“Christianity is the active side of the triad, Islam the passive, Buddhism the reconciling. Christianity seeks God, Islam surrenders to God, Buddhism finds God. When you see them as three separate systems, you miss the great teaching of which each contains but a part. Seek the kingdom as a Christian, give yourself to God as a Muslim, find your new companion in the dynamic silence of Buddhist meditation.”

Man, since His fall from grace, has felt the misery, impermanence, and meaninglessness of His existence, and looked for salvation from that misery, impermanence, and meaninglessness in a belief in The Creator, and eventually other gods, who would rescue Him from various tragedies in this life - and beyond - and give Him the well-being He desired yet couldn’t quite obtain in His life. This is the reason religion exists.

Though, salvation - healing - does not lie in external rituals and the profession of faith, but in a clear understanding of the meaning of life.

True religion, a teaching based in ethics, is the establishment of a relationship between Man and the infinite life that surrounds Him.  It binds His life to this infinity and guides His actions.

It has been written that since the earliest of times, as Man attempted to ‘repair the world,’ The Creator sent prophets and other spiritual leaders to act as messengers - being an intermediary between the heavens and the earth - in an attempt to help others find their way back to the path of righteousness. Among different nations, there were many men who taught people about what The Creator or gods are, and about what they need to do to please them in order to get the reward in this or some future life. These prophets and leaders were gifted with special insights and abilities that allowed them to see the world in a different way; they understood the concept of Divinity.

Though, the longer Man lived, the more inadequate these teachings proved; they did not satisfy the demands of the human soul.

It was as if Man began to discover that happiness in this world, that to which He was inherently driven to, was not attained, despite the fulfillment of the requirements of The Creator or any other gods. With the spread of education, the credibility of what religious teachers taught about The Creator - about the future life and its rewards beyond death, not corresponding to the modern learned notions of the world - weakened and weakened. Essentially, Man’s confidence in the different teachings weakened because the people, through getting closer with each other, learned that teachers in every country just taught their own distinctive doctrine as the only truth, and denied all others. This incongruence garnered distrust and Man, and after realizing this, He concluded that none of these teachings was truer than another, and therefore none of them can be accepted as an indisputable, absolute Truth.

These teachings, by their declaration of the existence of The Creator as God, the preserver, and the redeemer, tried to mask the contradiction of human life; but an ethical, intelligent teaching, by contrast, showed people this contradiction in all its entirety. A solution was derived from acknowledging the contradiction.

Yet, what was the contradiction?

Let’s remember - according to the origins of Creation - Man is an animal and cannot cease to be an animal while residing in a material body, while simultaneously He is a spiritual being, one who denies the animalistic demands of being human - He is seeking righteousness. Man - since the fall - is a walking dichotomy, living as both a being of spirit and matter, incapable of being either one exclusively.

We can observe that Man, in the beginning of His life, doesn’t recognize that He lives, and so, the force of life that flows through everything, lives through Him. It’s as if innocence guides His every move, His every action. Though, once He becomes conscious that He lives, He begins to live by Himself, desiring the well-being of Himself and becoming aware that others also desire the well-being of themselves.

Within Man, reason awakened, providing Him with this knowledge.

Man, having acknowledged that He lives and desires for the well-being of Himself and that the other beings have the same desires, eventually discovers that the well-being He desires for in His own separate being is in fact, unattainable. Instead of the well-being He desires, He has to face inevitable suffering and death - this He knows. The same awaits all other beings.

And there the contradiction arises, which Man tries to resolve so that His life as it exists would have a reasonable meaning. He wants His life to continue to be as it was before the awakening of His reason - before the fall from grace - for example, entirely animal or else it should be wholly spiritual.

Man desires to be either an animal or an angel. Though, he can be neither.

And so, the ethical teachings based on intelligence provided the solution to this contradiction, which continues to reign true today. The teaching tells Man that He is neither an animal nor an angel but an angel being born of the beast — a spiritual being born out of the animal one. The teaching claims that all Man’s existence in this world is nothing else but this process of birth.

Existence is about the birth of spirit through flesh.

"What is true life?" - Man asks Himself. It’s as if He sees that true life is neither in himself nor in those beings that surround him.

An individual wakes up to an internal awareness, this consciousness within Him tells Him that He desires well-being; and as a by-product, His internal awareness is awakened in His separate being. Now it seems to Him that his desire for well-being is meant for His separate being.

