Religion
This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.
Religion to me is almost like when God leaves – and people devise a set of rules to fill in the space.
God has no religion.
When faith becomes religion, people on the inside of the group begin to focus their attention on the perimeter, patrolling the boundaries to regulate who is in and who is out. They develop visible boundary markers, demarcations of holiness, which become important signs of group identity.
Confidence can do things for you but confidence without clarity is a big disaster on the planet. Unfortunately, that has been the hallmark of religious people; they are confident without any clarity.
Pretending to know things that you do not know is the lifeblood of religion.
Spiritual process is a seeking. Religion means assuming things that you do not know.
Spirituality must be distinguished from religion—because people of every faith, and of none, have had the same sorts of spiritual experiences.
What is arising now is not a new belief system, a new religion, spiritual ideology, or mythology. We are coming to the end not only of mythologies but also of ideologies and belief systems. The change goes deeper than the content of your mind, deeper than your thoughts. In fact, at the heart of the new consciousness lies the transcendence of thought, a newfound ability of rising above thought, of realising a dimension within yourself that is infinitely more vast than thought. You then no longer derive your identity, your sense of who you are, from the incessant stream of thinking that in the old consciousness you take to be yourself. What a liberation to realize that the ‘voice in my head’ is not who I am. Who am I then? The one who sees that. The awareness that is prior to thought, the space in which the thought – or the emotion or sense perception – happens.
Imagine there's no countries, it isn't hard to do, nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too. Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will be as one.