On a Materialist Spirituality
This piece of writing was driven by the following questions. How do I conceive of my own spirituality? Or rather, how do I reconcile my belief in a spiritual aspect to existence within my broader belief in a materialist foundation to reality?
From the time I was young until I was approximately 28 years old (sometime around the year 2019) I never thought of myself as having any sort of spiritual tendencies or affiliations. But my stance of spirituality has drastically changed since then. Not that I have become in any way religious whatsoever, but that I’m much more receptive to the idea of spirituality, rather than outright denying its existence (for myself or for others).
I used to consider myself as secular, agnostic, or even atheist at various stages in my life. I think that’s because I had a very non-religious upbringing and wasn’t raised in a religious household. Yes, I had been to religious ceremonies, and I had family members who were either some variety of Christian, and Pakistani relatives who were Muslim, but none of these belief systems were pushed on me as a young person, and therefore I had no attachment to any of the common monotheistic-Abrahamic religions. I also had reservations about many religions because of their belief in some form of afterlife, or eternity, which can lead to a sense of detachment from the present, and I feel that detachment detracts from our ability to embrace the finite lives that we lead, preventing us from using our limited time in meaningful and fulfilling ways.
On top of my upbringing, I then pursued an education and career in the natural sciences, which very much maintains a misguided air of objectivity and occasionally an outright refusal of spirituality because of its difficulty to test or analyze or study, which runs counter to the dominant paradigm of western science. But maybe western science (as we know it) is not the best tool for proving or disproving something as seemingly immaterial and/or subjective as spiritual phenomena and experiences? I have written at length about the lack of any genuine recognition and/or incorporation for the subjective realm into western science that I won’t dive into that issue here, but I just wanted to note that that perspective permeates my ideas on spirituality as well.
Recently, as part of a multi-stakeholder meeting with Indigenous communities that I participated in through my work with Alberta Wilderness Association, I had the opportunity to write and present a prayer which is done at the beginning of every meeting. This is the first occasion I have had to try and write something that would give others a sense of my own spirituality, as informed by local-Indigenous world views. This is what I wrote:
Great Spirit, we thank you for the land, the air, the water, and all of the creatures that depend on it and who in turn sustain us as human beings. Thank you for bringing us together today and giving us the opportunity to give something back by fulfilling our obligations to steward the land and protect those who depend on it, such as the Ronald Lake Buffalo herd. We do this so that both current and future generations may enjoy the bounties you provide in a mindful and sustainable way. We thank you for your gifts, and hope to honour your generosity with gratitude and action. All my relations.
Afterwards, I sent this prayer to a friend of mine via text, and they proceeded to ask me who the prayer was directed at? As in, what did I mean by the Great Spirit, or who/what was I referring to? I will try to explain that in the following paragraphs.
The Great Spirit is a term that I have learned through my working relationships with Indigenous communities, and when I conceptualize it in my own mind, it’s the spiritual essence that permeates all things, both animate and inanimate alike, and not so much a specific individual (as is the case with monotheistic religions such as Christianity). I think that this perspective means that my conceptualization of spirituality is more rooted in traditionally animist belief systems where you can attribute a spiritual dimension to plants, inanimate objects, or natural phenomena. Spirituality is not solely restricted to humanity. Animist belief systems include those such as Japan’s Shinto religion and their belief in the “Kami” which inhabit all things, where everything possesses its own distinct spiritual essence.
But this raises the question of how I can ground this belief in spirituality within a materialist understanding of the universe? And I think that depends on whether you think that spirituality exists apart from — and as a separate dimension to — the material world. I think that my materialist understanding of reality still allows for what I consider to be the spiritual aspects of existence.
I have written about historical materialism and the dialectics of nature at length elsewhere, but I will try to tie those ideas — at a high level — into this argument for spirituality here.
As a broad generalization, everything in the known universe is comprised of matter and/or energy, or some combination of the two. Over a long period of time, somehow, the right interaction between matter and energy gives rise to the earliest forms of life on Earth — likely some form of simple single celled organism. Then, again, over another long period of time, natural selection operates on those early lifeforms which then gives rise to the diversity of life we see all around us today. Life has evolved more complex, more specialized forms, but each and every species — including humanity — are all still branches on this singular tree of life. We all interact with one another and rely on each other as part of a broader ecosystem that supports our entire existence. We are all descendants of that early single celled ancestor.
Then, as a result of natural selection, life suddenly evolved into a form that is now able to perceive of itself — humanity — through the emergence of consciousness. Life is now able to perceive of itself through the evolution of human consciousness. This is not something that happened intentionally. There is no directional movement to evolution by natural selection, but we have happened to develop (what seems to be) the unique ability to understand our own evolution from the original state of matter and energy. By perceiving ourselves, I don’t just mean the individual self, but the fact that we — humanity and other life forms — are part of a longer evolutionary process that began prior to the emergence of life itself. And that means, that since we are descendants of those original building blocks of the universe — matter and energy — we are the universe becoming aware of itself.
This is why I argue that both consciousness and the spiritual dimension to human existence are both rooted in a materialist understanding of our universe. Both are products of the original building blocks of our universe. I fully believe that I can ground my own sense of spirituality within materialism. I won’t argue, as some western scientists do, that consciousness is solely the result of chemical processes because I think that does a disservice to the beautiful, wonderful improbability of evolution and human social history which has resulted in our ability to even just perceive of the things we are discussing right now.
I also think that by recognizing a shared ancestry between the beginning of biological life and the base materials that comprise the rest of the inanimate world, that validates (in a way) the animist belief that all things share our own spiritual essence. We are connected to all things. This has given me a much greater appreciation and respect for idea such as universal or pan-consciousness, which is the idea that — at some level — consciousness is shared amongst all being, and that humans can tap into that shared awareness through mindfulness practices (e.g., meditation, high-level sports, “flow” states, spending time disconnected in nature) and/or the use of psychedelics. My perspective has most definitely been reaffirmed by my own experimentation with psychedelics and readings of eastern philosophies.
Occasionally, I get the feeling that consciousness of non-human nature operates on a different frequency or wavelength from our own, and that we have forgotten (or killed off — via Indigenous and/or cultural genocides) how to properly tap into that state of awareness and understanding of our relationship to nature. Thinking back to the use of psychedelics, I often fantasize about how the evolution of psychedelic chemicals could be considered as the development of a form of inter-species communication tool, which is produced by our distant non-human relatives (i.e., fungi) as a gift for humanity, which can help enable us to return to a more primitive state of awareness, respect, and mutual understanding with the natural world and the ecosystems we are a part of.
This materialist conception of spirituality, in which spiritualism arises through the history of the universe and is embodied (in at least one form) as human consciousness, is the only kind of spirituality that I truly support. In contrast to those forms of spirituality that emphasize a realm or time beyond our own finite existence (as with many of our institutionalized monotheistic religions), because I feel that those belief systems devalue the present by advertising a distant salvation, rather than encouraging us to fully embrace the now.
