Philosophy and Spirituality: Where Does the Line Run?

The line between philosophy and spirituality does not run between subjects; it runs along an attitude: whatever stays open to the phenomena and lets them speak for themselves is philosophical, even when the subject is God, the mind or your own soul. You may know the quiet irritation of a spiritual teaching telling you what you ought to feel, while what you actually feel no longer appears anywhere. That irritation is not a lack of devotion. It is an organ of knowledge noticing that someone is talking about reality without asking it anything.

A viewer put exactly this question to Gwendolin Kirchhoff during her conversation with Elisa Gratias on the German channel MANOVA. Her answer is a single criterion that cuts both ways: against a science that merely applies its theory, and against a spirituality that merely applies its doctrine. This essay follows that criterion through the questions it opens up: what spiritual bypassing is, why pop spirituality disappoints so often, whether yoga is philosophy, and what comes after a spiritual experience.

#What is the difference between philosophy and spirituality?

The difference between philosophy and spirituality begins where a person stops questioning the phenomena and starts imposing a finished doctrine on them. Gwendolin Kirchhoff approaches this first from science. Philosophy, the love of wisdom, is for her something direct. By contrast: “Most sciences and so on are deductive in nature.” (Kirchhoff, G., 2026, Manova, 01:15:02) Thoughts are derived from a basic assumption about being and applied to nature “without first stepping back and letting the phenomenon speak to me” (ibid., 01:15:36).

Her example comes from watching horses. According to the textbook, every mare wants the strongest stallion. Then, out in open country, you see an older stallion driven off by a younger one, and at some point one of the older mares is standing beside him, plainly by her own choice. The behavioural automaton the theory predicted does not exist at that moment. The living shows more than the doctrine allows: “there is so much more inner space and so much more soul in the matter” (ibid., 01:17:15).

The very same movement, she says, exists in spirituality. There, too, teachings circulate that are applied rigidly. And so she states the difference she had been asked about as an attitude: “the difference is openness towards the phenomena.” (ibid., 01:20:09)

Elisa Gratias pushed back: for her, spirituality is an entirely personal relationship to the divine and to life, so why draw a line at all? It is a strong objection, and Gwendolin Kirchhoff grants it. If spirituality is understood that way, “we don’t really need to draw this line so sharply” (ibid., 01:20:52). The line only becomes necessary where the so-called spiritual scene arrives with finished doctrinal systems. The distinction is aimed not at a lived relationship to the divine but at the doctrine that replaces it.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe formulated this attitude for the study of nature some two hundred years ago. His sentence is the methodological counterpart to every imposed theory:

#Is spirituality something added to the world?

For Gwendolin Kirchhoff, spirituality is not an extra that can be added to a finished world or left out of it; it is a question about what the world is. In the MANOVA panel “Materialism at the Abyss” she rejected the question of whether we need spirituality at all: it is “not a thing you add on, which would then make it just a subset” (Kirchhoff, G., 2024, Materialismus am Abgrund, 13:46). The real question concerns the human being within the cosmos, and her answer is a claim about reality:

“The spiritual is based on a reality that is to be found in the world.” (ibid., 13:57)

That sentence changes the situation. If the spiritual concerns something real, it stands under the same claim as any other knowledge: it has to be able to show itself. A spirituality that merely asserts can appeal to no reality; a spirituality that perceives has nothing to fear from comparison with philosophy. This is why Gwendolin Kirchhoff does not draw the line between two fields of knowledge. Whoever takes the reality of the spiritual seriously submits it to examination instead of shielding it. The natural philosophy she thinks from has always made this claim: mind belongs to reality itself.

#What is spiritual bypassing?

Spiritual bypassing means using spirituality to get away from what you truly feel and to numb it. Gwendolin Kirchhoff introduces the term at the very point where she asks about purpose: “The question is simply, what is spirituality being used for?” (Kirchhoff, G., 2026, Manova, 01:19:10) Often, she says, it is used to evade — to get away from what someone really feels and experiences.

The term — spiritual bypassing, often shortened to spiritual bypass — is older than her answer. The American psychologist John Welwood coined it in 1984 for the tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices as an avoidance strategy, to sidestep unresolved personal problems and emotions (cf. Welwood, 1984, Principles of Inner Work). Gwendolin Kirchhoff takes up the term but anchors it differently: in the criterion of openness rather than in developmental psychology.

