Dear Daffy,

Thank you for the links: I have read and understood.

However, you can't just tell someone off the street: "Drop your ego", "Stop wishing for continual existence or immortality", "Stop seeing yourself as separate from others"...

OK, here I tell you to do the above and unlike the fellow off the street you are even advantaged to be learned and believe so yourself, that my advise/instruction is correct....

So... have you done as I told you already? Have you dropped you ego? Have you stopped wishing for continual existence or immortality? Have you stopped seeing yourself as separate from others?

If not, why not?

You see my friend, it's not as easy, not even for you with all your studies. Religion is a long process, it takes more than a lifetime (unless of course you already spent quite a few already in conscious efforts to come closer to God), and exoteric efforts and disciplines are an essential part of that path, or rungs on that ladder.

The factual correctness of a religious belief is unimportant - what's important about it is the motivation and inspiration for the devotee to grind down their ego, still using certain parts of their ego to shatter other parts, then subtler parts to shatter the former and so on.

The root of the ego does not dissolve this way, but finally only through the grace of God and/or Guru. But it first has to be cut to size, as exoteric religion first uses Rajas to transform Tamas, followed by advanced esoteric methods that use Sattva to transform Rajas. It's only at the final stage that Shri Krishna's instruction to Arjuna to transcend even the Sattva Guna can occur by the grace of God:

trai-gunya-visaya veda
nistrai-gunyo bhavarjuna
nirdvandvo nitya-sattva-stho
niryoga-ksema atmavan

- "The Vedas deal mainly with the subject of the three modes of material nature. O Arjuna, become transcendental to these three modes. Be free from all dualities and from all anxieties for gain and safety, and be established in the self".

http://vedabase.net/bg/2/45/en2.php

Simple, tax the church and all it's offshoots, problem solved.

Geoff