This quote is from the podcast so it is related to this thread.
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: ...I have an option, living here in Hampstead, England, on Sundays I can stay at home and read the Sunday newspapers and I can meditate, which I do anyway, every day, or I can go to a church service on Sunday morning, where I sing beautiful hymns, there’s incredibly beautiful music, there’s a community of people I like and respect. I take part in the communion, that for me is important, the holy communion. I take part in collective prayers for the welfare of local people and people all over the world, and I usually emerge from that experience feeling uplifted and inspired, and I receive a blessing from a priest in beautiful robes. I emerge from that feeling uplifted and inspired and better than if I hadn’t gone.
So, for me, it’s not a question of, is this all totally true and is every word of the Bible literally true? I don’t think it is, but for me the question is, is taking part in these rituals, this communal singing, all of which are spiritual practices, these collective spiritual practices, is this helpful or is it not helpful? I do find it helpful. There are some people who don’t find it helpful, and that’s fair enough, I don’t think it’s necessary for salvation or for connecting with the ultimate. I’m not saying that at all.
What Rupert Sheldrake is describing is being spiritual. That is the purpose of spiritual practices: being spiritual.
I can't say what this is referring to ...
The only problem with that, is that the internet has given us so much as well. I am not on FB or anything remotely similar, but honestly, I would have failed to develop any distance from naive materialism without the internet.
David
But I will just say there is a difference between knowledge (for example knowledge that contradicts materialism) and being spiritual.
Rupert Sheldrake says it in the podcast:
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: ...I think that actually, at the basis of all spiritual traditions and religions, experience is the primary driver. I think it’s what is in it for most people, not a belief system. I think religions do have belief systems, but I don’t think they’re primary. Most people who go to church are not going to church because they’ve sat down, thought about the Christian creed, and come to the conclusion that every little bit of it is absolutely true, and then go to church. There are people who go to church because they like singing hymns or they feel part of something bigger than themselves, are part of a larger community, open to a spiritual dimension through the sacraments and the creed because it’s part of the service, without often understanding very much about what it’s saying. I think that’s much closer to the reality for most people.
Here are the practices he discusses in his book:
Meditation
Gratitude
Connecting with nature
Relating to plants
Rituals
Singing and chanting
Pilgrimage and holy places.
These are not intellectual pursuits.
Being spiritual is not something that comes from the analytical mind. It comes from the intuitive mind.
Analytical thinking blocks intuitive thinking and vice versa.
https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-11/humans-cant-be-empathetic-and-logical-same-time
Humans Can't Be Empathetic And Logical At The Same Time
Brain scans find that the two modes are mutually exclusive.
And if Sheldrake is interested in the role of spiritual practices in our secular society, I think he is missing the elephant in the living room if he doesn't discuss the unmentionable overwhelming forces in our society that have the opposite effect of spiritual practices.