The CICNS Charter

The CICNS is an independent centre open to the new spiritualities and to anyone wishing to inform themselves seriously about them. It fills a glaring gap in objective and rigorous information on the question of spirituality in our time. Integrating the new expressions of spiritual seeking represents a challenge for our society. That challenge is currently being taken up neither by the authorities nor by the general public. On the contrary, an odious campaign is under way to discredit spiritual commitment entirely, down to its very foundations.

The CICNS offers a space for information and advice to any person and any movement concerned to awaken, nourish and freely promote spiritual seeking in all its lawful forms. It also works to inform the authorities and the public, and presents itself as a reliable partner on the question of the new spiritualities today.

The CICNS does not judge the value of its members’ various spiritual paths.

It represents the neutrality that is absent today from the media, from the courts, and among anti-cult activists. Its outlook is founded on recognising the natural place of spiritual seeking in a human society, one that is currently the victim of its own superficial priorities.

Human beings naturally aspire to find and fully live the meaning of their existence. The condemnation that spiritual seeking suffers today (summed up for the general public by the pejorative term “cult”) arises from tendentious and outrageous conflations perpetrated by individuals or groups engaged in a crusade against spirituality in general.

The criminal acts of a few individuals around the world have been used to justify an exceptional campaign of discrimination in France.

The members of the CICNS do not deny the existence of criminal acts, and accept without reservation, as citizens and where the facts are established, that such acts should be judged and punished, irrespective of the personal convictions or affiliations of those who commit them. But our centre’s existence is justified by the fact that these acts, sometimes unsolved, today lead to a campaign of disinformation about the nature of spiritual seeking, to conflations that the population has accepted wholesale, and to discrimination, injustice and human tragedies of which we have many examples and testimonies in our archives.

This situation, which resembles a new obscurantism, is unacceptable in a society that proclaims itself democratic.

The CICNS was therefore formed to represent those who recognise themselves in this assessment and who wish to see the situation change.

Consequently, membership of the CICNS also carries certain responsibilities:

• Members of the CICNS are necessarily engaged in undertakings that aim to restore the dignity of the human being, to express their potential, to reveal their true and deep nature, to free them from the yoke of materialism, and to promote humanist and spiritual values in our society. The CICNS reserves the right to refuse membership to individuals or groups who would advocate destructive or criminal actions.

• Members of our association undertake to be examples of what the spiritual dimension can bring, at its most profound, to the individual and, consequently, to society.

• Members of our association are aware, beyond their own beliefs, of the necessity of respecting the laws in force in our country. They reserve the right, however, to denounce those laws that fail to respect the natural right to live and express one’s life choices, however unusual these may appear to the general public.

• Members of our association take care to respect all forms of belief themselves, avoiding hasty conclusions, knee-jerk judgements and platitudes about the diverse forms of spiritual seeking. They are vigilant in particular in observing, for themselves first of all, how collective conditioning could unwittingly lead them into unconsidered condemnations of which they would inevitably become the victims themselves.

• Members of our association are committed to a peaceful approach to restoring the truth on the question of the new spiritualities.