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On the use of the term ‘spiritual’

September 2, 2014 by Guest author

Another response to the ‘spirituality’ debate, this time from Alan Rogers.

 All religions of whatever variety try to find words which imply virtue and special qualities and which are accepted without question. Politicians do the same. American politicians use ‘America’ and ‘the American people’ in this way, as does Tony Blair use ‘family values’. The word ‘spiritual’ might once have meant simply ‘relationship to God’ but now it is a Humpy Dumpty word which means whatever the speaker wants it to mean. Thus, whenever someone uses the word ‘spiritual’ to me I have to ask, ‘What do you mean by “spiritual”?’

—Dorothy Rowe, world-renowned psychologist and writer

 

Jeremy Rodell of the British Humanist Association wrote an article in August defending the use of the term ‘spiritual’ by an atheist for describing emotional response to a variety of circumstances. I disagree.

Jeremy Rodell cites the experiences of looking at the night sky, seeing a superb mountain vista, being moved by great music and serving an ace in tennis as examples of spiritual experience. I struggle to see what these experiences have in common that requires an umbrella term and, if one must be used, why it should be the highly inappropriate word ‘spiritual’.

I am well aware of these experiences. I live in rural West Wales. We may not have many gin-clear nights but we are spared the far too prevalent phenomenon of light pollution. Looking up into that awe inspiring sight I am acutely aware of a sense of privilege. To be alive and aware at this time and place, to be the beneficiary of over 3 billion years of evolving life, to have received an education which allowed me to read the science which established the scale in space and time of the observable universe, such that I can see and understand what this spectacle means, is a privilege which I have done little or nothing to deserve. Where I live I am surrounded by beautiful scenery and have been fortunate enough to visit some of the greatest landscapes our planet has to offer. I enjoy music. The constructions in the syntax of melody, harmony and orchestration created by the greatest talents of my fellow man are pleasurable, joyous and often moving.  To link these disparate experiences seems to me to be an artificial and unnecessary device. They each affect the senses and the mind in different ways. To name all these experiences with a word like ‘spiritual’ conveys the impression that they are outside human mental processes. In fact there is little evidence of permanence or universality in these things. The night sky was once the source of superstitious fear. Some still follow the idiotic utterances of astrologers. Mountain scenery was, a few centuries ago, regarded as oppressive and ugly. Not until the Romantic movement was established did the appreciation of such landscapes develop. Music too has its fashions. I know this myself since I appreciate virtually nothing written after Elgar and Holst. I simply do not understand the language, the syntax of modern composition.

So I think the need for a universal term is not demonstrated. Worse by far is the choice of ‘spiritual’ for this unnecessary purpose. Let us firstly dispose of the homographs.

The phrase over the pub door ‘licensed to sell wine and spirits’ does not mean that you will necessarily receive spiritual guidance within. The root of the word spiritual is ‘spirit’ with the meaning of a supernatural presence within or without the human body. Inside it is a soul. Outside it is a free soul or a ghost.  The concept of material body and supernatural soul (spirit) is called Cartesian Dualism by philosophers. In 1949 Cartesian Dualism was put to the intellectual sword by the Oxford philosopher Gilbert Ryle in his book The Concept of Mind. He proved methodically that Cartesian Dualism was bunkum. Subsequent research in neuroscience completely vindicates Ryle. The computational theory of mind has removed the need for a supernatural explanation of mind every bit as much as the theory of evolution has removed the need for a supernatural creation of the species. A modern scientific view of mankind is that we have a body including a brain and nervous system and that the mind emerges from the working of these physical components. The mind is what the brain does. We see the placebo effect and the possible benefits of holistic medicine because the body and mind are one integrated system – necessarily, since they evolved together.

The followers of received religion which affirms the possibility of an after-life have no alternative but to suspend disbelief and visualize an immaterial soul which can escape the physical body upon death. They need the concept of spirit and the word ‘spiritual’ in order to sustain this self deception. The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines spiritual as: Of spirit as opposed to matter; of the soul especially as acted upon by God, holy, divine, inspired…. It has recently become very noticeable that religious leaders find the word “religious” inadequate. They refer pompously to “the Religious and Spiritual Life of the Nation”. I think it would be unkind to steal this word from them at a time of their greatest need.

