Fritz Detwiler, Ph.D.
Adrian College, 1999
The world as you experience it is unique in human history. Never before in all of recorded history have such fundamental changes occurred in human social and personal existence with such speed and breadth. Almost every area of your lives seems to be changing far faster than you can influence it or even think about the implications of the change that is happening around you. In fact, in many parts of your lives it may seem like the world is out of control -- at least your control.
Computers have altered your world and they promise to continue to change your daily life in untold ways. Their impact effects us at both the seen and unseen parts of our lives. Y2K hysteria provided us with a perfect example. As we approached the new millennium, we had no idea whether the institutions that we continually depend upon were going to fail, spurt, burp, or continue to function "normally." Because many of our appliances and tools now depend on computer chips to do their "work" we had no idea how our daily routines might change on January 1, 2000.
Computer technology also effects the way we communicate. This, in turn, redefines questions about individual privacy, identity, and security. For several years now, people have been able to locate themselves precisely in the world through mobile and personal satellite location systems. Cadillac automobiles even offer as part of their product to be in instant communication with the driver at all times in order to send emergency services to precise locations at a second's notice. While driving to work, school, or to leisure activities, we can now talk with anyone in the world on the way and execute e-trades through the Internet at the same time.
Computer technology also impacts our lives in two other important ways. Artificial intelligence enables computers to do creative and interpretive thinking. This raises questions about the nature of intelligence and our uniqueness as human beings. Virtual reality allows us to visit places, times, and galaxies otherwise unknown to us. It blurs the distinctions between reality and fiction and, in so doing, challenges previous notions about truth, reality, and existence.
At the level of interpersonal relationships computers are redefining the nature of human interaction. We are becoming less immediate and direct in our relations with others. At the very same time computers are creating virtual friendships and communities through cyberspace. Face-to-face conversations are becoming rare even in business and education because of network conferencing. Even personal telephone contact between humans is fading as e-mail, chat-room, faxes, and voice-mail replace it.
Advances in scientific technology are also having a profound effect on our ideas about human existence. Genetic engineering raises the question of "human" life itself through the technology of designer babies and cloning. If not possible now, in the near future you will be able to control the genetic map of yourself and your potential children. Health providers will offer the possibility of cloning your organs for potential transplant needs.
Astrophysicists continue to explore the universe and make discoveries that force us to redefine our sense of importance, our uniqueness, and our understanding of our past and future. The discovery of planets in other solar systems raises fundamental questions about the universe and our place in it. As we travel further to the center of the universe, we confront evidence that seems to question some of the most basic assumptions religious people hold about their world while at the same time we discover things that seem to give strength to religious claims.
As fundamental as these changes in science and technology are, they are only one part of the phenomenal changes that effect every aspect of our lives. Equally significant changes are occurring in politics with the collapse of communism and the efforts of ethnic people to "cleanse" their territories of their former friends and neighbors who belong to another ethnic group. In the area of economics, the expansion of the free market system to most of the world extends competitive values and processes into cultures that traditionally valued cooperation over competition. The globalization of the economy works counter to these growing ethnic rivalries in politics as corporations, markets, resources, and workforces no longer depend on political boundaries and national loyalties. At the same time, these market forces are not only increasing the gap between the affluent and indigent, changes in communication technologies are constantly making us more aware of the gap.
Changes in the area of psychology known as human cognition are making us more vulnerable to hidden manipulation as researchers discover more and more about how the brain works and how we develop and change our perceptions about the world. When combined with market forces, we are becoming more subject to manipulation of our thoughts, choices, ideas and values for corporate and individual profit or for the advancement of particular political or religious ideologies.
One of the consequences of all these factors for each of you is that at a time of diminishing economic expectations, workers in the future should expect to change occupations several times during their lives in order to accommodate new economic and cultural realities over which they will have little or no control. These changes will require people to move frequently either voluntarily or by necessity from one sector of the economy to another. People who train for a specific occupation will find that their jobs are either being constantly redefined or eliminated in response to market forces. Knowledge gained in technical fields will become obsolete more quickly in an ever-shrinking future.
