Religious and spiritual writings, myths, and folktales portray a dimension or realm of reality occupied by forces and beings and happenings that lie outside of or beyond the normal natural materialistic universe. Spirit and psi related phenomena are the most prominent.
The term spirit relates to a universal force or power or energy field that arises from or draws on a transcendental realm or dimension typically associated with the divine. It has appeared in a multiplicity of cultural forms throughout history, is experienced by large numbers of people today, and can produce measurable effects in the natural world. Spirit lies at the heart of all religious systems.
We know about this nonmaterial realm because humans down through the ages have reported that they were contacted by and received information from it. When communication flows from the divine realm to humans the process is called revelation. The concept of revelation is a fundamental one in every religion that in any way traces its origin to God or a divinity. Revelation in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is the basis of religious knowledge, and they are thus known as revealed religions. The opposite of revealed religion is sometimes called natural religion. Natural religion is religious thought that is independent of revelation. Unitarian universalism is an example. Although spirit underlies revealed religions, it is not exclusive to any one religion and can manifest outside of religious systems.
Contact with spirit typically occurs through spirits. A spirit can be thought of is a nonmaterial conscious entity or being. The world’s cultures dating back before recorded history there have recognized a staggering array of spirits from those associated with natural phenomena, such as storms and animals to the gods and goddesses celebrated in myth.
Talking about spirit and spirits as if they are two clearly different kinds of phenomena as we are doing is misleading as they are closely related. Spirits owe their very existence to spirit. Those believing in spirits typically view them in hierarchical terms with those closer to or more filled with the source – spirit – having a higher status. In Christian terms archangels are superior to angels. The very lowest are demons completely removed from or outside of spirit. With few exceptions most of what we know about spirit has been communicated by spirits although those of a high order.
While millions of people around the world believe that spirit and spirits are real, science which has great power in saying what is real and what is not has no room for such things. This is not surprising since science is a way of exploring the natural world and the facts emerging from that exploration. Spirit and spirits are not part of that world insofar as they are not made up of the same physical material stuff. If not natural then it would seem, as science suggests, they must be considered to be supernatural. The problem with this label is that it’s typically associated with ghosts and goblins or other unearthly beings and thus thought of as eerie or occult.
Aside from the fact that science says spirits are impossible, we don’t typically hear about them in general conversation or even in philosophical and academic discussions. However, in religious circles angels are well-known and much loved, and they clearly fit the definition of a spirit. For those who hold a belief in life after death, whether it be in heaven or some other kind of dimension, a moment’s thought suggests the deceased person must exist as a spirit. He or she has no body but remains conscious and able to experience whatever is there. If the deceased are spirits, so is your great grandparent and some day you will be too.
Whether spirit and spirits are real may not be a question for most people. For those who view the world from a strict scientific perspective such things cannot be considered real, at least in the same sense that planets and plants are real. For those who consider themselves to be religious or spiritual they are real, perhaps more so than things in the natural world we live in. There are also those who appear to accept two realities, one for six days a week and another when they sit in church on Sunday.
People may have no doubt that spirits are something mythical and not real but may not be willing to say this categorically about spirit. After all, spirit can be equated with God or at least a major aspect of God, the Holy Spirit in Christian terms. Saying directly that God is not real, that He is a myth, is something that even those who rely on science to tell them what is real may feel uncomfortable with.
Unless one is quite religious or interested in metaphysical or occult ideas, the whole topic of spirit and spirits may seem remote from everyday experience, something not worthy of serious consideration. Most people may not know anyone personally or may not have read about someone who has had a significant spiritual experience that passes muster when considered objectively and rationally.
Spirit and Religion
The ancient metaphysical or esoteric model describing the nature of reality including spirits and spirit emphasizes that there are a number of nonphysical realms or planes of reality which occupy the same space as the physical world. These exist in a hierarchy beginning with the lowest astral plane and ascending through the next two astral planes into higher mental and spiritual planes, until all form dissolves into the final absolute indescribable universal Godhead. Nonphysical beings are present in each plane. For our purposes the experience of spirit involves encounters with the higher mental and spiritual planes.
A component of spirit as it is experienced involves information about how this reality operates including the functioning and purpose of us humans and guidance as to how we should live to further our spiritual purpose. Sometimes this information is called God’s plan or Ageless Wisdom. If it is experienced in connection with a particular religion or god it is generally referred to as revelation. In other contexts such as channeling or mystical and near death experiences it may be referred to as Ageless Wisdom.
In his book on channeling Klimo characterized Ageless Wisdom as a common view of the greater reality running through world religions and the various esoteric, occult, and mystery schools. He summarizes the broad features of this reality as follows.
