Toward the Spiritualization of Politics

This essay offers a theoretical explanation of and a rational framework for the connection between politics and spirituality and some of the consequent implications of that connection for political life and development. It rests on the idea that empirical investigation, logical reason, and contemplative intuition are connected. They are only different epistemological approaches to the same reality, which is multidimensional but one. The unity of reality has been recognized with different nuances by various spiritual traditions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism. In the Abrahamic religions, God, the Absolute One, is the sole creator, giver of life, and sustainer of the universe—that is, the divine reality that upholds and supports all observable reality. But this essential distinction between a transcendent God and creatures does not necessarily exclude the unity of reality, since God permeates all material existence. God is “all in all,” says the Apostle Paul.1 Philosophers from Plotinus to Wittgenstein and mystics over the centuries have also accepted this unity of reality, which has never been denied by modern science.2

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