In response to these changes, many possible alternatives are open to us. Increasing numbers of people seek comfort and security in religions -- old and new. Others are equally firm in their rejection of religion holding that religious explanations are either irrelevant or destructive to their lives or out of date. Some resign themselves to a kind of fatalism that substitutes the exhilaration of pure experience in the present moment for any kind of connection to transcendent forces, meanings, and values. Others float from place to place believing, against the odds, that through the shear force of will they will succeed while others fail. Still others create virtual community or turn to gangs in the hopes of maintaining some sense of interpersonal connectedness.
Whether or not you consider religion important or relevant in some ways is irrelevant to the nature of religion and the purpose of this course. Religion focuses our attention on the most basic questions of human existence. In this respect it can be both comforting and troubling. Religion typically provides people with a "sacred canopy" that gives their lives order, meaning, and orientation in an otherwise chaotic world. The adequacy of any specific canopy is a matter of debate among religious people. What is not open to debate among them is the conviction that life, existence, and the world have meaning, order, and, purpose and that they should live their lives in harmony with the values and things of significance that ultimately define reality. Because of the speed of change in our lives, this comforting function of religion seems to be far more attractive to most Americans than the more prophetic forms of religion that ask us to step back and consider the moral and human implications of the new realities in our lives. In some forms of fundamentalism, these two dynamics actually converge as people seek comfort in religious worldviews that condemn the changes altogether and point back to a more idyllic past in which people lived more peaceful and fulfilling lives. Such is the power of religious symbols, myths, and rituals.
The Nature of Religion and
the Purpose of this Course
The purpose of this course is to educate you in the study of religion and about the religious phenomena that relate most directly to these fundamental issues of life. The purpose of the course goes to the root meaning of the terms educate and religion. Educate comes from the a root stem in Latin that means "to lead out." Religion comes from another Latin stem meaning "to bind or tie together." This translates into the following purpose for this course: to lead you out of your present mindset in order to come to understand how and why seven great religious traditions bind people together with each other, with humanity, with the cosmos, and with existence itself.
This purpose is completely consistent with the subject of the course. After all, religion is about transcendence. It is about the way in which people go beyond ordinary existence to encounter the deeper dimensions of themselves, others, and reality itself. Religions differ, sometimes quite markedly, in the way they present these deeper realities to us. In Western religions, for example, this depth dimension is presented at the cosmic level as a person -- "Yahweh," "God," or "Allah." In the Eastern religions such as Daoism and Confucianism this deeper reality is identified at the cosmic level as an impersonal structure or force of the universe -- "Dao." In some forms of Buddhism such as Zen or Nichiren, the depth dimension is found not at the external reaches of the universe but in the individual person -- the "Buddha nature within the self." In Hinduism, the distinction between internal and external reality ultimately disappears and the depth dimension of the self and the cosmos are held to be the same -- "atman" or the essential self is "Brahman" or the entirety of the universe.
Religions are vehicles of transcendence. They move us toward these deeper realities to help us establish connections with that which is beyond and/or deepest within ourselves. Those who study religion employ specific tools and terminology to discuss the way in which religions function as vehicles of transcendence. As in most disciplines, scholars disagree over the precise meaning of these tools and terms and even over their usefulness. Nevertheless, for our purposes we will use three terms to focus our study: myths, symbols, and rituals. The issues raised by these terms translate into questions about the way in which religious people express their sacred understandings, values, meanings, and significations through symbols; about the nature and content of truth as we examine the relationship between myth and history; and, questions about activities that bring us closer together with ourselves and reality as we explore the nature and function of religious rituals.
Religions are also vehicles of transformation. Religions typically describe the way we should live and provide the means by which we can transform our lives to become what we ought to be. Essential to becoming a religious person, particularly in some forms of Christianity in the West, is a conversion experience in which a person accepts a new view of reality and seeks to live according to a new set of values. This conversion experience is often the product of a momentary insight or a flash of truth in which the order and power of existence becomes clear to the person. From that point on, the transformation of the individual brings him/her into a new relationship with the world, the self, and others.
