The Perfect Religion

God wound the perfect religion into orbit,
Humans then made pirate copies of it,
Even calling it, The Perfect Religion;
Hundreds of copies of the One
Have been made, each claiming
Theirs is the true religion, implying
Others are all homologated!
They may differ in details and deities,
But all essentially saying the same things;
Unbeknownst to one another,
Each and everyone staying within
The shell - coconut shell -
Of their faiths and not bothering,
Or allowed to step out and find out
What's cooking under the other
Shells dotted about on the barren
moonscape of faiths as surrogates
For certainty of knowledge;
Each jealously guarding their individual
Bubble of belief and if you
So much as peek out from under
Your own shell to ask or comment
On the smell coming from the pot
Of another shell, you'll be warned
In no uncertain terms not to interfere
In other people's shell matters!

Over the centuries the copied religions
accrue added beliefs, stories, history, myths
And legends to thicken the plot and
Add bricks to the wall of beliefs,
To become what a religion essentially is today -
A currency made valid by force of advocacy -
Like a coma patient dependent on apparatus:
Remove the props and he will be a different status;
The throne might as well be replaced by a chair
If everyone can be made to declare
The chair is the new symbol, like those
Emperor's new clothes,
Are a pretense to hide hypocrisy,
Or Solomon's dinner to euphemize cow patsy;
Just by giving it a set of vests
To engage humans in their fetish hex;
Just by giving it a set of liturgy,
In a language in which the clergy
Holds an advantage over the laity;
To catch humans at their most impressionable:
The more you understand, the more refutable,
The less you understand, the more inflexible;
Just by giving it a set of rituals
To catch humans in an ineffective gear -
Psychosomatic repetitive behavior.

In any plan grandeur to start
And sustain a conspiracy of beliefs,
A captive crowd is a basic ingredient
Providing the critical mass and lever
From initial resistance to deliver -
One converts, the bandwagon effect takes over,
This was what happened to Parameswara
In the Melakan clover.

Soon, the boundary between brick and belief blurs,
The brick is now the target of the kisser
And the wall the direction of prayer
To be pawed and wept over,
Each ritual act an entreaty for an
Easier entry into the ethereal pantry,
Rather like a student squirming in
An examination hall beseeching his
Subject teacher, the invigilator,
"Sir, tolong Sir!" for a tip or,
Better still, an outright answer!

Over time, if not right at the start,
The perfect religion is forgotten;
In pursuit of the copied religion,
The vestments, the liturgy, the rituals,
The historical experience,
Become an ignored-at-your-own-peril
Imperative all their own, God
Now an accessory after the act,
A footnote to the form and show of religion;
The means making a meal of the end,
The journey obscuring the destination,
The mercedes shoehorned into a collection,
Pasting piety in the skull cappy,
Making a religion out of religiosity.

And what, you may well ask, is the true perfect religion?
The answer, my fellow salikins, pilgrims and, yes,
Naysayers also, is blindingly simple -
An answer which the blind have seen
All along without even making
A song and dance of it,
As in the Blind Watchmaker
As in the footfalls of Al-Maari
Simply because they don't see
The visible copies;
An answer which the sighted
Cannot see because they
Are so hooked on the visible externals.

But before I tell you the answer, here is another story ... blah, blah,
Here is a bottle of my lintah oil ... blah, blah,
And here, and here ...
Alright, the answer:

Radiate the inner light beatific,
Patiently wait the final fix.