Religion
These founders of three of the world’s great religions lived at roughly the same time, but there is no record of their having met. This painting portrays the idea that the three teachings are a harmonious one.
The word religion is from the Latin religiō “Aton.”bond between man and the gods” or religāre “to bind back.” Religion is intended to bind the individual to God and to his fellowman. But there are abroad in the world today many misconceptions and wrong attitudes that divide mankind and have resulted in people turning away from the religious life.
God releases new religions in order to give his children a new awareness of himself. We cannot assimilate God all at once. Just as we don’t eat the food of a lifetime in a day but portion by portion, so we assimilate God crumb by crumb.
Each age brings new revelations of God
There are specific periods of time, called ages, in which a civilization, a continent or an entire planet is destined to assimilate a certain attribute of God. The opening of these epochs is accompanied by the birth of an Avatar, a God-man, who embodies the Word as it applies to the dispensation he inaugurates.
The length of an age is approximately 2,150 years. It is based on the precession of the equinoxes, the slow rotation of the earth’s axis during which the point of the spring equinox moves backwards through the signs of the zodiac. The equinox point takes about 2,150 years to go through 30 degrees of the zodiac, or one astrological sign.
The age of Aries
About 4,000 years ago we entered the age of Aries. About 2,000 years ago we entered the age of Pisces. And today we are entering the age of Aquarius. Each 2,150-year period marks a dispensation of Light from the Great Central Sun that gives to earth’s evolutions a new awareness of God’s Presence.
The dispensation of Aries brought the awareness of God as the Father, the Lawgiver, and as the embodiment of universal Law itself. This age was characterized by God’s direct communion with Moses and God’s gift to all generations of his name I AM THAT I AM, whereby they, too, could walk and talk with God. Moses showed us that it was the divine right of every son and daughter of God to walk and talk with the Indwelling Presence, the Great I AM. The condition: obey my commandments.
In the Arian age we also note the monotheism of the Egyptian pharaoh Ikhnaton. A century before Moses, he attained mystical union with God through his meditation on the sun—and on the Sun behind the sun. Ikhnaton called God “Aton.” The symbol for Aton was the sun with diverging rays ending in hands. This symbolized that man is the hand of God in action—and that as the sun and its rays are one, so there is no separation between Creator and creation. Ikhnaton means “he who serves the Aton.” The pharaoh believed that he was a son of Aton. He truly knew himself as the Light-emanation of the one God.
The ages of Pisces and Aquarius
The age of Pisces brought the awareness of God as the Son, revealed to us in the Universal Christ personified in the Christ, Jesus. Jesus came to show us how to walk the path of personal Christhood so that we could realize the Son of God within ourselves. The condition: Love me and keep my commandments.
Jeremiah prophesied the full revelation of the Son of God who should appear in the age of Pisces. He saw the son as “The Lord Our Righteousness.”[1] In the twentieth century Saint Germain unveiled the Son as the personal, or Inner, Christ. We address this Inner Christ as our Beloved “Holy Christ Self.” Knowledge of the Son of God as our True Self, or Higher Self, brings us that much closer to the Lord, I AM THAT I AM.
The dawning age of Aquarius brings us the awareness of God as the Holy Spirit and as the Divine Mother. In this age the Divine Feminine is exalted in male and female as the sacred fire that rises on the altar of our chakras. The condition we must fulfill is self-transcendence through divine love.
The unfoldment of God’s identity through cosmic cycles
The unfoldment of God’s identity within you and your identification with it is progressive through the cosmic cycles. This unfoldment culminates in your direct experience of God followed by your union with God. This is the goal of all of your past incarnations and the goal of your life today.
We do not leave behind the previous ages but we build upon their foundations. Knowledge of the ascended masters’ teachings is no excuse to set aside the Ten Commandments or the teachings of Jesus Christ or the great truths that come down to us through the Vedas and the Upanishads and all of the teachings of the Avatars of the major world religions.[2]
We have this communion with our I AM Presence because we have built, stone upon stone, our pyramid. And now we have come to that age and hour when we ourselves must place the spiritual capstone on our personal pyramid.
