Religion has made us Zombies  

 

You can read on this topic at Chapter 7 Section 3 and 4 of the book by clicking on this link or read the book extracts reproduced below:

 

3.       Faith is Blinding

You must believe in the concept of God and religion to benefit from it. If you do not have faith in the method, it does not work for you. The more faith you have in the method, the more it will work for you and the less you will question the system. The more it closes your mind and the more it blinds you. You act like a zombie.

Faith in our current method has blinded us from even attempting to look for a better method to spirituality and to explain the spiritual laws.

So clearly the method has not worked overall. And clearly, there is a need to look for a better method.

What stops us from having a fresh look at religious rules and rituals? And what stops us from looking for a better method? Here lies the catch. Faith has blinded us from even attempting to look for a better method to spirituality and to explain the spiritual laws. Just like law of Gravitational forces, there exists a spiritual law. Scriptures have tried to explain the Spiritual Law by using the concept of God or the psychotherapy of God. Because love and faith are important components of this therapy, (as we saw in Fig. 4.9) instead of trying to explore that spiritual law objectively, we have got emotionally attached to the scriptures and their creators. We do not get emotionally attached to Newton or Galileo who explained the physical laws. To understand Newton and Galileo, you have to use your brain. To understand Christ, Buddha, etc. and their preaching, the present day religion requires that the heart is involved, and that is the root cause of all problems.

4.       We are all in a Trance

Just like law of Gravitational forces, there exists a spiritual law. Scriptures have tried to explain the Spiritual Law by using the concept of God

The method of god and religion is a psychotherapeutic method. We all have been under psychotherapy. We all have been in a trance. We need to come out of it.

I remember in one of the student  festivals in my college, students from medical college gave a demonstration of hypnosis on the stage. Volunteers were called to stage and they were hypnotised in front of a big audience.

Imagine yourself in the audience. You can see that the people on stage were in a state of trance. A person in a trance says and does anything that the hypnotist asks him to say or do. If the hypnotist says “you are in a lovely world, you need not worry as someone is caring for you, someone is protecting you”, the subject actually feels good. While you as a spectator know that it is all imaginary but the subject does not know anything. If you were on the stage, you would obviously not know that you are in a trance.

It is only when you look at yourself as the audience, if you be away from the hypnosis like a spectator, far removed from the influence that you will see the effect of hypnosis working on someone. A person under religious influence is also under a trance or under hypnosis. Since we are all under the influence, we do not realize it. It is only when you look at yourself as a spectator, far removed from the influence of religion, you will realize that the religious hypnosis is working on you, that you are in a trance. In fact, all of us are in a trance under the influence of religion.

While we should acknowledge that this is the current best method to reach high energy state or to tap one’s spiritual energy to good cause, we should take an objective look at it and see what are its merits and demerits. We should come out of the trance and see what has been the outcome of man having adopted this method. Its greatest merit is that it is the most widely used method to improve our state of mind and our energy state. We should not be blind to the  demerits of this method.

 

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