“There is a consensus within the channeled material of all ages that the universe is a multidimensional, living Being, which some call God. Within it as aspects of itself are sentient beings of consciousness existing on many or all of its other dimensions besides the physical as we currently experience it. We have continually received messages about, and from, the etheric, astral, mental, causal, and other dimensions of this expanded nature. Wherever a being, personality, or entity may be within this cosmological hierarchy, that entity is always in a process of learning for the purpose of evolving toward greater unity with the one being that is the source and destiny of ail separate beings. Reigning over wisdom, light, and pure force or energetic power is love, the supreme reality of all creation. We humans on earth are in a kind of classroom in which we are slowly learning to be loving beings that reflect the nature of our creator. Essentially, we are of the same quality or nature as our creator and thus undying with many opportunities and contexts for this learning and evolution to take place. There is a recurrent theme of reincarnation, or multiple projections ourselves as the experience-gathering vehicle of consciousness.”
Origins of religions
Particular religions typically came into existence when a person experienced a powerful revelation that may have instructed him or her to initiate a new faith to correct or add to an existing religion. These revelations came from beings more advanced than us. However, they still inhabit some form, that is, they are limited, and are in the process of themselves attempting to advance. Therefore, the information received by the individual mystic may differ as his or her source in the higher planes differs. Furthermore, individual founders of religions live in a particular culture at a particular time, and this influences the information they receive and communicate to their followers. Christianity from its inception was exclusivistic. It and only it considered itself to be the one true religion.
Although experiences of spirit outside of religious systems don’t bear the stamp of a religious structure, they too came from a particular source, although that source may not have identified itself. They can be as powerful as a religious revelation as is the case of mystical and near-death experiences.
These powerful experiences of spirit usually convince the recipient that he or she is in direct contact with the divine. If, as is believed in Christianity and Islam, that there is only one true path to the one true god, then it’s not surprising that such experiences of spirit would create a strong allegiance to that religion within which it occurs. After all, the outcome of one’s choice of religions are thought to determine eternal existence in either heaven or some less pleasant place. Most religious people probably don’t personally have powerful experiences of spirit, but their religious scriptures are full of such accounts. Christianity emphasizes the importance of correct scriptural belief about Jesus Christ and the salvation he offers through his death and resurrection. In many denominations belief is equally if not more important for salvation than the behaviors one exhibits in his or her life. Of course, these should flow from beliefs about Jesus and the example he set.
Within the Ageless Wisdom tradition love is the supreme reality of all creation, and we humans are in a kind of cosmic classroom where we are slowly learning to be loving beings that reflect the nature of our source. It’s commonly said that we are spiritual beings having a human experience. While Jesus as a manifestation of divine love is emphasized in Christian scriptures, there are other Old Testament scriptures that characterize god the father as being quite vengeful and willing to severely punish those who disobey him. It would be helpful to consider that both Old and New Testament accounts contain reports of many people’s experiences of spirit that could very well have different sources from different realms of the spiritual hierarchy. In the current highly divisive religious landscape in this country some groups appear to favor accounts of a moralistic and punishing father god as a guide for their lives rather than accounts of his loving son.
Relationship Between Science and Religion
Up until the last two hundred years there was little fundamental disagreement between science and religion. The great majority in both camps assumed that we live in a world created by God. Most of the people responsible for developing science were deeply religious. For them, learning the secrets of God’s world was a way to better understand and appreciate Him.
As science emerged from philosophy and its tools for understanding became more sophisticated, there was an increasing emphasis on clearly identifying where those tools could and could not be applied. Today science is typically defined as the study of the natural world. The natural world is the physical world that we can directly observe with our senses or through special instruments or that can be predicted or hypothesized to exist on the basis of laws governing the physical world. From this perspective, anything that exists outside of the natural world including God and His activities, are supernatural. Most within science view the natural world as being identical with reality. Anything that exists, that is real, can be understood on the basis of scientific principles, although science as it currently exists may not have the tools to do so.
Actually, these two conceptualizations represented by naturalism and supernaturalism are best viewed as poles on a continuum. The strict naturalist position is that there is not and has never been any divine, immaterial creator god or principle. The world works on natural material principles. At the other end of the continuum is the belief that God created the world and actively runs it. Everything that comes about is caused by God. If lightning strikes a building killing all its occupants, God would be the cause.
There are, however, intermediate views between these positions. One holds that there is a creator god who created the world out of nothing as a very complex system with natural laws governing its processes. God’s original creation is called primary creation whereas things bring about other things in the natural world through what is called secondary creation. In this view natural forces, not God, would be the cause of the lightning strike and resulting deaths. A second intermediary position holds that there is a creator god who set up the world to work through natural laws but who sometimes intervenes in ways that appear to violate the natural order. Such occurrences are miracles. What things qualify as miracles is not clear.
