LECTURE TWO: Homo
religiosus: “WHAT IS
‘RELIGIOUS-NESS’” AND RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS, AS FUNCTIONS OF
ORIENTATIO…
But when we say that God [underscore mine] is the
object of religious experience, we must realize that “God” is frequently an
extremely indefinite concept which does not completely coincide with what we
ourselves usually understand by it.
Religious experience, in other terms, is concerned with a
“Somewhat”. But this assertion
often means no more than that this “Somewhat” is merely a vague “something”; and
in order that man may be able to make more significant statements about this
“Somewhat”, it must force itself upon him, must oppose itself to him as being
Something Other [underscore mine].
Thus, the first affirmation we can make about the Object of Religion is
that it is a “highly exceptional and extremely impressive “Other”
[underscore mine]. Subjectively,
again, the initial state of man’s mind is amazement; and as Soderblom has
remarked, this is true not only for philosophy but equally for religion. As yet, it must further be observed, we
are in no way concerned with the supernatural or the transcendent: we can speak of “God” in merely a
figurative sense; but there arises and persists an experience which connects or
unites itself to the “Other” that thus obtrudes. Theory, and even the slightest degree of
generalization, are still far remote; man remains quite content with the purely
practical recognition that this Object is a departure from all that is usual and
familiar; and this again is the consequence of the Power [underscore
mine] it generates. The most
primitive belief, then, is absolutely empirical; as regards primitive religious
experience, therefore, and even a large proportion of that of antiquity, we must
in this respect accustom ourselves to interpret the supernatural element in the
conception of God by the simple notion of an “Other”, of something foreign and
highly unusual, and at the same time the consciousness of absolute dependence,
so well known to ourselves, by a indefinite and generalized feeling of
remoteness
Van der Leeuw, Gerardus.
Religion in Essence and Manifestation,
Tr. by J.E. Turner.
23-24.
Despite its importance for an understanding of the
religious phenomenon, we shall not here discuss the problem of
“hominization.” It is sufficient to
recall that the vertical posture already marks a transcending of the condition
typical of the primates.
Uprightness cannot be maintained except in a state of wakefulness. It is because of man’s vertical posture
that space is organized in a structure inaccessible to the prehominians: in four horizontal directions radiating
from an “up”-“down” central axis.
In other words, space can be organized around the human body as extending
forward, backward, to right, to left, upward, and downward. It is from this original and originating
experience—feeling oneself “thrown” into the middle of an apparently limitless,
unknown, and threatening extensioin—that the different methods of
orientatio [underscore mine] are developed; for it is impossible to
survive for any length of time in the vertigo brought on by disorientation. This experience of space oriented around
a “center” explains the importance of the paradigmatic divisions and
distributions of territories, agglomerations, and habitations and their
cosmological symbolism…
Eliade, Mircea. A History
of Religious Ideas: Vol. I From the
Stone Age
to the Eleusinian Mysteries.
Tr. by Willard R. Trask.
Returning to the
fundamental theme of the “What” of religious studies as such, “World Religions”
as a specific subset of religious studies, and more specifically, returning to
the “What is ‘religious-ness’?” formula as a catalyst or re-agent for propelling
us forward through this line of inquiry/examination, we need to attempt to make
some substantive assertions about the data set, the subject matter, for
examination in this course.
Essentially, what IS “religious-ness,” as such, that we can call this or
that specific phenomenon (e.g. this or that behavior—prayer or meditation; this
or that rite/ritual or ceremony—the Native American sweat-lodge ceremony or the
Judaic bat mitzvah; this or that oral story—the African Traditional Dogon
Creation Story or the koans of Zen or Ch’an Buddhism; this or that
written text—the Analects of Confucius or the Muslim/Islamicate
Q’uran; this or that person—a pious Methodist or devoted wiccan)
“religious”? A substantive answer
to this fundamental more philosophical question will provide us with a
classificatory or taxonomical framework universally descriptive of all
historical, contemporary, and yet-to-be manifested phenomena that are
categorizable as “religious.” An
attempt at such a substantive answer is very ambitious and fraught with
challenges; however, a substantive assertion is essential for grasping the scope
of that which is covered in a more general fashion through this more
survey-format course or that which is covered more specifically in any line of
inquiry identifiable as a function of “religious studies.”
