The pure religion we preach here is preached by many others, and while what we narrate is based on ancient traditions, many discovered and re-discovered the same truth in modern times too. All spiritual men, philosophers, and sincere seekers in all countries and all time arrived at the same conclusion that this is the path, and the same religion has been proclaimed in different ways and languages.
At the dawn of modernity in renaissance Europe, the enlightened and spiritual men of the time rose against the church's unreasonable dogmas, and realized a simpler religion in more agreement with human intuition. A main branch of it came to be known as deism. It is similar to pure religion in fundamentals and is an instance and sister of it. During that time Issac Newton, who is the father of modern physics and mechanics as we know today, wrote a treatise about "True religion" 1 and his true religion is truly a description of our pure religion. Other nobles and saints of that time, many of whom were fathers of different branches of science, also said and wrote the same things. Verily the great discovery of that period was not "science" but was the discovery, or better to say re-discovery, of this pure and perennial religion. A book with the same title 2 was authored by a scholar in the twentieth century summarizing the concepts and history of this religion.
In the east and in India, Gandhi in the early twentieth century rejected the other-worldliness and other non-pure elements in Hinduism, and talked about a religion whose way was service to others and whose God was Truth (satya). Before him in medieval India, Akbar Shah talked about "Din Ellahi" (religion of God), a perennial religion underlying all religions. Several other Indian saints also came to the same conclusion at different times, and preached a religion based on service to others rather than sitting in cloisters and cross leg yoga meditation all the time.
And many new religious movements in recent centuries and years in North America, Japan and other parts of the world brought an ideology similar to pure religion. And before that time, ancient Greek and classic Romans and others talked about the same truth: they all talked about God as the goal, the virtue and good deed as the path, and rituals and dogmas as anti-path.
How is it that all these learned and noble men lived in different countries and different ages but proclaimed the same truth and same path? Like volcanos that are in different locations and time but all erupt the same materials, so all these great men, erupted the Truth, which is timeless and placeless. And should they all rise from the grave and come together, they will look very different but all will be brothers and find no difference in their path. They all sit in the fellowship table of the Divine union, as a manifestation of what the bible says: "people come from east and west and sit in the kingdom of God" [Mathew 8:11]
And the next verse of the same says: "But the children of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness" [Mathew 8:12]. Here, the "children of the kingdom" refers, as if, to organized religions. These religions that still exist among us today claim the absolute truth and yet are the most misguided ones. They added rituals and many other impure elements to their religions, and mixed it with strange beliefs and fables. But even in these religions and in their scriptures there exist many words pointing and pushing towards the concepts of pure religion, to the point that we feel they are also our brothers, and perchance they used to be a form of pure religion at their time, but later altered and corrupted in different directions.
For the Bible itself defines "pure religion" when it says: "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world "[James 1:27]. Here, religion in its pure form is defined as service to others and having virtues, which is in conformity to the pure religion we preach in this book. And again in the Sermon on the mount Jesus proclaims nothing but virtue and sincerity towards God, and his great commandments of "love God and love your neighbour as yourself" [Mathew 22:37-40] are also a testimony to this. The narrations of the Gospels, through an unbiased eye, almost assure that Jesus was preaching the pure religion against the dogmatism and ritualism of jewish pharisees. In the world of Hinduism, the book of Bhagavad Gita teaches a simple devotion to God and rejects rituals and other Hindu dogmas. Other religions also contain the same allusions to pure religion, clear and explicit.
But these religions today became impure, full of complexities, and they differed and rejected each other. This is because of the religion corruption principle. This principle goes beyond religion and encompasses everything. For everything will be corrupted throughout the time. Everything has a beginning and an end. Nothing can stand time, and thus, it is proclaimed as the grand destroyer and pictured as a bloodthirsty warrior.
This corruption principle happens for religions too. And this should not come as a surprise since Evil does not remain idle. Religion is his greatest enemy, and so he creates anti-religion to counter it. Path and anti-path go hand in hand. Evil deflects some with lust, anger, addiction and other mundane means, but not all follow this path. In some people the Divine nature is dominant. They are not taken away by evil impulses and harmful acts. Instead, they are looking for the truth and eventually pick a religion. To deflect and nullify this group of people, Evil attempts to corrupt their religions. Once a religion is corrupted and misguided, all who follow it will be misguided without realizing it.
Evil injected many misleading ideas into religions throughout history to corrupt them. Here are common cases of such ideas that eventually enters into every religion: exegesis and interpretation, legalism, ritualism, philosophising, intercession and mediumship, exaggerating the power of Evil (that Evil is too strong and the world cannot be made better, and so we just stay home, pray and do nothing else). All these different elements at the end lead to one result, that is to discourage the followers to take effort to do good work, and to engage them into useless activities like rituals or endless waiting for a saviour. All are a waste of time, "all is vanity and vexation of spirit" [Ecclesiastes 1:14].
A main cause and agent of adding such corrupted elements to religions is the "priest craft" phenomenon. This is when Evil deceives some people with the lust to power, and they use religion as a means for that power. They inject this idea into the religion that certain rituals are necessary and needed by God, and we are the ones that can and should perform these rituals. And thus, they assume a position called priest, a lofty position, a paramount one, for without them there will be no grace of God. Once in that position, these broods of vipers [Mathew 12:34], require money and gold in exchange for their rituals. They become rich and the religion becomes poor, and it goes into a spiral of decline and corruption until it becomes like unto religions today. Priest craft is not always based on rituals, but also can be based on teaching meditation or in some cases bestowing salvation or divine light directly to the followers. All of these ultimately place some men in place of God, and people will turn to these men instead of God almighty.
This corruption happens for every religion. Even if it starts as a pure religion in its purest form, and creates great men and women, and builds the land of milk and honey, as time passes by it gathers more and more impure elements to itself, due to priest craft and other undesirable events in its history, until it becomes like unto one of the religions today, full of complexities and superstitions, and divided into many branches. Such corruption happens in the course of time and continues until a great Divine man comes and destroys all these religions and establishes a new Divine order, and a pure religion. And that pure religion creates great men and women, and continues, till it becomes corrupted again and the same cycle repeats forever, thus, conforming to the ying-yang and light-darkness doctrine. This is what 's called the cycle of religion corruption.
A follower of pure religion should know about this religion corruption cycle, and not be deceived by illogical claims of today religions followers. The idea that a religion appears at one point in history and remains pure forever is not realistic. It is not even fair, since we all have to toil to create our heaven. We cannot just inherit it from the previous generation. For this is the law of this universe that you cannot possess anything unless you earn it: "through toil you will eat of it all the days of your life", and "By the sweat of your brow you will eat your bread" [Genesis 3:17-19] were the words of God to Adam. And in this direction, we have to create a sweet heaven with the sweat of our brow. Old prophets left us with models and ideas, but the religion and way of life should be made by us, and for our time.
It is pure religion followers duty to create a new sect if existing ones are corrupted, and should revolt against everything that is not pure religion and based on goodness. An aspirant in this path should have complete knowledge of what makes a religion pure and what makes it impure, and avoid the impurities at all times and at all costs. Even this pure religion we preach here and the movement thereof will be corrupted one day, and a new such similar book and movement will need to come and repeat the battle and struggle. And this fight will go on and on, as long as the earth revolves and sun rises and sets.