Reasons why spirituality is considered dangerous

 Reasons why spirituality is considered dangerous

The reason why “spirituality” is often perceived as “problematic” or “risky” is that there are actually quite a few people who think this way.

If you search for “spirituality” on Google, suggested keywords appear below the search bar. These suggestions are generated based on what many people are searching for.

In other words, the fact that these suggestions appear indicates that there are a significant number of people in society who consider spirituality to be “problematic.”

People are free to hold their own values, and if they are not interested, they can simply choose not to engage. However, when it comes to spirituality, it seems that there is a tendency for people to become curious or concerned about it.

The boom in “spirituality” reached its peak with the TV program Aura no Izumi, featuring the psychic Hiroyuki Ehara. However, programs about spirituality on public television have gradually disappeared.

Trends tend to rise and fall, and the same applies to spirituality, but it has not completely vanished.

From a spiritual perspective, it is not that spirituality disappears; rather, in the future, people may begin to recognize its relevance and feel the need for it more readily.

Moreover, those who think that “spirituality is dangerous” may themselves increasingly reveal problematic behaviors or tendencies.

“Spiritual” is “dangerous,” “growth of the mind,” “spiritual”

Regarding the perception that “spirituality is dangerous” and the topic of “growth of the heart,” some insights can be seen from a spiritual perspective.

“Growth of the soul”—as I have discussed many times on this blog—refers to the idea that the growth of knowledge is made up of each individual “realization,” and similarly, the growth of the heart, or “spiritual development,” is also built upon each individual realization from the heart.

When one’s spiritual development is high, one’s presence and influence increase in a meaningful way, the creative power to enrich others’ hearts grows, and the broader the awareness from these realizations, the wider one’s perspective on things becomes. This is not a complicated concept; it is, in essence, about maturing spiritually.

Conversely, when one’s spiritual development is low, one’s presence and influence are weaker in a meaningful sense, and one tends to prioritize satisfying one’s own heart over enriching others’. With fewer realizations from the heart, one’s perspective on things tends to be narrower. This is similarly not a complicated idea—it is a spiritual form of immaturity.

In other words, when spiritual development is low, the narrowness of perspective makes it more difficult for a person to gain “awareness” of spiritual values.

In modern times, especially in Japan, people tend to place little value on the state of the heart, and those with low spiritual development appear more frequently.

This tendency is particularly noticeable among young people, where expressing thoughts that differ from the surrounding values can make one feel isolated or avoided.

“Spiritual” is “dangerous,” and the inevitable reason why

There is an inevitable reason why “spirituality” is often perceived as “dangerous.”

In Japan, after the defeat in the war, there arose the idea that the reason people were sent to fight was rooted in the education system. This led to the emergence of many left-leaning teachers who avoided instilling moral and ethical values in students’ hearts.

While Japanese education does include lessons on morals, these teachings are not emphasized strongly as valuable principles.

During the era of student movements, radical communists committed acts such as murder and hijacking, which created a general sentiment that participating in student activism itself was undesirable.

The incidents caused by the Aum Shinrikyo cult also fostered a view that engaging with religion itself was problematic, further weakening the societal value placed on considering the state of one’s heart.

Although people’s values are, in principle, free, spiritual growth—“growth of the soul”—and each realization from the heart are absolute laws in the natural world, with no alternative methods.

In Western countries, spiritual values are generally accepted and incorporated into daily life. However, in Japan, where many people view “spirituality” as “dangerous,” this reflects a spiritually immature or childlike mindset, revealing a potentially problematic aspect of society.