A few years ago, my friend Sarah—a self-described atheist and data scientist—returned from a solo hiking trip transformed. She struggled to articulate what happened during a sunrise on a mountain peak: a sense of connection to something vast and eternal, a feeling of profound peace that lasted for weeks afterward. Yet, every time she used words like “transcendent” or “spiritual,” she would catch herself and add, “Well, not spiritual exactly, since I don’t believe in God.”
This awkward dance around language occurs more often than you might think. We’ve somehow decided that “spiritual” experiences belong exclusively to religious people, leaving millions of others—atheists, agnostics, and the religiously unaffiliated—without adequate words for some of life’s most meaningful moments.
It’s time to reclaim spirituality from its gatekeepers, both religious and secular.
The Great Spiritual Divide
Walk into any bookstore, and you’ll find the “Spirituality” section sandwiched between “Religion” and “Self-Help,” with titles that seem to reinforce the idea that spiritual seeking requires supernatural beliefs. This wasn’t always the case. Some of history’s most celebrated thinkers used spiritual language without religious jargon or beliefs.
Carl Sagan, the astronomer who gave us Cosmos, wrote that “science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.” Albert Einstein spoke of the “cosmic religious feeling” that arises from contemplating the universe’s mysteries. Neither man was conventionally religious, yet both found profound meaning in what they experienced as spiritual dimensions of existence.
In the famous Munk Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Tony Blair in 2010, Hitchens acknowledged that, although he was a materialist, human beings experience the numinous, transcendent, and even ecstatic through such things as music, love, art, and deep feeling. He argued that these experiences have genuine value but should be distinguished from superstition and claims about the supernatural.
Paraphrased from Christopher Hitchens, responding to an audience question during the Munk Debate with Tony Blair, Be it resolved, religion is a force for good in the world, Toronto, November 26, 2010.
Today, philosopher Sam Harris argues that we need to rescue spirituality from religion entirely. “Spirituality must be distinguished from religion—because people of every faith, and of none, have had the same sorts of spiritual experiences,” he writes. The difference lies not in the experience itself, but in how we interpret it.
Sam Harris, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion (Simon & Schuster, 2014), Chapter One.
So, what exactly do we mean when we say “spiritual”?
Beyond Belief: What Spirituality Actually Feels Like
Rather than defining spirituality by what people believe, what if we focused on what they experience? When we strip away the theological baggage, spiritual experiences share common qualities:
They involve a connection to something larger than ourselves—whether that’s nature, humanity, the cosmos, or simply a profound sense of interconnectedness. They often evoke feelings of awe, wonder, or transcendence that shift our perspective beyond everyday concerns. These experiences can bring deep peace, clarity, or insight that feels meaningful and lasting.
Consider the last time you were genuinely moved by a piece of music, stood in awe before a natural landscape, or experienced a sense of flow during creative work. These moments share qualities that people throughout history have identified as spiritual, regardless of their religious beliefs.
My friend David, a committed materialist who teaches philosophy, describes his morning meditation practice as “spiritual discipline.” When I asked him about the apparent contradiction, he shrugged. “I’m cultivating awareness, compassion, and wisdom. I’m working on integrating different parts of my experience. If that’s not spiritual work, what is?”
The Secular Spiritual Underground
Secular forms of spirituality already appear within recovery groups, mindfulness communities, and personal development circles. People are discovering meaning, transformation, and transcendence through practices that do not necessitate belief in the supernatural.
In addiction recovery, for example, many individuals struggle with the “higher power” terminology used in traditional twelve-step programs. However, secular recovery groups have found ways to access similar transformative experiences through connections with nature, commitment to personal values, or simply the power of community.
Kevin Griffin offers a nontheistic interpretation of spiritual practice, treating mindfulness, wisdom, love, and community as sources of strength that do not depend upon belief in a supernatural God.
Griffin also warns that meditation itself can become “another kind of high” when we become attached to experiences of peace, rapture, or connectedness—or use meditation to avoid unresolved problems. At the same time, he argues that meditation can sustain and deepen recovery by cultivating clarity, calm, mindfulness, and compassion, provided it remains connected to honest self-examination, relationships, and the practical work of recovery.
The Dark Side: When Good Intentions Go Wrong
So, here’s where things get interesting—and complicated. You can experience all the issues associated with traditional “spiritual bypassing” without having any religious beliefs at all.
Psychologist John Welwood coined the term “spiritual bypassing” to describe how individuals use spiritual concepts to avoid confronting emotional pain or psychological wounds. Consider the person who insists they’ve “transcended” anger while clearly suppressing it, or someone who uses meditation to escape difficult feelings rather than process them.
The secular version appears different but follows the same pattern. There’s the intellectual who overanalyzes every emotion instead of actually feeling it (my own experience of secular bypassing). The activist who channels personal rage into a cause while never addressing its sources in their own life. The mindfulness enthusiast who uses meditation to numb out rather than to tune in.
This parallel suggests something important: whatever human needs spirituality addresses—for meaning, transcendence, connection, or integration—these needs exist whether or not someone has religious beliefs. The potential for both authentic growth and spiritual bypassing arises regardless of your theology.
A Bigger Tent
Expanding our definition of spirituality does not diminish its power or importance. Instead, it acknowledges that the experiences prompting spiritual seeking—such as the need for meaning, connection, transcendence, and integration—are broader than any single tradition or belief system.
This is important for practical reasons. In healthcare settings, recognizing that patients may have spiritual needs that are not religious opens up new possibilities for healing and support. In education, understanding that wonder and awe are natural human experiences can shape how we teach subjects ranging from science to ethics.
It also has implications for social cohesion. In an increasingly polarized world, finding common ground in shared human experiences—the capacity for transcendence, the need for meaning, and the power of connection—may be more crucial than ever.
The Science of Spiritual Experience
Researchers are studying the biological processes associated with experiences often described as spiritual. Some studies associate meditation, awe, and self-transcendent experiences with measurable differences in attention, emotion, behavior, and brain activity. The findings vary by practice, population, and method, and they do not justify every popular claim made in their name.
This does not diminish the significance of spiritual experiences; rather, it gives us additional ways to study them. The fact that transcendent states have neurological correlates does not make them any less real or meaningful, just as understanding the brain’s basis for love does not diminish love’s profundity.
In fact, science suggests that spiritual experiences serve important functions in human development and well-being, regardless of how some may interpret them theologically.
Making Room at the Table
So where does this leave us? Perhaps it’s time to view spirituality less as a category of belief and more as a dimension of human experience—one that may be accessible to anyone willing to engage with questions of meaning, connection, and transcendence.
This perspective doesn’t require abandoning religious frameworks for those who find them meaningful. Instead, it creates space for millions of people who have profound, transformative experiences but lack the language to articulate them.
My friend Sarah never became religious after her mountain experience. However, she stopped apologizing for using spiritual language to describe what happened to her. She joined a secular meditation group, began volunteering for environmental causes, and became more intentional about cultivating the sense of connection and meaning she had discovered.
Was this spiritual growth? I believe so. And I think it’s time we all became comfortable with that possibility.
The human capacity for transcendence, meaning-making, and profound connection does not depend on a specific set of beliefs, religious or secular, to be real and transformative. Perhaps the question isn’t who gets to be spiritual, but rather: what happens when we make room for everyone who is genuinely seeking?