Recently
I saw an internet posting that compared perceived tenets of religion with those of spirituality. According to the table
provided, religion views and treats people as weak, fallen and sinful, whereas in
terms of spirituality they are seen as magical, unlimited and powerful. The
arguments presented are certainly reasonable and persuasive, and I would agree
with most of them. However, the author of this posting missed out one important
factor, that of the stages of human development.
In
one of my earlier books Multi-Dimensional
Thinking (2003), I compared human moral and spiritual development to the
process of growth as seen in some insects, beginning with a larval stage, during which they eat voraciously and are
quite destructive, and ending with a later stage when the insect matures within
a chrysalis and a more perfect form emerges.
This
analogy suggests that, during the early stages of our own social development, we
can be quite egocentric and self-destructive, as well as being inclined to hurt
others, only
interested in selfishly meeting our own basic needs. In other words, a period
of inner growth is required for a human being to learn to master the
fundamental basic urges which relate to bodily processes, to move through the
entanglements of the mind and emerge as a more spiritual being. This process
can take many decades and alas, in some cases, is never completed.
To return to the issue of the validity of religion, I
would suggest that, during the phase of early moral and spiritual development, we
all require some external locus of
control, a framework which imposes ideas, values and behaviour on those of
us who have not come to a full understanding of the nature of reality and our true,
authentic selves. This could be said to be the purpose of religion, to provide a
prescriptive framework of beliefs and rules meant to introduce us to the most
basic principles of spirituality. It is therefore, true that religion points
out our inherent weaknesses (which do exist at this early stage), and demands conformity
to the authority of a religious organisation.
However, that is only the beginning of human moral and
spiritual development. As a person matures intellectually and morally, a new
consciousness and understanding should arise, one which can be explained in
terms of emergence, a relatively
recent concept used by psychologists to explain a process during which the
interaction between inner systems leads to the appearance a new and totally
different state able to manifest a potential that did not exist previously. In
other words, the interaction between human self-reflection, value systems and
lessons learnt through experience should eventually combine to bring about a
new realisation of self, that which is termed in psychology the higher or authentic self.
Once in this new state of self-realisation, we are able
to overcome, or at least manage, our basic instincts, urges and needs
associated with the body, free ourselves from the entanglements of the mind by
attaining a new understanding of our purpose and place in the world, and be
able to fully acknowledge our true selves and unlimited potential. This new
state of being is associated with an internal
locus of control, in which our conscience alone is sufficient to align us with
the highest spiritual principles and regulate our behaviour. In other words,
this new state of self-realisation empowers us to stand on our own two feet
without the direction of any religious institution. This ‘emergence’ of the authentic self is that which can be associated
with spirituality and represents
those attributes of man described by the author of the article as ‘magical,
unlimited and powerful.’
To
summarise, organised worship and religion should not be rejected outright, as
they still play an important role in the formative stages of the moral and
spiritual development of the human being, but become less important following the
emergence of self-realisation, at which time the individual moves into a
one-to-one relationship with a personal concept of Being, the universe or a Higher
Reality.
In
practice, a problem only arises in the situation in which the individual feels
or knows that religion is no longer meeting his or her spiritual and
developmental needs, but chooses to remain within this framework out of fear or convention.
Jimmy Henderson is a developmental specialist and
metaphysician and the published author of a number of books on the power of the
mind.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=jimmy+henderson
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