Symbols: (Windows to the Transcendent)
Religious symbols are touch points between the mundane world and the world of sacred existence. They make present (or re-present) to individuals the power and character of the depth dimension of reality. In one sense, they are windows. They allow us to see through to the ultimate nature of things. To carry the analogy one step further, in their fullest sense they are open windows. They allow the force and power of reality to impact us directly, even if we only get a wisp of it at any given time. When we analyze symbols as windows, then, we should expect to find in and through them some representation of the ultimate nature of things. Edward Farley calls the most powerful religious symbols deep symbols. They contain within in them all of the essential meanings and values that shape all aspects of the individual’s awareness of social reality. Examples of such deep symbols in our culture are "family," "individualism," "communism," and "freedom." In the context of Christianity they include "God," "imago dei," "holy spirit," "Jesus Christ." For Jews it’s the Ark of the Covenant, for Muslims the unity of God or tawid. Hindus find it in Brahman, Buddhists in the Buddha, Chinese in the Dao, and Japanese express it in kami. These deep symbols are the focus of our readings. If you are able to grasp some of the complex meaning of these essential symbols in each of the religious traditions you will have gained some insight into that religion's sacred canopy.
The task is not easy. It takes courage, humility, honesty, and perseverance. Deep symbols are often difficult to grasp because they are powerful and complex. They reveal their power in multiple ways and at multiple levels. Scholars refer to this complexity in terms of the multivocal and multivalent dimensions of symbols. Multivocal means, literally, "to speak with many voices." It suggests that different people, either from different cultures or within the same culture, can understand a given symbol to mean different things. For example, "family" in some circles in contemporary American culture symbolizes the nuclear family. Its meaning is restricted to include only a mother, father, and children. In other circles within our culture, "family" symbolizes an extended family that would include grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins in addition to the nuclear family. Finally, in still other groups in our society "family" symbolizes an entire lineage that would include not only those living persons in the extended family but also previous generations. All of these people could therefore attribute different significance or reality to the same symbol. This is what scholars mean when they say that symbols are complex and speak with many voices.
Multivalence suggests the depth dimension of symbols. The term literally means "to have many levels." It suggests that symbols operate at a variety of levels. They touch some people at the most profound level of their own experience and connect them with the deepest dimensions of reality. They touch others in less intense and less powerful ways. Encounters with deep symbols may only remind them of some feeling or experience that had meaning for them but not at the most significant and powerful levels. For example, the symbolic power of the American flag has a number of different levels of meaning. At the most superficial level we recognize it as our national flag. At this level it conveys the meaning of our identity as a citizen or resident of the United States. Just below that surface, through the presence of the flag we may experience a feeling of love for the nation or pride in our national accomplishments. At a deeper level, the symbolic power of the flag confronts us with the power and wealth of the nation. At the next level, it pushes to remind us of the blood spilled over the decades by soldiers who defended the nation in times of peril. Continuing our journey, we next pass into an awareness of the pain and horror of those soldiers as they shed their blood for their family, the neighbors, and millions of others with whom they shared a love of nation. We then go deeper to confront the values of freedom and personal liberty for which those soldiers gave their "last full measure of devotion," as Abraham Lincoln said at Gettysburg. At the deepest level we discover the ultimate commitments and most fundamental values of the noble figures of the past who created the vision for the nation. We gain appreciation and admiration for those founding figures who fought against the world's most powerful nation to fulfill their vision of establishing a new form of human society. They had great faith in their vision. The believed that the American experiment in human government was more closely in tune with the ultimate structure of the universe and more consistent with the most profound realities about human nature than any other form of government devised by humans throughout five millenniums of recorded history.
Through our example of the American flag we note that symbols presents us with some of the power of the realities to which they open us. As we read the materials and seek an understanding of the basic symbols of the world's most popular religions, we must constantly remind ourselves that the meanings we may discover in these symbols are probably just one or two parts of a vast web of meanings and that the glimpses they provide us into the reality of others is only fleeting. We must also remind ourselves that these webs in all their richness and complexity provide others with the sacred canopy that sustains them in life. Finally we must remember that such symbols reveal to people the ultimate power they need to live their lives according to the vision of reality presented to them through these symbols.
