Do We Need Religion?

Does your being atheist or a theist inhibit the ability to become enlightened or to experience God-consciousness? dive into this lesson and discover for yourself. What is religion or what should make religion true? Come listen to this open-minded talk and discover for yourselves.

Transcript

Hello and welcome.

My name is Douglas Garmins.

Thanks for joining me again today.

It's been a nice Christmas break and speaking of Christmas breaks,

We did have a few new followers come in and join up with us.

I'd like to say hello and shout out to Ash,

Melissa,

Mina,

Pedro,

Andrea Childers,

Emily Borosi,

And two Emily's from the United Kingdom.

So,

Welcome aboard.

It's wonderful to have everybody from around the world gather together and listen to a few words of wisdom,

If we could call them that.

I'm watching this new episode on HBO Max called Raised by Wolves.

It's a very interesting series if you guys get a chance to watch it.

It's quite,

I don't know,

Disturbing or what do you want to call it.

But basically what it is,

Is these two androids are shipped,

Are flown to a new planet called Kepler-12,

Or Kepler-22,

Excuse me.

Anyway,

These two androids basically are tasked with raising 12 little embryos and having them develop into babies and grow up.

But here's the catch.

Their whole growth cycle is completely God-free.

Completely atheistic.

In fact,

I think the gist of the whole story is that they tried to escape this certain religion that was forced upon all the people.

So anyway,

It's quite an interesting series and I won't spoil it for you guys if you decide to watch it.

But it's very interesting that society came to the point where it was felt that either you believed in God or you're completely atheist and you don't believe in God.

And those are the only two choices that are presented to us.

So what do we do?

Do we live our lives without belief?

I mean,

It's possible.

Many atheists are doing just that.

They're getting by every day without having a firm belief that they are basically slaves and that there's a master that is going around controlling everything.

So they're the freedom thinkers,

The freedom of thought thinkers,

That they are free to believe or not believe.

And that has its own beauty to it.

Even Buddha himself,

Basically when asked if there's such a thing as God,

Basically denied the existence of God.

But that didn't make Buddha a atheist.

In fact,

Buddha was asked three times in the same day if God exists.

And one person said yes,

And the other said maybe,

And the other said no,

God does not exist.

So it was the questioner,

It was their interpretation of what Buddha had to give to them so they could take away and grow consciously.

And that's it.

That's the key goal,

To grow consciously.

So what is religion?

What is the difference between a theist and a non-believer?

Really you could say that basically there are two sides of the same coin.

On one side you have belief,

And on the other side you have non-belief.

But here's the thing,

They both don't know.

They both are believing in blind faith and that their way is right or what their understanding is right.

But they're two sides to the same coin.

If we think of religion as being like a wheel,

And basically the wheel has many spokes.

All the spokes go out from the hub,

From the center where they're all very close to each other and very in unison and work well together.

And then this energy goes outward towards the periphery of the wheel.

And basically every religion should be a journey back towards the hub,

Back towards the center,

Back where there's more of a unison.

And the closer you draw to the center,

Then the more each religion bleeds into each other.

I can also make it sound like this too.

If there's a necklace,

And each bead of the necklace could represent a religion,

And the thread that joins all these beads together,

You could say that is God.

And both are true.

So the purpose of religion basically is to draw you back closer to the hub,

Back to the center,

Back to this,

If the hub is God,

Then that God consciousness,

That God essence,

I love the new words God consciousness or Christ consciousness is what some of the people are starting to call it.

But basically it's just a drawing to the truth,

A drawing closer to the center to where you become reunited.

And that's just the thing,

If it's a true religion,

If it has an essence of trueness about it,

Then it is going to draw you back to the hub,

Back to the center.

And like I said,

Everything bleeds together as you get closer and closer to the center of the hub.

And I guess one thing you have to realize is that the closer you draw to the center of anything,

There's no to,

There's no I and Thou.

