The second part of my conversation with Jonas Atlas, host of Revisioning Religion about spiritual development. 

Mark Vernon's latest book takes a deep dive into Dante's Divine Comedy, a classic masterpiece, which, after many centuries, still provides many helpful insights for those who find themselves on a spiritual journey. We place Dante's work in a longer lineage that can be traced to the philosophers of Ancient Greece. 

Often, those philosophers are presented as purely 'rational' thinkers who's thinking was repressed by early Christianity because it would conflict with a religious outlook on life. Yet, the historical facts paint a different picture. The ideas of the Greek philosophers were not merely precursors of modern science, but were fully embedded in a general search for spiritual development. 

Even more so, according to Mark, their personal spiritual journeys were connected to larger spiritual developments of human consciousness, in which the emergence of Christianity also played an important role. 

This leads us to discuss whether or not the spiritual journey of humankind can truly be seen as a form of 'progression', and how Mark assesses contemporary "New Age" ideas about the spiritual growth of humanity.