From Victor Zurbel:

Re: How did religion evolve? (Feb. 8): I agree that religion is a created belief system to foster morality and to organize people around a common cause. However, the “spiritual” experience is quite different. It is a direct experience of our connection from our individual consciousness (or soul, if you will) to a higher consciousness or universal “mind.” The ancient yogis, zen masters, and Buddhists taught meditation (not prayer) to still the mind and experience a state of peace, bliss and oneness. Rituals were added as practices to take one away from “monkey mind” and create the space to go within and withdraw from dualistic mental aberations. Bhakti (devotion) is expressing the same connectedness to our higher selves, expressed through the heart and generated by selfless service (“love all, serve all”). Osho, the mystic, said that each individual should find their own religion, rather than grow into their inherited one as that will simply become a conditioning process. He said that it is very rare for a Christian to have a religious revelation of a Buddha, or a Buddhist to have a religious experience of Christ.

When Swami Satchidananda came to america in 1966, i asked him, “Are you a Hindu?” “No, I am an Un-do,” he replied. “You have already done enough. ”

Victor Zurbel
Publisher, AwareDigest.com