RELIGION'S TRUE PURPOSE
CHAPTER TEN
RELIGION'S TRUE PURPOSE
ASKED for his definition of religion, Silver Birch replied: "Religion is to serve the Great Spirit by serving His children. Religion has little to do with the conventional ideas of your world. Religion is that which enables the Great Spirit in you to be revealed in your life. Religion is that which increases the tie between you and the Great Spirit and between you and His other children. Religion is that which makes you go out into your world and give service wherever you can. Religion is service, and service is religion.
"All else does not matter. When the physical body falls away all the creeds over which human beings have for so long fought and striven are shown to be empty and vain, meaningless and purposeless, for they have not aided the growth of the soul by one iota. The growth of the soul is only increased by service, for as you forget self in the service of others so your own soul grows in stature and in strength.
"There have been for too long too many so-called religions, each with a variation of a message. The things which they hold most dear are in reality of no value. The things for which they have, in the past, caused blood to flow, tortured, maimed and burned, do not increase the spirit of man by one inch. They have divided mankind into opposite camps; they have created barriers; they have caused needless differences in countries; and in families.
They have caused disputes; they have done everything that stands for disruption and disharmony. They have failed to unite the children of the Great Spirit. That is why we care not for buildings and conventional religion. We are not concerned with what a man calls himself. It is what he does that matters."
One of the main constituents of orthodox religion is prayer. What is the object of prayer? Here is one answerーSilver Birch's:
"Not to address requests that are already known to Omnipotence; not to acquaint the Great Spirit with facts already known, even before they are expressed; not to ask for mere petitions which you may not, when they are answered, deserve, for, after all, are you capable of deciding what is best for your own development? No! The object of true prayer is to obtain a closer unity with the Great Spirit and all the powers of that spirit, so that they may flood and suffuse your being in a far richer manner than ever they have done before.
"True prayer is a spiritual exercise which compels introspection, so that looking within you become con-scious of your own weaknesses and imperfections, but also conscious of your innate strength. Thus, prayer draws you nearer to the source of all being and stimulates and inspires you to strive to reach higher stages of attain-ment.
When asked how the spirit world regards prayer, the guide answered: "To appreciate prayer, you must realise its purpose. The mere mouthing of words, the mere repetition of a formula achieves nothing. These well-worn tracks in the atmosphere attract nobody, neither do they create any vibrant forces. We are not interested in stereotyped phrases, for there is no sincerity behind them and the one who utters them usually does so with indifference, for he has long ceased to ponder on the meaning of the words that are repeated almost as by an automaton. There is, however, some value in real prayer. It is never suggested that whilst you live in your world any action of the mind can be a substitute for the labours that you have to perform.
"Prayer is not intended to be a refuge of the coward who seeks to escape his obligations. Prayer is not a substitute for the work that you have to do. Prayer is not a means by which you can escape your responsibilities. Prayer is not a means of outwitting the laws of the Great Spirit. No prayer can do that, neither can it by one iota make any alteration in the unbreakable
sequence of cause and effect. You can disregard all prayers that do not spring from a heart which is willing to serve and which is conscious of its obligations and its duties. Having disregarded all those, there are the prayers which, because they are a psychic or spiritual exercise, set into motion certain vibrations which bring responses. Those responses are not necessarily the ones which the man who makes the prayer expects, but they are the natural result of the vibrations he has created.
"If you have faced honestly, fairly and squarely all the problems and difficulties that beset you; if you have tried within the limits of your own power to find a
solution and you have failed, then you have a perfect right to ask that some higher power, some greater soul, should give you light in your hour of perplexity. And you will get that guidance, you will get that light, for those who are round and about you, those who see with those who see with the eyes of the spirit, know the conditions of your own soul. They know, for example, whether you are honest or not.
"Then there is the prayer of those who desire to effect a more complete harmony with the spiritual forces of life, the prayer of the soul which yearns to overcome the barriers imposed by the physical body and seeks to claim its own. Those prayers must be answered, for their mere exercise is enabling the spirit gradually to acquire its rightful heritage. Always when you speak of prayer, you must differentiate between the kinds of prayer to which you are referring.
