Content warning: I am going to use The G Word. No dogma attached, and I’m using it because it’s a starting place, a short hand for something essentially unknowable.
How does spirituality fossilise into religion?
The blight of spirituality, and what turns it into religion, is the stories we make up to explain or describe God.
It is the stories being analysed and hardened into doctrine which lead to the power imbalance between the priestly class or the guru and the followers. This power imbalance in turn leads to the manipulation, abuse, lust for power and eagerness to be subject to power which are the sicknesses of religion as an institution.
What is pure spirituality?
Perhaps the only pure spirituality is similar to what English Poet John Keats described as “negative capability”. He describes how in 1817 he was walking home with friends from a Christmas pantomime.
…several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously — I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason
Similarly Krishna recommends in Baghavad Gita, to act rightly but not be concerned about the outcome, which amounts to compassionate action but with detachment from self interest- forsaking the need to have certainty about the results of your actions.
On the level of understanding, the paralell could be to acknowledge and love the divine without presuming to understand it enough to make up a theoretical framework for it. Enough stories already; enough rules made up by people in the name of God!
What is the name of God anyway?
What would God say to himself as he came down to breakfast?
“Morning Yaweh.”
“Oh hi Jehova, how did you sleep?”
“Why are you calling me that? Are you talking to me? I dont see anyone else here so you must be talking to me.”
And the names multiply according to the multiplication of humans and groups of humans.
YHWH (יהוה) in Judaism. The Light to Quakers. Ra to Ancient Egyptians. Jah to Rastafarians. Maykapal to Filipinos. Parvardigar to Sufis. Bahá to the Baháʼí faith. Ahura Mazda to Zoroastrians.
We could go on, but we wont, because:
The Tao that we can name is not The Tao.
After all, no one has ever seen God. But the rumours persist.
