# Religion > Religion externalizes forgotten connection through ritual and intermediaries while saviors teach equality; organized structures dissolve as humanity reclaims its own divinity. - Canonical: https://sassani.app/topic/religion # Religion Religion, in Bashar's framing, is the outward exploration of the self while the self believes itself separate from all that is — ritual and dogma built to reflect a connection that has been forgotten. It arose (along with government) from a 25,000-year cycle of separation, in which power was handed to intermediaries — priests, saviors, rulers — to fend off a feared divinity and keep the congregant "safe." The saviors themselves never sought followers; their message was always "know yourself, and in knowing yourself you will know God." As humanity integrates and reclaims its own responsibility and fear, religion and government dissolve back into their original function: unconditional love, lived rather than ritualized. ## Religion as the product of separation, not a description of God Bashar locates the origin of religion in a specific historical premise: roughly 25,000 years ago in Atlantean civilization, consciousness chose to explore separation from the knowing that it is all that is. As spirit projected further into materiality, it became fascinated with limitation, formed the habit of expressing through belief and emotion and thought (rather than knowingness), and "locked itself off" from its own knowing self. When beings could no longer feel their natural connection, they attempted to manufacture connection through domination — of environment, of each other — and religion and government arose together as the structures that took in people's fear and power in exchange for the promise of safety. An institution created out of fear, Bashar says, can only sustain itself by generating more fear, by keeping the congregant "thinking and believing that you are less and worth less in the eyes of a greater power." This is not a moral judgment of religion; separation has been one valid way for all that is to view itself, and the cycle is a "great creation" in its own right. In this view the term "God" itself carries the limits any definition imposes. Bashar prefers "all that is," because the popular word "God" has been used in ways that contradict the very omnipotence it claims — for example, asserting that God is everywhere and everything while also insisting that "somehow, still, God is not me." By definition, if God is everything, "you are not outside God. God is not outside you. You are God. God is you." The religion topic, then, is not a study of the divine but a study of the structures a separating consciousness builds to relate to a divinity it has forgotten it already is. ## The saviors taught equality, not followership Across transcripts Bashar returns to the same reading of the figures religion has elevated: Jesus (Yeshua), Buddha, Muhammad, Krishna, Baha'u'llah, and others are, in their higher aspects, in complete accord; "there are no discrepancies in the energy of the initial consciousness." Their shared message was that you are equal to them — that each of you is also a Christ, a Buddha, a Krishna. They "never required the idea, nor asked for the idea, of followers. They were creating equals." The phrase ascribed to Jesus, "I am the way," is read not as a claim of exclusive access but as an invitation to be the way he is — to know yourself as all that is. "Be like me, because you are like me." This is why Bashar distinguishes the messenger from the religion built afterward around the messenger. The cycle of separation was "so complete" that the message of equality was heard, instead, as a call to become followers, "to give over the power to the individual." Religion in its organized form is what gets built in that gap between the messenger's teaching of equality and a separating consciousness's need to delegate its power. The so-called "second coming," in this framing, is not the return of one individual but the awakening within each person of "your own Christ consciousness, your own Buddha nature, your own Krishna spirit." ## Scripture as mixed historical and symbolic material Bashar treats biblical and other religious literature as a mixture of literal event, metaphor, analogy, misremembering, and misinterpretation — not a uniform historical record. Asked whether Moses, Abraham, Solomon, and Jesus were real people "as portrayed in the Bible," he answers yes as to their historical existence but "not completely" as to the portrayal: "some of it is metaphorical, some of it is literal, some of it is an analogy, some of it is misremembered, some of it is misinterpreted." He notes that what you call your Bible "was not written to record history, it was written to convert," and that it contains less than ten percent of what the figure at its center actually said, committed to writing decades later and "very much misinterpreted according to the understanding of when it was written." Genesis stories such as Adam and Eve are read as "allegorical for the most part," framed in story-form because the concepts exceeded the language of the time. A separate teaching traces specific religious iconography to its archetypal root. Halos, angels, horns, and devils are understood as projections of the positive/negative, light/dark, day/night polarity onto human-like forms; the halo of the saint is the sun, the horns of the devil are the moon. These images are "just presentations, just symbols, just representations" — they do not have to "contain any solidity, any validity" for you. The function of much religious demonology, Bashar suggests, has been to convince the believer that "they are being attacked by demons" so that they will not look within and recognize the negative belief as their own. ## One underlying source, many ritual expressions Even when religions appear to disagree, Bashar attributes the disagreement to the surrounding ritual structures rather than to an absent common truth. Every organized faith, in his view, has its origin in some form of channeling — communication with other consciousness or with aspects of the founder's own higher consciousness — and the fundamental recognition behind all religions on the planet "are from the same overall source." Discrepancies arise only when the fundamentals are surrounded by rituals "reflective of each and every individual's particular way that they wish to go about relating to the fundamentals." Each organized faith therefore "has some view or some portion of an overriding truth," but by setting itself apart from the others it represents only a piece of it; "if all of them would simply blend together into a natural relationship or understanding, then you would have more