A Brief History of Religion

Last month we touched on Chapter 1 of God is for Everyone, inspired Paramhansa Yogananda, as taught to and understood by his disciple Swami Kriyananda. This month we’d like to share some thoughts from Chapter 2. How can thoughtful people everywhere reconcile their desire to see the world’s different religions as part of one family of Truth with the seeming impossibility of this feat (given historical precedents)? Let us examine a point of view that can help us begin such a reconciliation. It begins with considering that religions have too often misunderstood the essence of their founders’ teachings. For example:

When Buddha appeared to reject the Hindu Vedas was he perhaps trying to correct a prevalent misunderstanding of those great scriptures rather giving a doctrine of self-reliance that was to evolve into an atheistical dogma? In fact, Buddha’s intent was to encourage people to take spiritual responsibility for their lives and not to depend passively on God or a bewildering pantheon of lesser “gods” for material boons.

Centuries later Swami Shankarcharya came to correct both the atheistical tendency of Buddhism and Hinduism’s focus on lesser deities with his insistence upon the Supreme Spirit as the only reality and union with God as the goal of life. Yet his message and that of the Buddha’s were misinterpreted to exclude the need for devotion, and a focus for that devotion. In Shankarcharya’s life was overlooked the fact of his own deep devotion to God as the Divine Mother! Thus some centuries later in India came the great saint, Ramanuja, and then Chaitanya, expressing the eternal divine romance of the soul with God.

Chaitanya’s great love for Krishna was interpreted to mean that Krishna was the incarnation of God Himself, much as Christianity insists on Jesus as the only son of God to have ever existed on this earth. The Vaishnava followers of Chaitanya dogmatically denounced the advaita teachings of Shankarcharya! It was not understood that love for Krishna (and the path of Bhakti, devotional love) is a steppingstone to the Infinite reality of God.

Such, however, is the genius of India that divergent beliefs are absorbed and accepted for they are generally seen as various expressions of the soul’s longing for God!

In a similar pattern, Moses, too, like Buddha, insisted on one truth and the need for self-effort. The commandments and lesser rules that Moses gave to the Israelites however became the object of obsessive attachment. Mistaking the rules for the Truth towards which right action attunes the soul, the natural love of the heart withered. Persecution of the prophets for their failure to adhere to the complex rules of their religion only hardened their hearts more. Jesus came to urge them to love God, not merely obey (sometimes hypocritically) his laws. But to love God is inherently the act of the individual soul, not yet another opportunity for liturgy and sacrifices to prove that love. Alas, however, the Western genius for organization only encased Jesus’ teaching in the outer husk of credo and conformity.

Mohammed, too, like Moses brought to his people the much needed teaching that God is One. He had hoped to unite the faiths of the Bible into a single faith, but in this he was repudiated by Jews and Christians alike: thus initiating the warfare that raged for centuries. Rampant sectarianism among these faiths of the Western branch made impossible dialogue and understanding with the Eastern branch, Hinduism, which in its turn spawned Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism.

Just as scientists around the world accept the findings of science regardless of their own race and nationality, so too the spiritual scientists (the saints) of every religion reveal a similar unanimity. The purpose of the chapters which follow are to demonstrate that behind every great scripture lies the wisdom of eternity.

Joy to you!