The symbols we encounter in the readings will present problems for those of you not familiar with the religions or cultures from which they are taken. Because symbols also are cultural in character they may mean totally different things to you than to the people about whom you are reading. This means that you cannot readily trust your own perceptions in interpreting such symbols. It also requires you to be aware of the human tendency to impose meaning on the symbols of others. In order to grasp the meaning and power of symbols we must recognize that they arise within particular historical and social settings and, in part, derive their power from the cultural context from which they emerge. Clifford Geertz describes this as moving along particular cultural pathways.
The Middle Ages in Christian Europe provides us with a good example of the cultural significance of symbol. In medieval Europe the triangle represented the Christian conception of the Trinity. The symbol was so powerful that it became the fundamental conceptual structure for the reordering of Western civilization. It legitimized the rule of kings and the power of popes. It provided the foundation for the social, economic, and political orders. Theologian Paul Tillich refers to the triangle as the central integrating symbol of the period. To us in present day America, the symbol of the triangle arises from a different cultural context and takes on new and quite different power and meaning. In many circles in contemporary America, the triangle has come to represent the social struggle of gay and lesbian people. It has become the operative symbol for a group of people who have traditionally been forced to the margins of our society. To them it represents, in a sense, a movement that seeks to overthrow the entrenched power structure that opposes their full participation in the culture.
In the past, scholars and popularizers of religious mythology have often failed to recognize the importance of the cultural context of symbols and have simply assumed that a particular symbol present in one culture represented the same meanings and values when found in another culture. Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell are two well-known examples. Given the probability that students in this course have little familiarity with the cultures and religions of the traditions we will study, you should expect to encounter some difficulty in uncovering the meaning and values presented by given symbols. Nevertheless, part of the transcendent character of religion requires that we seek to understand to the degree we are able the meaning and values attributed to those symbols by the people who recognize them as powerful and significant.
One final feature of symbols is closely related to the cultural dimension. Symbols are also social in nature. Their power is relative to the number of people who testify to their power. In this sense, some symbols are far more powerful than others because they function as vehicles and windows to transcendence for much larger numbers of people. In highly integrated cultures, a few deep symbols are accepted by nearly everyone as central symbols of the society. Again, the triangle functioned this way in the Middle Ages. Every aspect of the society reflected its power and it gave meaning and order to large numbers of people. The basic structure of the society included three fundamental institutions -- the church, the state, and the individual. Each stood in a particular relation to each other as defined by the nature and role of each of the points of a triangle. At the top stood the church, at the bottom the state and individual. Each institution took its meaning and significance from God who stood at the center of the triangle. In less integrated cultures, no single symbol or set of symbols are accepted by the majority and therefore no single symbol or set of symbols has enough power to hold the society together in terms of shared meaning, purpose, and values. This seems to be the case today in the United States. Our society is so fragmented into ethnic groups, social classes, and divergent life styles that no single set of symbols seems to have enough power to bring these various subcultures together. An example of this is the proliferation of television channels brought about by cable networks and satellite dishes. Each interest group gets its news and information from a channel that is directed to that particular subculture. The symbols generated within each group have a life of their own within that group. And even though they may have a great deal of power within the group, they have little power in either the larger social or in other subcultures.
What we seek when we seek an understanding of such complex webs of meaning is a grasp of the basic orientation or worldview of the people we study. When we study myths, rituals, and symbols we seek entry into their world through the tools they use to sustain their well-being and to empower them to live in harmony with their vision of the world. We are obviously restricted in this journey by the time and content restraints of this course. What needs to sustain us through this difficult journey is the power of curiosity. We must be curious about how these myths, rituals, and sacred places play a fundamental role in helping people make sense out of the world. We must be curious about how these pieces fit together to provide an overall vision of the world that works for the people committed to it. Finally, and most importantly, we must be curious about how we can begin to make some sense out of the world in which we live with all its chaos and change.
