Spirituality

Spirituality (from Latin spiritus 'spirit, breath' or spiro 'I breathe' - as in ancient Greek ψύχω or ψυχή, see psyche) is the search for, the turning towards, the immediate contemplation or subjective experience of a transcendent reality that cannot be sensually grasped or rationally explained and that underlies the material world. Spiritual insights can be connected with questions of meaning and value of existence, with the experience of the wholeness of the world in its connectedness with one's own existence, with the "ultimate truth" and absolute, highest reality, as well as with the integration of the sacred, inexplicable or ethically valuable into one's own life.

It is not a matter of mental insights, logic or communication about them, but in any case it is a matter of intense psychological, highly personal states and experiences that have a direct impact on the way of life and the ethical ideas of the person. The prerequisite is a religious conviction, which, however, does not have to be connected with a particular religion.

There is no generally accepted definition of the term. The personal, ideological belief determines its concrete meaning for each individual - for example, whether God or other spiritual beings, numinous or even natural forces play a role in it.

In Christianity, spirituality used to be synonymous with piety and is still partly used that way today. In fact, however, piety is more formally tied to the practice of a particular doctrine and its rituals. In the sciences today, spirituality is mostly used in the broader sense - across denominations and religions - and piety in the narrower - more church-based - sense.

The term religiosity is sometimes equated with spirituality, although it refers either to a reverent belief in a transcendent reality - without consciously and actively "fathoming" it - or to a devotion to a particular religion.

At the 2010 annual conference of the "Green Academy", only a minimal consensus could be reached on the meaning of the term spirituality: Spirituality is "something other than filthy lucre" (suggested wording by trend and futurologist Eike Wenzel). The sociologist Detlef Pollack notes an increasing secularisation of the German population, in the course of which the Catholic and Protestant churches in particular have to position themselves vis-à-vis the church-independent spiritual movement.

Historical development of the designated and the designation

Spiritual attitudes probably developed very early in human history as part of the intuitive classification of (supposedly) inexplicable phenomena in the magical-mythical thinking of our ancestors. In fact, however, many phenomena that appeared "mysterious" to earlier generations can now be explained with the help of scientific insights. As the research results of ethnology have shown for many scriptless cultures, originally there was only a blurred separation between the world and religion in people's lives as we know it. Spirituality was thus a commonplace behavioral pattern of the animistic worldview until the development of formal religions and the sciences.

By members of established faith communities, spirituality is often still equated with "piety", as it used to be. Today, however, this term is used predominantly in a church context, because it refers to a spirituality that is oriented towards the teachings and cults of a particular religion and is not "freely" directed towards the transcendent. Thus, it is also associated with the negative connotation that a pious person uncritically adheres to a religion, even if his mind would have to refuse to accept certain statements of faith as "true".

Christian Rutishauser distinguishes between theological and secular spirituality. According to him, spirituality in contemporary society expresses the longing for a spirit that does not get stuck in the mundane and superficial.

In the present, spirituality is regarded above all as a "leading term of postmodern religiosity". Karl Baier explains the "career" that the term spirituality has had up to the present day by the fact that it lacks the "patina that many religious words have acquired in modernity". In French- and English-speaking countries it was not used by a larger number of people until around 1900. In the German-speaking world it was also mentioned in a dictionary around 1900, but it only became massively effective here after 1960.

Theoretical conclusion

The psychologist Rudolf Sponsel defines spirituality in 2006 as a more or less conscious preoccupation "with questions of meaning and value of existence, the world and people and especially one's own existence and one's self-realisation in life". Thus, according to him, spirituality also includes a special religious attitude to life of a person, not necessarily understood in a confessional sense, which focuses on the transcendent or immanent divine being or on the principle of the transcendent, non-personal ultimate truth or highest reality.

Büssing makes an attempt to consider different interpretations of the relationship between spirituality and existing religions in a definition and writes: "The term spirituality is used to describe an attitude to life that seeks meaning and significance, in which the seeker is aware of his/her 'divine' origin (whereby both a transcendent and an immanent divine being can be meant, e.g. God, Allah, YHWH, Tao, Brahman, Prajna, All-One, etc.) and feels a connection to others, to nature, to the divine, etc.). God, Allah, YHWH, Tao, Brahman, Prajna, All-One, etc.) and feels a connectedness with others, with nature, with the Divine, etc. Out of this awareness he/she strives for the concrete realization of the teachings, experiences or insights in the sense of an individually lived spirituality, which may well be non-denominational. This has a direct impact on the way of life and ethical ideas."