Thoreau and Evolving Spiritual Awareness

​Thoreau and Evolving Spiritual Awareness

Readers who have followed the posts on this site are likely to be puzzled by the last three short posts, all of which have been based on passages from Henry David Thoreau.* What, might one ask, does an 18th century New England Transcendentalist have to do with the evolving nature of religion, which is the theme of this site?
Thoreau’s many passages describing his experience of the Sacred in the natural world sometimes are reminiscent of what some might call “paganism” (or, to use the far less pejorative label, animistic religions). In turn, some might then argue that this is evidence that religious consciousness doesn’t really evolve at all. If pre-Christian animists and an 18th century American transcendentalist both had a similar spiritual sensitivity to the presence of Spirit in the natural world, what evidence is there of an evolving spiritual consciousness over a span of more than 2000 years?
To that challenge, we would offer two points to consider:
 
1. Evolution and the principle of “Transcend and Include”
To suggest, as we do,  that the evolution of human spiritual awareness demonstrates an ever more expansive and fuller sense of Spirit, is not to imply that earlier spiritual experiential senses of the Sacred were false and should be rejected. Evolution always proceeds according to the pattern of transcend and include, both in the evolution of matter and the evolution of consciousness.
Ken Wilber consistently emphasizes this important insight: while evolution is a process which is constantly leading to entities with increased complexity and new traits that are different from and more complex, functional, and adaptive than what preceded them, those preceding stages are not destroyed or abandoned, but rather maintained as the basis for the newly evolved entities. In the physical realm, the formation of a molecule “transcends”, or is more than, the particles of which the molecule is composed, but the existence of the molecule does not (and cannot) destroy those particles. Similarly, an organ which is composed of a complex arrangement of cells is more than those cells, but it does not in any way negate them. And, of course, a human which is composed of a variety of organs acquires capacities (including consciousness) that are not found in any of those individual organs, but the human entity remains dependent on the organs for its material existence.
With regard to the evolution of spiritual consciousness, the obvious expansion of the human sense of Spirit in no way negates the earlier sense of Spirit, but it does expand the depth and breadth of our awareness of the Sacred. In Thoreau’s case, while he possessed a profound sense of the presence of Spirit in nature, he did so in a manner that was free from the mythic and anthropomorphic projections, as well as the sometimes brutal ethical elements (sacrificial practices of various types, including sentient beings) that are found in earlier expressions of animistic spirituality. In a sense, Thoreau’s spirituality includes the animistic sense of immanent Spirit in the natural world but also transcends it by removing the culturally conditioned mythic and anthropomorphic dimensions and expanding the circle of moral empathy.
 
2. An appropriate sense of temporal contextualization
In looking at evolution in general or spiritual evolution specifically, it is necessary to keep in mind the basic truth that evolution proceeds over vast stretches of time. That humans in the first century c.e. thought about spiritual matters in ways that are similar to how many humans think about such things today is not surprising, given that 2000 years is a very short period of time when we’re looking at evolutionary development. Philosopher J.L. Schellenberg has explored this theme in great depth in his wonderful trilogy on religious faith, where he repeatedly urges us to consider humanity as a fairly new, immature species, that has only recently acquired the capacity to experience and reflect upon the presence of a Transcendent or Spiritual reality.
Of course, some things have changed if we look at the evolution of the human spiritual sensibility from Neolithic pre-Axial cultures to today. A greater sense of the moral quality of Spirit and an ever-expanding sense of moral responsibility beyond the human species to other sentient beings are important evolutionary developments in spiritual awareness, and 3000 years is a relatively short period of time for such a development to occur.
So one should not be surprised to find animistic elements of a nature-based spirituality in Thoreau (and his fellow Transcendentalists), nor should one be surprised that Thoreau’s spiritual awareness is in some ways different from what preceded him. That’s how evolution works. That’s “transcend and include.”
 
All of this leads to the most intriguing question: what happens next?
Yes, it will take centuries or perhaps millennia for the next stage in the evolution of human spirituality to emerge. And yes, that process will be so slow and organic that it likely will go largely unnoticed. And in all likelihood, it will lead to a spiritual awareness that is utterly incomprehensible to 21st century humans, in the same way that non-dual mysticism and the moral duty to all sentient beings would have been incomprehensible to our ancestors from 40,000 years ago when, just yesterday, the religious sensibility appears to have emerged in our species.  How will the slowly evolving capacity of human consciousness to experientially intuit the spiritual element of the Cosmos, following the principle of transcend and include, manifest in new forms of spiritual experience and understanding?
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*It should be noted that Thoreau enthusiastically read Darwin’s On the Origin of Species shortly after its publication, although, of course, he did not apply the concept of evolution to consciousness or spiritual experience.