Myths: (Maps of the Transcendent)
Symbols are the basic building blocks of religious myths. Myths (and their cousins legends, tales, and folk stories) express the picture people have of the world in which they live -- at the levels of both ordinary and transcendent existence. They are maps of the world we inhabit. That is, they help guide us through life by providing to us the markers that orient us to existence. Myths, in particular, introduce us to the characters, forces, and powers that exist according to a particular worldview and describe through stories the way in which these phenomena interact with each other. In this same way, myths describe the consequences that might befall us, those around us, and even the if we violate the structure of life they define. Because they are composed of symbols, myths also require some familiarity with the historical, cultural, and social contexts in which they become powerful representations of transcendent realities. For example, we cannot simply assume that similar stories told in different cultural contexts have the same meaning and describe the same structure of existence. Nor can we blindly believe that these meanings are transhistorical -- that they mean the same thing to us as they did to people centuries or millenniums ago.
The most powerful form of myths are cosmogonic or creation stories. These stories tell of the forces and processes by which the world came into being or of the origins of the first people. The mythic figures we encounter here are often the most powerful ones recognized by a culture. This type story also tells of the way in which reality is ideally structured. Thus, beings and natural features that come later take their meaning, value, and significance from the themes we encounter at the very beginning of things.
Another quite popular form of mythology focuses on moral behavior. These come in at least two forms. The first type is sometimes called trickster stories. The purpose of trickster stories is to describe to the listeners what the consequences are when people allow their own selfish interests to go before those of the group. The main characters are often beings with enormous appetites both for food and sexual satisfaction. Their actions flow without regard to consequences either for themselves or others. They are often caught in their own excesses but, at other times, may be quite cunning -- weaving others into their web of deceit. Examples of trickster stories abound in the African tales of Brer Rabbit and in Navaho coyote tales. A second form is called morality tales. These are often less complex than trickster stories and often focus less on character and more on proper behavior in specific situations. The purpose of morality tales is to make clear a moral rule or principle that is valued in a particular culture. Morality tales are often gender specific. They describe the different behaviors required by men and women. Aesop's Fables, sometimes read to children in the West, is one example of this type of mythology.
A third form of mythology is closely related to the second. Stories of culture heroes are found throughout the world. These are beings who help humans find their way through the world as originally created. Such stories often include myths of emergence, which describe the origins of humans. Culture heroes teach humans how to do things necessary for human survival. They introduce to humans the social, political, economic, and religious institutions around which humans shape their collective lives. This gives those institutions divine authority and humans come to recognize them as reflective of the way people ought to structure their lives.
One of the most important features of mythology is that it must be both practical and sensible to those who recognize the transcendent power it reveals. That is, myths cannot be fictitious in the sense that they can have no relationship to the world of everyday experience. If the portrayal of reality is so disconnected from the world of ordinary existence, people will dismiss the myths as fanciful stories. Further, if the myth does not provide keys to making life better and more connected to ultimate reality then people will not give it any significance. Therefore, we should take the mythology of other people seriously since it does provide, at least for them, a practical and sensible orientation to the world. It makes them feel "at home in the universe" as William James describes it. Or in other language, it provides the sacred canopy that affords them protection from the inherent chaos of existence that threatens human well-being.
The principle focus of our study of mythology in this course is on the issue of the relationship between myth and history. Most Western religious traditions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) appear to draw a clear line between what counts as history (factual events) and what counts as mythology (stories about sacred beings). Other traditions such as those originating in India blur the distinction even to the point of collapsing myth and history into a single notion -- mythistory. Our study of the relation between myth and history will raise several important questions about the nature of truth: "What do we mean by 'myth'? What do we mean by 'history'? Does the distinction make any sense and from what perspective?" This is where the theory of religion I am introducing in this course relates directly to your experience. To understand a given religion's answer to these questions requires you to transcend or "go beyond" your ordinary way of thinking about reality to engage, at a serious level, perspectives of others.
