The
stages of spiritual growth
(zitiert aus:
Further Along the Road less travelled; M. Scott Peck; ISBN: 0671015818, bei
amazon.de kostet das Buch 11,34 €)
Our unique human capacity for change and transformacion is reflected in our human spirituality. … There are different stages of spiritual growth or religious development. … I arrived at my own understandig of these stages not out of book learning but through experience. (One) of those noncomputing experiences occurred more gradually …
After I had been practicing
psychotherapy for some years, a strange pattern began to emerge. If religious
people come to see me because they were in pain and trouble and difficulty,
and they really got involved in therapy, then - more often than not - they would
leave therapy as questioners, doubters, sceptics, agnostics, possibly even atheists.
But if atheists or agnostics or sceptics came to me in pain, trouble, and difficulty
and they really got involved in therapy, then - more often then not - they would
leave therapy having become deeply religious or spiritually concerned people.
This pattern just made no sense, did not compute. Same therapist, same therapy,
successful yet utterly opposite results. I could not figure this out, until
it slowly began to dawn on me that we are not all at the same place spiritually
and that there are these different stages. We must look at them with caution
and flexibility, however, because God has this rather peculiar way of interfering
with my categories sometimes, and people do not always fall quite as neatly
into my psychospiritual pigeonholes as I might like them to do.
At the beginning - the bottom, if you wish - is Stage One, which I label "chaotic/antisocial".
This stage probably encompasses about twenty percent of the population, including
those whom I call people of the lie. In general, this is a stage of absent spirituality
and the people at this stage are utterly unprincipled. I call it antisocial
because while they are capable of pretending to be loving, actually all of their
relationships with their fellow human beings are self-serving and unprincipled,
they have no mechanism that might govern them other than their own will. Since
the unharnessed will can go this way one day and that way the next, their being
is consequently chaotic. Because it is, the people in this stage will frequently
be found in trouble or difficulty, and often in jails or hospitals or out on
the street. Some of them, however, may actually be quite self-disciplined, from
time to time, in the service of their ambition and may rise to positions of
considerable prestige and power. They may even become presidents or famous preachers.
The people in Stage One may occasionally get in touch with the chaos of their
own being. And when they do, it is perhaps the single most painful experience
a human can have. Generally, they just ride it out, but if this painful experience
continues, they may kill themselves, and I think that some unexplained suicides
may fall into this category. Or occasionally, they may convert to Stage Two.
Such conversions are usually ? I say usually because there are always exceptions
very sudden and dramatic. It is as if God literally reaches down and grabs that
soul and yanks it up in a quantum leap. Something astonishing happens to that
person and it is usually totally unconscious. lf it could be made conscious,
I think it would be as if that person said to himself or herself, I am willing
to do anything?anything?in order to liberate myself from this chaos, even submit
myself to an institution for my governance." And so it is that they convert
to Stage Two, which I have labelled "formal/institutional." I label it institutional
because people in it are dependent upon an institution for their governance.
For some the institution may be a prison. In such places, in my experience,
there is always a prisoner who, when the new psychiatrist comes in to work in
the prison, gathers a group of fellow inmates together for a group therapy session,
who is the warden's right?hand man, yet who somehow manages never to get a shiv
stuck between his ribs. He is a model prisoner and a model citizen Because he
is so well adjusted in the institution, he is always paroled at the first possible
opportunity. Immediately he becomes a walking crime wave, and within a week
of his parole, he is rearrested and put right back behind bars, where once again
he becomes a model citizen with the walls of the institution around him to organize
his being. For others the institution may be the military. This is a profoundly
positive role the military plays in our and other societies. There are tens
of thousands of people who would lead chaotic lives were it not for the rather
paternalistic and in some ways maternalistic structuring of the military. For
still others, the institution to which they submit themselves for their governance
may be a highly organized business corporation. But for most people, it is the
church. Indeed, the majority of churchgoers fall into Stage Two, the formal/institutional
stage. Although there are gradations and nothing is absolutely cut?and?dried
within these stages, certain things tend to characterize people's religious
behaviour in Stage Two. As mentioned, they are dependent on the institution
of the church for their governance, and 1 call it formal because they are very
attached to the forms of the religion Stage Two people become very, very upset
if someone starts changing forms or rituals, altering their liturgy or introducing
new hymns. For example, in the Episcopal church, in the mid?seventies, it was
decided that there might be some alternative ways to say the same things on
different Sundays, and many people were so up in arms that a full?blown schism
resulted, Another example: In the 1960s, the Vatican 11 Council of the Roman
Catholic hierarchy led to profound changes in that church, and thirty years
later Pope John Paul II still seems to be in the process of trying to undo those
changes. And it's not just Episcopalians and Catholics This kind of turmoil
goes on in every denomination of every religion in the world And it's no wonder
that people in Stage Two become so upset when the forms of their religion are
changed, because it's precisely those forms that they depend upon to some extent
for their liberation from chaos. Another thing that tends to characterize people's
religious behaviour in this stage is that their vision of God is almost entirely
that of an external being. They have very little understanding of that half
of God which lives inside each of us what theologians term immanent?the dwelling
divinity within the human spirit. They almost totally think of God as up there,
out there. They generally envision God along the masculine model, and while
they believe Him to be a loving being, they also ascribe to Him a certain kind
of punitive power which He is not afraid to use on appropriate occasions. It
is a vision of God as a giant benevolent cop in the sky. And in many ways, this
is exactly the kind of Cod that people in Stage Two need. Let's say that two
people who are firmly rooted in Stage Two meet and marry and have children.
