Ritual and Religious Experience – Part 2

Charles Seymour

Professor James, the famous American psychologist, in his delightfully written book – “Varieties of Religious Experience”, – emphasises the advantage of some study of the laws of psychology before considering seriously the religious phenomena of Mysticism. Even a slight knowledge of how the mind works will at times throw a flood of light on the real aims of, and the reasons for, many curious rites in the ancient Mystery Religions. Historical research which has been carried out since 1900, strongly tends to show that the educated priesthoods who served in the Mystery Religions of two thousand years ago had a very sound working knowledge of psychology.

Here it is necessary to point out that the regular study of books on the Mystery Religions which have been written before 1890 is largely a waste of time, at any rate for the beginner. So much has been discovered in the last forty five years that it is distinctly unsafe to quote the opinions of almost any modern writer who is prior to that date, the reason for this being that usually his data is inadequate, and so it is often mistakenly applied. It is a point, only too easily forgotten, that nowadays religious books like modern battleships, soon become obsolete.

Today we are slowly being driven to conclude that as regards education, the populace of the civilised parts of the Roman Empire were on a far higher level than was formerly thought to be possible. It is now known that the phenomena and the psychology of religious experience were both carefully studied and practically taught to the Initiates of the higher grades in many. of the ancient Mystery Schools; also that the training of the priestly Initiates must have lasted a great many years and been extremely thorough. Except in the Church if Rome, most modern Divinity Schools seem to give a very inadequate course of instruction. And, judging by what one hears the clergy expound from the pulpits, any instruction that may have been received seems only too often to have been quickly forgotten, or discarded.

In the Divinity Schools of most protestant sects little is taught about the psychology of ritual; indeed, only too often little beyond dates, and personalities, and blind condemnation of anything that savours of “Romanism”, comes the way of the average Divinity student. Failure to study Ritual as Power is an adequate explanation of the deplorable state of the Anglican Church of two hundred years ago, when Fox the Quaker called the Church of England a ‘dead church’ worshipping a ‘dead Christ’. Even Dean Inge seems to think that this reproach can be applied with only too much truth to the Church today: and the Dean of St Paul’s very definitely states that ‘the impregnable rock’ is ‘neither an institution nor a book, but life or experience’. Inge’s Christian Mysticism pp329-330).

Here perhaps a few words may be said about the phrase, used above, ‘To Study Ritual as Power’. It is not easy to explain all that this sentence implies, but an attempt to do so by analogy will be made. For example, you may go into a place of worship; it feels cold and dead, there is no warmth, no feeling, and it produces in you no desire to worship. As one sometimes hears it put – “There is no atmosphere”. Yet the place of worship may have cost much to build, it may be beautifully decorated and most expensively kept up. The Preacher may be a very learned man, a very good man, and a very hard-working, tactful man. Nevertheless the place seems to feel more like a lecture hall than a place of worship. Most of us have ‘felt’ something like this, at some time or other.

Perhaps a quarter of a mile away, there is another place of worship. It may be in a poor quarter. It may be cheap and tawdry. But while its decorative effect may offend your good taste, there seems to meet you, as you enter, a something which makes you want to pray, or at least to sit quiet and rest in its atmosphere. That something is what Rudolph Otto calls the “numinous”. It is a feeling of the nearness of the ‘Unseen’.

One can learn a lot from a good Quakers’ meeting. For example, I know a Quakers’ meeting house. It is the plainest and most inartistic room I have ever been in. The congregation mostly were people who worked with their hands six days a week; simple folk, perhaps widely read in some ways, but with no university polish about them. At the time, I wondered if they knew what they were doing; for, at the end of fifteen minutes’ silence, that room was humming like a dynamo with spiritual power. You see they were trained in “The Ritual of Silence”; and they were carrying it out with one accord in one place: This is a point of vital importance. But when a speaker began to ‘rant’, the atmosphere perceptibly lessened. Now can you imagine an untrained congregation such as one finds on some of the Anglican Churches, sitting tense and motionless and fully concentrated on the “Ritual of Silence”?

If you understand religion to mean contact with the ‘numen’, then there are two main aspects to religion: the aspect of Meditation and the aspect of Ritual. Either will take you far along a straight, steep and narrow path that will lead to “Realisation”. Either aspect, by itself, can take you a long way along ‘the Path’. But if you want to travel far and to travel fast, unless you are an exceptional person, with rare spiritual gifts, you will be well advised to combine both aspects and to make full use of the powers which ritual gives as well as the powers which meditation gives. For with these two acting in combination you can have a speed, a balance, and a harmony, which is so often lacking when one aspect only is used, and when the other aspect is neglected and its power unknown.

The Mystery Religions made a great point of combining meditation and ritual in a balanced harmony in their system of training; they knew how controlled meditation can help a tortured mind; they also knew that a Mystery ritual, if properly worked, has a strange power of refreshing a tired soul and of calming a mind burdened with doubt or sorrow, or trouble. They knew, too, that a ritual, to be effective, must be worked with that power which can only come from knowledge, study and faith. In religion, practical knowledge confers very potent powers on those who can use them.

Commentary by Christian Gilson

William James, was the elder brother of the novelist Henry James. In his early adulthood, James suffered from a variety of physical and mental difficulties, including problems with his eyes, back, stomach, and skin, as well as periods of depression in which he was tempted by the thought of suicide. He went on to study medicine at Harvard Medical School in 1864. James spent his entire academic career at Harvard. He was appointed instructor in physiology for the spring 1873 term, instructor in anatomy and physiology in 1873, assistant professor of psychology in 1876, assistant professor of philosophy in 1881, full professor in 1885, endowed chair in psychology in 1889, return to philosophy in 1897, and emeritus professor of philosophy in 1907.

