Im sure everyone reading this has had their ears ‘graced’ by the all-too-pervasive obnoxious phrase “I’m not religious, I’m just spiritual”. Everyone knows there’s something fishy about this claim, but it can often be difficult to rationalise this intuition. However, before we get into why exactly the notion of “spiritual but not religious” does not work, we need to define religion.
Cicero says religion, which is the english derivation of the latin religio comes from the words re- and lego, which would mean something along the lines of to recollect, to regather, to go over–whether in speech, thought, or reading–or to remember. Some others, including Augustine and Lactantius also speculate that religio comes from the word religare which means to bind or to connect. We can see how all these ideas intersect in the idea of religion as the connecting or binding of things in the very act of our recollection. Religio is defined by Cicero as the cultus deorum, or the cultivation of the gods–that is, the participation in the divine rites–bringing the gods into human life. Here we see the intersection between culture and religion. Culture comes from the Latin cultus, which means cultivation, and this can very simply be understood as the work or movement of man in the world. Cultus is speculated to ultimately come from the pro-indoeuropean *kwel which means to move. Every second of our existence in this world we are moving, and movement always, necessarily indicates a movement from A to B, movement is always towards an end. There is no moment in which we are not moving, or working, or cultivating. At every moment we are moving towards an end. This end towards which we are moving is the end, or god, which we are cultivating–and thus is the god of our religion–our cultus deorum.
Because everybody is always moving, and movement always presupposes an end, everybody has an end towards which they are moving–everybody has a god. Everybody has an organising principle in their life towards which they are moving and which allows for them to move at all. If you ask people what their god is, or what their religion is, and they say they have no god, or they have no religion, they are either unaware of what forces are moving them in their life towards a foreign end which they are not familiar with; or their god is themself. Movement or cultivation always has to be towards something other, and the moment you posit yourself as that towards which you are moving, you are splitting yourself into two, you are creating an image of yourself, which you are viewing from your actual self. One who creates this self-image quickly finds that this image does not truly encapsulate the self, rather it is just a finite set of qualities viewed from the unidentifiable self qua void. This is the Zizekian subject, and Trey has a bunch of videos going over this on the Telosbound youtube channel that you can check out for more details on that, but I digress. . . A culture is a group built upon their unity in movement towards a particular goal or end, and this end is always, by necessity, religious in nature. Remember that religion is precisely the most fundamental cultural act that there is, it is the cultural movement, the cultus deorum, the bringing about of a telos or end goal. It is transforming what is into what ought to be.
To quote Fr. Sergius Bulgakov:
“In religion a bond is established and experienced, the bond of the human with that which is higher than the human. At the basis of a religious relationship lies therefore a fundamental and irremovable dualism… In religion the human is aware of being seen and known before he ahs known himself, but at the same time he is conscious of himself as remote and torn away from that blessed source of life with which he strives to restore the bond, to establish religion. And so in the most general form one can give this definition of religion: religion is the recognition of God and the experience of a bond with God. If one were to translate this religious formula into the language of philosophy, it would receive this expression: religion is the experience of the transcendent which has become immanent, preserving however its transcendence, the experience of the transcendent-immanent.”
Our relationship with the transcendent is the force which constitutes the very possibility for culture to exist. It is in finding a unity which a collective can commune with that allows collectives to form in the first place. You cannot exist without religion, it is unavoidable. It’s not even just that you can’t exist without religion, it is that you cannot exist without religious obligation compelling you and shaping you. As soon as you decide what your religious imperatives are you are falling into the trap of projecting yourself and your own subjectivity onto the transcendent telos. Religion is about binding, gathering, recollecting and remembering. Religion is about taking our own particularity, our own subjectivity and uniting it with the cosmic narrative which we are but a mere part of. The real kicker with this dance of unity and multiplicity is that it is hierarchical. Embedded into the very notion of relationship is the notion of ritual and hierarchy. When we relate to one another we participate in cultural games and cultural dances which, contrary to the opinion of some, do not obscure the intimacy between subjects but rather they allow the relationship to exist in the first place. Without a hierarchy of value, and a hierarchy of meaning there is nothing. Every particular thing participates in the unity in which all things have their identity in their own particular ways, because that is what it means to be particular. What this means is that, when all things are directed, in their particularity towards the highest good, towards their telos, we see them fall into a coherent structure–a web of meaning–which is a whole greater than the sum of its parts. When every particular points towards the highest good we see that the highest good, which is love and unity infuses each particular in a way that binds everything to everything. What this means is not some sort of disappearance of particularity into unity, but rather what it means is that particularity becomes more fully real, as it is only in being united with something different from itself that any thing can even be a unique thing at all. All of this has been said to demonstrate that the way in which we participate in the greatest good, the ultimate goal of religion and culture is not irrelevant. We have to participate in the highest good in the way which maximises the participation of all things in this unity to the degree which it is possible. Jonathan pageau has a fantastic video on the inevitability of ritual which I will link here for some more demonstration of the facts covered in this article.
