History
Chapter 6 in Thesis – On the Universal Meaning and Significance of Spirituality –
The history of spirituality appears to be as old as our species and as new as this very day. From the ancient cave paintings depicting spiritual beings (Winkelman, 2010) to the elaborate machines we use to capture their neural signature today (Swanson, 2018) it seems that human beings have always been captured by spirituality. From the caves to the machines spirituality has taken many forms within many different traditions. In shamanism which is thought to be the earliest form of spirituality, people claim to be channeling with spirits, journeying into spiritual dimensions and divining whispers of the future (Stutley, 2002). In Buddhism we hear stories of how the great masters became enlightened, such as Siddharta Guatama who sat under a tree (Kornfield, 2012) or the student of zen buddhism who forgot everything he ever knew and became enlightened at the flick of a pebble (Grimstone, 2014). In Daoism we hear tales of the alchemical union of opposites and the attainment of immortality (Mitchell, 2018). These spiritual claims and stories are so extraordinary to the western mind that they can be hard to believe, yet whatever the reason that caused people to tell such stories, it is no thing of the past.
In the following section we will illuminate some of the major patterns in the history of spirituality, which lead up to the research question of this thesis. This journey will begin with the birth of western psychology and conclude with our current historical conditions. In the context of the spiritual renaissance, we will begin with its antecedents in western history, then move on to its rise and close with its birth. At the end of the journey, the rationale behind this thesis will be placed in its context. With that, we will now dive into the early days of western psychology and its grapple with spirituality.
(1800’s) – Antecedents of the Spiritual Renaissance
– Spiritualism and the Birth of Western Psychology
Around the birth of Western Psychology in the late 19th century (Myers, 2010), it is clear that the extraordinary claims of spirituality were at the gates of the field from its beginnings. The founding fathers of Western Psychology generally attempted to establish a natural science of the human mind akin to the disciplines of chemistry and biology (Exline & Jones, 2013), yet what were they to make of these extraordinary claims using the objective measures of natural science which were available at the time? No small feat in a day when the brain was largely a black box and there were no tools to peer directly into it such as we have today. This problem not only pertained to the extraordinary claims of spirituality, but also to the accepted realm of experiential phenomena. How for instance could a childhood trauma be understood using flashlights and reaction times?
United States: One of the founding fathers, William James, was particularly troubled by this. While he had originally been a proponent of a natural science of the mind, he eventually changed his own mind. In 1902 he published his book “The varieties of religious experience” in which he concluded that a natural science approach was too narrow to understand the great expanse of mind which he believed lied beyond our “normal waking consciousness” (Friedman & Hartelius, 2013). James came to believe that these extraordinary religious experiences, as he called them, were at the root and center of religious history and that no account of human nature could be complete without understanding them (Zsolnai & Flanagan, 2019). James’ writings later became the cornerstone of a new branch of Psychology, the Psychology of Religion, which would extend beyond the methodological confines of a natural science to embrace subjective evidence (Jr. et al., 2018) and they also became the cornerstone of the study of altered states of consciousness (Friedman & Hartelius, 2013; Goleman & Davidson, 2018).
Europe: Meanwhile, James’ contemporaries across the Atlantic were also grappling with strange spiritual phenomena in Europe. In the second half of the 19th century the writings of notable figures such as Emanuel Swedenborg and Franz Mesmer inspired a cultural movement known as spiritualism (Carroll, 1997). These writings included accounts of the structure of the spirit world, instructions on how to contact the spirits and attain knowledge of one’s personal afterlife. During the rise of spiritualism, those inspired by these thoughts soon claimed to possess extraordinary abilities including crystal gazing, glossolalia and automatic writing. This attracted the attention of the leading scientists of the time including Sigmund Freud, Eugen Bleuler and Carl Jung. The spiritualists would demonstrate their abilities to the scientists during what was known as “seances”, marking another notable point of contact between spirituality and western psychology (Jung et al., 2012). It is telling that Carl Jung’s medical dissertation focused on psychogenesis of spiritualistic phenomena. It is also notable that Sigmund Freud, like William James, eventually dropped his ambition of founding a natural science of the psyche, leading him to establish his school of psychoanalysis which, like the Psychology of Religion, was grounded in subjective evidence instead (Northoff, 2012). What role spiritual phenomena played in that decision is not yet clear to me, but it seems likely to have played a part as it had with James’ change in attitude. What is more clear, is that Freud’s partner Carl Jung was heavily influenced, not just by the experiences of others, but by his own spiritual experiences during what became known as his “confrontation with the unconscious” (Jung et al., 1989). Jung would describe a time when he abandoned his theoretical baggage and began to approach his patients as well as his patients’ experiences more directly. He would later go on to be influenced by other spiritual traditions, including eastern religions and western Alchemical traditions, incorporating his learnings into his own approach which today is known as Jungian Psychology, Jungian Therapy or Jungian Analysis. His approach would go on to have a major influence on the spiritual counterculture (Collins, 1998) of the following century and is still widely practiced today (St.Hilaire, 2018).
