Nature’s Religion

from “In an Eastern Rose Garden”

Hazrat Inayat Khan

If you want to find Him you will find Him in the higher intelligence. When intelligence manifests itself on the surface-- that is God. In manifesting Himself, He has assumed various forms; through each of these He seeks gradually to attain to the same state of absolute being. Every form: rock, animal, bird, man, everything, is always striving to climb to the surface. The Bible tells us to raise our light on high; it is covered under a bushel. The bushel is the manifested part of our life; all these forms that cover the inner intelligence, which in its original aspect is the root of being, are the bushel. The inner intelligence, the light, has become veiled under the manifestation, and it is the desire of nature to unfold it again, so as to allow it to behold its original being, which it does through all changes that take the form of death and destruction.

This great truth, so difficult to express, must needs be uttered by every prophet, every teacher, every saint who has brought the message, in that language which their hearers could best understand. If the teacher perceived that the method used by the hearers was good, he would advise them to continue in the same mode of worship, to continue to go to such a temple or such a church, until they were able to perceive what is the real truth hidden behind all these things.

Having grasped the idea of God, there comes the question of the mode of worshipping Him. Religion offers many ways of worship; but various religions offer many modes of worship which have become the law of each religion, and how can that law be obeyed by the whole world? Let us ask the ministers of any religion, of Islam, of Christianity, of Buddhism, of Hinduism, whether their own law can become the law for the religion of the whole world.

Though each one of them will say yes, yet surely it is not meant to be so. All men are not alike; the tendencies of every people differ; their habits are not the same. For instance the law of the Hindu is to go to the Ganges in the morning and bathe in it. How would that do in London? How could one bathe in the Thames in December before offering one's prayers? Everybody will agree that no one could do such a thing. Again, a Muslim obeys the law of leaving his shoes outside the mosque, and then goes to wash his hands and feet, and make his ablutions in running water; then he stands on the marble floor of the mosque, and offers up his prayers. If the same mode of worship were to be the law for Russia, where there is so much cold and snow underfoot, to prostrate oneself on the marble would mean to be frozen to death in one day. And then one would never live to take the name of any religion again.

In this way we see that one faith and religion and law cannot be promoted and advocated in the same way in all different lands and places. The different faiths are bound gradually to become unrecognized and forgotten. Those who wish to promote their own customs would cease even to imagine such a thing, could they realize that every person has a different temperament, that every form of religion is a form of worship of the same God. Nature teaches every soul to worship God in some way or other, and often provides that which is suitable for each. Those who want one law to govern all have lost sight of the spirit of their own religion. And it is in people who have not yet learned their own religion that such ideas are commonly found. Did they but know their own religion, how tolerant they would become, and how free from any grudge against the religion of others!