Returning to the Source, 7

Chapter six ended with a question: if so many traditions have sought to find the same thing, is it a sign of chance or that of something common to all humankind? This chapter proposes a hypothesis: not a hidden truth behind all religions, but a human possibility so simple that it could be touched, forgotten, and then found again.

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A Universal Experience

We are used to looking for the universal in ideas. This tendency may come from the fact that most people share the same curiosity, the same aspiration.

We compare doctrines, symbols, beliefs, words. We ask whether two traditions say the same thing, whether their concepts can meet, whether their visions of the world are compatible. We look for unity in what has already been formulated.

But there is another way of looking.

Before doctrines, there is a person. Before words, there is an experience. Before being a creature of reason, there is a being of senses and breath ; one who falls silent, breathes, looks, feels alive, and discovers that life is not limited to the concepts formed about it.

This is the possibility we have followed in the previous chapters.

We have seen that certain experiences are so close to us that they pass unnoticed. Silence, breath, attention, that inner presence which watches without merging with what it sees: none of this belongs to any particular era, language, or religion. These are human realities before they are objects of doctrine.

A child can know them without naming them. A walker can pass through them without thinking about it. A person sitting alone in a room can sense them, turn away, then return. They require no specialized vocabulary. They do not need to be believed in order to be lived.

This is why there is no risk in considering the hypothesis of a universal experience ; not as a universal doctrine, as a religion hidden behind all religions, as a system that would reduce every tradition to a single formula, but as a shared human possibility: that of returning to a quality of presence which the ordinary agitation of the mind covers, hides, distorts, or simply lets pass without recognizing it.

This nuance is essential.

To say that a universal experience may exist does not mean that all traditions say the same thing. They do not say the same thing. They do not share the same history, the same concepts, the same practices, the same images of the world. Some contradict one another. Others stand opposed. Many cannot be brought together within a single system without doing violence to them.

But it is not impossible that they have all encountered, each in its own way, a shared inner experience common to human beings ; a peace that does not depend entirely on circumstances, an attention that ceases to lose itself in its own commentary, a simpler perception of life, a way of acting in which a person does not constantly add their own disturbance to the disturbance of the world, and a consciousness capable of seeing thoughts, emotions, and desires without being entirely reduced to them.

This experience is not spectacular. That is probably one of the reasons it has been forgotten. We recognize more easily what overwhelms us than what simplifies us. We remember the events that tear us away from ourselves, but we barely notice the moments when, on the contrary, we return to ourselves in a truer way.

And yet, in these moments, something decisive takes place. A person walks through a forest. They hear the sound of their own steps, the wind, a bird’s song. For a few moments, the inner commentary withdraws. They possess nothing more than before. They do not suddenly understand the universe. Their condition has not changed. But they are there in a more complete way.

Another, or perhaps it is the same person, deep down, sits in silence. At first, agitation rises. Then, beneath that first agitation, a depth appears ; a peace, a serenity they did not create. They have only stopped covering it over.

Another still returns to the breath. Air comes in, air goes out, a pause settles, then the in-breath returns on its own. Nothing is added. And yet attention gathers itself, the body finds its place again, the world ceases to be merely the backdrop for thoughts.

In each of these moments, the experience is simple. It does not yet have a name. It is not yet Taoist, Buddhist, Christian, yogic, or Sufi. It is human. Only afterward will words come. And that is where another story will begin.

A lived experience does not always remain silent. One day, someone seeks to pass it on. They speak to someone close, to a child, to a disciple, to a companion on the way. They use the words available to them, the images of their people, the symbols of their culture. They speak of breath, of light, of a path, of a source, of peace, of emptiness, of a Kingdom, of presence, or of truth.

At first, these words may be no more than pointers. They do not yet claim to become a system. They simply try to lead someone toward what has been seen, felt, recognized.

But as soon as the experience is spoken, it enters memory. It can be repeated, memorized, commented on, protected, misunderstood. It can become a teaching, then a school, then a tradition, and finally, a doctrine.

This movement is not a fault. Without it, nothing would be passed on. If no one spoke, every human being would have to start over alone, as though no one before them had ever seen anything. Words are necessary. Stories are necessary. Symbols are necessary. They allow an experience to cross through generations. But they also carry a danger.

Through the constant passing on of words, one can forget what they once pointed to. Through preserving the map, one can lose the taste for the landscape. This is why the visible history of religions and philosophies is not enough. It tells the story of texts, institutions, schools, debates, ruptures, and lineages. It is indispensable, but it does not exhaust the subject.

We know the history of doctrines. It is time we turned our attention to the history of the experiences that made them possible.

This first part has therefore not sought to define spirituality. It has only tried to return to what comes before definitions. It has looked at people in silence, in breath, in attention, in that consciousness capable of seeing what passes through it without being entirely reduced to it.

What has been found is not proof. It is a direction ; a possibility simple enough to be forgotten, deep enough to have crossed centuries, human enough to appear wherever a human being stops scattering themselves, even for a moment, and returns to life as it gives itself.

The second part can now begin. It will not first ask which doctrine is true, or which religion holds the best map. It will ask another question: how does a silent experience become a word, then a transmission, then a tradition?

In other words: how does what we call spirituality come into being?

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