Jeremy Rodell admits that the word is ambiguous. I think that this is due to its use being stretched to breaking point. I will give what I think is an important example later. He quotes the Church of England opposing an atheist or humanist contribution to Thought for the Day and seems to think that, if we can convince the C of E and the BBC that we have ‘spiritual’ experiences, they will graciously allow us to contribute; that we must present our beliefs as quasi-religious. I think that is too high a price to pay for five minutes of air-time. Personally, I would rather we concentrated on getting Thought for the Day renamed as Religious Platitude for the Day.

But the most dangerous result of the use of ‘spiritual’ from my own experience is its use in the NHS. Remarkably Jeremy Rodell quotes the NHS use of this term as a justification for the non-religious use.

The ambiguous use of the word ‘spiritual’ has been seized upon by the College of Health Care Chaplains. Despite the impressive academic name the CHCC is a branch of UNITE the union. This is an example of the trick I mentioned previously of using Religious and Spiritual as a cover, a smoke screen, for justifying the extension of religious interference into a wider sphere than that of the dwindling number of Christian adherents.

As I mentioned earlier I live in Wales. In 2010 the Welsh Government produced a set of documents called Standards for Spiritual Care in the NHS Wales.  In fact the documents were written by the CHCC (in fact mostly copied from the CHCC sister organisation in Scotland) and signed off by the Minister for Health in Wales. These documents contain the following ‘definition’ of spiritual care. From the Standards for Spiritual Care in the NHS Wales 2010 we have an attempt at a definition of spiritual care.

Spiritual Care and Religious Care

The document Service Development for Spiritual Care in the NHS in Wales (2010) differentiated between spiritual care and religious care:

Spiritual Care in usually given in a one to one relationship, is completely person centred and makes no assumptions about personal conviction or life orientation.

Religious Care is given in the context of shared religious beliefs, values, liturgies and life style of a faith community.

Spiritual care is often used as the overall term and is relevant for all. For some the spiritual needs are met by religious care, the visits, prayers, worship, rites and sacraments often provided by a faith leader or representative of the faith community or belief group.

Spiritual care can be provided by all health care staff, by carers, families and other patients. When a person is treated with respect, when they are listened to in a meaningful way, when they are seen and treated as a whole person within the context of their life, values and beliefs, then they are receiving spiritual care. Chaplains are the specialist spiritual care providers.

Notice the sentence within the definition of Religious Care: Spiritual care is often used as the overall term and is relevant for all.

From this point on there is total confusion about these terms Religious Care and Spiritual Care. When we use one do we mean both? In the end there is a further definition following ‘Spiritual care can be provided by all… ‘and the whole thing simply becomes a requirement to be kind and empathetic. This should be in the job description of every health care worker in contact with the public and doesn’t need to be labelled ‘spiritual care’.

If we had only the definition of Religious Care ‘…shared religious beliefs, values, liturgies and life style of a faith community’ and an expression of the need to treat patients with humanity and with empathy then a great deal of the nonsense about ‘spiritual care’ could be eliminated.

In the past four financial years every chaplaincy post funded in the NHS Wales has been held by clerics. Of these 97.4% were for Christian clerics.

The care delivered in this time, at a total cost of over £5 million, has been religious care. I hope the chaplains are kind and empathetic towards all patients that is, or should be, a responsibility for all NHS staff in contact with patients. The chaplains are trained clerics and are in hospitals to provide religious care. The use of the word ‘spiritual’ is obfuscation. We really must not allow ourselves to be a party to this deception.

In the Standards for Spiritual Care Guidance document (2010) the Acknowledgements section is as follows (my comment in square brackets):-

Rosemary Kennedy, Chief Nursing Officer    [A political appointee]

Rev. Peter Sedgewick

Rev. Alan Tyler

Rev. Chris Lewinson

Rev. Peter Gilbert

Rev. Cliff Chonka

Rev. Wynne Roberts

Rev. Edward Lewis

Rev. Robert Lloyd-Richards

Rev. Lance Clark

Imam Farid Khan

Carol English UNITE    [The College of Health Care Chaplains is a branch of UNITE the union]

Steve Sloan    UNITE

You will notice that the Standards for Spiritual Care Guidance have been prepared by clerics (as it happens, exclusively male clerics), their trade union officials and a political appointee of the Welsh Government. I can find no reference to a consultation with the public or with hospital patients. I understand that a letter was sent to the Royal College of Nursing which received a brief, formal reply.