"Now I come to what is called the Lord's Prayer, and I immediately say that no stereotyped prayer has any value for mankind, that the mere act of formality robs it of any potency that originally it may have possessed. It may serve as a useful formula, but it cannot help you in any other way. The Great Spirit is perfect law. It is not necessary to besiege the Great Spirit with requests which you can answer. Then you must remember, too,
that many years have rolled by since the days when the Nazarene is supposed to have uttered it. Man has grown and evolved and realises far more about life in many of its ramifications. Not quite in that form was it expressed by the Nazarene, but it was clothed in the language which was applicable to the people of his day.
"Now you know that the Great Spirit is not in heavenーbeing the perfect law the Great Spirit pervades all space, all life; there is no aspect of life in the mighty
universe of which the perfect law is not cognisant. The Great Spirit is no more in the highest heaven than the Great Spirit is in the lowest hell. The Great Spirit is
universal and is manifested through every phase of universal activity. There is no necessity to address peti-tions announcing that the kingdom of the Great Spirit will come; that will happen, but as to when it will happen depends upon the labour of those who are co-operating with the power of the spirit and who seek to advance its coming. That it will come is inevitable, but whether that coming is hastened or delayed depends upon the work that people in your world are able to do."
Prayers for fine weather or for rain are common in orthodox churches. Members of the circle were discus-sing prayers to make the sun shine when a sitter asked: "What would God have to do to make fine weather suddenly? How many tons of pressure over Iceland would He have to move, and how would He do it?"
"I have been asked before about these days of prayer," said Silver Birch, "and the Great Spirit is not impressed when you suddenly decide to petition Him in mass form. The Great Spirit, being the Great Spirit, is familiar with the needs of all His children before He is acquainted with that fact in places which are called cathedrals and churches.
"Prayer does not consist in the fact that large numbers of people gather together and listen to set words or to specially devised compositions. Prayer cannot alter the operation of the natural law. Prayer cannot interfere with the sequence of cause and effect. Man does not possess that power to interrupt what is a mathematical certaintyーthat effect follows cause with unalterable precision.
"Prayer has value as an exercise of the spirit, when the individual, conscious of his own limitations and, para-doxically, his innate strength, tries to release that flow of latent energy within his own being to inspire and impel him to greater deeds. Prayer, when it is truly prayer and thus an exercise of the spirit, is a means by which man's spirit releases itself from some of earth's thraldom and finds a greater manifestation. Thus man makes himself more receptive to higher forces and becomes his own vehicle for the answer of his own prayer, that is, by desiring to serve he makes himself worthy of greater inspiration.
"Now that is how I understand the value of prayer. But mass supplications to alter natural law cannot have any effect.
Asked what was the use of official days of prayer, Silver Birch replied: "Prayer is not official or unofficial. It is not fixed by days or nights. True prayer cannot be commanded by any source that is outside the individual.
"There is no value in mechanical prayer, in prayers said by rote. Those who meet from time to time because they have been commanded to do so, or because it is their habit, and read, or have read to them, words that some-times are so familiar that they make no imprint on their mindsーthese do not place themselves any nearer the Great Spirit. The Great Spirit is aware of all your needs. He knows the unspoken desires of your heart; there is no need to petition Him in large numbers.
"True prayer does not consist in the words that are expressed in public assembly; true prayer does not con-sist in words at all. True prayer is the aspiration of the soul which recognises that it is a fragment of a much larger whole and it seeks to unite itself; it seeks to draw nearer and nearer to that power which fashioned it and of which it is a part.
"True prayer is accomplished by the individual when he is by himself, when his soul yearns and desires to attune and harmonise itself with the rhythm of life, with the creative forces which are around and about it, so that in doing so the individual may fit himself for larger service. True prayer is a means of introspection where the indi-vidual, conscious of his divinity, is also conscious of all his shortcomings and seeks so to utilise his latent gifts that he may truly be an instrument of the power which gave him life and birth.
