The Universality Hypothesis
Chapter 9 in Thesis – On the Universal Meaning and Significance of Spirituality –
If spirituality is universally vital to human life then it must first of all be universal. I have therefore made the prediction that spirituality is present and significantly regular across cultures, independent of values or beliefs. To the extent that this prediction is confirmed, we can conclude that humanity shares a universal nature which underlies the many forms of spirituality. Yet, the first thing that may come to the mind of someone who considers the universality of spirituality, might be the dramatic differences they have seen across different spirituality traditions. How could the spirituality of the bald Buddhist Monk who sits and observes his breath, the throbed Muslim who prays to Allah, and the feathered Shaman who dances with magical creatures be engaged in the same essential thing? As we will see, this kind of question is by no means unique to the study of spirituality. This question is relevant and has been asked about a great variety of human phenomena. For this reason, we will begin by asking “what is universality and relativity in human life?
What is Universality and Relativity in Human Beings?
In the study of the human condition, the field of anthropology has revealed a remarkable flexibility of cultural expression in many other aspects of culture. For instance, it is possible for one culture to view the consumption of deceased relatives as a moral achievement and for another to view it as sin (Stein & Stein, 2017). In fact, the differences can be so stark, that fellow homo sapiens have come to feel that they belonged to different races together, giving rise to a human history riddled with racism (Hirschman, 2004). How could people who behave so radically differently possibly share a single universal human nature? While such behavioral differences have fueled intolerant ideologies such as racism, they have also given rise to highly tolerant ideologies such as cultural relativism. Cultural relativism says that we cannot understand the behavior of other cultures from our own perspective, but that we can and should understand the behavior of other cultures relative to their own cultural perspective (Stein & Stein, 2017) However, tolerant as it may be, cultural relativism, like racism, does not provide a universal perspective on cultural differences, such as different forms of death rituals and in our case, spirituality. Fortunately, another branch of anthropology has also long been interested in the universal aspects of the human condition. These aspects are called human or cultural universals (Brown, 1991). Cultural universals can be found in the structure of human language, in the expression of emotion and, yes, in the presence of death rituals. So, as we can see, it may be universal to have a death ritual but simultaneously relative in its kind. In the same way, it may be that spirituality is universal at some levels but relative at others. Teasing apart cultural universality and relativity tells us something about which parts of ourselves may and may not vary.
Is Spirituality a Human Universal?
In a book called human universals, the author Donald Brown conceptualized the universal people who carry all the human traits to which no cultural exception has been found i.e. human universals (Brown, 1991). This concept allows us to say things like “universal people care about what others think” meaning that people of all cultures care what others think. In his book Brown devoted a chapter to describe the universal people from the accumulated research on cultural universals. Relevant for this thesis, it is clear that the universal people are spiritual as the author himself underscores. For example, universal people practice various kinds of magic for purposes such as attracting love and extending life, they practice divination to reveal the unknown past present and future (Hong & Henrich, 2021) and they are in relationship with supernatural beings (Brown, 1991). Are these practices spiritual?
According to the current definition they are. As already mentioned, magical practices are often concerned with powers of consciousness such as the power of will and the ability to see into things such as the past and the future (Radin, 2018) and manipulating the consciousness of others (Illes, 2009). So according to the study of human universals, we can initially conclude that spirituality is one. As we will see in the demographic evidence later in this section, there are now reasons to question this conclusion. However, for now we will investigate the extent of the regularity we see across spirituality. The more regularity we see, the more a universal underlying nature will be indicated.
Regularity in the Representations of Spirituality Across Culture
Diving deeper into cross-cultural research, we see that the universal people are not only spiritual, but they also share fundamental features to their spirituality, starting from the way they represent their spiritual reality. We can see this in the same study of semantic associations that we used to identify the experiential meaning of the word “spirit”. As mentioned, this study mapped out the many meanings that have been colexified with the word “breathe” across 13 languages in order to discover the universal associations of meaning. As a reminder two meanings are said to be colexified if they are rooted in the same word or “lexeme”, such as the meanings of a “straight person” and “talking straight”. Therefore, colexified meanings have an association in meaning. The study found that the world “breathe” had universally been colexified with a wide variety of spiritual meanings including, (breath of) life”, “living being, animal”, “soul of individual(immortal)”, “ghost”, “supernatural being (good / bad): spirit”, “strong passions: courage, pride arrogance, wrath”, “living part of individual: vital force”, “the person, the self”, “mind, thought”, “Seat of will & feelings: heart”, “frame of mind, mood”, “mental skills: intelligence, wit” (François 2008).
