Religion has elaborated a series of worldly stunts and salesmanship campaigns which Jesus would have been the first to reject, because they arise out of a mental confusion about religion's true mission to humanity. Mysticism has deftly produced, on the one hand, pseudo-psychologies and half-mysticisms which are unhappy compounds of smart salesmanship and aspiring idealism and, on the other, an eccentric medley of queerly varied cults which link a little borrowed wisdom to the crankiest notions and the most astonishing claims ever born out of half-baked minds or distorted balance. When Fergus Hume, the Australian novelist, wrote in one of his stories, "Start anything, however silly, and you will find followers!" he may have been thinking of California where religion pullulates into dozens of different sects. I found twenty-seven churches of different denominations in one town of 7,000 population!
-- Notebooks Category 16: The Sensitives > Chapter 10 : The Is Is Not an Ism > # 42
