Books and words comprise scriptures, but they are not the only revelations of life. All creation is “word,” God's cosmic scripture for us to read and understand. The method of study is glorification, communion, and feeling that the stream of life that flows through our and Nature's veins is One.
The gospels relate how Jesus taught his disciples “many tongues.” I doubt that we are intended to believe from that that he instructed them in foreign languages. Rather, that he helped them to learn how God speaks Law and Life through self-manifestation; that the trees, flowers, and all creatures are, too, the language of the Infinite. As Shakespeare said in As You Like It, “And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.”
There are countless religions, sects and theologies. Life is not long enough to study them all. But all derive from one expression: Cosmic Nature. Religion comes not from East or West, but from the heart of Nature. Study Nature. Nature does not exist in a single instance without expressing the most profound meaning of life.
It was Nature that awakened man to religion: Beauty, wonder and admiration are the beginning of all worship and prayer. If there were no love or beauty, religion would never have existed. Nature is the only scripture written directly and entirely by God—as such the most perfect source of self-revelation.
The religion of Nature is not based on a personal experience of someone else in another time. According to Nature's religion, no one can be religious until he has the direct revelation for himself. Nature is the first scripture of Yoga.
As you find yourself in Nature you will evolve morally. You will expand in your spiritual consciousness. There will be an integrated harmonious development felt and revealed in every aspect of your life as you find it in Nature. All obstacles will drop away because Nature has an exclusively spiritual purpose. The whole activity of Nature exists so that the soul may emerge through successive and progressive experiences to realize that it is free in the Absolute. When the soul knows that it is free from the differentiation and form of the external Nature, then it has learned its lesson well! When it perceives its oneness with the soul of Nature, it is whole.
The companionship of Nature is not imagined. It is real. The universe of Nature in which we live is filled with the spirit akin to our own. Nature is alive with God. What that spirit awakens in the heart is a blessing. Some people consider a certain plant sacred; others bow to a stone; many worship the sun. It is always the desire to love and to feel union with God through this wonderful world that is satisfied in such reverences.
Come out into Nature—not the nature of maps and marked paths, not even the nature of America or of any particular country—but the Nature of God…and of yourself. That Nature is filled with whispers of ruling powers which inhabit trees and flowers, streams and mountains. They will feed your inspiration and speak to you in your own immortal language.
Frontiers of the Spirit
Swami Kamalananda