The Spiritual Impulse:

Mother of All Religion

by Ramon Stevens

Excerpted by permission from
"Spirit Wisdom: Living Consciously in an Age of Turmoil and Transformation"

Every culture's spiritual life differs in dogma, ritual, and celebration, yet all great religions flow from the same fundamental source, interpreted and filtered through each culture's unique lens of time, place, and worldview. Because human consciousness cannot grasp the deepest truths in full totality, each culture weaves its symbolic stories and rites as hints and signs pointing toward the body of spiritual truth which lies beyond the power of word and symbol to express. Just as a song originates in its composer's mind, so can religions be thought of as spiritual music, echoing the richer harmony of their source; and each religion's endurance in time and power to offer moral guidance and determined by its degree of harmony with deeper spiritual truth.

Every human culture has a spiritual element. In some the spiritual is so interwoven with the whole of life that one does damage to the culture by attempting to express its "religion" as distinct from its other cultural aspects. In other cultures, particularly modern western culture, religion is held as a discrete aspect of life, with worship services held at specific times and places while the separation of church from state is inscribed in law.

Everyone has a religion. Everyone carries a philosophical framework or worldview which organizes and gives meaning to life. Even an atheist scientist, convinced that he lives in a random universe devoid of spiritual influence has a religion: he has faith in the scientific method and in the veracity of the scientific theories spun to explain the world from a purely mechanistic perspective. If a religion's longevity reflects its degree of harmony with the deeper truths, then the mechanistic worldview, several centuries old and collapsing under the ineluctable march of quantum physics, is revealed as grossly disharmonious with the truths which have sustained the world's great religions for millennia and animate them still.

The Universal Truths: What, then, are the fundamental spiritual truths which all religions strive to express? As mentioned, any time a deep truth is reduced to words it necessarily loses its power, becoming a symbolic truth rather than an experienced truth. Nevertheless, enumerating the basic truths in words in a first step on the path toward directly experiencing them.

The first fundamental truth is the essential oneness of creation. This understanding lies at the heart of many great religions. Its paradox is that it directly contradicts the experience of the senses. You see and feel that your body has a distinct boundary at the skin which cleanly separates you from everything else. You see rocks, trees, flowers, buildings, and so on, and affix a different name to each, dividing the world into categories. Each person you meet is unique, and it stretches the mind's limits to imagine that at some level the various races, colors, beliefs and cultures of human experience blend into a unified whole.

Nevertheless, at the deepest levels all is united, all is one. The fantastically variegated phenomenal world is but a thought in the mind of All That Is, whence arise countless other worlds and dimensions beyond your awareness, all flowing from the same source. It is perhaps ironic that western science, heir to a reductionist tradition which splinters and fragments creation rather than perceiving its unity, should offer proof of this most basic truth in the discoveries of modern physics. At the deepest level, one finds no irreducible building blocks of matter, but only waves the fields of vibration; a pulsating, inviolate fabric of energy.

How, then, do you perceive this unbroken field of vibration as discrete objects; what binds your awareness exclusively to your body; why does your mind organize its experience as it does? For this understanding we must turn to a second fundamental truth.

You are consciousness temporarily housed in flesh. While this is understood by many spiritual traditions, western science has inverted the process such that self-awareness is posited as miraculously arising in organisms when they evolve to a certain degree of complexity. How consciousness spontaneously arises from inert matter is never explained; and indeed can never be. For you are consciousness first and foremost, cloaked for a time in physical form. This provides the illusion of separation, of yourself as a discrete being standing apart from the rest of creation.

This is not to impugn the validity of your private experience, nor your uniqueness.

Each human life is a unique expression of All That Is, with its private purpose and fulfillment. Just as each of your fingers is unique while embedded in the larger construction of your hand, which in turn is a member of your entire body, so is each human life unique while on deeper terms it unites with all humanity to form a common brotherhood.

Notice that the second truth seems paradoxical at first as well: your senses tell you that you are separate from others while in truth you are one strand in the larger human fabric, itself woven into the whole of creation. Moving beyond the apparent paradoxes is an essential step on the spiritual path.

A third fundamental truth is that the more closely human laws parallel natural laws, the more harmonious and balanced a culture will be. Nature hasn't many laws, but those guiding principles established to maintain balance and harmony in the natural world carry over into human endeavors as well. Because humanity is unique in its free will and highly developed reason, a person or society may choose to follow a path outside of, or to actively violate, natural law. For a while it may appear that one can "get away" with violating nature. Over time, however, the consequence of violating natural law will become apparent.

As an example, one of nature's most fundamental laws is that every action has a consequence. Some religions express this truth as the law of karma; even western science expresses this understanding in the law that every action begets an equal and opposite reaction. For some time humanity has been acting as if it carried special immunity from the consequences of its actions, could plunder and pillage the natural world without ill effect. Now, however, as the ecological crisis demonstrates, the folly and danger of continuously and severely violating natural law become indisputable.