Could it be any clearer that hospital chaplaincy is about delivering religious care and the use of the word ‘spiritual’ is an attempt to justify the use of tax payers’ money for this purpose? That’s what I personally think is going on.

In Wales, we have a Charitable Chaplaincy Campaign intended to save £1.3 million of NHS Wales budget for nursing and medical use by encouraging organised religion to set up a charity to fund this service. I contend that the use of the Humpy Dumpty word ‘spiritual’ by the non-religious muddies the waters, allows it to be used unchallenged by organised religion and obstructs our campaign.

 

Filed Under: Atheism, Comment, Humanism Tagged With: spirituality

A Humanism without the word ‘spirituality’

August 28, 2014 by Guest author

Todd Battistelli makes the case for humanists turning to words other than ‘spirituality’ to describe feelings of wonder and awe.

We all feel wonder from time to time. But should we be mindful not to use language with religious connotations? Photo: Trey Ratcliff

We all feel wonder from time to time. But should we be mindful not to use language with religious connotations? Photo: Trey Ratcliff

I enjoyed reading Saif Rahman and Jeremy Rodell’s essays on spirituality. Even though I don’t use the term spirituality myself, I share their appreciation of our deepest experiences. Non-humanists can stereotype our worldview as coldly rational, but humanism has long embraced the insight that reason and emotion depend on each other.

The IHEU Amsterdam Declaration describes this interdependence in ‘a lifestance aiming at the maximum possible fulfillment through the cultivation of ethical and creative living and offers an ethical and rational means of addressing the challenges of our time.’ Humanism can movingly describe profundities. While some humanists may choose the word spirituality to do so, others do not, and their choice is informed not by negative associations between spirituality and religion but by the positive associations of alternative words.

There is more to be said about spirituality than I can discuss here. Rodell raises several questions worth exploring: Can humanists be spiritual and/or use the term spiritual? Should humanists use the term? Is spirituality ‘the best word’ to describe our sense of deepest meaning? I will focus on the question of why I do not use the word, but I also want to state up front that humanists can use the term spirituality if they find it appropriate. I do not use it for two reasons. First, using other words helps me clearly communicate my humanism to non-humanists. Second, I find other words more moving.

I approach language from a descriptivist perspective where the most common usage of a word defines its meaning. This isn’t to say that meaning doesn’t change or that people can’t intentionally and successfully work to change a word’s meaning. However, if a word carries one set of connotations for most who hear it, then using the word to mean something different poses a challenge.

When religious people call deep feeling spiritual, they connect it to supernatural or transcendent meaning. I could try to change that meaning, describing a purely naturalist usage for spirituality (after all its root traces back to the word for breath), but such usage conflicts with the way most understand the word.

Instead of departing from this widespread connotation of spirituality, I turn to other words more commonly understood to have secular connotations. Looking to other words also helps head off confusion when spirituality is used to refer to multiple distinct ideas that can be discussed separately (e.g. aspiration, respite, wonder, awe, a sense of connection to the universe and others, etc.).

To give one example, I could speak of the frisson that accompanies Carl Sagan’s ‘we are made of star-stuff’ no matter how many times I think of it. Sagan’s idea speaks to humanity’s primal connection to nature. It is a deeply moving idea, but not, I would say, a spiritual one.

Others would disagree. For them the word spirituality does describe that frisson, and yet others would find the idea of an entirely natural existence abhorrent instead of moving. Such disagreements are part of the challenge of talking across worldviews and traditions. We can see this challenge even within a group such as humanists and our different reactions to the word spirituality. Certain words hold powerful meaning for some while ringing hollow for others.

When my audience attaches supernatural connotations to the word spirituality or uses it to ambiguously refer to multiple ideas, I will use alternatives to explore in detail where we agree and disagree. For instance, by the word mystery do we mean some unknown but potentially knowable element of the cosmos or some supernatural aspect to existence that surpasses any possible understanding?

It’s been my experience that many have trouble accepting that I or any humanist could be authentically satisfied with a wholly naturalist understanding of existence (and satisfied with always having more questions than answers about that existence), but we are. Trying to revise the dominant understanding of spirituality adds another layer of potential misunderstanding.

As for whether using the word spirituality would decrease anti-atheist stigma, I suspect that the prejudice of those like Christina Rees will last for some time no matter the words we use. What will decrease stigma, according to social science research, is more personal interaction with people who identify as atheists.