"These things cannot be accomplished by official methods, by displays or ceremonies. They can only be accomplished in the silence of the soul, in that silence which is pregnant with meaning and possibility to all who are sincere in their desire to seek nothing for self, but to serve others."
The guide's views on prayer would not be complete without one or two examples of some of the prayers uttered by Silver Birch himself. Firstly, an invocation:
"Oh Great White Spirit, we strive to reveal the perfect love which is behind the perfect law. Throughout all the centuries men have tried to visualise Thee and their conceptions have been based upon their shortcomings, their limitations, their restrictions.
"They have caught faint glimpses of the supernal wisdom that directs universal life and have sought to translate this transcendental power into terms which they could comprehend. They visualised Thy character in terms of a human being, with all the weaknesses, faults and passions that are common to all mortals. They con-ceived a personal deity who intervened in order to show divine favour or wrath. Even with the growth of knowledge throughout the centuries the picture that is painted of the Creator of the whole universe falls short of what Thou really art.
"It is beyond the mind of any man to translate the infinite into finite language. All the divinity of Thy majesty, and all the eternity of Thy love and Thy wisdom are incapable of being understood by those whose senses confine them to a world of matter.
"And so we, who have had experience of other aspects of being, point to the natural law; the law which con-tains and regulates all; the law which is unfailing in its constancy and inflexible in its purpose; the law which makes provision for every kind of activity in a universe filled with myriads of forms of being; the law that controls all the natural phenomena of life; the law that regulates the orbit of human activity.
"With an understanding of how the universe is ruled, and with a dismissal of the idea of a partisan God, there does come to the mind a picture of sequence, orderliness, rhythm, harmony and perfect balance. The individual realises that he is part of an infinite scheme, his own life playing its measured part in the divine plan.
"It is part of our task to reveal those qualities of the human spirit which can add their lustre to life, those gifts of the soul and the mind which are still unexplored regions, which are filled with vast potentialities and which, when exercised, can bring into human life a rich-ness and sweetness, a grandeur and nobility, a breadth of vision and mental stature that transform the whole of human understanding.
"These are the aspects of man which relate him to the eternal; these are the divine attributes which Thou hast implanted; and these are the gifts which, when developed, make him god-like and help him to fulfil his birthright and to claim his heritage.
"Thus it is that we labour in the fields of spiritual attain-ment, for it is there that so much ignorance reigns. If that could be dispelled, the light of truth would be the guide for all humanity.
"All that belongs to the darkness would no longer exist and Thy children everywhere would live as Thou dost intend, free, upright and worthy of their divine kinship."
And here is an inspired acknowledgement of man's divine heritage:
"Oh, Great White Spirit, we are living witnesses to Thy eternal truths, to Thy power and to Thy unchanging law. We see Thee reflected in the panorama of nature which is Thy divine handiwork.
"Thou art to be seen in the rising and the setting of the sun, in the glittering stars in the firmament, in the lapping of the ocean's tide, in the gentle breeze, in the nodding pines, in the droning insects, in the azure skies, in all the facets of an ever-changing natural order of life.
"Thou art to be found in the spirit which is within all Thy living creatures. In man Thou art seen as individual consciousness, for Thou hast raised him up so that he can partake with Thee in the processes of shaping infinite creation.
"Thou hast bestowed on man many of Thy divine attributes, and he possesses as a consequence the gifts of the spirit, those faculties which enable him to be aware of the more subtle forces of life, the power of the spirit.
"It is this power which has made life possible; it is this power which distinguishes him from the whole of creation; it is this power which gives him the ability to think and judge, to reflect and decide, to behold beauty and to understand it, to receive wisdom and to appreciate it, to acquire knowledge and to value it.
"It is this power which makes him subject to the inspiration of the larger life; it is this power which makes it possible for him to come to the rescue of those who bear life's difficulties; it is this power which makes him aware of the world of spirit and all its denizens who seek to use him in the larger fields of service; it is this power which makes him aware of his own place in the vast cosmic scheme.
