Religions …….
Ellaeenah
How do your religions mirror this universe? You have always considered each religion as separate, distinct, having its own rules, so to speak, its unique explanations, its Gods, its Goddesses, its deities, its sages, its prophets, its teachers, its followers; and in all these various labels, you have forgotten that no universe can exist in time, or exists time-less, as do religions. But as explained, when the focus of humanity’s consciousness at large, shifts to one aspect of the universal field, it manifests into physical reality this aspect for experiential use. And so with miracles, which you wish to manifest. But till you have understood that you will have a miracle of that aspect which you focus your attention upon, you will constantly live in an abstract world of semi-real knowledge.
So let us look at how religions, though they seem to have occurred chronologically in your historical realities are still timeless and uniquely connected. And no religion is therefore, distinct and separate from another. For this purpose, we will use your own historical knowledge and understanding, because unless we use something of your own fertile mind, what we speak off will only appear abstractions.
So we will start with that age when the elements of nature became the gods and so you had Ra as the Sun God and you had Indra as wind; and every culture started from this symbolic representation of the universe, taken to be religion. How was the universe mirrored? Ra as a deity and as a god that manifested only in the conscious mind of humanity and nowhere else, was given aspects of power and control and authority; the ability to wield and manipulate, the ability to move and create and destroy, and that was none other than the manifestation for a human being to understand the power of energy of the sun. It is the sun that creates and it is the sun that can destroy. The sun controls your very movement of the day with its rising and setting. The sun controls your very body rhythms as it wields its power. And so each element, in order to be understood as an aspect of nature itself, was given the position of a god, and these were worshipped as dearly as you worship your gods today.
And then man evolved and understood that these gods were none other than symbols; symbols used by the ancient teachers to teach of nature and its elements so that man, in that period of evolution, would understand the power of nature, which he, himself, had created with his focus. But he had to understand it. Even though he had created it, he hadn’t understood its immense power. And these gods, as representative symbols, explained and manifested in reality for them, what they had not understood in abstraction. When that was completely understood, there came other gods that replaced the old. The universal truths now put before mankind had been raised to another level of truth, as is so often done with you. When one truth is understood, that truth is used as the foundation to develop upon and present to you an even higher truth.
And so there came, in your culture, the trinity of the Brahma and Vishnu and Shiva, the Creator, the one who maintains, and that who destroys. And what are they mirrors of? Brahma, that which is in you to create. The eye of Brahma looks and when it looks, it’s creating but when Shiva opens his eye, he destroys; that which he focuses on comes to nought. And see this beautiful representation in yourself. As the Brahma energy, you are capable of all creation and the universe shows you this mirror by the creation of a deity called Brahma, so that you can see outside of you clearly when the inner vision is still dull and dim. And that which you create, you preserve with care and nurturing, and that is Vishnu. When you create, do you not wish to keep it safe? And then it goes one step beyond, and asks you then to destroy your own creation. It asks you to open your eye of Shiva to see that that which you have created and preserved, with such care, has now lost its significance in your evolution and must make way for something new. And when that eye of realization of Shiva opens, you surrender and allow the destruction of your creation to take place so that as Brahma, creation is all anew. But you need to see it outside of you. You need to see the picture of Vishnu. You need to see the ling of Shiva because without external vision, nothing exists in your reality.
But then what about Islam, that religion that strongly advocates no icon, no idol, no picture, no worship, no prophet? The followers of the religion worship Allah, not Mohammed. They respect and revere him as the manifestation of a human being who came to teach this religion. And then, what does this religion mirror when it has no prophet, no image, no statue? It mirrors the universe’s unity, a reality that cannot be manifest; that can only be experienced. And so there is a thread. When you needed to manifest the universal truths there came religions that helped you to manifest, but when mankind was ready to accept, what appears to be an abstract knowledge of universal unity, without focus on one deity, there came Islam, where it now tried to take mankind’s focus away from individual gods and goddesses. It attempted to teach the truth that ALL IS GOD. There is no God but God and Allah is His manifestation. There is no God. Time and time have you been told ‘to whom do you look up to?’ There is no external God, but God (pointing towards the inner self). I AM the Universe. Ahum Brahmasmi. There is no God but God and when you wish to give a name, it manifests as Allah.