In general, it seems clear that spirituality has been a significant influence on western psychology from its very beginning. As we have seen, the cultural presence of religious experience and spirituality dramatically influenced the vision of some of psychology’s early giants. It did so by calling the basic assumptions of a purely natural science of the mind into question, and motivating the emergence of alternative branches of psychology, such as the Psychology of Religion and Jungian Psychology and potentially influencing the emergence of a major mainstream school of western psychology, Psychoanalysis. These branches would base themselves on subjective as opposed to objective evidence which characterized the natural sciences. As we will now see, these spiritual influences would germinate in western culture, and would later fuel the countercultural movements of the following century, along with many other influences. For this reason, the movement of spiritualism and the early days of western psychology may constitute the early cultural stirrings of the spiritual renaissance in western culture.
(1900’s) – The Rebellious Rise of the Spiritual Renaissance
Waves of Spiritual Counterculture
Moving on to the next century of the 1900’s, the west saw the rise of multiple waves of spiritual counterculture, and this time, the influence came not only from the long esoteric history of the west as it did in spiritualism. It also came from the rest of the world’s history, as well as from entirely novel synthetic chemicals capable of inducing spiritual experience (Griffiths et al., 2006). We will begin by covering the massive import of spirituality to the west from foreign cultures.
Importing Spirituality
After the second world war during the second half of the 1900’s, commercial flights became increasingly available to westerners and the world opened up for cultural cross pollination to an unprecedented degree (Petrescu et al., 2017). At that time, counter cultural sentiments in the west made the culture ripe for foreign influence, and indeed many westerners took advantage of the open skies to seek it out in foreign lands (King, 1970). Western youth traveled to the geographical homes of ancient spiritual traditions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Shamanism in places such as South East Asia and South America, leading to a massive import and appropriation of traditional forms of spiritual practice such as “Hawaiian Kahuna magic, Australian Aborigine dreamworking, South American Amerindianayahuasca and San Pedro ceremony, Hindu Ayurveda and yoga, and Chinese FengShui, Qi Gong and Tai Chi” (York, 2001). Some of these western travelers are now famous for adapting these traditional forms of spirituality to the western mind and for igniting new ideas and cultural movements in the west. These people include Philosopher Alan Watts (Furlong, 2001) considered a pioneer in the translation of eastern philosophy and spirituality to the west. They included Anthropologists James Harner (Harner, 1990) and Carlos Castenada (Castaneda, 1985) who spent extensive time with traditional shamans around the world and considered to be among the fathers of modern Neo Shamanism (Rodd, 2015). They also included John Zabbat Khin, Richard Davidson and Daniel Goleman, who may be considered pioneers in the integration of buddhist meditation into modern science and medical practice (Goleman & Davidson, 2018) as well as Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert who may be placed among the fathers of the psychedelic renaissance and a big influence on the hippie movement (Pollan, 2019). Other notable influential people include Stanislov Groff (Grof, 2006), Terrence Mckenna (McKenna & McKenna, 1994), Sam Harris (Harris, 2015) as well as many more. All of these people went through transformative spiritual experiences on their journeys and came back to plant foreign seeds for the western spiritual renaissance, either by fueling cultural movements, or by developing new science and health practices. Many of these people were met with fierce resistance by western culture culture as they attempted to have their influence. This is most clearly exemplified by Timothy Leary who was at one point called the most dangerous man in America by former president Richard Nixon (Pollan, 2019), but also by those who fought for decades to get their research into spirituality approved (Goleman & Davidson, 2018; Grof, 2006). Yet at this point, the western resistance of foreign spirituality may only have served to delay the inevitable. The cultural zeitgeist was sufficiently open to influence, the long tradition of western esotericism had already been preprocessed in the days of spiritualism and ready for another takeoff and the skies were open to facilitate spiritual import from most of the world. In other words, the soil of western culture was fertile and the seeds of humanity’s spiritual heritage from around the world were already planted or being planted in that soil. Indeed, glancing over the western history of the late 1900’s, most people do not have to think hard to recall the effects of those seeds. Starting from the 1950s, the west would become a wild breeding ground for numerous syntheses of world spirituality, through a series of countercultural movements, known respectively as the Beatniks (50’s), the Hippies (60’s) and the New Age (70’s and 80’s). We will now cover each in turn, to understand against what they were counter, to what they were for, and how they facilitated the rise of the spiritual renaissance in the west.
