No Religious Faith Required
Yiwu, Zhejiang Province, China, June 23, 2013
Salaroche

Yoga is a discipline with four primary branches and many sub disciplines. All strands of Yoga emanate originally from Hinduism, but, in our day and age, not all of them necessarily adhere to Hindu religious mythology as a basic premise.

Jnana Yoga, for one, is a discipline whose practice doesn’t require any degree of religious faith or belief in any of the gods in the Hindu pantheon. In my view, Jnana Yoga can be best defined as a transcendental philosophy with no religious affiliation. Better still, it could be described as a metapsychological-metaphysical discipline.

To undertake the quest for Realization (direct knowledge of the god-consciousness) within the discipline of Jnana Yoga the initial premise needed is a profound doubt as to what the true nature of our consciousness really is. Such doubt necessarily entails a deep skepticism as to the ultimate veracity of the psychological structure of our minds and personalities. In Jnana Yoga, none of the received notions about ourselves is taken for granted, that is, none of it is accepted as unquestionably true. All of it is subject to doubt.

No religious faith is required to start on this journey. There is no need to believe in any prophet, guru or deity as our “savior”. For example, I have always had the most profound respect for Ramana Maharshi, the guy who came up with the idea of the Atma Vichara, as well as for his method, but I never thought of him as a prophet or anything of that sort. I was just totally sure that his method was very pragmatic and that if I followed it correctly I would attain the results there prescribed.

I just had a high degree of conviction in the feasibility of my quest, which can be said to be a mental state similar to “faith”. My faith, however, was merely on the viability of the method. It was not a faith based on dogma or belief, but on my Chrystal-clear understanding of the method, which can be best defined as conviction.

I also experienced a high level of devotion, but not toward any person, deity or otherworldly entity. My devotion was to my practice, as I practiced the method anytime and anywhere. As long as I was awake I would practice the method, always, in a constant and relentless manner. I was truly devoted to my practice.

I didn’t have many preconceptions either. I did have an inkling that my real identity might be of the same consciousness-substance as the Universal Consciousness or god-consciousness, but I did not understand how such thing could be possible. I did not believe in anything in advance other than in the possibility of it all, and the desire to get to know that possibility further immersed me in my practice.

Many years before first engaging in the practice of Jnana Yoga I had already discarded any notion of god as an entity with personality and passions of the human sort, such as are the gods described in the religions of the book, so my mind was wide open and ready to accept the possibility that at the end of my quest I might find myself face to face with an impersonal god, and that possibility fascinated me to the point of obsession.

I felt totally free from any tutelage in my quest, even from Ramana’s. I looked up to Ramana in the early stages of my journey, but a few months into my practice I didn’t care much about him anymore. At that point my only concern was to achieve my goal and the good thing about it was that I didn’t depend on anybody’s favors or tutelage to do it. I was totally on my own and I liked it.

I had found the golden code to open the golden door that leads to a direct knowledge of the god-consciousness and all I had to do was to punch the code keys the right way and my quest would be accomplished. The only faith I needed was in my own self, that is, all I needed was my unconditional trust that I had understood the method perfectly well, along with the absolute certainty and conviction that if I just practiced the method long enough and with the utmost intensity I would attain the goal prescribed in it.

And I did it.

I am the living proof that there is no need for religion to attain direct knowledge of the god-consciousness. In fact, I could now assert that some religions may actually hinder our chances of attaining such direct knowledge of god. The moment you accept that you need to wait for someone to come and take you to heaven or that you need to hold on to farfetched, irrational, and contradictory doctrines and beliefs in order to attain “salvation”, you may have already lost your way.

If your religion doesn’t give you a key to open the door to the “Kingdom of Heaven” all by yourself, without the constant need of tutelage from the part of any priest, prophet or doctrine, you are probably not going down the right path. There is no religious faith required to meet face to face with the god-consciousness, just as there is no need for any organized religion to guide you there. All we need is the courage to accept that we are not what we have until now been led to believe we are and to have the concentration and determination necessary to look deep into ourselves for that timeless spark of universal consciousness which is our true nature and identity.

I understand that the religions of the book serve a purpose on this earth, as they may provide a certain moral compass to those who would otherwise feel lost without it. But from the moment that their mythologies stake claims to exclusive revelations their followers are instantly reduced to sheep incapable to think or act for themselves, as those doctrines dictate that only the anointed ones have license to speak to and for god.

No such thing.

Deists, on the other hand, claim that god is knowable to everyone through reason, but their reason doesn’t seem to have yet led them to understand that monistic philosophies such as Spinoza’s may provide them with a vehicle for attaining such knowledge. If, as Spinozism and Vedanta claim, everything in this world is of the same substance as that of all other possible worlds, in finding the essence of our consciousness we may also find the essence of the eternal consciousness which is the basis for the entire Universe.

I have never belonged to any deist association, but I can spontaneously identify with some of their basic guiding premises. They may have been considered radicals at the dawn of the Age of Reason just as they may still be considered as such in our own day and age, but in my view they’re just a group of sensible people whose minds simply refuse to go along with the long-reigning religious tradition of superstitions and dogmas that have thus far held the upper hand over humanity’s quest for elucidating their spiritual origins and destiny.

There is no religious faith required to attain direct knowledge of the god-consciousness. Reason can be enough, provided we find the right method to get there and understand it in full. There is no need to believe in exclusive, superstitious, farfetched postulates to find out what our true and eternal identity really is. On the contrary, it is in getting rid of the former that we may stand a good chance of attaining such precious knowledge.

Religious traditions can weigh heavily on our minds filling it with prejudices and fears that keep us from reasoning, but in abdicating to our rationality we are denying ourselves the benefits of the highest human possession that separates us from the rest of creation: Our intelligence.

Want to shake minds with god? Be my guest. No religious faith required.


Salaroche