SYMPOSIUMS

LECTURE

No. 3 – ENDING RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE

Over the centuries, our planet has all too often mixed religion with violence, some wanting to eradicate all spirituality, others hunting down the ungodly, persecuting religious minorities or clashing in the name of a God decreed superior to that of others…

Fortunately, in recent decades we have seen notable progress, for example in joint stands taken against barbarity. This shows the desire to put an end to violence in a growing number of men and women.

But in this period of transition, how much violence is still committed, particularly in the name of God, on every continent and sometimes even on our doorstep…

Ending religious intolerance in a lasting way is essential if we want one day to live together better.

To approach this crucial point, we will start from 3 questions:

How does religious intolerance become murderous?
How can we get out of the feeling of powerlessness in the face of this violence?
What is Aumism’s contribution to helping us get out of fratricidal religious divisions?

I – HOW RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE BECOMES MURDEROUS

At the outset, sectarianism is the attitude, unfortunately common to varying degrees, of an individual or group who shows narrow-mindedness in matters of politics, philosophy or religion. But the more we withdraw into dogmas, or even prejudices considered to be the only truth, the more we shut ourselves into a rigidity that cuts the world in two: there are those who “possess” the truth, and the others… This refusal of freedom of thought leads people to want to impose their truth.

And when people reach the point of wanting to impose their truth at any price, it slides into fanaticism, defined as “absolute and exclusive devotion to a cause, which leads to religious or political intolerance and to acts of violence”.^[1] A violence which, as events show us, can be both suicidal and murderous.

This obviously raises questions for religions about their relationship to the Truth, absolute because divine… About the space they allow for reflection and for understanding different paths. It raises questions for religions about the risk that this relationship to Truth may carry among followers inclined to violence. Of course, it is common for everyone, believer or not, to favour a goal and values that give meaning to their life, and to call them truths (truth being defined as the idea that agrees with the feeling someone has of reality).^[2]

We also understand that religions speak of divine Truth, since faith in God is their reason for being. But this calls for discernment: divine Truth does not call for hatred or for the murder of one’s neighbour, since God is the Energy of Life and Love. Shedding blood to impose a so-called “divine Truth” becomes the work of totalitarian, fanatical human beings who have ended up creating God in their own image, projecting their own intolerance onto Him. By thus denying divine Love, they are incapable of respecting in each person the very principle of humanity.

But we must be realistic: no one is safe from the tendency to intolerance. And the Founder of Aumism warns His disciples and urges them to fight it within themselves from the very start, so that this religion, over time, does not commit violence in His Name. Hence the importance of the work on oneself discussed earlier, in line with this idea of Gandhi: “Each person is responsible for their religion.”

II – TODAY WE HAVE A CHALLENGE TO MEET: GETTING OUT OF THE FEELING OF POWERLESSNESS IN THE FACE OF INTOLERANCE

Faced with violence, we often feel we are up against an infernal machine that has run out of control and escapes human control. It is this feeling of powerlessness that we must get out of. Intolerance is not an evil external to human beings. It dwells in their thoughts just as tolerance can.

Human beings therefore have the power to get out of violence if they change their way of thinking. This fundamental idea concerns believers and atheists alike, and it gives education its full importance, which will be discussed in the last lecture. “Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed” (Constitution of UNESCO, 1945). This change of mental state of course requires the opening of the heart.

The upheavals of today’s world force us to question our habits and to make a choice in our daily lives:

Either we remain attached to the intolerant judgements and behaviours of the past, and we feed violence;
Or we develop tolerance, in the sense of accepting differences, and we help prepare an Era of peace.

Why is everyone faced with this choice? If God eradicated wars without human beings having changed inwardly, they would immediately be recreated by minds clinging to the divisions of the past. Having to choose implies a conscious effort to change. Only this responsible evolution guarantees the building of a lasting peace.

The Lord HAMSAH MANARAH says to each of us: “I am the Energy that propels souls onto the Evolutionary Path, but I cannot walk and move forward in your place.” This is the attitude of a spiritual Master who guides each person towards their own autonomy.

