Spirituality without religion?
Published by MadMan June 1st, 2004 in Atheism, Culture and Society“I’m not religious; I’m spiritual”
I’ve heard this a fair few times, and it’s always puzzled me. First of all, the whole “spirituality” concept is fuzzy in my mind, possibly because different people have different ideas about what it means to be spiritual. It doesn’t help that every other Tom, Dick, and Dickless fella has written some book on the subject. So let me put it out there to readers of AnarCapLib: What does being “spiritual” mean to you?
Secondly, I can’t figure out how you can be spiritual but not religious. If spirituality is somehow linked to the human “soul”, isn’t that a religious concept by itself? The very idea of a “soul” comes from religion, so how can you separate religion and spirituality?
(This is an open topic, intended to ask some questions that may be addressed in future entries. Yazad Uncle is busy with work, so his tome on Indian poverty will have to wait a while)
Bias declaration: Many of the Cartel members are atheists, but that shouldn’t affect the validity of the questions posed above.
Update: After scanning the comments, I’m still confused. What on earth is “spiritual realisation”? What is this “ultimate truth” people seek? Are you confused about your existence on this planet?
50 Responses to “Spirituality without religion?”
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A person calling himself religious suggests that he/she believes in a set of ideas and practices formulated by someone else.
A person calling himself spiritual suggests that he/she is a seeker of spiritual knowledge (about God, the human soul, purpose/meaning of life, and such). A spiritual person need not be tied down to a set of beliefs to accomplish or seek this knowledge.
A sanyasi, for example, is non-religious by definition as he/she has renounced all physical and religious attachments. That does not make them non-spiritual (or even an atheist), however. In fact, they renounce everything only because they want to start tabula rasa.
Note that atheism like theism is also a belief, though not necessarily dicated by someone else.
That’s bullshit. Atheism is per definition the absence of belief.
I know who said that! I know! And since then, that person has revised his views, and has fallen in line with the other members of the club!
Atheism is the BELIEF that God does not exist.
Check out the online dictionaries if you’re so interested. Do that, and THEN say that my previous statement was bovine excreta. Don’t just talk through your hat.
Please keep this on-topic instead of a spat over semantics.
Asli, can you be an atheist and still be spiritual? If so, please explain.
BTW, atheists only believe in the invisible pink unicorn.
Yes, one can be an atheist and still be spiritual.
Spirituality is about increasing one’s understanding of the universe. An atheist does not believe in God as defined as a creator/controller/destroyer. However, merely negating theism does not answer questions such as one’s role in the universe or one’s physical/mental limits. Although an atheist understands that the answers posed by religions are incorrect, an atheist would still be inquisitive to know the actual answers.
Such an atheist would either seek these answers through science (the “western” way) or through spirituality (the “eastern” way). In other words, by looking outwards or by looking inwards. The atheist who chooses to look inwards would be a spiritual atheist. Looking inwards can be done by experimenting with one’s body or with one’s mind. This is why a lot of Zen practitioners either seek spirituality from martial arts or from meditation. For most, the two (mind+body) are interconnected too.
lol@IPU
:-)
I think there is some (pardon the usage here, am a still a young guy, but…) merit in asli’s thoughts.
Thats how I began reading up on Vedic religion (which looks inward, and initially, didnt look at an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent god, but personified nature, and made them extra powerful human beings, operative word being humans.)
I am still searching, but I am not deluding myself with the statement I used to make. And which is this post’s title
Att: asli
No, then it’s name would be anti-theism. But it’s called atheism, meaning the absence of theism, belief in god.
If we consider the word “theism” we will discover it to mean “belief-in-god”. Since the preposition a-something means the absence of, we can now discover that atheism means “no-belief-in-god”.
Thus, atheism is simply the absence of belief, not the rejection of belief.
If a child was brought up by wolves, it would be an atheist, since THAT’S THE ORIGINAL POSITION. Theism is something that’s added after you’re born.
All children are born atheists. They’re not anti-theists, mind you, they just don’t have the faintest idea who this imaginary man in the clouds is and what all this bowing, praying and whining is good for.
Now that I have proven you wrong, allow me to point out that your post was bovine excreta.
