Religion has many faces, from pantheistic to monotheistic, from dogmatic to free, from love to fear, from immanence to transcendence.  Yet, behind this diversity, lies hidden a unity that the modern Indian Sufi Hazrat Inayat Khan called ‘the Unity of religious Ideals'.
Inspired by the teachings of this Sufi master and his student Samuel L. Lewis, the present author made a study of the main spiritual traditions of the world with Sufi, Buddhist, Christian and Jewish teachers.
Writing assignments for the Dutch Hindu broadcasting company OHM and for the Liberal Dutch Christian Church and a variety of Dutch spiritual magazines, as well as trips to Islamic countries and family in India deepened the everyday aspects and practical applications of some of these traditions. A workshop practice of over twenty years bringing the author and his wife Ariënne to many countries in Europe, Russia, the US, Australia and New Zealand, teaching the legacy of Hazrat Inayat Khan and Murshid SAM, helped bringing practice and theory together, as did the author's personal spiritual Sufi path.   This volume brings together some background of these studies, mixed with experiential understanding of the prehistoric traditions honoring the Great Mother and Nature, with the historical religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Sufism. In chapters on the different faces of the One, the author shows how choices for love or for fear can lead eventually to mysticism or to the fundamentalism that in this age terrorizes a great part of the world. Written with the Universal Worship of Hazrat Inayat Khan and the Dances of Universal Peace of Murshid SAM in mind, this book aims to all readers, interested in an open and undogmatic view on the main traditions of the world.