Message 45

Christmas message, Bessay, France, 21 December 2001

What is Religion?

Religion is perhaps an Art – a way of doing and living effortlessly without any frictional force at any level of existence (individual, family, society, national and international) by virtue of a natural inspirational energy.

Art and Work of art are not the same. Work of art can change hands, can be sold or purchased; but not Art itself for Art is in the inspiration of the Artist. Religion is also a perceptive and creative process. Products of religion are concepts and conclusions, dogmas and doctrines, beliefs and bigotry, ideals and inhibitions, postulates and prejudices, faiths and fragmentation, guilt and gullibility, hoaxes and hypocrisies, assertions and arrogance, jargons and jihads, manias and murders, rhetoric and resistance, stories and surmises, vanities and vested interests, assumptions and ascription and so on and on. These things change brains, can be used for brainwashing by temples, mosques, churches and synagogues.

Religion is to be lived by and for oneself. It is not to be learnt from scriptures and seminaries leading to theocracies and terrorism, to organisations and obscurities. One has to be empty so that religion can enter in one’s being. When religion is the consequence of conditioning, a sequence of separative consciousness, a product of the priest-craft; it opposes all scientific understanding and advancement in the first instance and then it becomes apologetic and it solicits support from science by giving “scientific explanations” of its various stupidities. Politicians and Priests make sure that eighty percent of scientific discoveries are used for wars and destruction in the name of God and Isms – all product of mind and its mischief and malice. Divine always keeps coming, but you (mind) are not present to receive Him. Mind is always in the past and future, never in the present. Religion is an invitation to the Divine which is not possible as you (mind) are busy in imitation.

Religion is not prayer. Prayer is persuading or provoking the Divine to act according to your desires and demands. And the mind which deludes itself to direct the Divine to function in accordance with its stupid desires is not a religious mind. It is indeed a shoddy little petty mind! Religion is meditative beholding of everything in and around you. It is the benediction and wisdom of direct perception of what is and not to get lost into vagaries and vulgarities of mental conjectures and conclusions of what should be.

Religion is not in the longing for experience, but in the luminous existence of an eternal reality.

Religion is dispelling the darkness of the mind (swadhyay), diligent practice to release the body from the shackles of the mind (tapas) and divine perception (ishwara pranidhan). This is real Kriya Yoga – not the entertainment and excitement available in the spiritual market under the banner of Kriya Yoga.

JAY LAHIRI MAHASHAY – THE GREATEST DISPELLER OF DARKNESS OF THE MIND!

Download the Message in PDF format:  Message 45: Divine Keeps Coming (English)