MadMan, great post, I’ve been thinking along the same lines for a while- not that spiritual;ity and religiosity are disjuct or conjunct or even intersecting, but that the whole thing should be studied further.
I think that what most people call spirituality is:
‘Trying to search for a higher meaning without traditional rituals.’ Note traditional- a whole bunch of spiritualism is just new rituals.
Well, in practical usage, the word “atheist” has come to refer to a person who does not believe in “God”. I would speculate that Yazad was referring to this meaning since his other posts on this topic lead us to believe that. ;-)
Spooner wrote, “They’re not anti-theists, mind you, they just don’t have the faintest idea who this imaginary man in the clouds is and what all this bowing, praying and whining is good for.”
In Hinduism, there is no “imaginary man”, only the “ultimate truth” (brahman). The interpretation of that term are the basis of whole belief systems by themselves (e.g. dvaita, advaita). To some extent, this would be analogous to the debates between the sophists and the followers of Socrates in the Republic. The thing with Hinduism is that we have hundreds of different (even competing) philosophies that are oft mingled with myths, rituals and so on.
So when a person says that “he is a theist & a Hindu” and another says that “he is an atheist and a Hindu” - they could both be correct. ;-)
One more thing- being the Terry Pratchett cultist that I am, I’d like to point out _Small Gods_ as an excellent SFF book that addresses religion and the nature of gods. I’m not claiming it as the gospel (pun unintended but not resisted) truth, but it does raise some interesting points about the nature of religion and belief.
What I understood by ‘I am not religios but not spiritual’ is rather straight forward.
Religion or religiosity is usually associated with ritual and the accoutrements of keeping certain things and days holy. Spirituality is the distillate of the religion, after the impurity of ritual has been discarded.
So a person who says such a thing, would generally be a theist or an agnostic, and continue to be prime fodder for atheists’ ribbing.
Mere semantics, my good fellow, and quite open to multiple interpretations.
Although you have defined atheism quite logically (i must say), i take shelter in the dictionaries and in common usage. A claim of atheism is usually understood as a specific disbelief in God. I concede that this might be so because theism is much more common than atheism; hence the (incorrect) assumption is that atheism is disbelief in God. What you have defined is somewhat between soft atheism and agnostism.
Since i was right, both literally and colloquially (and only wrong semantically), your statement was still unnecessarily strong.
If you are a practitioner of Vipassana, the technique by which Buddha got enlightment, you are basically following a spiritual practice to know more about yourself. But this is not at all religious as there is no involvement of “God” or any divinity in this process.
Religion is one of the numerous paths to spiritual realisation….being religious IMHO means pursuing a particular path to know the ultimate/infinite/Brahman/truth…like i heard somewhere - ‘religion is stuck with rituals, while spirituality is about human values’…and theology advocates spherical thinking which simply means that there are several ways/paths to a destination…at the point where one gets spiritual enlightenment, religion would just be the ladder that he had used till then and that he no longer needs…
Madman, to put it simply, since time immemorial, people have been asking THE question, “Why are we here?” The “ultimate truth”, “spiritual realisation” etc are ways of attaining enlightenment. In other words, philosophers have attempted to answer that question through discourse and dialectic.
Of course, the answer is also 42.
My WordWeb Pro swears that the term “atheist” means “Someone who denies the existence of god”.
And spurred by the strange obstinacy on the part of L.Spooner to apply a good measure of bovid faeces on any distraction from his own definition of the term “atheist”, I thought why not soil my hand too on this time-tested antiseptic and odorless manure!
Yes, one can be spiritual but not religious. Such folks fall in the category of “agnostics”. Religion depends on blind faith and permits only a narrow bandwidth for debate, analysis and proof. But for Nachikethas (Katopanishad) who went on a questioning spree of the fundamentals of creation, birth and death (though it is doubtfull if he got a convincing answer), there has been very little enlightened quest for the absolute truth of “everything”.
J.Krishnamoorthy was one who encouraged everyone to join him in the eternal quest for truth. Such folks remained “spiritual” but not bounded by the peg marks of a religion where certain things have to be taken on good faith.
And the term “spiritual” implies the existence of some superhuman phenomenon which is yet to be unravelled by man. The spiritually inclined has an open mind, ready to accept proof as it is placed before him. He doesn’t raise a wall about his beliefs and prejudices.
