There is a spiritual revolution underway similar to the Copernican Revolution in astronomy. Just as Copernicus and Galileo moved science beyond the geocentric view to the heliocentric view, so now there is a movement moving spirituality from an egocentric to a noncentric awareness of reality.
There is a spiritual revolution underway similar to the Copernican Revolution in astronomy. Just as Copernicus and Galileo moved science beyond the geocentric view to the heliocentric view, so now there is a movement moving spirituality from an egocentric to a noncentric awareness of reality.
There are certain experiences that communicate the Divine. For many people viewing the starry heavens on a clear night can elicit this. We cannot help but ponder our connection to the universe. The heavens have always elicited such a response from humans it seems. Structures like Stonehenge attest to this.
Humans have imagined constellations in the stars and seen gods in the skies and created stories about them. This wonder of the heavenly bodies is the source of astrology, which assumes that somehow the apparent movement of stars is connected to us as persons.
Even people with no religious beliefs are awed by the sheer vastness of space and the universe. I am thinking of astronomers like Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson. There is something awe-inspiring about the heavens.
Humans understanding of the cosmos has gone through evolutions and revolutions. In the earliest worldview the earth was at the center of the universe. Everything revolved around us. The sun and stars and planets all centered on us. This is the Ptolemaic view or the geocentric understanding of the universe.
In the 16th century the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus saw it differently and began what is called the Copernican Revolution. He took the earth out of the center and with it our central place in the universe. He postulated that the sun was the center – at least of our solar system - the heliocentric understanding. This was proven by Galileo, but the Church took a long time accepting this new view of things. It threatened the prevailing Christian worldview.
In time we came to know that our sun-centered system is just one of many solar systems in a galaxy, which itself is only one of countless galaxies in the universe. Each galaxy may have a center, but no galaxy – including ours - is the center of the universe. This understanding of the universe of course affected humans’ spiritual understanding of themselves. The universe was less and less about us. It knocked apart the anthropocentric worldview.
Darwin undermined anthropocentrism even more with his theory of evolution. Since Darwin more and more fossil and genetic evidence have supported the evolution of life on this planet. We found out that we are just one of many species that have occupied this planet. Indeed we are latecomers in the 4.5 billion year history of the earth and the 13.7 billion year history of the universe. Life was on earth long before us and will be long after us. Humans are more a footnote than the apex of evolution.
Once again the Church fought against this understanding, and parts of it are still fighting against it. Evangelicals and fundamentalists insist against all the scientific evidence for evolution is a hoax and an atheistic conspiracy. They insist that the anthropocentric view is still valid. We are the pinnacle of creation and the centerpiece of God’s master plan for the universe. Other spiritually minded people have come to accept that the universe is not anthropocentric. It is not all about us.
There is another revolution in spirituality that parallels the Copernican Revolution. That is the shift away from the egocentrism of humans. We have always assumed that the ego or psyche is who we are. We are persons. We have always assumed that what makes us who we are is our minds. Our self-consciousness. Our psyches. We could call this the psychocentric model of spirituality. Once again it is all about us as individual persons. We make deities in our image and then turn it around and say we are made it the image of God. There are exceptions to this understandings. In indigenous cultures there have also been animal spirits and impersonal power like mana.
But the major Western traditions like Judaism, Christianity and Islam have focused on a personal God, which looks strangely an awful lot like us, as Michelangelo reminds us in the Sistine Chapel. This God sounds like us and acts an awful lot like us. It does not take a genius to see it is us in theistic disguise. Our monotheistic God is the human psyche blown up big and made into a God. Or rather I should say, an idol.
The human ego has made God into a Divine Ego. This current runs deep in Christianity. Evangelicals make a big deal about worshiping a personal God and having a personal relationship with a personal Savior. They say it is not religion, it is relationship with a Person. This relationship involves submitting one’s will to God’s will. That is the literal meaning of the word Islam – submission.
This is the theocentric approach with God at the center. Christianity is a variation called the Christocentric approach. A Personal God is the center of the moral and spiritual universe, sitting on a throne ruling all, with everything and everyone under their feet. This is as far as traditional Christianity, Islam or Judaism is prepared to go – the human ego submitting to the will or law of this theistic God.
But there is another approach, and more and more people are making this shift these days. A new Copernican Revolution is under way. In actuality this has always been a minority approach throughout the history of religions, which is why it is sometimes called the Perennial Philosophy. There have always been mystics and seers in all religions who have gone beyond the psychocentric and egocentric model of humans. They have gone beyond the theocentric understanding of God. They have known by experience that that we are not psyches or egos. Neither is God a Super Psyche or Super Ego.
This is a shift from seeing us and God as selves to seeing us and God as not-self. The Divine and the human are defined by what they are not. When positive language is used, this is described as Spirit. But this is not a Spirit-centered worldview. Spirit is not part of space and time, so there is no center. That which is omnipresent cannot have a center.
It is best to call this a non-centric approach. The whole idea of a center – the center of us or the universe - is a mistake. This is truly radical revolution. It does not put something new in the center. It eliminates the center itself! This is descriptive of our awareness of both the true self and the Divine and the universe. There is no center. There is omnipresence.
Science is likewise supporting an approach to the universe that does not have a center. Scientists tell us that the universe is expanding, and it has been expanding ever since the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago. The model of the Big Bang that most people have in their minds is a big explosion. That would seem to imply that there is a center to the universe. All we have to do is trace the trajectory of all matter back to its point of origin, and we find the center of the universe, right? No, not right!
It turns out that the universe is not expanding in that way. Space is more like dots painted on the surface of a balloon which is being blown up. It is like raisins in a loaf of bread dough that is expanding as it is rising and baking. Every point in the universe is expanding equally apart from all other points. In other words there is no center. If space is like the surface of a balloon, no spot on the balloon is the center. Nor is there an outer edge. The universe is like a circle without a center or a circumference, which is of course no circle at all!
The strange thing is that when scientists look into the heavens it seems like we are at the center because everything is expanding away from us. If everything is moving away from us then it all must have started here. So it feels like we on earth are the center of the universe. But we aren’t. It just seems that way. There is no center. Of if we are then every place is equally the center.
When it comes to spirituality it may feel like we are the center of the universe. It feels like our self-consciousness is the center of the universe. But in reality is there is no center. We are not at the center, and we are not the center. There is no center. This centerless center is what is called Spirit. That is what we are. Or we can call it No-Self.
It turns out that we are made in the image of the universe, which is not surprising since we are the universe! The universe is us. We are the universe conscious of itself. We are without a center. There is no center. That spacious centerlessness is our true nature. To be aware of this and to live from that non-center is a Copernican Revolution in Spirituality.