But the true self is the Divine Self; and the highest nature is the Nature of God.

If this is so, we serve God best and obey God best by trying to perfect our nature in response to a stimulus, a pressure, and a guidance which is at once natural and divine.
In other words, we serve God best by following the path of self-realisation.

And the better we serve God, the more truly and fully do we learn to know him.

If to know him, and to live up to our knowledge of him, is to be truly religious, then the life of self-realisation is, in the truest and deepest sense of the word, a _religious_ life.

Or rather it is the only religious life, for in no other way can knowledge of God be won.
Let me try to make good this statement.