(Re-)defining spirituality

[Angelo Cannata]

Angelo Cannata, you didn't really understand my question unfortunately. You had said, "spirituality is any inner experience." What I was asking is why you wouldn't just call that "experience" (experience is necessarily "inner") or "subjectivity" or something like that. Why would you feel the need to use the word "spirituality" instead?

My choice of “spirituality”, rather than “experience” or other words, is suggested to me by my intention to investigate the kind of experience that is produced in ourselves by humanities. When we read a poetry, it is more probable to say that poetry contains a deep spirituality; we can say that it gives us a deep experience, but just because we decided to use the term “experience” in relation to a poetry; but the term “experience” alone does not guide our mind so directly to the kind of experiences that poetry is able to produce in us.

When I take a pen in my hand to write something, I feel the pen in my hand and that phisical feeling is more an experience rather than a spirituality; it corresponds to what I call “universal spirituality”, that coincides totally with “experience”; but my intention is not to investigate about my phisical feelings in touching the pen; I prefer to be interested in the poetry that I will write with that pen; this is what i call “human spirituality”.

This can cause some confusion, especially when I will use the term “spirituality” without specifying if I mean universal or human, but I think that the advantages of investigating human spirituality are worth dealing with this little difficulty. Actually, no word is free from risks about some kind of misunderstanding.

[prothero]

But is not all of human "experience", "inner experience"? Are you not then just equating "spirituality" with "having, perceptions, feelings, thoughts and experiences"? That means all humans are "spiritual"? and thus there is no real conversation to be had. Try William Jame's The Varieties of Religious Experience.

[Angelo Cannata]

But is not all of human "experience", "inner experience"? Are you not then just equating "spirituality" with "having, perceptions, feelings, thoughts and experiences"? That means all humans are "spiritual"? and thus there is no real conversation to be had. Try William Jame's The Varieties of Religious Experience.

I think that what I say is different.

What I call “universal spirituality” is not human perception. Water boiling inside a pot is, in my project, “universal spirituality”, because it is a movement. God in heavens is universal spirituality, no matter if God exists or not. All these thing are not necessarily human experiences.

What I call “human spirituality” is exclusively human.

“Human spirituality” can be considered part of “universal spirituality”, because “universal spirituality” includes everything, no matter if existent or not.

In this context I can say that all humans are “spiritual”, meaning that no humans exist in the world having nothing moving inside them.

When I say “inner experience”, I’m not saying “human experience”. A pot experiences water boiling inside it. Obviously, a pot perceives just like a pot is able to perceive, that is, in a very elementary way, just some atoms moving; a human perceives in a more complex way, but they can be both considered perceptions, since perception, in this context, is nothing else than any kind of reaction to something moving.

[prothero]

And where does that get us in discussing religion and spirituality ,other than a rather extensive notion of divine immanence in all things (everything is spiritual (from boiling pots to human beings)?.

[Angelo Cannata]

And where does that get us in discussing religion and spirituality ,other than a rather extensive notion of divine immanence in all things (everything is spiritual (from boiling pots to human beings)?.

My thought does not state a divine immanence, because I leave apart any question about the existence of God or of any kind of supernatural spirit, because this question does not contain academically accepted reference points. So, it makes no difference if they exist or not.

In the context of my thought, discussions will not be about the existence or about the nature of God, or of any beings. Discussions will be about what kind of inner movements are more interesting and more capable to stand up to criticism.

For example, believing or not in some kind of ghosts or spirits does not prove to be able to face up to actual historical problems, such as politics, violence, justice, racism. This does not mean that I forbid those discussions: simply I’m not interested in them very much. I consider more fruitful to discuss about inner human experiences that make us interested in justice or in violence, in art or in politics, in meditation or in human relationships. So, I think we could discuss about the spirituality of justice, spirituality of violence, spirituality of jazz music.

Among all these spiritualities, I think the most abstract, the purest, is spirituality of silence; I don’t think it is totally pure, because what our mind does in silence depends on our past, our personal history, our mentality, but I consider it purer than other kind of spirituality. Purer does not mean better: it only means less dipendent from external sources.

[Terrapin Station]

My choice of “spirituality”, rather than “experience” or other words, is suggested to me by my intention to investigate the kind of experience that is produced in ourselves by humanities. When we read a poetry, it is more probable to say that poetry contains a deep spirituality; we can say that it gives us a deep experience, but just because we decided to use the term “experience” in relation to a poetry; but the term “experience” alone does not guide our mind so directly to the kind of experiences that poetry is able to produce in us.

But then it would turn out that you're not saying that "spirituality" is the same thing as "(inner) experience" after all--otherwise they'd be substitutable. So I'm left wondering what "spirituality" denotes there that "experience" does not.

