A year ago we wrote two short posts:

Why the word “Spirituality” kinda sucks
Why the word “Enlightenment” kinda sucks

Basically – people use these words in numerous and contradictory ways, and nobody can be wrong. Often the usage refers to something supernatural. Sometimes the usage is manipulative. But almost nobody acknowledges these discrepancies…

People often use the words AS IF the meaning is clear. This creates a lot of confusion especially for someone uninitiated. They assume everyone “gets it” – only to gradually realize people are speaking different languages – there is no clear “it”.

Admittedly, both words CAN refer to important experiences, and “for lack of a better word”, it evokes something.

I recently found the essay “Spirituality and Intellectual Honesty” by Thomas Metzinger, and it is one of the sharpest takes on both terms I’ve ever encountered.

Metzinger is a bona fide philosopher and cognitive scientist, but does an excellent job keeping things simple in this essay.

Here are links: essay & youtube lecture

The part I want to focus on is how he defines both words.

“Spirituality”

Spirituality is an epistemic stance, the unconditional desire for knowledge, for an existential form of self-knowledge beyond all theory and dogma.

He shares how he reasons his way to this definition. He cites Krishnamurti (for example) as having a comparably concise view on the word:

“I maintain that the only spirituality is the incorruptibility of the self”
-Krishnamurti

Brilliant! If I MUST use the word spirituality, I can get on board with this. We’ll unpack this more in a moment, but first let’s look at enlightenment.

“Enlightenment”

What about the idea of enlightenment? For many of those engaged in spiritual practice, it seems to be something like the final goal, the deepest insight, the end of all suffering. On closer inspection, these reports only resemble each other in certain characteristic traits, but never in all of them. There are no good arguments for saying that a single, well-defined, culturally invariant and theory- and description-independent state of consciousness that is “the” enlightenment exists.

He further argues that, because “enlightenment” is pre-conceptual, any definition of the word is basically unusable by science and research. By association, we can look at the terms “waking up” and “awakened” the same way.

Bottom Line

If “spirituality” is essentially an extreme epistemic stance – the honest pursuit of knowing ourselves – beyond theory and dogma – who we are prior to conceptual knowledge – this radically simplifies things.

What does that mean?

Typically when we talk about “epistemology” – we are talking about the nature of knowledge and belief – what we know, and how we know it. “Epistemic humility” means, by default, holding all our knowledge as provisional – to be revised or discarded in the face of good evidence. Again and again, in our community, we recognize the value of humility.

“Spirituality” is taking this humility to its extreme: Not only is knowledge of the outside world provisional, but knowledge of ourselves – who we believe we are – our feelings – our entire phenomenological existence – we can investigate all of it.

Wow! That’s one hell of a position – leading to all sorts of interesting questions. (as this community knows).

So I ask: why use the word “spiritual” at all?

Personally, I avoid it, except when relating to historical context or when the meaning is clear enough that it won’t mislead anyone. When I use “Self-Investigation”, it represents what I mean, exploring down to the core of our existence. The ultimate epistemic stance – without the need to clarify and disambiguate “spirituality”.

As far as “enlightenment” goes – here too – I realize that when we DO perceive the most fundamental “core” of who we are, we might call this enlightenment. But we should also realize that, at the end of the day, this cannot be translated – there is no converting it into a recipe, a credential, or a foundation for behavior. To be clear: I do NOT want to dismiss how transformative and meaningful “exploring one’s core” can feel. Rather, that to emphasize it as the goal, or use it as a basis for how we behave and interact back in “dualistic” land (aka everyday life), seems prone to rejection and confusion.

Given how adjacent “Self-Investigation” is to “spirituality” and “enlightenment” – this kind of discussion and clarification feels helpful. Not to discard the terms entirely – but to see them for what they are – freighted with baggage – and use them cautiously and carefully.

Discussion

This is posted to our discourse forum for discussion.