What is religion ?

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Is there a God ? Can we predict the future ?

Religion is a belief system which involves the supernatural and, usually, has something to do with what happens after death. Not all supernatural beliefs are religions. Every culture, every religion, and every adult have attempted to answer these.

All religions believe in “God” in some form and all religions have a creation story. Many religions have certain holy books that are revered as true accounts. These are called scripture, text considered sacred and either inspired or directly dictated by a deity.

Dalai Lama said “Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.” New civilization exercises love’s creativity to develop ways of living that demonstrate compassion and respect for the human race and for the world.

Building the Civilization of Love is not just to restore what has been broken, but to create a brand new way of living together that will only be discovered as we refuse to indulge our fears and strike out boldly in love.

Religion is like nutrition. Like diets, it is highly individualistic and must be tailor-made as per one’s inclinations and goals. Why did mankind feel compelled to propagate it ? So much so that they were ready to die for it ? What is it about religion that gets people’s blood boiling ? Many of the adherents to these religions claim that their scriptures prove the existence of their deity.

The Nobel Prize Winner Eric R Kandel quotes that ‘Western intellectual life is divided into two cultures: that of the sciences, which are concerned with the physical nature of the universe, and that of the humanities – literature and art – which are concerned with the nature of human experience.

Science, religion, spirituality, philosophy and artistic expression fall within these two broad categorisations, with literature written in each of these genres typically reflecting the cultural and methodological disconnect between the disciplines.

According to Mahatma Gandhi, “Belief in one God is the cornerstone of all religions,” so it is toward this one God that all religious people are climbing. Some scientists call the Earth Gaia and there is the Gaia theory which states, the Earth is a conscious living organism.

No different than what the Earth religions, Goddess Religions. But all these facts and beliefs are still talking about something larger than the self. Humans have created everything we use from clothing, to cars, to technology, a painting, music, etc., all creations from intelligence, imagination, and the power to make it so!

True religion only began 5,700 or so years ago ? In a book called The World’s Religions, they tell us the Primal Religions started,…3,000,000 years ago; this is the Chronological reference. The Dalai Lama affirms that “the essential message of all religions is very much the same.

For Hindus, satsang means the community of people seeking higher truth, similar to “fellowship” or “brotherhood” in Western religious traditions and the sanga in Buddhism. the Eastern philosophy of religion, it has been known for thousands of years that the world is not as we perceive it. This is made clear by the existence of the term maya, which means "delusion" or "illusion".

Bhakti yoga is a method of learning to live in love, much like meditation is a method of quieting the mind and expanding awareness. This term expresses the belief that the world is just a sham caused by our senses and only exists in our imagination.

The main aim of yoga or Buddhism is to see through and overcome this illusion. Human psyche, regardless of its source, is valuable to us. Maybe questions about fact vs. faith, thought vs. feeling, evidence vs. inner revelation, are supposed to remain open.

It might simply be the case that these deep uncertainties about the nature of what is real and true actually help us because they prompt us to explore the source of meaning. Our Golden Consciousness, and our true divinity has never stopped working.

“It is possible to climb life’s mountain from any side, but when the top is reached the trails converge,” writes philosopher of religion Huston Smith. “At base, in the foothills of theology, ritual, and organizational structure, the religions are distinct.”

Differences in culture, history, geography, and collective temperament all make for diverse starting points. It is like a way maker of a truth-seeking wave that is about to bless the planet. This blissful wave, is the only wave we will ever need, as all other fear based waves, shall be evaporated into meaningless dust.