To pump oil from the ground and burn it is a violation; to build dams is a violation; to electrify the globe is a violation; to split the atom is a violation; to tinker with genetics is a violation. Each such violation would alone impair the natural world's ability to heal itself, but taken together they threaten a total unraveling of the earth's power to sustain life-supporting processes.

It is no coincidence that such impending catastrophe has been brought about by western science, whose worldview is the first in human history to disavow and disdain spirituality. By refusing to acknowledge any spiritual laws governing human affairs, man is unrestrained by ethics or morals which would temper healthier cultures. The result, the inevitable consequences, can be seen in rain forest destruction, toxic waste, mountains of garbage, degenerative diseases, evaporating ozone, and other symptoms of a planet plummeting toward self-destruction.

The apparent paradox os this third fundamental truth is that humanity's rational mind seems to grant it superiority over the natural world and freedom from natural laws, yet any exercise of reason which violates those laws inevitably redounds to your detriment.

A fourth fundamental truth is that time and space are illusions. This cuts a deeper paradox than merely saying that what your senses perceive is an illusion; for time and space are the very foundation of your experienced reality. Some of the world's spiritual traditions recognize this truth, referring to the illusions of temporal life as "maya," warning against the trap of mistaking sense experience for deepest reality.

Time and space are the two main dimensions into which energy creating temporal events is channeled. Any "event" exists beyond space-time as a grid of energy or intent, eternally viable in all its possible manifestations. Your experience of events is determined by how much "event energy" you draw into your sphere of experience and the balance you strike between expressing the event through time and space. An illness, for example, can be experienced as a minor ache lasting interminably or as a full-bodied crisis quickly healed. The same amount of event energy may be dissipated in both cases, but the space- time balance differs.

Space and time are energy channels, then, through which physically based consciousness experiences events. They have no validity beyond the physical dimension; therefore, in deepest terms, they are illusions. Perhaps no paradox so grates against your waking awareness as this; yet, again, those on the spiritual path must overcome and integrate the paradox, allowing them to live partly in the phenomenal world and partly beyond it.

The Spiritual Impulse: As we mentioned, every human society fashions the fundamental truths into a religious system influenced by its time, place and culture. The truths are filtered through each culture's prism, refracted into shades of wisdom carrying the energy of their source but not its full vitality.

The unique focus of human life is to express itself through symbol. Language, art, even human relationships, are all symbolic expressions of deep veins of consciousness which bubble to the surface of awareness and seek expression through symbol. You communicate with others through spoken and written language, art, bodily gestures, affection, and violence. You can never fully communicate the condition of your body and the flow of your thoughts at any given time; you selectively filter what you will offer to others as a symbolic summary of your condition.

So it is with the spiritual impulse as it finds expression in the world's great religions, a prayer of grace before a meal, the baptism or initiation of children, or the joy you find in spending time in wild nature. All rites and rituals, symbols and songs, evoke the deeper unspoken spiritual impulse which beats within every human breast, seeking expression through symbol.

What is this spiritual impulse, then? What drives every human culture to fashion schools of thought which explain life's origin and meaning, and offer rules of conduct for proper living?

The spiritual impulse is the hunger for reunion with All That Is, the ultimate source of all creation. Unconsciously knowing that each human soul is a fragment of its greater source, the urge to return to the source, to reunite with it, is the motivating force behind all religious expressions. From the Christian Kingdom of Heaven to the Buddhist nirvana, the religious path always leads the righteous back to the godhead, the source, the creator. The "spiritual path" is thus a trail leading from temporal earthly life to eternal bliss and reunion with creation's ultimate source.

To render the spiritual impulse through art is to grant symbolic expression to the hunger for reunion with the source. To paint a picture, sing a song, or write a book exalting the creator is to forge a relationship with the creator, a bond from the exiled soul to its source. Much of any culture's greatest art is religious in nature for there is no deeper, more passionate inspiration than the longing for reunion with one's spiritual source.

Each human life replicates the spiritual search, whatever the religious beliefs a person holds. For each human life begins by floating in a warm, fluid cocoon of bliss and safety, where all needs are met. Birth is the separation from the source, though newborns do not distinguish between themselves and others at first. Childhood means learning the language, culture, and power to manipulate effectively, all leading toward the day of separation from the parents and embrace of adult responsibilities.

Here a new opportunity for union arises in choosing a life partner, as most cultures favor narrowing the impulse toward union to a single partner with whom one creates a home base of stability and security. The love of a spouse, long-term friendships, and happy community relations all offer "union," as human relationships symbolically reflect life's deeper meaning, the search for union with the spiritual source. As each human soul is another fragment of that source, romance and friendship are ultimately the embrace of the creator.

