America and the Religion of No Religion

America and the Religion of No Religion

Jeffrey Kripal — 1 recording in the archive.

The book: Authors of the Impossible by Jeffrey Kripal.

So tonight, I want to give you a very formal lecture on what is called religion without religion, but which most of you would know as a spiritual, but not religious, worldview. And my basic goal here today is to explain why, certainly in its origins and certainly in its logical structure or theology, this is not a confused worldview. This is not, this is a very serious intellectual position that people adopt today, often without any understanding of where it comes from or of its radicalism, in fact. But my goal here today is to give you an idea of ​​ where this comes from and help you appreciate it more. Well, then I'll just get started. Tonight. I want to talk about religion without religion in two different ways. In the first approach, I want to address religion without religion, philosophically or theologically. In other words, I want to describe it as a kind of unconscious superlogic or operating system that different historical figures and communities throughout the centuries have expressed, although never, of course, articulated exactly in this way. In the second approach, I want to address religion without religion, both historically and culturally. In other words, I want to describe very briefly the background of this orientation in the general history of religions and in a more recent cultural expression of it. The Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. It was Esalen that spawned the human potential movement of the 1960s and 70s, which in turn helped sow the seeds of the New Age movement, more popular in the 1980s and 90s. Finally, I will conclude with some comments on the American legal system. Regarding the very real dilemmas of religious tolerance embedded in this category, and regarding that immense demographic group of Americans under 30 who now describe themselves as spiritual but not religious. So, I have a lot of goals tonight and we only have five hours. So let's move forward quickly. Part one, the superlogic of religion without religion. Let me start with what religion without religion is not. Religion without religion is not secularism. Although, as we shall see, it depends on a robustly secular society to flourish. Similarly, religion without religion is not atheism. Although particular expressions of religion without religion may very well be atheistic, any religion without religion will seriously call into question the images of God that the…