What is spirituality?
To many people, spirituality is about having certain feelings, and spiritual practices are those actions which bring the feelings about. Light the candles, and feel “connected.” Pray, and become inspired. One does these practices in order to have certain feelings, or mindstates, to which one may attribute a range of mythic or psychological meaning. Conversely, if a practice isn’t working for you – that is, if you don’t get the desired feeling – drop it. Secular critics of this type of spirituality (which often is derided as “New Age”) complain that it is narcissistic. Essentially, it’s just another thrill – and one which is then overlaid with delusion. At best, these pleasant delusions are rather pathetic balms. But they may also be deeply counterproductive, as the happy spiritual practitioner blissfully ignores her own problems, and those of the world. At worst, if the spiritual practitioner actually believes Allah, or Jesus, or whoever, is speaking to him, the delusions of the New Age are little different from the fundamentalisms of our era. 
Within religious circles, surprisingly similar criticisms are leveled against ‘New Age’ spirituality. First, religious critics argue that New Age spirituality puts the individual before God. Some argue that it improperly values experience over authority, or over ethics – it is immodest, indulgent, and perhaps just too much fun.
A less common critique comes from within the world of spiritual practitioners itself. Here, the complaint is neither impudence nor egotism but theological error. From a nondual perspective, spiritual practice is not about having a particular feeling, but about waking up to the shocking reality that your conventional self only exists as an appearance, a mirage. Like the Big Dipper, it is “there” in some sense, but not in the deepest sense; it’s not a structure of reality, but merely a way reality appears when looked at from a certain way. Spiritual and contemplative practice, in the nondual view, exist to wake us up from that “certain way,” which also happens to bring about all kinds of suffering, selfishness, and violence.
To do so, nondual spiritual practice must be all-pervasive. If you suppose that God is only present in the pleasant stuff – on a summer’s day but not in a cancer ward, when you’re feeling relaxed but not when you’re tense – then you’ve still making the same dualist error: God is here, but not there. In fact, the best spiritual practice might be one that neither provides the allure of the present nor the expiation of the difficult – but one which is utterly transparent, colorless, and thus always available.
Ironically, the nondualist and the traditionalist here shake hands, because the traditionalist, as we have seen, also scoffs at “feel-good” religious practice – though for entirely different reasons. The nondualist complains that “feel-good” is a counterproductive contemplative error – idolatry, translated into contemplative practice. The traditionalist complains that “feel good” doesn’t obey authority, privileges experience over ethics, and doesn’t do all the dour, disciplining things that religion is supposed to do. Very different reasons, but perhaps in the handshake between the contemplative and the traditionalist, there is something significant to be said about religion.
Take the example of kashrut, the Jewish dietary laws and practices. Along with the Sabbath and prayer, kashrut is perhaps the most demanding of Jewish ritual observances; it is a discipline that requires daily attention, and can seem quite overbearing at times. However, kashrut is actually quite subtle, and puts in high relief all the questions we have just been addressing.
Practically speaking, the vast majority of “keeping kosher” derives from three basic rules. First, only some animals may be eaten. Second, even those animals must be killed in a certain way. Third, even if the animals are killed the right way, their flesh cannot be mixed with milk. That’s about 90% of it – but as anyone who keeps kosher knows, things quickly get complicated. For example, we would all agree that if a strip of bacon were fried in a pan, and then an egg were fried right in the leftover bacon grease, that the egg is not kosher, even though there’s nothing intrinsically non-kosher about the egg. Well, what if a single drop of non-kosher gravy is dropped into a huge vat of kosher chicken soup? Generations of rabbis have busied themselves with such questions, and have created a huge, ornate body of rules and regulations as a result. Two sinks, four sets of dishes, salad in restaurants but not with onions – all of these stem from the same few basic principles.
Why bother? Some of the rationales I’ve encountered (by no means an exhaustive list) include: God commanded it, so I do it. It imbues mundane acts with holiness, and honors my body. It connects me to God/Spirit/my higher self. It connects me to the Jewish people; it builds community. It separates me from the goyim. It shapes the world according to arbitrary, but transcendent, norms. It’s part of the halachic system, which is a structure for spiritual life. It teaches me discipline. It is an ancient magical set of taboos, reflective of order and chaos. It elevates to the spiritual what would otherwise be merely animal. It lifts the sparks of the dead animals. It recognizes the moral stature of the dead animals. Vegetarianism would be better, but this is a good compromise. It’s good for my health. It’s good for my diet/limits my meat intake. My family does it, so I do it. It’s just what I’m used to; it just feels right.
Obviously, some of these rationales please us more than others, and some are simply outdated. To claim, for example, that kashrut is really good for one’s health is surely dubious in our time of strict food standards, sustainable vegetarianism, and advanced scientific understanding of how nutrition and disease actually work. Other rationales seem outright problematic – for example, kashrut’s emphasis on keeping Jews distinct from other nations, a questionable value discussed elsewhere in this issue.