The summum bonum is if you can’t be certain there is no God, you can’t be certain there isn’t one!
I have spoken!
Quizman, for the answer to that question, I beg thee to take a look at this. An entry I posted on 29th April. Much before this discussion began.
Ravages..I did..And your post seems to refer to a judeo-christian-islamic interpretation of the “ultimate truth”. I was referring more to the personal seeking done by eastern philosophers as well as the Greeks. As far as I know no Greek, Hindi, Jain, Buddhist, Sikh or Zorastrian killed anyone for converting the “sinners into believers”. In fact, just the opposite - from Socrates to the Sikh Gurus, most of them have laid their lives in their quest.
HIndi —>> Hindu..typo
While we’re on the subject of Ultimate Truths and Ultimate answers, the Ultimate Question according to the philosopher Heidegger (sp?) is ‘Why is there anything at all rather than nothing?’
Going by the definitions above (and my own opinion) a religious person would answer ‘God made it so’ to this question, while a spiritual person would reply “I dunno, but I’m trying to find out.’
And the spiritual person would probably also feel on an instinctive level that the answer to this question is not ‘Things just happen. What the heck.’
Quizman.
The point is, whatever religion you follow, be it inward looking, or outward or J-I-C, or Hinduism or Sanathana Dharma, it results in bloodshed and death. Just who dies is the difference.
Atheists didn’t go around killing, or dying for the cause. They were the victims.
Point is Religion, or even it’s abscence can cause deaths
abscence –> absence.
Oh Ravages, what about it’s –> its ?
ROFL.
yeah yeah!
get off my back already
I admit. I make mistakes. But that is my god given right to do so.
;o)
Ok! No more fooling around. No more spelling mistakes.
No more grammar errors, no more stupidity.
You all are gonna see a different Ravager(s).
Ravages,
Violence caused by an intrinsic intolerance to diverse views is not an exclusive province of religion. Heck, you could even be killed for cheering the wrong football team in some parts of the world, or for writing a newspaper report, or for a book, a scientific belief…
True. True. I’ve kinda lost steam on this. (have been arguing on this with friends for ages). When I pick up more momentum, I’ll ping you.
:o)
He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened. - Lao Tzu
Yes, one can be an atheist and still be spiritual.
Yes.
This enlightenment thing is a big myth. Enlightenment/spirituality isn’t something you achieve by doing tapas or reading spiritual books. Enlightenment is a state of mind, not some prize you get by sitting naked somewhere for years together. Enlightened is something you are, not something you achieve.
You know that very popular question “Who am I”? It’s a spiritual question. It’s the most important question and there is an answer to that.
J. Krishnamurti and M.K. Gandhi showed ways of being enlightened. One of the ways of being enlightened is by exploring our conditioning as J. Krishnamurti says.
One thing I would like to address is the bias that atheists have. You say that God doesn’t exist and Religion is a big bunch of bullshit. So, how then can Religion kill people? If Religion was invented by humans, wouldn’t it be humans that are doing the killing rather than the Religion?
BTW, I am an atheist.
Atheism is a great way to start on the path to truth. As long as your quest is for truth it does not matter where you start. The only condition is to have an open mind and search for the truth. In fact atheists are more rational and inquisitive and better suited. On the other hand, if atheism is just an excuse to not look for real knowledge, and just induldge in hedonism, then it is a completely different issue.
Now, I assume as an aetheist you are a scientific and rational person who believes in experimentation. Now, here is an experiment you can perform. Just sit down silently and try to focus your attention on your breath. You will find it nearly impossible to do it, because you mind will throw in a monkey wrench and you will suddenly start thinking about your work, itch on you leg etc.
You see our mind is always jumping from one thing to another, and never sits idle. It is a huge associative machine that never rests. So, would you like to discover what happens when you are able to calm down this jumping monkey, control it, and see what is it you experience? If you are of scientic bent, and always looking to experiment, question and experience, then try this experiment out. That is all that is needed to search for the ultimate truth. The goal is simply to see what is in our mind beneath the jumping monkey, everything else about meditative techniques is just detail.
Now where is any kind of belief involved here? Willingness to experiment, yes, but belief no way.
