Class May 3, 2006

Bring: Bowl, pillow case, candle, matches, Mother Teresa Video, Study guides for final exam, cartoon

Focus #1—Human Existence and the Sanctified Life

1. The extra dimension for the religious person

1. The human being is never alone
2. Part of the world lives in him/her

1. Example: The Hindu who, embracing his wife, declares that she is Earth and he Heaven is speaking symbolically. He knows she is human as well as himself. Yet earth and heaven were created by the gods, and this is a way of saying both of them are sacred creatures.
2. Example: In Oceanic and Asian traditional culture the word lak is used both for phallus and for a spade to dig in the ground. The spade is a symbol for the phallus which ads fertility. The one using the spade is one created by the gods and is fertilizing the earth with the spade, just as the gods fertilized the earth.
3. Cosmic symbolism adds a new value to an object or action without affecting their common values.

1. Sanctification of Life

There is a belief that there is an absolute reality, the sacred, which transcends this world but manifests itself in this world, thereby sanctifying it and making it real.

1. Every human experience is capable of being transfigured, lived on a different, a transhuman plane.
2. The traditional person is in communication with the gods
3. And shares in the sanctity, the sacredness, the holiness of sacred space.
4. One has to know the symbolism and the stories of the gods.
5. Have you had an ordinary experience turned into a special one?

1. Body-House-Cosmos

1. The spinal column symbolizes the Cosmic pillar that supports the heavens and opens the way to the gods.
2. The breaths symbolize the Winds
3. The navel or heart symbolizes the Center of the world
4. In one way or another, the cosmos that one inhabits—the body, or the house, or the tribal territory communicates above with a different plane, a transcendent plane.

1. Passing through the Narrow Gate

1. When brought to birth, a person is not yet completed; s/he must be born a second time, spiritually.
2. Human existence attains completion through a series of "passage rites," that is, by successive initiations.
3. Symbolism of "the perilous bridge" or a "narrow gate" suggest the idea of a dangerous passage. It expresses the difficulty of gaining spiritual knowledge and wisdom.

1. Iranian mythology: The Cinvat Bridge is for the dead to cross over on their journey from this life. It is wide for the just, but narrow as a razor blade for the wicked. Under the Cinvat Bridge lies the mouth of the deep pit of hell.
2. Christianity: Strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. (Matthew)
3. Those who have chosen the Quest, the road that leads to the center, to union with God, must abandon material things and walk toward the supreme truth, toward the Hidden God.

1. Rites of Passage—Imply a tension and a danger

These rites play a leading role in the religious formation of the person. For example, to become a man, he must "die" to his old life and be reborn to a higher life which is both religious and cultural.

Initiation is basically a paradox. It is both a death and resurrection, or second birth. Initiation is equal to a spiritual maturing.

These rites were initiated by the gods or ancestors or cultural heroes.

The tribal religious person wants to be other than what s/he is naturally and works to make himself in accordance with the ideal image revealed to him by his sacred stories and myths. S/he tries to realize the religious ideal of humanity.

Sacred knowledge and wisdom are the fruit of an initiation.

It was the power of the rite itself that "killed" and "resuscitated" the candidate.

The teaching about the rites.

The symbolism in the rites.

The following in the path of the fathers, the mothers.

Involves both consciousness and the unconscious depths.

1. Puberty initiation

1. A radical change
2. For women, it begins at the first menstruation
3. For men, it begins at a certain age

1. Rites at birth

1. Give the status as a "living person" and part of the tribe

1. Marriage

1. Leave the group of singles and be part of the group of families

1. Death

1. The dead person has to undergo certain ordeals that concern his own destiny in the afterlife, but s/he must also be recognized by the community of the dead and accepted by them.
2. For some peoples, only ritual burial confirms death—s/he who is not buried according to custom is not dead.

1. Today

1. The counseling situation as a modern example of initiation

1. Patient is asked to face the issues of the past, any traumatic or damaging experiences.
2. Patient integrates this into a world view.
3. Patient gains wisdom and knowledge.

1. The "struggle of life" as a modern example of initiation

1. Facing ordeals and difficulties that stand in the way of vocation or career
2. One proves himself or herself; becomes conscious of strengths and weaknesses; becomes adult and creative.

1. For the non-religious person today, religion has fallen into the unconscious. To reintegrate a religious vision of life lies at a great depth.

Focus two

Spirit or God

1. Tacit knowing

1. Cognitive underpinnings that are indispensable to our knowing but that operate unconsciously.

1. Knowing what to do in complicated situations without being able to explain exactly how we know.
2. Hunches that pay off.
3. Intuitive expertise

1. Richard Rorty’s Observation [Because of the clarity and humor of his writing style, and his ability to question cherished assumptions, Rorty is one of the most widely-read contemporary philosophers.] Born in 1941 and still living.