Today there’s a common view that science and religion form two separate and warring camps. Many people think that all scientists are hostile to religion. There is a second view held by many, a “separate realms” model, that sees science and religion operating in fundamentally different realms of knowledge and activity. Evolutionary biologist and popular science writer Stephen Jay Gould proposed that science and religion have their own independent autonomous separate spheres of authority he called “nonoverlapping magisteria” or NOMA.
“Science tries to document the factual character of the natural world, and to develop theories that coordinate and explain these facts. Religion, on the other hand, operates in the equally important, but utterly different, realm of human purposes, meanings, and values—subjects that the factual domain of science might illuminate, but can never resolve.”
The National Academy of Sciences in its 1999 publication Science and Creationism stated that:
“Scientists, like many others, are touched with awe at the order and complexity of nature. Indeed, many scientists are deeply religious. But science and religion occupy two separate realms of human experience. Demanding that they be combined detracts from the glory of each. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-overlapping_magisteria]
Spirit and Christianity
Spirit was to play a central role in the new religion to develop out of the Jewish tradition, Christianity, with its central figure, Jesus Christ. While from its outset there were major questions and controversy about who Jesus was, the majority of today’s scholars agree that he was first and foremost a charismatic, a person who knows the world of spirit firsthand. The first incident reported about Jesus as an adult places him directly in the charismatic tradition of Judaism.
The gospels tell us that he began his ministry with a vision from the other world of spirit which descended upon him. He had gone to John the Baptist, a charismatic wilderness preacher of repentance, and during his baptism he had a vision. “He saw the heavens opened and the spirit descending upon him like a dove.” Mark 1:10.
Shortly after this experience spirit drove or led Jesus out into the wilderness for 40 days where in a desolate desert area near the Dead Sea he underwent a period of extended solitude and fasting during which he was tested by Satan and nourished by beneficent spirits. Theologian Marcus Borg describes these events as
“typical of what other traditions call a “vision quest” [and notes that] . . . . the sequence of initiation into the world of spirit (the baptism) followed by a testing or ordeal in the wilderness is strikingly similar to what is reported of charismatic figures cross-culturally.”
From these events onward Jesus’s life was marked by an intense experiential relationship with spirit. His connection to the world of spirit, Borg notes can be seen “in central dimensions of his public life: in the impression he made on others, his claims to authority, and in the style of his speech.”
Jesus in the gospels is portrayed as a person of prayer. In the Gospel of Luke he prays at every significant moment in his ministry. In the gospel of Matthew, Chapter 6, he teaches his followers to “pray in this way.”
Our Father, who are in heaven, sanctified be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And do not bring us into a time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.
Jesus was a wisdom teacher with a metaphoric mind who commonly taught with memorable aphorisms. What these sayings reveal is a predominant theme running through all of his teachings, the Kingdom of God. He was an apocalyptic prophet who predicted that the end of the age was soon to arrive, when God would intervene in history and overthrow the forces of evil to bring in his good kingdom. Jesus talked about this kingdom in terms drawn from the everyday world. Although he often used parables and aphorisms, the settings and events consisted entirely of common daily happenings involving ordinary people. Jesus didn’t develop major philosophical or theological themes based on Hebrew scriptures, he didn’t often interpret the finer points of Jewish law and when he did he often parodied the legal process, and he didn’t recount epic events from the Israelites past. However, while he spoke in mundane everyday terms, Jesus’ followers recognized that he often had something else in mind, that he was speaking metaphorically. And the basic metaphor was God’s reign and the Kingdom of Heaven.
The Holy Spirit
According to Christian scripture before Jesus died he promised the disciples that God would send the Holy Spirit to remain with them and carry out his task of salvation. They subsequently experienced this directly at their Pentecostal gathering in Jerusalem as an intense visionary encounter when the Holy Spirit is said to have descended into their group accompanied by a sound “like a mighty wind” that filled the room with “tongues as of fire” appearing above them. For the disciples this was overwhelming and indisputable proof that Jesus the Christ continued to be present among them in spite of his death and ascension. Acts of the Apostles reports that immediately after this occurrence the disciples were inspired to begin preaching ecstatically to the multitudes. This Pentacostal experience marked the beginning of a new age with the pouring forth of the spirit upon all people within the Christian community.
