One thing that has always struck me is that when it comes to issues of religion and spirituality everyone thinks they can pontificate without any actual study of the issues! Or, they remain within the realm of a child's education on the issues. This section will lead you through, in a simple manner, some of the issues involved, and will leave you with a beginning grasp of how to understand religion and spirituality in a way that I am sure will make sense to you. For those of you who think that religious talk is nonsense, you will begin to discover how it actually makes sense, and discusses aspects of experience that are yours simply because you are a human being! The religions make sense. They are not fantasy. They are not just imaginative thinking. They are not just neurotic compensations or opiates of the masses.
The main problem in the attempt to make sense of the religo-spiritual aspects of human being is quite simple: We don't know what we're talking about! For every person you ask to define "spirituality" you will get as many answers. What do you think of when Many of us simply don't know what it could mean.There is a rather severe problem having to do with definition of terms.
"It is necessary to recognize that all the great classical problems of the psychology of religion that were formulated fifty to one hundred years ago are still with us. ...here is the basic weakness. Theoretically, the psychology of religion is poorly organized. Dittes (1969) noted a decade and a half ago that the main problem of the psychology of religion is a lack of theoretical specification."
This problem is still very much with us. In a recent (1990) dissertation
"...the professional counseling community does not seem to have a conception of the "spiritual" which is not grounded in a specific religion or that is consistent with any major counseling theory. If the professional community is to make sense of these developments and reintegrate a spiritual component into professional counseling and psychology, an outline for separating the wheat of the genuinely spiritual from the chaff of the sensational, merely popular, or downright fraudulent is needed."
My own research into what one presumes is the most up-to-date and academically valid writings on the subject has confirmed these statements. We have little, if any, contemporary sense of the religio-spiritual outside of particular theologies. That is, we are unable to identify the religio-spiritual as specifically human. More often than not, it is confused with aspects of psychology such as relaxation or self-esteem.
So, our first step is to figure out why we no longer have a useful understanding of "spirituality". As we look at this issue we will gain some knowledge that will aid us in our attempt to define "spirituality" in a way that is useful to contemporary people. We are going to have to do two things at this point: talk about science, and look at some trends that began in the 1600s.
ISAAC NEWTON
So, the story goes, Isaac Newton was just sittin' under a tree when BONK! he gets hit on the head with an apple. YIKES! Isaac has a massive insight into reality!
Newton
realized that the world is predictable. That things happen the same way over
and over again. He figured out that there are certain rules or laws that determine
how the world works. The world is made up of millions of parts (such as apples,
trees, oceans) that all fit together--just like the parts of a machine!
Big deal you say. Well, if you were living 300-400 years ago it would have been a very big deal. You see, before Newton people did not see the world as very predictable. It was a big, scary, dirty, smelly place where anything could happen at any time. You would feel kind of like today's random drive-by shootings might make you feel--a bit paranoid.
Newton though, discovered that the world is predictable. For instance: if you have an object that is at rest it will not move unless some other object starts it moving. No big deal? It is if you were always afraid that the object might jump up of its own accord and rip your face off! If we can understand the mechanics of how objects move (such as a water wheel) then, in theory, we should be able to understand the mechanics of the entire universe! Then we won't have to be afraid of things unpredictably jumping at us. Because of Newton we have planes, stereos, cars, refrigerators and all sorts of appliances, not to mention the modern medical science that saves your life. You see, once we saw that reality was a giant machine we realized we could take parts and put them together in new ways that helped and entertained us. We realized that our bodies are like machines so we can replace its parts as well. How creative!
Isaac Newton's discovery was so important and earth-shaking that I bet everyone who ever reads this book has at least heard of him. What was it exactly that Newton did? Well, we have to jump back again to our own century and a person named Thomas Kuhn who wrote a book called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Newton's work began a scientific revolution.
PARADIGMS
There are two major misconceptions about science. 1) People tend to think of science as some huge, scary, gigantic thing. Actually, it is really very simple. Science is nothing more than disciplined observation of anything that happens. "Anything that happens" is called a phenomenon. A "methodology" are the tools we use to discipline our observations of phenomenon (i.e. "scientific methods"). 2) Science gives us certain, indubitable, firm, precise knowledge. No, it doesn't. This is what Kuhn's book is about.