Again, even in
contemplating the “What” of religious studies—the “What is ‘Religious-ness’”
puzzle or conundrum—one must be perpetually wary of the reductive or
reductionistic tendency. Thus, as
in any specific application of the scientific method, once one makes a
hypothesis, one must rigorously try to demonstrate exceptions to the hypothesis
in order to re-shape the scope of the hypothesis in the service of rendering the
hypothesis universally and accurately descriptive of all that the hypothesis
purports to describe.
In addressing
the “What” of religious studies puzzle/conundrum, it is most useful to follow
the
Otto, van der Leeuw, and Eliade, in turn, assert that any phenomenon
classifiable as “religious” must be correlated with primary experiences of
power: essentially the eruption of
the power that is the Somewhat, the Something Other, or the numinous/Wholly
Other into the empirical field or life-world of human being. Eliade classifies this kind of eruption
of the Somewhat/Something Other into the empirical field, a kratophany (a
Greek term meaning “the revelation or manifestation of power”). When the Somewhat/Something
Other/numinous erupts into the empirical field of human consciousness, human
being as Homo sapiens is transformed into Homo religiosus,
that is, the hominid who is oriented by, through, and towards some more primary
eruption of power into the “here and now” field… some kratophany.
When the Somewhat/Something Other/numinous erupts into the empirical
field, not only is this an eruption of power but it is also simultaneously an
incidence of the Holy (the English term holy is derivative from
the German term Heil or Heilig, again connoting power that is
extra-ordinary and Something Other or “Wholly Other”). Eliade asserts that a primary
kratophany is not only a manifestation of the powerful in the empirical
domain of human being but also simultaneously a manifestation of the holy: a hierophany in Eliade’s
terminology or parlance (throughout his books and journal articles, Eliade
refers to a hierophany/kratophany interface that is fundamental to any
derivative phenomenon that is classifiable as “religious”). Thus, inherent in any phenomenon that is
classifiable as “religious” is this fundamental quality of power-relatedness (in
the “Introductory Overview” of their textbook, Lewis Hopfe and Mark R. Woodward
refer to this kind of hypothesis concerning the “What is ‘religious-ness’”
puzzle as indicative of an approach to religious studies classifiable as
dynamism; however, I believe that the phenomenological assertions about
the primary power-orientation that is religious-ness, espoused by Otto,
van der Leeuw, and Eliade, are far more complex and descriptively accurate than
the rather reductive dynamism designation implies—in calling the
phenomenologists like Otto, van der Leeuw, and Eliade proponents of
dynamism in their approach to religious studies, thus implying that this
approach to religious studies is reductive, the critics themselves have become
reductive!).
As acculturated
to a significant degree in the phenomenological approach to religious studies, I
tend to concur with the fundamental approximations of Otto, van der Leeuw, and
Eliade: any phenomenon that is
classifiable as “religious” must be at least be derivatively a function of some
more primary orientation to a Somewhat/Something Other/numinous/wholly Other
that erupts into the empirical field of Homo sapiens in what can be
called the hierophany/kratophany interface. One of the most cited examples of this
provenient hierophany/kratophany dynamic, generative of a whole
historical and contemporary range of phenomena classifiable as “religious”
(albeit a cited example recognizable primarily to those acculturated to some
degree in the root gestalten of the Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) is the
sacred written or textual account of the figure Moses encountering the Wholly
Other designated “Yahweh” or YHWH on Mt. Sinai or Horeb, which constitutes a
primary, normative, framing element in the Hebrew and Judeo-Christian
Bibles. The Book of Exodus
from The Jerusalem Bible (a particular English translation of the
Judeo-Christian Bible or canonical/authoritative sacred text), relays the
account of Moses’ hierophanic/kratophanic experience as follows:
Moses was looking after the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, priest
of Midian.
He led his flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the
mountain
of God. There the angel of
Yahweh appeared to him in the shape of a flame of
fire, coming from the middle of a bush. Moses looked; there was a bush
blazing
but it was not being burned up.
‘I must go and look at this strange sight,’ Moses
said ‘and see why the bush is not burned.’ Now Yahweh saw him go forward
to
look, and God called to him from the middle of the bush. ‘Moses, Moses!’
he said.
‘Here I am’ he answered.
‘Come no nearer’ he said.