Sociologist Penny Edgell and her colleagues have found that people reflect more on atheists as an abstract group than on their experience with actual atheists, and that the atheist identity is seen to reject a common morality that has been (incorrectly) linked to belief in deity. Psychologist Will M. Gervais discusses [pdf] how stigma for non-obvious characteristics, like atheism, declines when people believe the stigmatized are more common in society.

This research suggests that the more atheists freely identify as such to their fellow citizens, while at the same time demonstrating their commitment to common values, the more they will help lessen stigma. This should hold true whether or not atheists use the term spiritual. Indeed, a greater diversity of atheist and humanist identities could help even more, conveying how similar we are to our religious neighbors in our own disagreements.

Just as using spirituality isn’t a term used by all atheists, it also doesn’t describe how everyone makes meaning. Rodell quotes the NHS language on ‘spiritual care’ where ‘spirituality’ is ‘looking for meaning in your life.’ The Department of Defense in the United States uses similar language, and, yes, nontheists have asked that that language be changed. A term that has religious connotations for many should not be used by government to describe the meaning making of all.

It is certainly possible to qualify the use of the term and to try to revise its definition, but doing so appeals less to me than using alternatives to spirituality that I find much more compelling. This approach is not solely or even primarily a matter of pragmatic communication. As I have developed as a humanist, the language of explicitly naturalist thinkers has moved me more deeply than those who talk of spirituality. These voices include Sagan and early twentieth century Unitarian humanists such as Arthur Wakefield Slaten and Earl F. Cook and others recorded in the 1927 book Humanist Sermons.

My humanism is neither spiritual nor transcendent. My avoiding the term spirituality comes not from pride or distaste for anything that smacks of religion. My motive is something else altogether: a delight in secular language and ideas. I too have had profound experiences of grandeur, of feeling my small place in the seemingly infinite gulf of space, of fellowship with other people of Earth, and of art that speaks to the core of my being.

These emotions spring from my recognition of the deep interconnectedness of all elements of the universe. From my perspective, there is simply nothing to be transcended. Existence is of one piece counterbalanced only by nonexistence. We live for a short time in a place we know little about, a place indifferent to us and where we alone make our lives meaningful. As Cook puts it more poetically:

‘Although the universe cares not particularly about our morality and our ideals, we must care for them. Upon our shoulders is being carried the ark of life through the wilderness. All the virtues, all there is of goodness, kindliness, courtesy is of our own creation and we must sustain them, otherwise they will go out of existence into darkness, as a star goes out.’

This aspiration to virtue, the promise of helping to build a better world for ourselves and those who come after, urges me forward. It is an aspiration I gladly share as common ground with those who, religious or not, describe it as spiritual so long as they allow me to describe it otherwise as Slaten does:

‘Humanism sets before us a great World-Hope…. Humanism may take away some of the old consolations, but it offers others more convincing…. Our sojourn here becomes a wonder-awakening romance, a pilgrimage through mysteries and marvels, and as we walk together our hearts burn within us.’

However we describe the flame of our burning hearts, it lights the way on our brief journey between oblivions, revealing moments of profound feeling and understanding.


Todd Battistelli is an independent scholar in rhetoric and a freelance writer. He runs the blog Humanism Speaks.

Filed Under: Comment, Humanism Tagged With: spirituality

Spirituality and Humanism

August 19, 2014 by Jeremy Rodell

by Jeremy Rodell

This article is an updated version of talks given to West London Humanists & Secularists and to Westminster Cathedral Interfaith Group, based on an earlier debate on ‘Can humanists be spiritual?’ held by South West London Humanists.

The stunning sight of Mont Blanc, which inspired feelings of the 'sublime' in great writers such as Shelley. Photo: Jean-Raphaël Guillaumin

The stunning sight of Mont Blanc, which inspired feelings of the ‘sublime’ in great writers such as Shelley. Photo: Jean-Raphaël Guillaumin

Many humanists avoid anything to do with spirituality or the spiritual. ‘It’s an ill-defined term’, they say, ‘laden with religious baggage. Not for us.’ I think that’s a mistake. Yes, it is an ambiguous term, and some of the ground it covers is anathema to most humanists. But, whether or not we choose to use these words, they refer to essential elements of our humanity which  should be as much home territory for humanists as for anyone else, including the religious.

Religious spirituality

Here’s an illustration of what humanists don’t like. It’s from St.Paul’s letter to the Romans (8:6-11)[1]:

6 The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. 7 The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. 8 Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.9 You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. 10 But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. 11 And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.

