During the first millennium BC, spiritually gifted people in four distinct regions of the civilised world pioneered a radical change of consciousness. From about 900BC to 200BC, the great ideologies that have continued to nourish human beings came into being: Confucianism and Daoism in China; Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism in northern India; monotheism in Israel; and philosophical rationalism in Greece. Karl Jaspers, the German philosopher, called this seminal period the “Axial Age”, because it was pivotal to the spiritual history of humanity. There would be nothing similar until the Great Western Transformation, a scientific and technological revolution that began in the 16th century and is still in progress, irrevocably altered the way we see the world and ourselves.

We have never superseded the spiritual insights of the Axial Age. During periods of crisis, reformers and prophets have sought inspiration in these original visions. They have often interpreted them differently but they have not been able to go beyond them. Thus Rabbinic Judaism, Christianity and Islam can all be seen as latterday adaptations, which brought to fruition the religion that had developed in Israel during the Axial Age.

But the message of the prophets, mystics, philosophers and poets of the Axial Age (men such as Confucius, Laozi, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the sages of the Upanishads, the Buddha, Mahavira, Aeschylus, Euripides and Socrates) was so demanding that later generations tended to dilute it. In the process, they often produced exactly the kind of piety that the Axial reformers wanted to get rid of. The Axial sages have an important message for our own time, but their message will be surprising — even shocking — to many who consider themselves religious today.

Thus it is often assumed that faith is a matter of believing certain creedal propositions; indeed, it is common to call religious people “believers” as though assenting to the articles of faith were their chief activity. But most of the Axial philosophers had no interest whatsoever in dogma or metaphysics. A person’s theological beliefs were a matter of total indifference to somebody such as the Buddha. Confucius resolutely refused even to discuss theology, claiming that it was distracting and damaging. Others argued that it was immature, unrealistic and perverse to look for the kind of absolute certainty that many expect religion to provide. Indeed, when philosophers did begin to teach a militant orthodoxy, it was a sign that the Axial Age was drawing to a close.

What mattered was not what you believed but how you behaved. The only way you could encounter what the Axial sages called God, Nirvana, Brahman or the Way was to live a compassionate life. Indeed, religion was compassion. Today we often assume that before undertaking a religious lifestyle we must prove to our own satisfaction that the Absolute exists. But the Axial philosophers argued that this was to put the cart before the horse. First you must wholly commit yourself to the compassionate life; this alone would give you intimations of the transcendence you sought.

The greatest Axial teachers all taught a spirituality of empathy. Not only was it wrong to kill another person; you must not even speak an unkind word or make an irritable gesture. Nor could you confine your benevolence to your own people: your concern must somehow extend to the entire world. In fact, when people started to limit their sympathies, this was another indication that the Axial Age was coming to an end. Each of the Axial sages developed his own formulation of what has been called the Golden Rule, which they insisted was the essence of religion: do not do to others what you would not have done to you.

The sages did not create their compassionate ethic in idyllic circumstances. Each tradition developed in societies that were torn apart by violence and warfare as never before. Indeed, the first catalyst of religious change was usually a principled rejection of the aggression that the sages saw all around them. It is significant that the Greeks, who never eschewed violence, did not have a religious Axial Age; they made some marvellous contributions, especially in their tragic drama, but ultimately their great transformation was philosophical and scientific — not religious.

When they started to look for the causes of violence in the psyche, the Axial philosophers discovered the interior world and began to explore a hitherto undiscovered realm of human experience. By rigorous observation and experiment, the Axial teachers found that if people consist- ently dethroned the ego from the centre of their world and put another there, they experienced an ekstasis, a “stepping out” of the self.

This consensus of the Axial Age is an eloquent testimony to the unanimity of the spiritual quest of the human race; it tells us something about the structure of our humanity. Today, in our torn, conflicted world, where religion is often perverted by violence and egotism, we need to rediscover the Axial ethos of the Golden Rule, which does not depend on theological conviction. In our global village, we can no longer afford a parochial or exclusive vision. We must learn to live and behave as though people in countries remote from our own or who seem to be our enemies are as important as ourselves.

THE OXFORD LITERARY FESTIVAL

Karen Armstrong discusses her book, The Great Transformation: The World in the Time of Buddha, Socrates, Confucius and Jeremiah, at The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival on Friday, March 24, at 4pm

Explore Books

• Book Extracts

• Book Reviews

• Books Group

• Audio Books

Times Recommends

• The 100 Best Books of the Decade
• The Times picks the 50 best paperbacks of 2009
• The conversation: James Ellroy