1. John J. Thatamanil
There is a widely accepted convention that distinguishes between spirituality & religion.
Hence, the idea of SBNR, Spiritual But Not Religious. We need a genealogy for how this
came to be. I wonder if there is good writing available that gives to this (perhaps
questionable) distinction some disciplined content. Are there really useful/illuminating ways
of defining these 2 terms that you like?
John N Veronica
Dr. T., I found the work of Bernard Lonergan inspirational, especially as articulated by his
protege Daniel Helminiak, who drew distinctions between progressively broadening
horizons of human concerns: 1) positivist 2) philosophic 3) theistic 4) theotic in 2 technical
works: The Human Core of Spirituality and Religion and the Human Sciences. Per Helminiak,
spiritual concerns emerge on the philosophic horizon, religious on the theistic. But I do not
fully subscribe to the theological anthropology of Lonergan or Rahner's transcendental
Thomism, which is too Kantian & a tad too optimistic.
Taking further inspiration from Peirce, I don't view epistemology in such a tidy, foundational
way but as a hermeneutical spiral that is, in a word, messier, where one may begin "in
media res," as the normative mediates between the descriptive & interpretive to effect the
evaluative. In my account, abstractly, the spiritual might entail a dance of sorts between the
descriptive, evaluative & normative human concerns without the imposition of a
substantive interpretive stance. Concretely, some type of interpretive approach, however
inchoate or implicit, will be in play as an integral dynamic of our evolutionary epistemology.
It may be that the SBNR is a self-description that more so indicates one's eschewal of
organized or institutional articulations of interpretive stances but it would be a dubious
claim, in my view, for anyone to claim total immunity from the semiotic process of
interpretation that, in fact, differentiates our species as "sapiens." All have a fundamental
trust in uncertain reality (Kung's phrase) and maybe not all "justify" it in explicit terms, but
this justification must be more broadly conceived beyond the mere epistemic to also
include prudential (both moral & pragmatic) and relational (robustly unitive) norms, i.e.
those existential patterns of habits and expectations that betray the beliefs of those who'd
deny having any.
re: I'd like to include in spirituality something other than the gathering or happening of
experiences, but as disciplined transformation of our capacities for attending to attention--
to cultivate attention for the sake of self and world-care, or something like that. <<<
Thomas Merton would agree, as he wrote: "And so, many contemplatives never become
great saints, never enter into close friendship with God, never find a deep participation in
His immense joys, because they cling to the miserable little consolations that are given to
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2. beginners in the contemplative way."
I very much resonate with this approach of "disciplined transformation." And I think, again,
of Lonergan's epistemological precepts: Be attentive! Be intelligent! Be reasonable! and Be
responsible! I rather refer to them as existential imperatives, though, a broader
conceptualization of the dynamism of sensation, abstraction, reasoning and judgment. And I
think also of Lonergan's "conversions," as expanded by the recently deceased Don Gelpi:
intellectual, affective, moral, sociopolitical & religious. This is precisely what Don's Peircean
aphorism addresses when he said that orthopraxis authenticates orthodoxy; specifically
when Don asked how well our churches institutionalize conversion, fostering
transformation. It's the challenge, too, to any SBNR approach?
Another thought about experiences. From the East, I learned to seek Enlightenment out of
compassion for those who would have to otherwise continue to experience my
unenlightened self. Often, in the Western literature, mystics like St. John of the Cross come
across as rather severe in their asceticism. His fellow Carmelite, Teresa of Avila, regarding
experiences, wrote: "The water is for the flowers." And she said something along the lines
that we must desire and occupy ourselves in prayer not so much so as to receive
consolations but so as to gain the strength to serve.
But John's emphasis on nature, the imagery of his poetry and his relational imagery reveal a
man overflowing with sensuality and delight! He is selling us on nothing less than Divine
Eros, an embodied love, and, in the words of Richard Hardy: “in the light of this erotic love
challenges today’s Christian to embrace a lifestyle that risks all for the sake of all.” John is
forsaking whatever only in order to purchase the field where he's discovered a more
valuable treasure!
So, there is a balance to be struck between any dismissal of experiences as trivial
epiphenomena and any chasing after experiences apart from our pursuits of truth, beauty,
goodness, freedom and love, which are their own reward. Experiences of absoulte unitary
being and/or of intimate unitive communion do ensue as by-products of
solidarity/compassion and/or of authentic loving relationship and not from selfish pursuits,
as our agapic quests transcend without negating our erotic realizations.
David Dault wrote: "Spirituality is our answer to the eclipse of religious power from civil life
- we construct an interior world, recognized as sacrosanct by the Supreme Court precisely
because it has been relegated to political ineffectiveness."
Our experience of the Enlightenment in the US does differ in some ways from the
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3. Continental, which more so marginalized religion? Our 1st Amendment's nonestablishment
and free exercise clauses actually strengthened the influence of religion in our society in
many ways? In a pluralistic society, we might even conceive of such norms as are found in
documents like the Declaration of Independence, the UN Declaration of Human Rights and
so on as reflecting a type of religious consensus.
While we adopt secularization as a political strategy, this need not be conceived as a
relegation of religious influence only as a practical strategy that requires the translation of
any normative religious claims into terms and logic that are transparent to all human
reason. At least in America, perhaps what we call the secular order is no reality from which
the Spirit has been either partially bracketed or fully abstracted but represents, rather, our
"pneumatological consensus" to date, even if such a "religious" accord is somewhat implicit
and unconsciously competent and not otherwise negotiated through explicitly conscious
dialogical processes.
Still, what David & Michael suggest does seem to explain a lot as this is a complex reality
w/many aspects. I fear that I may have more so described an ideal of sorts and less so a
sociologic reality?
In my own studies of spiritual asceticism, disciplines and practices, I have especially been
impressed with those of the East where they address the mastery of one's internal milieu,
encouraging a most efficacious pause between sensation and abstraction
(conceptualization), gifting one --- not so much with a new way of thinking about or
processing reality, but --- with a new way of SEEING reality, of engaging it with a more raw
awareness.
This is not to deny the happening of experiences, but I don't think we would want to
presume that folks — who, self-described, would kill the Buddha — are returning from
ineffable experiences only to clearly effable about reality, or that they are telling us tales
about, what they claim to hold in-principle as, untellable stories. Something else is going on,
which is an invitation into an experience and not an initiation into a philosophical system.
Still, many of these phenomenal experiences point to a deep interconnectedness of all
Reality. This interrelatedness is ineluctably unobtrusive, which is why so few see it, but
utterly efficacious, which is why all experience it, even unawares.
Because we are dealing with vague phenomenal experiences and existential realizations and
not, rather, robust phenomenological descriptions and philosophical arguments, category
errors and confusion will inevitably abound for any critic who chooses to engage such
experiences through dualistic Cartesian lenses rather than engaging the wisdom that is
there to be had even in, maybe especially in, paradox. Whatever one thinks about any
putative ontological nonduality, as an epistemic stance, a nondual approach seems to be an
indispensable complement to our more dualistic, problem-solving mindsets (which have
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4. been no less impressive in advancing the mastery of our external milieu).
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