Kirpal Singh

The Master’s Opening Remarks

Delivered at the Inaugural Session of the Fourth Religions Conference, 6 February 1970

Dear brothers and sisters

I cannot really express the joy of Love that I feel at this moment at seeing both East and West meeting at this platform to lay heads together in order to find ways and means for establishing Love and peace amongst the followers of the various religions.

Man was born as man with the same privileges, born the same way, with the same construction outside – two hands, two feet, two eyes, etc. – and the same construction inside. He is the highest of all creation. Those Who unravelled the mystery of life by tapping inside helped others also who came in contact with Them to solve the same. When They left the scene, man made religions to keep Their teachings alive. So long as there were practical people, the people derived the benefit. For dearth of such practical persons there was stagnation and stagnation resulted in deterioration. First we are man and then called by the names of the labels of various religions we carry on our bodies. It is we who made social bodies. The purpose of all social religions is to know God. Before man can know God, he has to know himself. The purpose of social religions was just to prescribe a mode of life so that, in the first place, we may have a peaceful existence during our sojourn on this earth, and then to analyse ourselves so as to know our self and to know God.

So True Religion begins by knowing what man is. He is a conscious entity, an ensouled body. We are too much after the organisations we have made, the main purpose of which was to know ourself first and then know God. But that aim was just kept in the background and the outer preliminaries were taken to be the be-all and end-all.

When I went to the West, the people there asked me,

How can we avoid the dangers of atomic war?

I told them,

Only if you live up to what the scriptures say.

All the scriptures say,

Love thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind.

And,

As God resides in every heart, we should love all humanity.

In one way or the other the teachings of all the Great Masters Who came in the past were based on these two principles. I told them that if they followed these two principles there would be no danger of atomic war.

A man who loves God will naturally love all mankind as God resides in all hearts.

Love and all things shall be added unto you,

is what the Gospel enjoins. Love and ahimsa are but synonyms. Love is the natural concomitant of ahimsa. All Saints Who came in the past, whether Kabir, Nanak, Christ, Confucius, Zoroaster, Mahavira, Buddha, or others, They all said the same thing. This is the golden principle on which we have to stand for the Unity of all religions of the world. And this we have forgotten. We have lost sight of the kernel and are too much after the outer casings.

There are two aspects of religion; one is the Inner Aspect and the other is the outer. The outer aspect of religion is concerned with the body and the bodily relations, while the Inner Aspect is concerned directly with the Soul; and so you will find that there is only one Inner Religion. Unity is already there. We have not to create it. Those Masters Who came in the past, They had contact with that perennial reality within. They knew that the same reality is immanent in every form and supporting all creation.

So They gave out that,

All mankind is One.

We have with us here friends both from the East and the West to whom we extend our welcome. We have great appreciation and Love for you all, especially as you come for the cause of God. All of us should join the army of God, I should say. What are the qualifications which enable us to join the army of God? Righteousness or dharma. Righteousness consists of kind thoughts, kind words and kind deeds. So, as I told you, these social religions were formed, from time to time, with this main object in view. But the people instead of joining the army of God, joined the army of various sectarian religions, and are thus fighting with each other.

Truly speaking, religion is an expression of Divinity already existing in man, and there we are all one. So those who realise this One Reality, they see from the level of the soul that the same Reality is working throughout all creation. Their level of thinking is very different from that of ordinary people who look from the level of labels we are wearing, which is misleading.

We should look to the One Reality working in all creation and to the Ultimate Goal of knowing God that has been set before us.

So the World Religions Conference held here is for this aim only, and we must try our best to do full justice to this.

Last time when I was in Washington (America), a meeting was arranged with the avowed purpose of representing the viewpoint of both East and West. They chose me as a representative of the East and one representative was nominated for the West, who had to come from France.

Unfortunately he did not arrive in time and so they said to me,

All right, we leave the representation of both East and West to You.

I told them that people say that,

East is East and West is West and the two shall never meet.

But I said that this was our distinction, for we had made East and West. There was in fact neither East nor West. God made One Creation. All the countries are so many rooms in the house of our Father. The air planes have annihilated all distances. If we fly today from here we reach England the next day and on the third day we are in America. So we all live in one house of our Father.

The awakened persons give us the right understanding that as man we are One, as Soul we are of the same essence as that of God and worship the same Power, under one name or the other, controlling us in the body. With this we will have right thoughts, right speech and right actions. Thus we will bring Kingdom of God on earth or have Ram Rajya as Gandhi Ji told us.

With kind thoughts I wish you to engage with all your mind and soul in the service of the Holy Word and the Holy Word will take care of you.

Kirpal Singh