An old wise Dervish said, “There are as many ways to the Truth as there are hearts of men”. If we believe him then a few concepts must be accepted by anybody looking for a path to the Light:
a- There is only one Supreme God common to all religions and there has only been one at all time. Most religions and Mystery Schools believe in their own Supreme Being who is, among other things, responsible for creating, in one-way or the other, the material world. That the members of each religion and schools can believe that their own God, completely different from the god of the other creeds, and only Him was responsible for creating the world, is one of the most difficult contradictions to explain. In fact as there is only one material world, it could not possibly have been created by many Supreme Beings. The only acceptable explanation is that there is only One Supreme Being, common to all religions and Mystery Schools. However, each creed sees Him in different ways, due to their different perception of the world, and each of them gave Him a different name. Some creeds are polytheist, they believe in different gods. This seems to be in contradiction with the fact that there is only one God. The contradiction is only apparent. The Supreme Being, God, is responsible for everything that we see in the natural world and for everything that we do. The monotheist religions recognise, and accept, that their God is responsible for all this. Others, especially the oldest religions and most Mystery Schools, cannot accept this due to the intellectual limitations of their members; they believe that a god must only be responsible for one activity, or one component of the natural world. In fact, what they do, is to give a different name to each facet of the Supreme God. In conclusion, there is only one Supreme Being, one God, who is known under a different name by each religion or school; the polytheist religions have he same and unique God, but they address each of his facets of activity by a different name. In these polytheistic religions, God, the Supreme Being, is the sum of all their divinities.
b- God is responsible for all things, material and spiritual. He created all of them in his own time, and in his own way. God, seen as the Supreme Being, is then obviously responsible for all things. He created the material world as well as the spiritual field that encompass it. It is useless to ask oneself why he did it, when, and how. This is outside the comprehension of the human mind. All we can know, comprehend, talk about is what we can see. There is no way for man to go further that observing and admiring what has been done in the material world. We can, in some ways, get a better understanding of the spiritual world. This requires personal research and observation; it is available to each person within the limits of his, or her, intellectual abilities and willingness to search for it. As will be seen later this is a long process requiring long period of work, as well as the necessary commitment and patience.
c- God is immaterial, he cannot be seen, he does not live in a specific place but, on the contrary, God is everywhere, in every creature, and in every object of the material world. God being immaterial, we do not know of what He is made off. We can say, with a good probability to be right, that He is not part of the material world, and that He is closer, although there is no way to be certain, to the spiritual world. That He cannot be seen, and that He is not located in any specific places, is obvious if we accept that He is not part of the material world. However we can presume that God is present -in His own way- in every creature and in every object of the material world as well that in His own world that is unknown to us. In consequence, as God is present in every man, we can talk to Him, but this direct communication is going one way only. God does not talk back to us. His answers to our requests and questions, if He wishes to answer, appear to us as material events before our eyes.
d- God has no direct contact with the material world. Sometime God wants, needs or has to communicate with men, his human creatures. As He cannot do it directly, He creates what has become to be known as a prophet to deliver His message. A prophet is a human being who, knowingly or not, receives a message from God with the instruction to transmit it to all men, or to some of them only. There are two kinds of prophets. First, there are the prophets who know that they have been instructed by God to deliver a message. But there is also a second type of prophets who do not know that they are carrying a specific message from God. However, all the prophets cannot help but deliver their messages. The first type does it knowingly, and they state that they are speaking in God’s name. The second type of prophets delivers their message too, but it is up to their audience to realise that the messenger is speaking in the name of God. God having created the material and spiritual worlds, obviously created Man too. It is not known how he did it, why, and when, or if Man has been created in His image or not. The only certainty is that God created Man for His own reasons. Once created, Man lost contact with His creator; he has no way to get in direct contact with Him because Man is part of the material world. God being everywhere and in every creature, part of God is in Man, but the only possible connection is through the spiritual world. To do this Man has to purify himself through knowledge, introspection, and by living a decent life. But, even those who follow these rules are not guarantee a spiritual contact with God. Only Him can decide if that learned man is worth of his consideration; in other words, God alone can decide if this man is worth of being able to glimpse at Him in the spiritual world in which he immersed himself. This is the road to salvation.