Having discovered this, Man no longer regards Himself as an animal. His perspective changes. Man transitions from seeing Himself as only a mortal, isolating himself from others, to something beyond that. He regards Himself as being inseparable from others, He is spiritual, and thus immortal.

As soon as Man becomes conscious of Himself, realizing that His true self is not His body - which is actually absent of true life - He desires for universal well-being. In other words, He desires for the well-being of all that exists.

Love.

The desire of well-being of all existing is what gives life to all that exists, what is commonly known as God. The Being which is revealed to a person by His awareness of an internal consciousness, the Being that is getting born, that which gives life to all that exists, is God.

Referring to old teachings, in order to know God, a human had to believe what other people told him about God.

How is it that God created the world and people?

How was he revealed to them?

According to the ethical, intelligent teaching, Man recognizes God directly within Himself through His own consciousness. Consciousness reveals to Man that the essence of His life is in the desire of well-being of all existing, something inexplicable and inexpressible in words, and, at the same time, the closest and most understandable to Him. This desire of the well-being of all existing is the source of every life.

It is God and thus, God is Love.

The ethical, intelligent teaching of religion, in its true meaning, acknowledging the supreme law of human life to be the law of love - which in no instance permits violence between men - is so close to the heart of Man and gives such undoubted freedom, such independent happiness to Man, that it would seem this need only be known for all men to accept it as the guiding principle of their behavior.

Though, the unfortunate fact is that at the time when the true meaning of the ethical teaching started becoming clearer to people, a large section of the world had already become accustomed to regarding the truth as existing in external religious forms. These forms not only hid, but they continue to hide the true meaning of the ethical teachings, upholding a system that is in direct opposition to it.

Thus, in order to perceive the ethical teaching in its true meaning, Man, who has, to a greater or lesser extent understood the truth, must free Himself not only from His belief in the false forms of perverted teachings, but also from belief in the necessity and inevitability of that system that was founded on this falsity.

According to the ethical teaching, once God is recognized as found within Man as the desire of well-being of all existing – Love, Man also acknowledges it outside Himself in all that exists.

Being aware in His separate body of that spiritual and inseparable being of God, and seeing the presence of the same God in everything alive, Man cannot but ask himself:

Why God, why have you enclosed yourself in the separate bodies of beings?

Why place yourself within each individual?

Why is the immortal enclosed in the mortal, bound within it?

Really, there can be only one answer:

There is higher, Divine Will, the motives of which are unattainable to Man.

And although the ultimate purpose of the world's existence is hidden from Man, deep down within Himself, He knows what constitutes the immediate work of the world's development, in which He is called to participate.

This work replaces the division and discord in the world with union and harmony.

More clearly, Man’s increase of love is what drives the work being committed in the world: the replacement of division and discord with union and harmony.

Man realizes that the essence of the work of God, in which He is called to participate, fosters the inner urge of that spiritual being, that which is getting born within Himself.

Love.

And so, very similar to the natural processes within the world, like the origins of consciousness, mitosis, or the development of a family structure, being separate from the other is what creates the process of evolution. If the desire for the well-being of all existing, Love, was not enclosed in a separate being, it would not know about itself and would always remain equal to itself; but being placed in the limits of a separate being, Man, it is aware of itself and its limits, and tends to break what binds it.

Remember the origin story.

By its nature, Love, the desire for well-being, tends to embrace all that exists.

The ancient teachings do their best to convey the Truth to the people, yet, Man has yet to move from His current, personal perspective on life. The Truth denies Man’s personal life.

Yet, what is the difference between personal life and true life?

Personal life aims to increase the enjoyment of outer life and to prolong it; and this goal, despite all the efforts, is never attained, because Man holds no control over external conditions that hinder enjoyment, nor does He hold power over disasters that may at any time hit Him. Man does not hold power over the Divine and all attempts prove fatal.

Whereas the purpose of the true life, which consists in expanding and intensifying Love, cannot be hindered by anything because all external causes such as violence, illness, suffering, which impede on the achievement of the goals of the personal life, actually contribute to the achievement of the spiritual purpose.

Look, the ancient teachings did their very best to convey that Man may not know the best individual external aims and with that, there may be obstacles in the way of achieving them, but the approach to inner perfection and the increase of Love within yourself and others cannot be stopped by anyone or anything. These are the lessons Man must learn from.

And as we can observe, Man refuses to learn from His mistakes. He prevents Himself from living the true life.

And so, Man continues to fall.