Worldviews (Maps of Reality and Truth)
If symbols are the building blocks of religious myths, then myths are the building blocks of worldviews. Myths provide people with partial views of the world beyond their immediate experience. Worldviews provide people with the most comprehensive explanations of reality, both in terms of depth and breadth. Worldviews present to people a picture of reality that penetrates to the very deepest parts of our individual lives and to the most expansive boundaries of that which we include in the cosmos. Worldviews, in other words, refer to the way a person in a given society, "sees [themselves] in relation to all else. . . . It is, in short, a [person's] idea of the universe."
As long as our worldview functions well, we don't even think about it. We simply take it for granted. When new situations arise or crises emerge, however, the capacity of the existing worldview to accommodate the new realities becomes critical. If the disruption caused by these new realities, such as the computer, is minor, the existing worldview adapts and the new reality becomes integrated into the accepted structure of reality without requiring major adjustment. When the disruption is major, however, serious modifications in our map of reality or may be necessary. A good example comes to us from the islands of the south Pacific. Beginning in the nineteenth century and expanding during the years of World War II, the people of many the many traditional societies in the south Pacific first encountered Europeans. Material goods previously unknown to these people seemed to appear out of nowhere as European ships deposited their cargoes to supply the missionaries who sought to convert the islanders. In response to this rather severe disruption of their lives, the islanders developed what came to be known as "cargo cult" religions. They increased both in number and significance during World War II when cargo seemingly appeared out of the sky when ally planes dropped provisions for their troops.
On the island of New Guinea, for instance, prophetic leaders promised continued blessings from the new deities even as the people rejected the inroads of other aspects of Western culture into their societies. After the war, tribal members even built runways for the goods that the gods might continue to provide them. The response of these people to the new realities arose from within the worldview they held and the realities they previously knew to order their lives. A similar phenomena of new religious movements in response to significant cultural disruption occurred among Native Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries and in Japan after the Western powers forced open the Japanese economy in the last half of the 19th century.
These adjustments to new realities sometimes occur on a wider cultural level as the fundamental ideas about existence that ground one historical period give way to new realities. Thomas Kuhn refers to such changes as paradigm shifts. In Western culture, for example, the discoveries of Galileo and Copernicus forced medieval Western culture to totally reconstruct their way of looking at the relationship of humans to the rest of the cosmos. The human-centered worldview of medieval Christianity gradually and grudgingly gave way to the heliocentric worldview of later times. The difference between the medieval culture and today is that it took centuries for these new discoveries to impact the lives of people at the wider cultural level during the Middle Ages. In the contemporary period, equivalent changes are happening much more rapidly and much more frequently.
The disruption these changes cause in our worldview sometimes goes unnoticed because of the deep level at which our fundamental assumptions about things rest. Worldviews are so inclusive of every dimension of our lives, we rarely recognized them as human constructions. We simply accept them as reality. Further, we seldom recognize how much our perceptions about life are shaped by both history and culture. We simply assume that all people experience and experienced the world as we do. It is difficult for us to accept the fact that people in other times and places have looked at the world very differently than we do, and that they do not take for granted the same things as we do.
The issue of worldview formation and maintenance is particularly relevant to American culture as we look forward to the second millennium. The dominant worldviews of the past, either that of conservative Christian Republicanism or classical liberalism and modern science, no longer seem to have widespread support in the larger culture. Yet nothing has arisen to take their place. Postmodernism offers only the weakest alternatives. One reason to study the myths, symbols, and rituals of the various religions considered in this course is to sample the variety of alternatives they do offer -- alternatives that have worked equally as well as ours for centuries and that have been produced by some of the greatest minds and personalities in human history. The truth is that in such a time of change, we cannot ignore their counsel, we cannot turn our backs on the questions they ask, the values they embrace, or the purposes to which they orient their lives.
