SPIRITUALITY WITHOUT RELIGION - THE CULTIVATION OF HUMAN QUALITY

Abstract

This article gathers contributions to the understanding of spirituality without religion, either non-religious or secular. On the one hand, it addresses the significance of autonomous spiritualities that are independent from the beliefs, doctrinal body and community organization of religious institutions. On the other hand, it reflects on the cultivation of the human quality and the profound human quality, from a non-dual anthropological conception whereby the human animal, a talking animal, accesses reality and models it both as a dimension linked to needs and as one that goes beyond them. Our approach leads us to the necessity of overcoming the terms religion and spirituality, considered as the fruit of axiological projects no longer suitable for societies marked by an intense process of constant change, such as the contemporary knowledge societies and innovation societies. However, to deal with the issue, we consider appropriate to examine some key concepts from their traditional sense. Consequently, this study tries to present, though briefly, some of their delimitations. The main objective is to problematize the issue of spirituality without religion as a cultivation of human quality in light of the theory recog­nized as axiological epistemology, developed by the thinker Marià Corbí. We question the sense of spirituality as deriving from the human condition in its traditional sense, by considering that the human animal must fundamentally be understood as a being of language. As Corbí's theory points out, the survival mechanism of the speaking animal, as a being in need, works as a shaper of reality, processing, therefore, the non-dual access to the absolute dimension of reality (AD) and the relative dimension of reality (RD). In this theoretical­-practical approach, we specifically understand spirituality as the cultivation of human quality - the profound human quality, the process resulting from a collective axiological project which provides the realization of the person from the unconditional interest in reality, as well as from distance and silence (IDS); cultivated as free inquiry, communication and mutual service (ICS).