Chapter 2. We Have Outgrown the
Cult of Childish Religion:
Salvation and
Destiny
Conventionally religious people
often think that “salvation” (or release from the negative
implications of change and death) is a matter of belief, or
a mere change of mind, and they are reluctant to follow any
such change of mind with profound and persistent changes of
emotion, bodily habit, and relational disposition. Likewise,
they think that to be “saved” (or to believe they will be
released from misfortune and death) is directly associated
with an immediate passage to Heaven, or a World in which God
is overwhelmingly in Power, after death.
Truly, the categories of belief
(often mistaken for “faith”) are the common and gravely
superficial substance of popular religion all over the
world. Ordinary people, full of themselves, crave release
from their inevitable difficulties, and there is no absence
of authoritarian and imaginative religion to console them.
But God or Truth is not the substance of those
consolations.
Our encounter with the most
fundamental questions or considerations of our experience
must go beyond belief and mental changes to become profound
psychic, emotional, physical, and moral (or relational)
transformation. And only such transformation is truly
religious, because it makes us happy, free, benign,
compassionate, and loving in the world and in all
relationships.
Just so, the conversion of the total
body-mind releases us beyond belief and consolation to
ecstatic Communion with the Living Divine Being. And only
such Communion, rather than the believers hopes of eventual
reunion with God, is salvation.
Salvation, or present Communion with
God, is the primary religious principle . But that principle
is not a promise of a mechanically inevitable Heavenly
future.
Communion with God-not travel to a
place where God will be found-is salvation. Communion with
God is the sufficient and only substance of happiness. And
God-Communion is itself the ultimate Process whereby or
wherein we are positively changed or Transformed in our
appearance and destiny. Therefore, those who Awaken to
God-Communion are surrendered in ecstasy to the point of
real Transformation. They are Transfigured and Transformed,
grown and matured and evolved, by the Radiant Divine that is
released to Work in them and in all their relationships.
Thus, salvation, which is God-Communion, does not signify a
mechanically guaranteed future, in this world or beyond.
Rather, God-Communion is a great Principle and Process,
sufficient in itself for happiness, which, over time, and
depending on the profundity of our surrender or ecstasy,
Works changes for the good. And all devotees are set out on
a Divine adventure, to see the changes and the Destiny that
God will make of them or to which God will move them, now,
and now, and now.
Scientific
Proof – Table of Contents