To make this more relatable, this is true for famous words such as the Latin word spīritus meaning air in motion or breath of air yet is also related to the spiritual meanings above. It is true of the Arab word for rūh which both refers to the breath of air in its form “rīh” and also shares its root with all the spiritual meanings listed above. It is even true of the Classical Greek word, psūkhē which refers to breath or puff of air and also shares its root with all the spiritual meanings above. As an extra point here, psūkhē is also the lexical root of the word for the scientific study of mind and behavior, psychology (Definition and Etymology of Psychology, n.d.). Given our definition, it is no surprise that Psychology is based on the same essential word – breathe – as spirituality since psychology is principally concerned with phenomena of consciousness.
These three words may be the most familiar examples, but the pattern is true of all the 13 languages included in the study and likely of most languages insofar as these languages are representative. The other languages and their corresponding word for breathe in the study include, Sanskrit; atman, Mwotlap; mokhe and Nelemwa; horea (François 2008). Some of these languages have so distant origins that they may have been culturally isolated since the melting of the ice caps. What are we to make of this? Why do the universal people use the same kind of representation of breath to refer to their spiritual reality?
It is reasonable to think that if isolated cultures share a particular representation of x, then it is likely because they are looking at the same or a highly similar x. In this case, it is reasonable to think that if isolated cultures share a particular representation (breath) of their spiritual reality, then it is likely because they are looking at the same or a highly similar spiritual reality. This strongly suggests that people across the world have been confronted by the same essential spiritual reality and that there is therefore a single universal nature behind spirituality which transcends cultural relativity. Given that people have universally been confronted by the same spiritual realities, it is reasonable that there may be deeper regularities to be found in how spirituality has been understood and navigated across spiritual traditions. Is that what we find?
Deeper Regularities Across Spiritual Traditions
Universal Shamanism
Indeed, the evidence for a universal nature of spirituality seems to stretch far deeper than the most fundamental level of how the spiritual reality is represented across cultures. Anthropological science has revealed remarkable similarities in the spiritual theory, practice, and experience of isolated cultures.
This may be most clearly seen in cross-cultural research on what is considered the earliest form of human spirituality, Shamanism (Stutley, 2002). Some of the more general similarities include, (1) All forms of shamanism believe in the world of spirits that regularly interacts with the ordinary world and that it is the role of the Shaman to master this realm so that he can act as protector, healer and guide for his culture (2) All forms of shamanism use ecstatic singing, dancing and drumming to induce non-ordinary states of consciousness, where the spirit of the shaman may leave their body and enter the spirit world. (3) We also see that it is universally the role of the shaman to help his community members through disease and difficulties in life (Stutley, 2002). Already here, we see a great deal of cross-cultural regularity in the way spirituality had been navigated and in the various roles of the spiritual leaders of society.
Going deeper into shamanism, anthropologist and teacher of shamanism James Harner describes universal shamanism in his book “The Way of The Shaman ” where we can get a sense of some still deeper similarities across shamanic cultures. In his own words “These shamanic methods are strikingly similar the world over, even for peoples whose cultures are quite different in other respects, and who have been separated by oceans and continents for tens of thousands of years” (Harner, 1990). For instance, the spirit worlds of various shamanism seem to share an infrastructure having a lower, middle, and upper world, with similar characteristics and methods of entry. Entering any world, generally happens in darkness, to the steady beating of a drum and through various techniques of altering consciousness, such as singing or dancing. As consciousness shifts, the lower world is usually entered through an opening into the earth of some kind, such as a cave or down a lake – here It may be noted that this emphasis on altering and navigating the experience of consciousness is consistent with the consciousness definition of spirituality -. The upper world is usually accessed through an ascent of some kind, such as climbing up a tree or going up a mountain. Furthermore, these spirit worlds are populated with either humans, animals and magical creatures with which the shaman will universally form intimate alliances, so that they can help with things like healing procedures, granting specific powers and with the revelation of truths. Additionally, shamans universally accumulate power objects over the course of their lives, such as plants or rocks that possess spirits who will help the shaman to perform specific spiritual operations (Harner, 1990).
These are but a few examples to give a picture of the depth and specificity of regularities which are found across isolated spiritual traditions, providing further evidence of a universal reality underlying spirituality. However, is this also true beyond shamanism?
Beyond Shamanism
If we consider that shamanism is the earliest evidenced form of religion and spirituality and that we indeed still find that shamanism goes with those cultures that most resemble the earliest forms of human culture, then it is reasonable to believe that shamanism is the form of spirituality which naturally emerges in this kind of culture. If this is the case, then we are left with the conclusion that all known religion and spirituality, major and minor, have their roots in the shamanism of early culture. A conclusion shared by scholar Michael J. Winkelman who has studied the natural and cultural evolution of shamanism in his book “Shamanism a biopsychosocial paradigm of consciousness and healing” (Winkelman, 2011). Insofar as shamanism displays a high degree of universality, we can therefore infer that all major and minor religions at the very least share a universal core from which they originated.