"We desire to spread knowledge of all that which will make man fulfil his appointed role, which will enable him to claim his larger destiny.
"Thus will he be able to drive out all the darkness which at present obscures the light; thus will he be able to live in wisdom, truth, understanding, harmony and peace; thus will he play his part in helping others to understand their relationship to Thee, the purpose of their lives and to realise the greater life which awaits them beyond the door that men call death."
Finally, a prayer on service: "Let us all pause to attune ourselves to the mighty power of the universe, to the source of all life, to the fountain of all wisdom, to the divine mind, that we may refresh ourselves and gain strength, that we may bathe ourselves in its wisdom, that we may receive direction, purpose and understanding.
"Oh, Great Spirit, we all desire to be Thy servants to the fullest measure, to spread Thy truth, Thy wisdom, Thy love and an understanding of Thy eternal natural laws. We desire to give Thy children an understanding of their place in Thy infinite schemeーthat they may truly find themselves and learn to use the power that Thou hast given them in a world that is full of darkness and bitterness, anger and hatred. We desire to stress the simple truths of spirit realities, which provide always the eternal foundations for justice, for right, for goodness and for beauty. To those who have lost their way, who know not where to find Thee, our aim is to teach them that Thou art within them, that Thy infinite spirit resides within their beings, that truly the kingdom of heaven is
within, a kingdom of joy and happiness, a kingdom of wisdom and understanding, a kingdom of toleration and righteousness.
"We desire to reach all those who are sad and weary, sick and distressed, who mourn and who are not yet com-forted, who are tired and weary, who know not where to turn for guidance and for understanding, so that they may realise Thou hast not left them alone. Our mission encompasses the whole world of matter and all people who dwell in it, making no distinction between them, realising that Thy spirit flows through every human nature, through every facet of the mighty universe, and is expressed in every atom of consciousness.
"With the recognition of that truth there will come a new peace, which will quicken the hearts and souls and minds of men and make them live for one another, serving Thee by serving Thy children everywhere."
Serviceーhow many of us really serve mankind in the ennobled and dedicated sense constantly urged by Silver Birch? True selflessness is attained by the few, but the following words can act as a spur to those who are willing to admit how far short we fall of the supreme religious ideal embodied in that simple, seven-letter word:
"The whole keynote of our teaching is contained in the wordーservice. We have declared eternal warfare on that selfishness which is one of the cancers in your world. We are intent on destroying that materialism which leads to war, to bloodshed, to chaos, to destruction.
"Ours is the gospel of mutual helpfulness, co-operation, tolerance, sympathy. We desire all to learn to serve one another, that he who has much shall give some of his abundance to him who has none or little; that he who is richly endowed with gifts of the mind shall use his inheritance to enlighten those who are still in the dark-ness.
"Your world needs service. It needs the spread of the idea that all people are parts of one another, that the divine spirit flows through all human beings, making them all equal in the sight of the Great Spiritーequal so far as their natures are concerned. Greatness comes when those who are more advanced in character, in growth, in evolution and in understanding try to share what they possess with those who lack these possessions.
"Those who work for the world of spirit, those who place their gifts at its disposal, will always find that they are served as they serve, because they are tapping the law which must fulfil itself. It is not part of a bribe, or a reward, it is merely the fulfilment of the law of cause and effect, that he who gives the most can receive the most."
Here are Silver Birch's views on the important subject of children's religious education:
"Let us begin with the very obvious truism that the child of to-day is the man or woman of to-morrow. Thus we realise quite simply that all the education it receives should be an adequate preparation for the life which lies ahead beyond schooling, so that it is equipped, ready to face the tasks that citizenship imposes upon all adult lives.
"True education should consist in the dissemination of that knowledge which will enable children to be citizens of the world in which they live. It should instruct them in all the natural laws of the universe. It should make them aware of all the faculties with which they have been endowed, so that an unfolding of them will be of the greatest service to their own lives and to the world in which they live.
