What Religion Is For

Religion is that which diminishes man's suffering and increases his joy and capacity.

When men and women get spiritual knowledge, religions crop up to benefit man and show the way to that same knowledge. Religions are the maps and signs. Spiritual knowledge is the fruit. The spiritual seeker loves the maps and signs (religions) because they bring him to the fruit.

Those who say "I'm spiritual but not religious" are simply not that serious about their spiritual interests. They want a path of no discipline and no rules, thus they attain little. They look at the apparent contradictions or the flotsam-and-jetsam aspects of religion without a penetrating eye to see the eternal verities inside of them. They take a shallow view, and thus do not really comprehend religion.

Those who embrace religious disciplines -- continence, meditation, and austerities -- are those who get spiritual knowledge and spiritual ability.

Religion is a transient externality that directs us to the imperishable internal. Exterior scriptures, edifices, and ideas are for the purpose of directing us to the internal Imperishable and helping us to become established in that. However, the externals themselves -- scriptures, histories, stories, priests, places, and edifices -- are all part of the fleeting external world-dream. They ever-change. They are also, like the rest of the false outer world-dream, are only projections of yourself. However religion, because it directs you to changeless and imperishable God within yourself, is the choicest aspect of your externalized projections.

 Everybody Gets the Religions They Deserve