[Terrapin Station]

God in heavens is universal spirituality, no matter if God exists or not.

??? How would something non-existent be "universal spirituality"?

A pot experiences water boiling inside it.

I have no idea what that would mean. Experience is a mental phenomenon. Pots do not have minds.

Obviously, a pot perceives just like a pot is able to perceive,

Pots do not perceive in any way.

I don't know, the more you try to explain this, the less it makes any sense to me.

[Angelo Cannata]

But then it would turn out that you're not saying that "spirituality" is the same thing as "(inner) experience" after all--otherwise they'd be substitutable. So I'm left wondering what "spirituality" denotes there that "experience" does not.

In the definition that I gave, “spirituality” and “inner experience” are definitely interchangeable; I said exactly that spirituality is any inner experience.
But when I said that definition, I still had not made the distinction between universal and human spirituality. Now, it can be clear that the definition was referred to universal spirituality. Human spirituality is not any inner experience, because even an animal or a stone can have an inner experiences, but they are not human experiences, so they are not human spirituality. In this context, the word “spirituality”, if used alone, is necessarily ambiguous. From a structural point of view, spirituality is universal spirituality; from a human interest point of view, spirituality is only a selected portion of universal spirituality, that is human spirituality.

??? How would something non-existent be "universal spirituality"?

It is not difficult to think an example of non-existent things being “universal spirituality”: the believer thinks that God exists, so, for him God is a universal spirituality, that is, some kind of movement, that can be meant even as an emotional movement, for example by saying that God loves his believers. But for the atheist God does not exist; in his opinion God is an invention of the believer, that is, something moving exclusively inside the imagination of the believer; in this case God is only a human spirituality. But human spirituality is a portion of universal spirituality; so, even a God considered existent only in the imagination of his believers can be considered a portion of universal spirituality.

Pots do not have minds

Obviously I agree that pots do not have minds. But what is this mental phenomenon that we call experience? Is it not the result of the interaction of some neurons inside our brain? And is not this interaction the result of some atoms mutually interacting? And is not any reaction of the pot to the boiled water a result of interacting atoms? So, what’s the difference between our brain perceiving an object and a pot reacting to hot water? Are not both ultimately interactions of atoms? The difference consists only in the kind of atoms and their organization.

We can even refer the human perception to something supernatural; so the difference from the pot would seem to be more consistent; but it isn’t, because they are both movements, and, in my thought, perception can be ultimately considered any reaction to any movement.

[Terrapin Station]

It is not difficult to think an example of non-existent things being “universal spirituality”: the believer thinks that God exists, so, for him God is a universal spirituality, that is, some kind of movement, that can be meant even as an emotional movement, for example by saying that God loves his believers. But for the atheist God does not exist; in his opinion God is an invention of the believer, that is, something moving exclusively inside the imagination of the believer; in this case God is only a human spirituality. But human spirituality is a portion of universal spirituality; so, even a God considered existent only in the imagination of his believers can be considered a portion of universal spirituality.

That part makes sense more or less. I initially read it as you attributing properties to a non-existent.

Obviously I agree that pots do not have minds. But what is this mental phenomenon that we call experience? Is it not the result of the interaction of some neurons inside our brain? And is not this interaction the result of some atoms mutually interacting? And is not any reaction of the pot to the boiled water a result of interacting atoms? So, what’s the difference between our brain perceiving an object and a pot reacting to hot water?

Well, different materials, in different structures, undergoing different processes, amount to different properties. So that's the difference.

This part of your comments seem like you're basically equating "spirituality" with motion.

[Angelo Cannata]

This part of your comments seem like you're basically equating "spirituality" with motion.

Yes, basically I equate spirituality with motion. This happens because, in my mind, basically everything is motion (from Heraclitus’ “Panta rhei”, “everything flows”). Basically anything can be equated to anything else, so that anything can be adopted as a perspective to interpret anything else. When I say that, basically, everything is “universal spirituality”, I’m trying to find an interpretation, a hermeneutic, hoping that it will be useful to me to reveal some interesting aspects about existence, life, humanity.

[Terrapin Station]

I agree that everything is in motion. I don't see any sense in renaming motion "spirit" though.

[Angelo Cannata]

I think that, by renaming motion “spirit”, I remind to myself that motion is a human idea. When I investigate motion, I am investigating a human idea; furthermore, the act of investigating is in itself a human activity and, as such, it is influenced by my being human. This means that, before doing research about nature or motion, it could be better to do research about human being.
Obviously, by doing this I don’t want to say that scientists should be philosophers before being scientists. I’m only saying to myself that any scientific research is a human research and that a good job for philosophy would be to engage itself in research about human being.