Meher Baba
The Cage of Religion
NOVEMBER 11, 1944
On Saturday night, November 11th, darshan began at 9:30 P.M. in Gorakshan Maidan, where almost thirty thousand people had gathered. Baba gave a message on "God and Religion" which Justice Niyogi read out, Deshmukh translating in Marathi and Manek Mehta in Hindi. The following is an excerpt:
The organized religions of the world often fail to express the real vision of those who have been the fountainhead of inspiration for their very coming into existence. Dogmas and beliefs, rituals and ceremonies, can never be the essence of true spiritual life. When religion has become merely a matter of external rituals and ceremonies, it has become a cage for the soul. Nor does it help very far to change one religion for another. It is like going from one cage to another. If religion does not help man to emancipate the soul from spiritual bondage and realize God, it has no useful purpose to serve. Then it is time that religion should go to make room for God!
I am, therefore, not interested in founding a new religion. The world is already divided by numberless sects, based upon dogmas and beliefs. I have not come to give another cage for man, but to impart to the world the illimitable Truth. The world needs awakening and not mere verbal instruction; it needs the freedom and the amplitude of divine life, and not the superficiality of mechanized and pompous forms; it needs love, and not the display of power.
The world task ahead of me is particularly creative. Really speaking, none of you have to receive divinity from me; but what I have to give is the knowledge and experience of the Oneness of us all.
Man will be weaned away from the allurements of the ego-life. He shall come into full inheritance of his own divinity and know himself to be none other than the supreme God Himself; and his heart shall be unlocked so as to release the dynamic love divine. Divine love knows no decay, fear or corruption, because it is illumined by the understanding that all life is One. Let those who are alive to the real values hearken to this call of mine; they will have an ample share in bringing into existence the New Era of Truth and Love.
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