3385. Whenever and wherever intense love for God arises, at that time and place there also arises mysticism, the concept and the experience of oneness with God. It does not matter what name is used for God. It does not matter who are the saints and saviors. This is a natural law. This is a fact of psychology. This is an observable and verifiable phenomenon of spiritual beings. This is a well documented historical truth.
3386. As Ramakrishna, the great Hindu saint of the 19th century, said: “God is One. Men call him by various names.”.
3387. In this sense, it is true that all religions are the same.
3388. It is necessary first to understand that all religions are basically the same, before you can then understand that there are two types of religion which are inherently inconsistent and incompatible.
3389. In religion, there is oneness, but there is also twoness.
3390. If you do not understand that love for God arises in all religions and that this love for God is essentially the same spiritual phenomenon in all religions, then you will believe that your own love for God is proof of the doctrines of your own particular religion. This is not true. If this were true, then all the contradictory doctrines of all the particular religions would have to be true.
3391. The belief that only people of your own religion experience love for God can only exist in the presence of extreme ignorance.
3392. The belief that only people who believe the doctrines of your own religion are going to go to heaven, and that everyone else in the world is going to go to hell and is going to be tortured for all eternity by a supposedly loving God, despite the intensity of his love for God under a different name, is barbaric and absurd in the extreme.
3393. Type 2 religion is a perversion of the great truths of Type 1 religion.
3394. Type 1 religion teaches that you should achieve union with God. Type 2 religion teaches that you should die and go to heaven and be with God. In this way it teaches that there is no higher awareness. There is only a better location in space.
3395. Type 1 religion teaches that man, like God, exists outside of time, and only uses his body for a while. Type 2 religion teaches that man is a creature, a thing created by God. In this way it teaches materialism.
3396. Type 1 religion teaches that man, like God, is the source and cause of his own actions and adventures. Type 2 religion teaches that God alone is the creator, not you. Only God is the cause of anything and everything, not you. This is called “the sovereignty of God”. In this way it teaches irresponsibility.
3397. Type 1 religion teaches that you should achieve greater awareness, understanding, and wisdom. Type 2 religion teaches that it is your duty to believe the revealed doctrines, and that you should have faith in the revelations of God, without questioning them, even if they don’t make sense. If they don’t make sense, that’s because they are “divine mysteries”. In this way it teaches dogmatism.
3398. Type 1 religion teaches that you should do good in the world and help others to live better lives and to achieve enlightenment. Type 2 religion teaches that it is your duty to obey the commandments of God and to obey the church and to teach others the true faith. In this way it teaches slavery.
3399. Type 1 religion teaches that the understanding and love and joy of divine awareness and enlightenment are the same regardless of what name is used for God. Type 2 religion teaches loyalty to a particular name for God and to a particular savior or messenger of God. It teaches that unbelievers, those who use a different name for God, are not qualified for salvation. In this way it teaches hatred and war against unbelievers.
3400. Type 1 religion teaches that you are God. Type 2 religion teaches that you are not God.
3401. The concept of “oneness with God”, the concept of being separate and distinct but at the same time being one, exists even in orthodox Christianity, in the concept of the Trinity, “the Triune God”, the Three who are One. This is not a concept of the individual soul “becoming one with God” or “achieving oneness with God”, which is emphatically denied. The concept is that the three “Persons of God”, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, are Three, but are also at the same time One. They are Three separate and distinct “Persons”. At the same time, they are One God.
3402. In the Gospel of John, Chapter 10, Jesus says “I and my Father are one.”. He also says “The Father is in me, and I in him.”. Bible believing Christians often say, “Jesus is God.”.
3403. In Type 2 religion, the dogmas are always at war with the natural mysticism that arises in the presence of great love for God.
3404. In Type 2 religion, the dogmas are always at war with the natural love for all men everywhere that arises in the presence of great love for God.
3405. In Type 2 religion, the punishment and execution of heretics are justified by arguing that the heretic leads many people away from the true faith. He thereby brings them to eternal damnation. This is worse than murder. Murder brings death to the body. Heresy brings death to the soul.
3406. The main attraction of Type 2 religion is that it resembles Type 1 religion. Men feel love for God. They hear some Type 2 preacher. And they believe the lies.
3407. The appeal of Type 2 religion has two main sources. First, it advocates love for God. Second, the laws and commandments of Type 2 religion, excluding those which demand loyalty and obedience, are usually sound principles of how to live a good life, or at least they were when they were written.
3408. Both of these factors, loving God and living a good life, are common ground between Type 1 religion and Type 2 religion. In these two factors, there is oneness in all religions.
3409. Another thing that Type 1 and Type 2 have in common is that both advocate love for other men. However, sometimes in Type 2 religion this is restricted to loving other men who are faithful believers in the one true God according to that particular brand of Type 2 religion.
