In every faith, only that which is spiritual is true.
Jesus does not say to the Samaritans: abandon your beliefs and your tradition for the Jewish ones; he does not say to the Jews: join the Samaritans; but rather, he says to the Samaritans and the Jews: you are both equally misguided. God is spirit, and a faith in him can only be within you, not tied to any place or any external form. Neither the Temple nor its service is important. Neither Gerizim nor Jerusalem is important. A time will come, and it has already come, when people will bow to the Father not in Gerizim or Jerusalem, but when true followers will bow to the Father in spirit and truth, for such are the followers that the Father seeks for himself.
He searched for them in the times of Jerusalem. He is looking for them even now. When will he find them? When anyone who, having grown tired of sources that cannot quench one’s thirst, will say to Jesus: “Lord, give me this water, so that I do not get thirsty, neither come all the way here to draw!”
— Lamennais
Christ came in order to reveal that the eternal is not the future, but only the invisible—that eternity is not the ocean into which people are carried by the river of time, but that it surrounds them now, and that their lives are only real to the extent they can feel its presence. He came in order to teach us that God is not some accidental abstraction, infinitely separated from them in some remote heavens, but that he is the Father in whom they live, move and exist, and that the service that he desires does not consist in the solemn execution of church traditions, but in charity, justice, humility and love.
— Farrar
God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.
— John 4:24
The religion that consists in the positions and movements of the body is lower than the exercises of a warrior.
If you lack inner knowledge, do not boast about your verbal worship of the Deity.
The faith that says that it is profitable to renounce your current life is false: is it not obvious that eternal life begins in this life?
A human being who has reached perfection makes no distinction between the soul and universal nature, between himself and another person.
Out of the sons of men, only he who perceives God in his heart deserves to be called holy. Know thyself—and you will be divine.
Not knowing that the source of life exists in your soul right now, why are you searching for it, imagining that you can find it somewhere else? The one who does this is akin to a person who lights a lamp in sunlight.
— Vamana Purana
It cannot be said that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of the soul to acknowledge Christ in the flesh; but what is absolutely necessary for the salvation of the soul is to recognize the son of God, i.e. that eternal wisdom of God which manifests in all things and primarily in the human soul, and which most of all manifested in Jesus Christ. Without this wisdom, no one can attain the state of bliss, because only it alone reveals what is true and what is false, what is good and what is evil.
— Spinoza
Do not be afraid to discard from your faith everything material, everything visible and tangible. The more you purify the spiritual core of your faith, the stronger it will be for you.
