The word religion is derived from the Latin, religio, which means “tying back” or “binding back to”. It can also, more euphemistically mean “connecting back” or “cording”. A word for religion doesn’t exist in Ancient Greek. Matters of the divine were simply “matters of the divine”. There was no need for such a word as religion in Plato, for example, because it was already clear not only to him, but to all his contemporaries, that our very Soul, our very essence is the connection itself. Why need any other explanation or system? So, from Plato’s perspective, there is no need to describe or prove a connection to the divine or God. The Soul is our connection.
However, in Plato’s dialogue, called the Phaedo, he explores how doubt about the eternal and divine nature of the Soul is what leads to the desire for proofs or stories about our connection to the divine. When we lose our own awareness of the eternal being of our Soul, who we truly are, we seek outside the soul in order see if we can re-gain that awareness. Humanity has been on that track for centuries. When you look our human history, you can begin to see that it has been one great attempt to divorce ourselves from Source (God) and our Soul by means of Egoic structures. There is no word in Plato for ego or egoic. The only thing that comes close to it are what Plato would call the pseudoi, the liars or deceivers. In the Bible, the liars and deceivers are described in terms of one being, namely, Satan.
As a result of historical circumstance, the human being today has very little Soul awareness. Soul awareness has instead been overlaid with some form of Ego identity. The Ego identity is Synthetic Structure that has been designed to replace the amorphous, mysterious, and undefined nature of the eternal soul. Egos are something we are now very comfortable with. They are what the government uses to track us and trace us, the moment our mother signs our birth certificate. They are what our friends use to qualify or describe us. They are reflected on our CV or resume. They can be decorated like an avatar in a game. Your ego can portray itself in a variety of ways and in various forms. The ego is a structure that you can build and decorate in any way you want out of the materials given to you by the world that contains them.
You could point to the spiritual community and say they are exceptions to this rule. To some extent, they attempt to free themselves from Egoic structures and there are countless books on the topic. But the truth is that most don’t understand that the Egoic structure is a structure that is designed to include anything and everything that you identify with in any way. So, if you identify as a soul from another planet, there you go, you have an Ego identifying as a soul on another planet. Again, this is a false soul structure overlaying the true Soul being. The true Soul being doesn’t need to read books to convince itself of what it is or isn’t. There is no is or isn’t as a Soul being. There isn’t that polarity.
Due to the loss of true Soul awareness, which is the awareness of the infinite and the ignorance that is natural to it, it has been easy for the new age religions of various kinds to redefine the ego as being god. First, it posits that god is within you, and that it is your true nature. This is the foundation of all Manifestation practices, which teach you that you create your world, and that you are responsible for everything that goes on in your life. This is a complete and utter lie, and incredibly damaging to people. Humanity’s consciousness level is not yet at the level of Source. Most people no longer experience themselves as even being connected to anything divine at all, and even when they do, their actions mostly betray that we are all here in physical bodies spending most of the hours of days tending to its needs, needs which are quite substantial. On the physical level, manifestation is a co-created action that involves interaction with the world and others inside of it in order to generate the assistance you want. But most of us are working inside of Synthetic Ego structures, and that is why the things we want are the things we think we want, and the people we want to be with are the things that the we think we want to be with. The egoic structure is an illusion that is actually designed to keep you from your true soul nature, which is a much more fluid and comfortable expression of who you are, because it is who you are. When you are in the Egoic structure you are literally feeling the desires of your soul, and yet chasing things or situations outside of it. It never works. Your Ego always misdirects you. That is why Manifestation practices are simply ways to solidify and create greater divide between your true Soul nature and your Egoic Structure. Manifestation practices are methods of accumulation which lead to fortifying your alienation from you true nature.
Soul in the machine 