Universal Spirituality

Whether in Australia, China, Egypt, France or any other country, the practice of science is essentially the same. There is one, universal science. Nothing parochial about it.

Not so for spirituality. There are many traditions each with a different outlook on the nature and ends of their practice. Further, these traditions are embedded in religions that are even more diverse in their methods and beliefs.  

Over the years, the Spiritual Naturalist Society has published articles from secular Buddhists, Taoists, Christians, Pagans and Jews, as well as Stoics and other forms of spirituality based on philosophy or psychology. In their orthodox form, these traditions have little in common. However, as these articles show, when secularized they actually have a lot in common. 

In the past, both others and myself have posted here about the difference between religion and spirituality.(1) While many differences have been listed, here I will note just one: belief is important to religion but experience is central to spirituality. 

The secularized form of a religion like Buddhism or any other others listed above focuses on a core experience that inspired the founders of these traditions while disregarding many, if not all, of the beliefs. Most religions are embedded in elaborate mythologies. When secularized these myths, which the orthodox often take literally, are regards as myths. (I don’t really like the word “secularized” as I’m using it here, but I’m not able to come up with a better one. While the term secular is often used as an antonym for both religion and spirituality, as used here it is only in opposition to supernatural belief.)

This attitude towards the myths of religion is not just a modern viewpoint. Many prominent saints and mystics of old held this attitude. Meister Eckhart, for example, wrote: “Why dost thou prate of God? Whatever thou sayest of Him is untrue.” A statement to silence any dogmatism. He also wrote: “This then is salvation – when we marvel at the beauty of created things and praise their beautiful Creator.” If we define “God” or “Creator” as the great mystery behind the fact of this cosmos, a naturalist shouldn’t have trouble saying “amen” to either of these. 

Towards a Universal Spirituality
The religions of the world are based on highly diverse and often incompatible systems of belief. When we move from belief to experience, however, things become simpler.

The belief that all the world’s religions in their inner teachings are informed by a common spiritual experience has been called the perennial wisdom or perennial philosophy. This term is perhaps most associated with Aldous Huxley who wrote a book titled The Perennial Philosophy. The term, however, also applies to many others, including a rather diverse group of 20th century theologians and thinkers that include Rene Guenon, Frithjof Schuon, Ananda Coomaraswamy, Titus Burckhardt and Marco Pallis.  With the exception of Pallis, these are not writers I would recommend to a spiritual naturalist, as they tend to be somewhat hostile to naturalism (as it was understood in their time). But they are writers who often express deep insights into the universal aspects of spirituality.

The writer and translator, Stephen Mitchell, is a particularly good example of a living proponent of the perennial wisdom. His two collections The Contemplative Heart: an Anthology of Sacred Poetry and The Contemplative Mind: an Anthology of Sacred Prose aptly express its essence.  

I have often used Huxley’s book as a starting point for contemplation, as it contains dozens of excerpts from the writings of sages, mystics and saints from a number of spiritual traditions. Huxley’s book can be criticized in many ways, but I am in agreement with his central conclusion about the perennial philosophy — that the statement Tat Tvan Asi, “Thou Art That,” found in the Chandogya Upanishad, contain its essence. 

What he means by this is that each of the great traditions, in one way or the other, promote the discovery that what each of us most truly is is an otherness. In the theist traditions this otherness is God, in Taoism it is Tao, in Vedanta it is Brahman. For a naturalist, it is often the experience of oneness with Nature. The Philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson provides an often cited example of such an experience:

Standing on the bare ground—my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent Eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. 

In an article I published here a few years ago titled “Being a Brain,” I attempted to show that in this experience of otherness, we can find a place where science and spirituality truly unite.(2) A fundamental tenet of naturalism is that the world operates, without exception, on natural law. A corollary of this is that the human self is a product of natural law. And as modern neuroscience can demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt, the human self is an effect the cause of which is the brain. That may seem like a rather depressing conclusion, but let’s explore it a little further. 

To get from the idea that the world operates on natural law to the idea that the human self is a product of the brain, we have traversed the entire history of the cosmos; from the period when the fundamental parameters of the cosmos first appeared (The Big Bang) through cosmological, geological, biological and finally cultural evolution. 

Those fundamental parameters that rather magically appear at the earliest instant science can fathom had to be largely the way they are for the rest of that evolution to occur. Somehow or other, the universe has conspired to become alive and aware, to gain an inner dimension. We are each that life, that awareness, that inner dimension. We each give the universe eyes and ears, feelings and thoughts. Why this has happened is beyond what we know. Perhaps it is pure chance or perhaps all of it is the result of a primordial potential that the universe has actualized through time. Who knows? Whatever the case, we are here. 

As an aid to survival, biology has provided us with an ego. As survival is a central concern of humans, it is not surprising that most of our behavior is ego driven. But the great spiritual traditions, each in their own way, have discovered that if we can get beyond the ego, which creates a sense of separation between ourselves and both others and the natural world, we can gain the experience of at-one-ment. And this experience, this communion with the beautiful creator/creation, gives us a direct knowledge of that which we most truly are.(3)

In the Emerson quote above he says, “I am part and particle of God.” From my own experience, I would say, “I am part and particle of the Cosmos.” It took the entire genius of the Cosmos to create us. And that the Cosmos has the genius to create us – well, again, there is the great mystery. The mystery of the cosmos and the mystery of being are one and the same mystery. To abide a while in that mystery is to abide in the heights and depths of spirituality.

This is the essence of spirituality as I know and live it. And as Huxley goes to great length to demonstrate in his book, it has also been found by others, across the continents and ages, to be the essence of spirituality. 

There is a great deal more to say about this, but then again there is nothing more worth saying about it at all. The experience is everything and the words but a shadow. So I’ll shut up.

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The Spiritual Naturalist Society works to spread awareness of spiritual naturalism as a way of life, develop its thought and practice, and help bring together like-minded practitioners in fellowship.

SNS strives to include diverse voices within the spectrum of naturalistic spirituality. Authors will vary in their opinions, terms, and outlook. The views of no single author therefore necessarily reflect those of all Spiritual Naturalists or of SNS.
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Notes:

1. For example, Religion and Spirituality, published Aug. 1, 2019
2. Being a Brain, published Sept. 7, 2023
3. In the article Communion, published on June 8, 2017, I develop the idea that “communion,” in some sense of the word, is something many religions have in common.