(50s) – The Beatnik Wave
In the 1950s the US cultural atmosphere was heavily influenced by the cold war, in part through a range of repressive policies (Issitt, 2009). Meanwhile, consumerism was on the rise, orienting the culture towards material gains and values. These are among the factors that gave rise to a countercultural youth movement known as The Beatniks and sometimes referred to as the Stone Age Hippies. The Beatniks were characterized by an intellectual youth movement with an interest in eastern religion, pacifism, ecological consciousness, homosexual rights and hedonism. In the 50’s the beatniks began to differentiate themselves culturally through music, poetry and lifestyle ect. They flocked to cultural hotspots in New York and San Francisco where the culture grew around places such as alternative coffee shops and clothes and music stores. In general the rebellion of the Beatnik Generation was marked by a rejection of material values, institutional religion and academic literature, in favor of new spirituality found through mystical experience, psychedelic drugs and especially eastern spirituality, such as Hinduism, Buddhism and Zen (Jackson, 1988). As previously mentioned, this influence was made possible by cultural importers of the west like Alan Watts who had an enormous influence on the Beat Generation, but also cultural exporters Like D.T. Suzuki who grew up in the East. The influence of the Beat Generation was the first out of three major eruptions of spiritual counterculture, paving the way for the next wave to reach new heights, the Hippie wave..
(60’s) – The Hippie Wave
During the 60’s, US culture was heavily influenced by new emerging factors including the Vietnam War and the spread of psychedelic drugs. At the time, psychedelic substances were leaking from the labs where they were being studied for therapeutic use, to fuel the countercultural movement of the hippies. This influence was led by Harvard Professor Timothy Leary who was a proponent of psychedelic spirituality and famously called the most dangerous man in America by former president Nixon. Another notable influence was Ken Keysey who introduced thousands of new hippies to the psychedelic experience. The hippies would take over many of the neighborhoods and businesses which belonged to the Beatniks in the previous wave, but expanded far beyond (Issitt, 2009). The counterculture grew to massive sizes with tens of thousands of hippies flocking to festivals around the US and with rural hippie communities emerging across the country. Who were the hippies? Overall the hippies defined themselves in opposition to materialism, militant politics, social repressions, and more generally in opposition to the establishment. The Hippies celebrated pleasure, natural impulses and the individual’s expression among other things. Once again, new spirituality was fundamental to the hippie movement. This time psychedelic drugs were major players in the spiritual scene alongside eastern spirituality which continued to grow in influence from the time of the Beatniks. The leaders of these spiritual influences were championed as gurus, including Timothy Leary and Ken Keysey on the psychedelic side and Allen Ginsberg and Richard Alpert (Baba Ram Ras) on the side of eastern spirituality. Overall the spiritual influences appeared to grow and diversify during the hippie movement. Yet however diverse the influences had become during the hippie movement, it could not compare to the diversity of the next wave of spiritual counterculture, the New Age.
