Interesting… seems Google’s recommendation algos are tracking me…
Reading it, I believe they are conflating religion and spirituality.
What they are saying would be clearer if the term Religious Motivation was changed to Spiritual Motivation. They actually report in their findings that extrinsic-social religiosity was “unrelated to these patters.” While the two questions they use as examples are more spiritual questions, not necessarily religious “I have often had a strong sense of God’s presence” (intrinsic religiosity) and “Prayer is for peace and happiness” (extrinsic-personal religiosity)
There has been similar research with similar findings about practices that are not connected to any Religion, but have their basis in spiritual practices (like meditation). Or even LSD.
I agree with @raybennett we have to be able to discern between the esoteric and exoteric features of religious belief. What the practices are pointing to rather than what the practices say they’re pointing to.
I thought this study was specifically looking at Religious practice leading to Integral levels, with due to population of subjects (not necessarily by design) primarily Christian. Most religions through “practice” have the goal of delivering a spiritual experience. Perhaps the conflating is spiritual with integral experience? Or perhaps we are seeing new vernaculars used to describe well known experiences (aka levels)?
I don’t think this study had anything to do with Integral. They define “higher level” as finding meaning in an action rather than the mechanistic features of the action. So it’s not higher level as in higher stages of development, but just in terms of finding meaning in the things one does.
@WillE - Correct in that the “Integral” term and vernacular is not used. “higher level” is used in relation to higher-level meaning and “more global, higher-level action identities”.
They specifically look at extrinsic vs intrinsic religious motivations with extrinsic, in this case, looking more for social bonds and intrinsic as intentional internally motivated.
If we connect the “higher level” and benefits of religion, they sound very similar to the benefits of “Integral” practice.
Would all of this not map very nicely into lower left/right and upper left (intentional interior work) quadrants?