"The child is malleable; its mind is as yet unformed in judgment; it has no instinctive means of reflection and judgment, of weighing up whether statements which are taught are true, are false, or contain but a portion of truth. The mind of the child is very plastic, and, being trustworthy, it accepts as truth that which is inculcated
into its mind at an age when it is too early to question the instructions which are given.
"Thus you are dealing with very precious and very delicate material, for you are helping to form impressions that will become part of the warp and the woof of the child's own being. You are reaching the subconscious mind of the child, and everything which is being taught to it will colour its thinking in later life. Those who, for whatever reason, deliberately inculcate doctrines which are false, are guilty of a very grave disservice to the future of the race and of civilisation.
"If you are ignorant of the child's many potentialities, if you are unfamiliar with spiritual realities, and, as a consequence, are unable to teach it the truths about its own being, its own nature, its relationship to the Great Spirit, its relationship to the vast cosmic plan of life, then the child will be handicapped. It will go through life not as fully equipped and armed with knowledge as it should.
"It does not fall within my province to deal with the essential requirements for the physical life. These are well known, for it is obvious that there should be tuition in all the sciences and the natural phenomena of life, in all that would help to cultivate the mind to appreciate the riches of literature and all the arts and refinements of your world.
"And so I come to the question of religion, which, seeking to give guidance to the soul so that it can be pre-pared to face and to conquer all life's battles, obviously plays a paramount part in education. Because every child is part of the Great Spirit, because it is in essence a spiritual being, it is intended to live with all the benefits that free-dom brings. If you cramp, if you restrict the soul of the child at an early age, you are denying it its elementary rights of freedom; you are condemning it to serfdom; you are making it a spiritual slave.
"Freedom is the essence of all education. As I see it, the child will grow in freedom if it is taught the truths about religion. If those who are teachers give instructions based upon a desire, not to give the child freedom, but to teach it loyalty to ancient myth and fable, then they are poison-ing the springs of the child's mind. No service is rendered to religion, to education or to the child by teaching it discarded creeds which, if it is intelligent, it will reject at the earliest possible age.
"Then there will come the inevitable reaction. It will turn its back on all those whom it considers misled it at a young time when it had no means of resisting them. The young sapling is intended to grow stalwart and straight as a tree, but if you give it nurture which is false, then you are helping to tamper with the very roots of its being and the growth will become stunted.
"We oppose all those whose desire is not to teach the truths about the spirit, not to teach about the relationship between all spiritual beings and the Great Spirit of life, but whose desire is to strengthen their tottering churches and to fill their emptying pews. The truth about religion
is that no religion possesses the whole of truth. Each has seen but a glimpse and that, alas, has become distorted with the centuries or falsified by the creedalists.
"The child must be taught that true religion is to give service, to ignore all the elaborate phrase-making of priestcraft, and to live an honest, unselfish life, desiring to help the world in which it dwells and so be true to the Great Spirit of Whom it is an integral part."
"How would you explain the Great Spirit to children?" Silver Birch was once asked. He answered:
"That is not a difficult task if the one who is to do the explaining has a clear conception of the power which is behind all life. For myself, I would point to the divine artistry of nature's handiwork. I would point to the stars, the diamonds in the sky. I would point to the glory of the sun, to the pale reflection of the moon. I would point to the whispering, murmuring breeze, to the nodding pines. I would point to the trickling stream and to the mighty ocean. I would touch every facet of nature showing how each is controlled by purpose, by law. I would add that where man has made any discovery in the field of natural life, he finds it comes within the orbit of law, that its growth is controlled and regulated, that it is part of one vast, intricate, yet harmonious pattern, that order reigns supreme throughout the vast universe, controlling planets and insects, storms and breezes, all life, no matter how variegated its expressions may be.
"And then I would say, the mind behind all that, the power that sustains it all, the force that controls the whole vast panorama of the universe and many other worlds that you have not yet seen, is what we call the Great Spirit."