Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution via natural selection inspired countless more progressivist and spiritual versions of evolution to arise, ‘substitute-religions’ (Rose, 1986, pp. 1–4), which tried to find new sources of meaning, myth, ethics and purpose in an evolutionary universe (Bowler, 2003, pp. 237; Midgley, 1985, pp. 15–19).
These science-religions appealed to the authority of evolution as previous religions had appealed to the authority of God.
Evolutionary spirituality is a tradition within the broader culture of New Age spirituality, which asserts that human evolution is not finished and can be guided towards the creation of higher beings through such techniques as meditation, psychedelics and eugenics or genetic modification (Ferguson, 1981, pp. 157–162; Herrick, 2003, pp. 118–148; Huston, 2007; Hubbard, 2015).
Evolutionary spirituality has historical roots in eighteenth-century ideas of the improvement and possible perfectibility of humans. William Godwin and the Marquis de Condorcet predicted science could advance so far that humans would become immortal, blissful beings (Chonaill, 2007). In the 19th century, German idealists like Fichte, Schelling and Hegel thought that God or Spirit evolved in a dynamic process throughout human history, manifesting in higher forms in particular individuals and cultures (Murphy, 2013). This idea was taken up by transcendentalists in other countries.
These variants of evolutionary spirituality share two ideas. First, to replace Christianity and other traditional religions and become the global religion of the future.
Second, human evolution as an ongoing process is not automatic, like Darwin’s evolution, but requires individuals to accept guidance by spiritual guides to higher and better forms of being, AKA Transhumanism.
HG Wells and Julian Huxley, two early transhumanists, promoted mind-altering drugs to guide human evolution towards the creation of superbeings. Abraham Maslow also believed humans could evolve through ‘peak experiences’, attained by psychedelics or other means.
Unlike Darwin’s Evolution which branches into countless species, believers in evolutionary spirituality are more likely to embrace Plato’s idea of the ‘great chain of being’ in which there is a natural-to-spiritual hierarchy from plants to animals to humans to angels and finally to God. Through spiritual practice, we can ascend the evolutionary escalator, realize new ‘potentialities’, and ultimately become god-like.
The attainment of a ‘higher state of consciousness’ – often achieved through the use of psychedelics – can mark not just a stage of evolution but even the emergence of a whole new species. (Singleton, 2007). Timothy Leary suggested LSD was producing a ‘new race of mutants’. (The Harvard Crimson, 1966)..
In biblical terms, demon-possessed and controlled humans. Note, the decriminalization and legalization of cannabis in the general public, which has increased its use, also increases the associated side effect of psychosis, which must be considered as a sign of spirit possession.
There are some potential ethical issues with evolutionary spirituality. To say the least.
1. Spiritual narcissism
Followers of evolutionary spirituality believe some humans are more evolved. (Maslow, 1971, p. 45). This often leads to the idea of an evolutionary elite. Friedrich Nietzsche (who has exerted a huge influence on the tradition) and apostles of evolutionary spirituality often believe only a few humans are evolving to a higher stage – especially themselves – while others are failing to evolve – not because they hold certain beliefs or follow a particular lifestyle, like Christians or Muslims, but because they are essentially superior, the next step in evolution, the first buds of homo deus. In Richard Bucke’s case, he thinks he is as superior to homo sapiens as humans are to dogs.
Evolutionary spirituality overlaps with class privilege. Pre-war spiritual movements like the Theosophical Society, the Golden Dawn or the Society for Psychical Research tended to attract upper and middle-class affluent, educated followers (Urban, 1997), readily inclined to see themselves as more evolved than the urban proletariat.
When the Silicon Valley business elite take psychedelics to expand their consciousness within the frame of evolutionary spirituality, it can be easy to see oneself as a highly-evolved superbeing…what Sean Parker (the investor and psychedelic philanthropist) calls ‘immortal overlords’ (Perrigo, 2017).
Christian Angermayer, the world’s leading investor in psychedelics, lives in a London penthouse apartment filled with statues of gods, emperors and immortal heroes, and aspires to divinity as well.
Taking psychedelics at luxury retreats costing thousands of dollars, affluent psychonauts could be inclined to believe that, in the words of psychedelic author James Oroc: “We are the sharpened spearhead of humanity, We are the 5% who have to help humanity move into its next phase, the recognition of our own divine origins.” (Oroc, 2018, p. 125)
2. Contempt for the less-evolved or ‘unfit’ masses
This sense of evolutionary superiority is often accompanied by a tendency to look down on the masses as not fully human. Angermayer thinks there could be a bifurcation into two species—the gods and the left-behind (The Rubin Report, 2021).