In this Christian view, there are two intertwined realms, the physical and the spiritual. And if you buy the theology, you can overcome death. Islam features a similar idea. It’s an attractive proposition, but one we would say is simply made up. Eastern religions – even Buddhism as actually practiced in many places – often feature a spiritual realm in which gods and other spiritual forces operate. Almost all religions feature miracles, in which the laws of nature are somehow suspended, adjusted or overturned.

Similarly, there’s a huge array of non-religious New Age spirituality, from Reiki to Astrology, which has similar characteristics but without the associated structures and scriptures: a belief in a spiritual realm, or at least the existence of supernatural powers and miraculous or paranormal events – including mini-miracles such as a Reiki massage that does more than a placebo – not governed by the laws of nature. More myth and wishful thinking, we would say.

I’ll call this type of religious and New Age thinking ‘religious spirituality’. It really is ‘not for us’.

 

Experiential spirituality

On the other hand, here’s Andre Comte-Sponville, former Professor of Philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris, from his Book of Atheist Spirituality :

‘The first time it happened I was in the forest in the north of France. I must have been twenty five or twenty six. I had just been hired to teach high-school philosophy in a school on the edge of a canal, up in the fields near the Belgian border. That particular evening, some friends and I had gone for a walk in the forest we liked so much. Night had fallen. We were walking. Gradually our laughter faded, and the conversation died down. Nothing remained but our friendship, our mutual trust and shared presence, the mildness of the night air and of everything around us…My mind empty of thought, I was simply registering the world around me – the darkness of the undergrowth, the incredible luminosity of the sky, the faint sounds of the forest…only making the silence more palpable. And then, all of a sudden…What? Nothing: everything! No words, no meanings, no questions, only – a surprise. Only – this. A seemingly infinite happiness. A seemingly eternal sense of peace. Above me, the starry sky was immense, luminous and unfathomable, and within me there was nothing but the sky, of which I was a part, and the silence, and the light, like a warm hum, and a sense of joy with neither subject nor object …Yes, in the darkness of that night, I contained only the dazzling presence of the All…. 

…’This is what Spinoza meant by eternity’, I said to myself – and naturally, that put an end to it.’

What he’s talking about is an intense human experience. I recognise it because I’ve had one too.  Most religious people, as well as Comte-Sponville himself, as an Atheist, would call this a ‘spiritual experience’. In this example, it’s particularly powerful. But it’s on the same spectrum as the experience created by great art, whether it’s the shiver down the spine from a Beethoven slow movement, or the instant of human connectedness from a great painting, novel, film or play, or the sense of wonder from seeing the stars on a dark night.

Albert Einstein put it in a cosmological context:

‘A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe – a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as separate from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to the affection for those nearest us.’

And:

‘There are moments when one feels free from one’s own identification with human limitations and inadequacies. At such moments one imagines that one stands on some spot of a small planet, gazing in amazement at the cold yet profoundly moving beauty of the eternal, the unfathomable; life and death flow into one, and there is neither evolution nor destiny, only being.’

This is non-religious ‘spirituality’ in Comte-Sponville’s sense. Einstein isn’t suggesting there’s a spiritual realm or nature-defying miracles. He’s talking about enhanced human experience, in this case triggered by the natural world. Many artists try to do the same thing. As the painter Mark Rothko said: ‘A painting is not about an experience. It is an experience.’

There are a few things that these artistic and natural examples of ‘experiential spirituality’ have in common:

  • For a start, they are non-intellectual. As Comte-Sponville found, as soon as you try to analyse what’s happening – in his case by thinking about Spinoza – it disappears. Beethoven didn’t want you to think about the structure of his music, he wanted you to be transported by it. (OK, that’s a guess, but it seems likely.)
  • Secondly, the core of the experience is a sense of transcendence or connectedness. That may mean other people, wider humanity, the rest of the universe, or simply ‘something greater’. The experience carries with it a diminishment of the ego, sometimes to the point where there is no self-awareness, or separation between subject and object. Rather than ‘you’ looking at ‘it’, there is simply ‘looking’.
  • The feeling that goes with it is powerful and positive – elation, joy, compassion. Sadly, for most people, especially those of us who tend to over-intellectualise, it’s often short-lived. We quickly come back to normality as we start to think about it.
  • The final characteristic is that the experience is individual. As far as we know, the others in Comte-Sponville’s party just had a nice walk. Even sharing art with others in a concert hall, or a gallery, our experience is entirely subjective and individual.

