Is There One True Religion, One True Path to God?

I'd read that if it was written by another writer, I have no more patience for that man.
 
yes we generically get in trouble for global references....

I do all the time.

all would be wrong..many would be correct....as might most.
 
voiceofwood said:
Ideas of karma and reincarnation are fundamentally evil and incomparable with a loving God
Click to expand...

Is this the same loving god who has condemned everyone to hell because they are stained with the sin of Adam? :)
 
I believe that was man and man's religion that condemned folks to hell because of original sin... However...since it ain't my religion...I'll allow any folks that believe anything akin to that to respond.
 
As a kid attending religious school (Jewish) I was taught that God or Truth was like a mountain top and the religions, like paths for their followers to climb. None of the paths came close to the top and so they seemed far apart to the climbers. Yet they were all attempting to reach the same place. The teacher said that this was a Buddhist idea.
 
Namaste Jesus said:
There are many religious beliefs throughout the world. Is one of them the only true path to God and the others false?

The way I see it, all faiths and religious beliefs are in one way or the other interconnected. I see the differences between them as more cultural than anything else with the goal of each being more or less the same.

Thoughts?
Click to expand...

I see it that way too, give or take. Cultural mores influence every aspect of our lives. It's only natural that concepts of God and religion would reflect that influence. That's what makes one religion appear different from another.

I look at it this way. Here in the states, yanks fix their cars with a wrench. Back home we use a spanner. Sounds like 2 different things, but they're actually one and the same. Like religion, there's a right way and a wrong way to use them, but one is no superior than the other.
 
Namaste Jesus said:
There are many religious beliefs throughout the world. Is one of them the only true path to God and the others false?

The way I see it, all faiths and religious beliefs are in one way or the other interconnected. I see the differences between them as more cultural than anything else with the goal of each being more or less the same.

Thoughts?
Click to expand...

the one that leads one to truths about oneself.
 
I think it can be said God is all around you in the world, and even inside of you since you were created by God. So the best way to find God is going inside of yourself and start the inner journey. It is realizing the divinity within yourself.

My other thought is God does not exist in duality or polarity like all in this world. So if you find someone describing God in duality, then they probably have an agenda.
 
John 14:6New American Standard Bible (NASB)

6 Jesus *said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.
 
I am...the great I am...our higher selves... Christ Consciousness....

Paul said put the mind of Christ in your mind...

The knowledge that we are all one, is the connection that opens us upto the one...
 
wil said:
I am...the great I am...our higher selves... Christ Consciousness....

Paul said put the mind of Christ in your mind...

The knowledge that we are all one, is the connection that opens us upto the one...
Click to expand...


similar to my take on it.

"I AM", awareness before concepts, this presence this awareness that I AM before thought before concepts before Ideas, that which is aware I AM, is the way.
 
Roger Bannister was the first to break the four minute mile in a race.

He doesn't own the four minute mile....he was the one that showed others it was possible.

Just as Jesus, doesn't own Christ Consciousness. He was our elder brother and wayshower that blazed a path... (Our, for Christians, Krishna, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Mohammed, others blazed paths for others...)
 
the bible even says, the kingdom of heaven is found within you.

suggests inner journey, to recognize the divinity within yourself which is your direct connection to God. After this you need no other teachers because your higher self is your guide.
 
pasqualie1980 said:
the bible even says, the kingdom of heaven is found within you.
Click to expand...
Yes it does, but in this case I think there is a tendency to assume a meaning that's at odds with the total text. This is a case of eisegesis (thanks Jayhawker Soule), of reading something onto a line of a text, whereas the line in the context of the narrative flow says something else.

pasqualie1980 said:
suggests inner journey, to recognize the divinity within yourself which is your direct connection to God.
Click to expand...
Again, such an interpretation is axiomatic of certain 'New Age' philosophies, but not the Abrahamic. In those traditions, creation is a theophany, a Divine act, but creation and all therein is not inherently divine. It is created, and subject to finitude, to time and space, to increase and decrease (even the soul). The Divine is not subject to any condition, ergo the human cannot be inherently divine (were that so, it would know absolutely).

But the soul can participate in the Divine Life.

The 'inner journey' of the New Testament is one of metanoia-kenosis-theosis – change of heart-self-emptying-deification. This is brought about by the 'indwelling' of the Holy Spirit in the soul, referred to as shekinah 'the settling of the Divine Presence' (in the soul), in the Jewish Tradition, pneuma 'spirit' or 'breath' of God, in the Christian (from the Hebrew ruach, the 'breathe' by which God animated man in Genesis 2) and Barakah in the Moslem. In all three, the 'kingdom within' is the presence of God in and to the soul, not the soul itself – that is human and created although it has the capax dei, the 'capacity for God' as Augustine said.

pasqualie1980 said:
After this you need no other teachers because your higher self is your guide.
Click to expand...
Again, the Abrahamics do not go into dualist (multiple-personality) psychologies. In the Traditions, which are holistic rather than dualist, there is just the self, the soul, not multiple selves, higher, mediate, lower, etc. The self is spoken of in such terms purely metaphorically.

The teacher is the Indwelling Presence, as Scripture asserts:
John 14:17
"The spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, nor knoweth him: but you shall know him; because he shall abide with you, and shall be in you." (This provides the true key to interpret 'the kingdom within'.)

John 15:26
"But when the Paraclete cometh, whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceedeth from the Father, he shall give testimony of me."

John 16:13
"But when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will teach you all truth. For he shall not speak of himself; but what things soever he shall hear, he shall speak; and the things that are to come, he shall shew you."

When we 'find' the light, we find it was always there. But we are too busy following our own lights to notice.

This is an anagogical interpretation of Luke 10:
Now it came to pass as they went, that he entered into a certain town: and a certain woman named Martha, received him into her house (house=soul). And she had a sister called Mary, who sitting also at the Lord's feet, heard his word. (that is, heard His word spoken in her soul.) But Martha was busy about much serving (being 'in the world' or 'in herself'). Who stood and said: Lord, hast thou no care that my sister hath left me alone to serve? speak to her therefore, that she help me.
And the Lord answering, said to her: Martha, Martha, thou art careful, and art troubled about many things: (in her self) But one thing is necessary. Mary hath chosen the best part, (listening to Christ rather than her self) which shall not be taken away from her."
In the Hermetic sense, 'Mary' symbolises the soul. We could say that Mary is the essence of the soul, the soul-to-itself-inwardly, Martha is the act of the soul in its presence in the world as a body, the soul-to-itself-outwardly.

Long story short, if the Spirit of God breathes in the soul, what other teacher could one ask for?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top