Paraphrased (and adapted somewhat) from a wonderful book, The Telling, by Ursula K. Le Guin:
There were no “original” human words for God, gods, or the divine. The bureaucrats who formalized spirituality into “religions” made up words for “God” and installed state or cultural theism when they learned that a concept of deity was more important in the cultures or states they took as models. They saw that religion was a useful tool for those in power. But there was no native theism or deism. The word god, to authentic, original human beings, human beings living in accord with the laws that govern all life and to which human beings are not an exception, was a word without referrent. No capital letters. No creator, only creation. No eternal father to reward and punish, justify injustice, ordain cruelty, offer salvation. Eternity was not an endpoint but a continuity. Primal division of being into material and spirutal existed only as two-as-one, or one in two aspects. There was no hierarchy of Nature and Supernatural. No binary Dark/Light, Evil/Good, or Body/Soul. No afterlife, no rebirth, no immortal disembodied or reincarnated soul. No heavens, no hells. The original human system, the one that resulted in the evolution of the human species from neanderthal to cromagnon to homo erectus to homo sapiens to homo sapiens sapiens [a process which bureaucratic religions all insist was the point at which evolution ended, being no longer necessary, contrary to the principle that in order to progress, to survive, a species must evolve or die] was a spiritual discipline with spiritual goals, but they were exactly the same goals it sought for bodily and ethical well-being. Right action was its own reward. Dharma without karma.
