How Religion ended in Dogma?

How Religion ended in Dogma?

Shri Mataji: “Religions are also the expressions and experiments of realised souls, The Seers. They also talk about the inner being, second birth, and about Self-Realization. In the beginning, in India, they tried to take the attention inside by introducing symbols that they saw of this unconscious, Universal Being within.

This gave rise to pantheism and the aspirant’s attention got stuck to symbols (Sakar) and to rituals which killed the main objective.

So the other type of experiments of talking only about the abstract (Nirakar) gave rise to many other religions which ended up as dogmas or “isms.” The reason is obvious.

Talking about the flower or the honey cannot take you to the honey but can only create dogmatic.. “isms” in the mind. You have to be a bee to reach there, i.e., you have to be reborn.

This has to happen within, to take you inside. It is too great an achievement and unbelievable, but I feel the search of ages has brought great results.

One may not believe, or may believe, but the fact is that, in human awareness, what we have reached is a stage where we do not know about the absolute truth. This is the reason why there are so many types of philosophies and ideologies and people want to have different types of religions which are exclusive and they fight with each other and finish the fundamentals of religion.” (excerpt from Shri Mataji’s most read & best-seller book: Meta Modern Era, chap.11, The Subtle System)

Reflect on Parabola for Spirit – Sat-Chit-Anand or Three Types of Phenomena

Find out: What is a Seer?


This Post Has 22 Comments

  1. Adrian

    An interesting piece of writing… a bit confusing in clarity… but here is what I think…

    Fear drives us into dogma, but do we understand that. We can try to understand the notion of rebirth… and to equate that with “awakening or self realization”

    What do we know about “fear”… do we understand that we actually have that choice… that is the choice to create our own fears… as opposed to be loving. Isn’t that what it means to be realized… isn’t that what it means to have “the free will to choose responsibly for self” to believe and experience what we want…but always in a conscious and responsible way.

    So the question is… are we aware that we are capable of choosing to be immersed in fear as well as love… we create… we choose… consciously or not what we want to experience.

    HOW AWARE ARE WE OF THIS THOUGHT.

    1. adrian kraayeveld

      Shri Mataji… speaks…

      About being re-born or reborn…
      That is the spark that takes us into the realm of realization…
      or what is possible…
      Yet…
      We are still with the mind of the old self…
      And not yet with the new SELF emerging…
      The MIND is now open to these new possibilities…
      Of the unknown to the physical realm…
      Yet entirely known to the realm of the spirit or SELF.
      The old realm is/was filled with notions and fears of doubt… about religion, how we shold behave, what we should/should not acquire /own/need so to speak!
      The/this new realm is filled with only love, yet seems so strange/unfamiliar for it is just that.. unfamiliar.
      When we are open to a certain amount of unfamiliarity such as this sort of new love…just allow that to be.

      It is the birthing/creative space for the change that you seek…
      to evolve and expand into this new SELF.

  2. Prof.K. Narsimha Reddy

    Ithink relegion is man made institution whereas spiritulaism deals with Spirit which is ultimate. All the major religions talk about Spirit

    1. Meeta Rani

      We must not confuse everything spiritual as divine. It is only the divine spirituality which leads us to self-realization & God realization.

      1. adrian kraayeveld

        Just another thought…

        “Divine Spirituality leads us to “realization”…

        “Realization leads us to Divine Spirituality”…

        So which is it…

        Or is it both?

        Or can it be either!

        Seeking…

        Perhaps it is understanding what it means to be with “MIND”!

  3. Prakash

    Religion is Man Made and hence blind faith, whereas realization is the actualisation, knowing yourself before knowing the world. It’s a way of living.

    This is what has been taught by all the Great Prophets who appeared in this world.

    1. adrian

      These are my thoughts about your comment.

      I agree… it is man made… yet if man is already connected to God…(God’s creation) then his attempt to understand the unknown, in his own and individual way… is simply the outcome of God’s love for the beholder… That is the choice of free will given to him by God… to simply choose, without judgement. And is the most profound act of love… “conscious free will”. And I feel that is how we have evolved all of these religions.

      Religion is about the attempt to understand ourselves… how to be… hence man-made, as you say. Now that does not mean that one is right and the other is wrong? For that is how the “dogma” came about… distortion through “EGO”… the need for certain individuals to assert power over others… hence conflict.

      Spirituality attempts to examine the common threads “if you will in religions”. Yet that knowledge can be accessed anytime we want… it already exists.. simply by going within… we will discover that knowledge.

      This requires letting go of “EGO” and then all that we need to know will be revealed.

      EGO is nothing more than our self created FEAR at work… and we call this DOGMA.

      It would seem then that Spirituality is the essence of religion… or TRUTH. Our awakening through self realization will unfold what we need to know.

      It looks like both religion and spirituality have been created by God… I wonder why?

