Atheist Spirituality

By Leo Gura - July 10, 2025

There is this odd phenomenon of atheist spirituality, or secular spirituality. These are people who disbelieve in God, self-identify as atheist, rational, and scientific, yet they do spiritual practices like meditation and may even do stuff like mystical practices. These people try to be spiritual but while rejecting the notion of God and the supernatural. These people do not understand what spirituality really is, but they think they are quite advanced. Such people are usually academic types who think they’ve figured spirituality out through academic methods. Nope! Self-deception alert.

The lady who runs this channel is such an example. She is an atheist yet she also studies mystical traditions and talks about nondual concepts and mysticism. She practices Sufism. She knows the theory of various mystical traditions such as Buddhism, Zen, Daoism, Kabbalah, etc. She has done academic work in religion and spirituality. But ultimately she has no idea what mysticism or spirituality is. This is an interesting case-study in sophisticated self-deception. She wants spirituality, but without God. She wants mysticism, but without Truth. To her, mysticism is just human experiences and feelings. This is a great example of how to screw up spirituality by taking it too lightly, taking it as something academic, something human — by not taking metaphysics seriously. It is spirituality done for psychology benefits. Spirituality as cognitive science and psychology. This is Sam Harris-type of spirituality, and I want to make you aware of this strain of spiritual self-deception.

Her channel is called “No Nonsense Spirituality”, but of course it is nonsense spirituality. She uses words like “enlightenment”, “transcendence”, “mystical”, and “oneness”, but she doesn’t fathom what these things are. And the people who follow her channel have no idea she is misleading them because she sounds so sensible and inoffensive.

How do you correct someone like this?

Is it possible to be an atheist mystic? No
Is it possible to be an enlightened atheist? No
Is it possible spirituality has nothing to do with God? No
Is it possible mysticism is not about Truth but just experiences? No

Spirituality is only about one thing: Realizing you are God.

Everything else is derivative noise.

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This is one of the reasons why I am so against stuff like westernized Zen and Buddhism. It leads to this kind of atheist spirituality, which totally misses the point of Awakening. Western Buddhists believe they can have enlightenment and atheism. This is spiritual weak-sauce designed to suit Stage Orange rationalist sensibilities. You have to go much deeper than that.

Buddhism and nonduality is a very convenient way for atheists to avoid admitting they are wrong. But where is the fun in that?

The whole point of spirituality is to get completely mindfucked.

Note: The reason I tend to be a hardass about these topics is because I don’t want you to miss God.

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