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The Absolute
1 “By religion I mean the codification of the interaction with an absolute that remains empirically unknown, but is nevertheless empirically assumed.” The absolute is the assumed source of an inescapable conditioning of human experience. A fundamental example of this conditioning is death. Because one is “conditioned in repeated and coherent ways”, it is possible to speak of a perception of the absolute, even if it is empirically unknown. Beyond the horizon of the knowable, the absolute is like a vanishing point that can be intuited as the convergence to which the experience of being conditioned leads.
2 One fundamental difference lies in whether or not the absolute is conceived of as having the autonomous capacity for action. A “god” is an active absolute, and is capable of interacting with humans. The alternative is an inert absolute which underlies reality but does not intervene or interact with humans.
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The Structure of Religion
3 There is a structural analogy between religious systems, based on the difference in how the absolute is conceived. A first distinction is whether initiative is attributed to the absolute or to humans; a second distinction is whether one considers the single individual or the community. Further, interaction between humans and the absolute can be explicit or implicit. If explicit, there will be cultural expressions that can be studied. Implicit interaction can be deduced to some degree from the explicit data.
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Spirituality, at the Origin of Religion
4 Behind religion, a “structured and culturally defined codification”, lies what I term “spirituality” and consider to be the origin of religious phenomena. In this work, “it is a question of directing our attention to sensitivity, a sensitivity not detached from external forms (which are the only data accessible to a historical investigation), but seen as the focal point from which forms arise.” 5 Piety is like “spirituality in search of religion”, and can be found on a variety of occasions in historical sources.
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Myth and History
6 Like I have used the term “absolute” to unite in a single concept what different traditions refer to as god, the divine or fate, I unite what different traditions call “revelation” or “intuition” under the heading of “illumination”.
7 What is meant depends on whether one assumes an actual reality for the pole that conditions spiritual experience, and by what is meant by factuality. For instance, in polytheism the creation story postulates a chain of events which had a beginning, but whether those events were factual or not is not a factor. In monotheism, on the other hand, those events are understood as the result of an agent acting, and if the factuality were to lapse, so would the entire system. Myth corresponds to the first system; history to the second.
8 In a historical vision, the concept of “faith” is assent to a factuality (for instance, the factuality of God the Creator) that incorporates yet transcends the data. In the mythical vision, the emphasis is on an explanatory process which is symbolic, not factually true. These two approaches generate two different spiritualities.
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Our Methodology
9 In our investigation of spirituality, we aim for both expertise regarding the available cultural data, and sensitivity for the human experience that generated it. “The semiotic method by which we reconstruct the link between the sign (the cultural manifestation) and meaning (the profound intention) may not always lead to a completely satisfactory verification…but the certainty remains that such a meaning existed, and that it is up to us to discover it.”
10 In this exploration, we must be aware of our cultural assumptions, and reach for an objectivity that is in tune with the assumptions of the phenomena we study.
11 We must also avoid arguing in a given field of research with assumptions derived from another field.
12 In this way, not only religion but also spirituality is susceptible to historical analysis.