in the halt, in the poor, in the weak, in the diabolical.

22. The basis of all religions is the same, wherever they are; try to help them all you can, teach them all you can, but do not try to injure them.

23. The whole universe is a symbol, and God is the essence behind.

24. Brahman, this Reality, is unknown and unknowable, not in the sense of agnostic, but because to know Him would be a blasphemy, because you are He already.

25. To be good and to do good-------------------that is the whole of religion.

26. To devote your life to the good of all and to the happiness of all is religion. Whatever you do for your own sake is not religion.

27. True religion is not talk, or doctrines, or theories, nor is it sectarianism. It is the relation between soul and God. Religion does not consist in erecting temples, or building churches, or attending public worship. It is not to be found in books, or in words, or in lectures, or in organizations. Religion consists in realization. We must realize God, feel God, see God, talk to God. That is religion.

28. Realise religion, no talking will do.

29. Try to be pure and unselfish------------------that is the whole of religion.

30. Do not bother your head with religious theories.

31. Do not talk religion.

32. Enter not the door of any organised religion.

33. Seek not, and that is God.

34. As you began in God, you must go back to God.

35. See God in your children.

36. Do not limit God anywhere.

37. See Him in your own soul. That is practical religion.

38. There is one thing which is the world and another which is God; and this distinction is very true.

39. The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature.

40. Unselfishness is God.

41. Everywhere is He.

42. He is all.

43. Truth is my God.

44. Be one with the universe, be one with Him.

45. Religion is the realisation of spirit as spirit.

46. Where there is love, it is He.

47. Religion is the manifestation of the soul nature.

48. Religion is not a thing of imagination but of direct perception.

49. This realisation alone is the soul of religion.

50. The Vedanta says, there is nothing that is not God…………………….The living God is within you, and yet you are building churches and temples and believing all sorts of imaginary nonsense. The only God to worship is the human soul, in the human body. Of course, all animals are temples too, but man is the highest, the Taj Mahal of temples. If I can not worship in that no other temples will be of any advantage.

51. It was the same God, and the different realisations were only degrees and differences of vision.

52. No two persons have the same religion.

53. The religious ideals of the future must embrace all that exists in the world.

54. Talking, talking religion is but little good.

55. A Sannyasi cannot belong to any religion.

56. Do not fight over methods. Look only for realisation and choose the best method you can find to suit you.

57. Religion is the search after the highest ideal.

58. Know that service to these (poor, illiterate, ignorant, and afflicted) alone is the highest religion.

59. What is Religion?

Stand upon the Self, then only can we truly love the world. Take a very, very high stand; knowing our universal nature, we must look with perfect calmness upon all the panorama of the world. It is but baby’s play, and we know that, so cannot be disturbed by it. If the mind is pleased with praise, it will be displeased with blame. All pleasures of the senses or even of the mind are evanescent, but within ourselves is the one true unrelated pleasure, dependent upon nothing. It is perfectly free, it is bliss. The more our bliss is within, the more spiritual we are. The pleasure of the Self is what the world calls religion.

60. Look upon every man, woman, and everyone as God. You can not help anyone; you can only serve; serve the children of the Lord, serve the Lord Himself, if you have the privilege. If the Lord grants that you can help anyone of His children, blessed you are; do not think too much of yourselves. Blessed you are that that privilege was given to you when others had it not. Do it only as a worship. The poor and the miserable are for our salvation, so that we may serve the Lord coming in the shape of the diseased, coming in the shape of the lunatic, the leper, and the sinner.

61. We have wept long enough; no more weeping, but stand on your feet and be men. It is a man-making religion that we want. It is man-making theories that we want. It is man-making education all round that we want. And here is the test of truth-------------------anything that makes you weak physically, intellectually and spiritually, reject as poison; there is no life in it, it cannot be true. Truth is strengthening, Truth is purity, Truth is all knowledge. Truth must be strengthening, must be enlightening, must be invigorating.

62. To him who has nothing in the universe the Lord comes.

63. God is love, and only he who has known God as love can be a teacher of godliness and God to man.

64. Do not search for God in obscure places, for God is there in front of you in millions forms. He who loves creation is serving God…………….Throw away the paraphernalia of worship! Go out and worship man, for God has appeared in the form of man, and to worship man is to serve man and to serve is to toil and labour.

65. The Most Joyful Thing in the World

The Best

RELIGION SHOULD BE THE MOST JOYFUL THING IN THE WORLD, BECAUSE IT IS THE BEST.

