Learning as a Spiritual Practice

I teach at a University an Introduction to Liberal Education course, which is primarily a philosophy and hermeneutics course. It is a study of what kind of education is liberal, and what a liberally educated interpretive perspective is. We begin the semester with an overview of Critical Thinking and what it involves, and several sessions looking at what liberal means. Etymologically, the word “liberal” comes from the Latin, liberalis, meaning free, broadminded, and generous. When applied to the act of learning it is the freeing of the mind from error and superstition; instilling a broadmindedness towards one’s experience and the experience of others; and approaching relationships with a generosity that conceives of the purpose of human connection as a connection with an Other in such a manner as to understand, as best as is possible, their experience and the way it forms meaning to them. Critical Thinking is a component in this process in that it involves one in understanding one’s own assumptions, point of view, and context such that, being rooted in that, one can be liberated towards a “new being” arrived at by connecting with that Other.

Of course studying it requires one to employ the techniques and language of analysis to understand it. But, simply put, it is to know thyself as the prelude to “transcending the self” in creative connection whereby you learn something new, something you didn’t know a moment before. Thus, the self “expands,” becoming freer, more broadminded, more generous in the helpings of knowledge – intellectual and emotional – of self, others, and world. One grows. But, it is growth with a particular aim and direction. It is not towards the past, though understanding the past is a substantial part of it. It is towards the open future. It is not towards an identity derived from or located in yesterday, though knowledge of what and who one was before is crucial. It is towards the “new being” life can transform us towards. It is not towards certainty, but possibility, though often knowledge of certain things eliminates other competing things, as the products of science often show.

There is not anything necessarily spiritual about this, but the hermeneutic can be spiritual. As one of the originators of my particular field, Religious Studies, once observed: “[Religion assumes] the forces which govern the world [are] conscious and personal, [not] unconscious and impersonal.” (J.G. Frazer) Or, to say it another way, existence, the world, the universe is designed in such a manner that the learning of a new thing about it can yield a liberating feel within human being, and we can feel more free, conceive of the next moment in a more broadminded way, and the sentiments unleashed by generosity can move us to altruistic aims that transcend self-interest and self-preservation. That is part of my spiritual reading, my spiritual interpretation. We are fitted to the Sphere, and it to Us. And there is an agreement we are born into, a Covenant of Being as it were, that as we find and build this place as our home, we find and build the Self and Others.