(70’s – 80’s) – The New Age Wave
The New Age was once again a countercultural spiritual movement defining itself in opposition to mainstream US culture. This time the opposition was particularly directed at the materialistic worldview of science and Judeo-Christianity, which were perceived to be oppressive forces of the establishment (Collins, 1998). During the New Age, it became clear that the spiritual renaissance as a whole did not only take root in the novel seed of psychedelic drugs or the foreign seeds such as eastern religion and native spirituality as we saw in the previous waves. As we saw in the emergence of spiritualism of the 1800’s, the seeds of alternative spiritual culture have existed within the west for a long time, waiting for the cultural conditions to emerge. Indeed, just like spiritualism, the spiritual counterculture the New Age was thought to have strong roots in western esotericism, but this time benefiting from the intellectual contributions of the days of spiritualism. The New Age benefitted in particular from Carl Jung who had distilled many esoteric ideas from western history into a modern psychoanalytic framework capable of integrating different forms of spirituality. However the influence of western esotericism was not in stead of the influences which characterized the Beatniks and the Hippies, it was in addition to them. Therefore the New Age was perhaps best defined by an unprecedented spiritual eclecticism, drawing its influence from spiritual traditions of all times and places, such as astrology, Celtic druidism, alchemy, spiritualism, Estern religions, native american religion, witchcraft and more. Another important trend that happened during the New Age, was that the counterculture took the fight to modern science, attempting to reconcile spirituality and mysticism with modern physics (Kaiser, 2011). The resulting ideas, especially those relating to quantum physics, would go on to have major influence among spiritual circles in the future, and it has even been argued that they contributed to the formation of the modern field of quantum information theory. This meeting of science and spirituality foreshadowed the next chapter to come in the spiritual renaissance. More specifically, it foreshadowed the integration of spirituality into the mainstream and therefore the birth of the spiritual renaissance. Yet before going into that chapter, we need to understand what happened to spirituality at the end of the New Age movement. A time when spirituality outside religion grew more than it ever had during the waves of spiritual counterculture, only this time, not as a countercultural movement. Why?
(90’s – today) – Rise of the Spiritual but not Religious
Going into the 90’s the identification with the term New Age dropped significantly and as a result some scholars mark this as the end of the New Age movement (Kemp, 2004). So what happened with spirituality outside religion from the 90’s? Going back to the demographic evidence, it is clear that the 90’s did not bring an end to alternative spirituality. In Europe the demographic of the spiritual but not religious is modest yet significant with a median of 11% of the population, still very much alive. In the US which was the epicenter of the three waves of spiritual counterculture described above, the spiritual but not religious appear to be on the rise and growing faster than any other spiritual/religious demographic. From 1972 to 2017 the demographic grew from below 5% to 27% of the population (Funk & Smith, 2012; Lipka & Gecewicz, 2017). Surprisingly, looking at the evidence, we can see that the most rapid growth of spirituality outside religion did not occur during the times of the famous hippie and new age movements as might have been expected. Rather they appear to have experienced their most dramatic growth in the US during the 21st century. In just five years between 2012 and 2017 the spiritual but not religious grew from 19% to 27% of the US population with no signs of stopping (Lipka & Gecewicz, 2017). How to explain that the spiritual but not religious grew the most at a time when they were not fueled by dramatic counter cultural movements? What changed? The explanation I propose is that the spiritual counter culture grew silent because it succeeded. As we will see in the following section, spirituality would become increasingly embraced by modern science and health practice around the time when the New Age movement fell silent. It is therefore my thesis that like a child, the spiritual counter culture stopped screaming because it was heard. So what happened with spirituality when it was heard?
(2000’s) – Birth of the Spiritual Renaissance
Integration of Spirituality into Science and Health Practice
Around the 90’s and into the 21’s century the world of science and health practice has witnessed a dramatic integration and growth in spirituality. This is a trend which has been observed and corroborated by multiple major academic handbooks on topics related to spirituality including the Handbook of Spirituality Religion and Mental Health (Rosmarin & Koenig, 2020), The Routledge International Handbook of Spirituality in Society (Zsolnai & Flanagan, 2019) and Handbook of Transpersonal Psychology (Friedman & Hartelius, 2013). I will begin by covering the integration into science and move on to cover the world of health practice.
