Religion, which in its most correct definition can only be called as a singular noun, has been turned into a plural noun - thanks to the corrupted definition we have given to it.
For us, religion means Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Sikhism, etc. and therefore we go on saying things like, “All religions are equal,” “Respect other religions,” and so on. When someone starts wearing a cross necklace and going to the church every Sunday, we say he has adopted Christian religion. When someone starts going to the Hajj and fasting during the Ramadan month, we say he has adopted Islam religion. When someone wears a tilak on his forehead and worships the statue of Krishna, we say he has adopted Hindu religion. When someone wears a turban and kirpan, we say he is from Sikh religion.
In the name of religion, people have been gulping in hundreds and hundreds of belief systems and performing hundreds of meaningless rituals and duties. What is today’s religion except belief systems and rituals? What is today’s religion except changing your attire? Nothing. It’s all belief systems and rituals with no hint or discussion of Truth anywhere.
Going to the Church every Sunday can make you a Christian, but not religious.
Going to the Hajj can make you a Muslim, but not religious.
Worshipping the statues of deities can make you a Hindu, but not religious.
Wearing a turban and kirpan can make you Sikh, but not religious.
What is religion? And what it means to be religious?
Under any definition or circumstances, whatever is happening today in the name of religion is not religion. It’s irreligion masquerading as religion. We are worshipping irreligion and telling ourselves that we are very religious people. It’s a proof of the ignorance and stupidity of humanity that it first thinks irreligion to be religion, and then start blaming religion for its own stupidity.
There’s this Hindi word called Dharma, and I think that sounds more appropriate while describing what religion actually is. Let’s understand it with an example: It’s the dharma of sugar to sweeten everything it’s put into, it’s the dharma of fire to burn everything coming its way, and when sugar stops sweetening and the fire stops burning, it would mean they have lost their dharma and become irreligious.
Similarly, it’s the dharma of man to get his consciousness level to such heights that all the boundaries and limits of mind and body cease to exist, to get himself into his natural state of limitless being - out of space and time. Anyone who works on that is religious.
Now compare that to everything that looks religious today. All of the religious structures are established to make sure that man stays in bondage. They all preach you to do this ritual, to go on that pilgrimage, to recite that mantra, to dress a certain way, to do everything under the sun but not to look inwards, because looking inwards mean being religious and if man truly becomes religious, all these social establishments and structures that work to enslave man and get the priest to the top would come crashing down.
A person who is unaware of his true nature as an eternal being is irreligious not matter how many deities he worships and how many pilgrimages he goes to, a person ignorant of his true identity is irreligious no matter how many mantras he remembers and how long his streak of going to the temple/church/mosque is - and that’s the vast majority of humanity today.
We are so busy appearing to be religious that we have lost all the understanding of what religion actually is.
Religion has been preached in such a phony way down the centuries that many people have come to believe that the world would have been much better without religion. It’s no wonder that more and more people are labeling themselves as “non-religious” and want religion to be eradicated from the world because we have committed so many atrocities under the name of religion.
Religion is the biggest scapegoat.
When you preach ideologies and belief systems as religion, you are bound to lead to the world where people are separated and divided under different name tags, and wherever there is division, there is conflict and violence. All the so-called religions today know nothing other than ideologies and concepts, while the Truth has nothing to do with any ideology or concept.
Bruce and Lee sitting at a cafe:
BRUCE: (reading softly from the newspaper in his hand) “Another incidence of violence between the mobs of two different religions come forward as five are reported to be dead and several wounded.” Geeze, that’s too bad.
LEE: Certainly, it’s so sad to hear that. It’s 21st century and people are still fighting like this.
BRUCE: I don’t understand why these people can’t understand that all the religions are equal and the people from the other religion are our brothers and sisters.
LEE: It puzzles me as well.
That’s how our conversations sound like when the news of dispute between two different religions comes out and it’s natural to have such a reaction when your understanding of religion is limited to merely ideologies, thoughts, and concepts, when you have not known religion as something beyond all ideologies.
