1. General Statements

The Meaning of Our Lives / 1. General Statements

1. General Statements

1:1. Throughout the history of people on the planet Earth God has been repeatedly giving them His Teachings through His Messengers (Messiahs, Avatars) and prophets. Each time the information was presented in the form that was adequate for concrete group of people — according to the level of their philosophic and religious awareness and the conditions of life in that particular historical period (whether it was period of war or peace, first stages of religion’s formation or existence of established religious tradition in the particular region).

1:2. But at each of those epicenters of religious knowledge established by God, people inevitably distorted His Teachings. For example:

— all religious duties of people got reduced to sole participation in “saving” rituals; bodily movements and standard prayers gradually became the main religious occupation of believers, substituting for real efforts on the path of personal spiritual evolution;

— so-called religious fundamentalism appeared, where the religious life was considered not as accumulating knowledge about God and the meaning of our life, not as mastering of methods of spiritual self-development and helping others in doing it, but was reduced to crude, violent forcing people to keep certain “rules of behavior” that have no religious value;

— false concepts of “national religions” and of “national Gods” formed, whereas in reality God is One — not only for all people of the Earth, but for the whole Universe;

— such degeneration very often resulted in hatred to “heretics” and “infidels” becoming the main essence of the religious ideology, which led to terror and aggressive wars.

God calls this kind of pseudo-religiosity, where He and Love are lost, “a contagion much worse than AIDS”. Followers of such orientations prepare themselves for going to hell.

1:3. These religious distortions got dramatically manifested in the events of September 11, 2001 (a terrorist attack against people of U.S. cities by religious zealots using hijacked airplanes). The acts of those terrorist-kamikazes were based on a belief that murdering “infidels” secures future life in paradise for the murderers. (The origin of this postulate is clear: it was given many centuries ago to belligerent tribes at the time of war — for the sake of inspiring the warriors of the righteous party to fight the enemy. But under conditions of peace and stable existence of a religious tradition such guidelines clearly cannot be followed)

1:4 For all rational people of our planet these dramatic events are clearly pointing out at the necessity of accepting and applying in the everyday life of all people of all nations FUNDAMENTALS OF THE COMMON RELIGION. This Declaration is based on the modern scientific knowledge and on recapitulation of the religious experience accumulated throughout the history of mankind, as well as on what God is teaching us now.