I. AS SCIENCE ADVANCES, MYTHOLOGY RETREATS.

    When we think of existential spirituality within a long time-frame,
when we consider how this deep way of being
might be formulated 1,000 years from now,
we appreciate the genius of subjective spirituality
as opposed to discussion of objects of faith.

    Most of the past forms of human religion and spirituality
have focused on gods and other objects of belief
—as if gaining deeper 'knowledge' of such entities
was the main goal of religious progress.

    However, precisely the opposite has occurred:
Whenever the content of spirituality has been objectified,
inevitably disputes and disagreements have arisen
when these formulated contents of religion
have confronted new knowledge as discovered by science.

    Religious 'truth' that has been formulated
as if it were facts about the gods
has always had to give way to new knowledge
about the world and about ourselves.

    For example, as natural science explains the world
in ever greater detail and depth,
ideas about divine creation must retreat.
And if the most important affirmations
of some form of religion or spirituality
involved claims about the objective world in which we live,
then those affirmations must retreat
as natural science advances.

    (If you would like to explore the disappearance of the Creator,
you might like to read another cyber-sermon:
WHICH GODS DO NOT EXIST?
No Gods Created the Universe .)

    Likewise, as psychological understanding deepens,
some of the former ideas about our inward dynamics
must be revised.
If a system of religious beliefs was basically
a description of psychological processes,
then as psychology gives a better description of our inward dynamics,
the religious explanations fade away as irrelevant.

II. SELF-CRITICAL INWARDNESS IS NOT ENDANGERED BY SCIENCE.

    However, non-objectifying passionate inwardness
is not in danger of being replaced by physics or psychology.

    Think of the progress that is likely to be made in the next 1,000 years
in the realms of natural science and psychological understanding.
Natural science in our modern understanding began in the 1700s.
Thus the scientific method is only a few hundred years old.
Unless something brings a halt to scientific progress,
the next 1,000 years will see scientific discoveries
that we can only begin to imagine.

    Psychological understanding is somewhat slower to develop than physics,
but advances in the natural sciences are certain
to have profound impacts of our understanding of ourselves.
And many of the psychological phenomena
we used to express exclusively in religious terminology
will be better explained by psychological description.

    To the degree that we describe our own spiritual experiences
without objectifying them in terms of supernatural 'causes',
such orientations of being
will not be displaced in the next 1,000 years,
as science explains the natural world
and our psychological dynamics better than ever before.

    At least among intelligent and well-educated people,
all forms of religious belief that made objective claims
that can be corrected or replaced by natural science
and deeper psychological understandings
will fade away
just as all other forms of pre-scientific understandings
have been quietly replaced
by better models of the world and of ourselves.

    But subjective passionate inwardness is not similarly vulnerable.
As all forms of science advance,
we might be stimulated into better expressions
for what we know about ourselves in passionate inwardness.
But if our subjective spirituality has a firm foundation,
it will not be shaken by any scientific advances.

III. A PRESENT FORMULATION OF PASSIONATE INWARDNESS.

    We human beings are caught in a Predicament or Malaise
we have only begun to understand and express:
existential anxiety, depression, meaninglessness, absurdity.

    However, we also have inklings of life beyond this Malaise.
When we are able to compose a special posture-of-being,
we discover that our anxiety, depression, & absurdity are gone.

    In the past, this posture-of-being
was mostly discussed in mythological terms.
And so, those forms of religion and spirituality
seemed to be tied to world-views
that became less and less believable
as science provided better models of our world and of ourselves.

    However, some thinkers suggest ways to let the mythology go
(if ever we expressed our spirituality in mythological terms)
and still remain within the new condition-of-being.

    Surrender, submission, commitment, leaping
are all ways we have expressed the new orientation
that enables us to become free of our Existential Predicament.

    We gather our inwardness resolutely
and we leap out of our Malaise.

    Each person who has taken this leap
will describe it in his or her own unique way,
but some general patterns can still be described.

    First, the person of passionate inwardness
experiences a long period of exploring the Predicament.
Which false understandings of anxiety, for example, must be transcended
before we are truly grasped by our existential anxiety?

    Second, there will be a phase of attempting to cast off the Malaise
by a variety of psychological techniques.
Sometimes these psychological methods will take forms
that many people would call religious.
However, if these efforts are basically self-reliant striving,
we remain within the psychological struggle of
attempting to solve our Predicament by our own internal powers.

    Third, we finally discover how to compose the posture of surrender.
In passionate inwardness:
We give over ourselves.
We make the leap.
We submit ourselves.
We surrender.

    After this transformation takes place in our depths,
we will continue to seek better ways to express it for others.
And as we gain deeper understandings of the world and of ourselves,
we will continue to revise such forms of expression.

    We will be able to continue to 'demythologize'
whatever expressions we used last year,
so that our new ways of expression our passionate inwardness
remains consistent with whatever new understandings
we gain of ourselves and of our world.

    Collectively, this process of re-expression can continue indefinitely.
As the centuries roll by,
the living persons who are experiencing release from our Malaise
will find ever new ways of expressing and explaining
what has happened to them in the deepest levels of their beings.

The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author.
The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by the University of Minnesota.