Religious Spiritualism
We cannot seek Nous by being religious or spiritual alone, we must combine the two. We must work to make our understandings of life adapt to the spiritualism of world religious beliefs. Spiritualism without religion can become un-motivational, self-centered, and relativistic. Without spiritualism, religion can become sere, dogmatic, and faithless. For these reasons, we should keep the two in balance by following the traditions of Gnothi Sauton, Living in the Present, Logos, Meditational Prayer, Sapientia, Sattvic Action, and Zakat. All of the 10 Traditions should be kept in balance with one another and at all times considered. One cannot sacrifice the validity of one or more to uphold a preferred tradition. Worst of all is the abuse of the traditions for personal, it is hoped to accomplish. First of all, we should note that anything we write here is an opaque shadow masking the tenacity and truth of our beliefs. Words cannot express what we have come to understand; you must see it for yourself. We offer ourselves to the will of the Divine by the 10 traditions of Religious Spiritualism (described below). Our ultimate goal is the same as many: to give a Path or Way to Nous and the Divine for all those who seek it. political, or economical gain; likewise, offer Religious Spiritualism to all those who ask. In addition, we encourage Astrivians to establish rituals for themselves. They can be whatever you desire, but you cannot break or bend any of the 10 Traditions in the process. For example, human sacrifice could not be part of Meditational Prayer because it violates Compassion and Humility and Sapientia. An easy idea would be to set a time of day for Meditational Prayer (sundown, sunrise, noon, 1:34 am, it doesn’t matter). Should you forget to adhere to your ritual, donʼt be too hard on yourself. Learn from the mistake and move on.
Quotations
These quotes are meant to inspire and clarify, not define the various traditions. There is no order to the quotations under the specific tradition. While this may make it difficult to search, the scattering is meant to portray a larger concept: there is no order or hierarchy amongst world religions. Similarly, some quotes are not even from sacred or spiritual texts in the traditional sense; inspiration can come from any source.
Our sources are listed at the end along with the ISBN’s of our texts. We encourage all readers to consult the original source (preferably in the original language) for their own spiritual guidance and clarification.
Feel free to add comments with your own favorite quotations.
“Foolish men talk of religion
in cheap, sentimental words,
leaning on the scriptures: ‘God
speaks here, and speaks here alone.’”
(Bhagavad Gita, p. 53)
Five times a day there is a call to prayer [in Islam]; at dawn, noon, midafternoon, dusk, and night. The prayers interrupt daily activities in order to reorient members of the community to religious awareness.
(Essential Sufism, p. 7)
“There is but one religion of god, and that is not to be evil.”
(Hermetica, Corpus Hermeticum XII, v. 23)
“And he (Jesus) said, ‘The man is like a wise fisherman who cast his net into the sea and drew it up from the sea full of small fish. Among them the wise fisherman found a fine large fish. He threw all the small fish back into the sea and chose the large fish without difficulty. Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear.’”
(Nag Hammadi, The Gospel of Thomas, p. 127)
“But all that things that God would have us do are hard for us to do—remember that—and hence, he oftener commands us that endeavors to persuade. And if we obey God, we must disobey ourselves; and it is in the disobeying ourselves, wherein the hardness of obeying God consists.”
(Moby Dick, p. 45)
“And an old priest said, Speak to us of Religion.
And he said:
Have I spoken this day of aught else?
Is not religion all deeds and all reflection,
And that which is neither deed nor reflection, but a wonder and a surprise ever springing in the soul, even while the hands hew the stone or tend the loom?
Who can separate his faith from his actions, or his belief from his occupations?
Who can spread his hours before him, saying, ‘This is for God and this for myself; This for my soul, and this other for my body.’
All your hours are wings that beat through space from self to self.
He who wears his morality but as his best garment were better naked.
The wind and the sun will tear no holes in his skin.
And he who defines his conduct by ethics imprisons his song-bird in a cage.
The freest song comes not through bars and wires.
And he to whom worshiping is a window, to open but also to shut, has not yet visited the house of his soul whose windows are from dawn to dawn.
Your daily life is your temple and your religion.
Whenever you enter into it take with you your all….
And if you would know God be not therefore a solver of riddles.
Rather look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children.
And look into space; you shall see Him walking in the cloud, outstretching His arms in the lightning and descending in rain.
You shall see Him smiling in flowers, then rising and waving His hands in trees.”
(Gibran, The Prophet, pp. 77-9)
“Someone who says, ‘I believe,’ even if he spends a long time pretending, he will not prevail, but he will fall; as your heart is, (so) will your life.”
(Nag Hammadi, The Sentences of Sextus, p. 505)
Jesus speaking: “’You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.’”
(The Bible, Matthew 5:13)
“They say: ‘Become Jews or Christians,
and find the right way.’
…
Say: ‘We believe in God
and what has been sent down to us,
and what has been revealed
to Abraham and Ishmael
and Isaac and Jacob and their progeny,
and to all other prophets by the Lord.
We make no distinction among them,
and we submit to Him.”
(Al-Qur’ān, 2:135-136; similar in 3:84, 4:152, 4:164, 6:42-50, 6:88-91, 10:47, 14:4, 22:34)
“Although there are some differences in the way things are done in the lodges of other Sufi orders, in essence they are not very different. There is not lack of love or respect between these various orders. They do not reject each other, or criticize each other. Nor do they claim to be closer to the Truth. Sometimes it is said, ‘The fountain from which I drank was here, and there are many other fountains if you are thirsty.’”
(Murat Yagan, Essential Sufism, p. 39)
“Finding myself thus hard pushed, I replied, ‘I mean, sir, the same ancient Catholic Church to which you and I, and Captain Peleg there, and Queequeg here, and all of us, and every mother’s son and soul of us belong; the great and everlasting First Congregation of this whole worshiping world; we all belong to that; only some of us cherish some queer crotchets noways touching the grand beliefs; in that we all join hands.’”
