Religion is the single most divisive force in humanity’s existence.
Untold millions have been killed with religion as the main contributing factor - wars, genocides, crusades, and conflicts.
The only thing that rivals religion’s reign of terror is economic impoverishment - namely poor people not having the same access to food, clean water, shelter, safe working conditions, and healthcare.
Very true. Religion is the ultimate spiritual imprisonment. It goes against the fundamentals of what god is, what freedom of thoughts are, feelings, free will and reaching a state of actualization and connectedness with god and the universe.
Many prophets from the past would feel ashamed, disappointed and disapprove how people have hijacked religion for a selfish purpose to control others and have power over them and their thoughts and feelings.
I consider myself very spiritual person and believe in my own version of god and enlightenment however it is not religion. I am not saying religion does not get things right, many times it does because anyone who becomes enlightened gain access to the source code and gains access to ultimate knowledge and insight. It is what people and humans do with this knowledge that is the problem and how they hijack it for their own benefit and purpose like to gain control over people, their thoughts and their morality. Right now we have access to some of the most enlightened people from around the world and majority of them are from India.
We are all capable of reaching these enlightenment states. Sometimes it is just for a brief period and sometimes it keeps coming and lasts longer. However sometimes people are not capable of handling this connection and go crazy and lose purpose and meaning kind of like what happened to Jim Carrey and use this to spread propaganda and miss guidances. They call these people zen devils.
Probably the greatest song ever made explains this imprisonment...