1. Accuses Descartes of dualism which has caused philosophers to replace the search for wisdom with the search for certainty and to turn toward science rather than toward helping people attain peace of mind.

Smith’s definition of Spirit or God

1. The image of God for Jews and Christians
2. The Atman of the Hindus
3. The Buddha-nature of the Buddhists
4. The Uncarved Block of East Asia
5. The "best statue" of the Muslims

Mystics see these all as one.

Monotheists see a distinction.

1. Light as the non-material component of photons = God, Spirit

1. We cannot see anything unless light is present
2. Photons strike the optic nerve of the eye and are recognized only through the energy they release. This energy produces in us the sensation of light.
3. We never see the photons, that is, light in the form it exists in the objective world.
4. The light we see and the photons in the objective world derive from the same source and carry the trace of that source—Spirit—within them.
5. See Houston Smith’s pg. 266 on light in various religions

1. A Happy Ending—The Afterlife

1. Will our consciousness continue? If so, how?

1. May be absorbed in God
2. May be in an ecstasy in contemplation of God
3. May be purified through various means before finding "the promised land", the "Happy Hunting Ground," Heaven, etc.. For the Sufi, one is purged of self-serving rationalizations and defenses.

1. Reincarnation
2. Purgatory
3. Imputed purity through faith in Christ

1. May be eternally punished

1. Hell
2. Hell as a purifying fire followed by release
3.  

Evil as a term

describes that which is regarded as morally bad, intrinsically corrupt, wantonly destructive, inhumane, or wicked. In most cultures, the word is used to describe acts, thoughts, and ideas which are thought to (either directly or causally) bring about affliction and death — the opposite of life. However, the definition of what counts as evil differs widely from culture to culture and from individual to individual.

Most ancient polytheist cultures lacked a concept of evil as a human quality or as a quality of human actions, or if they had such a concept, they did not place as much importance on it as have their monotheist successors. In the world of the Odyssey and Iliad epic poems, for example, there are acknowledged human virtues such as honor, faithfulness, and vengeance (which became a sin in Christian thought) but no direct corollary to the modern concept of evil. Likewise, Homeric characters are subject to judgment by the gods, but that judgment is often questionable as the gods themselves have imperfect, human-like characters.

In a number of religious traditions, human beings are considered to be "governed" by an innate bent towards selfishness and pride, actions that are considered evil. In others, humans may be considered naturally good, and evil to be a 'force' that tempts them away from their natural state. Evil may be personified in the form of a figure of evil, such as Satan.

Since human beings have to be aggressive at times and gentle at times, the natural possibility of evil always exists as aggressiveness acted out in ways that are hurtful, or of passivity when one could take action to stop a hurtful action or possibility.

What is the solution?

To have our desires, passions and decisions governed by a higher power.

1. For the Christian, Jew and Muslim

Submit to Christ and/or to the scriptures and traditional wisdom.

2. For the Buddhist

Meditation and obedience to sacred teachings

3. For the Hindu

The practice of Yoga

The removal of the ego from the throne of one’s life, and the ego working together with God or Truth to live a life of balance and harmony.

Ask why? Is the person mentally ill? Overtired or over burdened? Affected by drugs or alcohol?

The irruption of evil is one result.

A psychological solution:

In Carl G. Jung’s psychology, evil and good are on one continuum. If a person works to integrate what is in the unconscious with consciousness, he/she becomes maturer with a humbled, yet strong ego, which can control impulses to evil. The less the unconscious is integrated, the more likely the impulse to evil. The less the unconscious is integrated, the less one has control over one’s choices.

Dream work

Inner work

Journaling feelings, together with reflection, "What am I learning?"

Jungian analysis

Other????

Mother Teresa was a Catholic nun who felt a call from God to help the poorest of the poor. She eventually started her own religious order called The Missionaries of Charity.

She started by helping one man on the streets of Calcutta, India, and at the time of the Video, she and her religious sisters had helped over 40,000.

Today the Missionaries of Charity are on every continent.

The video gives us a look at one who is fully human, fully mature, at the most advanced stage of faith, and very good, but not a goodie-goodie, not perfect.

Begins with a look at suffering and contrasts it to the good in Mother Teresa.

Shows several aspects of her ministry.

Reveals how love heals.

Reveals the power of prayer.

STUDY GUIDE FOR RELIGIOUS STUDIES 101 FINAL EXAM, SPRING 2006

Study the following words and phrases so that you can define the following. The definitions will be matching.

1. Mystic
2. Final Causes
3. The two ways of knowing
4. Secularization
5. Natural Philosophy
6. Allegorical interpretation of scripture
7. Magic
8. Hermeneutics
9. Literal interpretation of scripture
10. The High God
11. Solar symbol
12. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act
13. Materialism
14. Lunar symbol
15. Theology