Science
Entire scientific fields of study have formed and or flourished around the study of spiritual matters such as, contemplative neuroscience (Dhar, 2022) studying the neuroscience of contemplative practices such as meditation, yoga and tai chi, Neurotheology (Newberg, 2018), Cognitive Science of Religion (Barrett, 2022) and Transpersonal Psychology (Friedman & Hartelius, 2013). Handbooks have been assembled (Friedman & Hartelius, 2013; Rosmarin & Koenig, 2020) and scientific journals have been dedicated to the study of spirituality (Journal for the Study of Spirituality, n.d.). Indeed the spiritual revival in science is well supported by quantitative data of scientific publications. The number of research titles including the word “spiritual” has grown from a mere 372 per year in 1990 to 12352 per year in 2021 (Dimensions, n.d.) Looking at specific fields relating spirituality we can consider the case of meditation and mindfulness research which has skyrocketed from just a handful in 1970 to 6838 articles in 2016 with the vast majority of articles published in the 21st century (Goleman & Davidson, 2018). This pattern is also apparent in a parallel explosion of psychedelic research in the 21st century, as more and more studies are being approved by authorities (Pollan, 2019). An online database with data starting from 1973, shows that the number of research articles with “psychedelic” included in their titles, grew from 34 in 2008 to 673 in 2021 (Dimensions, n.d.-b). The research grew so much in these years that the notion of a psychedelic renaissance is becoming widespread in academic papers (Pollan, 2019; Hadar et al., 2022; George et al., 2021). In general, as we can see in the evidence above, these trends may aptly be described as a spiritual revival in science in the words of other authors, or a spiritual renaissance in science in the words of this thesis. However, as we will see, the spiritual renaissance in the western mainstream is by no means contained within the sphere of scientific research.
Health Services
Spirituality is rapidly making its way into the mainstream of health services. In this section, I will go through some of the most notable fronts of spiritual integration in the health sphere to give a picture of a general trend.
One of the most notable examples of spiritual integration into mainstream health services is through what is known as the third wave of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) (Herbert & Forman, 2012). CBT is one of the most widely accepted forms of psychotherapy, considered to have the strongest base of evidence and is for that reason considered the golden standard of modern psychotherapy (David et al., 2018). CBT can therefore confidently be called the mainstream of modern psychotherapy. The first wave of CBT was focused on the behavioral level, the second included the cognitive level, and now in the third wave, it is concepts such as acceptance and mindfulness which are considered to be the primary features. These characteristic features of the third wave of CBT are commonly traced back to origins in eastern spirituality (Herbert & Forman, 2012). It is therefore no surprise to this thesis that the third wave of CBT began in the 90’s right after the new age movement fell silent, as this would constitute an embrace of spirituality by the mainstream. Conquering the mainstream of modern therapy is big, but it is just one front in the integration of spirituality into mainstream health services.
Mindfulness based programs and interventions such as Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) with explicit origin in the noble eightfold path of Buddhism are now widespread in US medical centers (Rosmarin & Koenig, 2020). Close to half of patients who attend these programs state spiritual growth to be the primary reason for attending, and the health professionals appear to be no different. In a 2003 survey of American psychologists – one of the least religious groups in the US – 63% reported studying spiritual material on a regular basis and 84% said they had felt very close to a spiritual force at least once in their life (Rosmarin & Koenig, 2020).
On yet another front of spiritual integration into western health practice, the extraordinary results of psychedelic research have already led both MDMA and Psilocybin to be designated as breakthrough treatments. A breakthrough designation is a protocol by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the US with the purpose of expediting the review and approval of promising treatments for severe conditions. In general psychedelic assisted psychotherapy shows promise to take a place among mainstream mental health services in the future (Lowe et al., 2021).
As we can see, the integration of spirituality into health services spans across the fields of both physical health and mental health. The influence has explicit origins in spiritual traditions, and has indeed found its way to what may confidently be considered the mainstream. Taken together with the spiritual revival in science, we are looking at a trend which shows no sign of slowing down. This is as we would expect under the thesis that we are currently witnessing the birth of a spiritual renaissance. What then can we broadly expect from later stages in the development of this renaissance? In other words, where are we going?
Future Prospects
The signs of a spiritual renaissance in mainstream health services are evident yet this may be just the beginning under the thesis of an ongoing Spiritual Renaissance.
As we have seen in the history, there have been plenty of spiritual practices other than psychedelics, meditation and mindfulness which have circulated in the waves of spiritual counterculture. These include the occult traditions of western esotericism which fueled spiritualism and new age spirituality including Hermeticism, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, Alchemy, Theosophy, Freemasonry, Planetary and Angel Magic in the renaissance, Ritual Magic and more (Goodrick-Clarke, 2008). They also include many other well known spiritual disciplines from across the world including Tai Chi (Guo et al., 2014), Yoga, Meditation, (Issitt, 2009) Tantra (Timalsina, 2011), Shamanisms (Rodd, 2015) and likely many more, including less known traditions. Scientific research is already underway on the practices of yoga (Vaidya & Vaidya, 2022), qi gong and Tai Chi (Jahnke et al., 2010), shamanism (Winkelman, 2000; Winkelman, 2010) and Magic (Radin, 2018). If the trend continues, we are likelike to see an increasing number of spiritual traditions being embraced by science, followed by an integration into mainstream health services such as we have seen with Meditation, Mindfulness and Psychedelics.
