"History of consciousness
describe the shifts in coordinates of orientation toward the self, nature, society, and the transcendent
and the forms of organization of knowledge itself—evident in particular assemblies of text.
The crucial issue is vital shifts in what secularists are capable of recognizing as spirituality.
This becomes the crucial issue when a taken-for-granted sense of self, nature, society, and the transcendent is lacking and seriously missed."
"Historians of consciousness direct their attention mainly to the points at which the vital shifts in sprituality are taking place.
The " inert mass," the stabilizing " ballast" of which cultural systems mostly consist, is generally beyond the scope of their concern,
except as the spheres which the vital shifts, originating elsewhere, influence—
or as the source of mechanisms of suppression or containment of these vital shifts."
