Reflections on the nature of spirituality: Evolutionary context, biological mechanisms, and future directions

ABSTRACT

Spiritual traditions and practices promote a positive and lasting transformation of our experience of self and of the world. Such traditions and practices are ubiquitous in human societies, but it remains unclear why and how they developed. Existing theories on the nature of spirituality range from the suggestion that human minds are inherently predisposed to spirituality, to the idea that spirituality developed adaptively to offer moral guidance and to promote mutually beneficial, cooperative behaviors. Here, we assess this question from the perspective of biological and cultural evolution, and propose that spirituality developed as a cultural adaptation to a characteristic feature of human mental experience – the duality, or differentiation, of mental subject and mental object. This model traces the development of spirituality to evolutionary events at the core of human exceptionalism, and supports the transformational potential of spirituality in language consistent with scientific knowledge.

KEYWORDS:

• Evolution of spirituality
• science of spirituality
• science and nonduality
• mysticism
• human condition
• social change

Introduction

Spiritual traditions and practices have always attempted to resolve the problems of the human condition, but it has largely remained unclear through which mechanisms, if at all, this effect occurs. Lack of clarity on the nature of spirituality has hindered our ability to improve the efficacy of such practices over time, limiting individual quality of life and societal wellbeing.

Here, we outline a simple conceptual model of spirituality and its functional role in human psychology and society from the perspective of biological and cultural evolution. We begin from the observation that the emergence of spirituality in human history appears to align with conspicuous events in human evolution, namely the development of an extreme duality, or differentiation, between the ‘subject’ of experience (the mental ‘me’) and the mental ‘objects’ which are experienced. We note that this extreme duality of subject and object appears to have contributed simultaneously to human exceptionalism and to the problematic aspects of the human condition. We also note that the degree of duality in human mental experience is not fixed but rather moves naturally along an axis from more to less, and that biological processes of life regulation which reduce duality improve the human condition in a manner consistent with spiritual experience. We propose that spiritual traditions and practices have developed as cultural adaptations that counterbalance the increasingly pervasive duality of human mental life by promoting experiences of reduced duality, and we offer testable predictions regarding the effectiveness of different approaches to spirituality in the modern world.

Our effort to render spirituality intelligible in terms of biological and cultural evolution has been driven by the recent development of a biological understanding of the subjective mental experiences known as feeling (Damasio 2018). Feelings have long been considered outside the realm of science, but they have always been the focus of spiritual traditions and practices. The recent development of a biological understanding of feeling invites us to reexamine from this new perspective two sets of familiar and persistent questions on the nature of spirituality:

1. Why do human cultures all over the world and going back 50,000 years or more include spiritual elements? Why do we seek spiritual transformation, while other animals do not appear to have any interest in spirituality? Why are we not happy as we are?

2. How does spirituality relate to individual and societal life? Is spirituality a mere enrichment to our lives, an ornament more beautiful than useful, or does spirituality have a function, a distinct role to play that is important for surviving individually and together in diverse societies?

The term ‘spirituality’ has acquired many different meanings around the world and throughout time. For example, modern usage of the term often has little to do with distinguishing ‘spirit’ from ‘matter’ as it used to. Here we consider ‘spirituality’ to refer simply to practices which aim to positively transform our experience of the world and of ourselves within it. By this definition, spirituality is independent of institutionalized religion although there are touchpoints. Importantly, the spirituality we describe is available to any human being, regardless of religious background or any other distinctions.

Subject-object duality as the primary component of human exceptionalism

Human consciousness has a distinguishing feature: a degree of mental self-awareness and subjectivity that appears to be unmatched in the animal kingdom.

This distinguishing feature of human consciousness can be traced to the degree of duality, or differentiation, between ‘perceiver’ and ‘perceived’, experiencing ‘subject’ and experienced ‘object’. The ‘subject’ is the mental ‘me’ – that which looks out of my eyes, feels the positioning and orientation of my body in space, and identifies with my experiences and memories. Meanwhile, mental contents – perceptions, thoughts, memories – are the ‘objects’ of experience. Mental objects are ‘images’, conceptual representations of all manner of things – food, friends, our bodies, our values. These images are discrete and independent and frozen in time. When we think of a ‘tree’ we think of a tree, not the seed, soil, and sunlight that became the tree.

Subject and object are not just static opposites, they create and uphold each other. When we see or think of an object, we necessarily imbue it with our own perspective and classify it relative to our needs, fears or desires. At the same time, the construction of mental ‘objects’ supports the differentiation of the ‘subject’ from its environment. As we parse sensory information about our environment into distinct, autonomous, and causally interacting objects, each of these objects is defined relative to the viewpoint of an experiencing subject. The more objects we identify and learn to recognize, the more the subject is differentiated from the environment.