To this end, He helps us; He creates the conditions that leave us free to go towards the happiness of the Golden Age. In His written Teaching He gives everyone a knowledge that makes respect for differences logical:

Becoming aware that the Divine is in each person has a consequence: attacking a human being is attacking God Himself!
Becoming aware that, through different incarnations, we have belonged to different religions opens us to the feeling of Unity.
We can also reflect on the Aumist conception of the afterlife, called the Column of Light (a theme developed at the previous colloquium, “Life on Earth and in the afterlife”), where intolerant souls must learn, for as long as necessary before reincarnating, respect for the other Traditions!

III – AUMISM’S CONTRIBUTION TO ENDING RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE

Over the centuries, people have focused on what in religions could serve as an alibi for violence, which has not weakened it! But today we no longer have time to go round in circles around what feeds the deadly energy of hatred. On the contrary, it is important to try to see what brings us together, in order to feed the energy of Life and reconciliation.

“Do not abandon your religion,” says the Lord HAMSAH MANARAH; “remain Christian, Jewish, Muslim, etc., but study the other religions in order to love them, and above all in order to understand your own better.”^[3] We then rediscover in all Traditions the precept of Love, which implies respecting the lives of our fellow beings and treating them with kindness.

The Lord HAMSAH MANARAH sets us the example: “Accept others in their difference,” He says, “for Unity is not the crushing of those who do not think as you do, but indeed the reconciliation of all those who think differently, while uniting their efforts for a better world.”^[4]

To get out of divisions, Aumism places at the forefront a Knowledge that goes hand in hand with respect for differences and recognition of their richness:

The Unity of the Faces of God

Before founding Aumism, His Holiness the Lord HAMSAH MANARAH made an initiatory journey within different Traditions of the West and the East, and experienced the highest States of consciousness, or Samadhis. “I experimented,” He says, “with many techniques of prayer, meditation and visualisation, and many sacred languages too, only to discover at last that beyond the religious rainbow there was only one single Divine Diamond…”^[5]

The Unity of the Faces of God is therefore the only dogma of Aumism: “God is One, whatever the name by which He is called.”^[6] Devotion to each founder of a religion must not make us forget that the different Envoys adapted their Teaching to different eras and different mentalities, but that they are all manifestations of the indivisible divine Energy.

Many Traditions speak of this unity in diversity, for example:

“In my Father’s house are many mansions,” says Jesus.

“Though the paths are different, the goal is one,” says Rumi for Sufism.

“There are many paths leading to the Fountain of eternal Bliss; each of the religions of the world is one of these paths,” Ramakrishna recalls in Hinduism.

“As men choose to approach me, so I accept them in my love,” says the Bhagavad Gita (IV, 11).

The Lord HAMSAH MANARAH places us before a reality that transcends oppositions:

“Human beings quarrel and kill one another in the name of God, whereas in reality they worship the same Energy (…). Fighting and dividing in the Name of the Divine, or of a religion considered superior to the others, is the worst of crimes against God.”^[7] It is therefore not a matter of denying the specific nature of the different religions, but of inviting them, while keeping their identity, to regard the others as sisters. To be an Aumist, for example, no one is forced to give up their religion of origin. It then becomes possible to respect different points of view, an essential notion in Jainism, which advocates Ahimsa, non-violence.

The urgent need today is for religions to rediscover their common root: divine Unity. Here are some essential elements of Aumism that help foster their reconciliation:

A symbol: the Hexamid

This pyramid with 6 edges represents the return to unity: the religions, divided at the base, converge towards the white light of the summit, which is at once the synthesis of their rainbow lights and the light of the creative Word, the OM of the original Unity.

