IS SPIRITUALITY A EUPHEMISM FOR RELIGIOSITY?

In this muddled age of increasing religiosity and pseudo-spirituality, one must read Yuval Noah Harari’s three books: ‘ Sapiens: A brief history of humankind’, ‘ Homo Deus: A brief history of tomorrow’ and the latest one, ‘21 lessons for the 21st century.’

Harari explains spirituality as ‘ a euphemism for religiosity.’ It’s a sophisticated front for blatant religiosity. What we all mean by spirituality is subtly based on ‘religio-esoteric spirituality.’ An individual’s spirituality invariably hinges on subconscious/unconscious religious indoctrination, accumulated through a great many generations. In other words, it’s religious morality and not conscientious morality. The latter is completely bereft of any esoteric tinge. What we need in this age of conflicts and perpetual (religio-spiritual) strife is a universal sense of rectitude, a moral compass, to be precise.

Remember, the evolutionary advancement of mankind is happening sans any divinity or presupposed divine intervention. Saying that the universe/god is responsible for this evolution is belittling the intrinsic human intelligence. Human evolution is a saga of being uni-cellular to multi-cellular.

We need to understand the slow but steady process of human evolution and the power of righteous ego as we often say in Persian ‘Khudi choon ast khuda’ (Khudi: Ego itself is khuda or god).