of it." This includes faiths that explicitly intend unification: even a unifying religion, "as it is expressed, doesn't necessarily go all the way toward unification." The same logic reframes the diversity of religious experience. The oneness of the religious experience is the recognition that "you are all exploring the same idea from different points of view"; many roads exist precisely because there are many individuals — "if there were only one path, there would only be one person." A religion that demands a single way for everyone is therefore contradicting its own premise. ## Religion as permission slip and the "no religion" that replaces it Bashar's practical guidance for someone inside a religious tradition is to use it as a doorway rather than a destination. The masters were saying that the proper use of any religion is "as a doorway until you get the point that what they were telling you is you don't need the religion. You are the same thing that I am being." Political, economic, and social teachings embedded in a tradition may be useful "stopgap measures" or "temporary permission slips, to get you to form your own idea," appropriate for the stretch of path they cover and replaceable when you have crossed it. As the separation cycle closes, religion in its outward, ritualized, mediated form is expected to dissolve into the living of what it has always pointed at. The "new religion," Bashar says, "will be no religion at all" — each individual recognizing itself as its own path. When asked what universal ritual could bridge the transition, the answer is that the only ritual needed is unconditional love: "Life and love are the only so-called rituals you need to integrate." Psychology and psychic study are described as the polarized offshoots that religion is already becoming as it loses its separatist qualities, eventually converging with science as all of them integrate into a single blended viewpoint. ## Prayer as gratitude rather than petition The reframing extends to the act of prayer. Prayer is not a request to an outside being for something absent; it is "an attitude of gratitude in the present tense," aligned with the recognition that "every single thing that is truly important for you to manifest in your life already exists" and that you simply have not been on the frequency to allow it to become visible. Prayer, so understood, is not about asking for what you lack but about being in alignment with what already is. ## Practical implications A learner can take several grounded implications from these teachings without turning them into a directive about any specific tradition: Notice where a religious framework asks you to delegate your power to an intermediary, and test that against the messenger's actual reported message of equality. Bashar's consistent framing is that the masters taught "be like me," not "follow me," and that anything built on the latter displaces the former. Treat scripture as mixed material — literal, metaphorical, analogical, misremembered, misinterpreted — and read a disputed passage in that light rather than as a uniformly historical record. This applies to Genesis as to any other origin story. Use a tradition's rituals and structures as permission slips for the stretch of path they genuinely serve, and allow them to be replaced when you no longer need them — rather than treating any one structure as the final destination. When you encounter religious iconography that claims authority over you — angels, demons, halos, horns — remember its archetypal root in light and dark, positive and negative, and that the presentation is "just a symbol," not a power you must submit to. If you pray, pray as present-tense gratitude for what already is, rather than as a petition for what is missing; Bashar frames the latter as a symptom of the separation the teaching is moving beyond. When comparing traditions, distinguish shared fundamentals from differing ritual expressions; the disagreement between religions is attributed here to the rituals built around a common source, not to the absence of that source. These implications describe the teaching's internal logic. They do not constitute medical, legal, or financial guidance, and they make no claim to verify or rank any specific religious tradition's history or doctrine. ## Representative passages Both the idea of religion and to some degree government is created from this separation, from the idea that stories and ideas can be created and perpetuated that have not to do with the connection between things but with those things that can be hidden, separated, judged upon. Individuals thus found themselves creating the cycle of giving their power over to these individuals who could then protect them from the things they told them existed. Because these institutions were created out of your lack of willingness to take your own fear and your own responsibility, then they, like any consciousness, once created out of fear, will want to fear, to sustain themselves. And if they were created out of fear the only methodology they have of sustaining their existence is to create more fear to keep you separate from yourselves.— Bashar, New Metaphysics Intro And Religion (new-metaphysics-intro-and-religion#qa-8) What Baha'u'llah was saying, what Jesus was saying, what Muhammad was saying, what Buddha was saying, what Krishna was actually saying, is that you are all Baha'u'llah's. You are all Christ. You are all Buddhas. You are all Krishnas. Don't follow me. Be like me. Because you are like me. Therefore, they never required the idea of followers. They were creating equals.— Bashar, Baha'i Faith Permissions Slip Stepping Stone (baha-i-faith-permissions-slip-stepping-stone#qa-2) The idea of the oneness is the recognition of the oneness that you all are. You are all exploring the same idea from different points of view. […] If there were only one path, there would only be one person. Because there is more than one person, you can recognize that there are many, many roads that all lead to the same understanding.— Bashar, New Metaphysics Intro And Religion (new-metaphysics-intro-and-religion#qa-3) What you call your Bible was not written to record history, it was written to convert. […] Recognize that there is still much misinterpretation of what was actually said there.— Bashar, Jesus Said (jesus-said#qa-3) ## Related - [Separation](https://sassani.app/topic/separation) - [Unconditional Love](https://sassani.app/topic/unconditional-love) - [Christ Consciousness](https://sassani.app/topic/christ-consciousness) - [Empowerment](https://sassani.app/topic/empowerment) - [All That Is](https://sassani.app/topic/all-that-is) Markdown twin of https://sassani.app/topic/religion. The HTML page is the source of truth.