Early on a problem arose in the first Christian churches when individuals claiming to be possessed by the Holy Spirit began producing charismatic phenomena such as speaking in tongues, spontaneous spiritual ecstasies, miraculous healings, prophesies, and assertions of new divine knowledge. These phenomena easily became disruptive when they occurred in church services. Wandering preachers proclaiming supposedly spirit inspired but unorthodox messages were clearly a problem to a church attempting to define and teach one correct set of beliefs. Increasingly as more structured and formal church organization developed these activities were discouraged. The Holy Spirit came increasingly to be seen as solely invested in the authority and activities of the institutional church and over time became accepted as the basis for the Church itself, expressing itself in all aspects of the life of the Church – its sacraments, prayer, and doctrine, its developing tradition, its official hierarchy, and its spiritual authority. (Richard Tarnas, Passion of Western Mind.)
Mystical Experience
Mystical experience, perhaps the most intense contact with spirit, contains insights into deeper aspects of reality. Those having such experiences are known as mystics who practice mysticism, but not everyone having these experiences is a mystic nor are they involved in the practice of mysticism. There is a long history of mystical experience occurring within the world’s major religions including Christianity. There are also a large number of people throughout history outside of religious settings who have reported mystical experiences, and they continue to do so today.
Over 100 years ago Canadian psychiatrist R. M. Bucke at age 36 had a single brief mystical experience of what he came to call “cosmic consciousness” that led to a life-long investigation of similar experiences of others.
“I had spent the evening in a great city, with two friends, reading and discussing poetry and philosophy. We parted at midnight. I had a long drive in a hansom to my lodging. My mind, deeply under the influence of the ideas, images, and emotions called up by the reading and talk, was calm and peaceful. I was in a state of quiet, almost passive enjoyment, not actually thinking, but letting ideas, images, and emotions flow of themselves, as it were, through my mind. All at once, without warning of any kind, I found myself wrapped in a flame-colored cloud. For an instant I thought of fire, an immense conflagration somewhere close by in that great city; the next, I knew that the fire was within myself. Directly afterward there came upon me a sense of exultation, of immense joyousness accompanied or immediately followed by an intellectual illumination impossible to describe. Among other things, I did not merely come to believe, but I saw that the universe is not composed of dead matter, but is, on the contrary, a living Presence; I became conscious in myself of eternal life. It was not a conviction that I would have eternal life, but a consciousness that I possessed eternal life then; I saw that all men are immortal; that the cosmic order is such that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all; that the foundation principle of the world, of all the worlds, is what we call love, and that happiness of each and all is in the long run absolutely certain. The vision lasted a few seconds and was gone; but the memory of it and the sense of the reality of what it taught has remained during the quarter of a century which has since elapsed. I knew that what the vision showed was true. I had attained to a point of view from which I saw that it must be true. That view, that conviction, I may say that consciousness, has never, even during periods of the deepest depression, been lost.”
Near-death experiences contain many of the same elements characterizing most reports of mystical experience
– Experiencing an altered state of time
– Experiencing accelerated thought processes
– Sense of sudden understanding
– Feelings of peace
– Feeling of joy
– Feeling of cosmic oneness
– Seeing/feeling surrounded by light
– Experiencing visions
– Experiencing a sense of an ‘otherworldly’ environment
What to make of experiences of this sort typically divides those committed to mainstream science and those in the religious traditions. Yet even among the former there is considerable diversity.
Bertrand Russell was deeply and generally distrustful of mystical experience and with characteristic sarcasm declared, that
“from a scientific point of view, we can make no distinction between the man who eats little and sees heaven and the man who drinks much and sees snakes. Each is in an abnormal physical condition, and therefore has abnormal perceptions”
Albert Einstein on the other hand remarked that
“the religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of [cosmic] religious feeling….In my view it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are capable of it….I maintain that cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest incitement to scientific research.”
Modern-day mystical experiences in many respects resemble those reported in religious and spiritual literature. When they occur in hospital settings, it’s often possible to rule out any normal things that might account for them. In fact, in a few cases the experiencer was determined to have no brain activity at the time it occurred – he or she was clinically dead. In a NDE people are sometimes given a vast amount of information on a range of personal and spiritual matters that may be incongruent with their existing knowledge and attitudes. They feel enriched and empowered and typically lose any fears of death.
One of the most significant and challenging aspects of mystical experience, one that is not given the attention that it should, is that the communication of this information appears to occur practically instantaneously in our normal sense of time. We know from our own experience that acquiring even a small amount of information about a subject that is well-known takes time. That this could involve a large amount of information about something outside of anything we have been exposed to is incomprehensible. Scientific understanding of cognitive processes and learning cannot explain it. Mysticism, in fact, involves so many elements lying outside the natural world that science simply ignores it.
There’s a very large body of evidence acquired through application of scientific procedures supporting the existence of the nonmaterial dimension of reality apart from the religious and spiritual writings, myths, and folktales describing it. To understand and appreciate our essential nature and our place in the cosmic scheme of things it behooves us to look into it.