Again, this habit of thinking can be traced back to Friedrich Nietzsche.
To me, the masses seem to be worth…working implements of the great. For the rest, let the devil and statistics carry them off! (Nietzsche, 1997, p. 113).
This Nietzschean contempt for the degenerate masses became fashionable among Modernist spiritual seekers like DH Lawrence (Lady Chatterley’s Lover) who believed in a hierarchy of natural aristocrats like him at the peak, and the ignorant masses below. Aldous and Julian Huxley both also believed in a natural hierarchy, including the Huxleys and other talented families.
About 99.5% of the entire population of the planet are as stupid and philistine (tho’ in different ways) as the great masses of the English. The important thing, it seems to me, is …to try to see that the 0.5% survives,…and, if possible, dominates the rest (Huxley, 1994, p. xx).
Spiritual movements of the late-19th and early-20th century often shared this view of a spiritual-biological hierarchy in nature, with an evolved elite and the slavish masses far below.
In some variants of evolutionary spirituality the bell-curve of self-actualization is racial…particularly the Aryan race. German Theosophists like Rudolf Steiner and Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels pronounced the German race the most spiritually-evolved, while other races were lower on the evolutionary scale. Steiner wrote:
The white race is the future, the race that is spiritually creative (Steiner, 1993, p. 67).
3. Social Darwinism and Malthusianism
This sense of a sharp divide between the evolved elite and degenerate masses can lead to Social Darwinian and Malthusian attitudes: there are too many humans, and there are too many unfit humans. Let nature do its work to select the fittest while letting the unfit die off.
This is one way that evolutionary spirituality can be quite different to older religions like Christianity, where those at the bottom of society are seen as having a place in the cosmic scheme of things, and part of serving God involves trying to help the poorest, weakest or least fortunate.
This new attitude can be traced back to the Reverend Thomas Malthus, a founding theologian of evolutionary spirituality, whose Essay on the Principle of Human Population in 1798 suggested that nature (created by a Supreme Being) selects the vigorous specimens while getting rid of the listless, malformed and wasteful, thereby creating progressively better beings. His Essay was a defining influence on Darwin, and on champions of evolutionary spirituality like the sociologist Herbert Spencer.
Spencer wrote, “The whole effort of nature is to get rid of [the unfit], to clear the world of them, to make room for better” (Spencer, 1892, p. 205). He suggested that “a finer type of man than has ever hitherto existed” would naturally evolve, as long as governments do not impede natural selection by excessive support for the poor. His evolutionary spirituality was popular with Gilded Age oligarchs like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller (Hofstadter, 1944).
HG Wells and Julian Huxley, two early prophets of transhumanism were also members of the Malthusian League (Bashford, 2014, p. 1) who believed that ‘overcrowding of the planet’ is “the fundamental evil out of which all the others … arose” (Wells, 1923, p. 1060). They thought over-population leads to demagogic politics, war, pandemics and environmental collapse.
Another member of the Malthusian League was Annie Besant, the Victorian radical who converted to Theosophy. Besant wrote that when she walked through the slums of Britain, she felt “that for those men and women, as they were, degraded, brutal, drunken, profligate … the best mercy that God could show them would be an earthquake that would swallow the whole great city” (Besant, 2020, p. 31).
As to ‘spiritual eugenics’, the risk of coercive 1920s-style eugenic programs seems low today. But we do see transhumanists and biotech entrepreneurs (including some prominent investors in psychedelics like Peter Thiel and Christian Angermayer) arguing for individuals’ right to alter their genes as well as their consciousness.
This ‘liberal eugenics’ raises a different ethical dilemma – not the risk of the violent imposition of genetic technologies onto the masses, but the risk of new genetic technologies being only available to the wealthy. Already, we are seeing an underground market for genetic enhancement technologies like embryo selection by polygenic risk scores, which are only available to the wealthy and well-connected (Black, 2022).
We’re seeing the rise of ‘genetic tourism’ like ‘psychedelic tourism’—the rich go to Costa Rica for ayahuasca retreats, and Cyprus for stem-cell injections. The fact that genetic enhancement technologies are largely confined to the wealthy has led some to express concern that humanity could bifurcate into two species—GenRich (the genetically enriched) and Naturals (Silver, 1997). Certainly health, education and income inequalities could get a lot worse.
One should include Eugenics, described by its leading prophet, Francis Galton, as the first post-Darwinian evolutionary religion (Galton, 1883, p. 304) and currently called by many of its apostles the ‘religion of the future’.
Kingdom Come 