God is Spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth. These people who worship in spirit and truth do not become God in order to achieve this level or type of worship. They do not require a superior humanity or advanced state of consciousness. They do not require a higher knowledge or mysteries or super saintliness. They worship God who is Spirit in spirit because they are spiritual. Human and spiritual. No contradiction of terms.
Beware the subtle gnosticism that creeps into “spiritual” people’s exaggerations, requiring them to rise to some advanced stage of mystic experience in order to acquire knowledge above that which is available to believers filled with Holy Spirit. Beware the subtle, “we’ve found the key” or “we’ve received the ultimate knowledge” on prayer, freedom, fasting, healing, or power and authority.
Beware the subtle suggestion that we need to experience out of body or separated from the flesh superiority through unusual or exaggerated fasting or prayer. No such exercise or discipline produces advanced spiritual conditions. They substitute for the experiences provided by the Cross and Holy Spirit in ways that distract and substitute, advancing the concept of “higher calling” and christianized gurus of the faith.
The spiritual world is conceived of as being radically different from the material world, co-extensive with the true God, and the true home of certain enlightened members of humanity; thus, these systems were expressive of a feeling of acute alienation within the world, and their resultant aim was to allow the soul to escape the constraints presented by the physical realm.
