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Teachings of Imam Mehdi
Spirituality Without Religion - Mt. Shasta Day 1
The following is an excerpt from Sufi Spiritual Revivalist Younus AlGohar's speech addressing attendees on the first day of the Mount Shasta Heart Activation Event.
I feel very lucky to be around all these people who love to love, who are very humble and who are following the cosmic energy. In recent times, everything is messed up.
Everything is either adulterated, tampered with or modified. We are almost in the wilderness of forced ignorance upon us.
It is very heartbreaking to sometimes see people distancing themselves from God - from religions, from Moses, from Jesus. I do not blame them for it because those who have represented them were fake people. If a religion and its ideology are corrupted, the entire humanity has to suffer.
When religion is corrupted, it turns into a monster.
Intolerance, hatred, supremacy, and this urge of being the best of all kills the fundamental purpose of religion. Unfortunately, in recent times, all three Abrahamic Faiths - Judaism, Christianity, Islam - have suffered at the hands of people who didn’t deserve to represent these religions.
Religion is like a human being; every religion has two dimensions: inner and outer. The more important aspect of human life is the inner dimension: your soul, your spirit. This body is like a container and these souls that we have are contained in this body whilst we are here in this world.
This body is not our reality. Our reality is our soul.
Religion must provide spiritual assistance to its followers, with the help of which they can establish a connection with God and regain consciousness. When the inner aspect in every religion was either rejected, overlooked, forgotten or it was made subject to corruption, the religions started malfunctioning and became monsters.
Terrorism, extremism, and fanaticism are the result of corruption in the religion.
No religion mandates the murder of a human; No religion will tell you to take the life of a human being in the name of God. I personally think that if God allows you to kill another fellow human being in God’s name, then most probably, I would stop believing in God. This is out of the divine character.
Either the colour of [our] skin is brown, black, white or any other colour, we are the creature of the same divine, supreme entity. To him, we are all one. Nobody is greater than the other. Nobody is lower than the other.
At least God doesn't discriminate. If he does, we have to stop believing in God. But he doesn’t.
Our destiny is God. God sent all these messengers, prophets and saints for your help, for my help. So they can teach us to connect with God.
No prophet, messenger or saint is greater than God.
You and I are to connect ourselves with God and we need some assistance. This is the only purpose of a messenger, prophet or a saint sent by God; announced by God.
All these religions that were established by different messengers and prophets have lost their glory. The messages of these religions have not been articulated and didn’t have proper representation. But today, every religion is bad. Why?
When we eat food and it is fresh, we enjoy it. For example, you made a lot of fresh food and ate some of it - but still have a portion left over - what would you want to do with it? You would want to preserve it so you put it in the fridge to eat tomorrow. This is what a refrigerator does to food. The fridge cannot keep the food fresh for too long. When the food goes stale, we throw it away because we don’t like it [anymore].
Similarly, the prophets and the early believers of any messenger were great because they received the divine connection directly from their messengers. After the messengers and prophets left the world, there were people were in contact with God. They worked as a refrigerator to keep the religion fresh. They were substitutes to prophets and messengers.
Now when we have no prophet, messenger or saint of God, there are many who would want to claim that they are very close to God - but when it comes to practicality, the Sufi practice of a majority of Sufis today is based on bookish knowledge. They do not have this connection which God. This is why they are confined to their respective religions.
A true Sufi represents God. He doesn’t represent a religion.
To God, all are equal whether you follow Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism or no religion at all. A Sufi is divinely equipped with spiritual instruments to connect people to God without requiring the religion. With a Sufi, you do not need a religion. You can directly get connected with God. Sufism is a direct contact with God.
There is a very small divine tunnel after the Opening of the Heart and that divine tunnel leads you and me to the destination: to the supreme power.
With whatever name you call him - Elohim, Allah, God, Dios - it’s the same.
Somebody asked Mevlana Rumi a question, ‘What is God's true name?’ and Rumi said, ‘It doesn’t matter.’
One of the people with him was from Iran, he spoke Persian. Another person was from Arabia and another was from the West. Rumi showed them water. In Persian they call it Aab. In Arabic, it's called Maan. In Hindi, we call it Paani and in English water.
When you give the water to them, they will all get what they wanted.
Someone will call it Aab, someone will call it Maan, somebody else will call it Paani and I will call it water, but it’s the same substance. The same goes for God.
These religions are different highways. For example, if you want to go to LA you can get onto Route 5, or 395. Many highways lead to Los Angeles. That is the similitude of these religions. The religions should not make us fight and hate each other like, ‘He is jew or he is a Christian or he is a Muslim.’
I understand that in recent times people have given rise to hatred and discrimination but they are wrong. God wants to love all, whomever you are. When Jesus came he said, ‘I am the light of the world, I am the only way to God.’ Then Prophet Mohammed came and he said the same thing. So, now people were confused about whom to follow. Who was right?