Religion, hierarchy, meaning and ritual are unavoidable if you want to live. Even those who claim to be anti-hierarchy, and anti religion/ritual necessarily fall into religion and ritual. In the very justifications of their views they rely on the hierarchical revelation of particularity into the realm of unity in the very use of words and speech. If religion, then, is necessary and unavoidable, then the responsibility falls upon us to find the highest good and participate in the highest good in the most meaningful way. What this would look like would be finding the transcendent which contains in itself the possibility of particularity and unity to not just coexist but exist interior to one another. This would be finding a God who contains perfectly in Himself both particularity and unity. This God’s church would also need to necessarily have–interior to its very existence–this complementary mutual indwelling of unity and particularity. What this would look like would not be a tower of Babel where men decided to “create a name for themself”, where man was posited as his own transcendental end, and all particularity–that is, all unique cultures and languages–were destroyed in the name of this false unity. What this would look like would be the marriage feast between God and His creation on Mount Zion in the book of Isaiah where every nation brings their unique languages, their unique rhythms or modes of participation, their own unique gifts as highlighted in Isaiah 65-66 to find their unity in the beautiful building of creation into a united house for the transcendent to inhabit.
Whatever you do in your life will necessarily manifest itself as religious and ritualistic. Even in the most mundane activities of our day-day life will, without fail, will manifest themselves ritualistically. Something as simple as brushing your teeth is, in a sense, religious. Obviously, brushing one’s teeth is dramatically less participatory in the transcendent in comparison to something more explicitly religious (in the Cicerian sense) like prayer, or the Church. Nonetheless, brushing one’s teeth is a habitualized, ritualised cultivation of the gods insofar as it is a temporal and financial sacrifice (albeit very miniscule) for the sake of good fortune in the dental department. Brushing your teeth in the morning and the evening is a liturgical commemoration of the tooth gods, and a supplication for their blessings. In a more negative fashion, rebellious anti-religious living will similarly, inevitably fall into religious rites and ritualistic habits. One who attempts to live their life as meaninglessly as possible will find that as they approach the point of absolute meaninglessness they approach a cessation of life itself. Interior to the manner in which we live, not only in a Spiritual sense, but also in a physical sense, is this participation of particularities with transcendent, uniting principalities. Our organs all coexist and function in communion and relation with one another insofar as they all lend themselves and their unique functions towards the greater purpose of sustaining the body which is a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Even at the most base and mundane level of existence, the atomic, there nonetheless persists this religious, unitive principle. Subatomic particles, at every moment, are gathering in religious processions in a manner which builds bodies and communities which exist as wholes greater than the sum of its parts. There does not pass a single second that electrons everywhere are transformed into stained glass windows, infused with the religious rays of the life of the atom which they participate in. From this organised prayer of subatomic particles arises the possibility for atoms to gather, in a similar manner to create various religious denominations of matter, which in turn gather to create cells, and from cells arise organs, which form bodies and from here we return to our original examples.
The nature of hierarchy is fractal, within every hierarchy are hierarchies which represent the greater hierarchy which they are a part of. Because of this being the manner in which hierarchies exist, it is not absurd to claim that should any hierarchy exist, there must necessarily be a greater hierarchy which it is simply a fractal installation of. Basically, if you brush your teeth, you should also go to Church. Interior to and permeating everything from the most mundane of activities such as brushing your teeth–or even the simple, seemingly passive, coexistence of your organs in a manner which sustains survival–to the most explicitly religious and transcendent activities such as meditation, prayer and liturgy is religion. Religion, which is the organising of particularity towards a transcendent unity which is greater than the sum of its parts, is the fundamental principle of life itself. Religion is life, and to attempt to live without religion, without meaning, is to attempt to live without life. This is an abominable absurdity and will lead to nothing but a depressing nihilism. Where religion is, there is life, and where life is, there is religion. To summarise this article, a most astute quote from Plutarch will suffice: “When you travel you find unwalled cities, uncultivated, without a King, without palaces, without money, without even a need for currency, without a number of theatres or athletic stadiums. But no one sees a town or a city without a Holy Temple or without God.”
The nature of reality is Trinitarian - the inherent oneness of particularity. And it is the nature of God to eternally manifest this infinite particularity of inherent oneness by the divine energies. There is no unity apart from particularity nor particularity apart from union. This is the non-dual, Trinitarian understanding of reality.
“It is only in being united with something different from itself that any thing can even be a unique thing at all.” However, union of particularities is inherent, not something done later or added on after the fact. Union is on the level of being. As you said, this union must be a “mutual indwelling of unity and particularity.” Particularity arises out of union not vice versa.
Pottery are unique manifestations of clay. Jewelry are unique manifestations of gold. Waves are unique manifestations of water. Ultimately, all that exists are unique manifestation of God. Differences exist at the level of manifestation, not the level of being. There is no real union apart from ontological union.
Religion is a finger pointing at the moon. The moon is the inherent ontological union of all unique particularities. Religion simply reveals that which is always already the case. Union is essential. Anything less falls into false duality.