Death, of course, is a profound experience of reunion with the spiritual realm. Many near-death survivors report being bathed in pure white light and being met by deceased loved ones and religious figures. These dramas, enacted in symbolic terms familiar to the still earth-based consciousness, symbolize death's deeper purpose, a release of the ego and sense of separation, an embrace of union with a realm of love and purity.

Consider the religious or spiritual practices which require that one close one's eyes, such as prayer or meditation. The deliberate blocking of sense experience reinforces the sense of turning away from the temporal world and seeking reunion with the spiritual realm. As one grants validity and attention to the spiritual impulse, one naturally seeks to quiet the mind and free the body from sensory excitement, the better to ride the spiritual impulse toward reunion with one's source.

New Spiritual Expressions: Spirituality and human institutions are fundamentally incompatible. While spirituality is intensely private, deeply felt, resonating in each heart with a unique timbre and pitch, human institutions require homogeneity. While spirituality is spontaneous, flowing, and mercurial, human institutions require order, structure, and predictability. While spirituality urges appreciation of and reunion with divine cosmic forces, human institutions are bound to the earth.

Because spirituality and human institutions are incompatible, it follows that any attempt to wrestle spiritual truth into dogma and creed, ceremony and ritual, hierarchy and power, will vitiate the spiritual truth offered by a religion's founder. The founders of the world's great religions opposed the institutions of their day, as true spirituality is liberating and spontaneous, poison to law and order.

In addition, because each culture filters spiritual truth through the prism of its time and place, the great spiritual fires igniting the world's religions dim as time passes and cultures evolve. Words that thrilled Jesus' or Buddha's listeners to trembling and exaltation are read and spoken far more academically in Space Age culture. Thousands of years have passed, cultures have evolved, and the symbolic truths carried in the words of the master teachers, while still noble and inspiring, cannot fully speak to the age in which you live.

The Christian Church has fallen far from its omnipotent power of the Middle Ages. In a culture where the separation of spirituality and government is codified into law, the Church's influence and power are diminished. The Church's structure, a hierarchical patriarchy which until recently forbade women from serving among its leadership, maintains its power and authority by burying the spiritual impulse beneath edifices of ritual and dogma, squelching any hint of genuine mystical experience.

Against such a backdrop, it is inevitable that many would leave the churches in which they were raised, finding them desiccated relics of ages past. The great search for spiritual meaning of the past few decades, particularly the interest in eastern and Native American religions, reflects the unquenchable spiritual impulse seeking fresh expression, free from rigid dogma and respecting the uniqueness of each soul's private experience.

The most recent trend is the rise of interest in "goddess" religions, either ancient or newly devised. The interest in feminine mythological figures, and in seeing the earth as the feminine Gaia, reflects the long suppression of the feminine principle in western religious systems. Christianity and Judaism are male-oriented religions, heavy on structure, form and hierarchy, with women relegated to supporting roles. A healthy culture balances and cherishes both masculine and feminine principles; thus, as western culture struggles to heal its imbalance, the feminine is actively embraced.

The feminine principle is love, forgiveness, compassion, nurturance, gentleness, quiescence, and stability. The earth and nature are often viewed as feminine, rightly so, for these qualities are evident in nature's harmonious web.

The masculine principle derives from the sun's qualities of strength, heat, creation and destruction, randomness, spontaneity, and energy. Western culture is largely based on the masculine principle, particularly with its emphasis on creation and destruction. So the interest in goddess religions, in searching the ancient past for evidence of harmonious cultures which revered the feminine principle and lived by it, reflects the desperate need for balancing, for cherishing and incorporating the feminine principle within western culture's values.

Future Spiritual Expressions: The rising interest in goddess religions is necessary to balance western culture's long emphasis on the masculine principle. But once the balance is restored, once masculine and feminine are equally valued and cherished, how will spirituality evolve? What new spiritual expressions will arise to take the place of traditional religions?

In a sense, every spiritual system is a blend of truth and symbol. Because human consciousness cannot apprehend absolute truth, but must reduce it to manageable fragmentary symbols, every religion is a unique mixture of truth and symbol. The greater the proportion of truth to symbol, the purer the spiritual system is and the longer its endurance and power.

As spirituality evolves, it seeks expression more as truth and less as symbol. It encourages direct experience, direct knowingness of spiritual truth, rather than the absorption of codified dogma. Formalized ritual diminishes as spontaneity and uniqueness are favored as offering more genuine spiritual expression. Hierarchy is replaced with equality, and recognition of the innate divinity burning in every heart, with no penance offered nor salvation sought from outside oneself. Future spiritual expression is thus likely to be more casual, spontaneous, and democratic.

Ceremonies will arise on the spur of the moment, with each contributing whatever he or she feels moved to offer. Most importantly, spirituality will be nature-based rather than god-based. Instead of projecting and worshiping a paternal sky god figure, the earth itself, the expression