What is the sacred?

[avevale_intelligencer]

Johnathan Haidt, in his The Happiness Hypothesis, apparently mentions Mircea Eliade, in The Sacred And The Profane, saying he shows that "the perception of sacredness is a human universal." And catsittingstill posts on this subject here and here.

I have only just seen the second post, which modifies Cat's original response based on the input of another friend who has read the Eliade book, and I admit I haven't read either Eliade or Haidt, so I'm going solely on what I know from the passage quoted. I'll try and weave a response to Cat's second post in among there somewhere. We'll see how it goes, and meet up at the other end, okay?

First off, the statement as quoted is, as I said at the time, piffle. The perception of sacredness, as an external phenomenon, is not a human universal; there are plenty of people who don't perceive it at all and have no compunction about saying so, and good for them. Apart from a moment of uncertainty which I'll mention later, I'm one. So where does the notion come from in the first place?

Cat's contention in the first post is that "The truth of the matter is we don't perceive sacredness, we imagine it--mentally model it, if you will," and then choose to pretend to ourselves that it's real. As ways of giving the lie direct go, this is one of the nicest ones I've encountered, and a credible theory to someone who's never encountered the thing itself. If I had never seen a plumber at work, I might well theorise that she mends broken pipes by kissing them better, and I'd have no data to contradict that theory unless I asked a plumber.

My problem with this (one of them) is that I believe I have as good an imagination as anyone, and I have spent my life imagining things, and some parts of my life trying to pretend that the things I imagined were real, and it doesn't work. I did actually try it with religion, and it didn't work then. And if it doesn't work for me, who am admittedly far less grounded in reality than many people I know, how could it work for anyone else?

Another of my problems is that if that theory were true, then the perception of sacredness would always behave the way we expect it to, because we'd imagined it. Sacredness would never be sad, or scary, or surprising, as reports indicate it often is. How could it, if we invented it in our own heads?

Cat says in the second post that when Haidt, or Eliade, talks about "the perception of sacredness" he is probably talking about an internal, subjective, and emotional reaction. This works if you assume that whichever of them it was chose to use the wrong word; "perception" is not a term applied to feelings. I don't perceive that I am happy, or that I have a headache: I am happy, I have the headache. I perceive that you are happy, or that you have a headache. Perception, as Cat says, is a word for external phenomena.

Now while I know people do use the wrong words, and have done it myself, I'm uneasy about any argument that's based on "he probably said it wrong." I can't definitely agree or disagree with it. It removes the whole basis for discussion; he might just as well have meant to say "I would be distinctly gratified to receive a minced beef patty topped with processed dairy product in a bread roll." We can't tell. Call the language into question and communication goes into abeyance; we have to assume, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that people are saying what they mean.

My other problem is that I know people who tell me that they perceive sacredness. They aren't talking about their feelings, though profound feelings do accompany the experience; they are talking about specific sensory input. They aren't talking about something they imagined; they are talking about something they saw, mostly without wishing to. Since I do not choose to believe they are lying to me, or that they are subject to delusions, I choose to take their statement at its face value, and to me that is sufficient evidence to hypothesise that the perception of sacredness, while not a human universal, is a real phenomenon, as real as the perception of red (which is likewise not a human universal); not a let's-pretend game or an emotional response. Most people may not perceive it, and I think in fact most people take its existence on faith which is another thing entirely, but there is something there to be perceived.

So what is it?

Well, as Cat said in her second post, we can certainly say that it varies from person to person. Different things would appear sacred to different people. There are also, I would imagine, a host of other variables involved. My other senses vary in acuity from day to day, from time to time, based on what I've been doing, how well I slept the previous night, so on and so forth, and I use those senses regularly. Sacredness might also require the mediation of another person or persons; if a wafer is consecrated by a priest whose mind isn't on the job--or a priest who doesn't himself perceive sacredness and is therefore effectively doing it blindfold--does the process take? If the priest is doing the best he can but the congregation is asleep, does it work then?

We're kind of getting into the territory of those who have established that mediums cannot produce ectoplasm in a brightly lit laboratory with people in white coats staring at them (I can think of several things I might have difficulty in doing under those circumstances) and it's all getting a bit tenuous. Some things are elusive; the Higgs boson, for one. I gather a fairly precise set of conditions and a fairly specific environment is required in order to see where one's been. There are other, equally abstruse and evanescent particles, whose courses have been tracked, and quite possibly more that will be as we edge more and more slowly towards the moment immediately after something we don't understand happened and the universe came into being. Maybe sacredness is a phenomenon on a similar order.

