I don’t think it’s over your head I just think it’s academic literary fluff from Eliade, but at its core it breaks down that developing consciousness meant that we also developed methods to conceptualize something that was more real than reality itself. For example, numbers do not “exist” in reality, but represent reality more accurately than it represents itself most of the time. That’s why they’re so useful.
There are truths that are abstracted out of reality, that is a commonplace in human existence - sacred, spiritual, divine, esoteric, whatever you want to call it, there is an innate connection between humankind and something that is beyond humankind (a sort of meta-reality) and that relationship has aided our development since the dawn of consciousness. Connecting that to any one religion would be a fools errand but it does describe how our very being is tied to something more than just the damned physical world, more than just animalistic instinct. It’s all abstraction.
That is my interpretation anyway.
>So, you’re defining “spiritual” as “conscious.”
Good callout, I wasn’t very specific. I think conscious is the baseline reality, it makes being spiritual a possibility. A prerequisite. Being spiritual would be the willingness to use that consciousness to abstract specifically on the human condition, and voluntarily conclude that we ourselves have a part to play in something that is more real than the reality in front of us.
I can’t speak for the original poster, but I am still developing what I consider to be my spiritual knowledge, and I don’t foresee myself learning all there is to be known any time soon. Still young in that regard.
Edit for your edit on transcending evolutionary necessity: No sources, but let’s say even if, for example, the theory that consciousness emerged in early hominids as a side effect of a brain that rapidly grew to visually detect snakes[1], even in that scenario consciousness is still the side effect. And that means that a prerequisite to spiritual abstraction would be just an evolutionary side effect.
We still do not understand the evolutionary emergence of consciousness and why it appears to be so rare, so I’m not going to act like I have the answers there. But billions of years passed on earth before a human first questioned their place in the universe, and to me that is self-evidence of a lack of evolutionarily necessity. I understand if that conclusion is not solid enough for most though.
