Thus we have two classes of believers: those who are away from ethical values and those who adhere to certain values.
Each religion had its origin because of certain compulsions. The great Gautham Buddh revealed four noble truths, viz., sufferings exist: they arise from attachments: they cease when attachment to them ceases, and freedom comes by following eight fold paths. See, being a prince his outlook toward life and its vicissitudes was totally different. His sufferings arose from the fear of old age, physical desire and its final culmination. For him freedom or Nirvan was in the cessation of bodily sufferings. His eight fold path also related to the rightful use of the senses. All of these relate, again, to the body or its ‘mind’: The mind—conscious knowledge, which each body is embodied with! In order to achieve their ends, each master initiated a set of norms of conduct with regard to common ethics, which the masters expected their followers to observe and follow. These norms, more rightly, the commandments became religious ethics. Just as there are different types of people; their circumstances, and attitudes differing from place to place, there are also a variety of religions with as much coloration (philosophies). Although each master tried to give a cosmopolitan ‘look’ to his set of ‘values’, still their components being varied, differed with others in content, application and manifestation, i.e., symbolism. Thus all religions, though professing universality have, failed to produce a commonly acceptable set of universal values. They have also failed to sit at one common platform and speak in one voice, on all those issues, which are the basic ‘truths’ for each religion—the source of the origin of their ethical values. The cause for this lapse lies with the personal lives of their masters. They did not apply on themselves the values, which they themselves had ‘created’ but in return expected their followers to follow in earnest. Gautham Buddh and Mahavir were both renunciates, as such whatever they preached was not applicable to the worldly people, simply because their followers were not renunciates like them. The great Zen masters, Teethankars, Bhikshus and Popes, are the creation of their respective ‘systems,’ as were the great monasteries, Dhamas, Sangathan, Vatican. History is silent about any welfare schemes, undertaken by these ‘greats’, for the poor! We often hear such and such king spread the state adopted religions to far off lands, but in each case only oppression, suppression were exported to those lands; not peace or prosperity.
Religions are, as stated earlier, the by-products of the senses—the mind, and they function within their orbits. Their mandates or doctrines are meant to regulate the function of the senses within normal limits. A discipline, whose scope is limited only to physical aspects, cannot be expected to yield results in area which it was never intended. Through religions one can never realize the Self. The general prescription, which each religion apply, viz., worshiping, singing the glory of God/masters’ names, Yog Sadhna (meditation) etc., are only physical and mental exercises, to exert control over the body and the mind. These have nothing to do with the Self-Realization or Divine- realization.