The pure religion and the Divine path we preach here are preached by many others. It is ancient wisdom, and many discovered and rediscovered the same truth throughout history, even in modern times. All spiritual men, philosophers, and sincere seekers in all countries and at all times arrived at the same conclusion that this is the path, and the same religion has been proclaimed in different ways and languages.
The modernity and Renaissance movement in Europe, in contrast to popular ideas today, was not a secular and materialistic agenda. Quite the opposite, it was indeed a sincere search for truth and for the true God. The famous philosophers and scientists of that time were indeed spiritual men who rose against the church's unreasonable dogmas and realized simpler and more pure religions in agreement with human intuition. An example of such religions was known as Deism. It is similar to the pure religion in fundamentals and is an instance and sister of it.
Other spiritual movements such as Transcendentalism also present instances of our pure religion throughout the modern history of the West. Jefferson of America created the "Jefferson Bible" by cutting all the impure verses (verses that are not about God or good works) and thus produced a bible of, in his own words, "pure and unsophisticated doctrine," which indeed is a bible for our pure religion.
In the Eastern world, Gandhi of India in the early twentieth century rejected the other-worldliness and other impure elements in Hinduism and talked about a religion whose way was service to others and whose God was Truth (Satya). Before him in medieval India, Akbar Shah talked about "Din Ellahi" (religion of God), a perennial religion underlying all religions. Several other Indian saints also came to the same conclusion at different times and preached a religion based on service to others rather than sitting in cloisters and meditation all the time.
And many new religious movements in recent centuries and years in North America, Japan, and other parts of the world advocated an ideology similar to the pure religion. And before that time, ancient Greeks and classical Romans and others talked about the same truth: they all talked about God as the goal, virtue and good works as the path, and rituals and dogmas as anti-path.
How is it that all these learned and noble men lived in different countries and different ages but proclaimed the same truth and same path? Like volcanoes that are in different locations and times but all erupt the same materials, so all these great men erupted the same Truth, which is timeless and placeless. And should they all rise from the grave today and come together, they will look very different but all will be brothers and find no difference in their path. They all will sit at the fellowship table of the Divine union, as a manifestation of this verse in the Bible: "People come from east and west and sit in the kingdom of God" (Matthew 8:11).
And the next verse in the Bible says: "But the children of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness" (Matthew 8:12). Here, the "children of the kingdom" refers, as it were, to the current religions who insist on absolute authority and lineage from previous prophets. Despite these claims, they are the most misguided religions; they added rituals and many other impure elements to their religions and mixed them with strange beliefs and fables.
But even in these corrupted religions there exist many teachings pointing and pushing towards the concepts of the pure religion, to the point that one may feel that perchance they used to be a form of the pure religion at their time, but later altered and distorted in different directions.
For example, Christianity is a corrupted religion (and in fact the most corrupted one), and yet the Bible itself talks about pure religion explicitly: "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world" (James 1:27). Here, religion in its pure form is defined as service to others and having virtues, which is in conformity with the pure religion we preach in this book.
And again in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus proclaims nothing but virtue and sincerity towards God, and his great commandments of "love God and love your neighbor as yourself" (Matthew 22:37-40) are also a testimony to this. The narrations of the Gospels, through an unbiased eye, almost assure that Jesus was preaching the pure religion against the dogmatism and ritualism of Jewish Pharisees.
In the world of Hinduism, the holy book of Bhagavad Gita teaches a simple devotion to God and rejects rituals and other Hindu dogmas. Other religions also contain the same allusions to the pure religion, clear and explicit.
Nevertheless, these references to the pure religion principles are surrounded by many impure elements in these religions, to the extent that they are almost forgotten, and only impure elements such as rituals and dogmas have become the focus of the church and its followers.
And this should not come as a surprise since Evil does not remain idle. Religion is its greatest enemy, and so it corrupts and dilutes religions to counter them. Path and anti-path go hand in hand. Evil deflects some with lust, anger, addiction, and other mundane means, but not all follow this path. In some people the Divine nature is dominant. They are not taken away by evil impulses and harmful acts. Instead, they are looking for the truth and eventually pick a religion. To deflect and nullify this group of people, Evil attempts to corrupt their religions. Once a religion is corrupted and misguided, all who follow it will be misguided as well, and they become so without realizing it.
As a result, Evil injected many misleading ideas into religions throughout history to corrupt them. The common forms of such misleading ideas are exegesis, interpretations, legalism, ritualism, philosophizing, intercession, mediumship, idolizing masters, exaggerating the power of Evil, and fear-mongering. All these different forms lead to one result in the end: to discourage the followers from taking effort to do good works, and to engage them in useless activities like rituals, serving a master, or endless waiting for a savior. All are a waste of time and "all is vanity and vexation of spirit" in the words of the Bible (Ecclesiastes 1:14).
Such corruption happens for every religion. Even if it starts as a pure religion in its purest form, and creates great men and women, and builds a land of milk and honey, as time passes by it gathers more and more impure elements to itself due to Evil's activities, until it becomes like unto one of the current religions which are full of complexities, full of superstitions, and divided into many branches. Such corruption happens in the course of time and continues until a great Divine man comes and destroys all these religions and establishes a new Divine order and a new form of the pure religion. And that pure religion creates great men and women again, and continues, till it becomes corrupted again and the same cycle repeats forever, thus, conforming to the yin-yang and light-darkness doctrine. This is what's called the cycle of religion clone-and-corruption.
A follower of the pure religion should know about this cycle, and not be deceived by illogical claims of current religion's followers that they are not corrupted and represent the pristine teachings. It is the pure religion followers' duty to uphold and renew the pure religion and Divine path if need be. They should create a new sect if existing ones are corrupted, and should revolt against everything that is not pure religion and not based on goodness and morality. And this fight will go on and on, as long as the Earth revolves and the sun rises and sets.