If it is the business of religion to guide faith and not to supply knowledge, to promote moral feeling and not to stimulate rational intelligence, it would be well if those who are officially in charge of religious institutions were occasionally to remind themselves and their flocks not to become so immersed in its forms and customs as to forget the ultimate aim of the institution. Ceremonies which become more and more mechanical as they become more and more familiar, also arouse less and less inner response, stimulate less and less true reverence, and are apt to turn religious services into empty shows. To take a human ecclesiasticism for a divine religion or a showy ritualism for divine worship is a sign of intellectual childhood. It is perfectly proper in its own time. But systems and customs must grow up, like the child itself. Formalized religion is too often dead religion. "In the opinion that my body is completely extinct they pay worship in many ways to the relics, but me they see not. . . . Repeatedly am I born in the world of the living," observes Buddha in Saddharma Pundarika. There is no nutriment here for matured human minds or true human lives. This is why we neither support any external organization nor encourage the following of any personal teacher. This is why we practise, and counsel others to practise, a balanced individualism.
-- Notebooks Category 17: The Religious Urge > Chapter 2 : Organization, Content of Religion > # 101