(Moby Dick, p. 83)
“Jesus saw infants being suckled. He said to his disciples, ‘These infants being suckled are like those who enter the kingdom’.
They (the disciples) said to him, ‘Shall we then, as children, enter the kingdom?’
Jesus said to them, “When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male not be male nor the female female; and when you fashion eyes in place of an eye, and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, and a likeness in place of a likeness; then will you enter [the kingdom].’”
(Nag Hammadi, The Gospel of Thomas, p. 129)
“Speaking as a prophet, I will tell you that after us will remain none of that simple regard for philosophy found only in the continuing reflection and holy reverence by which one must recognize divinity. The many make philosophy obscure in the multiplicity of their reasoning.”
(Hermetica, Asclepius, v. 12)
“But whatever the form of reverence,
whatever god a sincere
devotee chooses to worship,
I grant him an unswerving faith.”
(Bhagavad Gita, p. 103)
“When the Tao is lost, there is goodness,
When goodness is lost, there is morality,
When morality is lost, there is ritual.
Ritual is the husk of true faith,
the beginning of chaos.”
(Tao te Ching, ch. 38)
“I was a good Christian; born and bred in the bosom of the infallible Presbyterian Church. How then could I unite with this wild idolator in worshiping his piece of wood? But what is worship? Thought I. Do you suppose now, Ishmael that the magnanimous God of heaven and earth—pagans and all included—can possibly be jealous of an insignificant bit of black wood? Impossible! But what is worship?—to do to my fellow man what I would have my fellow man do to me—that is the will of God.”
(Moby Dick, p. 54)
Sufism without Islam is like a candle burning in the open without a lantern. There are winds which may blow that candle out. But if you have a lantern with glass protecting the flame, the candle will continue to burn safely.
(Muzaffer Ozak, Essential Sufism, p. 4)
“[The] true [word] of God is [the] word of God.”
(Nag Hammadi, The Sentences of Sextus, p. 506)
“Some say, ‘The Law tells us to abstain from anger, lust, and hypocrisy. This is plainly impossible, for we are created with those qualities inherent in us. You might as well tell us to make black white.’ People ignore the fact that the law does not tell us to uproot these passions but to restrain them within due limits so that, by avoiding the great sins, we may obtain forgiveness of the smaller ones. Even the Prophet of God [Muhammad] said, ‘I am a man like you, and get angry like others.’ In the Koran it is written, ‘God loves those who swallow down their anger.’”
(Al-Ghazzali, Essential Sufism, p. 59)
“One day the Prophet Abraham invited a person to dinner, but when he learned that he was and infidel he canceled the invitation and turned him out. Immediately the Divine Voice reprimanded him, saying, ‘You did not give him food for a day even because he belonged to a different religion, yet for the last seventy years I am feeding him in spite of his heresy. Had you fed him for one night, you would not have become poor on that account.’”
(Al-Ghazzali, Essential Sufism, p. 63)
“And each one of them [the blessed beings], starting out in his land, revealed his (kind of) acquaintance to the visible church constituted of the modeled forms of perdition. It (viz., the church) was found to contain all kinds of seed, because of the seed of the authorities that had [mixed with it].”
(Nag Hammadi, On the Origin of the World, p. 187)
“‘Name now our names, praise us. We are your mother, we are your father. Speak now:
“Hurricane,
Newborn Thunderbolt, Raw Thunderbolt,
Heart of Sky, Heart of Earth,
Maker, Modeler
Bearer, Begetter,”
speak, pray to us, keep our days.’”
(Popol Vuh, p. 78)
“[Mary] said, ‘ There is but one saying I will [speak] to the Lord concerning the mystery of truth: In this have we taken our stand, and to the cosmic we are transparent.’”
(Nag Hammadi, The Dialogue of the Savior, p. 253)
“‘”Do not lay down any rules beyond what I [the Savior] appointed for you, and do not give a law like the lawgiver lest you be constrained by it.’”
(Nag Hammadi, The Gospel of Mary, p. 525)
“There were countless peoples, but there was just one dawn for all tribes.”
(Popol Vuh, p. 182
Sources and Further Reading
Bhagavad Gita. (c. 500 B.C.E to 100 C.E.; trans. 2000). (Stephen Mitchell trans.). New York: Harmony Books.
ISBN: 060960550X
Boethius (524 C.E; trans. 1962). The Consolation of Philosophy. (Richard Green trans.). New Jersey: Macmillan Publishing Company.
ISBN: 002346450X
Gibran, Kahlil. (first printed 1923, this edition: 2001). The Prophet. New York: Alfred A Knopf.
ISBN: 0394404289
Hermetica. (1992). (Brian P. Copenhaver, Trans.). London: Cambridge University Press.
ISBN: 0521425433
Lao Tzu. (original composition date unknown, possibly c. 500 B.C.E; trans. 1991). Tao Te Ching. (Stephen Mitchell trans.). New York: Harper Perennial.
ISBN: 0060916087
Melville, Herman. (first printed: 1851, this edition: 1967). Moby Dick. London: England. W.W. Norton & Company.
ISBN: 039309670X
Miller, J, Kenedi, A. (Eds.). (2000). God’s Breath: Sacred Scriptures from Around the World. New York: Marlowe & Company.
ISBN: 1569246181
Muhammad. (trans. 1993). Al-Qur’ān. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
ISBN: 0691074992
Rudolph, Kurt. (1987). Gnosis: the Nature and History of Gnosticism. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco.
ISBN: 0060670185