The ecumenical monastery of Mandarom

Showing that it is possible to live together in unity and respect for diversity, the Lord HAMSAH MANARAH founded the monastery of Mandarom which, bringing together temples and statues of many Traditions, is in itself a symbol and an example of brotherhood. “May everyone,” He says, “find here the symbol of the divine that speaks most to their Heart…”

The statue of Christ (17 m high) and that of the Buddha (22 m high) face each other: “The gaze of Christ merged with that of the Buddha is the symbol of tolerance and of the coming together of peoples.”^[8] The coming together of West and East, of Love and Wisdom.

In the same spirit of reconciliation, the Temple Pyramid of Unity will bring together, in prayer for peace, men and women of goodwill from all Traditions. In its architecture, elements of different religions remind each one of its original Unity with the others. This Temple is the guarantor of a better future, of a reconciled humanity, for it is the guarantor of the Unity of the Faces of God.

The Revelation of the Messiah of Synthesis

First of all, we need to move beyond human projections. Fortunately, at the level of the Divine there is none of the ranking and competition that create divisions in human societies. All the Envoys are manifestations of the same Energy of Unity, but each has a particular Mission. That of the Messiah of the new times is to help humanity enter the Age of reconciliation and solidarity (the Golden Age), in order to leave the Age of violence and suffering (the Iron Age).

That is why, in 1990, the Lord HAMSAH MANARAH took it upon Himself to reveal Himself as the Messiah of Synthesis, come for all religions and for the whole of humanity, recalling the original Unity of the Faces of God. “To prevent human beings in the future from using the multiplicity of the Faces of God on Earth as a pretext for quarrelling, all these Faces have merged into a single Face, that of the Messiah…”^[9] Thus the Messiah expressed His love for all religions, whatever their specific features. He regenerated the message of brotherhood of which they are the guardians and for which they are responsible, so that they may enter the New Era together. Aumism, the religion of Synthesis, stands in continuity with the High Teachings of love and peace preserved in the different Traditions, adapting a new Knowledge and a new Energy to this decisive turning point in our history.

Christ had spoken of the need for human beings to evolve before receiving a new Teaching: “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now” (John 16:12).

Today, entering the New Era obliges us to grow in maturity: that is why the Messiah of Synthesis gives everyone the means to take charge of the future of the planet, saying: “Humanity, deliver yourself from Evil.” And in His immense desire to help us take this step forward towards more love and wisdom, the Messiah renewed, through His Incarnation in a world where intolerance turned violently against His Message of Unity, the act of infinite compassion in which God becomes Man so that Man and Woman may become God. But with the humility of the Servants of humanity, He states: “In truth, it matters little to me to be recognised as the Messiah (…). Only the unity of religions matters to me,”^[10] the unity of religions being the condition for peaceful living together.

Conclusion

I will end with the call of God that has echoed from Age to Age, but which today resounds for all as a last means of rescue:

“Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, yellow, white, black, love one another. Never kill your brothers in the name of God or for the triumph of a political doctrine.”^[11] “Forgive offences, wish harm to no one. Thought is creative.”^[12]

Our planet needs love to heal the wounds of intolerance inflicted over the course of history. And it is the creative Word, the OM of brotherhood, present in amen, amin and aum, that is offered for all to share. In their daily lives, in misfortunes and trials, all human beings without distinction can take refuge in the OM:

“In the AUM there is neither white nor black,
In the AUM there is neither Christian nor Muslim,
In the AUM there is neither Jew nor Buddhist.
In the AUM, yet, there are all the Lights.”^[13]

The Lord HAMSAH MANARAH says to each person, as to every living being: “May the blessing of the eternal and infinite OM be granted to you.”

*******

V. Mandaja

[1] Larousse dictionary.

[2] Larousse dictionary.

[3] La Réintégration divine par le Yoga, p. 163.

[4] Une Loi pour détruire le Mal, p. 427.

[5] Ibid., Introduction.

[6] La Révolution du Monde des Vivants et des Morts, p. 66.

[7] Le Yoga de l’Amour dans la Force, p. 288.

[8] L’Unité des Visages de Dieu, p. 96.

[9] Ibid., p. 49.