Dimensions of the sacred
- Key People:
- Mircea Eliade
- Rudolf Otto
- Related Topics:
- hell
- heaven
- divine intervention
- mythical being
- spirit
The sacred, by definition, pervades all dimensions of life. Within the kind of religious apprehension that is expressed in sacred myth and ritual, however, there is a special focus on time, place (cosmos), and active agents (heroes, ancestors, divinities). When existence is seen in terms of the dichotomy of sacred and profane—which assumes that the sacred is wholly other than, yet necessary for, everyday existence—it is very important to know and to get in contact with the sacred. In periodic festivals men celebrate sacred time; a sacred calendar marks off the intervals of man’s life, and these sacred festivals provide the pattern for productive and joyous living.
Seasonal sacred calendars are especially important in predominantly agricultural societies. In the very order of nature, people see that different seasons have their distinct values. These differences are celebrated with spring festivals (when the world is re-created through ritual expressions of generation) and harvest festivals (of thanksgiving and of protecting the life force in seeds for the next spring). Here time is regarded as cyclical, and one’s life is marked by those rituals in which one continually returns to the divine source.
Similarly, the myths and rituals mark off the world (cosmos) into places that have special sacred significance. The territory in which one lives is real insofar as it is in contact with the divine reality. Within this territory is life; outside it is chaos, danger, and demons. Throughout most of history the “sacred world” was coextensive with a certain territory, and one could speak literally of Christian lands, the Jewish homeland, the Muslim world, the place of the noble people (Āryāvarta, Hindu), or the central kingdom (China). Consecrating one’s possession of land with certain rituals was equal to establishing an order with divine sanction. In Vedic ritual, for example, the erection of a fire altar (in which the god Agni—fire—was present) was the establishment of a cosmos on a microcosmic scale. Once a cosmos is established, there are certain places that are especially sacred. Certain rivers, mountains, groves of trees, caves, or human constructions such as temples, shrines, or cities provide the “gate,” “ladder,” “navel,” or “pole” between heaven and earth. This sacred place is that which both allows the sacred power to flow into existence and gives order and stability to life.
Another dimension of the sacred is divine or heroic activity: the decisive action done by creative or protective agents. One’s spiritual ancestors need not be biologically defined ancestors; they may not even be human. They are the essential forces on which survival depends and can be embodied in animal skills (longevity, rebirth, magical skills), in the “ways of the ancients,” or through a special hero who has provided present existence with material and spiritual benefits. If the notion of sacred manifestation is extended to include the social relationships (especially tabus) in a community, then communal relations can be viewed as a dimension through which the sacred is manifested. Here human values are sacralized by social restraints that prescribe—e.g., with whom one can eat or whom one can marry or kill. The establishment of a community requires forming certain relationships; and these relationships are sacred when they bear the power of ultimate, eternal, cosmic force. For example, the consecration of a king or emperor in traditional agricultural societies was the establishment of a system of allegiance and order for society.
By extending the notion of “sacralization” to include human reorganization of experience within the context of any absolute norm, the sacred can be seen in such dimensions of life as history, self-consciousness, aesthetics, and philosophical reflection (conceptualization). Each of these modes of human experience can become the creative force whereby some people have “become real” and gained the most profound understanding of themselves.
Critical problems
Phenomenologists of religion who use the concept “sacred” as a universal term for the basis of religion differ in their estimation of the nature of the sacred manifestation. Otto and van der Leeuw hold (in different formulations) that the sacred is a reality that transcends the apprehension of the sacred in symbols or rituals. The forms (ideograms) through which the sacred is expressed are secondary and are simply reactions to the “wholly other.” Kristensen and Eliade, on the other hand, regard the sacred reality to be available through the particular symbols or ways of apprehending the sacred. Thus, Kristensen places emphasis on how the sacred is apprehended, and Eliade describes different modalities of the sacred, while Otto looks beyond the forms toward a meta-empirical source.
