Dear Alain,

Thank you so much for your kind words regarding this forum. In turn, I consider you a most important contributor to it, and your presence here cannot be more stimulating for me.

A phrase in your post, among others, especially caught my eye:

"... there are many aspects that I do not adhere to in most religions and, even though I was raised as a Catholic and feel closer in my beliefs to the Buddhist, I am more inclined to find my contact with God through Nature as in some Native Amerindian Traditions... "

It is Buddhism, and more precisely the Native Amerindian Traditions, that I had in mind when I decided to start this thread as an essential part of this forum. And curiously enough, just as I was about to do it, this quote caught my attention:

"Buddhism has the characteristics of what would be expected in a cosmic religion for the future: It transcends a personal God, avoids dogmas and theology; it covers both the natural and spiritual; and it is based on a religious sense aspiring from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity."

"If there is any religion that would cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism."

-- Albert Einstein

As to the Native Amerindian traditions, they ultimately seem to be particular derivations of the Primordial Tradition with Atlantis as an intermediate phase, such as are virtually all other religious and cultural manifestations subsisting in the American continent and, for that matter, in the entire world. What is important in this regard is that in the Central and Southern regions of this continent, both the traditions of the Maya and the pre-Inca peoples, also derived from the Primordial and Atlantean traditions, all remember a divine founder (a cultural hero, as these semi-divine founders are called by the "official" scholarship) who taught them all their lore and gave them good precepts of life.

So in essence, they were great spiritual masters who, in founding their respective civilizations, lead them into a new, golden age of peace and great prosperity. Precisely what the Buddha Maitreya of Buddhists and the avatara Kalki of Hindus, no less than the Christ of Glory of Christians and even the Al-Maddi of Muslims, are each supposed to do as soon as this degraded era has ended and a new, Golden Age has started.

Hence my interest in this subject.

Since my purpose in creating this forum has been to find answers with regard to the possibility of a "cosmic religion" that leads the human kind into the coming New Age, you can imagine how important it is for me to learn from the past. For one thing, I am absolutely certain that this will help us to make decisions - perhaps the most important decisions we will ever make.

With Love and Blessings,

Luis Miguel Goitizolo

Luis and Alain,

This gets better and better.

As long as there are people like you that are willing to search for answers in different places this planet's future is assured. We as humans make spectacular global mistakes but I believe that powers beyond our complete knowledge ensure that our damage is limited.

Religion is part of our being. Even those who claim no beliefs make a religion of that belief.

Thank you so much for your work and your openess in sharing Luis.

Roger

Hi Luis Miguel and Roger!

As so very well expressed by Roger, it becomes more and more interesting... and, I am most certain that we are well guided along the Path My Friends!

Amazing what You found and express here as well and the close relationship with my own path of Evolution in regards to religion... I am really looking forward My Friend... Keep Up!

Dear Roger, Alain and everyone,

I hope all are by now clear that religion is not what most religions have become in the course of time, particularly now that this degraded age seems to be nearing its end. In a way, they are rather particular phenomena of our time in that they respond to either the needs of their adherents (or sometimes of their founders or hierarchies) or, in a wider sense, to the challenges it poses. In some extreme cases they are no more than excrescences born of deviate minds.

Generally speaking, it is the same with all religions, even the three or four main religions that we all more or less adhere to which emerged around a great and saintly personality like Jesus Christ or Buddha or Muhammad. The Hindus have it clear when they say that every age has the religion it deserves, though I would not say "deserves" but "needs". This does not mean that any religion is superior or inferior, but that they were intended to be followed by the intellectually and morally superior or inferior people of every age. You may ask, intended by whom? Well, by no other than God himself. Or we may think of a Cosmic Mind that as every age ends and a new one starts, assesses the historical juncture and foresees the planetary needs for well into the future.

Consider, for example, the cases of Christianity and Buddhism. Does it not seem as if they both were born not only for the special people and the circumstances of their time but also to endure long enough, in fact millennia, and to separately influence, each of them, an immense chunk of our planet in order to arrive more or less unscathed into our very present time?

And with this thought-provoking proposition, I will leave it at this point.

I would like to show now a text I found in a blog called "Convergenism."

Einstein’s Cosmic Religion

"Who would have thought that Einstein, of all people, was religious? I’m reading a book on his views, lectures, and life examples that illustrated his belief in a God. I would say he was more of a Hindu or a Buddhist. He believed in a “cosmic religion” which basically means that God IS the Universe. The awe-inspired by God is equivalent to him as the awe-inspired by the universe as a whole.

Clearly he was amazed at the great complexity and beauty found in the universe at a macro and microscopic level. How he differed from western religion was in that he refused to believe there was a “personal” God who uniquely and intentionally affected our lives. He felt that God set the universal laws in place, more specifically, God is the laws, and through the laws he affects us.

I’m not completely convinced that God is not a personal God. I do believe that God and the universe are one. In my understanding, the Bible says this in not so many words. How else could God be omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipowerful? However, I’m not convinced that the Universe is all there is to God. Perhaps the universe is just one attribute of God.

The uncertainty principle shows that there are unknowns that contradict his views on a completely deterministic universe. What controls these unknowns is still undiscovered, but Einstein was ardently against it to the point where he tried to refute it publicly. He was unsuccessful.

Ultimately, Einstein took a lot of heat for his stand on an “impersonal” God. I’m not quite sure why he was so adamant about it. As a scientist, he had no proof for or against it. He’s entitled to his faith in an impersonal God, but he should have allowed for the possibility."

No author mentioned, no precise explanation what the blog is all about except for the text itself. If I have copied it is just because these paragraphs more or less beautifully summarize my beliefs in:

a) A personal God (in spite of Einstein personal belief);

b) God as being both the Universe and Himself. Here I am partially with Einstein but I also believe, with the author and the Hindus, that God is simultaneously something else; and

b) What is known as "Universal Determinism." Whether it is complete or not remains an open question.

Note that so far in this post I only have touched the great historical religions, i.e. those that appeared late in the course of human civilization, about three thousand years after civilization "officially" started (in 3000 - 3100 b.C).* And that if we want to know what this civilization's original religion was, we need to go back to that date of 3000-3100 b.C., just about the time when the civilizations of Mohenho-daro and Harappa in India, and Caral in Peru, emerged to the world. I intend this to be the subject of next posts.

Thank you,

Luis Miguel Goitizolo

* The exception is, of course, Hinduism, which curiously enough computes the beginning of their Kali Yuga, the age of degradation in which we are supposed to be now, at a very similar date: 3102 b.C. If we are to believe this, so far the Kali Yuga would be encompassing the entire length of what we in the West know as the history of civilization.

Fascinating Luis,

You have done much research.