Beyond increasing the scope of inclusion we may also see an increasing depth of inclusion in the future. Leading researchers Goleman and Richardson point that it is the most shallow version of buddhism that has spread that fastest in the west (Goleman & Davidson, 2018). Yet with time, science and health practice may reach deeper into the traditions of buddhism where they will find notions such as enlightenment and non-dual reality (Loy, 1990). Indeed, if the pattern persists, the same may happen with the rest of the spiritual traditions of the world. In other words, the spiritual integration may widen and deepen its scope, by reaching further into the many spiritual influences which are already circulating in western culture from the rise of the Spiritual Renaissance.
This concludes the historical context, giving us a picture of where we are today and where the story may be headed. In the discussion I will expand much more on the potential future implication of the spiritual renaissance, including the discussion of how and why it may lead to the Spiritual Golden Ages. In the beginning of this section I said that the research question of this thesis is motivated by the particular historical conditions of today in which it has arisen. Now that the history is in place, we may understand why.
Review and Discussion
My Thesis in the Context of the Spiritual Renaissance
The question I seek to answer in this thesis is “Should spirituality be considered a universal and vital dimension of human life?”. Why is that question particularly relevant today? In the justification I introduced the first major reason. The reason was that we must understand the effects that spiritual decline may be having on western culture. However the historical context introduced in this section adds important new dimensions to the rationale.
We have seen that spirituality has been implicated in the western culture and science from the birth of western psychology, making spirituality an important phenomenon to understand independently of the major eruptions of spiritual counterculture in the 1900’s. However, the history of the 1900’s adds a more historically particular rationale for the current research question. During the waves of spiritual counterculture we saw a growing demographic of people rejecting the traditional homes of spirituality in western religion as well as the dominant scientific worldview and western material culture. These people were no longer accommodated by the mainstream cultural paradigm of the west resulting in a massive revival of spirituality from across the world. This means that western culture found itself in a situation where major parts of its population were fulfilling their spiritual needs through a plethora of spiritualities which no single spiritual tradition nor the western paradigm could understand or accommodate by itself. This unique historical condition therefore calls for a universal understanding of spirituality which is capable of reconciling this variety of spirituality with each other and with the dominant scientific worldview of western culture. In other words, there is now a unique demand for the spirituality of the future to understand and accommodate all the spiritualities contained within the culture. This demand is a central motivation for my attempt to develop a universal understanding of spirituality in this thesis. For this reason, a significant portion of this thesis will be spent establishing a universal definition of spirituality capable of reconciling the full variety of human spirituality with each other and with the dominant scientific worldview.
Moving into the history of the 2000’s, still further rationale is added to the research question. During the 2000’s we have seen a wave of integration of spirituality into western science and health services. This trend appears to be responding to the need for reconciliation which my thesis also seeks to address. In other words the history of the 2000’s tells us that the reconciliation of spiritual knowledge is not just a future potential, it is already underway. Still, as the integration both in science and health practice indicates, we are still in the early days of the integration process and of the spiritual renaissance. For this integration to succeed, it is crucial that we invest in developing a universal understanding of spirituality to facilitate the integration of a greater variety and depth of spirituality as well as to facilitate crosstalk among all the relevant parties involved. Beyond the ongoing spiritual integration, the same history of the 2000’s century also tells us that the increasing prioritization of spirituality in western culture is underway. It is also crucial that we get clear about the universal significance of spirituality for human life. This understanding would provide the appropriate motivation to invest in the integration process and to prioritize spirituality in proportion to its significance. It is therefore highly important to get clearer on whether and to what extent spirituality may be a vital dimension of human life.
In short this thesis is motivated by the particular historical context of the west A. because it can help interpret the implication of spiritual decline by illuminating its universal significance for human life, B because it can help facilitate the reconciliation of the spiritual knowledge needed in a culture that harbors a myriad unreconciled spiritual influences C. because the reconciliation, increased prioritization and growth of spirituality is already underway in the 2000’s, making a contribution to the process particularly relevant. On the more abstract level, this thesis seeks to inform the ongoing spiritual renaissance by treating its most fundamental premises. This starts with the premise of a universal reality underlying spirituality and the attempts to define it.
Author – Sagi Andersen