Scoping the idea of spirituality
Some Indian traditions define spirituality (Sanskrit: adhyatma) as that which pertains to the self or soul (Sanskrit: atman).
Certain forms of spirituality can appear more like philosophy: note in particular the scope of metaphysics. And Ursula King writes: “… spirituality is now understood anthropologically as an exploration into what is involved in becoming fully human”.[1]
Due to the broad scope and personal nature of spirituality as a term in various usages, however, one can perhaps gain an overview of the field by focusing on key concepts that arise when people describe what spirituality means to them. Research by Martsolf and Mickley[2] highlighted the following areas as worthy of consideration:
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- Meaning – significance of life; making sense of situations; deriving purpose.
- Values – beliefs, standards and ethics that one cherishes.
- Transcendence – experience, awareness, and appreciation of a “transcendent dimension” to life beyond self.
- Connecting – increased awareness of a connection with self, others, God/Spirit/Divinity, and nature/Nature.
- Becoming – an unfolding of life that calls for reflection and experience; including a sense of who one “is” and how one knows.
The American magazine What is Enlightenment?, in its tenth anniversary issue, published an article which drew a distinction between what it called “feel good” or “translational” spirituality, and “transformational” spirituality, the former covering essentially the practices whereby a person feels better or changes approach, without in fact enhancing personal underlying spiritual centering (or ego-related viewpoint).
Osho, a controversial Indian teacher, comments of spiritual teachers that “[o]ut of one hundred masters, there is only one Master, ninety-nine are only teachers. The teacher is necessarily learned, the Master … it is not a necessity… The Master is a rebel. he lives out of his own being, he is spontaneous, not traditional…”[3]
The spiritual and the religious
An important distinction exists between spirituality in religion and spirituality as opposed to religion.
In recent years, spirituality in religion often carries connotations of a believer having a faith more personal, less dogmatic, more open to new ideas and myriad influences, and more pluralistic than the doctrinal/dogmatic faiths of mature religions. It also can connote the nature of believers’ personal relationship or “connection” with their god(s) or belief-system(s), as opposed to the general relationship with a Deity as shared by all members of a given faith.
Those who speak of spirituality as opposed to religion generally meta-religiously believe in the existence of many “spiritual paths” and deny any objective truth about the best path to follow. Rather, adherents of this definition of the term emphasize the importance of finding one’s own path to whatever-god-there-is, rather than following what others say works. In summary: the path which makes the most coherent sense becomes the correct one (for oneself).
Many adherents of orthodox religions who regard spirituality as an aspect of their religious experience tend to contrast spirituality with secular “worldliness” rather than with the ritual expression of their religion.
People of a more New-Age disposition tend to regard spirituality not as religion per se, but as the active and vital connection to a force/power/energy, spirit, or sense of the deep self. As cultural historian and yogi William Irwin Thompson (1938 – ) put it, “Religion is not identical with spirituality; rather religion is the form spirituality takes in civilization.” (1981, 103)
For a religious parallel to the approach whereby some see spirituality in everything, compare pantheism.
Directed spirituality
“Being spiritual” may aim toward:
- simultaneously improving one’s wisdom and willpower
- achieving a closer connection to Deity/the universe
- removing illusions or “false ideas” at the sensory, feeling and thinking aspects of a person.
Plato‘s allegory of the cave in book VII of The Republic gives one of the best-known descriptions of the spiritual development process, and may provide an aid in understanding what “spiritual development” exactly entails.
Spirituality can comprise both inner growth, changing oneself as one changes one’s relationship with the external universe, and the outer process of transforming the physical reality around oneself as a result of the inward change.[citations needed] Some authorities connect the two, suggesting that outer change arises through the inner realization that all is oneself; whereupon the divine inward manifests the diverse outward for experience and progress.[citation needed]
Spirituality and personal well-being
Spirituality, according to most adherents of the idea, forms an essential part of an individual’s holistic health and well-being. In this respect, some supporters of the idea of spirituality see it as a supportive concept even in workplace environments.[citation needed]
Spirituality and science
Analysis of spiritual qualities in science faces problems — such as the imprecision of spiritual concepts, the subjectivity of spiritual experience, and the amount of work required to translate and map observable components of a spiritual system into empirical evidence.
Opposition
Science takes as its basis empirical, repeatable observations of the natural world, and thus generally regards ideas that rely on supernatural forces for an explanation as beyond the purview of science. Scientists regard ideas which present themselves as scientific, but which rely on a supernatural force for an explanation, as religious rather than scientific; and may label such ideas as pseudo-science. In this context scientists may oppose spirituality, at least in the scientific sphere.
Integration
New Age physicist-philosopher Fritjof Capra has articulated connections between what he sees as the spiritual consequences of quantum physics.[citation needed] Ken Wilber, in an attempt to unite science and spirituality, has proposed an “Integral Theory of Consciousness”.[4]
Ervin László posits a field of information as the substance of the cosmos. Using the Sanskrit and Vedic term for “space“, akasha, he calls this information-field the “Akashic field” or “A-field”. He posits the “quantum vacuum” (see Vacuum state) as the fundamental energy- and information-carrying field that informs not just the current universe, but all universes past and present (collectively, the “Metaverse“).
History of spirituality
Until recent centuries, the history of spirituality remained bound up within the history of religion.[citation needed] Spiritual innovators who operated within the context of a religious tradition became either marginalised/suppressed as heretics or separated out as schismatics. In these circumstances, anthropologists generally treat so-called “spiritual” practices such as shamanism in the sphere of the religious, and class even non-traditional activities such as those of Robespierre’s Cult of the Supreme Being in the province of religion.
Eighteenth-century Enlightenment thinkers, often opposed to clericalism and skeptical of religion, sometimes came to express their more emotional responses to the world under the rubric of “the Sublime” rather than discussing “spirituality”. The spread of the ideas of modernity began to diminish the role of religion in society and in popular thought.
Schmidt sees Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) as a pioneer of the idea of spirituality as a distinct field.[5] Phineas Quimby (1802-1866) and New Thought played a role in emphasizing the spiritual in new ways within Christian church traditions during the 19th century.
In the wake of the Nietzschean concept of the “death of God” in 1882, people unpersuaded by scientific rationalism turned increasingly to the idea of spirituality as an alternative both to materialism and to traditional religious dogma.
Important early 20th century writers who studied the phenomenon of spirituality include William James (The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)) and Rudolph Otto (especially The Idea of the Holy (1917)).
The distinction between the spiritual and the religious became more common in the popular mind during the late 20th century with the rise of secularism and the advent of the New Age movement. Paul Heelas noted the development within New Age circles of what he called “seminar spirituality” [6]: structured offerings complementing consumer choice with spiritual options.
The study of spirituality
Many spiritual traditions promote courses of study in spirituality which happen to culminate in the unflowering of their own world-view systems or practices.
More generally, building on both the Western esoteric tradition and theosophy,[7] Rudolf Steiner and others in the anthroposophic tradition have attempted to apply systematic methodology to the study of spiritual phenomena.[8] This enterprise does not attempt to redefine natural science, but to explore inner experience — especially our thinking — with the same rigor that we apply to outer (sensory) experience.
Overall, scholars in disciplines such as theology, religious studies, psychology, anthropology and sociology sometimes concentrate their researches on spirituality, but the field remains ill-defined.
