1 result for (book:ss AND session:587 AND stemmed:deni)
[... 5 paragraphs ...]
Exterior religious dramas are important and valuable only to the extent that they faithfully reflect the nature of inner, private spiritual existence. To the extent that a man feels that his religion expresses such inner experience, he will feel it valid. Most religions per se, however, set up as permissible certain groups of experiences while denying others. They limit themselves by applying the principles of the sacredness of life only to your own species, and often to highly limited groups within it.
[... 4 paragraphs ...]
The Hebrews conceived of an overseer god, an angry and just and sometimes cruel god; and many sects denied, then, the idea that other living beings beside man possessed inner spirits. The earlier beliefs represented a far better representation of inner reality, in which man, observing nature, let nature speak and reveal its secrets.
[... 24 paragraphs ...]
(10:38.) So the concept of God began to change as the ego recognized its reliance upon inner reality, but the drama had to be worked out within the current framework. Mohammedanism was basically so violent precisely because Christianity was basically so gentle. Not that Christianity was not mixed with violence, or that Mohammedanism was devoid of love. But as the psyche went through its developments and battled with itself, denying some feelings and characteristics and stressing others, so the historic religious exterior dramas represented and followed these inner aspirations, struggles, and searches.
[... 21 paragraphs ...]