Of course, spirituality has so many different meanings and understandings. I like your description of the possibilities, and I also found @Outlanders post interesting. A large aspect of the ambiguity arises due to whether spirit is seen as imminent or transcendent. Non dualism does seem to be able to get it's way round this. Also, many posts by @180 Proof show how Spinoxa's ideas and substance dualism are useful as a contrast to many forms of materialism

Nevertheless, one of the biggest areas of debate still hover around the question of whether spirit goes on beyond death, even if this doesn't seem in terms of ego consciousness but in a different form.

all human understanding is coming-to-understand the mind of God — NotAristotle

This is interesting, the way you have framed it. Of course, humans first had to evolve the ability to know, or make inferences, about minds other than theirs, and this mental capacity evolved long before religion. It is termed "theory of mind." Each one of us is able to recognize that others have thoughts that differ from ours, and form a theory about what is in the minds of others. There is evidence that this capacity began to evolve millions of years ago. Indeed, successful social interactions are not possible without this ability.

In The Belief Instinct: The Psychology of Souls, Destiny, and the Meaning of Life, author Jesse Bering shares the hypothesis that religion developed as a by-product of theory of mind. That, once humans were able to make inferences about what is in the minds of others, they extended this ability to supernatural beings, and thus make theories about what is in the mind of God.

Jung definitely sees the integration of opposites as being important, including the masculine and feminine, as well as good and evil as being essential to inner work or individuation. This does correspond with Joseph Campbell's ida of the hero's quest. It includes navigation in both inner and outer life in most instances. So many myths and religious quests draw upon these, as do stories as an art form, or science itself may have a symbolic dimension.

Spirituality is possible without religion, as Sam.Harris argued. However, the significance of the stance of spirituality is so much more concrete within mainstream religious thinking. Jung was particularly interested in the Gnostic tradition within Christianity. The Gnostic Gospels, which were discovered in Nag Hammadi present an extremely more symbolic understanding of the life of Jesus. They are also controversial in approach, such as the incorporating the idea of Mary Magdalene as Jesus's lover.

religion developed as a by-product of theory of mind. — Questioner

Sure, why not. I do not see why God could not work by natural means, in addition to supernatural means, to help us know what He is thinking.

Sure, why not. I do not see why God could not work by natural means, in addition to supernatural means, to help us know what He is thinking. — NotAristotle

Good answer! It is certainly possible.

I did not mean to say all atheists are opposed to spirituality.

There are several books that use quantum physics to explain spirituality. Some of these books mix quantum physics with the Chinese Tao, and at least one, "The Purposeful Universe: How Quantum Theory and Mayan Cosmology Explain the Origin and Evolution of Life," uses quantum physics to explain the Mayan perspective, and that book makes Jose Argüelles' book, "The Mayan Factor", more plausible. Those books go nicely with Athens' study of math and their perspective on sacred math. This stuff excites me a lot, and it would be wonderful to learn from someone who knows more about it than I do.

I think most of the books are about quantum physics and consciousness. Our current interest in consciousness is remarkable, and I think we might be entering a profound shift in consciousness.

The Gnostic Gospels, which were discovered in Nag Hammadi present an extremely more symbolic understanding of the life of Jesus. — Jack Cummins

I think that if we want to understand Jesus, we need to have an understanding of Buddhism, because I believe the Jesus perspective was more Eastern than Roman. Rome was materialistic, and that is problematic when considering spiritual matters. Perhaps we should remember the fighting between different Christian groups because of the spiritual concepts being taken over by materialistic thinking.

What AI says about this is awesome, but we can use AI. It is really hard to engage Christians in the discussion without information about the Roman spiritual/material conflict.

No, I was being techincal:

Spirituality in the context of Religious Studies and Philosophy are fairly distinct. In religious studies it does cover secular and non-secular variants.
— I like sushi — I like sushi

:grin: This is delicious, as I just opened the discussion to the spiritual and Roman conflict. That conflict became a power struggle that some think corrupted Christianity. Today, we are becoming aware of quantum physics and the Eastern perspective (also Native American).

I want to establish, I think you are a very intelligent person and that you value your intelligence and nurture it. However, I think you come from Western (materialistic) thinking without awareness of Eastern thinking (energy/consciousness).

Spirituality, just like Religion, means different things to different people. If we are all using different meanings without knowing it, then the chances of a productive discussion are likely reduced. — I like sushi

I think we need to establish the materialistic and energy/consciousness difference. Until we understand the difference between the energy and materialistic thinking, we can not be talking about the same thing. One of the worst conflicts Roman Christians had was the nature of God. Is there only one God or does the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost mean there is more than one God? Is Jesus God, or the Son of God? When did Jesus become more than a human? When he was born, when he was baptized, when he died? This is about spiritual reality and materialism.

The Greek Trinity gave the Greeks an understanding of the Trinity of God, as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The Romans did not have a word for this concept of a Trinity. They could not agree that there is only one God until they had a word for the concept of a Trinity.

Our whole lives we have lived with a materialistic understanding of reality. Quantum physics is changing that.

Apologies if I've given the impression of "substance dualism" in mentions of Spinoza. In the Ethics he adamantly opposes "substance dualism" (such as Descartes') and instead proposes a form of property dualism¹ (parallelism²).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_dualism [1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychophysical_parallelism [2]

There are several books that use quantum physics to explain spirituality. — Athena

If by "spirituality" what is meant is supernatural or non-physical, then quantum physics, the scope of which is only nature / the physical, cannot "explain spirituality". I'm afraid you've been reading :sparkle: quantum woo-woo comic books :sparkle: – pure entainment, my dear, complete fictions.

I think we need to establish the materialistic and energy/consciousness difference. — Athena

Do so please. I do not think there is any such thing as materialistic spirituality, other than by way of fetishism? Or are you talking about something akin to 'soul'/'mind' when you think of spirituality?

Please do steer clear of quantum woo-woo talk or this will go nowhere fast. I first love was physics.