RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY

There is a series of controversies when placing the mystical experience of man, in labels, such as churches, sects, cults, religion, spirituality. The vast majority confuse the church and its sectors with religion, just as the vast majority do not believe that we are spiritual beings.

The church is a human creation, and religion is implicit in the mystical experience of man since spirituality is the determinant of his existence as a spirit; and well said, Teilhard de Chardin, French idealist philosopher and Jesuit priest that: “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience... We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

What is meant by the church today is something completely different from the original meaning of this word. The church is a hierarchical organization, with its human head and its legal constitution. Thomas Aquinas defines the church as a perfect society, endowed with executive, legislative and judicial power. The church, according to this theological concept, developed since the fourth century, is a state organization, whose functioning obeys the same norms of any other government organization, including having its armed wing, or of fanatical defenders, vigilantes that at any moment can slaughter those who do not profess the same doctrine. Thomas Aquinas is considered the greatest theologian of ecclesiastical Christianity; he wrote voluminous theology treatises. However, by the end of his life, he had a vision or revelation and never wrote anything, saying: “I can't write anymore. I saw things that make my writing look like straw.” And so, the giant of faith silences, because straw is nothing, dust, without any expression, symbolism or dialectical and dogmatic brilliance.

Paul Brunton in his book The Message of Arunachala stated that: “Religion, which in ancient times instructed men in the truth and gave them spiritual support, became impoverished in the face of the development of the intellect in subsequent periods and was unable to sustain itself in the face of convincing criticism. If today's religious doctrines were one hundred per cent true, religious leaders would have nothing to fear from progress.”

True religion helps man to find God, especially the kingdom of God within himself. Possibly, the external form of religion will pass through several stages, such as man himself, as a child, adolescent and adulthood. And we must consider all our stages of life as good, because, in the case of a being in constant evolution, true life is not just a certain stage.

The word religion comes from the Latin word “religio” and the meaning is influenced by the verb “religare”, that is, to connect, to cling to something concrete or abstract. In the abstract sense, it refers to the supernatural, to the divinity, to the mystical, to faith in something supposedly intangible which does not need scientific proof. A word that, according to Huberto Rohden, is linked to the concept of some church, sect, creed, but which is divorced from the soul of what true religion is, for every divine revelation when it lands in human hands becomes immediately contaminated. Religion is to be in tune with the Creative Power, of the union with the Infinite, of the overflow of the mystical experience in ethical living, that as religion is understood the mystical, the cosmic experience of Infinite Reality. Religion, the “first and greatest of all commandments” refers directly to God; the religious man is caught up in God, enjoys God, feels one with God, is diluted in an ocean of love and beatitude, with all his soul, with all his heart, with all his mind and with all his strength.

“The religion of future humanity will be transcendent, mystical!”, that is, self-knowledge and self-realization - wrote the great initiated Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888-1975), a former Indian statesman.

Guido Nunes Lopes, Brazilian spiritualist recognizes that:

“Religion is not just one, there are hundreds.

Spirituality is the only one.

Religion is for those who are anaesthetized.

Spirituality is for those who are awake.

Religion is for those who need someone to tell them what to do and want to be guided.

Spirituality is for those who pay attention to their Inner Voice.

Religion has a set of dogmatic rules.

Spirituality invites man to reason about everything, to question everything.

Religion threatens, frightens and controls.

Spirituality offers inner peace.

Religion speaks of sin and guilt.

Spirituality says: “learn from mistakes.”

Religion represses everything, is pure hypocrisy.

Spirituality transcends everything, it produces the true man!

Religion is not God.

Spirituality is everything and therefore is God.

Religion does not inquire or question.

Spirituality questions everything.

Religion is human, is an organization with rules.

Spirituality is divine, without rules.

Religion is a cause of divisions.

Spirituality is the cause of unity.

Religion seeks man to believe.

Spirituality, man has to seek.

Religion follows the precepts of books called sacred.

Spirituality seeks the sacred in all the books.

Religion feeds on fear.

Spirituality is nourished by trust and faith.

Religion makes one live in thought.

Spirituality makes consciousness live.

Religion is concerned with doing.

Spirituality is concerned with Being.

Religion feeds the ego.

Spirituality makes man transcend.

Religion makes us renounce the world.

Spirituality makes us live in God, and not renounce Him.

Religion is worship.

Spirituality is Meditation.

Religion dreams of glory and paradise.

Spirituality brings glory and paradise to life here and now.

Religion lives in the past and the future.

Spirituality lives in the present.

Religion cloisters memory.

Spirituality frees consciousness.

Religion believes in eternal life.

Spirituality makes man aware of eternal life.

Religion promises after death.

Spirituality is to find the inner God during life.”