Levels of Spirituality - Part I

I have come to embrace of mild form of spirituality that is consistent with my rationalist leanings yet not inconsistent with our major spiritual traditions. I will explain the specifics of my personal spirituality in a subsequent essay. My purpose here is to describe the shared structural elements of our major spiritual traditions as viewed from the perspective of a rational, open-minded non-participant.

My analysis of our major spiritual perspectives indicates that there are three discrete levels of involvement. These levels of spirituality are defined with respect to the Transcendent entity underlying all of these traditions. The distinct levels of spirituality are:

• Adherent - Believer in Transcendence
• Prophet - Communer with Transcendence
• Divinity - Manifestation of Transcendence

The Adherent represents the minimum level of participation in a given tradition. As such they are the most loosely affiliated participants in a given spiritual practice. This is the level of the majority of those associated with a given spiritual interpretation. The Adherents of different spiritual traditions have accepted as true the revelations of a Prophet of that tradition.

A Prophet speaks for the fundamental Transcendent entity underlying most spiritual interpretations. To do so, the Prophet has to have had some form of communion with this Transcendence. From most spiritual perspectives this communion represents a mystical experience. It is generally the first significant instance of such an experience that transforms an Adherent into a Prophet. In being fundamentally transformed by their spirituality, Prophets have a deeper level of commitment to their interpretation than do Adherents. The relative rarity of true mystical experiences means there are typically fewer Prophets than Adherents in a given spiritual tradition. The mystical experience provides the Prophet with intuitive insight into the nature of Transcendence, in the form of a spiritual revelation. Collectively the revelations of the orthodox Prophets of a given spiritual interpretation represent its logos.

In mystic spirituality the fundamental Transcendent entity is regarded as being beyond comprehension. As such its manifestation as Divinity is what Prophets commune with in order to receive the revelations that form the foundation of the beliefs of Adherents.

Its Divinity represents the accessible core of a spiritual tradition. Only the most exceptional beings in a given spiritual interpretation are found here. In the Abrahamic traditions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) Adherents are taught that the Transcendent descends to manifest as the Divinity (Shekhinah, the Holy Spirit, the Christ, Az-Zahir). Generally in the Abrahamic interpretations only Prophets believe they can ascend to the Unity with Transcendence that manifests as Divinity. Abrahamic Adherents believe they can only aspire to proximity with the Transcendent, a location that represents the realm they call Heaven. This domain corresponds to what is essentially the upper reaches of the Prophetic level.

By contrast, in the Dharmic and Daoic traditions (Hinduism, Daoism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism, etc), Adherents are taught that Prophets can ascend to Divinity through spiritual growth. These Far Eastern traditions share the Abrahamic belief that the Transcendent can descend to manifest as Divinity.

God Talk IX - Epilog

And so it goes.

The intent of these “God Talks” was to provide you with some insights into the nature of Reality from an absolute perspective. Again note that the subject of these posts is a being whose nature is consistent with what is being said, but not with participation in such discourses. This entity only qualifies as God in the strictest sense of the term ‘Supreme Being’.

I am aware that the Supreme Being presented here is largely inconsistent with the standard Abrahamic conception of God. While it actually has much in common with the more mystical Abrahamic interpretations of God as well as with the foundations of the Dharmic and Taoic spiritual traditions, none of these belief systems was the actual basis of the perspective presented here.

This perspective was derived from the rational framework that I initially developed to explain the causal dynamics of the world around us. The fact that it could be extended to address the transcendent questions of our major spiritual traditions represents an unexpected bonus.

It is this underlying framework that allows me to assert that the optimistic nature of the perspective presented here is not simply wishful thinking. I maintain that things work the way they are described in these discourses because this is what makes the most sense in the context of my framework, not because of some obsessive need I have to validate a particular outcome.

Unfortunately, as I stated earlier the full depth and complexity of my entire framework does not lend itself to the blog model (you could easily argue that what I have presented so far is significantly stretching the paradigm). I am still looking for an agent / publisher for the manuscript I have written that describes it in its entirety. In the interim I will continue to look for ways to communicate the essence of this framework in blog-sized chunks.

I realize that I have only addressed four of the seven fundamental questions listed in my earlier post titled, “The Origin of My Framework of Reality”. Once I come up with a way of structuring my framework’s answers to the other three questions in this format you can expect that there will be more “God Talk”.