It is a common mistake to assume that a nonhuman animal sees a tree in the same way we do, as discrete and independent and frozen in time. This is not to say that animals do not see trees, but that the way they see a tree is likely to be different – perhaps more embedded within the context of its surroundings instead of as a distinct and independent object. Animals certainly demonstrate degrees of subjectivity and self-awareness, but to the best of our knowledge to date it appears as though this ability is most developed in humans.

Humans’ exceptional degree of subject-object duality would appear to be the primary driver of the evolutionary success of our ancestors. Experiencing a world of manipulable objects from the perspective of an experiencing and self-aware subject underlies abilities such as the construction of narratives, the use of symbols, the invention of tools (Suddendorf 2013), the appreciation and creation of art and music, and more recently, the building of societies and cultures. Increasing but still limited archeological evidence suggests that these abilities emerged almost two million years ago in Homo erectus (Everett 2018). Since then, hominid brains have grown tremendously, until about 200,000 years ago Homo sapiens had our brain size and potentially our abilities (Coolidge and Wynn 2018).

One of the most consequential developments in the evolutionary success of our ancestors was the ability to objectify time, what paleontologists call ‘mental time-travel’. Mental time travel enables us to remember the past and to visualize the future. Homo erectus may have been capable of mental time travel, as this ability would appear to be a precondition for inventing music and dance, saving tools for future use, and planting seeds to be cropped in the future (Buonomano 2017).

Inventing tools also requires a duality of subject and object. Subject-object duality allows the subject to be sufficiently removed from the constant flow of impressions to (a) detect and analyze causal relationships between objects; (b) deconstruct them into their component elements; and (c) creatively recombine these elements in new and useful ways.

We do not know exactly how our exceptional degree of subject-object duality emerged in evolution, or which mixture of mutations and epigenetic changes enabled our powerful cognition, but we do know that such changes occurred, and we can reasonably identify their effects as the core element of our evolutionary advantage.

Subject-object duality as the basis for the problems of the ‘human condition’

If the duality of a self-aware subject and a mental object is a primary component of human exceptionalism, it is also where our distinctly human problems begin.

These problems include, but are not limited to: (a) identity insecurity, or difficulty understanding who we are; (b) social insecurity and existential loneliness, or difficulty finding a sense of belonging and meaningful connection; and (c) fear of death.

The first problem, identity insecurity, can be traced to the fact that, although we do construct a conceptual object of ourselves – a ‘self’ or ‘identity’ which defines us relative to the rest of the world, the experiencing subject cannot be fully captured conceptually. When we hold a self-image in our mind we necessarily experience it as we do all other phenomena, as an object that we look at from a distance. But if we look at the ‘subject’ from a distance, as an object, then who is doing the looking? The experiencing subject always escapes conceptual capture. Despite the impossibility of ‘knowing’ the subject of our experience, we represent ourselves in our own minds and to others as objects without pause. We do not say ‘Nice to meet you, I am an unknowable mental subject’; we say, ‘Nice to meet you, my name is Max and I live in Los Angeles and I am a scientist’. We confuse our mental subject with our social identity, the latter of which is actually nothing but a list of various conceptual categories.

The second problem, social insecurity, can be traced to the fact that when we objectify ourselves, we then cannot avoid comparing the objectification of ourselves with our objectification of others, and judging our respective value accordingly. We already do this with other objects – evaluating which of two things we like better. Comparing our mental representations of ourselves to our mental representations of others is an important life-regulatory process for assessing and maintaining social relationships, but it is a slippery slope into feelings of personal inadequacy in various domains – success, beauty, physical strength, intelligence. And, indeed, a nagging feeling of inadequacy has become a familiar feature of modern human life.

Existential loneliness, too, can be understood to arise from our dualistic interpretation of reality. As noted earlier, our mental subject is incompatible with this world of causal interactions between distinct and time-fixed objects. Through our dualistic lens, we can only observe the world as if from a distance, isolated by our own subjectivity from the constant flow of life around and through us.

Finally, fear of death also depends on duality, and in particular on the objectification of time. Without objectifying time, how could we count down the years we have left, knowing that every day we are closer to death than we have ever been? Of course, our mortality may not be such a bad thing, in fact the impermanent and cyclical nature of life can be quite beautiful, but no matter how much perspective we have cultivated, at some level the fact of our own impermanence remains, reasonably enough, unsettling.