‘Take off your shoes, for the
place on which you stand is holy ground. I am the God of our father,’ he
said
‘the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.’ At this Moses
covered his face, afraid to look at God. (Exodus
3:1-6)
Through the text, one can deduce the fundamental
hierophany/kratophany formula alluded to by Otto and van der Leeuw and directly
identified by Eliade. This text is
but one specific manifestation or example of an isomorphic pattern evidenced in
an expansive range of phenomena (historical as well as contemporary) that are
classifiable as “religious.” Again,
in some primary or derivative fashion, that which is classifiable as “religious”
entails that which is a function of a fundamental orientation to—a being bound
to and paying attention to—a Somewhat/Something Other/numinous/wholly
Other. Thus, this isomorphic
pattern (a pattern of similarity evidenced in a range of apparently different or
disparate phenomena) is universally descriptive of all that is classifiable or
categorizable as “religious.”
In his classic phenomenological study called The Idea of the
Holy: An Inquiry into the
Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and Its Relation to the
Rational, published first in 1928, Rudolf Otto introduces the idea of the
numinous as a term connoting that which is “Wholly Other” or holy. Moreover, Otto explores the domain of
the human experience of this numinous or “Wholly Other”—the experience that
renders Homo sapiens also classifiable as Homo religiosus. Otto indicates that when Homo
sapiens understands herself/himself as Homo religiosus, through some
kind of primary or derivative experience of the numinous or the “Wholly Other,”
Homo sapiens becomes religiously conscious or exhibits a kind of
consciousness that must be called “religious.” Otto asserts that the experience of the
numinous, the “Wholly Other,” the holy, is an experience of mystery
(mysterium in Latin): a
mystery that is tremendous, fascinating, majestic, and evocative of a religious
fear (all these adjectives are used by Otto in their more Latin, cognate
senses). The classificatory term
“religious,” then, as a term connoting orientation that is a function of a
primary or derivative experience of the numinous/holy, must include human
agency: a religious consciousness
on the part of Homo religiosus.
Any phenomenon that is classifiable as “religious” must entail some
human response to a primary or derivative experience of the Somewhat/Something
Other/the numinous/the wholly Other”/the holy for human beings. That which is religious is that which in
some primary or secondary way entails human agency or response: orientation or orientatio is,
after all, a human response…a human consciousness…
The “binding” and “paying attention to” concepts of orientation
(traceable through an etymological or word-origin examination of the term
“religion”) become recurrently paramount or crucial in prehending (grasping) the
psychological—the non-rational and rational—content and the actual behavioral
dynamics indicative of religious “consciousness”: in his classic book/monograph called
The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion (Tr. by Willard R.
Trask. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1959), Mircea Eliade stresses the
dynamic centrality of orientation in terms of religious “consciousness,”
stating, “…for nothing can begin, nothing can be done, without previous
orientation—and any orientation implies acquiring a fixed point. It is for this reason that religious man
has always sought to fix his abode at the ‘center of the world’” (22). Remember, also, that Eliade stresses
that Homo sapiental consciousness itself is most primarily and originarily a
function of orientation around the axes of bipedal uprightness in the world:
again, Eliade states in A History of Religious Ideas,Vol. I… that, “It is
from this original and originating experience—feeling oneself ‘thrown’ into the
middle of an apparently limitless, unknown, and threatening extension—that the
different methods of orientation are developed; for it is impossible to survive
for any length of time in the vertigo brought on by disorientation” (3). That which is classifiable as
“religious” or religious “consciousness” itself begins and is sustained through
binding, intentional orientation; however, a most crucial question emerges when
we grasp the dynamic model or thought paradigm of orientation as our crux in
this line of inquiry called “religious studies” or “World Religions”—orientation
by, through, and towards WHAT!?
So far, we have encountered the conveniently amorphous terms like
“Somewhat,” “Something Other,” “the numinous,” “the “wholly Other,” or “the holy,” to
provide the reference points in relation to the “religion as orientation” assertion;
however, we are now at another crossroads of sorts in addressing the “What is
‘religious-ness’” puzzle, which demands that we trace and isolate a kind of
reference point for the intentional, binding orientation designated “religious
consciousness”—in a sense, that which is classifiable as “religious” represents
primarily or derivatively an orientation by, through, and towards WHAT!? According to van der Leeuw, this is a
question concerning the Object of religion or religiosity.
