If religion is to save what is best in itself, it must not only set its house in order but must admit the mystical practices into its system of instruction. It must become less exteriorized and more interiorized, more mystical. Stone-built sanctuaries are many in every town and village of the land. But those that truly light the mind are few. Yet there is one with doors wide open to all, great enough to include every city in the country yet narrow enough to exclude the dull materialist, the ruthlessly cruel, and the poisonously selfish. This is the sanctuary of the inner Self. From this mystical standpoint the institutional side of every religion is its least important side. To understand a religion in this way we must first become heretics; we must cast off conventional views which blind the mind's eyes. We need no longer worry ourselves over the hotly debated question of whether or not Christ was born of a virgin mother, for instance, but we do need to give our time and thought to finding that which Christ represents within ourselves. Christ can live again within our hearts, as he himself taught, which means we must look for him inside ourselves much more than inside a Church building.
-- Notebooks Category 17: The Religious Urge > Chapter 3 : Religion As Preparatory > # 123
