Swimming the Sacred River

To my mind, there is no such objective thing as essence, at least in the sense of a soul, genius, augoeides, higher self, or other non-corporeal form of self-being. In relation to this, I also do not recognize different spiritual states. By that, I mean that any experience of a “spiritual state” is a purely psychological phenomenon. This is not a bad thing at all; in fact, I am a big proponent of seeking such experiences. But they are purely subjective—no one is “more spiritual” than another person in any essential, objective sense.

There is a reason I put these two things together, spiritual states and essence. Religious transformations have not been shown to change the fundamental nature of people—such experiences can often change things like attitudes, aims, and beliefs, but not personal capabilities, bio-psycho functioning (with a caveat given below), or personality (a la the Big Five). Rather, such transformations often are aimed not at the biopsychosocial self but at one’s essential self, frequently in terms of being “born again,” “initiated,” or “attained.” The idea of attaining to objective spiritual states is an ancient one, although it takes a good number of forms, depending on the model one is working within. It’s useful to remember that those models are all manmade.

To our knowledge, humans are unique in that we have intentionality. We possess both self-awareness and the ability to make choices within a range of action possibilities. It is a gift of the most recent addition to our big brains, the neocortex, the outer rind of neurons that, among other things, allows for judgment, reasoning, and language. We take all this for granted, of course, but it is truly astounding—math, art, science, music, architecture, poetry, engineering, sports—these are all unique to homo sapiens.

Religion

Another major product of our neocortex is religion. It is arguable that religion was really just the earliest form of natural science, using available data and human reason to explain and predict various phenomena, such as seasonal changes or various illnesses. It has been a long strange trip from that point to modern religion. Although some religious movements still try to explain the physical world (such as the many Christians who use the Bible to determine the age of the Earth), most have moved into the more abstract domains, such as morality, transcendence, and the afterlife.

While my posts thus far have focused on a philosophical framework for spirituality, it is important to understand that such constructs are not the meat of a religious life. Ultimately, what makes a path spiritual or religious is the experience of it as such. As Jennifer Dornan (2004) writes, “the symbols and abstract ideas of a religion do not have the social force of belief unless there is some performative, experiential aspect to provide meaning and import to those symbols.” At the same time, such experiences have little intrinsic meaning until interpreted in the light of some established philosophy or ideology, and this dynamic dance is the engine behind the countless number of religious systems in the world. With this in mind, let’s begin to explore the world of religious experience.

So far, we have briefly examined two of three pillars of a developing spiritual orientation—Religious Naturalism and Allegoricalism. The final pillar is Progressivism.

In a very general sense, progressivism is a worldview that recognizes the worth of human life and seeks to maximize freedom, opportunity, and fairness in society. Further, it aspires towards improving the well-being of all—via education, the arts, technology, social justice, health care, economic opportunity, et cetera—while also balancing human interests with those of the natural world. A progressive vision, therefore, seeks to enhance the liberty and fulfillment of both individuals and groups while simultaneously cultivating social responsibility and environmental stewardship. Progressives seek to manifest this vision through the promotion of diversity, empathy, pragmatism, critical thinking and debate, innovation, and cultural participation.

I have three statues of Ganesha in my home, despite not believing in his objective existence. Although I take delight in their artistic beauty, that is not why I have them (or not the only reason I have them, anyway). They act as a kind of cognitive/emotional shorthand, or more precisely, a symbol of things that I consider sacred. The statues themselves are not sacred—they are lovely configurations of common metal—but the concepts that Ganesha represent are. And they are sacred for one simple reason: I choose for them to be, and having their physical analogs in my living space connects me with them in a meaningful way.

Wikipedia has a good article on Religious Naturalism. I mention this because that pretty much describes me. The basic definition states,

All forms of Religious Naturalism agree that the natural world must be placed at the center of our most significant experiences and understandings. [...] Religious Naturalists affirm the human need for meaning and value in our lives, drawing on two fundamental convictions in those quests: 1) the sense of nature’s richness, spectacular complexity and fecundity and 2) the recognition that nature is not only the realm in which we live out our lives, but that we and who we are – our physical bodies, our amazing brains with their capacity for human sensibilities and understanding, and even our predisposition to be religious – are actually part of nature.