Le Monde des religions n°51 – January/February 2012 —
Our report highlights an important fact : spiritual experience in its many diverse forms—prayer, shamanic trance, meditation—leaves a bodily imprint on the brain. Beyond the philosophical debate that arises from this and the materialist or spiritualist interpretations one might make, I draw another lesson from this fact. It is that spirituality is first and foremost a lived experience that touches the mind as much as the body. Depending on each individual's cultural conditioning, it will refer to very different objects or representations : an encounter with God, with an ineffable force or absolute, with the mysterious depths of the spirit. But these representations will always share the common thread of stirring a profound inner peace, an expansion of consciousness, and often of the heart. The sacred, whatever name or form it is given, transforms the one who experiences it. And it profoundly affects their entire being : emotional body, psyche, and spirit. Yet, many believers do not have this experience. For them, religion is first and foremost a marker of personal and collective identity, a moral code, a set of beliefs and rules to be observed. In short, religion is reduced to its social and cultural dimension.
We can pinpoint in history the moment when this social dimension of religion emerged and gradually overshadowed personal experience : the transition from nomadic life, where humans lived in communion with nature, to sedentary life, where they created cities and replaced the spirits of nature—with whom they connected through altered states of consciousness—with the gods of the city, to whom they offered sacrifices. The very etymology of the word "sacrifice"—"to make the sacred"—clearly shows that the sacred is no longer experienced : it is performed through a ritual act (offering to the gods) intended to guarantee world order and protect the city. And this act is delegated by the now numerous populace to a specialized clergy. Religion thus takes on an essentially social and political dimension : it creates bonds and unites a community around shared beliefs, ethical rules, and rituals.
It was in reaction to this overly external and collective dimension that, around the middle of the first millennium BCE, a diverse array of sages emerged in all civilizations, seeking to rehabilitate the personal experience of the sacred : Lao Tzu in China, the authors of the Upanishads and the Buddha in India, Zoroaster in Persia, the founders of mystery cults and Pythagoras in Greece, and the prophets of Israel up to Jesus. These spiritual currents often arose within religious traditions, which they tended to transform by challenging them from within. This extraordinary surge of mysticism, which continues to astonish historians with its convergence and synchronicity across the world's cultures, revolutionized religions by introducing a personal dimension that, in many respects, reconnected with the experience of the sacred in primitive societies. And I am struck by how much our era resembles that ancient period : it is this same dimension that increasingly interests our contemporaries, many of whom have distanced themselves from religion, which they consider too cold, social, and external. This is the paradox of an ultramodernity that attempts to reconnect with the most archaic forms of the sacred : a sacredness that is experienced more than it is "created." The 21st century is therefore both religious, due to the resurgence of identity in the face of fears generated by overly rapid globalization, and spiritual, due to this need for experience and transformation of being felt by many individuals, whether religious or not.