The big difference between a religious person and a humanist in considering any type of spiritual experience is that the religious person may see it as a religious experience, a manifestation of the spiritual realm, perhaps of the divine. The humanist would say it is a subjective human experience, available to anyone, taking place in a human brain, triggered by a complex combination of external sensory inputs and internal memories and processes, and nothing to do with a spiritual realm or deity, both of which she thinks are imaginary. Spiritual experiences can even be created in the laboratory or by taking the right drugs.

But knowing all that does little or nothing to diminish the power of the experience. Our ability to have a sense of transcendence and connectedness with others is arguably one of the defining features of our humanity. There is nothing magic here, just the still-mysterious characteristics of human consciousness.

Many religions give spiritual experience a higher priority in life than Humanism does, because they equate it with getting closer to god. So they deliberately set up the conditions in which it is likely to occur: awe-inspiring architecture, emotionally-powerful music, practices of contemplation and meditation which make people slow down and provide the sort of pause in daily life offered by Comte-Sponville’s silent walk in the forest. We don’t need the accompanying religious baggage, and I’m sure Richard Dawkins doesn’t aspire to the Dalai Lama’s spirituality, but – given that spiritual experiences are almost always positive and life-affirming – maybe we should be have the humility to accept that there are things we can learn here.

Some humanists find all this difficult to swallow. One reason is simply a dislike, even a phobia, of anything that smells of religion. Those who have had to break free from a strong faith background, or suffered from faith-based persecution, may understandably feel that way though, personally, I don’t have any concern that my Humanism will somehow be contaminated by religiosity.

Another, less understandable, reason seems to be a reluctance to accept the fundamental difference between our growing ability to observe and understand how the human brain works, and the subjective experience of being a human with a brain.

Almost all humanists would agree that the scientific method is by far the best way to understand objective truths about the world, including brains. But subjective experience is not, by definition, open to direct observation by anyone other than the person experiencing it, though it is undeniably both ‘real’ to that person and, as far as we know, unique, as we can’t get into the minds of others other than through their descriptions, or their artistic expression. If I say I can see the face of Jesus in a cloud, no-one can deny that’s what I’m seeing. They can, of course, demonstrate that it’s an illusion brought on by our brilliant facial recognition software, but that’s a different point. The emotional, maybe ‘spiritual’, experience of hearing Schubert’s string quintet is not the same as explaining and observing what’s happing in my brain while I’m listening to it, just as the (definitely non-spiritual) pain of shutting my fingers in a drawer is not the same as describing the responses of my nervous and hormonal systems – they don’t hurt.

You might think this is blindingly obvious. Sadly, there are people who really do resist the idea – the fact – that subjective experience is real to the subject. Maybe personality differences come into play, in the same way as we don’t all have the same appreciation of the arts.

What we’re talking about here is part of the experience of being a human being. Without ‘experiential spirituality’ there can be no gasp at an unexpected beautiful view, no ‘Comte-Sponville moments’, and a huge diminishment of great art.

But even accepting all of that, should humanists actually use the word ‘spiritual’ in this experiential sense? Other terms might do just as well to convey what we mean without confusing the two. ‘Sense of the transcendent’ maybe?

The problem with avoiding the S word altogether is illustrated by this quote from Christina Rees, a spokesperson for the Church of England’s General Synod, talking a few years ago on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme about why humanists and other atheists should continue to be banned from its Thought for the Day slot (as they still are):

‘Most people, more than 80 percent, understand life as having a spiritual dimension…’  whereas atheists are ‘…coming from a position that denies the spiritual dimension… a partial and diminished perspective…There is more to life than you can see, touch and measure.’

In her view, atheists are lesser beings because they lack a spiritual dimension. Like Mr Spock, they may appear to be human but have the essence of humanity missing. I don’t think humanists should accept that.

Another problem with saying that humanists should disapprove of the S word is that fellow atheists and other non-religious people often choose to use it because they think it’s the best word for the job.