As a learning community rooted firmly in a Western context—that is, a
context shaped by the history of Western ideas—we must acknowledge that
Judeo-Christian gestalten and their derivative classificatory schemas and terms
have informed our own sensibilities either latently or directly. Thus, we are prone to evoke the name or
word “God”—the at once English and Judeo-Christian-related term for the
Somewhat/Something Other/numinous/wholly Other/holy. However, with a modicum or degree of
introspection, we realize that the term “God” is much too imprecise, has much
too specialized of a linguistic, semantic, and cultural pedigree, to be a
universally descriptive term for that connoted by the more universal terms, such
as “Somewhat” “Something Other”… “numinous”… “Holy”… The word “God” is descriptive and
transformationally powerful in its utterance within the Judeo-Christian cultus
or even in a world shaped by the Western intellectual tradition; however, the
word is not the most descriptively encompassing, most generalizable, most
universal term for that which Homo religiosus has oriented itself by,
through, and towards both throughout history and in the contemporary world. As Van der Leeuw asserts (as
memorialized in the cited material at the beginning of this lecture), “But when
we say that God is the object of religious experience, we must realize that
“God” is frequently an extremely indefinite concept which does not completely
coincide with what we ourselves usually understand it.” The word “God” bears an
entire genealogy or “archaeological” matrix of subtexts and/or nuances,
traceable along sometimes visible, sometimes invisible or abandoned, lineages of
usage, in multivalent cultural contexts (the term “God” is akin to the
Islamic-
Arabic “Allah”, the Ancient Semitic “El,” the Native
American-Algonquian “Manitou”); therefore, for our more trans-historical,
trans-cultural religious studies agenda, we need to isolate a more significantly
and conceptually encompassing term to designate and describe, in a focused
manner, the sacred, the holy—the orienting axis.
Van der Leeuw, in his own trans-historical, trans-cultural agenda,
attempts to isolate a more broadly universal, more encompassing designation,
which most inclusively encapsulates and re-presents all the essential qualities
and attributes of the Somewhat/Something Other/numinous/wholly Other/holy, as
evidenced in the entire range of historical and contemporary phenomena
classifiable as “religious”: the essential term mana (a term of
Melanesian/Oceanic—Southwest Pacific—cultural derivation). For van der Leeuw, the term Mana
is the most generalizable, most underivative (that is, not further
reducible to any more primary category), most universally descriptive, most
essential term and correlated notion for re-presenting in language that which is
implied in the more general terms “Somewhat,” “Something Other”… In Religion in Essence
and Manifestation, van der Leeuw asserts that the term Mana is a
“Melanesian name for the Infinite,” which connotes, “Influence, Strength, Fame,
Majesty, Intelligence, Authority, Deity, Capability, extraordinary Power:
whatever is successful, strong, plenteous: to reverence, be capable, to adore
and to prophesy” (24). Therefore, the idea of Mana becomes a most adequate
catch-all category for Van der Leeuw in terms of isolating a “common
denominator” in all the historical and contemporary modes of orientation and
their correlate phenomena classifiable as “religious.” Beyond the variety of phenomena
classifiable as “religious” is mana; beyond all human behaviors and practices
that are classifiable as “religious” is mana; beyond the names—the
onomastics—of religious signification (the English word “God” with its
roots in Old Teutonic; the Semitic “El”; the Native American-Algonquian
“Manitou”) is mana. Therefore, when
one understands that all which is classifiable as religious is a function of
some primary or derivative orientation by, through, and towards a
Somewhat/Something Other/numinous/wholly Other/holy, according to van der Leeuw,
one can concretize or focus more tangibly the more abstract terms for the
“object” of orientation through the term “mana”: for van der Leeuw, this is the
essential answer to the “orientation towards what?” puzzle, mentioned
above. As Van der Leeuw asserts,
“Power is authenticated (or verified) empirically: in all cases whenever
anything unusual or great, effective or successful is manifested, people speak
of mana” (25). For van der Leeuw,
then, all that is classifiable as religious—every interior
psychological/spiritual orientation and every exteriorized “product” or
expression of the interior psychological/spiritual orientation—involves some
kind of primary or derivative interface with mana.
In Van der Leeuw’s understanding of the “What is ‘religious-ness’”
puzzle, the origins, legacy, and tenacious persistence of religious
consciousness, experience, and expression/re-presentation/signification,
sustained by Homo religiosus, can be accurately described as entailing
apprehensions of (to “apprehend” means “to grasp”) and responses to mana. Homo religiosus (again, the
hominid that is religious) is born of and sustained through the attitudes and
posturings of amazement at, fear of, or awe towards the presence of mana:
To this Power, in conclusion, man’s reaction is amazement (scheu),
and in some
extreme cases, fear. Marett
employs the fine terms “awe”; and this attitude is
characterized by Power being regarded, not indeed as supernatural, but
as
extraordinary, or some markedly unusual type, while objects and persons
endowed
with this potency, have the essential nature of their own which we will
call
“sacred” (van der Leeuw 28).
