Dan Chițoiu

Abstract

The spiritual experience is, somehow, closer to what is proper to the contemporary
scientific experiment: both are ways of tryout. A follower of such path needs to meet the
requirements comparable with those of scientific experiment (in spirituality we can name it
“experience”): rules and criteria of verification. Yet the result of this spiritual quest is on
another level, because it grants access to a reality beyond our common-sense perception. To
express the contents of this experience is extremely difficult, and the normal usage of words
is inadequate. And, with any generation in history, expressing the specificity of this
experience becomes always a question of novelty. This is due to a different cultural and social
background, of a different “field of experience”. I consider that nowadays we can better
understand the rigor of a spiritual path as well as its concreteness (new scientific researches
prove it), tracking the significance of spiritual practice for a more complex understanding of
reality. But at the same time, new spiritual experiences, made in the actual contexts, can offer
new solutions and new answers to the contemporary social and cultural challenges.
Spirituality, understood as a practice following a particular religious tradition and aiming
personal and community’s betterment, has the ability to provide empathy for the other,
because somebody having a spiritual practice can recognize a similar need of any other
human. “To reconcile” can have many meanings, from reconciling individuals to reconciling
neighborhoods, communities, entire countries, to which the reconciliation with self gathers
(since we often have contradictory elements in our formal instruction or in our thinking).
AnnalsUnibuc-2017-66-04Chițoiu