This means that the stark differences seen between the Buddhist monk observing his breath, the Muslim who pilgrimages to Mecca and the shaman dancing with the spirits have all evolved from similar origins. Indeed, the traces and nature of shamanism is everywhere to be found in world religions. “shamanism can be used in various ways since it is an element in all religions, such as in the ecstatic, charismatic leaders of Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, Islamic and other cults and sects; or as a religion associated with specific cult practices – the World Tree, the Fire-cult, Soul-loss, Soul-flight and so on” (Stutley, 2002).
Deeper still we can observe that some of the major religions such as Judaism Christianity and Islam were based on revelation (Olson, 2017), which is a routinely found in shamanism through divination and mystical experiences (Noll et al., 1985; Stutley, 2002) so much so that shamanism has also been called “the path of direct revelation” (Ingerman & Wesselman, 2010). We can also observe that the belief in divine beings is elementary to both monotheistic and polytheistic religions (Johnston, 2007) of which the spirit realm of universal shamanism is full (Stutley, 2002). Finally, we can also observe that rituals, magic, spirit possession, demons, ecstasy and much more are present in world religions and are also basic to shamanic spirituality (Stutley, 2002; Winkelman, 2011).
All in all, we can see that the traces of shamanism are reflected both in the most fundamental level of world religions such as the belief in divine beings, but also at the more specific level as in the practices of ecstasy, magic, and spirit possession (Stutley, 2002). Therefore, we can see that it is not just in shamanism that we find evidence for a universal nature underlying spirituality, it is also in the rest of known spirituality. That is, it does not matter which spiritual tradition one looks at, it reflects a significant degree of cross-cultural regularity as we would expect of any phenomenon which is universal to human nature.
However, as previously mentioned, the conclusion that spirituality is universal has been challenged by recent demographic trends, as more and more people claim not to be spiritual. We will investigate these trends in the following section.
Spirituality Outside Religion
As we have seen, spirituality is not only present across religious cultures, but there are also deep and specific universal regularities across the known forms of spirituality. However, one could still argue that while the presence and nature of spirituality might not be dependent on any particular religion, it could still be dependent on religion in general. In other words, spirituality could be a religious phenomenon that would go away if religion were to go away, and human nature can afford the transition to a way of navigating the world which is entirely independent of both. Historically it has not been uncommon to hear that religion and spirituality belongs in the childhood of humanity and that we are in the process of transcending this childhood for the better (Stringer, 1999).
Yet, if spirituality is truly a universal and vital aspect of human life, we would expect it to persist even in the absence of religion, and like thoughts and emotions, we would not expect it to belong in humanity’s childhood. We have shown that all forms of religion point to a universal nature of spirituality, yet we have still not covered all known expressions of human nature. To do that, we must look at those who claim not to be religious at all. Are these people really in the process of transcending spirituality? Or is spirituality simply manifesting in new ways outside of religion as we would expect under the assumption that spirituality reflects a universal aspect of the human experience?
Is Spirituality Dependent on Religion?
The western world is seeing a dramatic drop in religious affiliation and a proportional rise of the religiously unaffiliated, commonly referred to as the “nones”. In 1972 the nones constituted a mere 5% of the US population in 2010 this number had grown to 18% (Funk & Smith, 2012) and finally in 2020 the nones made up 30% of US Americans (Nadeem, 2022). Meanwhile the number of US Christians has dropped from 90% of the population in 1972 to 64% of the population in 2020 (Nadeem, 2022). Furthermore, the Pew Research Center projects that if the recent switching rates persist, then nones will make a majority of the US population by 2070 and by the same time, Christians will be a minority (Nadeem, 2022). So, who are the nones and are they truly independent of spirituality?
The nones can be divided into three initial categories, those who identify as religious making up 18% of the group, those who identify as spiritual but not religious, making up 37% of the group and those who neither identify as religious, nor spiritual making up 42% of the group according to research from 2012 (Funk & Smith, 2012). These numbers both support the hypothesis that spirituality is fundamental to human nature and puts it into question at the same time. On the supportive side, it is evident that spirituality does indeed survive the decline of traditional organized religion, with those who identify as religious or spiritual making up a majority of the religiously unaffiliated. In fact, demographic evidence suggests that it has more than survived. The spiritual but not religious are among the fastest growing populations in the US, having grown from 19% to 27% in just 5 years between 2012 and 2017, while the neither spiritual nor religious grew only from 16 to 18% in the same time period (Lipka & Gecewicz, 2017). Looking within the religiously unaffiliated of 2012, we also see that 68% believe in either a god or a universal spirit, showing a clear majority of people holding spiritual beliefs. Overall the demographic evidence suggests that spiritual belief and identity is significantly more prevalent among the nones than the opposite, supporting the hypothesis that spirituality is fundamental to human nature.
