A Discourse on Spirituality

Michael A. Rizzotti

Spirituality precedes religion. All great religious leaders were foremost spiritual beings. The overwhelming power of their spiritual experience eventually gave birth to world religions. True spirituality is essentially about communication between self and the wholly other. As such, Spirit is openness to a fullness of being. This openness is realized by self-communication, making the spiritual experience known. Spirit is therefore the presence of being to itself. A presence that unleashes a potentiality for self realization in the world. In other words, spirituality is a wholesome openness to the unfathomable sacredness of life. The unraveling of a unique and personal experience of the holy, the divine or the sacred.

In the first paragraph of Genesis, Spirit is described as a sweeping wind over the waters. In Genesis II, the words wind and breath are linked together as God breathes his Spirit into “man” and animates him with life. Interestingly, the Talmud has no word ­for spiritual. It is only in reaction to contact with Christian and Muslims theologies that terms like ruhani for spiritual, and gashmi for material, were later created.

In the Bible Spirit relates to a close personal relationship with the divine, described in Genesis as the creation of man in the image of God. This image is not to be understood in terms of a portrait, but rather as a reflection* of the presence of God. This presence IS eminently personal and spiritual. It is outlined in Yahweh’s (YHWH) historical presence compelling Moses into an alliance between His ‘word” and the unraveling history of His chosen people. It is also present in the devout Jew who through prayer feels so close to God that sometimes it takes the form of discussion.

In Latin the word spiritus means breath and air: The vital principle that gives life to the physical organisms in contrast to its purely material elements. Similarly, the Greek pneuma means breath and has a similar etymological connotation. For the Greeks, spirit animates all beings in nature, particularly human beings, in stark opposition to the physical and the material things.

Allegorically, inspiration is the action of breathing “in” the air shared by all. It implies being inspired by the divine presence. Expiration on the other hand, is the breathing “out” of the inner self, coming to terms with our temporary lease on life. Both are enduring metaphors of the sacred and profane, the give and take of life.

In the Gospels, the angel ─ or messenger─ communicates to Mary that the Holy Spirit will come upon her. And she will give birth to a child who will be called the Son of God. Later, Jesus is filled with the Holy Spirit and led to the desert to fast for 40 days prior to his mission. Soon afterward during is baptism, the Spirit came down from heaven: And then there was a voice from heaven, “This is my Son, the Beloved; my favor rests with him”.

The Acts describe how the apostles, who were gathered together during the Pentecost were startled by the sound of a violent wind. Soon to be filled with the presence of the Holy Spirit. They were henceforth empowered to express themselves in a convincing manner and preach to the outside world. All these examples point to the Spirit as the presence of God as a medium for communication.

The Spirit effectively gave the apostles the inspiration to communicate to others the Good News about the impending return of the Messiah. The rhetorical gift of preaching and baptizing allowed to convert a greater number of followers into communities. The early churches ─meaning; assembly or a gathering convoked for religious purposes─ were mostly comprised of Jewish members with a small number of non-Jews. These early members voluntarily shared their possessions and partake communal duties. The “communion of the breaking of the bread” was the central rite of these assemblies.

The conversion of Paul, a former persecutor of Christians, resulted in the conversion of an increasing number of non-Jewish members. The inclusion of non-Jews and a growing church also increased the tensions between Jews and the Gentiles. These tensions were eventually resolved by compromises made in Jewish dietary laws, circumcision and in cultic pagan rituals.

Paul’s theological definition of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ is considered to be one of his most invaluable contribution to Christian thought. Body is defined as an unifying force of assembly of believers as one people, created by baptism and maintained by partaking of the bread. From its genesis, the early churches were held together in mystical unity by the spiritual gift of communication, communion and community.

The growing number of Christians throughout the Roman Empire was seen as a menace to the genius ─the spirit─ of Rome. The faithful Christians who believed in an impending return of the Messiah were considered a threat to the stability of Rome and its religion. Religio, an original Roman word, meant; all the rituals to honor the gods, while its opposite, superstitio, meant what dishonors them. Generally speaking religio refers to the “pious cults of the gods”, performed by magistrates, statesmen and the citizens of Rome. Superstitio, on the other hand, was an excessive devotion to “other” gods considered a potential threat to the stability of the city-state. As such, Christians were among the religions that were considered superstitious.

