Sunmaster

It's harder than you think apparently. Religions are codified maps of spiritual practice. They usually stem from one teacher/man of knowledge/enlightened person who tried to put into words that which is unfathomable. Other people of the same or similar level of understanding, know very well what they meant when they used their parables and allegories. The problem arises when people of lesser (direct) understanding try to promote those concepts to others. They then distort and corrupt the original teachings, intellectualize them, add a great deal of empty rituals to them and tataaa....religions become the hot mess you're decrying. As soon as direct experience leaves the stage, dogma enters and thus creates all sorts of problems. You see the end result of this problem, but that is only a part (although the most visible) of the whole issue. Religions were NOT born to control people, but to liberate them from the illusion of the separate self. An illusion that the vast majority of people still live under, unfortunately. You say "No religion or Gov't wants you to think for yourself." Baseless generalization. If you would study the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, Sufism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Christian mystical teachings, Shamanism, Taoism and many others....you would see that their core is the same: re-binding (re-ligion) the individual to the divine source. Basically the opposite of what you claim. When it comes to governments though, I have to agree with you. There are some more enlightened/progressive countries (I'm thinking Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Bhutan perhaps), but we're not quite there yet.

What you describe could be applied to materialists just as well...

Absolutely. I'm not a 'group person' myself, but I understand the need for community in a shared value system. I see it as the movement of a pendulum. We ourselves go through periods of time where we strive to be independent and other times when we seek community with others. The same goes for societies. There are opportunities and pitfalls on every swing of the pendulum. That's why I find it useless to point to a specific place on the swing's trajectory. It's just a temporary state and it will change. Sure, for societies the timeframes are much longer than for individuals, but nonetheless, they too will change and move along the spiral.

I'm sorry, but what's your point? We all know that human organizations are as faulty as the people involved in them. Be they religious, political, scientific or whatnot. Calling people sheeple is just an attempt at categorizing the world in black and white groupings. Me, the enlightened one, and those other ones who have different worldviews, the sheeple. It's just a shortcut of the mind and doesn't do you any favours. The world is far more complex than that. There are people of all kinds of developmental stages involved in religions....those that take everything literal, those that take emotional and spiritual solace from the religious teachings and those that embrace the more esoteric teachings/practices. Pointing fingers is useless. Regardless of religions, there is one very important point to remember. Spirituality is not confined to religion. There are countless people who consider themselves spiritual, but would not be involved in anything religious. The problem is that many materialists can't see the difference and they are trying to reduce everything spiritual down to "religious". Unless one can not grasp this, there won't be any real understanding of the topic at hand.

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A great documentary in 4 parts, talking about consciousness, psychedelic substances, medicine, psychology, spirituality and science. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21062540/ https://www.netflix.com/watch/81164525?trackId=155573560