I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat new kind of religion. I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism. The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive.

Once a man asked Rabbi Joshua ben Karechah:
"Why did God choose to speak to Moses out of a thorn bush?"
The Rabbi replied:
"If he had chosen an olive tree or a bramble bush, you would have asked the same question. But I cannot leave you without an answer, so I will say that God chose a wretched little thorn bush in order to teach us that there is nowhere on Earth where He is not present."

Don Juan explained to me that intent doesn’t refer to have an intention, or to want one thing or the

When Bayazid was walking the streets he heard someone reciting: “Allahu Akbar”. So he asked the man:

GOD is nameless, for no man can either say or understand aught about Him.

If I say, God is good, it is not true; nay more; I am good, God is not good.

I may even say, I am better than God; for whatever is good, may become better, and whatever may become better, may become best.

Now God is not good, for He cannot become better. And if He cannot become better, He cannot become best, for these three things, good, better, and best, are far from God, since He is above all.

If I also say, God is wise, it is not true; I am wiser than He.

The revealed religions are of special importance to us. Those religions, that trace back to one human being, that told other human beings, he or she had been bestowed upon a revelation by God, and who asks others mostly by threatening with eternal perdition to believe this very revelation. The revealed religions are quasi the top of the religions of the I, the ‘ego’. 

Not only the God, who is said to have given a revelation, is an ‘I’, an ‘ego’. Also the revelator speaks as an ‘I’, that asks others to submit their ‘I’ to his. If we consider the matter impartially we notice the revelator to be only talking of himself und that the belief he is asking is the belief in him, the revelator.

Thus he also suggests at the very same time, God will under no circumstances bestow a similar revelation upon anyone else, that everybody else is excluded from a similar revelation and that God him/herself will abide by this revelation for all times to come. The revelator raises thus not only above his followers but also above the God revealed by him. That is why particularly the revealed religions require enlightenment and purgation.

by Bert Hellinger

I died from minerality and became vegetable;
And from vegetativeness I died and became animal.
I died from animality and became man.
Then why fear disappearance
through death?

Next time I shall die
Bringing forth wings and feathers like angels;
After that, soaring higher than angels -
What you cannot imagine,
I shall be that.

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi