Why a new spirituality is on the way

‘In simple and stark terms, consciousness is the 21st-century starting point for a spiritual view of reality.’ Dr George C Adams Jr

Between about 800 BCE and the first century CE, a wave of new religious concepts swept the world.

It was a phenomenal period that saw the arrival of Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism — a range of mystics, theologians and philosophers all had similar ideas about humanity.

The German-Swiss existential philosopher and psychiatrist Karl Jaspers named this period the Axial Age because it seemed that humanity was pivoting on an axis, in a major shift of religious consciousness away from that of previous millennia, to produce the great world religions, the monotheisms of the West and the non-dualisms of the East.

Islam did not appear until the seventh century CE, but its Abrahamic origins link it to Axial Age spirituality.

But now, after more than 2,000 years, the relevance of these Axial Age systems is finally fading, and we are entering a transition to Post-Axial religion, says George C Adams Jr., a teacher of religious studies and philosophy, in Thinking about Religion in the 21st Century: A new guide for the perplexed (Iff Books, July 2024). This book discusses what this new religion might be like, although it could take…