I’ve called all these explanations “rationales” rather than “reasons” because, however elegant the reasoning, I think they’re rather beside the point. I think most of us carry on with our religious practices for emotional, rather than intellectual, reasons. The explanations come later. These are myths, after all. Of course, within the system, things are quite rational indeed, thanks to exhaustive scientific and pseudo-scientific reasoning that extends the basic norms of kashrut into the molecular details of modern kitchen chemistry. But the foundations themselves? Notwithstanding a few hundred years of rationalist philosophy, I find religion to be a matter of love and fear, not reason.
Moreover, within the religious system itself, at least in its early strata, one would be hard-pressed to find any rationales at all, other than a few basic principles of commandment, holiness, and separation from non-Jews. Once again, within the system, reason may predominate, but justifying the system itself is only the force of Sinai, and the barest of justifications.
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Really, the most revolutionary principle of this form of Jewish religion is not any particular rationale, but that the rules exist at all in the material, practical form that they do. Today, we Jews are often a bit embarrassed that two sets of silverware are somehow religiously significant. But let’s take it seriously. The core underlying assumption, behind any form of physical religious prohibition which does not have a stated psychological, metaphysical or moral “reason,” is that body, itself, matters. Not because it can calm the mind, or make us feel good. Not because it curbs our dangerous appetites. And not because of health. But really, for its own sake, even if it gives no emotional, intellectual, or spiritual benefit whatsoever. Actions, not intentions and not “spiritual” consequences, are themselves of religious value.
Rather than search for a “spiritual meaning” to the rules of kashrut, I prefer to see the practice as purely a matter of materiality. And rather than search for an intellectual justification for the particular laws (Mary Douglas’s analysis in Purity and Danger – roughly the “ancient taboo” line from above – seems to me the most lucid, though it has little application to a contemporary consciousness), I have learned to regard them as arbitrary – and yet critically important precisely because they are arbitrary, non-“spiritual,” and devoid of emotional meaning. Why? Because without those embellisments, kashrut is a body practice, and recognizes the value of the body, of the material world, on its own.
Let’s take the implications of “body practice” one step further. Most of us, I think, are conditioned to believe that the body is merely a tool to affect some non-embodied “spirit.” There is a historical reason for this belief: it was one of the main sites of disagreement between Talmudic Jews and the early Christian Jews, led by Paul. Paul saw the body as flawed, fallen, and mortal; the soul, in contrast, was pure, capable of salvation, and immortal. How could circumcision of the flesh have any meaning, when circumcision of the heart was so much more important? Paul, Christianity, and Platonic dualism have so won the day that I think most of us take for granted that religion is a matter of heart and soul, and that religious practices exist only to bring about “spiritual” changes.
But the Talmudic sages disagreed. They argued, in their version of the “New Testament,” the Mishna (literally: “Second”), that the significant sphere of religious life was the body, not the disembodied soul. This is why “pointless” embodied commandments such as kashrut are discussed in such intimate, endless detail: because the body is the point.
If we try to make each detail of legalistic Judaism conform to some higher “spiritual” purpose, most of us will get very frustrated. On the other hand, if we approach the minutiae of kashrut as configuring the physical universe in a holy way – not because of how it makes us feel, but because of how it physically is, in itself – then we are liberated from the yoke of needing each act to be spiritually fulfilling and we find ourselves in a place of honoring the physical bodies we inhabit. Your body is of importance; thus even the details of frying an egg are important as well, whether the ego feels it or not. Halacha, the Jewish “path,” exists trans-subjectively – that is, beyond the sensations it brings about. 
All of this rather traditionalist conversation accords quite neatly with the nondual revolution in the realm of the spirit. In such a view, the soul is not a feeling, not a faculty in addition to the body, mind, and heart; it is the point of connection between those aspects of the self and the reality of the One. Feelings are part of the picture, but the true “goal” of spiritual practice is to embrace all of the parts, on their own terms. To be sure, nondual practice is advanced practice, because a colorless, feeling-less truth is only attractive for those who have first tasted the ecstasies and joys of contemplative life. First, taste the energies, know them, drink them in – and know that they are real, that several thousand years of hidden wisdom are not, actually, all made up. But as you come to know the delights of form, complement yesh (form) with ayin (emptiness); come to know that they are all one taste.
In the context of One Taste – Ken Wilber’s term for the omnipresent consciousness of the Divine, what the Hasidim would call devekus – both kashrut specifically and Jewish practices generally take on a new cast. If we only perform those rituals that give us a certain feeling, then we are mistaking a certain feeling for God. This is what I have called the “idolatry of yesh.” In fact, the Infinite is truly infinite, not just in the places we enjoy. God is in the fire, in the wind, in the still, small voices which nurture us at night – and in the physical body as well. In this light, kashrut, as with circumcision, technical Sabbath observance, and hundreds of other Jewish rituals, extends the infinite into the realm of the finite. It refuses to say that the material world is fallen, or irrelevant, or only important because of its effect on the “soul,” whatever that is. It sanctifies the ordinary not by creating a special feeling, but simply by being.