Despite the persecution of Christians that went on from time to time, long periods of relative calm allowed them to practice their religion freely as long as they did not participate in public disturbance. Christian martyrdom came to an end the day Constantine saw the light in the sky in the form of a cross. In 312 AD, he converted to Christianity and by the same token transformed the hierarchy of the empire into a hierarchy of the Church. The Church who represented the spiritual and mystical body of Christian believers slowly morphed into the physical and visible structure of the Holy See. The geographical reach of the Roman Empire became the theocratic reach of the Roman Church.

As a result, the Roman "Catholic" Church inherited Jewish spiritual teachings and the ethics of the early Jewish communities. The emerging Church was also indebted to Greek philosophy. And held together by a Latin language, and by a scrupulous Roman juridical application of the rituals. All cemented by a cohesive order of the hierarchy.

In early Christian theological tradition the issue of God the Father, the Son of God and the Holy Spirit in respect to monotheism, became a central point of debate and division. Only with the adoption of the doctrine of the Trinity was the Roman Church finally unified theologically. With the Trinity, the three persons ─or modes of being─ are considered as co-substantial in One self-presence of God. The Holy Spirit retained a profane identity devoid of any gender filiation in respect to the Father and the Son, defined, nonetheless, as the Giver of Life.

As the Church grew consistently monolithic, the universal ─or catholic─ principles of the Spirit of Jesus Christ gave way to a prescribed salvation through the sacraments. Martin Luther, who’s faith in God surpassed his devotion to the Church in Rome, fought for his spiritual ideals to the end. Luther’s faith was based on the principle that one is saved by faith alone, rather than by actions prescribed by the Holy See. Luther’s uncompromising faith in God’s word resulted the most important schism in Church’s history. The consequence of which resulted in the Reformation as well as the Church’s own Counter-Reformation.

The advent of the printing press put copies of the Bible in the hands of a growing number of Protestants. People were finally free to read the Old and New Testaments without the strict monitoring of the Church. Old Testament principles of personal ─individual─ responsibility for salvation through faith spread throughout Europe. These principles and the absolute sovereignty of God were later to influence the spirit of capitalism and the industrial revolution.

After several centuries of cultural stagnation, the Enlightenment finally brought some light in the Dark Ages and the discourse on the Spirit became the subject matter of philosophy rather than theology. It led to a profusion of debate that have enriched the course of history and given rise to a variety of notions about Spirit ─from Descartes to Leibniz and Kant. The most prominent proponent being the German philosopher Hegel. He proposed an outline of the whole history into a dialectic of being and Spirit.

With the expansion of the Industrial Revolution and the dehumanization of labor, the dialectics of Hegel gave way to dialectical materialism. The Spirit’s creative principle in history is henceforth replaced by “material class struggle”. The result of the Lord-owner being alienated from his property, and labor being alienated from the fruits of his manufactured work.

In the twentieth century the philosophical discourse on being eclipsed discussions on Spirit. The reason for the exclusion is that philosophers like Heidegger favored Greek metaphysics over Biblical and Christian thought. In addition, the devastation of the 1^st and 2^nd World Wars ushered a reactionary emergence of existentialism and atheism.

World War II ushered a dichotomy between genuine spirituality and cultic religion. Germany, the birthplace of Protestantism, saw the rise of Nazism and became the grounds for a total moral degeneration. Theologian and a minister Dietrich Bonhoeffer could not reconcile the behavior of his countrymen with the message of the Gospels. He could not understand how a Christian country like Germany could illegally invade other countries and be responsible for the persecution of Jews. Bonhoeffer was among a number of Germans who stood up to the Hitler and his minions. He participated in several missions to help Jewish people escape Germany and took part in failed plots to assassinate the Fuhrer. He was arrested for his unpatriotic stand and put in jail. He was executed only a few weeks before the liberation of Germany by the Allies.