As you draw closer and closer,

You shed your ego,

You shed your desire to know,

Basically.

Even the desire to know becomes a hindrance,

A barrier.

It all has to be dropped.

The closer you come to the center,

Then there's only room for one.

And if you feel that you're at the center of the wheel and you don't know this godliness,

This God consciousness,

Then you made something in the wrong direction.

As the farther you go away from the center,

Then the more the possibility of others can be.

But as you draw closer to the center,

Then no,

Only this is-ness,

This union with the divine has to occur.

So yes,

If it helps give you any clarity,

If it helps bring you closer to understanding the truth,

The basic purpose of religion is to draw you and return you to God consciousness to bring you back to experiencing what godliness is.

And I'm afraid that many religions are not doing that.

Many religions are just,

Basically,

They've got it backwards.

The horse is supposed to draw the carriage closer to the truth.

And unfortunately,

What's happening is the horse is now behind the carriage and it's not able to push the cart and bring you closer to truth.

Mostly because a lot of the religions are led by blind people,

People who are not enlightened,

People who don't know God consciousness.

I guess the question we have to ask ourselves is,

Is it necessary for the leader of the religion to be enlightened,

To know God consciousness,

To have experienced godliness?

Well,

That's a good question,

But the answer,

Believe it or not,

Is no.

You could still basically discover godliness on your own and experience godliness even from someone who is not enlightened.

It has happened before.

False masters have proclaimed that they were enlightened or had god consciousness and they were false and they weren't real,

But their followers somehow magically became enlightened.

I mean,

With the truth be known,

There are a few enlightened people out there who are actually like Muji or maybe Eckhart Tolle or some of these guys that are out there trying to push you and lead and guide you,

And they're enlightened and it's still not helping.

People are still not becoming enlightened.

If a fruit is known by the tree,

Or a tree is known by the fruit that it flowers,

And if there's no flowering,

Then that enlightened person is not succeeding in transferring or transforming all these people into enlightened beings.

And the reason is that it's hard.

It has to do with your heart.

It has to do with your understanding and your comprehension and how much you're willing to dive into the essence of the teaching of the so-called enlightened master or maybe even the false master.

It all depends on your heart.

It depends on your intensity and your totality.

And that's just it.

That's what Lao Tzu said.

You have to do things in its totality and then the happening will occur.

Buddha says that there's no such thing as God.

And when Buddha says there's no such thing as God,

It's not the same thing as an atheist saying there's no such thing as God.

Because like I said,

It all happens in this totality.

And Buddha realized that God is the last stepping stone in the way of you discovering the oneness of existence.

Like I said,

There can't be two there,

Right?

Remember the hub analogy I was just talking about?

There can't be two at the hub.

There can only be one.

So that's why Buddha basically tried to emphasize that there's no such thing as God.

And he even denied the fact that when you become enlightened that you're not becoming a God.

You're not becoming anything.

You're just becoming empty.

You're just becoming pure is-ness.

But he had his reasoning for denying the existence of God.

And like I said,

That's because there can only be one at the center of the hub.

And like I said,

If your energy,

If your practice,

If the way you meditate,

The way you pray,

The totality that you put into it,

The oneness,

The wholeness,

You know you're going in the right direction if there's less division.

If there's more division,

You're going in the wrong direction.

Whatever you're doing is wrong and needs to be dropped.

And you need to basically turn 180 degrees inward towards the center.

That's the only way that you'll become or come to know this God consciousness,

To know that this religion,

This path you're following is the correct path,

As if you dissolve and let yourself go.

You have to be receptive.

You have to be basically in a feminine state of mind because there's so much to receive and you have to be open to it.

If you're in a masculine frame of mind,

Then there's not enough room in your mind to comprehend what's about to be given or what's about to be shared with you.

So you have to be basically in a receptive,

Open mode and like Buddha said,

Completely empty,

Completely in expanse.