James’ Varieties of Religious Experience has remained a key work on the subject that still has its place on the shelves of many a contemporary theologian. The book is a collection of talks given by James for the annual Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh. James was not interested in studying religious institutions or doctrines. He focused instead on “the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.” For example, James compared two different types of religion according to the feelings and emotions that they instilled in people—the “Religion of Healthy-Mindedness” versus the “Sick Soul.”

To James, all religious experiences represent the workings of an important biological function within all human beings. He finds religion useful on the whole for all people although this does not necessarily make it true. According to James, religion connects human beings to some greater reality that we cannot readily experience in our normal everyday interactions with the world.

Mysticism is an important aspect of religion that in the last few decades has been passed over, even shunned by mainstream religion. Mainly because of the implicit difficulty of controlling and managing the claims made by mystics as a result of their subjective experiences. In modern times, “mysticism” has acquired a limited definition, with broad applications, as meaning the aim at the “union with the Absolute, the Infinite, or God”. This limited definition has been applied to a wide range of religious traditions and practices, valuing “mystical experience” as a key element of mysticism. Since the 1960s scholars have debated the merits of perennial (that there is universal similarity between these experiences that stretches throughout history) and constructionist (that these experiences are relevant only within a particular time and place) approaches in the scientific research of “mystical experiences”. The perennial position is now “largely dismissed by scholars”, most scholars using a contextual approach, which takes the cultural and historical context into consideration.

In the first paragraph it is clear that Seymour favours a perennial approach, and there are merits in such a position, which can be found in the writings of Aldous Huxley and the Theosophical Society. Both of which Seymour would have been very familiar. The warning he gives about the problem of obsolete scholarship is an important one that is still relevant today, particularly in the fields of science and archaeology in which new methods and interpretations of material are constantly being developed.

Seymour’s respect for the Roman Catholic Church is very interesting. At the time that particular denomination retained the Latin mass and with it the air of mystery. This has long since gone and I would wager the Seymour would find it hard to distinguish the Catholic priest from the Anglican minister in a standard Sunday homily. The same is true of the mass itself, with the training of priests focussing more on the pastoral element of ministry than the mystical aspects of ritual. This has contributed to the erosion of the authority of the church, and the decline in the production of modern mystical and devotional works. Much of what is produced now for the believer is focussed on the pastoral benefits of relationship with God. Indeed his words about the failure to study ritual as power can be extended to most modern denominations and new Christian movements. The focus has moved from mystery to the world and the need for consolation and promise. This can be seen in the decline in Church attendance nationally. Indeed when asked many state this fact as the reason for their move towards alternative religious expressions, and new religious movements such as paganism. They want a less dogmatic approach to their relationship with God, and the freedom to experience for themselves. In other words they are expressing a need for greater mystery, and the possibility of personal religious experience that is not hemmed in or explained away.

We must concur with Seymour’s observation that many places of worship lack the energy of reverence or awe. They have become tourist sites, where the art is to be enjoyed rather than worship given. Or more often than not we find them used for musical concerts, or literary readings. Often the Church itself is used for the playgroup or as a meeting place, or market place hosting the Christmas Fair. These buildings have become community centres rather than places of sacred worship. These profane uses of the space erode the spiritual energy that may have been present. Whilst there are other Christian groups that meet in profane social spaces; community centres, school halls, theatres, and cafes. Where the building up of sacred energy is impossible to achieve.

Yet there are many places where we can encounter this numinous presence, and these are often places in nature, or places of great antiquity. It is a place where we find ourselves emotionally moved, they convey to us a great sense of awe and wonder. There are modern spaces that also inspire this feeling not because of their architecture or some simple external factor. Often, we are unable to say precisely why they have moved us. William James would say that such an experience is ineffable, we are unable to find words to explain what has happened to us. There is this sense when entering the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, the visiting tourist finds a deep and abiding silence and sense of reverence descend without any requirement being placed upon them. They are simply encountering that build-up of spiritual energy that has come from the prayers of those who have been and are still members of the worshipping community. Yet we can walk a few yards into Haga Sophia and experience the opposite.

The importance of meditation and ritual that Seymour underlines here is an indicator of a far more fundamental distinction, the division of public and private worship. Ritual suggests the public element in which the individual can experience community, and more importantly can share the experience of relationship with the Divine. All religions have an aspect of this communal public worship. It serves to build a sense of identity and belonging, as well as establishing the boundaries that define the group or faith community. In occultism this group identity gives rise to the group mind and group spirit, the egregore, which is in every way as important as the functioning of the individuals within the group. This spiritual other that is the active combination of the worshipping community acts to bring the spiritual power into focus within the sacred space, and also serves many other roles that are too vast to explore in this commentary.

The role of meditation whether done alone or in community is a personal or private form of worship. The believer who only attends ritual misses the richness of a personal relationship with the Divine. Indeed, in the Judaeo-Christian tradition the believers are told “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). The act of meditation gives the opportunity for contemplating concepts and seeking a greater understanding, it also allows for mediation, where direction is gained from the Inner Planes.

Seymour has said a great deal in this very short article. Most importantly he has pinpointed the problem with modern expressions of religion, especially in the United Kingdom. The all too rapid move to please the growing secular public has divorced ritual from its roots in the mystical. This has left us with ineffectual faith communities and this can be judged by the absence of spiritual power within their places of worship. This argument can be extended to many of the new religious movements. It can be seen in neo-paganism that there is a growing preference for celebrations rather than expressions of deeper spiritual connection. Without due care and attention, a movement that was started out of a desire to take personal responsibility for our personal spiritual development will go the same way as the spiritless lip service found amongst other religious communities.