The Religious Experience

"Most people lose or forget the subjectively religious experience, and redefine 'religion' as a set of habits, behavior, dogmas, forms, which at the extreme become entirely legalistic, and bureaucratic, conventional, empty, and in the truest meaning of the word, anti-religious. The mystic experience, the illumination, the great awakening, along with the charismatic seer who started the whole thing, are forgotten, lost, or transformed into their opposites. Organized religion, the churches, finally may become the major enemies of the religious experiences and the religious experience."

--Abraham H. Maslow

"Do not believe in what you have heard; do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations; do not believe in anything because it is rumored or spoken of by many; do not believe merely because the written statement of some old sage is produced; do not believe conjectures; do not believe merely in the authority of your teachers and elders. After observation and analysis, when it agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it."

--The Buddha

"I am the eyes with which the universe beholds itself, and knows itself divine."

--The Hymn of Apollo

"In Heaven there are no religions. Thank God!"

--Gandhi