The original purpose of religion is to reconnect individual humans to
their inner self as well as to their greater society and the whole
cosmos and provide them with a holistic sense of existence. We humans
with our ability to highly focus our consciousness on certain topics
and blend out meanwhile the environment, can become trapped quite
easily in our tiny egoic illusions or social mindset limits, with which
we tend to identify. To overcome this identification with the illusion
our consciousness concentrates upon and believes in as reality, it´s
necessary from time to time to remind us, that we are much more than
our limited ideas what we actually would be and what we would be
capable of. So even the earliest human tribal cultures we know of, have
common rituals of extasy and practices of trance, which reconnect them
regularly to themselves, their tribe and all nature.
To realize it´s purpose religion primarily provides society with a common collective spirit - like a god, a pantheon of gods or any other form of common collective consciousness - which provides society with an ethical, cultural and ritual framework for social unity and common orientation. Above that religions purpose is to provide the individual with answers to the big eternal questions of live - like how to deal with suffering and death or what live is all about. The third purpose of religion is to provide people with a deep connection to their own innermost self and from there with an intimate connection to all the outer world. This three purposes can be partly or completely fullfilled as well by philosophical, scientifical or artistic systems, which provide holistic sensemaking theories und practices for the human condition and for existence in itself. In many religions we find a splitting of religious professions: The priests who care for societies ethics and individual orientation and the mystics who dwell in forests or monastrys to connect with their innermost and outermost self. The prophets as founders of religions are usually mystics, who develop and distribute a religious system for their society in orientation need, especially in times of great change. The god or what so ever the collective spirit is called is an imagined human head birth and therefore an illusion by nature, but it´s existing very real in form of laws, beliefs, behaviours, social structures and cultural institutions. So nobody can see or touch the god, but can become sanctified or punished by human believers in divine name. The biggest illusionary danger is to forget, that the god is a human head born and to believe instead that humans are created by such human ideas. Surely believers are culturally influenced and shaped by their religion, but not biologically created by their illusionary god. We humans may have been created ultimately by some kind of cosmic intelligence or divine creation, but this intelligence is definitely not like any of our earthly human gods, but much bigger and unspeakably unimaginable for our limited senses and brains. That´s the reason why some religions - like Islam - deny to imagine the divine cosmic principle in idols and instead concentrate on quite practical commandments and other rules and orientations for the very earthly human life and societies organisation. To explore the cosmic divine principle is not the priests task, but the mystics one. They use meditation practices and other techniques to dive deep into their innermost self to explore the unspeakable core of their subjective existence as well as to observe objectively the whole world as their outer self, which is reacting to their inner conditions and vice versa. They make experiences of inner light and joy and peace and all-unity with all that is, was and will be. This kind of experiences leads to the subtle knowledge, that we are indeed divine by nature and able to reconnect to this very basic reason of our existence. Modern day spirituallity is a nowadays adaptation of our timeless need for reconnection. New Age Gurus and Neoshamans are beginning to form new kinds of religious belief systems for a fast progressing, highly technologized and globalized society, which has killed it´s old, overaged god and is now suffering severly from a senseless materialism and social disorientation. So it´s no wonder, that countless spiritual seekers meditate in the woods or where so ever to overcome their ego and social role to finally meet their innermost divine self and find enlightenment - only to realize in sensations of all-unity, that their innermost self is the same innermost self of all that is, which we could call "the divine". They can not adequately describe the profoundness of their experiences in limited human words, but they can describe and distribute techniques to reach this inner state. In exactly this sense I´m writing this text here as well as this whole website to provide spiritual seekers with a lot of interesting techniques to reach enlightened or awakend states and know for themselves, what spirituallity is all about. Beyond this I can only remind people, that religion is pure human imagination and they should never ever identify completely with any of it´s aspects or even believe, that their gods would be real. It´s all about humans inner divination, societies unity and individual life orientation towards wholeness. It´s about overall connection to create a sensemaking and fullfilling life in a functioning society, which lives in mutual symbiosis with it´s environment and elevates it´s humans above themselves. |