They’re all right. In different times they said these things. At the time of Jesus, he was the only way to God, at the time of Abraham, he was the only to God, same for Adam but now we have different highways. Through Jesus, Mohammad, Moses, etc you can reach God.
The point is, do you have access to Jesus?
When people who represent Jesus do not have a connection with Jesus and tell you stories, you get fed up with the name Jesus. You have been hearing stories for the past 20 years about Jesus but nothing worked for you because people who are representing Jesus are fake; corrupted in the heart. They are making money, they don’t have a connection to Jesus or God.
Our message is the message of love and practical spirituality. We promote divine love.
There are two types of love: General type of love which is like a Hollywood movie type of love. You don’t need to learn anything, you just need to claim that you love someone. That is not loving, you are after their beauty, not love.
Unfortunately, God today is not being represented in the Mosques, Churches and Synagogues. Humanity has been left alone, religions are null and void of spirituality. Mosques, Churches and Temples have turned into shopping malls. Again, humanity is on its own. We have to find our own way to enlighten ourselves, illumine our hearts, and purify our negativity.
I’m not claiming to be a great Sufi master but I would like to share the same methodology with the help of which I obtained light in my heart. We’re not here gazing at your pockets [for money], we are not here to sell anything, but to share what we have.
I’m not a spiritual mentor, but I can tell you how I got where I am now. Maybe, if you tread on the same path, you can get there. It's not a matter of pride, it’s a matter of satisfaction. I have this passion in my heart that the spiritual path that I have been treading on, is a trustworthy spiritual path which has been through tests and trails. Thousands of people who have been treading on this spiritual path have acquired their spiritual quest.
If you follow this spiritual path, which is without any commitment, no religious pollution, no personal cult, no bondage, no discrimination. It doesn’t look at your complexion; your skin colour. It doesn’t look at your background because we understand the souls have the same colour, only our bodies differ in colour. I may be dark brown, you may be reddish-white but that’s only the colour of the skin but the soul was created by God, and it has only one colour, the colour of love.
Let's turn our souls into a pigeon and teach our souls to dive into the vast ocean of God’s love. Abraham, Moses, Adam, Jesus and Prophet Mohammad, they’re all true representations of God. Through the enormous amount of people reached God. But today, if these religions are malfunctioning and not producing results, it is not their fault. It is the people who are corrupted.
The corruption is of two types: corruption of mind and corruption of the heart. The corruption of heart most dangerous corruption.
There is a Sufi saying, ‘Oh sons of Adam [meaning the entire humanity] there is a lump of flesh in your human body. If it's reformed, your entire body will become reformed and if it is corrupted, the entire body will remain corrupted. Remember well, it is your heart. We need to revive spirituality in our hearts. The heart is like a satellite; like a telephone operator.
The most important factor in spirituality is the activation of the heart. The heart is the divine gateway. When the heart is enlightened and activated, you will find yourself in the presence of God.
It’s like an iPhone. When the colour of the message is green, it means you’re paying for it. If the colour of the message is blue it means it’s free. Similarly, when the heart is activated, God becomes not only your friend but your guide, your mentor and you’ll receive messages directly from him. You’ll find him within you.
When you are connected with God you no more behave like a human being. That’s how you recognise whether you are connected to God or not. If I am connected to God but in character, I behave like a devil, it’s easy to understand that I was telling you lies.
If a bottle is hot, nobody should tell you that it’s hot. If you bring your hand closer to it you will feel the heat. Would you believe me if I said, ‘This is really cold.’ but when you bring your palm closer to it you do not feel the coolness, you feel the heat?
Similarly, you make mighty claims that you are a divine person but you have the characteristics of the devil. A devil wants division, a corrupted heart, hatred, killing, carnage, bomb blasts, terrorism and extremism. This is all evil! But it is all part of religions now, it is so sad.
We need to work on different levels of consciousness, a consciousness that tells us how to recognise a true man and how to recognise the true representation of God. Before we are able to recognise God, we should be able to recognise ourselves. ‘One who has known himself, he has only known God.’ So, to know God we need to know ourselves. The reality of ourselves is buried deep down in our hearts.
All goodness will come after the heart is connected with god.
We do not need thick books. We do not need mighty Temples, Churches and Mosques. We need to turn our hearts into Temples. We need to turn our heart into the Bible, the Quran, the Torah. If these books are not inside the heart then outside these books are worthless.
We need to activate the heart because the heart knows its true source. Our body doesn't have any consciousness, the consciousness is granted to the body by the heart. When these spiritual faculties are dormant in our body, we do not know what to do, we are blind. Our ability to see each other is useless. We need the divine ability to see and hear God but that will only come about when the heart is activated.
Today I feel proud to tell you that to love and connect to God, you do not have to follow a religion. All you need to do is to activate your heart. If you have this knowledge and methodology, without religion, you can become divine. You can dig into your reality and you can find this supreme-self within you.
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