I can imagine quite a few people being confused by my quite open and unambiguous endorsement of Christianity against Islam, especially since I, myself, am not Christian. They would find it even more confusing if they knew that I am quite aware that Christians would and did openly oppose me. Actually, I personally had quite a few evil things done against me by Christians, and not much by Muslims, so, if I approached things from a self-serving perspective based on personal experience, I would probably be better off adopting a position of neutrality. However, I don’t.

To explain why, to someone who is not familiar with me or my thoughts, is not easy, but bear with me for a while, because you might find it interesting.

It would be easy for me to say that I see religions as ways, and God as the goal, and that some ways lead to that goal while others do not, and that some ways are outright wrong and point in ways that are opposite of helpful. That is partially true, but it’s not how I personally see things. You see, I don’t see religions as ways and God as the goal. I see God as the way, and religions mostly as a mistaken approach.

I know, it sounds like a very Christian thing to say, almost like John 14:6, but it’s actually a translation of the word darśanayoga, which I use to describe my spiritual practice. From the vision of God, you learn what God is, and you learn by becoming that which you observe. It’s like saying that love is not the goal, love is the way, or saying that photography is not the goal, it’s the way. You can only learn to become a carpenter by practicing carpentry, poorly at first, but gradually improving as you go along. You learn a thing by doing it. You learn love by loving, you learn forgiveness by forgiving, you learn God by being in God’s presence, and doing only the things that don’t remove you from God’s presence. You learn God by doing what God would do if he were in your shoes. God is clarity, so in its presence you learn to see the truth unobscured by bullshit. God is reality, so you learn to strip yourself of all illusion. God is an endless source of fulfillment, and, by just seeing that, you are cured of spiritual emptiness that motivates most evil deeds. This spiritual path has one consequence: you become quite perceptive of all things that are inconsistent with God. Knowing what would extinguish the presence of God in your spirit becomes an instinct, and after initial few months of diligent effort you don’t even have to work on it, it becomes automatic. It’s similar to being in love with a person of noble character: you instinctively know what you have to be and what you have to do in order for that person to love you; conversely, you instinctively know what would make that person despise you or hate you, and you instinctively shy away from those things.

If you see religions as paths, and God as the goal, it is very difficult to state with any degree of certainty that some religion is false, because the criterion of truth or falsehood is beyond the scope of any given religion, as they are defined. If a path is distinct from the goal, and their potential usefulness is to be known only after you die, it’s impossible to know if, in fact, any of them are of any use whatsoever. And here we come to the point: some religions are actually spiritually useful now, and not only in afterlife. Christianity, for instance, has a very interesting ability to produce spiritual experience in its actual adherents. I say “actual” because we’re not talking about those who think they are Christians because they decorate a Christmas tree or practice the formal shell of their religion without any actual feeling; I’m talking about the extreme cases of spiritual conversion, repentance, actual contact with God. I’m talking about actual experiences of God, that are profoundly real, profoundly substantial, and touch the core of one’s being. Apparently, Christianity has the “mandate of heaven”, since the spiritual experiences given to the non-Christians quite frequently contain Christian imagery and motivate those people to accept Christianity. I have seen exactly zero situations where someone received an authentic spiritual revelation that Allah is the true God and Mohammed is his prophet. Zero. I’ve seen emotions, I’ve seen hysteria, I’ve seen sectarian bullshit, that’s true, but as far as authentic spirituality is concerned, Christianity has the mandate of heaven, and Islam does not. Basically, if you’re a Muslim and you want to attain true spirituality, becoming a Christian is a much better path forward than trying to become a better Muslim or trying to join some Sufi school of mysticism.

The next question I’m facing is, why recommend Christianity, why not recommend the stuff you are doing? Well, I actually do recommend the stuff I’m doing, but there are significant difficulties there. You see, the stuff I’m doing is quite difficult to figure out or practice. It does have the mandate of heaven, in the sense that people do have spiritual experiences that reveal it, but it’s more of a post-doctoral study kind of a thing. I have no illusions about it being widely adopted; it’s too intellectual, too sophisticated, too spiritually demanding. However, it’s insanely easy to start on this path, if you’re a Christian who had a spiritual experience. All I would have to say to such a person is: absorb this experience, and remove everything in you that would be incompatible with God’s holy presence. Stop doing things that would offend this holy presence, stop saying, thinking and feeling things that do not emanate from this holy presence, and live your entire life in this holy presence. Everything else will come as the consequence of that one, permanent choice. So that’s why I recommend Christianity – because the main difference between a Christian who had a genuine, authentic vision of God, and myself, is 22 years of diligent, consistent practice. Everything else – the techniques of yoga, the complex philosophy, the intellectual power, I didn’t start with any of that, it’s all just manifestation of that one choice, diligently and consistently practiced. Don’t do anything God wouldn’t do, don’t be anything God wouldn’t be, don’t do things that would separate you from God’s holy presence. Yes, it sounds easy, but try to do it for one single day and you’ll tell a different tale. I’m not endorsing Christianity because of my great and previously unknown love for Christmas trees or Easter bunnies, that’s for sure. I’m endorsing it because if your starting point is Zagreb and you want to reach Split, a signpost that leads you to Karlovac is what you really need. When in Karlovac, you’ll be closer to your goal and see other signposts that are more specific as to where you need to go, and you’ll have a choice of either the highway or the country road. So you basically have choices and variety. However, a signpost that says “Split” and points to a slaughterhouse where you’ll be split into pieces, that’s what you presumably want to avoid. So basically, if you see the purpose of religion in finding God, stick to those that actually have the mandate of heaven. Stick to those whose converts had the actual experience of God, and, very much contrary to what the atheists believe, those are quite abundant.