Sacred Places (Power made Present)
Sacred places make the power of the divine (God, in the West) present to believers in particularly significant ways. When religious people approach a sacred place they begin to experience the power of the sacred. It begins to force transcendence on them by drawing them out of the mental and emotional baggage that they bring to the place and, then, shifts their attention and orientation to sacred realities. Sacred places are thus focusing lenses as Jonathan Smith calls them. They narrow the believer's span of attention and bring religious people into experiences of power that are rooted in the most fundamental issues and ideas about life itself.
Carlos Castaneda provides us with a good illustration of the way in which sacred places change our orientation to the world. In The Teachings of Don Juan, Castaneda describes the way in which his Yaqui spiritual guide Don Juan told Carlos that he had to find his "spot" on Don Juan's porch before the teachings could continue. Carlos, a trained sociologist pursuing research for a Ph.D. dissertation, had no idea what Don Juan meant. Nevertheless, Carlos found himself alone on his teacher's porch in the middle of the Mexican dessert confronted by that task. As the heat of the day began to give way to the shadows of the evening and the blackness of the dark, Carlos' anxiety began to grow. How could he ever protect himself from this environment if he had no idea what was "out-there"? As strange and threatening noises started to grab his attention, Carlos found himself in the middle of a world about which he had only the smallest grasp of understanding. He knew that his only hope was to find his spot. But what was a spot? What was he to look for in order to find it? Under the influence of peyote, Carlos spent the night rolling and walking around every inch of Don Juan's porch. While he was doing this, he paid the closest attention to every detail -- color, smell, texture, contour, and temperature. When he eventually found his spot, all his anxieties and fears disappeared. He discovered that this particular spot provided him with an orientation to reality that effectively calmed him and gave him a sense of security. In his search for the spot, he discovered that orienting himself to the world in this particular way was absolutely necessary before he could begin to continue the journey and start to make sense out of the things he was experiencing. Sacred places force us to examine our orientation to the world, they place us in an aura of security, and invite us to begin to make sense out of life. Sacred places are symbolic sacred canopies in miniature.
In this course, we will visit the most sacred places in the world according to seven religious traditions. We should look at them as focusing lenses that suggest the order, nature, and purpose of existence to those who experience sacred power in their presence. Perhaps the most complex example of a sacred place in Western religions is Jerusalem. It is sacred to Judaism as the site of the Holy of Holies in the Temple. It is sacred to Christians as the place of Christ's triumphal entry into the most powerful city in Judea, his crucifixion at the hands of the secular and religious authorities, and his triumph over death in the resurrection. It is sacred to Muslims as the place from which the angel Gabriel transported Muhammed into the presence of Allah in all His glory and power. Thus, religious pilgrims who go to Jerusalem may all experience the sacred power of the place, but they will experience that power in profoundly different ways according to the sacred canopy under which they live.
Your task as you read the material on sacred places is to begin to note the location and architecture of the sacred places described. Seek to understand that data in terms of its religious and cultural context. Begin to explore how the meaning and power present in that place orients people to the world in a particular way. Finally, question how these sacred places transform the lives of religious people in ways that lead many of them to greater fulfillment, peace, and joy in life. Whether the topic is the sacred Ganges in Hinduism or the most inner recesses of our sacred self in Buddhism, sacred places are places of power. They present to believers a power that forces religious people to transcend their past existence and to transform their lives in a way that bring them into harmony with sacred reality.
Rituals (Patterns of Transformation)
Rituals function to bring people into the presence of transcendent realities, meanings, and values. For example, the ritual performances associated with professional wrestling are clearly orchestrated to form a connection among the audience, the wrestlers, and a symbolic reality which the wrestlers embody. In another context, Amway corporation officials use ritual processes to lead their sales representatives into the celebration of a way of life that completely transcends the products they sell. Finally, political conventions and major college football games of state universities perform the same function -- they bring participants into contact with transcendent realities. In the case of politics, it is a political ideology or a set of fundamental social values. In the case of college football, it is a legitimization of a way of life and a personal/social identity. Sacred rituals go beyond this personal, social, or political dimension to bring participants into contact with the ultimate realities of human and cosmic existence.