The sacred and correlate consciousness/notion of the
sacred, then, originate and emerge when persons become oriented by,
through, and towards the Somewhat/Something Other/numinous/wholly
Other/holy—describable robustly through the term “mana”—and, thus, become
conscious of all aspects of their interior psychological/spiritual and
exterior/experiential life-worlds as governed by the religious orientation. Again, every phenomenon that can be
classified as “religious” somehow recapitulates or resonates the essential
mana-oriented-ness: an
oriented-ness that essentially defines the life-worlds of Homo religiosus
in terms of “sacred” or, as in some cases, “not sacred” (Eliade uses the
term “profane”) domains.
The Somewhat/Something Other/numinous/wholly Other/holy, graspable most
accurately through the term and correlate notion of mana, for van der Leeuw, is
the most essential, most fundamental, most underivative axis around which
Homo religosus has oriented herself/himself. Van der Leeuw maintains that mana is
primarily an undifferentiated
“field”: a unitary presence, which when it erupts in localization (in terms of
the space field), in temporalization (in terms of the time field), or is
differentiated into the empirical or observable field, becomes and sustains as
the axis or center point orienting both the cosmological sense in Homo
religious (the experienced, perceived, and rationalized order of the world
that becomes measurable through the exteriorized-externalized “product” of
Homo religiosus) and the correlate internal psychology (the experienced,
perceived, and rationalized interior “world” or microcosm of the human
psyche that participates in the larger cosmology). Therefore, Van der Leeuw postulates that
at its most essential level or base, every phenomenon that is classifiable as
“religious”—that is the externally or exteriorily quantifiable expression of
more fundamental interior orientation—affirms a monotheistic, or more
appropriately, monistic (unitary)—essence. The localizations of mana—the sacred
world order or orientation (cosmology), and even psychology (the microcosmic
“world order” of the human mind) all originate, extend from, and persist through
the unified and homogeneous essence of a vital “field”…mana.
Finally, then, as derivable from van der Leeuw’s normative assertions
(assertions that have profound impact on and import for religious studies, but
nevertheless, must not be hastily accepted as absolutely accurate without
continual scrutiny and analysis), any phenomenon that can be classifiable as
“religious”—any measurable or quantifiable historical or contemporary “product”
of Homo religious—is the direct, differentiated localization or
temporalization of the universal dynamic “field” of mana. Mana (a concretization of the more
unspeakable or ineffable mysteries correlated with the abstract terms
“Somewhat,” “Something Other,” “numinous,” “wholly Other,” “holy”) is the
undifferentiated, homogeneous, universal “field” which Homo religiosus is
always ultimately and intentionally oriented by, through, and towards. Therefore, all designations
approximating the fullness of the essential Somewhat/Something
Other/numinous/wholly Other/holy—the Chinese notion of the Tao or Way;
the Egyptian principle Ma’at, connoting “mutual complimentarity”; the
Judeo-Christian notion of Jesus the Christ as the logos or “Word of God”;
all specific names of or designations for the numinous—God, Manitou, El, Allah,
Olorun, Atman and Brahman, bhutatathata; all religious “products,”
re-presentations, significations, or encodings (words, inscriptions, gestures,
icons, religious cosmologies, religious psychologies, art, and architectures);
all attitudes of the sacred or sacramental…are functions of the
undifferentiated, unitary “field” that can best be uttered or spoken through the
term Mana. Therefore, based upon
this more phenomenological approach to resolving the “What is ‘religious-ness’”
puzzle (an approach that is de facto scientific in that it always demands
auto-correction in the service of deriving more accurately descriptive
hypotheses), the solution to the puzzle is a complex, yet simple, one: every
phenomenon that is classifiable as “religious” is in some primary or derivative
way a function of some fundamental orientation by, through, and toward a
Somewhat/Something Other/numinous/wholly Other/holy, identifiable through the
more specialized term mana, which orders through consecration all aspects
of the experienced, perceived, and rationalized world for Homo
religiosus: a fundamental
orientation that itself is always a function of some primary or derivative
hierophany/kratophany experience intrinsic to or inherent in religious
consciousness as such.