This is from an article by Joe Cornish, the respected British landscape photographer:

‘For some landscape photographers, Nature’s beauty is all the evidence they need of a Divine Creator. For others, scientific curiosity reveals an alternative explanation, where over unimaginable aeons our plant has evolved into the unique wonder that is our home today. This is a form of ‘terrestrial theology’, a belief in the fundamental, non-negotiable laws of physics. It’s not by any means depressing, reductionist scientific thinking based on the inevitability of nature’s immutable laws, but a broad church which encourages compassion and wonder in the beauty that we find in landscape, and humility in the face of what the world has to teach us. There is little doubt that for many of us, landscape photography is a spiritual journey.’

Is anyone going to say to him ‘Sorry Joe, you’re obviously an atheist, so you’re not allowed to use that word’?

And here again is the painter, Mark Rothko, whose work is often referred to as ‘spiritual’:

‘Art to me is an anecdote of the spirit, and the only means of making concrete the purpose of its varied quickness and stillness.’

Both Cornish and Rothko are using these words because, as artists – one inspired by nature, the other by introspection – they are the best words they know to convey what they mean. And they don’t seem to care whether they have religious baggage. In fact an article in the Telegraph about the Rothko exhibition in London in 2008 was headed ‘Rothko exhibition: art replaces religious faith‘.

There may be humanists who would be happy to dismiss the entire world of art as contaminated by the same ‘irrationality virus’ as religion, but I’ve never met one.

Inner spirituality

Philip Sheldrake’s Brief History of Spirituality defines it as the ‘deepest values and meanings by which people live.’ Like all definitions, that’s far from perfect, but it highlights the other sense in which we use the term, to mean the profound interior life that we all have, and which, to varying degrees, we know and examine, but can rarely fully control.

It’s in this sense that the NHS uses the term in its advice to carers on ‘spiritual care’:

Difficult or traumatic events in your life might lead you to ask questions about why something is happening to you or why something happens at all. Similarly, when a person is ill or dying they might think about what their life means or what will happen after they die.

Spirituality, or looking for meaning in your life, is a personal thing. For some people it means religious belief, but many believe that spirituality doesn’t have to be religious. Listening to beautiful music or appreciating nature may be spiritual experiences for some.

For some people, awareness of their own or someone else’s mortality brings questions about life’s meaning and purpose. For others, spirituality might already play an important and guiding role in their life. Religious faith may help some people to make sense of their situation, but others might find that they begin to question the beliefs that they have built their lives on.

Having the opportunity to talk about spiritual issues can help carers and the people they care for to feel more at peace and better able to deal with what the future might bring.

That’s precisely the type of need that humanist Pastoral Support teams aim to provide to non-religious people in hospitals and prisons. This type of spirituality may be ill-defined from a philosophical perspective, but we all know what it means. It’s about human beings in difficult circumstances thinking seriously about their lives and needing to share their thoughts and emotions with other human beings.  Are we really going to ask the NHS to change the term they use? If so, to what? Or is it more sensible to accept that humanists and other non-religious people have – in this sense – spiritual needs and we want to help meet them?

While the NHS has ‘spiritual care’, education has ‘spiritual development’, a component of ‘Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural’ (SMSC)  development on which Ofsted inspects all state schools[2]. Unfortunately, their definition of the ‘spiritual’ component is an example of the muddle and ambiguity that those who dislike the S word complain about:

  • beliefs, religious or otherwise, which inform their perspective on life and their interest in and respect for different people’s feelings and values
  • sense of enjoyment and fascination in learning about themselves, others and the world around them, including the intangible
  • use of imagination and creativity in their learning
  • willingness to reflect on their experiences.

But buried within this hotpotch is development of the element of children’s inner life that touches on the ‘deepest values and meanings by which people live’.

Setting aside the religious component –which is there, but certainly not dominant, in either the NHS or Ofsted examples – this is all about the ongoing subjective experience of being a human being, and about understanding that, in this profound sense, others have inner lives too. Unlike Experiential Spirituality, which is about finite experiences, this is the part of us which has the experiences, the essential part of our humanity that exists all the time – whether we are consciously aware of it or not – and which we can examine and talk about to others. I’ll call it ‘inner spirituality’.

