With this post we begin a longer text by Hazrat Inayat Khan on a very important subject. In this age in which ‘religion’ has become the excuse for persecuting those who are different from us, these thoughts deserve special attention. Here Hazrat Inayat establishes the fundamental principle that religion is not invented but natural, and when we dispute about names and forms, it is because we have lost sight of the true nature of religion.
Although it is no exaggeration to say that there are numberless religions in the world, and every religion has so many different sects and churches and chapels that this life is not long enough to study them–indeed it would be impossible even to count them in one lifetime–yet that which should really be studied proves to be something very different, for the thinker perceives that these many different religions have sprung out of one religion. Religion may begin in the East or the West, in the South or the North, yet it will always end in many religions. The more we ponder upon how all can have come from one, the plainer becomes the fact that all are expressions of one religion. And this religion is nature’s religion.
Rising above a religion does not mean giving up the religion.
It means being fully benefited by the religion.
The question as to what exactly this religion really is and how one may get to know it, can only be answered by those who have raised themselves beyond the limitations of ceremony and dogma in which they are always first instructed. But rising above a religion does not mean giving up the religion. It means being fully benefited by the religion. Those who say they have given up their religion are not above it; those alone are above it who have arrived at a full understanding of the spirit of religion. As soon as the spirit of religion has become manifest, then indeed are the eyes blessed. The distinctions and differences of castes and creeds and religions all vanish away in one moment of time.
Once this is perceived, there ceases to be anything to criticize; it is all the same what form of worship is to be used, what church is to be attended, what book is to be read. Thence forward it is seen that there is no such thing as a heretic, no such thing as a heathen, no difference between Kufr and Muslim. But until this truth is perceived there is always the thought, ‘Whatever religion, or belief, or faith I have or hold, the scripture that I read, the church that I attend, is the only scripture, the only church, the only faith; this that I have understood and regarded as mine all through my life, this is the only path.’
It is like a person in pursuit of a bird. He looks at the branch of the tree which is still shaking after the bird has flown from it. He says, ‘Oh, here is the bird’, but he is only looking at the branch trembling hither and thither after the bird has sat there just for a moment. He calls the branch the bird. Another person may see a branch moving, but this time the branch is so strong that the bird could not possibly have moved it. Not understanding this, he thinks the bird sat on that branch. Thus it is with the truth.
Instead of understanding the spirit of the truth, people have taught that religion lies in the name of the teacher. Importance is given to the name of the teacher, to the scripture, to the house in which worship is customary, to the priests or clergy who officiate. Prominence is given to being Brahmin or Buddhist, to belonging to certain communities formed in the name of a particular religion, to the castes set up, to the families formed, to those associations made in order to follow one particular creed, or ceremony, or law. Finally the loyalty to that particular religious system becomes its life, and this leads to the neglect–not only neglect, but actual hatred–of the religion followed by others. It is in this way that all wars and differences that have existed in all ages have arisen.
The origin of all religion is love and beauty.
When one studies nature, one finds that nature cannot create itself without expressing its religion. The origin of all religion is love and beauty. If there were no love or beauty religion would never have existed, because beauty is the beginning of worship and prayer. The beginning of prayer and the first step of worship is admiration.
A child knows nothing about religion, and yet from the very first it is attracted to something that is beautiful, something that it can like. As it grows older it is only the form of its desires that changes; it still seeks to acquire the object of beauty. As it grows older still, it comes to recognize beauty in intellectual things. It is beauty that man bows down to. When a man gives honor and respect and reverence to another it is still because of the beauty which he perceives in some form or other in a person, and he has a natural inclination to bow before this beautiful living thing. Prayer and worship are acts of bowing to beauty, acts necessary to satisfy the predisposition with which every soul is born, the predisposition which is called love. And it is the innate desire of love to satisfy itself by admiring and bowing before someone, to respect someone, to have veneration for someone, to worship someone.
To be continued…