Today it is not popular to speak of dividing lines, still less of schisms. We live in a complex and highly interrelated and interdependent social reality. Many sectors and functions of society are increasingly globalized – production, consumption, marketing, economy, communication, culture, science and politics. The world has become one, and a very small one indeed. Accordingly, there seems to be every reason for stressing everything we have in common and can agree upon in this world - our mutual interests and goals as human beings. And so the time spirit is in favour of uniting and unity. This is the general, popular feeling of many people.

But although globalization and universalism is no doubt a true and urgent theme of our time, it can also be misunderstood and misused if it is propelled forward by wrong ideas and intentions. The development towards a global orientation is by no means unambiguous or simple. Take for instance the field of religion in which disagreements have been so notoriously destructive. Can differences of belief structures be equalized or harmonized in a way that perhaps leads to a common religious understanding and practice, a kind of One World Religion? Many people who regard themselves to be progressive and at the cutting edge of spiritual orientation, advocate this development, and some of them also put forward suggestions as to what such a religion should comprise. They argue that humanity has historically paid a heavy prize for today’s more widespread understanding of the relativity of religious beliefs and their many resemblances. But if there is really no absolute truths, and we can all agree that there is also no real reality except this physical world of ours, why not construct an enlightened, humane, common religion for all men, using the most widely acceptable elements from all the religious traditions, perhaps in the form of an universal spiritual technology, stripping away dogmas and rituals? Let’s drop any culture centrism, traditionalism and bigotry and unite spiritually! And let’s go about this in a “scientific” way.

That sounds like an ideal and obvious agenda to most modern men, even many, who otherwise adhere to a denominational faith, but feel the need to adjust their religion more to the present personal and societal reality. No doubt there is an anthropocentric tendency in the trendsetting stratums of global culture. Institutions have to fit people and not the other way around. We look for up-to-date technologies and practical solutions to our problems in the hectic 21^st century. But perhaps we should investigate the conditions and implications of this religious renewal critically before adopting it out of sheer enthusiasm for man’s spiritual unity. What is the background, true or false, for any such endeavour? The purpose of this essay is to discriminate and outline some of the schisms of contemporary spirituality – not as differences of opinion, but as differences of reality. Of course, this can only be done in a brief sketch, but nevertheless we find it pertinent, since confusion and obscurity dominate this field completely, especially as some of the most influential players deliberately blur the real connections. We wish to draw up a few important dividing lines and list the dividing points, so that we should not be fooled or fool ourselves in spiritual matters. The only way this is possible, is on the basis of a conceptualized and coherent apprehension of spiritual reality, that is, a spiritual science like anthroposophy. Because, you see, the modern impulse towards quasi-religious unification is at the same time a legitimate and necessary attempt to base spirituality on the principles of knowledge and experience. Unfortunately this “scientification” is achieved only through a natural scientific reductionism, cutting down spirituality to technology in the field of human behavior and health, as we shall see below. This means that the traditional claim of religions to a broader cosmological understanding (a world view) is totally abandoned, which leads directly to the prevailing pragmatic relativization of spiritual values and ideas. This, however, is not the case with anthroposophy, which is inherently scientific in its ontological and epistemological background and hence completely realistic in a fashion that is independent of and not reducible to natural science. Therefore we will use anthroposophy as the guiding and discriminative expertise in our present essay, which in this respect can also be understood as an enumeration of some of the fundamental principles of anthroposophy in a critical dispute with modern unitism. We will try to accomplish this without any thorough elaboration of anthroposophic ideas and just assume that they are known to the reader in advance. If not, we hope the reader will take inspiration from this essay to study anthroposophy. 

It is rather evident that the urge to modernize religion is intimately linked with the driving factors of global development, which are market economy and technological innovation. These two sectors of society have in cooperation achieved a dominant position based on a materialistic and scientific world view. All other sectors – production, consumption, communication, politics and culture – have been subordinated this powerful “locomotive”, and the whole train of intertwined development within all sectors seems to have produced a common type of human behavior and identity stronger than any other stamp of personality – the individualistic (over)consumer of mass produced goods. It is no cause for surprise then, that even such traditional and historical human expressions as religion and the philosophy of life are gradually subjected to the same consumerism, when people start to fancy their own private belief and spiritual wishes in an open religious market, where everybody can piece together his religion by means of the offers from different spiritual suppliers. This situation, more than anything else, provides the actual background for a development towards standardization of religion, not any kind of idealistic educational work by progressive reformers. Today, religion in the more prosperous societies widely has to appeal to consumer demands and expectations and fit their self-image, and we experience in the field of religion many of the same paradoxical effects as elsewhere in the market economy. The interplay between consumer preferences, efficient marketing strategies and techniques, economic considerations and popularity ratings tends to standardize products within a superficial variance, making the individual choice as trivial and illusive as the product. At any given price level you can buy approximately the same type of car in a huge number of slightly differing designs as can and will many others. Take for instance the New Age market with all its apparent diversity and individualism, and ask yourself what is really the big difference of any smart tailored religious outfit here? There is a big and real difference between traditional Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity, but the New Age versions of these religions can not be told apart. Why is that? Perhaps there is some original and authentic element in traditional religion, which is completely missing in the postmodern religious construct! You have to wonder, what is the cause of this unmistakable sameness amidst all the variety? Of course there is also uniformity in the traditional religions, but this is outer uniformity, and most often you find an inner living individual richness. As a rule, the opposite is the case within New Age. Here the uniformity is felt inwardly in people as a complete dullness. Why?