What is decisive in her account is the twist that ties it back to that criterion. In spiritual bypassing it is not an outer phenomenon that gets passed over but an inner one: “Then you are the phenomenon that is being avoided” (Kirchhoff, G., 2026, Manova, 01:19:28). Her example is ordinary and precise: “For example, a huge rage in you, but it isn’t spiritually correct, so it isn’t allowed to be there” (ibid., 01:19:39). The doctrine of what a spiritual person ought to feel settles over what that person does feel. In everyday life spiritual bypassing usually looks inconspicuous: meditation becomes the place where a painful conflict no longer has to be felt, mindfulness practice becomes permission to skip over uncomfortable feelings, positivity becomes a duty to keep quiet about your own disappointment. None of these spiritual practices is avoidance in itself. It becomes avoidance through the way it is used. It is the same deductive movement as the behavioural scientist applying his theory to the horse, except that the horse is now you.

She adds at once: “That doesn’t mean all spiritual people have to be like that.” (ibid., 01:19:46) The diagnosis targets a use; it does not target a group. And it has a reverse side that shows what is lost in the evasion. Unpleasant feelings, Gwendolin Kirchhoff says in another interview, can contain remarkably precise perceptions if you let them come towards you instead of avoiding or numbing them (cf. Kirchhoff, G., 2024, Werden wir gelebt?, 31:32). The rage that is not allowed to exist may know something about a situation that correct composure will never learn. Whoever bypasses it spiritually calms down, but recognises nothing. This is the distinction the lexicon describes as self-soothing versus healing: a soothing story shifts a state; it does not transform it.

#Why do manifestation teachings fail?

The manifestation teachings of pop spirituality disappoint because they turn a true observation into a doctrine imposed on the phenomena. Gwendolin Kirchhoff names it directly: “I’m talking now about pop spirituality, which is essentially this you-create-your-own-reality thing.” (Kirchhoff, G., 2026, Manova, 01:18:12) The manifestation theorists, as she calls them, always already know where you are allowed to direct your attention and what you had better not think.

What is true in this teaching she lets stand explicitly. It does matter to pay attention to your own thoughts, precisely because “thoughts have a certain power, that they realise themselves in the world” (ibid., 01:18:56). That is the strongest form of the manifestation argument, and she does not dispute it. Whoever cultivates their thoughts changes how they act, and whoever changes how they act changes the world around them.

The error begins one step later. “So there are also teachings that are imposed on the phenomena without asking the phenomena what they would say of their own accord.” (ibid., 01:17:58) The doctrine of a self-created reality no longer asks what life answers; it has fixed the answer in advance. If what was hoped for fails to arrive, the fault, by this doctrine, lies with the person: they thought wrongly, believed too little, gave fear too much attention. Disappointment turns into guilt, and the feeling it triggers is once again not allowed to exist.

Gwendolin Kirchhoff’s counter-image is the event. A creative idea, for her, is not your own creation; life brings it about through a person, and that takes openness, because life cannot be manipulated. She is therefore sceptical of the notion that you can place an order with life for whatever you want, without denying the resonance phenomena that really do exist. The difference is the same as between science and philosophy: the manifestation doctrine applies; openness receives.

#What are people really looking for in spirituality?

What most people look for in spirituality is freedom, and a very particular kind: freedom from a feeling. Gwendolin Kirchhoff took this question apart in the same conversation. Everyone wants freedom, but what do they mean by it? Her answer: “They want freedom from an unpleasant, tormenting feeling.” (Kirchhoff, G., 2026, Manova, 01:23:08) It may be fears, a blockage, a sense of pressure or compulsion. Then comes the sentence that explains why so many paths miss their goal: “We want to be free of a feeling, and then we have ideas about what triggers that feeling.” (ibid., 01:23:33)

The ideas about the cause are not the feeling itself. Whoever misidentifies the cause looks for freedom in the wrong place: in a new teaching, a new teacher, a new technique meant to silence the feeling. This is where pop spirituality and spiritual bypassing meet. Both promise freedom from a feeling without the feeling ever having been questioned. The philosophical movement runs the other way. It turns towards the feeling before forming an idea about its cause, and then tests the idea against the feeling.

#Is yoga a philosophy?

Yoga is philosophy in the part where it describes the movements of the mind and makes that description testable. Gwendolin Kirchhoff, herself a certified Kundalini yoga teacher, says so without hesitation: “So, for example, what the yogis do I also consider philosophical.” (Kirchhoff, G., 2026, Manova, 01:21:10) The yogis observe phenomena and set out a phenomenology of the mind.