These and other problems have long been widely discussed under the umbrella term ‘the human condition’ (Malraux 1933). Similar concepts go back to St. Augustine’s ‘God shaped hole’ in our heart, i.e. a hole in our heart that only God can fill; and also to the Buddhist concept of ‘dukkha’, or suffering, sometimes described as the experience of ‘lack’ (Loy 1996). The severity of the modern human condition can be seen in increasing rates of suicide, ‘deaths of despair’, and depression and anxiety. That these problematic aspects of the modern human experience may well have their roots in our subject-object duality is not yet widely recognized, although there are indications that such a realization is beginning (Lent 2017).

A reduction in subject-object duality as a biological mechanism for spiritual experience

While some degree of subject-object duality appears to be inherent in human mental experience, the severity of this differentiation is not fixed, but rather moves along an axis of more to less depending on the situation. In some situations the differentiation between subject and object diminishes, such as when we are with loved ones, or deeply absorbed in sensation. In other situations this differentiation is sharpened, such as when we are in an unfamiliar and possibly dangerous environment and feel stressed or angry. Love and anger are particularly striking not only in their ability to, respectively, diminish and sharpen subject-object duality, but also because they illustrate the degree to which our experience of subject-object duality naturally fluctuates in our daily lives.

Movement along this axis would likely be accompanied by corresponding changes in our feelings and actions. If, in reality, we were fundamentally isolated and distinct from everything else – if reality were just a collection of fundamentally discrete, unchanging, and independent objects, ourselves among them – our individual existence as an organism whose survival depends upon other organisms, human and not, would be extremely precarious. Such a disconnection would be expected to provoke feelings of loneliness, vulnerability, and anxiety, and to be associated with selfish, dominative, and exploitative behavior patterns.

In contrast, a less dualistic interpretation of reality would be expected to result in quite the opposite experience and actions to match. The experience of being fundamentally interwoven with the greater wholeness of life itself would be expected to provoke profound feelings of belonging, comfort, and compassion, as well as a conviction of the radical equality of all living beings and a rejection of selfish and dominative behaviors that disregard the effect of one’s actions on the broader systems of which we are part. These feelings and behaviors are broadly consistent with those known to be associated with spirituality.

The toggle switch for spiritual experiences and actions, then, would appear to exist at the level of the biological processes of life regulation which modulate our interpretation of reality. The natural fluctuation in the degree of subject-object duality in our experience is unlikely to reflect an actual fluctuation in the degree to which we are distinct from or unified with the world around us. Instead, such fluctuations likely result from biological processes of life regulation which modulate how our brain interprets reality in different situations in order to give us the best chance of survival and flourishing.

The development of spirituality as a cultural adaptation to extreme subject-object duality

The highest aim of many spiritual traditions is a rare state of experience that goes by different names: ‘enlightenment’, ‘unification with God’, ‘moksha’, ‘gnosis’, etc., of which the basic common elements are (a) salvation from the problems of the human condition, and (b) an overcoming of subject-object duality (see Loy 1988). We call this highest aim of spirituality an experience of ‘absolute nonduality’.

A universal and comprehensive description of the experience of ‘absolute nonduality’ is far beyond the scope of the present article. One reason is that the experience of absolute nonduality is a rare event, likely only experienced by a handful of people across all cultures. Another reason is that a universal and precise description may in fact be impossible, although there are many valuable attempts in this direction (Loy 1988; Lusthaus 2002, 514). The experience of absolute nonduality resists precise description not only because of its profound ineffability (James 1902) but on logical grounds. If a mental event is truly nondual, the mental subject must be at least momentarily undifferentiated from mental objects. Such a state can be described conceptually only when duality has returned.

No spiritual practice can credibly claim to directly and reliably produce states of absolute nonduality, but they may be able to produce movement in that direction – reductions in the duality of experience – through a conceptual understanding of nonduality and practices that cultivate the corresponding feelings and actions. Notwithstanding the rare grandeur and ensuing happiness for the lucky individual of an ‘experience’ of absolute nonduality, for the practical purposes of remedying the problems of the human condition, a systematic reduction in the duality of experience that can be understood, practiced and experienced would appear to be sufficient.

Of course, not all approaches to remedying the problematic aspects of the human condition that have appeared throughout human history have done so by reducing duality. While non-dualistic approaches seek to reduce the differentiation between subject and object, for example through meditation, flow state, or compassion practices, dualistic approaches seek to remedy the problems of the human condition by further distancing the subject from the object, for example in ascetic practices.

