Religion and Spirituality - are they the same? Is religion damaging or healthy?

Yeah, that sounds pretty good.

In fact, I'd like to start with a quote by the Dalai Lama that I really like.

Okay.

And here's what he says.

Spirituality I take to be concerned with qualities of the human spirit, such as love, compassion, tolerance, forgiveness, commitment, a sense of responsibility, a sense of harmony.

And there is no reason why the individual not develop these even to a high degree without recourse to any religious or metaphysical system.

This is why I sometimes say that religion is something we can do without, but what we cannot do without are these basic human qualities.

And Steve, this is absolutely what I feel.

And the question I think to ask ourselves is how do we access these higher order qualities? Is it possible to access them as the Dalai Lama says, outside religion? And is it also possible to be part of a religion and not access them at all at any depth? Because for me, what I see spirituality as being, and Stan Grof, the father of transversal psychology, also agrees, is that spirituality is about depth, going deep.

We human beings have an addiction or a fixation with superficiality.

And I don't think that to go deep, we necessarily need religion.

And whatever takes us into the deeper dimensions, be it through the world of music, and Steve, you're a musician, or the world of being a novelist or a poet, and Steve, you are also a poet, a healer, whatever it is, If we go deep, then we touch these qualities that the Dalai Lama talks about.

And I think that what we need today is the capacity to go deep, to touch love at a deep level, to touch kindness at a deep level, to touch integrity at a deep level.

Do

you agree?

I do agree.

I think some people obviously don't go deep into religion.

And these are the people who are fundamentalists, who have a dogmatic approach to their religion, who believe that they have the truth and oppose other people who have different beliefs.

These people are not spiritual.

For them, religion seems to be an attempt to reinforce the ego, to support the ego.

I think these people derive a sense of identity from their religion.

They derive a sense of certainty because they feel that they can explain the world.

And there's something very, very egoic about it.

Very, very superficial.

And as I say, I don't think this is where religion and spirituality do not encroach on each other at all.