The Notebooks of Paul Brunton 01 - Perspectives by Paul Brunton

Author:Paul Brunton [Brunton, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781936012077
Publisher: Larson Publications
Published: 2018-01-14T05:00:00+00:00

17

THE RELIGIOUS URGE

Origin—Recognition—Manifestations—Traditional and less known religions—Connection with philosophy

1

We need religion, yes assuredly, but we need it freed from superstition. (7–4.137)

2

A quester necessarily becomes a pilgrim seeking his destination in a Holy City. He may be a metaphysician or mystic, a profound thinker or connoisseur of Orientalisms, but he may not leave out the simple humble reverences of religious feeling. (7–1.10)

3

He only has the fullest right to talk of God who knows God, not his idea, fancy, belief, or imagination about God. He only should write of the soul, its power, peace, and wisdom, who lives in it every moment of every day. But since such men are all too rare and hard to find, mankind has had to accept substitutes for them. These substitutes are frail and fallible mortals, clutching at shadows. This is why religionists disagree, quarrel, fight, and persecute both inside and outside their own groups. (7–4.86)

4

It is unjust to deny the truths of religion in efforts to show up its superstitions or to decry its services and contributions to human welfare in order to point at its persecutions.

5

The public demonstration of one’s religion in church or temple does not appeal to all temperaments. Some can find holiest feelings only in private. Those in the first group should not attempt to impose their will on the others. Those in the second group should not despise the followers of conventional communion. More understanding between the two may be hard to arrive at, but more tolerance would be a sign that the personal religious feeling is authentic. (7–3.69)

6

The sceptic, the anthropologist, and the philosopher of Bertrand Russell’s type say that religion arose because primitive man was terrified by the destructive powers of Nature and endeavoured to propitiate them or their personifications by worship and prayer. They say further that civilized man, having achieved some measure of control over natural forces, feels far less in need of religious practices. This is an erroneous view. Religions were instituted by sages who saw their need as a preparatory means of educating men’s minds for the higher truths of science and philosophy. (7–3.6)

7

Its originator left some power behind which was partly responsible for its wide and deep spread. This is the vivifying principle behind the spread of every historic religion, a principle whose results make us exclaim with Origen, “It is a work greater than any work of man.” We should regard the great originators, the great religious saviours of the human race like Jesus and Buddha, as divinely used instruments. The individual centre of power which each left behind on our planet extended for long beyond his bodily death, continued to respond helpfully to those who trusted it, but then gradually waned and will eventually terminate after a historic period has ended. No organized religion ever endures in its original form for more than a limited period. All the great religions of the earliest antiquity have perished. The originators were admittedly not ordinary men. They belonged to higher planes of thought and being.

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