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In my search for a postmetaphysical meditative practice I came upon the following article at Naturalsim.org. Many of my concerns of late are expressed therein, almost uncannily so, from a perspective called secular humanism/naturalism. Here are some excerpts from "Spirituality without faith":
To what extent can secular humanists be spiritual? Can those of us with a more or less naturalistic view of the world, one that doesn't involve spirits, gods, or ghosts, legitimately seek spiritual experience? There seems a prima facie difficulty here since traditional notions of spirituality often posit a non-physical realm categorically separate from the world described by science. Such dualism is of course the antithesis of naturalism, which understands existence to be of a piece, not split into the natural and supernatural. If for humanists the ultimate constituents of the world don't include immaterial essences, souls, or spirits, then it might seem that spirituality is off limits.
Many humanists, of course, will not necessarily want to access what I will call the "spiritual response." Even if I persuade them that there's nothing conceptually incoherent about a naturalistic spirituality, they might be constitutionally disinclined to indulge in emotions or practices that even temporarily disengage the rational mind set.
Authentic spirituality involves an emotional response, what I will call the spiritual response, which can include feelings of significance, unity, awe, joy, acceptance, and consolation. Such feelings are intrinsically rewarding and so are sought out in their own right, but they also help us in dealing with difficult situations involving death, loss, and disappointment. The spiritual response thus helps meet our affective needs for both celebration and reconciliation.
But what might evoke these states? Spirituality often involves a cognitive context, a set of beliefs about oneself and the world which can both inspire the spiritual response and provide an interpretation of it. Our ideas about what ultimately exists, who we fundamentally are, and our place in the greater scheme of things form the cognitive context for spirituality. By contemplating such beliefs we are temporarily drawn out of the mundane into the realization of life's deeper significance, and this realization generates emotional effects. But equally, the spiritual response thus generated is itself interpreted in the light of our basic beliefs; namely, it is taken to reflect the ultimate truth of our situation as we conceive it. The cognitive context of spirituality and the spiritual response are therefore linked tightly in reciprocal evocation and validation.
A third essential component of spirituality is what is ordinarily called spiritual practice. Since the intellectual appreciation of fundamental beliefs alone may not suffice to evoke a particularly deep experience, various non-cognitive techniques can help to access the spiritual response. Activities such as dance, singing, chant, meditation, and participation in various rituals and ceremonies all can play a role in moving us from the head to the heart. And it is in the heart, or gut, after all, where we find the most powerful intrinsic rewards of spirituality, as profound as its cognitive context might be.
Spiritual experience, in Christianity and other non-naturalistic traditions, is interpreted as putting the individual in direct contact with the agent/creator, or with at least some aspect of the spiritual realm. The feelings that arise during spiritual practice are construed as evidence of the realm's existence; they are the quasi-perceptual apprehension of God or Spirit. Thus, in this traditional cognitive context, spiritual experience is taken to be a special way of knowing ultimate truths about the world, a way quite different from ordinary empirical modes of knowing. The individual sees directly the face of God, and needs no further corroboration. Nor could any be forthcoming via normal sensory channels, since after all these are only capable of detecting physical appearances.
As much as the characteristics of traditional spirituality provide answers to the questions of death and meaning, two major drawbacks are evident. The problem of death is solved by splitting ourselves into two substances - one material and perishable, the other spiritual and immortal - but as a result the material becomes inherently inferior in its changeability. The physical becomes the merely physical - it assumes a second class metaphysical status. This in turn leads to alienation from our physical selves and indeed from the material world as a whole. Gross matter is denigrated in comparison to subtle spirit, and the material only has value to the extent that it is animated and directed by spirit. It can't accomplish anything of significance on its own. But of course we are embodied, and our world is material, so from this alienated perspective most of our lives is an unfortunate entanglement with crass physicality while awaiting the better, immaterial world to come.