Kuhn gives us the idea of a "paradigm". A paradigm is a central, unifying insight that then orients how we understand things. What Newton did was initiate a change in paradigms. Newton's central insight is that everything is like a machine. Newton gave us the mechanistic paradigm. This mechanistic paradigm then became the central insight that guided subsequent disciplined observations of phenomenon--science as we know it. When a scientist decides to observe some phenomenon he or she will approach the phenomenon with the understanding that it will be similar in its actions to a machine. Hundreds of years after Newton the mechanistic paradigm guides not only scientific understanding, but imbues popular understanding as well. For instance, way back when I was in eighth grade a friend of mine did a project comparing the human body to a V-8 engine. Each body part, the function of each organ, had a corresponding part with a similar function in the engine. You can't get a much more mechanistic understanding of the phenomenon that is the human body than that!
According to Kuhn the paradigm under which we operate will determine not only how we understand things, but our choice of which things to observe, and our development of methods and tools that will aid our observation. Here is the key: change the paradigm under which you operate and you will change not only how you understand what it is you are observing, but you will also change what objects you choose to observe as well as the methods and tools you use to help discipline your observation. Science does not give us knowledge in the strict sense of the word. Science gives us a particular understanding of the world from within a particular paradigm--and paradigms change!
The paradigm before Newton was a paradigm that saw things in terms of magic and superstition. Here is an example that will help illustrate the switch from a superstitious paradigm that believes in magic to a mechanistic paradigm. Picture a volcano. Now, let us suppose we live hundreds of years before Newton. The volcano is just something that happens in the world (well, a very dramatic something!). It is a phenomenon. When we observe the volcano we see the eruptions, the destruction from the lava. We hear the explosions and smell the fumes. These times, we observe, happen every once in a while. The eruptions tend to take us by surprise. How do we understand what it is we observe? We say that the volcano is a god. Perhaps we throw virgins or other things we value into the volcano to keep the god happy. We today know that this is superstitious. Back then it was good science. We today understand our observations of the volcano in terms of geology and plate tectonics. The volcano hasn't changed. We observe the exact same thing as the people of the past. However, thanks to Newton, the methods we use to discipline our observations have changed. The paradigm we use to develop methods and tools of observation has changed. Today the volcano is similar to a machine. Rather than bow down to it in worship, we fly over it with cameras and instruments of measurement.
So. Now we have an idea of what Newton did: initiate a change in paradigms. A paradigm determines, in many ways, not only what we understand, but how we understand it.
DESCARTES
Back we go to the 1600s. People such as Galileo and Francis Bacon were creating quite a stir as they began to discover mechanistic patterns in what they observed. One such person was Rene Descartes. Descartes is the one who said "I think, therefore I am". Like Newton, Descartes is so significant that most of us have heard of him. You see, what Descartes did was to take this new mechanistic view that led to Newton's discovery that reality is like a machine and apply it to human beings.
Now
remember, this is a time of paradigm change. Both Newton and Descartes were
still very much a part of the old superstitious paradigm. The world was still
very much inhabited with spirits, gods, magic and especially the Jewish-Christian
God. Newton was not an egghead scientist in a sterile lab. He was more often
than not reading his horoscope, so to speak. He really dug things like astrology
and alchemy which are, of course, magical and superstitious (obviously, the
old paradigm has still not been completely dispensed with!).
People have always distinguished the human being as something special--as something distinct, especially distinct from other animals. This distinction produces a basic division between the natural realm and the human realm. Newton applied his discoveries to the natural realm. It was Descartes who took Newton's ideas and began to apply them to the distinctively human realm.
When Descartes used Newtonian type ideas to discipline his observation of himself and other people he came up with some ideas that would prove to be very, very important to us. Well, let's jump briefly back into our own century. Do you know the singer Sting? When he was with the Police they had an album called "Ghost in a Machine". Guess where they got that familiar phrase from. That's right! Rene Descartes!
Descartes kind of "took apart" the human being like you might take apart a machine. He decided that the human was made up of two basic parts: the soul and the body. Descartes very much believed in the Christian understanding of God that was in vogue at the time and so he understood the soul as something that came from God and kind of animated the machine-like body. Descartes compared the natural world as being like a watch. God was the watchmaker.
