From religion to spirituality

[blazeofglory]

I have very often raised this issue.

Religions are rooted in divisions. I am a Hindu by birth; you may
be a Christian; Someone may be a Muslim or a Buddhist.

At the core, or deep down we are not different.

Love pervades all; it penetrates deeper and transcend all veneers of nationalities, languages, castes and creeds.

Yet I believe in spirituality.

Spriturality is a cohesive force and integrates all.

If I am spiritual I can be at home with all. I can be comfortable everywhere and indeed with everybody.

I feel this planet is a common home and all the treasures of this planet are common wealth.

Let us tie ourselves with a common or single thread of spirituality.

I belieive spirituality is a more refined, more sublte and cultivbated human attribute.

Spirituality is a superior and more advanced form of humanity.

Humanity stands for only man; yet this green planet does not belong to man alone. There are zillions of species in this planet and all are directly and indirectly related to us. Indeed spirituality hones a sense of relationship.

Let us love all; let us forget divisive things, and make something or do something to convince all that we are brothers.

God, religions, creeds, nationalities are superficial things.

Let us rise above such differences and feel spirtually at one with all.
.
This is how I have journeyed from religions to spirituality

[sonofaslan]

Hindu was next on the list if C. S. Lewis had not chose Christianity. Dualistic religions, outside Christianity, made the most logical sense to him.

[B-Mental]

I love this. I am devout Catholic, but I walk on the outside of the church as I believe it causes some divisiveness. I think all persons of strong faith feel this way. You are an enlightened person. I think your spirit shall return in a beautiful way.

[Camán]

As a bahái, I see no division between the world religions.
God decided to give slightly different teachings to different parts of the world,
since the social development was at different stages.
Now we are advancing together to a global society and that diference is not present anymore,
so He gave us a global teaching: The Bahái Faith through his Messenger Bahá’u’lláh.
A Messenger foretold by all the previous Messengers and the first Messenger with a mission
to bring all the people together and once-in-for-all bring world peace,
but also to establish equal rights and equality for everyone of us.
To implement this will take time, since not all heart are open yet to receive His message,
but the day will come when we are able to establish a paradise on earth.
If we going there by the easy-travelled road of "love, peace and understanding", as John Lennon put it,
or if we choose to have an apocalyptic "End of the world" senario is totally and utterly up to us.

Me, I go for the "Peace, love and understanding" rute anyday.
Man, fighting over possessions we can not take with us anyway is a total wast of time and
to suppress another human being is repulsive, repugnant och reptiliant behaviour.
(with all due respect to the reptilian community. Slither on boys. :p)
Why be a bastard, when you can be a buddy?

[dzebra]

True religion is looking after people who need help and keeping oneself from being corrupted by the world.

[NikolaiI]

Hopefully not to take the thread too off topic, but to continue it a little in the vein of something Caman said, the paradise on earth...
I've been wanting to write something about this.
First about your division of religion vs. spirituality...from The Gospel of Ramakrishna,

"God has made different religions to suit different aspirations, times and count8ires. All doctrines are only so many paths; but a path is by no means God himself. Indeed we can reach God if we follow any of the paths with whole-hearted devotion. One may eat a cake with icing either straight or sidewise. It will taste sweet either way.

"As we can ascend to the top of a house by ladder or bamboo or a staircase or a rope, so diverse are the ways to approach God and every religion shows one of these ways.

"People partition off their lands by means of boundaries, but no one can partition off the all-embracing sky overhead. The indivisible sky surrounds all and includes all. So people in ignorance say, "My religion is the only one, my religion is the best." But when the heart is illumined by true knowledge it knows that above all these sects and sectarians presides the one indivisible eternal all-knowing bliss.

"As a mother, in nursing her sick children, gives rice and curry to one, and sago and arrowroot to another, and bread and butter to a third, sot he Lord has laid out different paths for different people."

And if you follow the true blazemakers of any religion, the greatest minds and souls, you will find that they are so akin to each other. The greatest minds and mystics of every religion endorse non-dualism in one form or another. Though I have not studied everything of all religions....well, each of them has so much in them...still I am fairly sure that they are all paths to the same divine-- just as I say that men are equal to women. A divine-natured man is gentle, just as a divine woman is. The qualities of goodness and mediocrity or meanness apply to men and women equally, just as the qualities of saintliness, ignorance, passion, transcendence, mystical consciousness, delusion...all of the qualities that make up the spectrum of the influence of religion; good and bad and finite and infinite; middles and extremes.....they are all found in them all.

Now this is just me rambling...not even writing so good....just some different analytical points... but being a mystic myself, but yet perhaps being a somewhat unimpassioned one, .... it's very difficult to even describe... I mean I can't even approach it...but it's something like "I have this revelation I wish to share." But the joy and the vision is just...it's so tender, it's ultimately an ever-being-newborn creation, and it's so beautiful that...that is why it's kept in secret. Perhaps because mystics love it so much, they just keep it in secret-- even from themselves.

I don't know. I think paradise is not possible for everyone on this planet, but it should be worked towards none-the-less, because I am positive that there are so many, so many people on this planet who are living bliss-beyond-blissful lives.

I would say the secret of life is that God loves us, that people love people; that God is above us, yet above us as the eternal, more real reality, from which we came and to which we are going. As soon as we peek out our heads from this material universe...we never forget what we saw. I truly wish this ultimate peace for everyone. And when I am in this peaceful state of mind, and then I hear someone yelling about something, I sort of think to them, "Why are you angry?" because it's very foreign to me..."why are you angry, could this possibly be conducive to happiness?" it just doesn't make any sense.

the poem "One Single Life" by Sri Aurobindo

"Then shall be ended here the Law of Pain.
Earth shall be made a home of Heaven's light. . . .
The superconscient beam shall touch men's eyes
And the truth-consci9uos world come down to earth
Invading matter with the Spirit's ray,
Awakening its silence to immortal thoughts,
Awakening the dumb heart to the living Word.
This mortal life shall house Eternity's bliss,
The body's self taste immortality.

O mind, grow full of the eternal peace:
O work, cry out the immortal litany:
Built is the golden tower, the flame-child born.

The supermind shall claim the world for Light
And thrill with love of God the enamored heart
And place Light's crown on Nature's head
And found Light's reign on her unshaking base. . . .
A soul shall wake in the Inconscient's house;
The mind shall be God-vision's tabernacle,
The body intuition's instrument,
And life a channel for God's visible power. . . .

The Spirit's tops and Nature's base shall draw
Near to the secret of their separate truth
And each know other as on deity.
The Spirit shall look out through Matter's gaze
And Matter shall reveal the Spirit's face.
Then man and superman shall be at one
And all the earth become a single life."

Andrew Harvey writes...
"Other mystical systems have had a vision of what might be called "radiant apocalypse." Gregory of Nyssa and other Christian mystics envisaged all of the creation being transfigured by divine grace into the Pleroma, the divine fullness or glory, and Mahayana masters in Tibet and China taught and wrote about the coming reign of Shambhala, a heavenly kingdom on earth that would spread its rays of peace, health, and illumination everywhere", etc. (from Teachings of the Hindu Mystics)

Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabu also presaged a 10,000 year era of peace, which he himself was supposed to advent.