Added to the dualism of substance is the dualism of having two types of knowledge, ordinary empirical knowledge derived from the senses and confirmed intersubjectively (e.g., as in science) and the knowledge gained from the personal revelations of spiritual experience. Despite the arguments of some, such as Stephen J. Gould in his book Rocks of Ages, that these constitute "non-overlapping magisteria" which can't conflict since they have fundamentally different concerns, the fact remains that both sorts of knowledge make claims about what ultimately exists and they reach different conclusions. Science gives us no reason to believe in the supernatural (there is no scientifically admissible evidence for such a realm), while the firm intuition of spiritual experience, as interpreted within its traditional, non-naturalistic cognitive context, is precisely that a separate immaterial reality indeed exists. If I make use of both methods of knowing, then eventually it is likely I will confront some basic cognitive dilemmas: which method, and therefore which conclusion, is correct? In deciding the momentous question of what fundamentally exists, on what grounds do I choose science over spirituality, or visa versa? When do I stick with my spiritual intuitions, and when do I stick with science?
The upshot is that these two dualisms, one metaphysical, one epistemological, put adherents of traditional spirituality in a poor position to achieve, in this world, the apprehension of fundamental unity, even if they are promised salvation in the next. And unity, of course, is the essence of spirituality. Being of two natures and two minds, the traditional spiritualist is torn between the physical and immaterial world and unified with neither. Naturalists, I believe, suffer no such handicaps in their approach to ultimate concerns.
To see how naturalism might improve on traditional religious and secular dualism as a basis for spirituality, I want first to outline briefly its essential characteristics. Standard definitions of naturalism often contrast it with supernaturalism, meaning simply that naturalism denies the existence of a separate, categorically different supernatural realm that exists outside the natural world. As seen above, the supernatural realm often is taken to involve an agent, or agency, that acts as a first cause. Such an agent is causally privileged, in that from its supernatural vantage point it gets to influence events in the natural world (e.g., create it) without being at the effect of that world. God, typically, is unconstrained by the physical laws and constants that we find everywhere in nature. Naturalism denies that there are any such causally privileged agents or entities; rather, anything that exists is entirely embedded among other existents which account for its origins and characteristics. Nothing gets to cause without being caused in turn; nothing gets to be unconstrained by its context. In Buddhist philosophical terminology, this is called "dependent arising": all phenomena are ineluctably relational, there are no causally independent monads at any level of being.
In all these examples, the project of naturalization inherent in science has demonstrated (or aims to demonstrate) that these phenomena consist entirely of the ultimate constituents of the universe described by physics, organized and elaborated via empirically derived laws at several distinct levels of description into astoundingly complex patterns, some of which are persons. In none of these cases, and nowhere in science, is there a need to posit any essence, agency, spirit, or "spooky stuff" to make things happen. Rather, everything, down to the last detail, is a matter of functions and operations on basic elements, functions and operations that happen on their own, without supervision. This is the remarkable fact at the heart of naturalism (remarkable, at least, when compared to supernaturalism): there is no need for intentional agency or spirit as an explanatory postulate. The physical world is, on its own, sufficient to generate the marvels of life, consciousness, and human culture. From this perspective, to bring in a spirit or deity to do any explanatory work seems like a cheap trick, an easy out, and only vitiates the wonder of the fact that, to repeat, all these phenomena arise on their own.
Since naturalism rules out the existence of entities, like God, that are causally privileged, it also rules out the possibility that the universe could be the intentional creation of a being or agency that stands outside it in some respect. This means that under naturalism the universe can't be construed as having an ultimate purpose or goal attached to it – it exists, strangely enough, for no reason.
As much as we are driven to discern or impute purposes, to ask the teleological question "why?," we will always find that question unanswerable when applied to the largest scale of things. Naturalism also leaves us with the irreducible mysteries of why things should be precisely the way they are and not some other way, and why there should be something rather than nothing.
