"I’m not into religion, but I am into spirituality." How often do we hear this sentiment these days? Quite often. And with good reason. There seems to be something wrong about "religion" in many people’s minds, especially among those who consider themselves "truth seekers." Religion seems to be too formalized, too dogmatic, too "set in its ways." Most religious liberals and some Humanists are trying to keep the word "religion" as something to be esteemed. Robert Green Ingersoll looked forward to "Secularism: the religion of humanity." Thomas Paine said "To do good is my religion." Bertrand Russell, on the other hand, was ready to put religion among the bad guys, writing on the "harm that religion has done mankind." People who are "into spirituality" agree here, but find Bertrand Russell a little too dry for their tastes. The matter is not simple.

Is there anything wrong with a "truth seeker" being "into spirituality"? It depends on what you mean by "spirituality," and that is what I want to explore here. Let’s face it: the concept is very nebulous. (If the root of "spirit" is "breath," and the root of "nebulous" is "cloud," we shouldn’t be too surprised at this. As some cynics would say, it is all "airy fairy.") I shall lay out three distinct aspects of "spirituality," one of which, a part of natural spirituality, I welcome; the two others which I cannot accept are major themes of supernaturalism. Whether the three areas I explore cover all that is important about "spirituality" remains to be seen; reader response is always welcome.

The first aspect I wish to discuss, the one I find welcome in my life, is a general sense of awe, wonder, and appreciation. The world as we see it naturally, and as we explore it with the instruments and disciplines of science, is indeed a wondrous place. We human beings are gifted with a sense of awe, amazement, even fear as a reaction to the natural processes and, for that matter, to each other.

(One kind of setting that provokes awe in me is to be in the interior of a very large enclosed space, perhaps open to the sky. An example is the foot of Bridalveil Fall in Yosemite Valley; another is the Mist Trail that goes by Vernal Fall a few miles east of Bridalveil. There are man-made "places of wonder," too: the Hyatt Hotel near the Ferry Building in downtown San Francisco (and other hotels with similar architectural models); a view from the mezzanine of the Field Museum in Chicago (magnificent! it really takes your breath away); and let us not forget the cathedrals. Oh, yes, those builders knew what they were doing.)

Some people are afraid that science may take that away from us. By explaining what heretofore seemed mysterious, science has seemed to be at war with mystery itself. And here perhaps we get to the heart of the matter. We are faced with something that is much grander than we are, and there are important things that we don’t know about it. Is it a puzzle or a mystery? You see, besides awe, we are also gifted with curiosity, another aspect of our spirituality. Our awe would consider the wonder to be a mystery; our curiosity would rather treat it as a puzzle. We have solved many awesome puzzles through science, and it is this success that leads some to doubt the existence of true mysteries. And what, after all, is a true mystery? All sides agree that this question must remain unanswered: those who believe that there are no true mysteries will say that the answer has no content, while the "believers" in mysteries would say, "If we knew what it was, it wouldn’t be a true mystery." Since we will never be omniscient, even those who claim that there are no real mysteries, only puzzles, will readily admit that not all puzzles will be solved or are solvable. The one who is "into spirituality" will add, "and there is something very special about that."

This article cannot cover all the richness of natural spirituality. There is far more (for example, sex and music). Supernatural spirituality, which I do not accept, has two major themes.

The first of these is the concept of God, often brought in by language that doesn’t use the G word but gets at the idea in some other way. Commonly, religious people will use the G word, while "spiritual" people find their own language. (Native Americans are said to speak of "The Great Spirit"; the Masons, who are Deists, not Christians, speak of "The Grand Architect of the Universe." Andrew J. Galambos spoke of "the source of natural phenomena." The Quakers speak of "the inward Light.") The basic idea is that the "spiritual" people look at the world and ask, with the singer Peggy Lee, "Is that all there is?" They reply, "No, there’s got to be more to it than that." I can look at the world and say, "This is it! This is my home. I need look no further." Many people, however, cannot. There’s an itch, a sense of insistence on something more. An attitude more closely associated with religious people is some well-formed or vague expression of the argument from design: "Oh, come on. Don’t tell me all this just happened! There’s got to be somebody behind it all. There’s just too much structure, too much order, to say that it came about without a guiding hand of some kind." The more "spiritual" may remain unconvinced by the argument from design but still feel the need for something behind the scene, something or someone off-stage, so to speak. And so the God-concept lingers.

The other aspect of spirituality that I find unwelcome is the idea of the post-mortem survival of the ego(*). Common to most but not all religions, it is the insistence that we have an afterlife of some sort. The Christians and some Jews speak of Heaven and Hell, perhaps with various names; the Hindus speak of reincarnation, an endless recycling of the "soul" or whatever it is that survives death. These are the two main models. Spiritualism claims that communication with the dead is possible, and its model is not clearly one or the other, but has a suggestion of a temporary condition for the soul that can still communicate with the living, usually an unpleasant condition, an unresolved conflict. (I speak here of the spiritualism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries; some people, ignorant of that movement, label as "spiritualism" some aspects of what is now called "spirituality.")

The religions, as you would expect, have definite models, made more specific over time by tradition. Those who consider themselves "spiritual" but not "religious" will invent their own model, borrow from other models, maybe do a mix-and-match. Here indeed is an area of freedom of thought and expression.

But why can’t I buy into this? I answer the question with a question: What are we? What evidence is there for the dualistic idea of the soul and body as two separate, or separable, entities coexisting and mysteriously interacting in a living person? As we learn more about the mind, the emotions and aspects of what has traditionally been called the soul, evidence accumulates that the soul can be damaged, can change, can diminish, while a person is still living. These changes are linked to changes, usually injury or disease, that are observable in the brain. Since we know that the brain ceases to function when a person dies, we "unbelievers" doubt that there is anything left to "transmigrate."

I am not alone in doubting the post-mortem survival of the ego. Albert Einstein, dismissing God as Judge, added, "Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism." Thomas Edison said, "I cannot believe in the immortality of the soul . . . No, all this talk of an existence for us, as individuals, beyond the grave is wrong. It is born of our tenacity of life — our desire to go on living — our dread of coming to an end." We even find in the Bible, in the Book of Ecclesiastes, these words: "But he who is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward . . ."

And there you have one unbeliever’s take on spirituality.

 

* Footnote: Some "spiritual" people will balk at the word "ego," preferring "self," as they associate "ego" with some sort of narrow selfishness. I don’t use the word that way. I use it more in the Freudian sense, as a synonym for "I." I’m content to admit that the whole human being as an organism is far more than what the conscious mind is aware of or controls. But models of the afterlife stress that "I" survive in some way. "I" will enjoy heavenly bliss or hellish torment, or "I," Bridey Murphy, will be reincarnated as an American woman. If there’s no "I" here, the whole issue is pointless. So I insist that "ego," not "self," is the proper word to use in discussions of this kind.

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