Following this sad article to which I am referring, the thought comes to my mind (I do not know by what association of ideas) of the sects and religious groups which proliferate on our Earth. Without a doubt it is because of the intolerance which some of them have shown, or perhaps because most of them do not hesitate to make false insinuations like the ones that fill the article which I have just read. Whatever it may be, this is the topic which I have chosen for my contact this evening with the Cathedral of the Soul, hoping that a Master up there will further enlighten me.
I do not think it is necessary to explain again the 'ritual' followed to realize the contact, and to raise myself to the Cathedral of the Soul. I think that everything concerning this has been said in the first pages of this book, and at other times on the occasion of previous contacts. However, in one of the last chapters I shall have to come back to it, because I intend to relate in detail a Cosmic Initiation conducted at the level of the Cathedral of the Soul.
Today, then, I shall not report here the details of the 'trip'. I have arrived safely, and it is in the semidarkness of my sanctuary that I listen to the Master:
"Your question" he begins, "is
badly worded, although it is sufficiently understandable to reach
our conclave, and for my being
asked
no reply to it. You appear to make a difference between sects and what
you call religious groups. Now these latter, are sects themselves. Curiously,
they are the ones that have intentionally used the word 'sect' in a
disparaging sense, forgetting that, in so doing, they also attribute to
themselves this restrictive qualification.
"Think for a few moments: the world has more than three billion people.
The most important of religious thought—Buddhism in its diverse forms—has
nearly one billion adepts. Coming next is Islam, with eight-hundred
million Moslems. In third place is Catholicism, with six-hundred million
baptized, of which less than a twentieth are 'practicing'. Next is
Protestantism with its many branches, with the number of faithful
approaching that of the Catholics. You, yourself, who are of the Catholic
religion, and live in a country theoretically Catholic in the majority—you
cannot escape from a certain tendency to believe that your religion is
the most important in the world and that its injunctions, more or less
well-grounded, varying with the times and the latitudes, are binding
for all humanity. In that, like many others, you have been in error for a long
time. In the whole Orient, in all the Islamic countries, in the lands
where Catholicism is not strongly rooted, Catholic activities (and with
very good reason), Catholic opinions, influence, and directives are either
completely ignored or else just mentioned as news of merely secondary
interest. Never does news concerning them occupy the front pages of
newspapers, rarely are they mentioned in radio broadcasts, and more rarely
still on television, contrary to what is happening in the Latin countries
where the majority of the people are Catholic. But one could say the
same thing about Islam or Buddhism. The newspapers in the Latin countries speak
very little of their activities.
"Let us then consider the figures. A billion Buddhists, eight-hundred
million Moslems, six-hundred million 'baptized' Catholics - etc. None
of these figures represent the total population of Earth. Each is one part or
one section, and each religion, consequently, however large the minority,
is one sect. In addition, hundreds of millions of people are called
atheists by the different religious 'sects,' which I have just cited.
Actually, the atheists are called thus because they are not bound by
dogmas or by the particular faith of these sects which use the word
'atheist' in a way as disparaging as the way in which they use, for
others, the word 'sect', which refers equally to themselves. Now there
are very few atheists in the absolute sense of the term. Among the
considerable number of those who do not adhere to any specific faith,
to any of the 'sects' of which I have spoken, there are many believers who
practice a kind of personal religion, by following rules of life and
moral principles that are highly sound and devoid of hypocrisy, which
unfortunately small or large religious sects arouse within their followers
who are worried about the opinion of their church or of their neighbors.
