RELIGION
551. Those who know all about, say, Buddhism but nothing about Being and Consciousness, actually, do not understand Buddhism either.
552. Religion includes such an endeavour which aims at shattering the framework of immanence in the terrestrial sense.
553. Though religion has developed in the period of Kali-yuga, it cannot be considered as the product of a darkening process, but rather as the reaction to it. Since prior to Kali-yuga man had lived in a circum-spiritual state, there was no necessity for a particular religion or rite.
554. There are religious formations that having lost their purport necessarily cease to exist, just like Shamanism. However, there are also religious formations that having lost their essential doctrines are still able to exist, especially like Christianity.
555. Christianity can more or less function with titular bishops, contrary to Shamanism, which is not likely to operate with titular shamans.
556. Totemism does not mean that a given people consider themselves to have originated from a concrete animal ancestor, but that the derivation in question has been created by a will that is analogous to the will that has created the divine/demoniac spirit of a kind of species of animals.
557. Religions today do not represent the metaphysical traditions any longer. What is more, the time has arrived when we can safely declare that religions do not represent and mediate even religion, but some raggle-taggled relics of customs and some shreds of lifeless doctrines. It also seems now as if religions were eager to lower and then annihilate themselves; and, in fact, they will do so.
558. If there were a certain being who could fulfil every sincere desire, that is, a being who could behave in the way a significant number of religious people would like to see God, this being would be merely a samsārian being with a wide range of power but with a relatively inferior intelligence.
559. A prayer can reach only that height at which it has been uttered. Furthermore, as a worshipper cannot pray - even in his most exceptional moments - in a position higher than his own guardian angel’s, his prayer cannot reach that level either. Only that request can reach God which I start from a divine position.
560. The criterion for the fulfilment of a prayer is not the sincerity of our desire, but a firm belief that our request will certainly be realized.
561. Faith, after all, is always a faith in myself.
562. Expressions like »Dialogue between God and me« and »God is addressable and he can also address me« are but mawkish sentiments wrapped up in the language of theology.
563. In the state of grace a power is donated and received, during which the receiver can experience that he is the recipient of the donation but cannot experience that he is the donor of the grace. Only after an inner restoration and integration will it come to light that grace can solely be donated and received by myself.
564. Logos is the primordial unity of mental powers.
565. Theology is not in every way religious, just as religion is not always theological.
566. Satan also believes that God exists; indeed, he even knows it - in spite of this, he is not a believer but an atheist.
567. The under-valuation of any religion entails the undermining of all religions including one’s own.
568. Those who strive for metaphysical and supra-life self-realisation must leave the sphere of religion behind, attach themselves to the supra-religious state of forms and reach for the state of Being beyond forms. For, in this dark age of today, forms that are still related to religion can easily lead the person who joins them on a path that is completely opposite to the original tendency and aim of religion.