Recently my sister and I have been discussing the subject of spirituality. It all began after a stressful day at work when she suggested I do an hour of yoga with her. After ten minutes it became clear I was not in her words “taking this seriously.” I began to laugh at the point where the video instructor informed me that by breathing in a certain way, I was 'connecting' to all the other people doing yoga around the world. My response sparked a debate on what spirituality actually is and whether I am closed-minded in being suspicious of it.
I admit I have little knowledge of yoga, or understand the tenets of certain Eastern traditions which go back thousands of years, nor have I extensively researched 'chakras'. My thoughts here are based purely on discussions I've had with people who endorse the idea that yoga (and similar 'spiritual' activities) can 'change your life'. I therefore apologise if I have misrepresented certain ideas and would welcome correction.
My problem is with the kind of spirituality which claims that by reaching this certain mystical state - a state where thought is suspended, where one is simply 'existing', neither doing or thinking - I am somehow 'connecting' to something in a real ontological sense. The claim seems to be not only that in this state I can experience a connection to the universe, but that I actually am connecting to the universe. I asked my sister what this 'connecting' means. She replied that it is simply being a part of the universe, where you become less conscious of your ego and simply experience the absoluteness of a timeless and infinite universe.
This is a problem because I have yet to find a satisfactory answer to the question, What is this connection? If I am experiencing something real when I enter this spiritual state, what precisely is it? If the spiritualists want to claim this is more than my imagination, more than complex brain processes, then they must show how it is more than that.
It appears therefore, that a spiritual state of 'connectedness', or a sense of the 'Absolute' is actually no different from many other human experiences. These experiences are real in the subjective sense that the statement, “I am experiencing the feeling of such and such” is true, but they do not correspond to anything objectively real in this world, or any other world.
An example of this could be Love. When I love someone, I experience a variety of feelings and thoughts. These feelings are real in the sense that they exist in my brain. I can experience love, and it is real in the sense that it is true that I am experiencing love. Yet this experience is purely subjective, it cannot be said to exist in any objective way. There is not a transcendent place I need to access where the love between me and another exists, yet where our actual experience of love is not yet present. My experience of it is all that there is.
Spirituality is arguably no different from this. I can feel and experience moments of intense tranquillity, a sense of my own smallness, the removal of my ego, no concept of past or future, or any other way in which spiritualists describes this state, yet I remain unconvinced I am 'accessing' anything other than a part of my imagination and the corresponding feeling this imagined state creates in my mind. I am certainly not 'accessing' another realm of spirits, souls, chakras or energies. Just as my experience of love cannot exist somewhere before I actually experience it, the spiritual world cannot be 'experienced' prior to my imagination of it. By imagining it we create it in the only way it can be said to exist: in our imagination.
The spiritualists have two choices: Either they claim that the spiritual world is real in an objective sense and is not simply created in my mind by my imagination, in which case I would kindly ask them to provide some evidence. Or they can claim that they do not deny that spiritual experiences are subjective imaginative experiences, in which case I would ask them how they think they can teach it through yoga lessons and the like. Spiritual gurus claim to be able to teach the way to these spiritual experiences, but if they are merely subjective imaginative experiences, how can they? Can you teach someone to dream a particular dream, can you teach someone to love a particular person in a particular way, and can you teach someone to imagine another world exactly the way you do? I don't think so, and I wouldn't even want someone to try.
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