Some years back I came across a show on a local channel in Bombay, in which, the Islamic scholar Dr. Zakir Naik was making a speech. A member of the audience said that he was an atheist and wondered what Islam had to say about it. Dr. Naik said, “Oh good, you’re half way there. You’ve reached the “la ilaha” part. Now I only have to convince you about the “illallah” that follows.” :-)
I’m not a Muslim, but even I was impressed by the retort. :-)
ATT: Venkatesh
It is humans who kill and not religion. They CLAIM to kill in the name of religion, caste or colour. Remove these factors from society and humans will find other reasons to kill. Even before the existence of religion we were killing…over territory or mates. There seems to be this pervasive argument “but look around you, it IS religion that is the reason for half the conflicts around the world”. No it has more to do with the basics- territory, territory(I could list this reason a multiple times), possession and the insecurities that plague human nature. I wouldn’t be surprised if after the eradication of religion from society there is no reduction in the number of deaths.
ATT: Asli and Quizman
Spirituality has some connection with GOD. Why else would you be seeking answers to your questions of “Who am I?” , “where did I come from?” from the SOUL? If you were an atheist you wouldn’t be seeking your answers “inwardly” because an atheist does not believe in the existence of the Soul or GOD. Instead the theory of evolution would suffice and if Darwin doesn’t impress then you would seek parallel theories, but you would definitely NOT examine what Buddha or other philosphers/saints have to say. Atheists do not seek spiritual explanations; I would think we seek explanations defined within the parameters of Science. And if there is no explanation we would resort to the conclusion that there is insufficient scientific data to establish a valid explanation… so a spiritual atheist is really a paradox (maybe a spiritual agnostic is possible since they are on the fence of belief).
Mother T… smart about certain things (like this) but kinda nutty about things. Interesting.
att: Zeus
“..but kinda nutty about things” …curious but what exactly do you mean?
Quizman,
The big difference is that in this path books/scriptures etc are useless. So, there is no blind faith. You do not have to convince yourself of anything, only a willingness to experiment is needed.
Even Krishna said that — books are only to spur you to search for the truth, once you start on the search, throw away the books as they are useless.
This is no different from for e.g. experimenting with dropping ball with different weights to see if they take the same time to reach the ground. You do not have to believe in anything just experiment to see whether the answer they take same time or not.
So, simply experiment, even if you think of it as only an experiemt to discover your own mind and how it works. After all the only thing it calls for is watching how your mind works and experimenting with it.
ATT:
All these misconceptions seem to come from assuming something about religion. The world religion and God are Abrahmic concepts and have really no direct meaning/translation in Indian philosophy.
Let me put it you this way —
there are two forms of knowledge — a) experiential and b) underlying reality.
That the sun rises from east is experiential knowledge, and does not change with the underlying reality of earth going around the sun and not vice a versa. When you find out the underlying reality, it will simply change the way you look at world, and interpret the experience, not the stimulus of the experience.
Goal of Indian philosophy is similar. The goal is to show you the underlying reality and change the interpretation of the experience. Now, let us map this to Indian philosophy.
That you mind is a huge associative machine and is always thinking/working never being still is an experiantial knowledge which you can easily observe. Let us think of it as an ocean of thoughts with a lot of waves at the same time, with the consious thought being the most dominant. But the end result is that just like a noisy room, you are unable to see/hear beyond the most dominant thoughts.
Now, the Indian way is simply trying to answer and show you the underlying reality below the waves. The method is very obvious and simply wants you calm the biggest wave/noise source first, then the next biggest and so on until only the underlying reality remains. Only a will to experiment with your own inner mind is required. This will change the way you interpret the stimulus from the world around you, not the world.
P.S.
As a side effect it will also give you control of what you think, when, resulting in more freedom. Would you want a TV without remote which shows you random channels? Well that is what your mind is — it does what it feels like. As a side effect of this you will get the remote.
Atheists didn’t go around killing, or dying for the cause. They were the victims.
Even though I am an atheist, I would not like imaginary self-aggrandising epithets of “peaceful” attached to my kind of people.
I do not get why people love to paint themselves as victims.
Ravages, We are atheists. Full stop. We live in a country where atheists are not persecuted, neither are we looked down upon. An atheist was this country’s first Prime Minister. The most populated state in india has been ruled by a woman who has trashed the ideas of god and religion. We do not live in Iran or Pakistan where expressing your atheism on a public platform would lead to some pretty uncomfortable experiences. So get over it.
