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Religion serves as the glue that holds community
together. It provides our moral and ethical values, and it asks us to
seek and manifest higher virtue. Religion gives the community various
traditions and symbols that provide focus, direction, and cohesion. It
also suggests possible answers to the unanswerable questions of life,
such as ‘Why am I here’ and ‘What is life’s purpose’?
The shadow side of religion can be harmful in that
it may focus on power, hierarchical concealment, and war in the name of
God. However, if we are aware of the pitfalls, we are better prepared
to avoid the trap.
A quote from Joseph Campbell opens our dialog on
religions: “An honest comparison immediately reveals that all
[religions] have been built from one fund of mythological motifs –
variously selected, organized, interpreted, and ritualized, according to
local need, but revered by every people on earth” (1987, p.
4). In this quote, Campbell is telling us that all religions
originate from
the same archetypal story, and that the various religions are an outgrowth
of different tribal or cultural traditions. Indeed, society needs
religion as a container for its mythological history.
The religious archetype
stems from humanity’s roots, and humankind needs myth to make sense of
life circumstances. “Man, apparently, cannot maintain himself in the
universe without belief in some arrangement of the general inheritance
of myth. In fact, the fullness of his life would even seem to stand in
a direct relation to the depth and range not of his rational thought but
of his local mythology” (Campbell, 1987, p. 4). Myths are stories that
stimulate the imagination and the heart and exist as a part of our
archetypal heritage. Mythological themes of death and resurrection, the
virgin birth, and creation appear in all the various religions and
cannot be claimed as exclusive to any major religious group (Eliade,
1967).
Our mythological dramas
are born out of the same consciousness as the four year old’s magical
playtime. When the four year old pretends to be the ‘witch’, she truly
‘becomes’ the witch in her own imagination. Today’s religious liturgy
is an outgrowth of this magical consciousness that created the ancient
gods. Many of today’s religious rituals are based on pagan rites that
were assimilated in an attempt to appeal to the members of the
community. Religion is compelling because it is magical, and it excites
the primitive and emotionally charged part of the brain that seeks
answers to life’s mysteries.
Today’s world is rooted
in the rational, however science cannot provide us with answers or
reasons for our existence, nor can it give us a sense of the meaning or
purpose in our lives. Religion’s task is to provide us with these
answers, because meaning and purpose presuppose and demand an
understanding of the unknown esoteric realms that science cannot
fathom. Birth, death, and the hereafter is the domain of mystery - what
meaning does existence itself possess if some part of us does not
survive the death of the body? Our myths, dreams, fantasies, and
imaginings flow from mystical realms of consciousness, and they provide
our answers to these questions. Religion’s purpose is to give meaning
and structure to these mystical experiences.
As noted before, Jung
coined the term archetype to represent a collective image that occurs
across cultures. The same motifs play out in all tribes, and these
archetypes preserve the collective energy or roles necessary for
survival. A tribe cannot exist without a healing force, ruling force,
and Warrior force. The Divine or God force is also necessary, because
it explains existence and gives community a model for morality, ethics,
and the fair and just treatment of others. It is a civilizing energy
and it supplies a container for the expansion and evolution of
consciousness.
Religion elicits an
emotional response, much like art and poetry. Ancient art was probably
an attempt to express the mythical nature of the culture. Artistic
renderings on cave walls may indeed represent prayers offered to the
gods as an attempt to control the day-to-day functioning of the good
hunt, the weather, the birth and death of individuals, and the rise and
rule of nobles. Campbell notes that “mythology is a rendition of forms
through which the formless Form of forms can be known” (1987, p 55). He
is saying that mythology gives us an outer or concrete picture that
represents the inner or ‘formless form’ so that we can make the leap in
consciousness from the outer or perceptual realm to the inner or
mystical realm. Indeed, this is its purpose. Religion is a product of
the consciousness that experiences the numinous.
Thus, the outer symbol is
a description or representation of the internal and eternally mystical
in the same way that art, music, poetry, and writing are outer symbols
or descriptions of an internal experience. We see a rose, and we call
it a rose, but the name is not the experience of the rose. Harry Palmer
(1997) explains that this is the difference between a word lesson and a
world lesson, meaning that the name or label is not the experience of
the thing itself. We face the same difficulty when we try to describe
or name the Ultimate Reality or God, because the name of God is not the
experience of God.
Religion arises from our
most basic tribal roots. The first gods were nature gods,
representative of the natural forces of the world. Myths arose around
birth, death, and regeneration as an attempt to explain and understand.
Thus, gods were born out of human self awareness. When people first
recognized their mortality, they needed to make sense of life, and over
the centuries, tribes formed vast traditions and teachings in response
to basic life questions. Campbell (1987) tells us that mythological
themes parallel civilization advances, and the first figurines of
goddesses appear around 4500 to 3500 B.C. It is not a far stretch to
imagine that goddesses were connected with fertility and represented a
good harvest and lavish food supply. By revering the goddess, the tribe
ensured the harvest, and over time, elaborate rituals and traditions
were created to appease the goddess.
Campbell (1987)
postulates two ways of understanding our symbols, rituals, and
traditions – the elementary and ethnic. First, a ritual has an
‘elementary’ aspect, an esoteric or universal theme that is common to
all cultures and traditions. The elementary theme is interpreted and
understood through the ‘ethnic’ traditions which are cultural,
historical or sociological in nature and specific to the place and
time. The universal or elementary aspect transforms and disengages the
individual from the local and leads him to the ineffable or numinous
experience. The ethnic or historical ties the individual to his culture
and society, his family and history. Confusion arises when one is
unable to understand both aspects. If one uses a symbol purely as a
historical tie to ethnic rituals and rites, then the symbol loses its
mystical and transcending nature. It also keeps the individual locked
in his own tribal translation of the universal principle. This results
in religious separation and misunderstanding, because other ethnic forms
from other tribes will not be accepted or appreciated as similar yet
unique expressions of the esoteric principle.
Thus the same universal
deity can be worshipped by different individuals from different vantage
points and be experienced in vastly different ways. Religious adherents
from different tribes may have a completely different experience of the
same Deity based on the level of consciousness or cultural tradition
from which they experience that Deity. By contrast, individuals from
vastly different ethnic backgrounds can experience different tribal
Deities in the same ecstatic experience if they see the underlying
universal principle. They understand that different Deities are
expressions of the same esoteric principle, even though they call them
by different names.
It is the ethnic
difference that causes wars. Religion emphasizes the ethnic
understanding of the cultural Deity and loses the Mystical or spiritual
experience that embraces the esoteric or numinous understanding of the
formless. The ethnic ties us to the world, and the esoteric elevates us
in consciousness to the experience of the Divine. The ethnic yokes us
to cultural experiences of pleasure, power, and the laws of virtue, and
the esoteric releases us into enlightenment and transcendence. The true
role and purpose of the ethnic is to lead us to the esoteric, but it
requires a deeper understanding and development in consciousness for
this movement to occur.
Religious followers
mistake the literal form for the symbolic form at certain levels of
consciousness. The individual in Fowler’s (1987) Stage 3 consciousness
does not understand that the symbol is not the full reality, and he
gives symbolic form a literal meaning. The stage 5 individual
understands that the literal and the symbolic exist in the same form.
An individual in Stage 2 or 3 faith is willing to fight wars over this
literal understanding which is why an expansion of consciousness and an
understanding of faith development are necessary for world survival.
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