Jack Preston King
Aug 31, 2018 · 2 min read

the principles are universal and they are at the core of all religions.

I don’t disagree with this. I am only pointing out that if they are at the core of all religions, then they are part and parcel of those religions. They are religious principles. Can people be religious with no loyalty to the outer dogmas of any specific religion? Sure. That pretty much describes the New Age Movement. My sense is that a lot of people want to call religious ideas and practices by a secular name because we live in a time when religion as a category is much despised, and to a very large degree institutionalized religions have earned that ire. So it’s understandable. But a few hundred years ago, before the Enlightenment and the emergence of modern science, I doubt anybody anywhere would even have been able to think about spiritual matters outside the context of religion. Even mystics like the desert fathers, Sufi dervishes, Buddhist monks, Taoist sages, Kabbalistic Jews, practiced the mystical side of their religion, not a thing separate from their religion. The first person I’m aware of to espouse the Perennial Philosophy that there is some “core spirituality” that can be separated from religion was Aldous Huxely in 1945. The Theosophical Society was on the same track in the late 1800s, but they openly labeled their practices Hindu, Buddhist, etc. In the history of Humanity, religion, and spiritual practices, even the 1800s is super-recent. Most of the time we’ve been on the planet, religion and spirituality have been direct synonyms. In our time, people are working to change that, I know. I’m just questioning if such a thing is A) possible, and B) proper.

Thanks!

    Jack Preston King

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