They raise their children in a stable home because stability tends to be of
great value to people in Stage Two. They treat their children with dignity and
importance because the church says that children are important and should be
treated with dignity. And while their love may be a little bit legalistic or
unimaginative at times, nonetheless they are loving because the church tells
them to be loving and teaches them a little something about how to be loving.
What happens to a child raised in such a stable, loving home and treated with
dignity and importance That child will absorb his parents' religious principles?be
they Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, or Jewish?like mother's milk By the time the
child reaches adolescence, these principles will have become virtually engraved
on his heart, or "internalised" to use the psychiatric term But once this happens,
they will have become principled, self?governing human beings who no longer
need to depend upon an institution for their governance. lt is at this time,
which in healthy human development is usually at adolescence, that they start
saying, `Who needs these silly myths and superstitions and this fuddy?duddy
old institution?" They will then begin??often to their parents' utterly unnecessary
horror and chagrin ?to fall away from the church, having become doubters or
agnostics or atheists. At this point they have begun to convert to Stage Three,
which I call ?skeptic/individual. Again speaking generally, people in Stage
Three are ahead of people in Stage Two m their spirituality although they are
not religious in the ordinary sense of the word. They are not the least bit
antisocial Often they are deeply involved in society. They are the kinds of
people who tend to make up die backbone of organizations like Physicians for
Social Responsibility the ecology movement They make committed and loving parents.
Frequently they are scientists, and certainly scientific?minded. Invariably
they are truth seekers. And if they seek truth deeply enough, and widely enough
as SPIRITUALITY AND HUMAN NATURE / 125 I've suggested, they do begin to find
what they are looking for and get to fit enough pieces of truth to catch glimpses
of the big picture and see that it is not only very beautiful, but that it strangely
resembles many of those primitive myths and superstitions their Stage Two parents
or grandparents believed in. And it is at this point that they begin to convert
to Stage Four, which I call mystical/communal I use the word "mystical" to describe
this stage even though it is a word that is hard to define and one that has
been given a pejorative connotation in our culture and is usually misdefined.
But certain things can be said about mystics. They are people who have seen
a kind of cohesion beneath the surface of things. Throughout the ages, mystics
have seen connections between men and women, between humans and other creatures,
between people walking the earth and those who aren't even here. Seeing that
kind of interconnectedness beneath the surface, mystics of all cultures and
religions have spoken of things in terms of unity and community. They also have
always spoken in terms of paradox. Mystical has as its root the word mystery.
Mystics are people who love mystery. They love to solve mysteries, and yet at
the same time, they know the more they solve, the more mystery they are going
to encounter. But they are very comfortable living in a world of mystery whereas
people in Stage Two are most uncomfortable when things aren't cut?and-dried.
These principles hold true not only for Christianity and not only in the United
States but in all nations, cultures, and religions. Indeed, one of the things
that characterize all of the world's great religions is that they seem to have
a capacity to speak to people in both Stage Two and Stage Four as if the very
teachings of a given religion have two different translations. To take an example
from Judaism, Psalm 111 ends with The fear of the Lord is the begimung of wisdom."
At Stage Two this is translated to mean, "When you start fearing that big cop
in the sky, you really wise up." That's true. At Stage Four it is translated
to mean, "The awe of God shows you the way to enlightenment." And that's also
true. "Jesus is my Saviour" is a favourite statement among Christians and provides
another example. Among Stage two people, that tends to be translated to mean
that Jesus is a kind of fairy godmother who can rescue me whenever I get in
trouble as long as I can remember to call upon His name. And that's true; He
will exactly that. Whereas in Stage Four, people read it to mean that Jesus,
through His life and death, taught me the way that I myself must follow for
my salvation. And that is also true. As I noted, this quality of dual translation
holds true not just for Christianity and Judaism but also for Islam, Taoism,
Buddhism, and Hinduism. Indeed, I think it is what makes them great religions.
They all give room for both the Stage Two and the Stage Four believers.