      1. adrian

        Perhaps it is to simply to have the “experience”…

        What experience?

        The experience of “not being self”…

        And the experience of “Being Self”…

        That way you can freely choose and realize the “difference” for yourSelf… in order to understand that there is “no right or wrong”… for both are the creation of the Divine… seems paradoxical doesn’t it! Perhaps not! It is simply… I feel… an expression of unconditional Love… which is what IS.

  4. Shilpa

    I have heard in one Hindi Lectures of SHri Mataji..off hand i can’t give reference, but in that Shri Mataji says,

    Don’t hear me from the brain/mind, hear me through Heart, otherwise it would become Dogma.

    Then being Hindi as a Mother tongue, I then checked the meaning of Dogma in dictionary, and my understading of this word is that if we follow something rigidly without understanding the principles behind it, it turns into a blind philosophy, which is then called Dogma.

    Please correct me if I am wrong.

    1. adrian

      Nicely put… “heart is love centered”… and all about feeling… so we connect in an invisible way… through feeling… that is true joy and happiness. This does not require intelligence, ego or anything material.

  5. Clive Bates

    Again, this is where words become inadequate, as their true meaning is lost through social trends.

    The word ‘religion’, when used in it’s pure form, describes a mode of action, an inclnation, or a state of being, as opposed to ‘a man-made attempt at organising the absolute truth/God’.

    Just as ‘Sahaja Yoga’ is ultimately ‘a state of being’, as opposed to something one does.

    Socrates is perhaps the last person in the ‘west’ to use the word correctly. For that he was sentenced to death after being accused of disrespecting the Greek ‘Gods’.

    Paradoxically, all he was disrespectful of was the fact that the ‘Gods’, which he instinctively knew were representative of mankinds higher nature,were being depicted in a corrupt manner by the elite, who were using them to excuse and glorify mankinds lower nature.

    Definition >religion< Origin:
    1150–1200; ME religioun (< OF religion) < L religi?n- (s. of religi?) conscientiousness, piety, equiv. to relig(?re) to tie, fasten (re- re- + lig?re to bind, tie; cf. ligament) + -i?n- -ion; cf. rely
    (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/religion)

    1. Clive Bates

      So in Religion, as it is the state of all realised souls, we are bound to the Truth, which is universal and is found within, through an attitude of ‘concietious piety’ towards one’s higher SELF.

      1. Clive Bates

        …or rather, towards the dieties within us, in relation to Sahaja Yoga the endeavour.

        By the grace of the Adi Shakti within.

  6. Clive Bates

    The Romans greatly admired the Greeks, which indicates the manner in which Christianity came into being, particulary through ‘Catholicism’, which edified the least adequate of the disciples, Peter & Paul.

  7. armaity

    As I understand it, a dogma is an accepted set of tenets and beliefs taken as the truth and perhaps as ‘the only way’ of seeing things. Dogma is something which comes from an outside agency and has to be forcibly accepted. It leaves no place for ‘free will’ or individual pursuance to seek the truth from within through direct experience.
    All religions came into being to direct human beings on the path to find the truth by remaining on the right path, but ultimately moved away from this noble intention due to various reasons, mainly that most of the adherents were not ready for it, all were not equal and some were more dominating than the others to influence them through fear . Ignorance coupled with vested interests and commercialization saw to it that religions moved away from the very goal for which they came into being.

    It is only after one’s self-realization that on can understand religion. It’s a paradox but unfortunately true.

    Most religions, especially the organized ones ended as dogmatic because they put the cart before the horse.
    It is only when

  8. Avdhut

    how about a dog; blindly following or pursuing someone or something because it is seeking security, or being territorial, convinced of it’s rightness…

    1. Arie

      So, is mankind also “blindly following”!
      And…
      When are we not?
      And how do we know?

  9. Colleen

    The opposite of DOGMA? or DOGMA spelled backwards is AM GOD. Interesting!

    1. adrian

      You see
      and experience more
      When you are awake

  10. Kruti

    The main challenge we have in today’s world, even for Sahaja Yogis is that we can easily become dogma if we try to use our brain more. We try to rationalize everything.But we are very fortunate to have our Mother as a guru and through Her love and compassion, we can become the reverse of dogma.Thank You Ioana for one more interesting article and all those who replied.

  11. Jolanta

    Interesting discussion.

    My “understanding” is that humans have distorted the essence of religions by deviating from the original teachings / creating various dogmas and -isms.

    The danger of deviation/distortion still exists.

    However, with the practice of Sahaja Yoga, the practitioner is/becomes his/her own “temple”/”church” etc. because, during meditation, the awakened Kundalini energy helps us clear ourselves of negativities, balance ourselves, and rise above our minds.

    So we are truly free and feel this amazing energy in our bodies/on our finger tips.

    No man-made institution will ever take this away from us!

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