3410. In Type 1 religion, God is playful, fun, familiar, endearing, nearby, and warm. In Type 2 religion, God is serious, solemn, pompous, intimidating, far away, and cold.
3411. In Type 1 religion, God is friendly. In Type 2 religion, God is unfriendly.
3412. In Type 1 religion, you are supposed to be joyful with God. In Type 2 religion, you are supposed to fear God.
3413. In Type 1 religion, God shows you the way. In Type 2 religion, God gives you orders.
3414. In Type 1 religion, God says “Let’s play! Let’s party! Let’s rock and roll!”. He is talking to himself, because he can play many parts at the same time. In Type 2 religion, God creates man so that man can endlessly glorify and worship and praise God.
3415. When close to God, the differences between I and we and God are small.
3416. In Type 1 religion, God creates the universe to be his playground. In Type 2 religion, God creates the universe so that man can tell him how wonderful it is.
3417. In Type 1 religion, God is the cause of everything and acts through all spiritual beings everywhere. In Type 2 religion, God is the cause of everything and man is the cause of nothing.
3418. In Type 1 religion, God’s basic purpose is to have a good time. In Type 2 religion, God’s basic purpose is to make man obedient.
3419. In Type 1 religion, enlightenment is something you work at. Working to achieve enlightenment is the most important form of self-improvement. Like education, physical fitness, and other forms of self-improvement, it requires large amounts of time, effort, and study.
3420. In Type 2 religion, salvation is the gift of God’s grace. It is not like education, physical fitness, or other forms of self-improvement. It requires no time, no effort, and no study. All you need is faith. And faith is the free gift of God’s grace. Even if you want to, there is nothing you can do to acquire or earn or deserve grace and faith.
3421. In Type 2 religion, when someone loves God, and when he does spiritual exercises and works to make himself more pleasing to God and to become closer to God in his mind and heart, that is an infection of Type 1 thinking into Type 2 religion. It causes conflict because it is not consistent with Type 2 dogmas.
3422. Type 2 religion commonly contains elements which are similar to or reminiscent of Type 1 religion. This makes it more attractive, because it resembles the truth.
3423. The Bible, in Chapter 26 of the Gospel of Matthew, says “Jesus took bread … and said, Take, eat; this is my body. And he took the cup, … saying, Drink … For this is my blood”. In this way he instituted ritual cannibalism. The physical union of the body of the believer with the body of God through eating is similar to and reminiscent of the union of the soul with God through enlightenment.
3424. In Type 2 religion, belief is all-important.
3425. In Type 1 religion, enlightenment has nothing to do with belief.
3426. Type 1 and Type 2 agree that the Creator is more important than created things. But the believer in Type 2 religion incorrectly classifies himself as a created thing.
3427. The purpose of Type 1 religion is to make free beings. A free being is an enlightened and free spiritual being who may or may not have a material body.
3428. The purpose of Type 2 religion is to make slaves.
3429. The odd thing is that Type 1 people generally deny the distinction between Type 1 and Type 2. This is very foolish. They are busy loving God and have a low opinion of the value of intellect. They say that all religions are basically the same. This is not true. Type 1 religions are basically the same. And Type 2 religions are basically the same, each one having a God who claims to be creator and king and who demands obedience. But Type 2 religions are different from each other in that each one claims to have the one true God and that all other Gods are false Gods.
3430. The differences between different Type 1 religions are differences in how to go about achieving enlightenment.
3431. The purpose of Type 2 religion is to stamp out Type 1 religion and to keep people in ignorance and in slavery and at war with each other. And it is terribly effective.
3432. The distinction between Type 1 religion and Type 2 religion seems so simple and obvious. And yet almost no one is aware of this distinction or of its enormous importance. How can this be?
a. Type 2 religious people distinguish only between those who believe and obey the one true God according to their own brand of Type 2 religion, versus unbelievers who are not saved, which includes both Type 1 religious people and believers in any other brand of Type 2 religion.
b. Type 1 religious people delight in the oneness of all religions. They look at Type 2 religions and they find there the heretical elements of Type 1 religion. They say that this proves the oneness of all religions.
3433. The distinction between Type 1 and Type 2 is very clear if you look and observe and pay attention to what people are saying. But it is not a distinction that most people are familiar with. Both types talk about God, so they sound the same. Type 1 people believe that there is no Type 2. And most Type 2 people know nothing about Type 1. So you have to pay attention and observe that Type 1 and Type 2 really are different, that they contradict each other, and that if one is true then the other must be false.
* * * * * * *
This article is Chapter 109 in LIBERTY FOR ALL MEN EVERYWHERE – The Theory And Practice Of Freedom by Dale Samson. This book is available at http://www.libfame.com.
© Copyright 2010 Dale Richard Samson. Partial quotations of this chapter are permitted with attribution. Cite source as Dale Samson's LIBERTY FOR ALL MEN EVERYWHERE at http://www.libfame.com.