A second problem is the continuing question of whether or not the sacred is a universal category. There are religious expressions from various parts of the world that clearly manifest the kind of structure of religious awareness characterized above. It is especially apropos of some aspects in the religion of nonliterate societies, the ancient Near East, and some popular devotional aspects of Hinduism. There is, however, a serious question regarding the usefulness of this structure in interpreting a large part of Chinese religion, the social relationships (dharma) in Hinduism, the effort to achieve superconscious awareness in Hinduism (Yoga), Jainism, Buddhism (Zen), some forms of Daoism, and some contemporary (modern) options of total commitment that, nevertheless, reject the notion of an absolute source and goal essentially different from human existence. If one takes the notion of sacred as something above (beyond, different from) the religious structure dominated by divine or transcendent activity (described above), then this suggests that the notion of sacredness should not be limited to that structure. Thus, some scholars have found it confusing to use the notion of sacred as a universal religious quality, for it has been accepted by many religious people and by scholars of religion as referring to only one (though important) type of religious consciousness.
The 20th-century discussion of the nature and manifestation of the sacred includes other approaches than those of scholars in the comparative study of religions. For example, Sri Aurobindo, a Hindu mystic-philosopher, speaks of the supreme reality as the “Consciousness-Force”; and Nishida Kitaro, a Japanese philosopher, expresses his apprehension of universal reality as that of “absolute Nothingness.” Martin Heidegger, a German philosopher, speaks of “the holy” as that dimension of existence through which there is the illumination of the things that are, though it is no absolute Being prior to existence; rather it is a creative act at the point of engaging the Nothing (Nichts). In contrast, the Protestant theologian Karl Barth rejects philosophical reflection or mystical insight for apprehending the sacred, and insists that personal acceptance of God’s self-revelation in a particular historical form, Jesus Christ, is the place to begin any awareness of what philosophers call “ultimate.”
Sociologists who study religion have, since Durkheim, usually identified the sacred with social values that claim a supernatural basis. Nevertheless, the sacred has been identified predominantly as found in the social occasions (festivals) that disrupt the common social order (by Caillois), or as the reinforcing of social activities that secure a given social structure (by Howard Becker). During the 1960s, however, the usual definition of religion as those sacred activities which claimed a transcendent source was questioned by some empirical scholars. For example, Thomas Luckmann, a German-American sociologist, described the sacred in modern society as that “strata of significance to which everyday life is ultimately referred”; and this definition includes such themes as “the autonomous individual” and “the mobility ethos.”
The sacred today
The problems of defining and investigating religion mentioned above are already expressive of the shifts in modern consciousness regarding the sacred. Both the physical and social sciences have given modern man a new image of himself and techniques for improving his present life. The acceptance of rational and critical perspectives for judging the claims of religious authorities in Europe since the 18th century, plus the development of historical criticism and a sense of historical relativism, has contributed to the affirmation of man as basically a secular person. The once absolute authorities in the West (the Bible, priest, rabbi) are no longer the prime sources for one’s self-identity. To a growing extent the cultures in the East are also experiencing a loss of their traditional authorities. Some attempts have been made to resacralize contemporary cosmology, history, and personal experience by (1) extending the scope of religious concerns to “secular” areas such as politics, economics, personality development, and art; and (2) modifying theological positions, ethical norms, and liturgical forms to incorporate new modes of expression and to experiment with new styles of living.
An important 20th-century development in religious life has been the easy flow of information between religious communities on different continents. This has provided an opportunity for experimenting with religious forms from outside the traditionally acceptable forms in a culture. During the 1950s and 1960s, for example, Yoga and Zen meditation were serious religious options for some Westerners and a form of experimentation for large numbers. The concern to experiment with personal experience and with styles of living during the 1960s in the West has itself been considered an important religious expression by some commentators. These years saw considerable exploration in exotic experience with psychedelic drugs, many attempts to set up new communities for group living (communes)—though few lasted more than a year—and a shift in the values of middle class youth from a concern for personal economic security to social and experiential concerns. These recent activities may be viewed as attempts to recapture the experience of the sacred.
Throughout the past hundred years a number of philosophers and social scientists have asserted the disappearance of the sacred and predicted the demise of religion. A study of the history of religions shows that religious forms change and that there has never been unanimity on the nature and expression of religion. Whether or not man is now in a new situation for developing structures of ultimate values radically different from those provided in the traditionally affirmed awareness of the sacred is a vital question. The suggestion that a radically different kind of reality is possible is, of course, nonsense for those to whom the sacred already has been manifested once and for all in a particular form.
Frederick J. Streng