The history of spiritual ideas and practices, within or without religion, encompasses a wide variety of approaches, often in flux, often fighting or influencing each other, at other times static, seemingly frozen in time. Among these different manifestations of spirituality, we find some non-dualistic ones, and some that are dualistic, and some that are a mixture of both. To place all known spiritual practices along a range from dualistic to non-dualistic would be a valuable project, although regrettably beyond our present scope.

However, if we consider all known spiritual ideas and practices to be part of an ongoing process of cultural adaptation aimed at resolving the problems of the human condition, we may be able to discern a trend over time toward practices that reduce duality in mental experience, and away from practices which increase it. For instance, the term ‘spirituality’ appears to have originated in the dualistic approach before gradually shifting in meaning toward nonduality.

‘Spirit’ shares the same root, ‘spir’ as respiration and refers to the animating force or soul which inhabits our material form and looks through our eyes, as if visiting from a special nonphysical ‘spiritual realm’ before ultimately returning to it. Before the theory of evolution, the idea of an immortal spirit animating our bodily form was a compelling explanation for our dualistic experience. Based on this view of mind–body dualism, spiritual practices that enforce subject-object duality by considering the body an obstacle to transcend were attempted – Christian monks flagellating themselves in the Middle Ages or practicing extreme fasting – but these practices largely failed to reliably produce transformed and happy human beings. Consequently, these practices and others were abandoned in the global learning process. More recently, practices like meditation and nondual prayer (Bourgeault 2004) have become more popular around the world as the learning process continues.

Today, the term spirituality is increasingly associated with practices and ideas that guide us toward nonduality. Looking back at the progression of spiritual practice over time, one could reasonably suggest that this has been the goal all along. If the problems of the human condition are a consequence of the progression of the objectification process that has been ongoing since the time of our ancestor Homo erectus, the obvious remedy would be to develop practices that promote experiences of reduced duality or temporarily reverse the subject-object bifurcation. In this view, spirituality has developed less by choice than by necessity, the choice component only being the form that spirituality takes in different societies and cultures.

Conclusion and implications

For some time now, spirituality has been considered a generally positive, but largely ornamental feature of human life; a relic of times past when our eyes were not yet fully open to reason and to the objective truths of the physical world.

Here, we have attempted to amend this understanding, proposing instead that spirituality may have developed as a cultural adaptation that counterbalances the extreme subject-object duality that sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. Far from being an ornament, a well-functioning spirituality may be necessary for well-functioning human individuals and societies.

The model of spirituality advanced here offers testable predictions about the efficacy of different kinds of spiritual practices. Specifically, identifying the basis of the problems of the human condition with the duality of subject and object predicts that the effectiveness of any spiritual practice depends on the degree to which that practice does in fact reduce the differentiation of subject and object. This prediction could be investigated empirically.

The implications of the present discussion extend far beyond the psychological wellbeing of individuals. Our current social and economic system relentlessly promotes dualistic thinking and acting, with many good technological and material results, but also with many predictable destructive effects on society and on the environment. We have been taught, directly or indirectly, to see ourselves as independent agents in a zero-sum world, where we must fight, manipulate, and subdue to our personal or in-group advantage. The present social anomie and multiple looming existential crises are a clarion call for change.

To date, the problems of the modern world have not been widely understood to be the predictable result of the modern norm of an extremely dualistic experience of reality. It is not even widely recognized that the degree of duality in modern human experience is extreme. Many realize that we need to relate differently in and with the world, but few see that to transform the ‘human condition’, and thereby transform our experience of the world, we need a framework for understanding ourselves and the world in nondual, relational terms. Social transformation could develop from here.

Historians of the future may look back to our era and see a Hegelian dialectical process playing out: Before brains, there was no duality of seer and seen. Complex brains bring duality into the world, which enables us to build new and useful tools that bring material riches and comfort, but also creates new problems. Combining the intellectual and material achievement of humanity with the happy lightness of being that characterizes life in the nondual realm promises to address the problems and elevate our condition to new heights. Granted it is much harder now than in Hegel’s time to believe in the inevitability of human progress, but the possibility remains.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hans Henning

Hans Henning studied sociology at the Free University of Berlin, and later became fascinated by the intersection of sociology and spiritual traditions and practices. He is currently a Senior Fellow at Novus Think Tank in Los Angeles, USA.

Max Henning

Max Henning studied affective neuroscience under Dr Antonio Damasio at the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California, USA. His research interests center on the potential for a biological understanding of feeling to clarify longstanding questions on human nature and the human condition.