Bonhoeffer to this day stands as a true embodiment of the Spirit of Jesus-Christ. He knew firsthand The Cost of Discipleship, and what sacrifice it takes to be a Christian. He recognized the dire consequences of a country who faithfully follows a war leader. He came to the regretful conclusion that he was living in a time of Religiousless Christianity: A religious cult only by name, devoid of any spiritual content.

While in prison, Bonhoeffer recognized the signs of an impending divorce between spirituality and religion. He saw first hand how patriotism and state religion supplanted the true essence of Christianity. How religion was used by political leaders to confuse the body politic with the mystical body of Christ. As a consequence, the rest of the 20th century saw the unraveling of corporatism and communism battling for ideological attention and political supremacy.

On April 6th 1968 the cover of Time’s magazine displayed the title “Is God Dead?”. Echoes of  Nietzsche’s words put in the mouth of a madman, who nobody would believe, came back to haunt post-modernity. The words of Zarathustra, and the proponents of the Death of God philosophy, were mostly misinterpreted and misunderstood. Nevertheless, the caption on the cover was taken as affront by Christians. For Nietzsche the demise of the divine meant that the idea of God is no longer capable of acting or controlling a moral code for human conduct. The devastation of wars in the 20^th and 21^st centuries somehow attest to that view.

The advent of post-modernism, particularly the incursion of mass media, led to a displacement of some of the leading protagonists in the realm of the sacred. The advent of the cinematic news reel became the preferred propaganda tool that led to the rise of Nazi dictatorship. The media became the ideal tool for the subversion of spirituality. Resulting in the dissolution of human communication, communion and community.

With the implantation of TV in people's living room, the medium diverted the power of the word away from the priestly order. It displaced the temple as the center of propagation of creed and solace. The preacher was no longer the only medium between the sacred and the believer, a gateway to the good news.

With Tele-evangelism, the “medium” replaced the presence of the preacher and disposed of the temple as the gathering place for the community of believers. The media became a top-down source of propagation that generates seclusion, isolation and fragmentation of being.

Based on the definitions of Spirit outlined above, the media does not encourage self-communication. It does not generate communion or community. It is a remote form of control of marketable identity. It feeds itself on the consumer and in return brands the viewers’ spirit with logos. Furthermore, through the media the corporation self-propagated the creation of a person in its own image.

The corporation in the US is defined, in legal and accounting terms, as a person. And in respect to the US constitution it shares the same rights as a person. In respect of the US political system, this legal person has become one political body. However, the Incorporated body is not a human person and lacks the spiritual essence that inspires communication, communion and community. Promoting instead a cultic devotion to trademark, engendering fragmented tribalism.

As the Incorporated Body plays an ever greater role in politics, the advent of the Internet made subliminal inroads into human forms of communication. With the Internet, spirituality morphed into devoted interactivism and virtual commitments. The fragmented self leaped onto the awesome omnipresence, omniscience and all-seeing infinity of cyberspace.

The speed in which the Internet spread onto the world is unprecedented in history. Ushering a non-linear dynamic challenging the top-down hierarchies. Bottom-up power clusters resulted in open source operating systems and organizations of all kinds, that thrive on a centripetal force to develop and organize. The Net pulled the Self into the vast otherness of cyberspace. The immediacy of the medium fostered new friendship and re-linked old ones. It expanded the nature of dating and relationships. And changed the way human beings communicate, deliberate and congregate.

To conclude, we are well aware that the childlike innocence of the early days of the Internet are long gone. And that the Net is slowly being asphyxiated by a hybrid advertising, the result of a merger between TV advertising and the Net. Fortunately there is still plenty of room for open source interactivism to flourish and expand. And since the Net is by nature interactive, tools are available to bypass or ad-block any intrusion to the presence of the World Wide Web.

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* The word "reflection" is not to be confused with a mirror image, considered to be narcissistic, but in terms of a creative act of self-communication, in which the presence of the divine reveals His identity in the unfolding mystery of life.

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