And then, in my experience, feelings do arise. What I have experienced, when I am able to practice this way, is a different sort of love from the one I read about in books. It is an egoless, transparent love which inheres in the actual food I put in my mouth, in the actual stomach which digests it, and in the actual nutrients absorbed by my bloodstream. And it is an embrace that holds me even when I do not feel it, even when I do not want to be held. It is as inescapable as an Infinite Being should be: always with me, always touching every atom of my being, just waiting for me to wake up.
The non-duality of the embodied self leads to an enlightenment far deeper than the dualistic flight from the body. Holding onto a separation between the body and the soul, it’s easy to imagine a soul independent from the rest of the world, like a puppetmaster pulling the strings of our body: an autonomous, separate “soul,” apart from the body, and the seat of our actual, separate essence. But this whole picture is simply not true. What we call “the soul” is actually a net of causes and conditions determined by genetic information, environment, culture, society, and the myriad “accidents of living” we encounter. Consciousness, a trick played by a well-functioning brain, is not some immaterial puppetmaster pulling strings; it’s a result of decades of data, and millennia of genetic evolution. Of course, there are so many of these factors that none of us can keep track. No one can predict how a boy will grow into a man, and thus no one but that man is responsible for his conduct and destiny. But ultimately, if we really look at the causes of every act and decision, we will see that none of them spring from nowhere. Everything has its conditions, including your reading, my writing, and the sounds around you right now. In fact, since everything is fully dependent upon those conditions, you might ask: who really is reading, who really is writing, and what really is going on?
Some people worry that, without immortal, immaterial souls, we are merely machines, with no accountability and no humanity. But neither consequence is true. Actually seeing oneself as a “machine,” that is, as a body governed by the laws of the universe, is not a diminishment; it is a release from the delusion that who you are is this small self, separate from the rest of the universe, a soul trapped in a body. Precisely the scientific materialism so derided by many religious and spiritual people is the key to enlightenment itself. You are not a “soul” unfortunately trapped in a body. You are starstuff (in Carl Sagan’s words), and your mind is a temporary repository of the dreams of the universe.
The great spiritual achievement is not transcending the body, but as joining body and spirit together. Only then can form be dissolved in emptiness, and emptiness manifest as form; as long as the body is thought of as something to be negated, then, from a contemplative perspective, there is still more desire and fear to let go. And from a religious perspective, a gnostic denial of the reality of the manifest world cannot coexist with a monotheistic understanding of a God known in creation. Are all the world’s delights, all its sorrows, and all its manifold forms of beauty merely a temptation for the unfortunately imprisoned soul? Are they a waste of God’s (and our) time? Or is it all, in the end, a world devoid of significance, with beauty being a matter of mathematics alone, and with love a mere accident of neurology?
The truth does set you free; the release from the incorrect assumptions that what seems (i.e. the self) is what is, is simultaneously the release from the overzealous godwrestling which sees the world in terms of what I have, and what I don’t yet have but want. Just let it go, for God’s sake – the treadmill of inadequacy, craving, and stress is not doing you or the planet any good. Sure, the yearning is often righteous, for justice and equity and the rest. But more often, it churns the engines of consumption, turning even nourishment into industry.
Integration, however, is essential, and that is where the materiality of kashrut rescues the practice from historical artifact and ascetic sublimation. To return to a favorite image of mine, the six-pointed Jewish star has two triangles, one pointing upward – toward heaven, transcendence, ayin, the emptiness of the Infinite – and another pointing downward, toward the earth, Immanence, yesh, and the endless varieties of experience. The goal is not to privilege one triangle over the other – to flee the material world in favor of the spiritual one, or vice versa. It is the sacred marriage of the two. This union has many iterations: body and spirit, earth and sky, experience and theory, the Presence and the Holy One, feminine and masculine, immanence and transcendence, substance and form, the many manifest energies of the world and their ultimate, essential unity. On the plane of ayin, the entire cosmos really is all in your head – only, it isn’t your head. On the plane of yesh, the physical is as real as the “spiritual.” And both planes are true.
As long as the individual self still believes that its dispositions are the barometers of the Infinite, the idolatry of the yesh, of form, endures. Liberation cannot happen if spiritual practice is about feeling good, or mystical, or special. Yet it’s the simplest, most obvious thing in the world when the desires for those feelings are released, and the world is sufficient as it is: perfect, and up to you to make it better. Then the ego drops, the body is real (as real as anything, that is), and the real work at last can begin.