Religious people construct ritual environments in order to create contexts in which they can open the window between their everyday life and the dimension of the sacred. In this sense, rituals function as vehicles of transcendence. The are the means by which religious persons transcend their ordinary experiences and apprehend sacred power. In this environment, the ritual participants are transformed by their encounters and their lives reoriented to new, or at least, more significant realities. Clifford Geertz refers to this as crossing a threshold into another order of existence. By experiencing this sacred order of existence, participants realize its nature and power and are given insight into the imperfection and chaos of daily life. Transformed by its power, they return to their ordinary existence as changed persons. In this transformed state, they attempt to bring their lives, and the lives of others, into closer conformity with the sacred order of life they have just experienced.
The process of transformation typically involves three stages. Your text describes them as "pre-liminal," "liminal," and "post-liminal." Liminal comes from the Latin meaning "threshold" or "doorstep." Thus, the stages of ritual process are designed to transport people across the threshold of their everyday reality, into the presence of a transcendent power or reality, and back into the everyday world as transformed persons. During the first state of the ritual process, participants undergo a process of separation as they begin to reorient themselves from their everyday existence. Participants then move into an encounter with the sacred presence in which their entire orientation to life changes. They then return to their new station in life but experience it from their new perspective.
One marvelous example of this process comes from the Aboriginal people of Australia. In the ceremony through which boys become initiated into the community as men, the critical moment comes when the male elders of the community lead the initiates into the bush. All their lives the boys have lived in the protected environment of the village, watched over by the women. From time to time, they have seen their fathers, brothers, uncles, and grandfathers go into the bush sometimes to hunt, at other times to perform religious ceremonies and, occasionally, to fight other bands over territorial boundaries disputes. Not infrequently the men have returned bloodied. Sometimes one or two never return or die in the village from the injuries suffered in the bush. From the safety of the village the young boys have learned that some of this danger arises when, in the bush, the males encounter the ancestral spirits of the people known as the "grandfathers." The young boys know of these spirits only by the distinctive whirring sound they have heard coming from the bush when the men are in the presence of the grandfathers.
On day of their initiation, the boys are separated from the women and taken into the bush to meet the grandfathers. This separation is clearly represented. The boys sit back to back with their mothers in a straight line. A village elder walks between them symbolically cutting the young boy's ties to their mothers. After they cross the threshold into the bush, the men place them in a clearing and cover them with blankets so the boys cannot see anything. Soon the group hears the grandfathers begin to approach, at first only one voice is heard, then more and more voices join in until all the grandfathers are present. As more grandfathers arrive, the sound grows louder and intensifies. The boys become fearful as the sound becomes threateningly close to them. At the critical moment of ritual transformation, the elders quickly remove the blankets and the boys look up to see the noise being made by their fathers, brothers, and uncles who are whirling noisemakers attached to strings above their heads. The innocent naïve world of the young boys shatters. At the very moment they become men, they discover that the sound of the "grandfathers" has been manufactured by humans. In such a crisis moment, the old perspective collapses under the weight of new realities. The boys have grown up. They can never view the grandfathers in the same way again. They have been transported and transformed.
Conclusion
One contemporary Christian song proclaims, "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path." Through symbolic representation, this song describes the way in which religion functions to help orient people in the world of ordinary everyday existence. Similar proclamations come from other religions. All point to a vision of reality that helps us overcome the problems and trials of life. In the absence of sacred myths, rituals, and symbols, humans can find themselves adrift in the world without any values, meanings, and signficances to moor them. They can retreat into themselves and permit only their own personal interests and perspectives to guide their lives. In such a world, community both collapses and reemerges. The resurgence of religion in the last decades of the second millennium of the common era testifies to both the chaotic realities we experience and the enduring power of religion to bring to people a sense of place in the cosmic scheme of things.
The purpose of this course is to bring you closer to an understanding of the perspective of religious people and the way in which rituals, myths, and sacred places function in their lives. By giving an honest effort to this task, you will experience part of what religion is all about -- transcendence and transformation. Such experiences only come to those who have the courage, curiosity, and honesty for the journey. Welcome aboard!