Experiential Spirituality and Contemporary Gnosis

building block of reality and that which may be affected by consciousness and spirituality).

And this emphasis on spirituality and consciousness reflects an acknowledgment that we are, in essence, spiritual beings – and beings of pure energy, as consciousness is a form of energy – even though we are “in the body.” As Wayne Dyer says, “We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” Or, as Deepak Chopra says, our bodies are contained within our consciousness, not our consciousness contained within our bodies.

Many people have attempted to compare traditional religion and metaphysics, often pitting one against the other, as if the two of them were mutually exclusive or antithetical. Interestingly, however, religion based on theism is, by definition, a part of metaphysics, as any concept of a deity in traditional Western religion is outside the purview of our three-dimensional reality.

Which leads us to another interesting hallmark of contemporary metaphysics and the “New Age:” the spirituality is experiential.

And some of the causative factors involved with this experiencing of spirituality are somewhat understandable.

Many have theorized that the current interest in spirituality and metaphysics may in part be viewed as a reaction against the Age of Reason and the perceived pursuant overemphasis on the strictly material and empirical – that there is a longing for the transcendently spiritual, instead of feeling bogged down in a strict immersion in the physical. I. e., after a couple of centuries of emphasis on the empirically provable and concrete, there is a longing

for the spiritual as an antidote.

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