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Schouborg, Gary (2003).
"Toward a Theory of
Spirituality".
Toward a Theory of Spirituality
by
Gary Schouborg
Paul Griffiths
(1997) argues interestingly that our concept of emotion is like that of
sublunary and superlunary heavenly bodies in ancient cosmologies. Although
the terms referred to real entities, they had no explanatory value. That is,
they did not function in any useful explanatory system. Similarly, what we
popularly refer to as emotion dissolves under analysis into many things, some
non-explanatory and some explanatorily incoherent. He mentions in passing
that our concept of spirituality is similarly amorphous (see also Hood et al.
1996), an observation I find intriguing. I'd like to pursue it here at a
rudimentary level.
As
Griffiths also observes, concepts have more than explanatory uses. For
practical purposes, the intuitive languages of the arts, literature, and
common sense speak usefully to most people about spirituality. For
theoretical purposes, intuitive languages are ambiguous and not
systematically coherent. For theoretical purposes, I am trying to identify an
invariant among the rich variety of experiences that we intuitively call
spiritual. For practical purposes, theoretical language is too aseptic to be
immediately useful in our daily lives. However, longer term, it can be useful
to clean up intuitions. Although usually helpful, they are by nature a
thicket of implicit perceptions and can therefore easily conceal unexamined
errors. Opportunity for further error arises when we apply intuitions to
situations different from those in which they were originally derived. Theory
disciplines an intuition by uncovering and systematizing its implicit
perceptions and identifying the conditions under which they are true or
useful. We might say that theory is aerobics for flabby intuitions.
An
ultimate benefit in tuning up our intuitions about spirituality will be to
understand how to make everyday labor in our complex technoeconomy
spiritual — that is, deeply and holistically satisfying. Right now, daily
work is at worst demeaning and at best emotionally satisfying, but not
recognizably spiritual. That is why we tend to look outside the workplace for
spiritual nourishment.
For my
own theoretical goal of systematically explaining the role of spirituality in
human behavior, I'll identify some meanings that people give to
'spirituality'. I'll then propose a meaning that underlies them and provides
a basis for distinguishing different forms of spirituality and assessing
their functionality or dysfunctionality. The
following list of meanings is not comprehensive. Yet it is sufficient to
develop a definition that can accommodate any additional senses of the term.
Spirituality has been identified in
whole or in part with:
Religious
activities of any kind
Belief
in an unconditional reality
Belief
in the sacred
Belief
in the paranormal
Belief
in a "spirit world"
Self-transformation
Religious
experience as opposed to religious behaviors and beliefs
This
last item points to the most fundamental category — experience. The notion of
self-transformation includes the transformation of one's experience of life.
Behaviors and beliefs are ultimately assessed by how they affect the quality
of our life experience. Even highly dogmatic religions, which emphasize
precisely formulated beliefs and prescribed behaviors, are grounded in
experience. They include experiential consequences — pleasant or unpleasant
experiences in this life or the next — as motivations for holding their
beliefs and obeying their prescriptions. It is therefore inevitable that
meanings of spirituality include some sort of experience, for example:
Feeling
cared for
Release
from psychological suffering (e.g., isolation, self-loathing, excessive need
to control)
Feeling
of emotional health
Feeling
of emotional depth and fullness
Feeling
of community
Joy as
opposed to excitement and fun
Yearning
for something more than ordinary experience
The
paranormal
A
"spirit world"
The
sacred
Unconditional
reality
Unconditional
satisfaction with life
In a
manuscript I am writing, I argue for the essence of spirituality as
unconditional happiness or satisfaction with life, which I am calling
'feeling whole'. Unconditional happiness does not mean that all our desires
are met — the grand illusion about happiness that all wisdom traditions say
leads to our emotional perdition. Rather, unconditional happiness means that
we find satisfaction in life whatever our circumstances, whether we achieve
our desires or not. All other characterizations of spirituality either
mischaracterize as spiritual what are ordinary experiences, however deep, or
they correctly though usually implicitly characterize experiences as
adumbrations of feeling whole. For example, any breakthrough experience —
whether intellectual or emotional — is an adumbration of feeling whole in
liberating us from the prior, more limited state that is broken through. Feeling
whole provides a criterion by which we can assess any experience as
spiritually functional or dysfunctional. An experience is spiritually
functional to the extent that it helps us find satisfaction in life
independently of particular circumstances. It is spiritually dysfunctional to
the extent that it ties our satisfaction in life to particular circumstances.
Spirituality, then, is a continuum of liberation from depending on particular
circumstances for happiness. At the one extreme is the spiritual slave whose
happiness totally depends on present favorable circumstances. At the other
extreme is the spiritual genius who finds deep satisfaction in life in even
the most unfavorable circumstances.