While traditional faiths hold that spiritual experience answers ultimate questions of meaning, naturalism holds that such experience is simply a function of brain states or processes, not contact with a non-material realm. Considerable research is underway to pin down the neural correlates of the spiritual response, for instance by imaging the brains of meditators and describing the neural effects of hallucinogenic (or "entheogenic") drugs in generating experiences of ecstasy and unity. Researchers in Canada have successfully induced psychological states akin to cosmic consciousness in laboratory subjects using a device which stimulates the brain using magnetic pulses. Preliminary findings suggest that the sense of trans-personal connection arises when neural networks responsible for our sense of orientation in the world are shut down, and the sense of deep significance and conviction seems to have a neural correlate in the temporal lobe. In their book, Why God Won't Go Away, Andrew Newberg and Eugene D'Aquili describe several "association areas" in the cerebral cortex they believe are the neural basis for cosmic consciousness.
All in all, the spiritual response (what Newberg and D'Aquili call the sense of "Absolute Unitary Being") can be accounted for, naturalistically, as an experience which is at bottom identical to specific sorts of brain activity evoked by various sorts of stimuli. Understanding spiritual experience to be physical in this sense is just a special case of the reigning naturalistic hypothesis that drives current consciousness research: the mind and brain are one thing, not two. Furthermore, under naturalism the subjective sense of deep conviction characteristic of spiritual experience is not evidence for the truth of any belief. However special such experiences may seem, they are not a reliable way of knowing or of establishing facts about what exists; that privilege is accorded only to scientific empiricism and its intersubjective method of corroboration via experiment and evidence. Experiences, including spiritual experiences, are quite real of course, but they don't necessarily refer to anything real, however much it may seem they do when we have them. They are data to be explained and incorporated into our theories.
From the description of naturalism offered above, it's perhaps not all that difficult to see how it might serve as a basis for spirituality, both to inspire the spiritual response and to provide a plausible cognitive context for our ultimate concerns. First, it is clear that under naturalism connection with the world is built in to every aspect of our being, not a hoped for eventuality in the life to come. We're joined to the cosmos and the everyday world as described by science in countless ways: the elements composing our bodies are the products of the Big Bang and stellar evolution; most of our DNA is shared with other beings; our perceptions and sensations are all mediated by processes involving photons, electrons, ions, neurotransmitters and other entirely physical entities; and our character and behavior is fully a function of genetics and environment. We are, therefore, fully linked with our surroundings in time, space, matter/energy, and causality. In fact, no more intimate connection with the totality of what is could be imagined. So, from a naturalistic perspective, there is an empirically valid referent for the sense of cosmic consciousness encountered in spiritual experience. The feeling of unity generated by (actually, identical to) the quieting of the orientation mechanisms in the brain mirrors the objective state of our complete interconnection with the world.
Second, in its denial of ultimate meaning and purpose, naturalism, strangely enough, may equal traditional faiths in its capacity to inspire the spiritual response. When we confront the startling fact that existence isn't subsumable under any overarching interpretation, but simply is, we are left with an irreducible mystery about why we are here, or exist at all; and mystery serves at least as well as purpose to inspire spiritual experience. Unable not to ask questions about ultimate purpose and meaning, but rebuffed by the logic which shows such questions unanswerable, we are caught in a cosmic perplexity, a state of profound existential astonishment. The realization that existence inevitably outruns our attempts to assign meaning and purpose can have the impact of a true revelation, stunning the discursive mind in the manner of a Zen koan. Like a koan or other practices in which thinking confronts its own limitations, such a cognitive impasse can serve as the gateway to the direct, non-discursive experience that the present is sufficient unto itself. After all, there is no place to get to, no goal toward which Being is moving.