Her example is three impulses as the yogis describe them: wanting to have something at all costs, which is greed; wanting something gone, which is hatred or rejection; and not wanting to see what is true, which is ignorance. A yogi tells you that these three movements exist. You do not have to believe him. “These are all impulses you can check within yourself.” (ibid., 01:21:43) And once you find them in yourself, the matter is settled: “The evidence is given.” (ibid., 01:21:53)

With this, the criterion of openness is applied to spiritual practice itself. A statement about the mind that can be tested in your own experience is philosophical, whether it comes from Athens or from the Yoga Sutras. A statement that can only be believed is not, however spiritual it sounds. The phenomenology of European philosophy and the self-observation of the yogis meet at this point. Both describe what shows itself before explaining why it shows itself.

The yogis do not stop there, and that too is philosophical. Someone who notices they are strongly driven by wanting something gone can ask what is actually going on with them, and meditate on it. The description leads into a practice, and the practice tests the description. How Gwendolin Kirchhoff thinks yoga and natural philosophy together is set out more fully in the essay on Kundalini yoga and natural philosophy.

#What comes after a spiritual experience?

After the spiritual experience comes integration, and integration is the counterpart to spiritual bypassing: there, feeling gets skipped; here, life itself is at risk of being skipped. Gwendolin Kirchhoff put it pointedly on the podcast Durch den Nebel with Laurens Dillmann. Many people, she says there, want to reach a state of being in harmony with themselves and expect a great deal from it. Her counter-question: “Okay, so what do you do on Monday?” (Kirchhoff, G., 2026, Durch den Nebel, 33:02)

We all know ecstatic states, and they matter, because in them we remember something deep. Yet, as Gwendolin Kirchhoff puts it: “But all these ecstatic experiences pass.” (ibid., 34:49) Afterwards the old themes resurface, and life demands very concrete actions. So for her, integration means nothing mysterious. It means how what you remembered in the experience shows up in your actual life: whether you notice when and why you speak, where you react on autopilot, whether you can slow down when it counts (cf. ibid., 33:23–34:15). Her own formulation of this appears in the essay After the Kundalini Experience, which is devoted entirely to this question.

The Monday question is the criterion of openness extended through time. Whoever wants nothing more after a retreat, a ceremony or a deep meditation than to get the state back treats the experience like a doctrine: something to be confirmed. Whoever asks what it changes in everyday life treats it as a phenomenon that wants to keep being questioned. The experience was real. But its reality shows not in its intensity but in what it makes of an ordinary Tuesday.

#How do you recognise a spirituality that holds up?

You recognise a spirituality that holds up by its relationship to the phenomena, not by its vocabulary. Three touchstones can be drawn from Gwendolin Kirchhoff’s answer, and they apply to any practice — your own first.

The first concerns feeling. A spirituality that holds up lets feelings exist, the rage and the fear included, because unpleasant feelings, as she puts it, can contain remarkably precise perceptions. It takes them as information, not as mistakes on the path.

The second concerns testing. What it says about the mind can be checked in your own experience, the way the yogis’ three impulses can be found in every human being. Where a teaching asks you to believe what you cannot find in yourself, it leaves the ground on which philosophy and spirituality meet. This is also the difference between judgement and discipleship.

The third concerns Monday. A spirituality that holds up shows itself in ordinary life: in conversation, at work, in how you treat the people around you. It does not make you more independent of the world but more precise within it.

In this sense philosophy and spirituality are not opponents. The line between them protects spirituality from its own temptation to spare itself reality. Perhaps you know a place in your life where a teaching grew louder than what you felt. That place is not a failure. It is where the real question begins, and some of these questions are better thought through with someone than alone, for instance in a philosophical consultation. How such a conversation differs from coaching is the subject of the essay on philosophical consulting and coaching.

#Sources

Goethe, J. W. von (1833). Maximen und Reflexionen. Published posthumously, ed. Johann Peter Eckermann and Friedrich Wilhelm Riemer.

Kirchhoff, G. (2024). “MANOVA The Great WeSet: Materialismus am Abgrund” [Video, German]. Manova, YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmUvCIon2rY, 13:46.

Kirchhoff, G. (2024). “Werden wir gelebt? – HOPE-Doku-Interview” [Video, German]. HOPE Doku. 31:32.

Kirchhoff, G. (2026). “Die gefährlichste Form von Intelligenz” — MANOVA conversation with Elisa Gratias [Video, German]. Manova, YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VI43E5jdQQw, 1:14:31–1:23:38.

Kirchhoff, G. (2026). “Folge der Schönheit — Philosophin Gwendolin Kirchhoff über Beziehungen als Weg aus dem Nebel” [Video, German]. Podcast Durch den Nebel (Laurens Dillmann), YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNxKGk3bXeA, 33:02–34:49.

Welwood, J. (1984). “Principles of Inner Work: Psychological and Spiritual”. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 16(1). https://www.atpweb.org/jtparchive/trps-16-84-01-063.pdf.