Religion is the destroyer of all ideologies and mental constructs, while today’s religion is the sustainer and preacher of ideologies and mental constructs, and as long as we continue to think of ideologies as religion, there is always going to be violence between so-called “superior” and “inferior” religion no matter how intensely you tell people to respect other religions, because ideologies are a product of the mind and everything that emerges from the mind divides, and as soon as there is a sense of separation, the violence starts.
If you are telling people to not fight with the people of other religion while simultaneously preaching religion as Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, or Sikhism, then you are a hypocrite, and that’s what the priests have been doing down the centuries. On the one hand, they say “respect other religions” and paint themselves as “good” guys, while on the other hand, they push different ideologies into the minds of masses which are destined to lead to violence.
They have played a very cunning game here. They make you fight while also making you believe that they want peace. If bringing peace was as easy as saying “others are your brothers and sisters,” then the world would have been a utopia by now because many people have come and gone saying this as the world continues to be turmoiled with war and violence.
Today’s religion and the priests can’t bring about peace. They are the destroyers of peace.
Religion is the seeking of the Ultimate Truth and Truth can’t be Christian or Muslim or Hindu or Sikh or thousands of other names we think to be as religious.
Our ideas of religion are nothing but an escape from reality. That’s why in order to be a theist in its purest form, you have to become atheist toward today’s organized religion first. The rooftop of being a true theist can only be reached through the stairs of atheism toward today’s religious structures.
As contradictory as it may sound, but in order to be a theist, you have to become atheist first. The priests and popes won’t like this, because they want us to be an ideological theist as that’s the only way they can maintain their empires while continuing to extract profit our pockets.
Priests and Popes are very clever people……. and let me clear one more thing before we continue. Being clever is not a thing to be applauded, although we treat it as such. How clever you are depends on your ability to deceive others; if you can deceive and exploit people without any problem, you are clever and that’s what the parents teach their children to be. They teach their children to be clever and then go on complaining about the injustice in the world. A child with the flowers of innocence is forced to wear the thorns of cleverness and then parents sit and talk about how you can’t believe anybody in this world. This is a world full of hypocrites.
The world is in mess because we make mockery of innocence and treat cleverness as something of a treasure. Actual religion brings you back to those years of early childhood when you were just a pure consciousness without any impurities of hatred and division as innocence was radiating from each pore of your body, while today’s religion is the exact opposite; it snatches away your innocence and fills you with the impurities of all kind…….
So, priests and popes are very clever people. They are the people who have mastered the art of being your enemy by masquerading as your friend. The “religious preachers” are the most irreligious people on this planet. They give you flowers from one hand so that they can stab you with the other, as their clever use of the words make you unconscious of the hand with knife in it.
You don’t have to be a Hitler to inflict suffering over people, you just become a priest/pope and it comes with a bonus; people support and worship you for the suffering you inflict on them.
If religion is the diamond of the utmost purity, then the Christianity/Hinduism/Islam and thousands of other “religions” are the dirt that collected around it with the passage of time.
If you have a diamond that gets stained with mud, what would you do? Would you throw away the diamond itself or clean the stain on it? It’s no-brainer that you would clean the stain no matter how much effort you have to put in because the thing that got stained is of the highest value. Only an idiot would throw away the diamond because cleaning the stain takes effort, and it would also show that the person doesn’t know what diamond is, let alone its value.
People are condemning and throwing away precious diamond like Religion because they can’t differentiate between the mud of the organized religion and the diamond that actual religion is. When I say that a person has to become an atheist first to become a theist in its right sense, I mean putting an effort into first recognizing the clear distinction between mud and diamond, and then clean away all the impurities; only then can you have the diamond in its purest form.
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I like this. Because I am an atheist when it comes to matters of deities and "scriptures", prophets, but I also have questions about purpose, morality, compassion, justice, etc, that evolution and modern science do not have answers for.