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Runan wrote: ↑November 1st, 2023, 3:53 am
Can you draw a line between spirituality and religion? Personally, I feel both are interconnected in some ways. Can one remain spiritual without being religious? If there is a partition, please explain.
Hi,
Runan,
Thank you for your question!
Human languages including English are informal languages, not formal languages like math or some computer programming languages. Words are equivocal and inherently symbolic. Asking what a word means is like asking what a piece of art means, such as a painting or sculpture. Only the artist/speaker knows for sure because what it means is what they mean by it. To ask what it means is to ask what the intentions are of the one who spoke/wrote/drew/painted it, and since we aren't mind-readers we can never be 100% certain about that. Two people can say the exact same sentence, word-for-word, and mean two totally different things, and neither person is wrong or is using a word incorrectly or such.
That is one reason that when I write, you will often notice I repeat what I mean in multiple different wordings. I often use phrases like
"in other words",
"a.k.a.", and
"i.e.". This is analogous to the following: Me painting three very different paintings all to
'mean' the same exact one thing, and then me showing you all three paintings and me telling you that all three paintings mean the same one thing. It will help avoid misunderstandings because, to misunderstand, you would not only need to misunderstand all three paintings, but you would also need to misunderstand all three in the same exact way. Otherwise, if you interpreted one of the paintings as having a different meaning than one or both of the other two paintings, you would know you were misinterpreting.
It avoids misunderstanding in the same way counting the same stack of money 2 or 3 times avoids miscounting. You'd have to miscount the stack the same exact way every time in order to not realize a miscount had occurred.
So it's very common for you to see a piece of writing by me that looks like this:
"X. In other words, Y. In other words, Z."
I say all that just to say this: I can tell you what I mean by the word
'spirituality' when I use it and what I mean by the word
'religion' when I use it, and thus what the difference/partition between the two words is as I use them. But, keep in mind, this will only apply to me and my writing, to help you interpret what I say. Meaning is non-verbal and precedes words. Meaning existed long before words ever did.
I use the word
'spirit' as a synonym for
'consciousness'. As I use the two words, they mean the exact same thing. In other words, if we imagine two humans, one being a
philosophical zombie and one being a non-zombie, then the defining difference between the two—and the only defining difference between the two—is that the
philosophical zombie doesn't have a spirit. In
my book, I also use the phrase,
"the real you", to refer to that same exact one thing. If I were talking to a real-life
philosophical zombie, I wouldn't use the term
"the real you" with that zombie. Unlike you, they don't have what my book calls the
"Two Yous". They only have one, and that's the unreal one, so to speak.
Thus, roughly speaking, I would define
'spirituality' as the study, exploration, and/or science of the spirit. In other words, it's the study, exploration, and/or science of the real self. In that way, it's heavily related to what philosophers call,
"The Hard Problem of Consciousness". Likewise, it's heavily related to concepts such as
"finding yourself",
"finding your true self",
"self-actualization [of the true self]",
"self-transcendence [of the false self, a.k.a. the ego]",
"ego death", and
"transcendental experiences". It entails studying, exploring, understanding, being in touch with, and having knowledge of things like self-discipline (a.k.a. spiritual freedom, or free-spiritedness), self-responsibility, and inner peace (a.k.a. true happiness, or even what some might call nirvana, enlightenment, or grace).
In contrast, I see religion as being
organized shared mythology, especially in which some of the members of that organized group actually believe some or all of the mythology to be
literally true.
Keep in mind, I don't use the word
'mythology' in any derogatory sense. In fact, I love things like the Greek myths and the story of Adam and Eve from the Abrahamic religions (i.e. Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, which I see as more like one religion than three, or more like 1,000 religions than three, but certainly not three). I think there is a lot to be learned from such things, and many truths are told through those symbols, metaphors, stories, and proverbs. Indeed, my book,
In It Together, makes many explicit references to mythical figures like Sisyphus, Icarus, and the Sirens—three of my favorite myths.
I use the word
'mythology' in the celebratory sense that Joseph Campbell used it.
"Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth--penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words. Beyond images, beyond that bounding rim of the Buddhist Wheel of Becoming. Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told."
- Joseph Campbell,
The Power of Myth
"Shakespeare said that art is a mirror held up to nature. And that’s what it is. The nature is your nature, and all of these wonderful poetic images of mythology are referring to something in you. When your mind is trapped by the image out there so that you never make the reference to yourself, you have misread the image.
The inner world is the world of your requirements and your energies and your structure and your possibilities that meets the outer world. And the outer world is the field of your incarnation. That’s where you are. You’ve got to keep both going. As Novalis said, 'The seat of the soul is there where the inner and outer worlds meet."
- Joseph Campbell,
The Power of Myth
One easy way to understand much of the difference between spirituality and religion is this: If you were the only human being on Earth, you could engage in spirituality, but you couldn't engage in religion. Religion is a group activity, and it generally involves much more than mere spirituality. It generally involves empirical beliefs that are not backed by sufficient empirical evidence, but often with many, most, or even all 'believers' (i.e. members of the religion) seeing those would-be absurd empirical claims as simply symbolic metaphors.
For example, there are a lot of devoutly practicing Jews and Christians who don't
literally believe that there once was a literal talking snake 6,000 years ago or such. So it's not
literal belief in such counter-evidence claims (i.e. claims that don't match the evidence available) that separates spirituality from religion or non-religion from religion in general. It's enough that the myths exist as metaphorical symbols.
In any case, here is another thing to remember about the two things: One could be the most religious person in the world while also being the least spiritual person in the entire world. And, likewise, one can be extremely spiritual without being religious at all.
In fact, anyone with a spirit (i.e. anyone who isn't a philosophical zombie) would have to be somewhat spiritual. In other words, presumably, every single living human being has to be somewhat spiritual. Even the most non-religious person in the entire world must still be somewhat spiritual. That's because it's impossible to go through life having a true self without having any sense or knowledge or familiarity with that self at all. Even if someone is much less introspective and such than most other humans, they cannot avoid it entirely. To even just quickly glance in a mirror by mistake is, in some small but meaningful sense, to thereby instantly be engaging in some spirituality.
Another word for
'spirituality' is just
'self-familiarity' or
'self-exploration', in terms of the true self, meaning what
my book calls
"the real you" or
"your spirit". Anyone with a true self can do it, and really, anyone with a true self cannot avoid doing it at least a little bit.
What an awesome and thought-provoking question! Thank you so much, Runan!
With love,
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
a.k.a. Scott
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In addition to having authored his book, In It Together, Eckhart Aurelius Hughes (a.k.a. Scott) runs a mentoring program, with a free option, that guarantees success. Success is guaranteed for anyone who follows the program.
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