Each religion reveals a new image of God
Through each of the world’s major religions God has revealed to your soul another side, or image, of himself. Your soul is the mirror of God. If you allow your soul to mirror the astral plane or discordant images, then there is no room in the mirror for God. If you polish the mirror of the soul and direct that mirror through attention to God, you will always be able to look in the mirror of your soul and see God. That is the first experience of seeing God face to face. You first see God in the mirror of your soul and then directly when he chooses to appear to you.
When God reveals a new image, or attribute, of himself through a world religion, he also reveals in the mirror of your soul a new image, or attribute, of yourself. When you become one with this new image of God and of yourself, you learn a new way of communing with God. A new image is like a new language, a new mode of expression, as though you suddenly discovered love or discovered truth. A whole new world opens to you. You understand more of God and so you can be more of God. Thereby you learn a new way of attaining union with God.
The name of God is empowerment
In each age God has also given us one or more new names whereby we may invoke that image and, by reflection, make it our own. Knowledge of the name of God is empowerment.[3] God has empowered his people through many ages. And by that, we have learned to expand the flowers of our chakras. Each time we invoke God by a new name we access a portion of God’s Self that was previously beyond our reach.
The name of God is the key to his heart, to his mind, to his spirit, and to that state of consciousness we are destined to mirror and to become.
Eight pathways to God
Each of the world’s major religions facilitates our soul-development on a particular ray and a particular chakra. The seven major world religions and the minor eighth come under the dispensation of the seven rays and the seven chakras and the eighth ray and the eighth-ray chakra:
- Judaism facilitates your soul-development on the first ray of God’s power through the throat chakra.
- Buddhism facilitates your soul-development on the second ray of God’s wisdom through the crown chakra.
- Christianity facilitates your soul-development on the third ray of God’s love through the heart chakra.
- Hinduism facilitates your soul-development on the fourth ray of God’s purity through the base-of-the-spine chakra.
- Confucianism facilitates your soul-development on the fifth ray of science, healing and truth through the third-eye chakra.
- Islam facilitates your soul-development on the sixth ray of ministration and service through the solar-plexus chakra.
- Taoism facilitates your soul-development on the seventh ray of God’s freedom through the seat-of-the-soul chakra.
- Zoroastrianism facilitates your soul-development on the eighth ray through the secret chamber of the heart.
The universal path
The world’s major religions have two facets. They have the orthodox system of rules and rituals—an outer religion, a religion of form. As people advance on the Path, they decide this is not enough. They want more. Then there is the inner path of mysticism. It is the vital, animating element at the heart of every religion.
Every one of the world’s religions shows the same inner path—the discovery that God is a living fire. Fire is the key in every religion from Zoroastrianism to Taoism to Christianity.
The fire of the Holy Spirit, the flame—whatever way it is seen—is central on the altar of Being. And the goal of the mystic is to unite with the flame, to unite with God, to be transformed, to be purged, to be illumined and to enter into that total oneness.
If religion doesn’t give you a path of your soul’s reunion with that sacred fire in this life, it is missing the whole heart of the matter. You can engage in rituals for a lifetime but your heart may never have been opened to your Lord. The inner teachings of this mystical path are what we must live and demonstrate so that the world can be freed from religion that has become rote and dead.
The mystical path of the world’s religions is a legitimate path. It is legitimate to desire to be one with God. It is your divine birthright. All of the divine love of the universe is surrounding you now, intensifying in your being and telling you that this is the day and the hour when you can transcend yourself.
See also
For more information
Elizabeth Clare Prophet, Becoming God: The Path of the Christian Mystic
Elizabeth Clare Prophet, Kabbalah: Key to Your Inner Power
Elizabeth Clare Prophet, The Buddic Essence: Ten Stages to Becoming a Buddha
Lectures by Elizabeth Clare Prophet in her series Mystical Paths of the World’s Religions
Sources
Mark L. Prophet and Elizabeth Clare Prophet, The Path of Brotherhood, p. 196.
Mark L. Prophet and Elizabeth Clare Prophet, The Path to Attainment, pp. 225–29, 250.
- ↑ Jer. 23:6; 33:16.
- ↑ Among the Avatars of the major world religions are Rama, Krishna, Zarathustra, Gautama Buddha, Jesus the Christ and Saint Germain, Avatar of the Aquarian age.
- ↑ Examples of the names of God are Ra, Aton, Elohim, El Elyon, El Shaddai, Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, I AM THAT I AM, OM, Brahman, Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, Narayana, Ishvara.