I like this analogy and think it is fairly clever, and I would agree that what I call ”spirituality” is indeed a part of evolution, but that it’s different from what most people on this board think of as spirituality (which is what I would classify as religion and mythic beliefs). Valid and real spirituality has to do with consciousness, knowing what ones essence is, seeing through delusions, illusions, mental constructs and conditioning. It has very little (if anything) to do with belief or non-human entities.
Some other people who have taken this approach are psychologists and philosophers Wilber, Beck and Graves who have systems called Integral Theory and Spiral Dynamics that explain how the human consciousness develops through some rather predictable stages, where the first stages are mythic/religions, the later stages are rational/scientific and the very last stages are trans-rational/spiritual. Unfortunately the different stages tend to be at war with each other, and this board that is very much at the rational/scientific stage will commit what is called ”the pre/trans fallacy”, confusing early mythical beliefs and superstitions with later translational insights and spiritual experience.
So yes, according to them (and me) spirituality is very much part of evolution both in the micro and macro perspective. We all go through the stages as we grow up, both individually and collectively. And achieving ”rationality” is an important step on the way. You could say that the Western Enlightenment of the 1700’s was where we collectively moved out of the Mythic and into the Rational, and that another shift has been happening for the last 100 years or so where we are moving from rationality and modernism to trans-rationality and post-modernism collectively. This of course being the result of a relatively small group of people achieving a higher state of consciousness just as happened during the Enlightenment.
And just as in the example, it’s actually almost impossible to ”explain” or ”show” this to someone, because every bit of information or experience will be filtered through the level of development that ones ego or consciousness is at. If one is at a Mythic stage, all scientific and critical thought arguments will be either denied or fit into the current paradigm. Once at the Modern or Rational stage, that filter will negate not just the previous stage (refusing to believe in Mythic religions) but also defend itself against trans-rational or post-modern concepts.
The step that I would call genuinely ”spiritual” is the one that comes after the developmental level known as post-modern, where the very subject/object dualism is seen through and the ego or personal life is seen as a fiction, what the developmental psychologists call a ”phase shift” and what Zen monks call a ”satori”. That is when consciousness leaves the dialect of religion/science or myth/reason behind and becomes integral and spiritual.
This is a very solid and good point. My main issue with the so called spiritual sector is that it is filled with charlatans, confused people and religious craziness competing for attention, and that the noise-to-signal ratio is very, very low. It is also why I save my respect for the parts of the spiritual sector (i.e. the real wisdom traditions) that are investigating the truth with what amounts to a scientific method, checking if results can be reproduced and comparing experiences with peers. This type of spirituality has however almost never shown its face in public in the west, where the spiritual debate has been dominated by dogmatic mythic beliefs rather that honest investigation of reality. The (very few) christians that ever had some real insight into the nature of the universe where either silenced or burned at the stake (Giordano Bruno), unless they were very politically correct and managed to fit their insights into a shape that the christian dogma could accept (like John of the Cross, Meister Ekchart and Teresa of Avila).
Personally I think it is a huge mistake to do what the modernists do and throw the baby out with the bathwater, basically claiming that anything transcendent is just more ”myth”, but frankly that is understandable. Especially in a country like the US where almost the whole sector is ”owned” by what is indeed silly and ignorant dogma in the form of mythical belief and there is very little real spirituality (with some noted exceptions of course, like Adyashanti, Wilber etc). But on the other hand there is not much you can do. Just like in the original example, the illusion can not be broken until the equipment is in place so to speak. My life was spent as a secular humanist (rabid atheist more like actually) and science nerd, I did the exact same thing, dismissed everything ”spiritual” as mythical nonsense and pledged myself the the ”scientific” paradigm. Now of course I find that highly ironic, but it is also clear it could not have happened any other way. Until you finally start investigating the source of your own consciousness you’re stuck in Plato’s cave, and I’m not even sure there’s anything to be done about it. After this discussion is done for example, my experience suggests that exactly zero people will have changed their mind or perspective in any meaningful way, because their mind will filter out whatever doesn’t confirm with its own reality tunnel.