People had always had some sense of themselves as being made up of two substances: the body and whatever it was that seemed to leave the body at death. Descartes reinforced this understanding and updated it. Quite obviously, his "soul and body", his "ghost in a machine" is our current "mind and body" way of understanding ourselves. Oh oh! Isn't that the model of the human we said we were not going to use?!
DILTHEY
The whole mechanistic paradigm thing was very exciting to a lot of people. However, even at the beginning of the paradigm shift, there were some grumblings of discontent. A gentleman named William Dilthey was saying that the new way, the new method of observing things was great--for the natural realm. Dilthey thought that the new-fangled "scientific method" would not work for the distinctively human realm. He was correct, but ignored. People were just too damn excited. During the period of the American revolution people were actually trying to come up with a mathematics of things such as love, justice and happiness. "You see," they thought, "if we can take all the parts that make up justice, such as "common good", "individual rights", "responsibility", "being wronged" and so on, we will be able to come up with a predictable formula for justice." Just like putting different parts together to build a machine. (Haven't you heard of the wheels of justice?!) The best we come up with in reality is a legal machine, which is not the same as justice. Of course, people have stopped trying to figure out a mathematical formula for such distinctively human phenomenon as justice or happiness. They have not, however, stopped functioning from within the mechanistic paradigm.
Dilthey was correct back then. The mechanistic paradigm, the "experimental method" that develops out of it, is great for the natural realm, useful for some aspects of the subjective and social realms, but is almost useless for the spiritual realm.
And now we are in a position to understand how and why spirituality has atrophied to a point where we don't even know what the word means anymore.
SPIRITUAL ATROPHY
OK. Let's see where we are:
1) We always organize and understand our experience of life and reality through the filter of a paradigm. A paradigm will help determine what we observe and what tools we use to discipline our observation. Paradigms change.
2) Because of this science is not understood as something that gives us knowledge (in a strict sense), but gives us an understanding of phenomenon (such as a volcano) from within the paradigm being used.
3) We have inherited a mechanistic paradigm. This means that organized science and individuals will tend to organize and understand life and reality as being similar to a machine. Life and reality will always follow some sort of mechanistic rule or law.
4) The mechanistic paradigm developed out of the observations of natural phenomenon made by people such as Newton, Galileo, Bacon and Descartes. Descartes applied Newtonian-type methods to human phenomenon.
5) The mechanistic paradigm is wonderfully effective for natural phenomenon, but does not work as well (and in some cases not at all) for many aspects of human phenomenon such as happiness or justice.
So, given all this it is relatively easy to understand why we no longer have a clear understanding of what the word "spirituality" could possibly pertain to. How our bodies work is mechanistic. How we feel inside and how we deal with each other is partly mechanistic. Spirituality is non-mechanistic!
The mechanistic paradigm is astoundingly successful. It is why we have stereos, cars, modern medicine and other wonderful developments. However, over the course of centuries between Newton's time and our time we seem to have become so enraptured of these benefits that the phenomenon that cannot be understood through the filter of the mechanistic paradigm became increasingly ignored. What has happened is familiar to us as the idea that our technology has outstripped our morality. We have developed the mechanistic technology (natural realm) to destroy the world, but have not developed the social skills (human realm) that would make the use of such technology truly unthinkable. Coming at this from another angle we have the technology to feed the world (natural realm), but we don't use it (human realm).
Over the centuries, as scientists used methods developed out of the mechanistic paradigm, the phenomenon that could not be observed in a disciplined way using those methods became increasingly not real. In fact, a group of people called "logical positivists" claimed that much talk of the human realm was, in fact, nonsense. If you said "I believe in God" these scientists would claim that such a statement would have as much meaning as the statement "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously".
The other side to this development was a tendency towards reductionism. We still see this today. That is, if there is a phenomenon that is partly non-mechanistic we will reduce our understanding of it so that it can fit within the mechanistic paradigm. This is obvious in medical science and especially among many psychiatrists who would love to reduce human consciousness to the natural area of life by talking only about neurochemical interactions.
So what happened to spirituality? It doesn't exist! It was only a fantasy--a mistaken observation--from the old superstitious paradigm. You see, because spirituality is non-mechanistic it could not be observed or "seen" using the tools and methods developed out of the mechanistic paradigm. For many, there wasn't even any point in discussing the issue. And so spirituality atrophied to the point where we don't even know what the word means, or if it means anything at all.