Besides connection and mystery, naturalism leads to wonder. It's truly a marvel what matter and energy can do when left to their own devices. It's a marvel that the lifeless, insentient elements of creation give rise - via mechanisms, operations, and functions - to life in all its astounding variety and to consciousness in all its sensory and emotional richness. Somehow, the concatenation of neural activity in our brains ends up constituting awareness, intelligence, and wonder itself. To see, transparently, how highly organized matter and mind are precisely one thing, not two, is the spiritual significance of the mind-body problem. To penetrate it would be to leave behind the last vestiges of dualism. No longer could we be alienated from matter as "mere" matter, rather its properties and susceptibilities to organization are, wonderfully, the basis for all that we are as bodies and minds. And of course, far beyond our parochial selves lies the incalculable vastness of the cosmic arena from which we spring. Wonder, although not the only possible response when contemplating the immense scale of matter, space, and time, is surely appropriate once we realize we belong to something so very far beyond us. Such naturalistic wonder and awe counts as deeply spiritual, even though no spirits are involved.
Because naturalism conceives of experience as identical to some sort of material organization (consensus on just what sort of organization may be decades away), spiritual experience doesn't count as a special way of knowing, but rather a special way of being. Knowledge about what ultimately exists is a matter of reaching intersubjective consensus via theory and experiment grounded in our fallible capacities for perception, whether aided or unaided.
The intrinsically rewarding sense of ultimate unity, awe, and significance isn't a perception, it's a feeling, one of a near infinity of possible brain states of which we are capable. Nevertheless, this feeling reflects the scientific facts of our embededness in nature. Naturalism doesn't have to posit a special route to the spiritual truth which could conflict with scientific empiricism, rather it understands spiritual experience as a materially instantiated non-cognitive affirmation of what is actually the case. Thus naturalism is entirely monistic in its interpretation of spiritual experience: there is one world and one way of knowing it. By avoiding metaphysical and epistemic dualism, naturalism naturalizes spirituality, and in so doing provides a cognitive context for spiritual experience that reinforces its essential non-dual quality.
But how, practically speaking, are we to feel all this? Abstractions are all well and good, but we might want the direct experience of connection simply because it's intrinsically rewarding, a refreshment from our ordinary ego-centered, goal-driven state of mind. Naturalism can help inspire us, but to substantially change how we feel we may need to participate in some sort of spiritual practice.
An explicitly naturalistic spiritual practice must evoke the spiritual response in the cognitive context of naturalism. Traditional religion has linked this response to sacred liturgies, with all their supernatural connotations, using music, theater, incense, architecture and other ritual elements that generate feelings of connection and wonder. There is no reason why such a link cannot be forged between naturalism and such feelings; it's simply a matter of finding (or designing) rituals and practices which pair these feelings with expressions of naturalistic beliefs.
There's much to choose from in terms of existing spiritual practice that might be adapted for a naturalistic spirituality. Some Unitarian services come close to an entirely naturalistic celebration of community, despite the fact that they often use theistic hymns and take place in buildings that look suspiciously like churches. Naturalists must infiltrate these congregations, form committees over coffee, and lobby for less God and more naturalism in the liturgy. The musicians and lyricists among them must collaborate on new, more explicitly naturalistic anthems (having tried this myself, I know it's damned difficult, but someone's got to do it).
For those not inclined to communal practice, there are more private means of altering one's consciousness, meditation chief among them. Meditation, although not often advertised as such, can work dramatic changes on the brain via concentration or the non-judgmental awareness of mental contents. When thinking quiets down and sensory input is at a minimum, very different sorts of feelings can arise, some of which are extraordinarily unlike normal waking consciousness. Although meditation is not an easy art, the potential rewards are great for those who have the knack and put in the time. The states of consciousness accessed, naturalistically understood, are just more brain states, but they can have directly felt qualities of unity and acceptance that mark them off as subjectively quite special, and that correspond to empirically-grounded cognitions. Because many varieties of Buddhism are inherently naturalistic and emphatically this-worldly, humanists interested in exploring meditation could do worse than joining a local Zen center or vipassana (insight meditation) group.
As with meditation, which only comes through practice, arts such as dance, music, singing, chant, and yoga should be taught so that each of us has some basic techniques with which to engage the moment. Whatever their origins, we can adopt such skills and techniques without necessarily adopting the tradition within which they arose, unless, of course, we find that tradition to our liking.