The Encyclopedia of World Religions

religious experience S 385

ability to act for the benefit of others in a commu nity even to the point of self-sacrifice, had survival value for early humans and therefore was sanc tioned by religious myths and symbols. In the end, though, it is important to realize that human religion is a complex thing. Probably all that now goes under the name of religion does not have a single common origin, and no one the ory explains it all. Further reading: Paul A. Erickson, A History of Anthropological Theory (Peterborough, Ont.: Broad view, 2003); David Lewis-Williams, The Mind in the Cave (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2004); Eric Sharpe, Comparative Religion: A History (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1986); Edward O. Wilson, Sociobiology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975). religious experience Feelings, often intense, that are associated with a sense of religious aware ness and interpreted religiously. They are various in type. The term mystical experience is often used for profound, peaceful, timeless states that are thought to be experiences of oneness, of unity with the divine without separation. They may, as in B UDDHISM or V EDANTA Hinduism, be considered to be realizations of the impersonal divine essence that is already within; or, as in religions with a personal G OD , such as C HRISTIANITY , I SLAM , or BHAKTI Hinduism, occasions of drawing very close to God in love, so that the two become one in the way that two lovers might. PRAYER can produce a rich sense of communication with God but not oneness in the mystical sense. Even guilt can be a religious experience, less pleasant perhaps, of sin fulness and the way it separates one from God; it can lead to amendment through confession, pen ance, and a change in one’s way of life. Intellec tual religious experience can be a mainly mental realization of a religious truth, perhaps stimulated by sermon, lecture, or reading, accompanied by the exaltation one feels at such understanding in an important matter. Aesthetic religious experi ence is the feeling of being deeply moved that one

or idea and more toward seeing it as just a part of human culture generally. Religion’s development goes along with the emergence of memory, lan guage, art, and story. Certain features of religion clearly have roots extending far back to early human ancestors: ritual behavior, and by some reports the ability to express awe in a particularly “numinous” place. But such attitudes could not become fully religious until the awakening of what the Nobel Prize winner Gerald Edelman ( Bright Air, Brilliant Fire, 1994) has called higher-order consciousness, which includes the notion of a personal self, an ability to imagine long-term past or future possi bilities, and a view of the self as an actor with various possible choices. Edelman argues that this kind of consciousness appeared with Homo sapi ens, the kind of human we are, who emerged per haps 50,000–100,000 years ago. Among the early expressions of this distinctive human self-aware ness may have been the famous cave art. David Lewis-Williams ( The Mind in the Cave, 2002) linked cave art, SHAMANISM , and religion in an interesting way. He says that Homo sapiens may first have entered the new higher-order con sciousness using drumming, rhythmic actions, and intense concentration to induce trances in which they might recall memories, dream, and see VISIONS —and possibilities—outside the pres ent. These practices are all characteristic of sha manism, which Lewis-Williams, among others, suggests was the first form of what is now called human religion ( see PREHISTORIC RELIGION ). Shamans were adepts of the new kind of con sciousness. Art, including cave art, was, in Lewis Williams’s view, a way of recording what they saw, as it were to keep the visions alive. That was undoubtedly also the purpose of early religious practices like dancing, telling stories that became myths, and making special sacred places. Religion, in this view, began as a kind of expanded lan guage to convey a new human consciousness. At the same time, religion would also have acquired social functions, giving communities symbols of their cohesion and enforcing moral norms. Another recent theory is that of sociobiologists like Edward Wilson. They argue that altruism, the