Spirituality in Politics

This is my first article on Medium, so I will use the opportunity to introduce myself. To elaborate on my profile, I am a singer/songwriter, inspired by spirituality and religion, psychology (especially Jungian), mythology, and the failings and limitations of modern (materialist) science. I am interested in developing a spiritual science, which would imply a reunification of science and religion, contrary to the belief of many scientists that they are irreconcilable. This is a direction in which many scientists are already moving, having noticed that the materialist perspective is incapable of explaining the world.

I believe that such a worldview would make the world a better place, so am working on how to apply it to politics. My purpose in writing therefore is to make contact with others who think in similar ways, in the hope that at some point a movement may be initiated to implement such ideas.

I have two websites: grahampemberton.com which deals mainly with my music, and spiritualityinpolitics.com where I focus on my ideas. This already contains material related to this article, which I intend to reproduce here in future articles. I also have a youtube channel grahampemberton1 where you can listen to many of my songs.

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What follows is material from spiritualityinpolitics.com . If you wish to find out more about me, please visit that site.

Put as simply as possible, my message is that modern society has gone astray, having lost contact with the spiritual wisdom of earlier societies. The beginning of this problem can be traced to the rise of the (so-called) Enlightenment, modern physicalist science, and the accompanying march towards atheism, secularism, and humanism. In the wake of this, religion has become a private matter for the individual citizen, and is thought to have no place in politics.

In the past cultures were built on the idea of a relationship with higher powers. Ancient texts which exemplify this are the Bhagavad Gita in Hinduism, the Tao Te Ching in Taoism, the Hermetic and Gnostic traditions, Jewish Kabbalism and so on. Before European interference, there were strong spiritual traditions going back a long way among Native Americans, Australian Aborigines, and many other tribal cultures around the world.

I suggest that the solution to society’s problems, although in practice it might be difficult to achieve, can be found in a reconnection with these ancient wisdom traditions, without sacrificing the genuine advances of modern science. It is not intended to be a regressive looking backwards, rather a progressive looking forward to a future where science and spirituality can be reconciled, and reunified.

Many people are openly hostile to religion; others are heavily critical, sometimes for good reasons. Rather than reject religion, however, it is better to reinvent it by retaining its original spiritual truths whilst accepting valid criticisms, at the same time exposing the flaws in atheistic, physicalist, and humanistic thinking.

graham.pemberton@aol.co.uk