Pulling all this together…

‘Spirituality’ is an ambiguous term. But so are other terms we’re happy to use, including ‘Humanism’ and ‘religion’. The ambiguity lies is its breadth of meaning, which has extended beyond the original sense of ‘spirit’ (meaning the ‘animating or vital principle in man and animals’) to cover:

  • Inner spirituality: our profound inner life, relating to the ‘deepest values and meanings’ by which we live; the ongoing part of us that can be subject to self-examination, care and development; and the part that can be impacted by spiritual experiences.
  • Experiential spirituality: a wide spectrum of experiences ranging from the experience of art to a full-blown, unexpected Comte-Sponville type experience, but sharing the common characteristics of being non-intellectual –  feeling not thinking; involving a sense of transcendence or connectedness with something larger; being associated with emotions of elation, joy and compassion; and being specific to the individual.
  • Religious spirituality: the realm of god(s), miracles and the paranormal to which spiritual experiences may be attributed by religious people.

Humanists may prefer not to use the S word if there’s another way of conveying what we mean, maybe aesthetic awareness, sense of transcendence, love of nature, or simply love. On the other hand, we shouldn’t let the baggage of religious spirituality put us off if it’s the best word available, or if we need to reclaim it from those who seek to use it to exclude the non-religious.

Whatever terms we use, spiritual experience, and awareness of our own and others’ profound inner lives, are important parts of what it means to be human – and a humanist. And while this will remain an area of difference between humanists and the religious, we can also recognise it as an important area of common ground.

 


 

[1] Thanks to John Woodhouse for highlighting this quote.

[2] Thanks to Marilyn Mason for pointing out the ambiguities in the educational sphere.

Filed Under: Humanism Tagged With: romanticisism, spirituality, the sublime

My spirituality as a humanist

August 19, 2014 by Guest author

This article by Saif Rahman is cross-posted from the New Humanist magazine

Dedicated to the late Robin Williams, based on a conversation between Hughman and Warner

Is there any value in spirituality? As a non-believer you might expect me to say no, but the sentimental part in me would like to say yes. Of course when I talk about the human spirit, I’m not talking about some ghostly ethereal entity living inside my body. I’m talking about the non-material essence of being ‘human’. My colleagues might prefer the term ‘humanity,’ but for me this doesn’t capture our inter-relationship with the universe. There aren’t many words in our language that do, so I use the words spirit or spirituality in the same way I loosely use the phrase ‘Bless You’ when you sneeze. I can only describe it as an acute sense of the sublime, to feel its awe and succumbing to its wonder.

Some religious groups of course attempt to usurp its grandeur by pointing behind the sky’s celestial curtain. But whilst bottling our universe’s mystique may control her essence, it also strips her from a majesty of her very own.

I recall a moment standing on a cliff’s edge looking down towards the sea, watching the waves below beating at its sides, the mountains above cutting through the clouds… and I could feel the presence of something much greater than myself, I knew it was all around me.

country view

I remember lying on the grass underneath a clear night sky, gazing up and seeing more stars than I could imagine; from a billion miles away I could see their intense beams still radiating a billion years after their death.I felt humbled to be a part of them, honoured to still be their witness.

And there are simple, everyday moments too: being with good friends, the magic of a frolicking kitten, a quenching sip of freshly-squeezed juice on a sunny day, that game of tennis which goes to tie-break, or the soft embrace which stops space and time. At times I can be so overwhelmed by the sensation of being alive that I melt; sometimes I just smile and breathe deeply with a sigh.

I no longer imagine any of this belonging to a supernatural. But I do believe the thing which built those mountains has a name. It’s called plate tectonics. The thing causing those stars to twinkle is called nuclear fusion.  I understand that my body naturally craves specific foods for nutritional value, sometimes just for psychological reasons. Humility is simply recognizing our muted relevance in an infinite universe, and being grateful for it doesn’t require a someone or a something to be thankful towards.  I recognise that being happy in a comfortable social setting is an evolutionary trait of my species. And the intoxication of romance is most likely driven by the need to procreate.

Understanding provides me with the depth of perception to view the world as profoundly and with as much empathy and compassion as humanly possible. I am one with the universe, not metaphysically, but physically. So whilst I may be that bungling imperfect gene, I made it against all odds to be here.  I am as much the universe as a supernova. Made of the same particles; governed by the same forces.

I treasure its magnificence and to think that out of all the things in the universe, I am lucky enough to be one of the only things that can. I love learning, hitting that perfect serve, and hearing the sound of uncontrollable laughter. What a beautiful time to be alive and to explore ourselves, our time and our place in this universe. And that’s simply wonderful.


Saif Rahman is a strategic consultant, author of The Islamist Delusion, and founder of HCMA (the Humanist and Cultural Muslim Association).

Filed Under: Comment, Humanism Tagged With: spirituality

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