During this year’s International Summer School in the Netherlands, a Universal Worship service was held at Murad Hassil in Katwijk.   The texts, on the theme of ‘Impressions of Beauty,’ are below, and the audio file of the sermon is at the bottom of this post.

We read in the Hindu scriptures:

Still your mind in me, still yourself in me,
And without doubt you shall be united with me,
Lord of Love, dwelling in your heart.
But if you cannot still your mind in me,
Learn to do so through the practice of meditation.
If you lack the will for such self-discipline,
Engage yourself in selfless service of all around you,
For selfless service can lead you at last to me.
If you are unable to do even this,
Surrender yourself to me in love,
Receiving success and failure with equal calmness
As granted by me.
Better indeed is knowledge than mechanical practice.
Better than knowledge is meditation.
But better still is surrender in love,
Because there follows immediate peace.

[Bhagavad Gita, chapter 12 ]

We read in the Buddhist scriptures:

All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage.

All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him like a shadow that never leaves him.

[Dhammapada; ‘The Twin Thoughts’]

We read in the the Zoroastrian scriptures:

Then I realized You as Bountiful,
O Ahura Mazda,
when the Good Mind encircled me.
His question was:
‘Which party will you claim as your own?’
Zarathushtra replied:
‘Henceforth I will consecrate my homage to Your Fire,
and so long as I am able,
I will meditate upon your Truth.’

‘Therefore grant me Truth whom I invoke.’
Then Ahura Mazda replied:
‘I come to you with my daughter,
Armaiti, perfect thought, full of love and compassion.
Place before us your searching questions,
for by that questioning you will gain the Sovereignty
by which you will obtain understanding.’

[Gathas, Yasna 43, 9-10]

We read in the Jewish scriptures:

6 Always keep me in your heart
and wear this bracelet
to remember me by.
The passion of love
bursting into flame
is more powerful than death,
stronger than the grave.

7 Love cannot be drowned
by oceans or floods;
it cannot be bought,
no matter what is offered.

[Song of Solomon; 8]

We read in the Christian scriptures:

28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?”

[Gospel of Matthew, 5]

We read in the scriptures of Islam:

Verily, in the creation of the heavens and of the earth, and the succession of night and day: and in the ships that speed through the sea with what is useful to man: and in the waters which God sends down from the sky, giving life thereby to the earth after it had been lifeless, and causing all manner of living creatures to multiply thereon: and in the change of the winds, and the clouds that run their appointed courses between sky and earth: [in all this] there are messages indeed for people who use their reason.

[Sura 2, The Cow, 164]

We read in the Gayan:

All beauty is veiled by nature, and the greater the beauty the more it is covered.

Without modesty beauty is dead, for modesty is the spirit of beauty.

Beauty is the object which every soul pursues.

Natural religion is the religion of beauty.

In beauty is the secret of divinity.

Every virtue is but an expression of beauty.

Love develops into harmony, and of harmony is born beauty.

It is the exaltation of the spirit which is productive of all beauty.

[Boulas, Chalas]