50 Spirituality Studies 9-1 Spring 2023 5 Conclusion Eliade was an “old type” scholar. He mastered several languages, read both professional and beautiful literature all his life, wrote articles, reflections, books and oriented himself not only in history or philosophy but also in exact sciences, he was fascinated by biology. During his adulthood, he directed all his attention to the study of manifestations of the sacred. However, his research was not unique at that time. Several scholars were also devoted to the topic of spirituality, religion, mysticism, mythology, sacred rituals, or archetypes, and Eliade was very close to many of them in terms of methodology and ideas. For example, thanks to his stays abroad, in the 1950s he finally got to know C. G. Jung, with whom he worked together on lectures at the Eranos Club. Here he met many scientists with whom he got along intellectually (Henri Corbin, Karl Kerényi, Alfons Rosenberg, Joseph Campbell, Gilbert Durand, and others). Eliade saw Jung as the spiritual leader of these events and respected him both as a friend and as a scientist. Their work shows several points in common, the most important of which are the theory of archetypes and the integration of opposites. Eliade’s ideas are not based on Jung’s work; the parallels noticeable in their works such as synthesis and generalization, leaning towards spirituality and mysticism or a sympathetic view of religion are natural and not at all unusual in the context of the given time. However, both created a work that is special in a way. It was important for Eliade that, with the help of education and knowledge about the spiritual ideas of people throughout history and the world, he could pass to people a certain, as he believed, universal understanding that goes beyond human’s everyday life and common perception of temporal events, so that they could improve their experience of reality. He pointed out the importance of the presence of religion, spirituality, and the sacred in a person’s life and taught the necessity of returning to such a perception. He highlighted religious studies as a science that directly brings a person closer to spiritual insight, but he also valued literature, especially myths, which for him represented an imaginary bridge between philosophy and religion due to their archetypal nature (Horyna and Pavlincová 1999, 227). The ideas of Mircea Eliade are in a certain sense still relevant also in the modern world and in the context of spiritual life, as they can be well understood. Even in current time, which is very influenced by the internet, social networks, and progressive breakthroughs, we can observe the human need for spirituality. If we acknowledge how and why our environment shapes our philosophy, a specific way of a spiritual view of the world of contemporary man can be revealed to us. The form of spirituality without the necessary religious content is inherently very open; it is usually not based on strict dogmas and rules, rather it is affected by the environment and has an effect on this environment. For example, nowadays, no one doubts that meditation (with its spiritual overlap) is also a successful technique by which we can enrich our lives and improve our mental well-being. Various attempts have been made to prove this. As part of their corporate policy, corporations also offer meditation as part of a recovery package. Meditation has thus become something completely normal, meaningful, and necessary for mental health in our society. This can be confirmed, for example, by the well-known critic of religion, philosopher, and neuroscientist Samuel Harris. According to him, meditation is a connection between science and spirituality, because even though we do not learn anything about the origins of the universe from the insights that meditation allows us. It confirms, for example, that our conventional feeling of “I” is an illusion, positive emotions such as compassion and patience and the way of thinking, that all can be learned, and it directly affects the quality of our experience of the world (Harris 2017). Likewise, the concept of sati – “sharpness” has been successfully adopted by today’s psychology, based on the concept of mindfulness psychotherapy. Thus, the ancient philosophy of freeing the mind from suffering is commonly practiced in today’s space-time. These concepts, which have their justification even in the modern science-induce world, help to imply spirituality in the everyday life of today’s man. But Eliade called for something more. He invited humankind to our natural desire to be a part of the environment and masters of our lives. He gave us instructions on how to understand ourselves again. And this, according to Eliade, can only be done if we fully accept our spiritual, sacred essence. From this comes our ability to understand, but also to perceive time in a different way and to use our imagination, which can bring us back to living our authenticity.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MzgxMzI=