Spiritualise by Jonathan Rowson is a brave and robust attempt at defining the human spirit – perhaps the most elusive concept there is.
Rowson is the joint founder of the research institute Perspectiva. It was set up to combat the so-called Metacrisis, the perceived moral vacuum left in western developed countries by the decline of fundamentalist religious belief.
The crisis is reflected in our global failure to tackle climate change and pollution, growing inequality, polarised politics, ever more deadly weapons and wars and an apparent rise in social isolation, loneliness and mental problems.
Rowson argues that to make progress in global cooperation and politics we need to find a way to connect our inner worlds with the outer reality. This means we need to find a rational way to talk about spirituality and to foster “spiritual sensibility.”
He describes spirituality as “the feeling of being alive, the conviction that something matters, the intuition that the world makes sense, and the experience that life is meaningful…
“Cultivating spiritual sensibility is about deepening our engagement with questions of being (death), belonging (love), becoming (self) and beyondness (soul).”
Defining the Human Spirit
He argues that we have become relegated to consumers, isolated individuals in the capitalist market, constantly distracted by our personal needs and addictions. We should aim for a wider perspective that shows the ground of our being, not just our place in the world, and which reflects our connection to other people and the planet.
The book is full of impressive quotations and concepts. One of these is that human reality is neither simply subjective nor objective; it is something found in between, the relationship between the two.
He acknowledges a debt to Dr Iain McGilchrist and his seminal book The Master and his Emissary. This highlighted the recent dominance of “left brain thinking”, the search for technical solutions to control the outside world.
McGilchrist demonstrated that the alternative right brain view should not be ignored: it takes a broader perspective, using our emotions and intuition to tell us what needs to be done and why we should do it. He says this kind of thinking may use myths, rituals, stories we tell ourselves and our imagination. Not just logic and reason.
Rowson adds that human beings are not purely rational; our consciousness is embodied. Even if we reject the claims of religion, it may be that we still need the fellowship of its shared social rituals.
Defining the Human Spirit
So how can we define something as hard to measure as spirituality? Rowson makes some impressive attempts: “…our search for meaning, our sense of the sacred, the value of compassion, the experience of transcendence, the hunger for transformation.”
The book refers to Buddhism and the notion that our ego is not a fixed, real thing. It describes the selfless nature of acting with expertise and entering “the flow”: “To forget one’s self is to realise one’s emptiness, to realise that one’s every characteristic is conditioned and conditional.”
In other words our conscious self is an empty vessel that can contain many things. It may sometimes become those things. And as we make spiritual progress in our awareness – what changes is how we see things, the quality of our attention.
Rowson quotes Oliver Robinson saying that spirituality comes from turning inward, to “reduce thought chatter, find your inner light, stop talking so much, unlearn things, become still and simple, take off your social mask, be spontaneous, and allow your creative impulses and emotions spontaneous release.”
So can this kind of inner change lead on to political change? Rowson argues that democracy has failed to deliver, leaving citizens feeling powerless and often angry. So we need to find more inclusive ways to debate and negotiate social change. He cites the Six Debate Principles of the Danish Alternative Party:
“We will openly discuss both the advantages and disadvantages of a certain argument…
“We will listen more than we speak, and we will meet our political opponents on their own ground.
“We will emphasize the core set of values that guide our arguments.
“We will acknowledge when we have no answer to a question or when we make mistakes.
“We will be curious about each and every person with whom we are debating.
“We will argue openly and factually as to how The Alternative’s political vision can be realized.”
Defining the Human Spirit
Rowson uses the German term “Bildung” to describe the process of growing spiritual maturity and learning to accept realities which we can’t change. He also employs the term “Imaginaries”, to describe new narratives which could enable human beings to become better at working together and helping to sustain the planet.
The book is a tour de force in exploring the idea of progress in human consciousness. Jonathan Rowson is a chess Grandmaster and one feels the precision of his mind on every page, as he attempts to pin down the indefinable!
Perspectiva treats this attempt to change hearts and minds and society as a long term project that could last a hundred years. It advocates setting up small groups of like-minded activists to begin to change the world.
The JustBeauty blog shares many of these aims, with the difference that we emphasize the study and practise of the arts as a route to understanding our emotions and finding our values.
Near the end the book comes this formulation: “spiritual sanity could be about building society around the pre-eminence of love, the reality of death, the need to integrate and transcend the self, and the exquisite experience of the soul.”
Spiritualise, second edition, by Jonathan Rowson, published by Perspectiva.