Let me begin by observing: What a stupid question to ask. In my subsequent and continuing re-appraisals of the consciousness-raising polemics against organised religion, I’ve been hoping to show that atheism is neither a movement, a set of ideals, nor a thing in actual existence. A-theism is classified alongside a-goblinists and a-fairyiests as been redundantly unhelpful in defining oneself. No one defines themselves by what they do not believe or have (I do not define myself as a man “without three arms”, for example), so to set this question out with atheism as a noun, should set you on your guard.
Yet, I feel a need to begin answering this question: Where is the so-called “spiritual side” in nonbelief?
I believe ourselves, as a species, to be in the position of Captain Ahab pursuing an ever-evading white whale of gratification. Says Ahab: “Some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask.” No matter the mask or form it takes, it still may be treated as the longing it is.
But domination has also been a prevention for us. Yet, it seems to be changing.
I do not accept the dominion of organised religion over the numinous and transcendent; I do not accept any celestial dictatorship from up-high, yet from so low a time in our past, to command the moments which should belong to me, and me alone; I do not accept that these utterly human moments, ill-defined as “spiritual”, are, too, the targets of New Age tom-foolery. We remain, then, stranded on our own Pequod, poised between the organised religion we reject and the New Age Nonsense we appall. What then, Captains, do we pursue?
Because the rush of reality continues to set our minds ablaze, we know the journey has not ended. We yet continue our search for the white-whale of transcendental posturing.
Paul Heelas, Professor of Religious Studies at Lancaster, has written a beautiful piece on just this question. He asks us to take a look at the secularist variety of spirituality in existence, which he states ‘refer to the collection of practices, beliefs and activities known as “New Age”.’ I am weary of the claims myself, and am very sceptical due to my research in psychology. The point he raises, however, is an intriguing one: Are we not, as secularists and humanists, rejecting the very thing that could lead to a better world? Namely: the offer to those who see humanistic ethics as “cold” toward spirituality is retracted, as we embrace all the beauty on offer from the varieties of religious experience1.
It is an important point and one I don’t think taken seriously enough. But, for this, we must understand why: Why do so many nonbelievers reject what Heelas notes as probable alternatives for reaching numinous, “spiritual” life-styles? To some degree, it lies in our constant search for evidence and validation. The “New Age” market has teeth marks from where flimflam farrago has laid waste to human sensibility. Reiki, crystal-healing, psychics, acupuncturists, and others are all lumped together in a category of Tom-Foolery for a lot of us, best avoided and to be the recipients of neither our time nor money.
Yet again, Heelas asks us to question our outright rejection of it. ‘New Age spiritualities are routinely dismissed more or less in toto. The customary mode is scorn.’ But wait, he says, ‘What is the basis of the secular humanist ethic if not the quest for a good life, to live in a way consistent with an evolved sense of the universe and humanity? Why then do humanists rush so quickly to dismiss those who seek precisely these things in New Age?’
Throughout this article, Heelas forgets our utter abandoning of all things group-orientated, dictating how we should achieve what should be completely personal, beautiful and unstigmatised. Too long has humanity slunk in the shadow of a church steeple, as the bell for Sunday prayer told us what was the path to the numinous. Too often did we don our hats, bathe our feet and slink toward the Arabic a’thaan (call to prayer)- bending and creaking as we supplicated before a tyrannical overlord. Yes these domains exist for everyone, as he highlights, but he forgets our utter distrust of all who lay claim to know how to get there. And for forming groups centered around such things.
Consider the varieties of terms2 located within the monotheisms catering for just these transcendent notions.
Baqa (Arabic): The return of the mystic to his enhanced and enlarged self after ‘fana
Batini (Arabic): One who devotes himself to the esoteric, mystical understanding of the faith of Islam.
Brahman: The Hindu term for the sacred power that sustains all existing things; the inner meaning of existence.
En Sof (Hebrew: ‘without end’) The inscrutable, inaccessible and unknowable essence of God in the Jewish mystical theology of Kabbalah.
‘Fana (Arabic) Annihilation. The ecstatic absorption in God of the Sufi mystic.
Hesychasm (from the Greek hesychia: ‘interior silence’) The silent contemplation cultivated by Greek Orthrodox mystics with eschewed words and concepts.
Ouisa (Greek) Essence, nature. That which makes a thing what it is. A person or object as seen from within. Applied to the monotheist god, the term denotes that divine essence which eludes human understanding and experience.
This list not so much is the tip of the iceberg, as the tip of another continent. One will find many such terms, usually applied to different theologians and philosophers, in one’s investigations into the so-called deeper aspects of religious faith.
The last term should give us pause. Did you spot the white blubber roll beneath the sea of words? Did you spot the burst of sudden awareness from its distant blow-hole? We may have found our whale. We are in pursuit – that we can not deny. But our rejection comes not so much from knee-jerk reactions as from our investigations into the damages done by those who claim to know how to take us to a level so personal it has a million different names.
Faust states, in the beginning of Goethe’s masterpiece, that after studying all of human knowledge, he has nothing to show for it. “You’re no wiser than you were before!” he yells at himself. He continues to lament:
There’s no joy in self-delusion
Your search for truth ends in confusion.
Don’t imagine your teaching will ever raise
The minds of men or change their ways.
But I do not use morbid Germans as inspiration. No one should. However, it raises this speculation: What do we have to show for it? Where is the numinous if we are forever seeking and fulfilling our need for the numinous and trascendent?
Acupuncture has its needles; religions have their songs, art and beautiful mosques and cathedrals; and there in the darkly-lit corner are the nonbelievers. Are we to take Heelas’ advice? I believe many people, those I consider co-thinkers, would find gratification in the balanced expression of the “New Age” for good ideals: The promotion of happiness, gratitude and serenity. Some of us can not.
Heelas also correctly agrees that secularists and humanists have a most powerful tool, which I believe need not preclude the numinous: Reason. Indeed, the use of reason to promote secularism is perhaps the best for modern society, as AC Grayling highlights – and colleagues here at Edger naturally. Reason is the best tool we have, and we must protect it. We can let it lead us to the moments long dominated by religious dogmatists, proclaiming to be metatrons for their god. Reason might stand on the shores of an island we pass, as we traverse the chaotic waters after our white whale. Yet, it may still be our guide if we are to stop, listen and understand.
As Andre Comte-Sponville says: “What frightens us is our own imagination. What reassures us is our reason.” Comte-Sponville’s book on this very subject, The Book of Atheist Spirituality, is very enlightening (pun intended).
Nothing prevents us from reaching the numinous through art, music, literature and theatre; gazing through telescopes at the macrocosms and microscopes at the microcosms – teeming universes filled with beauty which make talking burning bushes and virgin births somewhat uninteresting. Nothing stops us from creating or appreciating those things long paid for by the Church and now called on by apologists as foundations for faith-defence. No nonbeliever rejects these with his previous faith, that would be baby-bathwater stupidity. Even if you tried, I doubt that as a human you could. We are all programmed to need this dimension of the numinous in our lives. We have all been designated a white whale to pursue.
I only say this: The harpoons and arrows from religions may perch out from the skin of your white whale, but is not yet dominated by them. Your own whale is forever evading you. Not as a trial, but as a journey. It is time to follow and pursue, but not with god-given knowledge, not with the hope of capture, but with the hope that the journey with reason can be fulfilling.
NOTES
1. William James has a book by this same title, worthy of any solid investigation by those interested in understanding humanity.
2. Source: A History of God by Karen Armstrong.