However, it cannot be ignored that a significant percentage of 42% among the nones claimed not to be spiritual, making 15% of the entire population and slowly rising. Moreover, it cannot be ignored that the picture looks very different in Europe with a clear majority of people identifying as neither spiritual nor religious, with a median of 53% compared to those who identify as spiritual but not religious with a median of 11% (Pew Research Center, 2020). In general it looks like spirituality outside religion is on a dramatic rise in the US while Europe favors the “neither spiritual nor religious”.
Going back to the hypothesis How could so many people claim not to be spiritual and not to hold spiritual beliefs if spirituality is universal to human nature?
How to Explain the Neither Spiritual nor Religious?
To answer this question, it will help to remember what is meant by a spiritual person in this thesis. “A person will be defined as spiritual to the extent that they are engaged in the navigation of the experiential space of consciousness” This leaves us with at least two explanations for why people might identify as neither spiritual nor religious.
Reason 1: The “neither spiritual nor religious” are not significantly engaged in the navigation of the experiential space of consciousness.
Reason 2: The “neither spiritual nor religious” are significantly engaged in the experiential space of consciousness, but do not perceive this engagement as spiritual.
A person who identifies as neither spiritual nor religious may fall into either one of these reasons. If the hypothesis that spirituality is a universal and vital dimension of human life is true, then those who fall into reason 1 may be lacking both personal and cultural support for their vital need of spirituality. A person who falls into reason 2 may have their vital need of spirituality satisfied to an extent, yet because they do not perceive their engagement to be spiritual, they will likely not seek support for this engagement in spiritual culture and wisdom.
Why may people not perceive their engagements with consciousness as spiritual? This is likely because the dominant materialistic worldview of western culture and especially of the neither spiritual nor religious, is still in conflict with the worldviews of spirituality (Zsolnai & Flanagan, 2019). In this context, it is crucial to note, that if the hypothesis of this thesis is true, then much of the progress which has been made within spiritual worldviews is universally relevant, also to those who carry the materialistic worldview. This is what we have seen in the case of meditation and psychedelics, and this is what we likely will continue to see as more and more spiritual ideas and practices become integrated with science and health practice.
However, it is evident that there are still major parts of US and especially European populations who reject spiritual practices and wisdom on the grounds of the scientific worldview. Therefore, if the hypothesis of this thesis is true, then there is far more work that needs to be done in the integration of spirituality into science and health practices. We will continue to investigate the universality hypothesis from a different complementary angle in the following section. This will help us understand the implications for the “neither spiritual nor religious”.
Review and Discussion
If spirituality is a vital dimension of human nature, then we would first of all expect it to be universally present in human culture. Moreover, if spirituality has a universal basis in human nature, then we would expect a fundamental regularity across the spirituality of different cultures including those cultures which have been isolated from each other. That is, we would expect even the most different forms of spirituality to resemble each other at a fundamental level. What have we found?
The first thing we found was that the study of human universals had identified several spiritual traits in the “universal people”, including belief in supernatural beings, divination, and magic, supporting the universality hypothesis. After establishing universality, we went into the cross-cultural regularities, the first and possibly most fundamental regularity we found was that the spiritual realities of experience have universally been represented in a similar way in association with the word “breathe”. This uniformity of representation suggests that people have universally been confronted by the same essential spiritual reality in their experience.
Beyond the uniformity of representation, we found many deep and more specific regularities. We found that there is significant uniformity in the methods and worldviews of the earliest forms of human spirituality, including a uniformity in the infrastructure of spirit worlds and in the methods for entering into them. We also found that later forms of spirituality continue to share fundamental aspects of early spirituality, such as revelation, belief in divine beings, rituals, magic, techniques of ecstasy and more.
Given that there is such a fundamental overlap across the many different forms of spirituality, it is reasonable to believe that the spiritual traditions of the world have in fact been navigating the same experiential landscape of spirituality arising from a common human nature. In other words, it is reasonable to believe that spirituality does not fundamentally arise from culture, but rather from a universal reality in human nature expressed through culture.
However, as we have seen, we are now witnessing a substantial and slowly growing population who do not identify as spiritual or religious. What does this mean for the universality hypothesis? Is it possible that all the remarkable cross-cultural evidence of the universal presence of spirituality and the fundamental regularities still somehow depend on religion or some other cultural condition? We have seen that the “spiritual but not religious” are in fact growing far faster than the “neither spiritual nor religious”, however the growing non-spiritual demographic still raises the question. Is it possible that spirituality is not truly a human universal and could one day become a thing of the past?
If this is the case, then we would surely not expect to find spirituality to be wired into universal human biology. Nor would we expect it to be significantly correlated with human health, especially in those who are not spiritual. We will investigate these hypotheses in the following sections.
Author – Sagi Andersen