Religion has a funny little habit. It always puts God at the center. And god with a capital G! Whether Christianity, Islam, or Judaism, or insert religion here, it all puts God first. Have you ever stopped to ask, "Where does that leave me?". In my life, I'm supposed to put something else first? Is this natural? Is this the way God would have wanted it?
If God would have wanted it this way, then the creator would have made us that way. Form follows function. But the creator put us at the center of our own lives. Our souls. Our mystical side. Our beautiful light. This is what is at the center of us. So, I must say that if form indeed follows function then we must be the center.
Osho has many quotes on religion, and this is one of my favorites: If you place God in the center, man will be only left with the outskirts. How are you to reach divinity if religion places you on the outskirts of your own development? This is a perplexing question. One that can only be answered with deep reflection. Before you answer this, I want you to look at nature...
Nature was created to work perfectly in union with itself. Nature ebbs and flows with all that is. It cleans up after itself. It is made of destruction and creation. It cascades into itself and comes back out anew. It does not need God at the center to work like this. You do not see the birds going to a bird-made synagogue to worship so that they may lay their eggs the next day. You do not see the foxes congregate in mass to allow them to feast on the bunny. They do not ask permission, because their permission is their instinct. Their form is their function.
Nature does not leave itself to the outskirts. Each thing in nature is the center of its own world and at the same time a piece of the larger puzzle of life. God is a part of all of it. Not a thing outside of it to be worshipped. God is within you always. You are God. Allow yourself to become the center. Then see where this flow can take you. Because the more you look outside of yourself for the answers, the further those answers will appear. Look within.
Religion tries to get you to look at them. Divinity is over here! Divinity is over there! Look! Look! Come to this house and give us money because God is here, and you must pay tribute. This is not natural. This is not how you were built. You were built as the center. You were built as the physical manifested universe. You were not built as the grandstands to this manifested universe.
Sometimes our programming from religion is so deep that we haven't even been able to question this reality that we are the center. Osho's quotes are designed to make you stop and think. He is not trying to please you with his abrupt logic. He is not even trying to get you to agree or disagree with him. He is trying to get you to understand him. Try this to attempt to understand:
INSPIRED ACTION: Grab your journal. Write all the ways that religion has taught you to view yourself. How to act. What to say. Who to become. Where God exists. Now write all the ways that nature has taught you to view yourself. Go look at nature. What does nature ask of you in return? How do you fit into nature? Where does God exist in nature? Who are you to nature? Compare notes from these two.
The fundamental difference between Indic and Abrahamic religions is that religion should be about seeking a path to God, to sacred spaces, to higher ways of experiencing the truth and the larger reality.
Abrahamic systems are about belief, about arbitrarily deciding who is God and stopping further explorations of the idea of God and sacred spaces.
Choosing a likely path to God means one need not arrive at a final conclusion based on emphatic assertions in unprovable holy texts. A path, if not fruitful in terms of experience and insight, can be abandoned and another chosen.
In short, Abrahamic faiths are about excluding free enquiry into the idea of God. Indic faiths are open-ended and capable of course-correction.
In my…