religion

“The people worship, but with no knowledge of the Lord” - Hosea

“No one can live life gloriously without a workable philosophy. A philosophy which has a scientific basis will fortify you in the certainty of its practical workability. A religion which is in tune with a scientific philosophy will be like unto the North Star to a mariner. A religion which has but an emotional basis is a quicksand, but when you add knowledge to the highest of spiritual emotions, you are surely upon a solid rock with your eyes to the Light instead of to the dark. There should be no guess work about life. Guessing is the method of ignorance. No one need be ignorant. Everyone can have all knowledge - for all knowledge exists - and is simple - and is yours for the desiring. Information, techniques and skills are complex, but they are not knowledge. These alone will not lead you to the Light. Until you do know the path to the Light and walk it knowingly, you will travel many paths in the dark, and your flesh will be torn with thorns, and you will be low in spirit and shrouded with self-pity in the measure of your not knowing.” - Walter Russell

“All Religions are One” - William Blake

“Religion can never be united as ONE until it has but ONE GOD, and until it replaces all of its unnatural creeds and doctrines with God's One Law of Love. We must become a nation of God-loving men, not God-fearing men. Why should man fear God from whom all of our blessings flow? Such teachings keep fear alive and breed war in all communities of men who walk many different roads on Sabbaths to find their different Gods. We cannot, therefore, look to religion to save us from the chaos toward which we are heading. Nor can we look to Government.” - Walter Russell

“Religion and morality no longer spring creatively from our inner being; they are based on tradition and are a heritage from times when all things revealed themselves through our instincts, when God and the world of morality were made manifest. (…) Faiths that no longer recognize living inspiration or revelation from the spirit in the immediate present must make do with tradition. Such faiths, however, lack inner vitality and immediate direction of religious life. This direction and vitality must be regained, otherwise our society cannot be healed. I have shown how humanity must regain cognition that comes through art to imagination, and then to inspiration. If we regain all that flows from the inspirations of spirit worlds into human consciousness, true religion will reappear. Intellectual discussions about the nature of Christ will cease, for once again it will be known — as it can indeed be known through inspiration — that the Christ was the human bearer of a real divine being who descended from spirit worlds into earthly existence. Without suprasensory knowledge, there can be no understanding of the Christ. Before Christianity can once again become deeply rooted in humanity, the path to suprasensory knowledge must be rediscovered. Inspiration must again impart a truly religious life to humankind in order that knowledge (…) may find no abyss dividing it alike from art and religion. Knowledge, art, religion — these three will then be in harmony.” - Rudolf Steiner

“I struggled for many years to solve the problem of religion. But I believe that for mankind, at this stage, religion opens the doors into unity of the soul with the real power back of all things.” - Inayat Khan

“Religion is a stepping-stone to further knowledge.” - Kevin R. Williams

“That which decides terrestrial mankind's receptivity towards a new spiritual foundation is not a question of will, but of an existing spiritual quality behind the will which is represented by the dominating mental forces in the consciousness. These forces are of a very different nature in each individual, and are in every one the sum of his collective experiences and knowledge, of his previous skills, habits and tendencies - all so varied for each person. These forces will therefore become the real will-power of the individual and regulate his acceptance or refusal of a new spiritual culture.” - Martinus Thomsen

“It is now thousands of years since the old world impulse was translated into a religious form. These thousands of years have made an evolutionary mark on the consciousness of mankind in all areas except the forms of religions which have not yet gone through the same change or expansion. Those religions still, in the form of dogmas, occupy only limited and primitive areas, so it is obvious that the most advanced people in life - those most influenced by evolution - must, in large areas of their consciousness, move right outside the scope of religions; indeed, they must even clash with the actual wording of the religions when taken literally, for the original intention behind the world plan was for the wording of religions to be taken symbolically. And the more these new layers of consciousness expand outside religions - especially in connection with technology, science and art - the more disharmony there will be with the wording and with the dogmas themselves. The consequence of this for a large number of terrestrial people is either an entire or a partial liberation from dogmas and a breakaway from religions. And here we see that humanity is appearing in two large main groups. One group consists of the people just mentioned - those who have broken away from religions, dogmas and the old world impulse - while the other, on the contrary, consists of those for whom these very factors still retain their full inspirational power and to whom, therefore, they are still an indispensable blessing. (…) The people in the two main groups which make up humanity as a whole, may be further divided into six specific categories. (…) Thus, any single terrestrial person can be classified under one or other of these six categories. The people in the categories differ from each other in their individual stages of development, for the latter has not been the same for everybody, but has occurred in such a way that at the present time some appear with too strongly developed feelings in relation to their intelligence, while for others the opposite is the case. However, there are also people in whom these two factors of consciousness are equal and in balance.” - Martinus Thomsen

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