It is obvious to anyone who gives the matter a moment’s thought that spirituality, God and our understanding of the universe are vastly different from what they were less than fifty years ago. It is interesting to explore those differences. How they have come about, what do they mean and to what do they point? However, this paper is not is not to be an in depth, academic theological discussion of matters spiritual, neither is it an exploration of the wonders of the universe. My interest in the universe is in the widespread usage of the expression ‘the Universe’ in contexts where once ‘God’ would have been spoken of. The work has been written for ‘the woman in the pew’ or ‘the man in the street’ who probably do not think too much about the issues but would like to know a bit more about this strange change in attitudes to things spiritual that has been taking place over for the past few decades.
A slightly off-beat overture to the work is with an obscure thirteenth century Italian monk called Joachim. Joachim, came from Fiore and he had a theory which I have always rather like. His idea was that time went in 2,000 years cycles to match the Persons of the Holy Trinity. In this schema the first 2,000 years of human history were the years of the Father, the Old Testament and the Mosaic Law; the second 2,000 years were ruled by the Son, Jesus Christ and the reign of His church and therefore the third age was to be dominated by the Holy Spirit. Joachim was, of course, only talking about the Judaeo/ Christian world, the only world that mattered to him. His was a mythic interpretation for the span of time and it does have some resonance with the expressions of spirituality, God and the Universe in popular experience today.
Spirituality was not a word one often heard fifty years ago. Even within religious settings, it was hardly ever mentioned and religion was definitely something you didn’t speak about at dinner parties. The two terms, if used, were practically indistinguishable, any difference was nit-picking and you were probably a bit odd if you cared.
Religion and spirituality, what is the difference? There is now a felt need to make a distance between religion and spirituality. Religion has to do with creeds, that is a corpus of beliefs about God; beliefs about life, morals and, often, unfortunately negative beliefs and attitudes to people who don’t agree with you. Religion means specific practices, recognised communities and, theoretically at least, either being ‘in’ or ‘out’. Religion in practice has a lot to do with belonging. This is the sort of bundle people are dropping when they claim to be ‘spiritual but not religious.’
Personal or individual spirituality has for much of its history been a cause of anxiety for those in authority. The Inquisition, heresy trials, religious wars, martyrdom and the Reformation are all expressions of the tension between the belief that uniformity is essential and the demands of the individual conscience. Prayer manuals, the Rosary etc. were useful means to keep the faithful on the straight and narrow, doctrinally speaking, such aids are less prominent now.
The Experience of God
For two millennia, from the beginning until now countless souls have been nurtured, fed, enlightened by the Faith, but what that experience means to the individual is not available to scrutiny. We may make assumptions from the regularity of their church attendance, from their demeanour, their devotions or their charity, but what it actually means is a very private matter to which the observer has no access. People may tell you what they believe, and why, but what they know is a different matter. I can discuss theology, engage in biblical research, even argue about the validity of practices, none of which will reveal the truth of my experience. At best it might attest to the existence of the experience but the quality, the knowing, doubting, rejoicing or agonizing over the God experience is known to myself alone.
It has been said that every marriage is a secret society with a membership of two; the intimacy of the Divine encounter is more exclusive even than that. How could it be otherwise? Every relationship is unique as each person is unique. It is like in a family of several children, all equally loved, but the quality of the relationship with each child is different as each child is different. It is perhaps a valuable insight that each person’s relationship to God and vice versa is unique because that is what love is. The core of our uniqueness is contained in that relation of at-one-ness. We don’t talk about it, not only is it too personal but it defies description and trying to put it into words falsifies it and invites comment, criticism, envy or any other sort of abuse.
“Not I but Christ in me” (St. Paul); “My me is God” (St. Catherine of Sienna) “Hurry into yourself and there find God (Meister Eckhart). These are ways in which some Christian mystics have tried to explain their experience of at-one-ness, for the experience of one-ness is at the heart of the mystical tradition. Mysticism is not a phenomenon exclusive to Christianity, mysticism one can claim, is an expression of a function of the human brain which is developed in some and can be developed by anyone who so desires. It is an aspect of all religions so far as we can tell; it is a human attribute and it is the direction in which spirituality heads today.
Mysticism has traditionally, whether in Christianity or any other religion, been the province of the spiritual athlete, the result of many, many hours over many years of rigorous dedication. By way of current research into how the brain achieves this state it can now be reached in a very short time by anyone who has the desire or enthusiasm to give themselves to the practice.
In Christianity mysticism has had a chequered career due to the addiction of authority to ‘right doctrine’. Orthodoxy stated in clear doctrine was the primary value and to veer away from the standard could be disastrous. Mystics who escaped the flames managed this by couching their writings in language both obscure and sufficiently orthodox to pass inquisition. Meister Eckhart was one who had a pretty dodgy time over his language. Mystical experience has been suspect because it transcends the bounds of dogma. The basic tenet is that anything one says about God is not God because the Infinite will always be beyond the descriptions of the finite mind. Dogma on the other hand is constituted on definitions of God composed from experience filtered through the human mind. The core of mystical experience is stated by an anonymous twelfth century English Mystic, “God can be caught by love but by thinking never.” It is not hard to see why people now claim that in mysticism religion and science come together, there is much similarity of language for this form of spiritual experience and the exploration of quantum physics
This kind of spiritual expression takes one beyond the bounds of dogma so that while organized religion slides further down the scale of concerns meditation and other spiritual practices are on the increase. In other words, the involvement, fascination and engagement with notions of transcendence; the potential for inter-action with an Unseen Realm beyond our everyday reality feels like a valuable and worthwhile quest for the very people for whom religion holds no interest. It is possible that what they are seeking is in fact true of the Christian faith but truth that has been so overlaid by antique interpretation and centuries of questionable archaic theology as to be completely obscured and all but lost.
Fifty years ago, personal spiritual development was a rare and rather weird phenomenon almost exclusively known to Anglo-Catholics. For example, in the early seventies I (paid up Anglo-Catholic) started teaching meditation on the Christian model because I was incensed by an article in the local paper by a Buddhist who offered to teach meditation to Christians “because there was no such tradition within Christianity”. That was the view, and not only from the outside; on the inside, I was told by the wife of a bishop that “meditation was the work of the devil” presumably because it opened the door to non-orthodox opinions. These days, of course, not to meditate sets you apart as once following the practice had set one apart. A few years ago, someone predicted in print that “soon meditation will be on a doctor’s prescription pad”, this is beginning to be a fact.
On the real meaning of why and how Christianity survives, from the perspective of the faithful, there is little more to say, the evidence is there for those who have the eyes to see it, even though obscured by the ordinary. We can however, look at Something, the Entity, the Being that answers for God in popular culture, far removed though it is from the Reality that is the centre of meaning in so many lives. That Entity will be the subject of Part II.
