The writer of this article received a letter from a deeply religious woman whose son had cursed God "in no uncertain terms", while she trembled with fear at the imagined consequences of such blasphemy. She wrote that she found it difficult to let go of a vengeful God issuing rewards and punishments for our deeds, and was trying to adjust to the idea that 'God' is totally loving and totally forgiving.

One cannot help smiling at the thought of the son cursing God, for that is really an affirmation of one's belief in the existence of God. In truth, what he was cursing was the concept of God that his religious conditioning had taught him. To curse the Source of all life, energy and consciousness is as foolish as cursing your own heartbeat and your very breath. To curse God is to curse the creative, living energy within all things. A seed, a plant, a fish, a fowl, an animal. To curse God is to curse the movement of the stars and planets, the orbits of the earth around the sun, the moon around the earth, the rising and the falling of the tide, the beginning and the ceasing of the wind. To curse God is to curse the vibrant, living energy within an atom, or within the seemingly inanimate rocks which are made up of such atoms. Indeed, there is life and consciousness in more than just the animate of the physical plane.

Even if were to accept the concept of God that we have made in our own image, a male figure with a long-flowing white beard (thank you, Michelangelo) living somewhere up in the clouds surrounded by harp-plucking angels, how is it that we can forgive our children time and time again for their cursing against us, 'I hate you, I hate you', yet we fear that God may not be as loving as ourselves? Does that not speak volumes about the concepts we have of God?

It is time that we, being the real Temple of God, became true witnesses, by example, of the Spirit of God within us, and began to love our brothers and sisters as ourselves; in business, law, government, politics and religions as well as in the home and on the street.

To attack the ignorance of Buddhism and Christianity as it is taught at today's level of degeneration is not to attack the Buddhists and the Christians, nor is deploring religion's conversion of both the Buddha and Jesus into gods in any way denigrating one whit of their teachings. Both were enlightened, God-realised men. Lights to the world, but men nevertheless.

Religion tells us that God dwells in a place called 'heaven', yet Jesus is supposed to have said that the spirit of God dwells within ourselves. Religion tells us that God is love, but damns us 'sinners' to eternal suffering. Would you do that to your children? Religion tells us that we are born in sin yet Jesus, quoting God's words to Asaph repeats, "I said you are Gods" and himself is supposed to have said "Know you not that YOU are the temple of God?" Religion has us praying together in a building which we call a 'church', yet Jesus is supposed to have warned us "not to be like the hypocrites who pray in public places."

Religion places a huge barrier of separation between Man and God, yet Jesus is quoted as saying, "I am in the Father, you are in me and I am in thee." Now, who do you believe? Jesus or religion?