You have to create a space in order for this God consciousness to enter you.

So I'd say try this experiment.

If you don't meditate,

Then try picking it up and trying to create space and create gaps of no thought and learn how to still the mind and allow consciousness and allow God consciousness basically to come into you and fill you and fill that negative void up.

And it will happen if you start meditating.

You'll definitely experience this blissfulness that comes along with meditation.

But the cool thing is that you don't have to be a believer.

You can be an atheist and it still works.

The magic still works.

Believing is not a prerequisite to coming to God or coming to godliness.

And it can be explained like this too.

So with the Buddhist analogy,

Basically I always refer to it as like a dam full of bricks.

And every time you meditate,

You take one of these bricks away and a little bit of water flows through.

And every time you meditate,

It feels good and it feels better.

You feel this burden relieved from you whenever you keep meditating because every time you meditate you take another brick away and another brick away all the way down to the last brick.

And like I said,

Buddha basically said that last brick is godliness.

You know,

It's the essence of God and it has to be removed.

All the bricks have to be removed and then the water can flow completely free.

So that's kind of like a negative approach of course.

And you're negating this,

Negating that and you're saying God is not this,

God is not that,

Until you get down to the last brick and then you finally find the courage to remove even that brick.

And then there's the other approach,

Basically the love approach.

And the love approach is doing things in its totality.

Being completely immersed into the essence of love.

And when you can do that,

When you can be completely 100% loving,

Then it's almost like the whole brick analogy of the dam.

Love can be such a strong force that it will bust down all the bricks all at one time and then the water is free to flow and this union with godliness occurs.

So there's just different approaches.

The love approach works and then the negativity approach works too.

So you could call the negativity approach basically almost like the atheistic approach and then the love approach could be the theist approach.

But basically,

Like I said,

It has more to do with the heart and the comprehension of the follower.

Which path is right for them?

That's each one of our own things we have to figure out in life is that which approach is more beneficial?

Which one is going to help me?

Which one is going to draw me closer to the truth?

And they say you can't serve two masters at the same time,

But I would disagree with this a little bit and say that if you combine these approaches,

If you combine the love approach and the negative approach and work from both ends,

It's like burning a candle from both ends.

You get to the core a lot faster.

So in reality,

You can choose both approaches and you can use prayer and you can use meditation.

They're both tools.

Now I will say that with prayer,

You'll always feel like there's this separation between you and what you're praying to.

And the true essence of prayer is to dissolve that separation between the two of you.

So prayer will get you only so far and meditation will actually take you the rest of the way.

So you can combine these truths,

Combine these paths and come up with your own ways of experiencing oneness or holiness and godliness.

So yes,

In the end,

It's all up to you and how open you can be or how receptive you can be.

And that's the beauty of it.

And nothing is ever going to be forced upon you.

Nobody's trying to force God consciousness or godliness upon you.

In fact,

It's the opposite.

Once you start seeking it,

Then the law of attraction takes place and it pulls you closer and pulls you into it more and more.

And the more open and the more receptive and the more meditative you can be,

Then the more you'll be drawn towards the center,

Back in the right direction towards the hub.

And this essence of godliness is this oneness that just has to be experienced.

But like I said,

It's totally up to you.

You can choose to be an atheist so you can be a theist.

You can actually decide to go beyond those things,

Beyond the two sides of the same coin and experience what we call knowing.

And that is the true core.

The two approaches can lead to the final result and that final result will basically be union with your maker,

Union with the divine.

But anyway,

I guess we'll end it there.

So I want to say thank you again for taking the time to listen to this talk.

I hope that it answers some of your questions and helps you basically define your core and find that if you go in the right direction,

If you go inward and become total with whatever you're doing,

Then you'll find that you'll reach the goal.

Anyway,

Thank you guys again for joining me and I hope you take care of yourselves and hopefully we'll pick this up on another talk.

Take care of yourselves.

Bye bye.