"And the cause of everything is that which we call God. To know God and to live is the same thing. God is Life. "
~ Leo Tolstoy, 1879What am I?A part of the infinite. It is indeed in these words that the whole problem lies. The essence of any religion lies solely in the answer to the question: why do I exist, and what is my relationship to the infinite universe that surrounds me?
It is impossible for there to be a person with no religion (i.e. without any kind of relationship to the world) as it is for there to be a person without a heart. He may not know that he has a religion, just as a person may not know that he has a heart, but it is no more possible for a person to exist without a religion than without a heart.
True religion is that relationship, in accordance with reason and knowledge, which man establishes with the infinite world around him, and which binds his life to that infinity and guides his actions.
The principles of this true religion are so appropriate to man that as soon as people discover them they accept them as something they have known for a long time and which stand to reason.
The principles are very simple, comprehensible and uncomplicated.
They are as follows:
- that there is a God who is the origin of everything;
- that there is an element of this divine origin in every person, which he can diminish or increase through his way of living;
- that in order for someone to increase this source he must suppress his passions and increase the love within himself;
- that the practical means of achieving this consist in doing to others as you would wish to do to you.
All these principles are common to Brahmanism, Hebraism, Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Christianity and Mohammedanism.
(If Buddhism does not provide a definition of God, it nevertheless recognises that with which man unites and merges as he reaches Nirvana. And that something is the same origin which the other religions recognise as God.)
~ Leo Tolstoy, 1879Reason is the power man possesses to define his relationship to the universe.
Since the relationship is the same for everyone, thus religion unites men.
Union among men gives them the highest attainable well-being, on both the physical and the spiritual level.
Humanity can only be saved from disaster when it frees itself from the hypnotic influence the priests hold over it, and from that into which the learned are leading it.
In order to pour something into a full vessel one must first empty it of its contents. Likewise, it is essential to free people from the deception they are held in, in order for them to adopt the true religion: a relationship with God, the source of all things, which is correct and in accord with the development of humanity, together with the guidance for conduct that results from this relationship.
Religion is the definition of man's relationship to the origin of everything, and of the purpose acquired as a result of this relationship, and of the rules of conduct that follow from this purpose.
And the religion common to all, the basic principles of which are alike in all practices, fully satisfies these demands. It defines man's relationship to God as of a part to a whole.
From this relationship follows man's purpose, which lies in increasing his spiritual qualities, and man's purpose leads to the practical rules of the law:
do to others as you would have them do unto you.
~ Leo Tolstoy, 1879Deep Ecology is rooted in a perception of reality that goes beyond the scientific framework to an intuitive awareness of the oneness of all life, the interdependence of its multiple manifestations and its cycles of change and transformation.
When the concept of the human spirit is understood in this sense, its mode of consciousness in which the individual feels connected to the cosmos as a whole, it becomes clear that ecological awareness is truly spiritual.
Indeed the idea of the individual being linked to the cosmos is expressed in the Latin root of the word
religion, religare (to bind strongly), as well as the Sanskrit
yoga, which means union.
~ Fritjof Capra, Fox, 1995The most important characteristic of the Eastern world view- one could almost say the essence of it- is the awareness of the unity and mutual interrelation of all things and events, the experience of all phenomena in the world as manifestations of a basic oneness.
All things are seen as interdependent and inseparable parts of this cosmic whole; as different manifestations of the same ultimate reality.
~ Capra, The Tao of Physics