e- Faith alone, although it is necessary, is not enough to guarantee salvation. The way to salvation is through knowledge, knowledge of one’s religion, knowledge of oneself by introspection and hard personal work. Faith alone, as preached by many traditional churches, in particular the Christian churches, is far from enough to guarantee salvation, faith is only a prerequisite to it. It is not possible to obtain salvation if one does not believe in God, the Supreme Being. But believing in the Supreme Being is not enough. Salvation requires knowledge of one’s religion, independently of what it is. Only broadly educated people can hope to be awarded salvation by the universal and unique God. This knowledge can only be the result of personal research based on all the information available, and not only those that the specific Church has accepted in its dogma. But knowledge in itself is not enough. The persons who hope to obtain salvation must also go through a deep self-analysis through introspection. The aim of this analysis is for the candidates to salvation to know themselves, to find their weak and strong points, and to correct their defects while, at the same time, increasing their personal qualities. The result of this personal analysis should be the realisation that man is not alone, that selfishness is to be eliminated, and that living a good and moral life, although difficult, is a basic requirement to be able to start walking on the road to salvation.
f- Through learning and knowledge men acquire a better, although incomplete, knowledge of God. This alone does not make them better, but it put them on the right way to salvation. As it was said before, learning and knowledge are a “must” requirement for salvation, but not a guarantee. Knowledge here is understood as the result of learning about one’s own religion, without any limitation imposed by the official Church and its clergy. All the aspects of this specific religion must be learned, including those aspects that have been rejected by the official clergy. It is well known that, in most religions, the clergy has decided, at one time or the other, what is the official doctrine of their church, eliminating all references to any other interpretation. More often that not, the writings of those authors who did not conform to the official doctrine were destroyed and their lecture prohibited. This is unacceptable, and the candidates to salvation should also read this literature and make their own judgment because it is not obvious, at priory, that the winning clergy was right in making their choice. The only thing that can be said about the winning clergy and their official doctrine, is that they succeeded to impose their view. Knowing the different views concerning one’s religion does not make the students better. It only makes them more open-minded and able to decide, on their own, what is the best approach to what could be the road to salvation.
g- Men can never fully know God but, through learning and knowledge, they can understand Him better, although in a limited way. God, the Supreme Being, is immaterial and, as it has been said before, there is no way for us to know him. We do not know what he is made off, except that he is not part of the material world, and we cannot know it as it is beyond our comprehension. We only presume that he belongs to the spiritual world, but we are not certain that His is the same spiritual world that the one we know. However, by putting together as much as possible of all that has been said, done, and written by the wise men, by the prophets of the past, by those still living, by those recognised by the official churches as well as those that were rejected, Man can hope to reach a level of knowledge that should allow him to have an inside view of the spiritual world. All this knowledge, supplemented by a constant and deep introspection as well as by leading a “good” life, should allow men to understand God better. The degree of understanding depends on the level of knowledge acquired, the depth of the introspection, and the way the candidates have been living. At the highest level, Man can hope to have a spiritual glimpse at God, but this is difficult and rare.
h- There are different levels of salvation, the lowest one being obtained by faith alone, and the higher one by faith, personnel knowledge, personal behaviour, and introspection. Not all the people are the same; they do not have the same intelligence, nor the will required to behave properly and learn all that is available about their religion. Some people will limit themselves to have faith in God, in their Church, and in its rituals and doctrine. This is the easy way; these people will never have the possibility to have a spiritual view and any real knowledge of their God. Perhaps they will reach salvation, but their life after death will be as passive as it has been on earth. At the other extreme we find the small minority of people who have faith in their God -perhaps also in their Church, but this is not always the case-, and who have learned all there is to know about their religion -the official doctrine, as well as the views of the dissidents and of those expelled for their non-orthodox views. They have led a good life and they have taken the time to know themselves through introspection, meditation, and self-analysis. These people have reached the highest level of preparation for a possible salvation. Only God can decide who will be saved and even the learned have no guarantee to be among the chosen ones. Moreover these people will not reach God’s level, they will not see or know him, as they are still part of the material world of which God is no part; but perhaps they will have some kind of privileged contacts or communication with Him in the spiritual world. In between, there are many intermediate levels that are reached by those who do something beyond having faith in their God, but without reaching the top level described before. For all of these people, there is always hope of salvation.
i- This new approach to religion is open to everybody independently of race, sex, social level, and church. This approach to religion is very personal. One must decide to go further than faith, and search for knowledge through long and hard work, introspection, and by living a “good life”. It is open to all the members of all religions who are ready to go along this difficult path, even if the knowledge sought is different.
j- People interested in the new approach to religion can either remain members of their old church, or leave it and practise their beliefs on their own. From what has been said before, this so-called new approach is not a new religion, but an extension of the old ones or, sometimes a return to the origins,with the aim to unify them, at least at the higher level. This means that all the present religions will continue to exist as they have done for many centuries but some of their members will not be happy to limit themselves to believe only in their churches’ doctrines. They will want to supplement it by personal knowledge and introspection that will lead them to a higher spiritual level and give them, hopefully, a better chance of salvation.