And then let us discuss Zarathustrianism, your very first modern religion that is monotheistic, that believed, in the presence of only one Universal Being; that removed the concepts of individual gods and goddesses and deities; that asks you to focus on one point of unity, which that great religion, instead of calling Allah, calls Ahura Mazda. Ahura Mazda… The Creation of That Which Is Light and Wisdom. And isn’t that universal energy? The creation of that which is Light, in wisdom. And yet, this monotheistic religion came at a time when it could not remove completely from humanity’s consciousness the concept of a physical prophet, and therefore its disciples to date worship a picture they believe to be the Zarathushtra. And yet, how few of these disciples remember that the Zarathushtra that they worship was not one teacher but several who came and went. But they worship one. And because this monotheistic religion occurred at a time when people believed in the separation and severalness of gods, through the teachers of this religion, the separateness was collected together and given one symbol, still permitting the people to worship that picture, knowing that humanity was not yet ready to have no picture at all.
And then, Christianity; your manifestation, your mirror, again of the Universal Being which now you called the Christ. And different religions gave the universal essence a different name, whether it be Allah, Ahura Mazda or the Christ. But Christianity went beyond even what the Zarathushtrian religion had propagated. It came as a continuation. And what was this continuation? The Zarathushtrian religion had attained what it wished to, and brought about the removal of the separateness of gods. And then the Christian religion explained the universal essence. Islam spoke of the unity of the universal essence; the various aspects of the universe were explained through its diverse essences by Christianity. How? With symbols of Jesus and Mary and Joseph. Symbols.
But before them was another religion, Judaism, which laid the foundation stone for this to evolve. And when anything is used as a foundation, it must, perforce, become radical, at some point in time, so that humanity is ready to move away. And that was served. The purpose was served by Judaism, making way for the symbols of Christianity. Jesus, what is he a symbol of? What is he a mirror of?
Love.
No, my beloved, he is not a mirror of love at all. Jesus’ life, (as written in your books, which you accept as reality), Jesus’ life was about miracles. Reclaiming your universal essence. Manifesting into your reality that which you desired. Jesus mirrored the powers of healing and creating, making way for the new ages of the future. But these powers would now not be manifest in one man alone, but in several that walk the Earth in his footsteps. And what did his mother, beautiful Mary, portray, mirror, symbolize? It is the symbol of love, nurturing, Brahma-- Jesus, Vishnu, preserving, caring, loving, nurturing—Mary, and then destroying…when Jesus himself went on to the cross. This created a manifested being that symbolized an aspect of the universe, which then opened his own eye to the reality of illusion, destroying that which was created.
And so each religion adds to another. It is not separate. There is a thread of continuity running through and the symbols of one religion help and aid in the manifestation of symbols of another religion and yet, through it all, there must be one religion that talks of no symbols. In all of manifestation, there must be the manifestation of that which is illusion and there must be a manifestation of that which is reality and that is Islam. And these religions co-exist, each showing you their different faces, their symbols, their mirrors of the universe.
How then, my dear friends, how then these foolish, foolish wars fought on the basis of truth? Truth is restricted and bound by you, by time, by space and so countries and nationalities and peoples are given labels according to religion and each one focuses then their attention to only one ripple in the truth of the cosmos, believing that only that one ripple is the cosmos.
Why were religions vital? Did you not need in this class that just preceded, did you not need the physical representation of the cloth to understand the ripple? And yet, you claim to have evolved. (Laughter) But you needed the physical reality and that is what all religions have done. At points in your time, when humanity’s consciousness has been focused on one aspect of universal truth, in order to then experience and understand this aspect, humanity’s consciousness created religions. There was no prophet before you created him. And if today, while sitting here, you take the conscious decision to make this instrument (Ell) into a revered form for your worship that is what she will become because you will manifest it. But if you can go beyond the need to have an external focus of worship, and maintain the need to the internal focus of worship within you, she will remain what she is. And so every god and goddess and every manifested energy is your mirror. It mirrors what you manifested in a certain period of humanity’s consciousness.