For spiritual people, asking about the use of spirituality is almost sacrilege. Spirituality does not have “use”—it does not serve anything but itself.
Spirituality could of course serve an end which is not beyond, but within, the scope of the sacred, for ample deepening our communion with the Divine. But spirituality could have an entirely mundane end as well. For example, spirituality can deepen our well-being, our happiness, and our relations with others. Most people would recognize these ends as beneficial and valid. I argue in this blog that this is a non-negligible possibility that merits a second look.
Aristotle said that human are social beings, and modern science confirms this. Spiritual people go further. They say that we are not only social but also spiritual beings. In its most explicit form this is the statement what we are not physical beings having a spiritual experience, but spiritual people having a physical experience.
It is questionable whether this assertion contributes mundane value to our life: it may give intrinsic satisfaction but not necessarily hold the key to a better life in a better world. The counterargument to this is that we we are truly spiritual in essence, we are not that in practice. Our spirituality would need to be deepened to be effective. How would we go about deepening our spirituality?
We can point to layers of inherited prejudice that block the unfolding of the spirituality of modern people. Modern people view spirituality as as a form of idealistic adventuring. Spiritual tenets are just fantasy; wishful thinking at best.
If we are spiritual persons, our intrinsic spirituality needs to be freed from such prejudice. We must remember that spirituality has been around for thousands of years, and many of the insights it has to convey have been examined and upheld by various cultures. Among other things, spiritual insights affirm our deep connections with one another and with the universe. Contemporary science supports this assumption.
If spiritual insights have a level of validity, they are worth exploring. How do we come by spiritual insights? The best way to answer this to try to become spiritual ourselves. We have an intrinsic spirituality ourselves—regardless of whether we agree that our basic nature is spiritual—but that spirituality is not expressed in action and is not even recognized. By becoming more spiritual, we can come up with more evident insights ourselves.
How do we become more spiritual ourselves? The self-taught spiritual master Pierre Pradervand suggested that to begin with, we need to ask yourself two questions:
What is my true priority in life, what am I really seeking?
Finding personal serenity? Helping to build a win-win world that works for all? Preparing the next reincarnation? Getting ahead in life, socially and materially?
What is the real motivation of my spiritual search?
Finding inner peace? Expressing unconditional love? A life of service? The elevation of the collective level of consciousness? Or just my own enlightenment?
Fostering and developing your spirituality is one of the most important and practical things you could do. We will not solve the problems of poverty, joblessness, ecological unsustainability, global warming, terrorism, and violence—to mention but a few—unless and until there is a critical mass of people who rise above the superficial pragmatism that dominates today’s world. These and other problems are symptoms of a curable disease. The disease of a flawed mindset. We can heal ourselves by developing a deeper spirituality.
We need to reconnect with nature, life, and the universe. This connection is important because the norms for health are accessible through deep spirituality. These norms are not perceived by the rational mind: they are screened by the superficial pragmatism that dominates the modern world. A deeper spirituality overcomes this filter and allows the norms of health and oneness to appear in our consciousness.
Repeated experiments show that the kind of information that discloses the norms of health is not the ordinary kind of information, and it does not appear at the ordinary frequencies of the EEG (electroencephalographic) spectrum. Nonordinary information surfaces to waking consciousness well below the frequency range of sense-perceivable reality: in the Alpha domain, and even below, in the Theta and Delta range. Spiritual persons are more likely to resonate with this nonordinary but essential information than rationally disposed individuals. The latter seldom accede to information below the Beta level.
The norms for wholeness and health are masked in the modern world: they are overlaid by a unilateral focus on our everyday commerce with the world. We need to go deeper if we are to rediscover them in our consciousness. We need a deep, effective form of spirituality. This is the way to healing, health, and normalcy, because the problems of today’s world are often due to the masking of the nonordinary, but extraordinarily important, information conveyed to us at the deep regions of the EEG spectrum. This information deserves to be recognized and brought to our waking consciousness; it may contain important guidance for our life.
The conclusion is evident: there is a real and urgent need for a deeper level of genuine spirituality in today’s world. If you aspire to be the change you wish to see in the world, you must upshift your inherent spirituality. This is an essential condition of becoming the person whose better “be-ing” could shift us to a better world.
ERVIN LASZLO, philosopher of science, leading systems theorist, author, co-author, or editor of more than one hundred books, was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. A celebrated child prodigy on the piano and discoverer of the Akashic Field, he is the founder and president of the international think tank The Club of Budapest and of the prestigious The Laszlo Institute of New Paradigm Research.
Ervin’s newest book The Survival Imperative: Upshifting to Conscious Evolution is a guide to returning peace and harmony to the planet. With humanity facing its greatest series of simultaneous crises, Ervin Laszlo offers a scientifically based perspective on what is called for at this critical juncture of our existence: a phase of upshift to higher levels of order and coherence to keep us on our evolutionary path.
