A Global Spiritual Awakening

One of the last century’s most respected existentialist philosophers, Karl Jaspers, once put forward the idea of an "axial age" in world history. He described it as a period of simultaneous spiritual break-throughs at widely separated points on the planet that together have transformed human existence in the world forever. Jaspers’ captivating idea provided the substance of one of his most readable and enthralling books, in English translation The Origin and Goal of History.

Recently, I took what must have been my sixth or seventh look at Jaspers' idea and discussion of it. And once again, I was overcome with appreciation for the breadth and depth of this philosopher's deep spiritual insights, of a sort difficult to come by in the reading of modern philosophy. This time, though, my appreciation assumed a slightly different form. If I may beat up the English language just a bit, Jaspers got it "righter" than even he was aware at the time he wrote. In specific, he defined the temporal parameters of the axial age in terms of a couple of centuries, when he could have worked within a framework of mere decades.

The decades I have in mind are roughly those between 590 and 530, B.C.E. Making allowances for the approximations and educated guesses ingredient in all historical reconstruction, the records suggest that across those years, the following spiritual leaders attained the height of their powers and influence: Zoroaster in Persia, Lao Tzu and Confucius in China, the Buddha in India, and the Old Testament prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Second Isaiah, exiled in Babylonia. And to make Jaspers’ notion of an axial age even more interesting, while these men were making their monumental contributions in these diverse regions on the globe, a new philosophical spirit was emerging in Southern Italy (e.g., in Xenophanes and Pythagoras) and Asia Minor (in Anaximander), sweeping away the worst in ancient Greek polytheism and replacing it with ideas of a God truly worthy of human worship.

Astonished by the coincidences among these massive spiritual break-throughs in such a brief span of historical time, Jaspers invited his readers to dwell with him on the mystery of such an overwhelming release of mental and spiritual energy into human consciousness without succumbing to the temptation to reduce it to some pretentiously articulated "explanation." For Jaspers, the break-throughs are in the final analysis inexplicable. But their import for subsequent generations is not.

One remarkable element in the teaching of all the sages and philosophers of this remarkable age was the ease with which each subjected "established" religious traditions to scrutiny and assessment on logical and moral grounds. Anything that would not yield to logical scrutiny --- for example, Hindu Brahmins' claims that only they had the capacity fully to understand the divine-human relationship --- these leaders quickly relegated to the status of mythology and superstition.

And anything that would not yield to examination and criticism on moral grounds, these same leaders just as quickly relegated to a contemptible status beneath human repect and loyalty. For example, practices designed to appease the spirits of departed and yet overly-involved ancestors failed to hold up under moral criticism, as did devotion to gods and goddesses whose character failed to reach the level of even mediocre human beings. Hebrew tribalism wilted under its exiled prophets' emerging universalist outlook, and not much later, Sophia --- "wisdom" personified --- began to take up her own rightful place in the affairs of all humankind.

Two things about this axial period in human history especially interested Karl Jaspers as a philosopher. The first was the liberation of the human spirit from bondage to religious authorities who demand unquestioning loyalty and demean all but themselves as bearers of the same divine image and "spark." The second was the discovery of rational thought as a means of approaching and giving expression to ultimate, sacred realities. For Jaspers, ever the existentialist, the realization of freedom and the exercise of the capacity for thought are what make human beings truly human. Thus, for him, the time of the axial age is quintessentially the time in which the human race began to attain its distinctiveness as a human race, as homo sapiens.

Jaspers' idea of a turning point in human history that is fundamentally spiritual in nature is especially relevant to the struggle that believers all over the world are facing these days, with fellow believers who are absolutely certain that nothing is really worth noting in the spiritual sphere until, for some, Jesus, and for others, Muhammed, made their appearance in human history. Placed alongside a grander sweep view of humankind's spiritual history, certitude of this sort ought to be called to account for just what it is, silly. Unfortunately, it is also dangerously silly.