We have now become familiarized with the traditional metaphysical teachings that are transmitted through symbolic initiations. When put together forming a coherent vision of the world, we obtain a worldview. A worldview is seeing and interpreting “the whole picture” in a certain way. This includes believing that the world functions in a specific manner, and has implications for how we should live and behave towards God or the highest reality, as well as towards others.

A worldview also includes the whole knowledge, culture and ethics of a particular community, and anyone interested in forming part of that group would need to share them. It is the glue that binds communities together, as they give meaning and direction to life. The meaning and direction lacking in our contemporary world.

Due to globalization and technological advances, we currently live in a world full of confusion. We now have to process extreme amounts of information coming from many conflicting worldviews and decide what we believe in and why.

We have lost our traditions, and an increasing number of people have become vulnerable to those who prey on the desperation of those who feel lost. It is not easy to filter the nuggets of valuable information contained among the noise (signal-to-noise ratio).

As a result, some people never commit to a coherent worldview. Instead, they pick metaphysical doctrines here and there from incompatible ones (Syncretism; e.g., New Age). However, this path cannot lead to a fulfilling spiritual life, since it lacks a coherent worldview that provides a solid structure, unity and stability.

So, in this complicated landscape of beliefs, what do people around the world believe in? What gives meaning, coherence and direction to their lives and hope beyond our current existence?

In the following sections we will briefly present the types of worldviews we can be confronted with, as well as their main representatives. These are:

• Religious Worldviews: showing us different paths towards a personal God or the impersonal Absolute.
• Mystical Worldviews: aiming at fusion with the Supreme.
• Esoteric Worldviews: based on secret knowledge and ritual, more reliant on personal practice and self-transcendence than on notions of a personal God.
• Philosophical Worldviews: a multitude of schools of thought and lifestances that aim at providing guidance on how to lead a good life based on human reason alone.
• Worldviews based on Science and Technology: that believe that every aspect of life can be explained through science alone (Scientism) or aim at transcending the human condition through technology (Transhumanism).

1. Encyclopedia of the World’s Religions. Robert Charles Zaehner.
2. Mysticism, Sacred and Profane: an Inquiry Into Some Varieties of Praeternatural Experience. Robert Charles Zaehner.
3. The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction. Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke.

4. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Thomas Samuel Kuhn.