Abstract: God without Religion is an extraordinary and most stimulating analysis of religion during past centuries and current trends of divisive forces to exploit society in the name of religion and God. It has been the practice and belief among rulers, religious leaders, individuals groups, power brokers, terrorists groups and even state governments that God is on their side. They devise methods to generate religious hatred, ethnic violence, terrorism and military action to cause destruction at a place and timings of their choosing. Events which led to terrorists attack on USA on Sep 11,2001 and American response to wage two wars and toppling the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq and destabilizing the region, killing thousands of innocent civilians and suffering heavy American causalities while offering them God?s gift of ?Freedom and Liberty? are recent examples. Sankara Saranam has reminded us that God does not have any religion, shape, image, gender ,skin color, geographical boundary or prejudice and He is a pure divine with whom all can have direct relationship by moving away from misguided religious zealots. Author has chronologically analyzed past religious believes, across the world during many centuries and used ?cycle theory? to explain degradation of various societies. He has quoted many historic events from the past societies of Asia, Middle East, Greece, USA where, in the name of religion many wars have been fought and very large sections of society have suffered. As the world today is aflame with violence, hatred and enmity, this book is timely to show a way of achieving peace, progress, freedom and opportunity to co-exist in harmony. Author reminds us that the company we keep in person or on-line influences our spiritual growth and as such, we should join spiritual group of like-minded people. This would help us to strengthen our spiritual foundation and establishing direct relationship with God. Similarly, reading and writing good books and sharing spiritual thoughts help us in moving away from organized religion and attain spirituality. Practicing non-attachment to worldly things is to sacrifice personal interests and help the needy without worrying about results. Today, there is an urgent need to learn from within and apply reason and imagination to gain self knowledge and respect all societies and nations. Religionists who have maintained their deep faith in prayer, chanting, reading scriptures may now find psycho-physical ascetic exercises based on science of intuition as an alternate approach to enhance their knowledge of God. Pranayama is a way to magnetize our heart by controlling and directing nervous energy toward the spine, relax tension and move on direct path to God. To overcome space and time, we need to attain infinite power by freeing from scattered materialistic thoughts and prejudices. God is the ruler of cosmos and can not be proven by scientific reasoning based on logic and sensory perceptions. However, God can be realized and felt around us through theory of self. We need to shed traditions of worshiping external proprieties and find one God within us to live and let live in free world of God.
By Dr Sarbjit Singh Ph D
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