In India, Divali Day (the Indian festival of lights) is celebrated by lighting candles. The people usually gamble, and if you ask them why, they will tell you that by gambling on that day our births and deaths will cease. There is a kind of gambling that finishes up the incarnations, but what kind of gambling it is, very few really know. The true gambling lies in sacrificing all other things - body and its environments - for the purpose of enkindling the Light within. Being ignorant of the true gambling, they started outer gambling instead; and the people blindly follow them, without going into the truth of it. He who will see the Light within withdraws his attention from the outgoing faculties and outer objects. Even in the field of spiritual matters, everyone is singing the name of God on top notes - no one stops to think exactly what those names stand for. Every religion contains the same basic teachings in the various languages: that is, in Naam, Word, etc., lies salvation, and not in any other teaching.
All religions encourage the reading of holy scriptures - that is to understand the subject, the theory; it is not necessary to make a lot of noise by singing and playing tunes to the words. The words are there to give thought to the subject. Very few will think on the words of the hymn, or what they denote. People imagine that merely reading out the words, parrot-like, is enough. Sometimes they shout the words at the tops of their voices, and even clap the hands and read - the more noise, the happier they are. But if the words were read like this for one hundred years without a pause, it would be of little avail. In the Shrimad Bhagavat it says that God cannot be realized just by reading the Vedas. Guru Nanak has said, "To read year by year, month by month, with intense yearning while the breath lasts; O Nanak, this avails nothing unless the written word is lived." Reading alone is valueless; the teaching must be followed.
The greatest aspiration of human life is to realize God: the God which expressed Himself into Creation, the Maker of Khand and Brahmand (astral and causal planes), the Sustainer of all things. In the language of the Saints, that God expressed is called Naam, through which they say the soul can gain salvation, irrespective of religion. The Ultimate or Absolute Lord is Nameless, but that which came into expression is called Naam, or Shabd, or Word - the God-into-Expression Power, which is not separate from His creation. "World is the room of Truth, and Truth resides therein." If the scriptures are read for long enough, it may be possible to gain some power of concentration and thereby perform small "miracles"; but there is no true awareness in this.
Excerpts from NEVER DANCE TO THE WORLD'S TUNE