I would
be interested to know whether fans of cultural psychology see the preceding
approach as compatible with the principles and findings of that field. My
superficial impression is that the approach is not only compatible with but
contributive to cultural psychology. Consider Olga Louchakova's
comments:
"I
do not know personally Michael Cole, but resonated greatly with his Cultural
Psychology: the Once and Future Science.
I found it indispensable in teaching consciousness studies in
transpersonal psychology. Transpersonal psychology searches for universals,
in hope that spiritual hierarchies of consciousness are generalizable
throughout the humankind. However, after teaching for 7 years in US spiritual
transformation and meditation methods developed in Russia, I found that in US
they produce personal changes which are different from those obtained in
Russia. For example, after 3 years of psychospiritual
training based on Kundalini yoga methods, Russians
displayed increased tendency to empathic community building, and more
resourceful and peaceful conflict resolution.
My American students, after the same training, were very good meditators
but had no desire to community building, and displayed increased sense of
boundaries and were even more protective of their individual space. I've been
completely puzzled by it, and searched
for answers in cultural psychology. That lead to understanding that cultural
psychological sensibility is applicable not only to personality theory, but
also to trans-personal or spiritual dimension of the psyche. I developed
Cole-Sweder -Cushman based cultural psychology
courses both for residential and global programs at the Institute of
Transpersonal Psychology where I teach now. In responce
to Fred, and indirectly in dialog with Michael Cole, I found that Luria-Vygotski praxis-based perspective can paradoxically be
complimented by the assumptions of ontological primacy of consciousness per
se - more to interactive synergy."
My
understanding of the above is that Olga and I are both looking for invariants
among spiritual experiences. She appears to identify the primary invariant as
"ontological primacy of consciousness per se". I would like to
understand what that means and how it might relate to my concept of feeling
whole. How does her concept help us distinguish functional from dysfunctional
spiritual experiences? I do not want simply to assume that the spiritual
development of the Russian and American students she mentions were
necessarily functional. Neither do I want to assume that one culture "is
as good as another". To deny ethnocentrism does not force us to affirm
cultural relativity. We can identify advantages and disadvantages of
particular cultures relative to various purposes.
Olga Louchakova further comments:
"Seems
that your comments mainly refer to Theravada Buddhist mindfulness meditation
practices. I would be careful with applying these observations to the whole
body of spiritual practice, as well as to meditation at large taken the
variety of methods and approaches. Cultural psychology deals with cultural
configurations of the self, meditation and spiritual practices are culturally
defined methods of self-transformation, whence connection. By association,
DSM-IV category of spiritual or religious problem ( code V), a.k.a. "Kundalini crisis", was introduced by Lu and Lukoff as a culture sensitive category."
Her
caution is well taken in order to avoid oversimplification. But I do not see
anything here that is incompatible in principle with my theoretical project
above.
Fred
Abraham quotes Richard Rorty:
"There
are two principal ways in which reflective human beings try, by placing their
lives in a larger context, to give sense to those lives. The first is by
telling the story of their contributions to a community. .. . The second way
is to describe themselves as standing in immediate relation to a nonhuman
reality. . . I shall say that stories of the former kind exemplify the desire
for solidarity, and that stories of the latter kind exemplify the desire for
objectivity. . .. the search for Truth (Rorty,
1985, 3)."
Giving
sense to our lives is a conditional experience, which brings conditional
satisfaction. It may be spiritually functional to the extent that it
liberates us from particular circumstances or spiritually dysfunctional to
the extent that it ties us to them. The unconditional state of feeling whole
brings satisfaction independently of our circumstances. Furthermore,
"standing in immediate relation to a nonhuman reality" can be taken
not only in the epistemic sense that Rorty gives it,
but also in an experiential sense of being conscious of an unconditional
reality. Feeling whole is just such an unconditional awareness.
Fred
Abraham further comments:
"I
guess I feel that Olga is right, and suspect that an appreciation of culture
and cultural diversity can contribute to one's own individuality, finding new
parts of the self, evolving, or again, as in dynamics, self-organizing,
emerging."
I want to agree strongly with this in order to avoid the impression that
feeling whole is some Platonic state cut off from the particulars of our
inherently cultural existence. Feeling whole is not independent of
conditional satisfactions in the sense of ascetically discarding them as
"merely conditional". Rather, it is the realization of a satisfaction
in life for which conditional satisfactions are not necessary. As a result,
achieving our desires becomes a flowering from an already satisfied frame of
mind rather than a deluded attempt to transform ourselves from a basically
unhappy state to a happy one by making our circumstances more favorable.
Cultures provide a rich variety of expressions and colorations of feeling
whole, of practices that lead to it, but also of practices that lead away
from it. An understanding of cultural psychology helps us understand how
feeling whole is an embodied experience which has many adumbrations, many
paths leading to it, and many false trails leading away from it.
References
Gary
Schouborg, PhD
Walnut
Creek, CA
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