And by the way, for almost 75 years, atheist Soviets suppressed religion. so it’s not like atheists are peaceniks.
Anyway, violence is a human trait. Has nothing to do with religion. Read lord of the Flies?
Usually “spirituality” is the name given to the ideas of people who want to disocciate themselves from the negative points of “religion”.
You can shrug off most of the evils in your religion by either blaming the “interpretations” or then saying “I am just interested in the spiritual side of things”.
By the way, Buddhism and Jainism are religions that dont believe in god. So belief in God is not a prerequisite for having a religion.
Asli
Was Moses narrated the dictionaries on top of Mount Sinai? What makes them above doubt?
Kautilya, that made a lot of sense!
ATT: Venkatesh
It is humans who kill and not religion. They CLAIM to kill in the name of religion, caste or colour. Remove these factors from society and humans will find other reasons to kill. Even before the existence of religion we were killing…over territory or mates. There seems to be this pervasive argument “but look around you, it IS religion that is the reason for half the conflicts around the world”. No it has more to do with the basics- territory, territory(I could list this reason a multiple times), possession and the insecurities that plague human nature.
Exactly what I have been saying.
I wouldn’t be surprised if after the eradication of religion from society there is no reduction in the number of deaths.
I know for a fact that whatever ideology or invention comes about trying to eradicate or cleanse the impulse of force, voilence will exist till the end of time.
Spirituality has some connection with GOD. Why else would you be seeking answers to your questions of “Who am I?” , “where did I come from?” from the SOUL? If you were an atheist you wouldn’t be seeking your answers “inwardly” because an atheist does not believe in the existence of the Soul or GOD. Instead the theory of evolution would suffice and if Darwin doesn’t impress then you would seek parallel theories, but you would definitely NOT examine what Buddha or other philosphers/saints have to say. Atheists do not seek spiritual explanations; I would think we seek explanations defined within the parameters of Science. And if there is no explanation we would resort to the conclusion that there is insufficient scientific data to establish a valid explanation… so a spiritual atheist is really a paradox (maybe a spiritual agnostic is possible since they are on the fence of belief).
Why wouldn’t atheists be interested in knowing about themselves? Because it’s “unscientific”? Or is it more appropriately fear of looking in the mirror and seeing ourselves as the thing that we fear? There is only one way of knowing about ourselves and it doesn’t involve any of the religious rituals or whatever. The process was called “systematic experimentation” (basically what is known as Science today) many centuries back or more popularly called sado-machoism (S&M) today.
One of the pros of S&M is that it involves a lot of hot leather sex with goth chicks. ;)
Surely the original Lysander Spooner was no atheist?
Interesting discussion.
But isn’t it a tad unnecessary in a country where there are two religions that don’t believe in God - jainism and buddhism?
Belief in a spirit is what drives spirituality, not belief in a god. This spirit can be anything that suites the temperament of the person.
Many people ascribe wondrous and magical aspects to the spirit, which is good because it keeps “wonder” alive. And as anyone who read Carl Sagan can tell you, wonder and reason are the two faces of the coin of science. Without wonder, all knowledge would perish in a matter of time.
Every student of science can tell you one thing - We have not reached the limit of knowledge. We have not reached the ultimate in technology. (which incidentally has been called ontotechnology - the amalgam of onto and technology. The ability to define what is real itself) We always exist in a sea of ignorance.
The question is how do we cope with this ignorance?
The majority ignore it in the humdrum of their lives. There are those who see beyond and establish a religion. This gives a safe haven to the many who don’t want to analyse beyond a certain extent. They are happy that a god is taking care of them.
Those who are unsatisfied with this explanation, go ahead and read more, analyze further and experience more. These are the spiritual, non-religious. To state it in scientific terms, spirituality is like the laboratory practicals for philosophy.
hi I have just had a rude awakening, I am being forced into religion by devil worshippers. these people give me threatening messages through other people’s mouths, they follow me whereever I go. I thought we live in a country where we had the freedom to choose our worship or to be free and seperate from religion. how do I get these people to leave me alone. please help.
anne