The Sacred Dimension

The eternality of religion is rooted in the eternality of the sacred in human consciousness.

(Robert Nisbet: The Social Bond: 241)

            Last post discussed the sacred essence of the human reality.  But this inner dimension must connect with an outer dimension of sacredness in the world for sacred energy to flow.  But we must also be careful with terminology and what “spacial” metaphors imply.  Inner and outer are not different and separate regions. The designations are meant, rather, to indicate one power manifest in two places: the “general” place of the spiritual creation and the “specific” place of the individual human soul.  But this relationship is like that between the ocean and the wave.  The cosmos is neither just within us nor entirely outside us, but everywhere at once—and with children the relationship between inner and outer is very close. 

            What is the sacred?  The sacred is not simply an object, a belief, or just some special feeling one has about something or someone.  The sacred is, first of all, a power, a dynamic life-force.  Like gravity, it acts upon human beings whether they are aware of it or not.  But it is a dimension that can manifest itself.  Human beings to be complete require the sacred and a connection with it for the world and themselves to have purpose and to make sense.  Engaging and connecting with the sacred is the experience of transcendence and the infusion of energy to power positive transformation.  While we can aspire to it, we can not reach it unaided.  It must reach down and “grasp” us. 

            Sociologist Peter Berger wrote: “By sacred is meant a quality of mysterious and awesome power, other than man and yet related to him, which is believed to reside in certain objects of experience.” (The Sacred Canopy: 25)   This power is a felt presence both within something, or within ourselves, that human beings encounter and can connect to.   On the archaic level of culture, the real -- that is, the powerful, the meaningful, the living -- is equivalent to the sacred.  The great scholar Mircea Eliade writes: “For primitives as for man of all pre-modern societies, the sacred is equivalent to a power, and, in the last analysis, to reality.  The sacred is saturated with being.  Sacred power means reality and at the same time enduringness and efficacity.” (The Sacred and the Profane:12)  

            Thus the sacred is not a projection of human desire.  Neither is it simply something of great concern, or seriousness.  It is not that such and such is “sacred to me”, though such an attitude obviously exists.  The sacred is an objective dimension of existence.  It does not originate from within human subjectivity, but exists beyond humanity as the source and ground of that subjectivity.  If we don’t “get it” it is because it hasn’t gripped us.  Perhaps it hasn’t gripped us because a too narrow view of reality precludes the possibility of its existence, or calls it something else. 

            The sacred is something with infinite and mysterious depths, whether God, our own soul, human relationships, or the universe.  Experiencing the sacred is of a qualitatively different order of experience than that of the ordinary.  It is the experience of a power that empowers. Sacredness is not bestowed by human beings, but is perceived and received by them, and aroused within them.  The sacred makes up the transcendent content of our lives and only our transcendent self recognizes it for what it is. 

            There is no doubt that, traditionally, religion has been the chief vehicle for this kind of experience.  Religion has always said that there is something “in here”, the deep, metaphysical within of the human reality, the immanent divinity usually called “soul” or spirit that responds to a transcendent Power, called God, the Divine, “out there.”  But by religion I don’t mean the hoary dogmas and churchy ideas that have crept into what is the most powerful experience humans are capable of having.  The religious instinct is a resident power of the human spirit.  It spontaneously manifests itself in children when they make inquiries like: “Mommy, who made God?”  

            The great psychologist Jung said of religion: “Religion, as the careful observation and taking account of certain invisible and uncontrollable factors, is an instinctive attitude peculiar to man, and its manifestations can be followed all through human history.” (The Undiscovered Self:26) Sociologist Daniel Bell believes: “The power of religion derives from the fact that, before ideologies or other modes of secular belief, it was the means of gathering together, in one overpowering vessel, the sense of the sacred—that which set us apart as the collective conscience of a people.” (The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism:154).  Historian, Arnold Toynbee, believed that religion is one of the most powerful drives behind the development of a new civilization. Religion, he felt, is the cultural glue which holds civilization together.  He said, “religion, after all, is the serious business of the human race."  Another historian, Christopher Dawson, believed that “it is of the essence of religion to bring man into relation with transcendental and eternal realities.” (Religion and the Rise of Western Culture: 25)     

            “Religion,” explains Peter Berger, “is the human enterprise by which a sacred cosmos is established.” (The Sacred Canopy: 25)   It is “the audacious attempt to conceive of the entire universe as being humanly significant.” (The Sacred Canopy: 28)  “Religion,” states Neil Postman, “may be defined as our attempt to give a total, integrated response to questions about the meaning of existence.” (The End of Education:152)   Sociologist Andrew Greeley writes: “Religion is man’s view of ultimate reality, a view learned in community and generating community, a view which demands the involvement of the whole man and thus embodies itself in myth and produces, in some form or other, a sense of the numinous or the transcendent.” (Unsecular Man: 173)  

            Regarding religion’s connection with human intelligence, anthropologist Gregory Bateson says “religion is a rich, internally structured model that stands in metaphorical relationship to the whole of life, and therefore can be used to think with.” (Angels Fear: Towards an Epistemology of the Sacred:195)   Daniel Bell writes: “Religion…is a constitutive part of man’s consciousness: the cognitive search for the pattern of the ‘general order’ of existence; the affective need to establish rituals and to make such conceptions sacred; the primordial need for relatedness to some others, or to a set of meanings which will establish a transcendent response to the self; and the existential need to confront the finalities of suffering and death.” (The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism:169)  In short: “Religion is the consciousness of society,” (The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism:155) 

            Dr. Alfred Meier writes: “...the religious belongs to the wholeness of the human personality….The subjective experience connected with a religious phenomenon and with healing is actually one of transcendence and this transcendence is a new element which was not in the system from the beginning.” (Jung’s Analytic Psychology and Religion: 73)

            The Bahá’í Writings speak of “…religion as the principal force impelling the development of human consciousness.” (One Common Faith: 23)  Religion is “a source of knowledge that totally embraces consciousness.” (One Common Faith: 13-14)  These same Writings warn that: "Should the lamp of religion be obscured, chaos and confusion will ensue, and the lights of fairness and justice, of tranquillity and peace cease to shine. Unto this will bear witness every man of true understanding." (Tablets of Baha’u’llah: 269)

Religion, not as personal experience but, rather, as a system of knowledge is the result of a collective, objective relationship with what is sacred, supernatural, divine, and mystical.  It is not an invention of the imagination or some needy wish-fulfillment of weak minds or socially marginalized groups.  Neither is it an opiate of the lazy and spiritually indolent.  The religious instinct is a perennial power.  As a perennial power it always performs the same function, namely, the bringing forth of human consciousness and human society by connecting with the sacred, the divine, the powers greater than human driving the universe.  It is not something that can be “outgrown” or discarded without losing something inherent within us, without denying some faculty necessary to fully engage the universe as a creation, without shattering both the wholeness of the human personality and society. 

            No education worth its salt could ever deny developing such a potent power without suffering grave distortions in its ability to present and interpret Reality. Being without full use of the religious power is like being deprived of the use of the faculty of sight.  Being deprived of sight would severely restrict the ability of the person to engage with visible Nature and revel in its glories.  Yet deliberately denying the existence of the faculty of religion is what western society has done.  I will trace some of that spiritual undevelopment of the west next.