Religion

The divine life has a certain capability to give life, and it gives this life as teaching to the children of earth. This teaching is called dharma or religion. Religions are many and different from one another, but only in form. Water is one and the same formless element, only it takes the shape of the channel which holds it and which it uses for its accommodation. Thus the name water is changed into river, lake, sea, stream, pond, etc. So it is with religion; the essential truth is one, but the aspects are different. Those who fight about external forms will always fight, those who recognize the inner truth will not disagree, and thus will be able to harmonize people of all religions.

Religion in the Sanskrit language is termed Dharma, which means duty. The duty of every individual is religion. 

Dharma has been given from time to time to the world, sometimes quietly, and sometimes in a loud voice. It is a continual outpouring of the inner knowledge of life and of divine blessing. Those who stick to their old forms, closing their eyes to the inner truth, paralyze their dharma by holding onto an old form while refusing the present stream that is sent. As life is the cause of activity, so such persons lose their activity; they remain where they are and are as dead. And when man has been thus paralyzed and shut out from further spiritual progress, he clings to outer forms which are not progressing.

All Masters from the time of Adam till the time of Mohammad have been the one embodiment of the Master-ideal. When Jesus Christ is represented as saying, “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end,” it is not meant that either the name or the visible person of Jesus Christ is the Alpha and Omega, but the Master-spirit within. It was this spirit which proclaimed this, moved by its realization of past, present, and future life, confident of its eternity. It is the same spirit which spoke through Krishna, saying, “We appear on earth when Dharma is corrupted,” which was long before the coming of Christ. During his divine absorption Mohammad said, “I existed even before this creation and shall remain after its assimilation.” In the holy traditions it is said, “We have created thee of Our light and from thy light We have created the universe.” This is not said of the external person of Mohammad as known by this name. It refers to the spirit which spoke through all the blessed tongues and yet remained formless, nameless, birthless and deathless.

It is something living in the soul, the mind, and the heart of man, the absence of which keeps man dead, and the presence of which gives him life. If there is any religion, it is in that particular sense. And what is that sense? The Hindus have called it in the Sanskrit language dharma, which in the ordinary meaning of the word is “duty.” But it is something much greater than what we know in our everyday life as duty. I do not call it duty; I call it life itself.

Now, there are two things in the world, one of which we may describe as free choice of action and the other as duty. Everybody follows either the way of free choice or the way of duty. As an example, we may think of the child who sees the fire and wants to touch it. This action will show a certain disagreeable result, which teaches the child. This teaching might also have come to the child as a warning from the parents, telling the child that the result of the action would be burning. The child might thus refrain from the action for the reason that it accepted the warning of the parents before burning its hand. Every child is born in life a pupil, one who is willing to learn and willing to believe.