66. The field of religion is beyond our senses, beyond even our consciousness. We cannot sense God. Nobody has seen God with his eyes or ever will see; nobody has God in his consciousness. I am not conscious of God, nor you, nor anybody. Where is God? Where is the field of religion? It is beyond the senses, beyond consciousness. Consciousness is only one of the many planes in which we work; you will have to transcend the field of consciousness, to go beyond the senses, approach nearer and nearer to your own centre, and as you do that, you will approach nearer and nearer to God. What is the proof of God? Direct perception, Pratyaksha. The proof of this wall is that I perceive it. God has been perceived that way by thousands before, and will be perceived by all who want to perceive Him. But this perception is no sense-perception at all; it is supersensuous, superconscious, and all this training is needed to take us beyond the senses. By means of all sorts of past work and bondages we are being dragged downwards; these preparations will make us pure and light. Bondages will fall off by themselves, and we shall be buoyed up beyond this plane of sense-perception to which we are tied down, and then we shall see, and hear, and feel things which men in the three ordinary states (viz waking, dream, and sleep) neither feel, nor see, nor hear. Then we shall speak a strange language, as it were, and the world will not understand us, because it does not know anything but the senses. True religion is entirely transcendental. Every being that is in the universe has the potentiality of transcending the senses; even the little worm will one day transcend the senses and reach God. No life will be a failure; there is no such thing as failure in the universe. A hundred times man will hurt himself, a thousand times he will tumble, but in the end he will realise that he is God. We know there is no progress in a straight line. Every soul moves, as it were, in a circle, and will have to complete it, and no soul can go so low but there will come a time when it will have to go upwards. No one will be lost. We are all projected from one common centre, which is God. The highest as well as the lowest life God ever projected, will come back to the Father of all lives. "From whom all beings are projected, in whom all live, and unto whom they all return; that is God.

67. Religion as a science, as a study, is the greatest and healthiest exercise that the human mind can have.

68. It is not much use to talk about religion until one has felt it.

69. Religion is the highest motive power.

70. Religion begins where philosophy ends.

71. The greatest name man ever gave to God is Truth.

72. After so much austerity, I have understood this as the real truth, God is present in every Jiva; there is no other God besides that. ‘Who serves Jiva, serves God indeed’.

73. Each soul is potentially divine.

The goal is to manifest this divinity within, by controlling nature, external and internal.

Do this either by work, or worship, or psychic control, or philosophy----------------by one, or more, or all of these------------------and be free.

This is the whole of religion. Doctrines, or dogmas, or rituals, or books, or temples, or forms, are but secondary details.

74. All who have actually attained any real religious experience never wrangle over the form in which the different religions are expressed. They know that the soul of all religions is the same and so they have no quarrel with anybody just because he or she does not speak in the same tongue.

75. The greatest name man ever gave to God is Truth.

76. All weakness, all bondage is imagination………. Do not weaken! ...stand up and be strong! That is all the religion I know.

77. Even he who has seen only a spook is more spiritual than book-learned pundits.

78. All who have actually attained any real religious experience never wrangle over the form in which the different religions are expressed. They know that the soul of all religions is the same and so they have no quarrel with anybody just because he or she does not speak in the same tongue.

79. Religion gives you nothing new; it only takes off obstacles and lets you see your Self.

80. Don’t bother your head with religious theories.

81. Religion is experience.

82. You must see God. The spirit must be realized, and that is practical religion.

83. Religion goes to the root of matter. If it is right, all is right.

84. A religion does not depend upon knowledge.

85. All religions lead to God.

86. Realisation is real religion, all the rest is only preparation.

87. Religion is a growth.

88. Religion is philosophy concretized through rituals and symbols.

89. The Secret of Religion

The secret of religion lies not in theories but in practice.

90. Learning has no place in religion; for the majority learning is a block in the way.

91. Religion comes with intense self-sacrifice.

92. Doing good to others is one great universal religion.

93. Religion is the manifestation of the natural strength that is in man.

94. Religion is the tie, unity of humanity.

95. To devote your life to the good of all and to the happiness of all is religion. Whatever you do for your own sake is not religion...

96. The whole of religion is our own inner perception.

97. Every religion is an expression, a language to express the same truth, and we must speak to each in his own language.

98. Every man has in him the potentiality of attaining to perfect saintliness.

99. Purity in thought, speech, and act is absolutely necessary for any one to be religious.

100. Altruistic service only is religion.

101. Intellect ends where religion begins.

102. Think of this when you see religion anywhere…….

Religion is of the soul and finds expression through various nations, languages, and customs.

103. All religions and all methods of work and worship lead us to one and the same goal.

104. Religion is one, but its application must be various.

105. Religion alone is all that we have and mean to have.

106. Religion is its own end.