The Universal God (ePub)

This is the first book of a trilogy titled: 'The Universal God'. It is subtitled: 'The Search for God in the Twenty-First Century'. It is written as a comparative religion book and focuses on the major modern religions: Hinduism, Confucianism/Taoism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Differing from many other comparative religion books that focus on the differences between these religions; this book seeks to find the commonalities and 'Truths' that these religions share with each other. The difficulty with attempting this search within the modern versions of these religions is that many of those core teachings and principles that they do share with each other have become hidden within the 'exclusiveness' that these religions now want to proclaim: They alone are the 'one true path' and they alone hold the keys to salvation. To find those commonalities within their shared 'Truths', the search cannot be directed to the present. Instead, these religions must be stripped clean and taken back to their original beginnings, their roots before they became organized religions. In their beginnings, there were only the 'founding sources', 'divine sparks' and 'revelation'. In those 'founding' moments; 'Truths' were revealed that equally apply to all human beings. Those founding 'Truths' are 'Universal' and belong to everyone. This book searches for those 'Truths' by exploring the lives and teachings of the Buddha, Jesus, Krishna, Mohammed, Confucius, Lao-tzu, Abraham, Moses and the many other prophets and teachers who provided the initial spiritual inspiration that brought these religions into existence. The book is formatted to discuss each of the religions within separate, self-contained chapters. It then concludes with a 'Commentary' section. This part of the book searches within these religions for those shared principles and teachings. This book can function both as a book for individual study or can be used as a textbook for comparative religion study.