The religion of each of us is the attainment of our souls’ desire; when we are on the path of that attainment we are religious; when we are off that path then we are irreligious, impious.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
Religion is a need of the human soul. In all periods and at every stage of the evolution of humanity there has been a religion which people followed, for at every period the need for religion has been felt. The reason is that our souls have several deep desires, and these desires are answered by religion.
The first desire is the search for the ideal. There comes a time when we seek for a more complete justice than we find among our fellow humans, and when we seek for someone on whom we can rely more surely than we can on our friends in the world. There comes a time when we feel a desire to open our hearts to a Being who is above human beings and who can understand our hearts. … We feel the need of asking forgiveness of someone who is above human pettiness, and of seeking refuge under someone stronger than we are. And to all these natural human tendencies there is an answer which is given by religion, and that answer is God.
( from the Sufi Message Series, Volume IX – The Unity of Religious Ideals, Part I: Seeking for the Ideal )
When speaking on the subject of ideal life, the words of the Prophet of Islam may be quoted, where he says, ‘Every soul has its own religion.’ This means that every soul has a certain direction which it has chosen, a goal to attain during life. This goal is a certain ideal, which depends on the soul’s evolution. … In the Hindu language, the same word, Dharma, means both duty and religion. Both are expressed by one word. ‘This is your Dharma’ means: ‘This is your faith.’ How beautiful the thought is! Whatever kind of duty it is, so long as you have an ideal before you and are performing that duty, you are walking in the path of religion.
We, with our narrowness of faith or belief, accuse others of belonging to another religion, another chapel or church. We say, ‘This temple is better, that faith is better.’ The whole world has kept on fighting and devastating itself just because it can not understand that each form of religion is peculiar to itself. Therefore, the ideal life is in following one’s own ideal. It is not in checking [ ie blocking or opposing ] other people’s ideals.
( from the Sufi Message Series, Volume VII – In an Eastern Rose Garden: The Ideal Life )
The whole aim of the Sufis is, by thought of God, to cover their imperfect selves even from their own eyes, and that moment when God is before them and not their own selves, is the moment of perfect bliss to them. My Murshid, Abu Hashim Madani, once said that there is only one virtue and one sin for a soul on the path: virtue when one is conscious of God and sin when one is not.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
Religion in its highest and truest sense being that which relates us to God, it is the fulfillment of this relation which alone satisfies the soul. This means the renunciation and abandonment of everything belonging to the three worlds of body, mind and spirit. So long as we hold any earthly or heavenly attachments our love is not for the Zat of God [ absolute essence, substance, beingness, also spelled Dhat — in distinction to the Sifat, the various manifested qualities. ]. When love is other than for the Zat of God, the person may be called irreligious, and is impious in the sense that this failure to keep on the right path will lead sooner or later to error and sin, and this keeps one bound by karmic ties.