Religion as a Means to an End
I was speaking to an Islamic scholar of my acquaintance (I have a few friends, Iranian Sufis, one lives in Canada, one in Australia, who I approached to teach me. They're pretty cool) about the politics of religion. The people who establish religion as a social / political order rather than religion as a method of the perfecting of the total human, often sacrifice the spiritual principles for political expediency. Thus, the outer appearance of the religion becomes a false god that they worship. Their morality becomes an end, rather than a means to an end.
Every religious body sooner or later faces a choice: stick with the spiritual principles of the religion, or sacrifice them for political expediency. Most go for the expediency - and the history of the Catholic Church will provide an excellent model to study this phenomenon.
And one of the things they present to the world is a false morality.
Most people lost sight of the real reasons why religions say do this and don't do that. Its more specifically like instructions for a spiritual yoga that one does with one's whole life. EVERYTHING has a reason, and EVERYTHING is done in order to attain a specific result. But most people don't know this.
In fact, a Hindu writer named P. Ramanathan once wrote a book that explained that the Gospels were actually instructions for a specific type of yoga - and were NOT intended for anyone except a small group of people.
Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad all saw it coming. They warned us every step of the way and told us how to avoid the pitfalls. Look at chapter 7 of the Book of Matthew in the Bible. Jesus described these nutcases, and the fate they made for themselves. In fact, Muhammad once said "There will come people who look like the people of hell fire, but they are really the people of paradise; and some will come who have the appearance of the people of paradise, but they are destined for hell".
And who are we to argue with Jesus and Muhammad?
In fact I would even go so far as to say that end of any religion is, ultimately, to remove the barriers that separate us from a direct experience with, and union with, Divinity. This is really the whole purpose of human life. It is a mistake to see science, religion, art, philosophy, and mysticism as being separate things. They are not. Remove - or destroy - the artificial barriers between them and an absolute truth becomes less inaccessible.
Every religious body sooner or later faces a choice: stick with the spiritual principles of the religion, or sacrifice them for political expediency. Most go for the expediency - and the history of the Catholic Church will provide an excellent model to study this phenomenon.
And one of the things they present to the world is a false morality.
Most people lost sight of the real reasons why religions say do this and don't do that. Its more specifically like instructions for a spiritual yoga that one does with one's whole life. EVERYTHING has a reason, and EVERYTHING is done in order to attain a specific result. But most people don't know this.
In fact, a Hindu writer named P. Ramanathan once wrote a book that explained that the Gospels were actually instructions for a specific type of yoga - and were NOT intended for anyone except a small group of people.
Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad all saw it coming. They warned us every step of the way and told us how to avoid the pitfalls. Look at chapter 7 of the Book of Matthew in the Bible. Jesus described these nutcases, and the fate they made for themselves. In fact, Muhammad once said "There will come people who look like the people of hell fire, but they are really the people of paradise; and some will come who have the appearance of the people of paradise, but they are destined for hell".
And who are we to argue with Jesus and Muhammad?
In fact I would even go so far as to say that end of any religion is, ultimately, to remove the barriers that separate us from a direct experience with, and union with, Divinity. This is really the whole purpose of human life. It is a mistake to see science, religion, art, philosophy, and mysticism as being separate things. They are not. Remove - or destroy - the artificial barriers between them and an absolute truth becomes less inaccessible.