Maybe it's like a radio band, with signals broadcasting on all frequencies, like the residual radiation from that first event, and some people at some times pick up one frequency and some pick up another and most don't pick up anything at all. Maybe when I went into the fake Victorian grotto at whichever castle it was (Soren, you were there: Leeds Castle, was it?) and had to come out again fairly quickly, that was a blackened valve in the radio set of my soul momentarily glowing a dull orange, stimulated by a short burst of Morse code from the equivalent of Hilversum or Reykjavik. Maybe when someone sees flowers filling the church as the priest says the Eucharistic Prayer, that's Radio God coming through loud and strong for once because atmospheric conditions are ideal. I don't know how you'd construct a reliable test for that, or what it would tell you that's useful even if you could.

What we can say with confidence is that all the words that have been spun out of this possibly genuine experience, all the laws that have been made, all the paintings and music and architecture and all the suffering and bloodshed and injustice--those are, if not all our own work, mostly so. (I very much doubt if the signal conveys any actual information, but I could be wrong.) We can say that this perception of sacredness, if it exists, has been misused and abused, perverted and subverted, by greedy, arrogant and fearful men for their own purposes. We might even say that even if it is real, it's no practical use, and we might even be better off without it, just as we might be better off in some ways without nuclear fission.

What I at least can't say with any confidence at all is that it isn't real. Or that, if it is real, pretending it isn't would be any more sensible than the other way around.

Comments

[griffen.livejournal.com]

Everything that isn't tangible is something we pretend is real. It's called reification. Ideas aren't tangible, but we've pretended them into existence. The sacred is an idea. What's sacred to me may be profane to you, but everyone has something sacred, even if they don't call it that. The sacred is that which we don't question and which we protect from investigation - it's too sacred. Theologians might investigate what god wants, but almost never do they investigate the existence of god. The sacred is taken as read, not investigated.

You say that the perception of red is real. How do you know? Maybe what you think red looks like is what I would call "pink." We have no proof and no way of knowing what any one person sees when we say "that's red." We just know that there's a shared (and arbitrary) label for that shade of color created by the sun or other light reflecting off of an object with certain properties, and we call it "red." It's arbitrary, and it's socially created.

Everything social is a perception. Many times it's a shared, or intersubjective, perception, but it's still a perception. We make it real by treating it as real, and if we treat something as real then it has real consequences for us. Look up the Thomas Theorem for more on that concept.

Even those who say they don't consider anything sacred have things that are sacred to them. Whether that's the relationship between a person and his chosen deity, their ideals about how people should behave towards one another, or the lucky penny they carry in their pocket, everyone has something that they protect from questioning and investigation, about which they react fiercely and defensively if someone else tries to question or investigate. That's what sacred means.

(You should read Haidt. He's part of the lit review in my dissertation and my master's thesis, and worth reading.)

[tattercoats.livejournal.com]

Er... that's not what sacred means to me.

[griffen.livejournal.com]

It's the social scientific definition of sacred, removing specific religious contexts to get at the heart of what it means to treat or define something as sacred.

[batyatoon]

My religion does not consider "sacred" equivalent to "not to be questioned or investigated." We question everything.

[griffen.livejournal.com]

Including the existence of a god? What religion is this?

[batyatoon]

Judaism, as it happens. But you do know that philosophers in many, many religions have debated how one can know / perceive / be certain of the existence of the divine?

There's an immense difference between "must be taken on faith because it cannot be proven" and "must not be questioned or investigated". It's certainly true that some religions, and some sects within others, discourage questioning and investigating about that which is considered sacred -- but that hardly defines the sacred.

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

What's your definition of "sacred", then? Mine gets as far as "something religious people get funny about in a way that makes no sense", which doesn't help. It isn't a word I use, or one I take seriously when used by others (well, other than "better not damage that then" on the same level as "better pretend the toddler's cuddly has feelings".)

Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred
"considered worthy of spiritual respect or devotion; or inspiring awe or reverence among believers in a given set of spiritual ideas"
Does that fit your understanding of the word?
If so, that seems to me to be a judgement value rather than an inherent property of an object. Person X can be worthy of respect because.... they're intelligent, they're honest, they're creative, they can kick a particular shape of ball a long way with great accuracy, they're ten feet tall.... but the decision that they're worthy of respect because of that quality is mine, and arbitrary.

[howeird]

Some people are color-blind, and cannot perceive red. Maybe some people are sacred-blind?

[griffen.livejournal.com]

Possible. But the argument here is that sacred is not limited to "things which a religion defines as sacred." On the other hand, anyone blind to sacred would probably be a sociopath.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Excuse me? *I* don't perceive sacredness.

And I am perfectly capable of forming normal emotional attachments to people, thank you.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Well, exactly. Same here, assuming my emotional attachments are normal. I think it's better to use a slightly more limited (and therefore more meaningful) definition of the word.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

This makes no sense to me. Honesty is not tangible. Is honesty something we pretend into existence? Truth isn't tangible. Is truth not real? This is playng around with words, which is fine and a fun game and all, but not what I'm about here.

To define the sacred as "that which we don't question and which we protect from investigation" is a definition based on the rhetoric of secularism, which ignores most of the qualities that define sacredness to people who actually recognise it, and is not even true. Say I had an addiction to fetish porn magazines; that would be something I wouldn't question and would protect from investigation. Would that make it sacred? Of course not, not even to me.

I say that the perception of red is real. I also said it's not universal; Jan can't see it any more. I don't do solipsism.

And I would not, these days, do my atheist friends the discourtesy of suggesting that there is anything of importance in their lives which they do not subject to rational and critical inquiry, or of using the terminology of religion to describe such a thing.

[griffen.livejournal.com]

*shrug* I'm a secular sociologist, so I define things in secular terms. Since I don't have any evidence of a god, it's not part of the definition of "sacred."

Honesty is a quality that we've defined as recounting events so that they fit whatever we've decided is factual, even if it makes us look bad to others. Truth is a quality - a reified one - that allows us to feel comfortable with what we've been told and trust that it will bear up under examination, that we can lean on it or depend on it and it will continue to work the same way. That's all they are. They're only real because we say they're real.

Society is built on reified ideas that we have pretended about long enough to make them real to ourselves. That which we treat as real is real in its consequences. That which we don't often isn't - if enough of us stop treating something as real, it loses its force.

The sacred is merely that which we can't bear to have questioned or examined too closely, which we hold apart and in a special place. Addiction is not the same thing at all, and it's disingenuous of you to draw the comparison.

Where's your empirical proof that the perception of red is real? Where is your empirical proof that what I see and think of as "red" is anything other than a label? Where's your empirical proof that you see exactly what I see when we point to something and say "that's red"?

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

Red:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red
"Red is any of a number of similar colors evoked by light consisting predominantly of the longest wavelengths discernible by the human eye, in the wavelength range of roughly 630–740 nm."

If we mechanically produce light known to be in that wavelength, and a lot of people look at the result and say "that's red", I think we have proof of a consistent definition and perception. We still don't know what those people are perceiving, but we have a label consistently applied: the beginning and end of the process are defined, if not the middle.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

I and the manufacturers of traffic lights everywhere thank you. :)

[griffen.livejournal.com]

Color-blind people do fine with traffic lights - not because of the color but because of the location. Red is the top light, green the bottom.

I think you are missing my point. Whether that's deliberate or not, I'm not sure.

[griffen.livejournal.com]

Right, but the point I'm making is one you've just made for me: it's just a label consistently applied. And the wikipedia entry even demonstrates that "red" to me may not be "red" to you: "any of a number of similar colors." You might be seeing the upper end of the wavelength range while I see the lower, due to biological variation in our eyes and how they apprehend different parts of the wavelength spectrum. That means we're really *not* seeing the same thing.

As a result, we really have no idea what anyone else sees when they point at something we've labeled "red" and say "that's red." We are just estimating or guessing that they see the same thing we see.

That means that "red" is a socially constructed label, nothing more. All of our reality, all of our labels, are socially constructed.

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

Sure, we know that. But you're missing the point: we have a definition of "red". We have wavelength limits, and light between those limits is defined as "red". How we actually perceive it, even whether we perceive it, is irrelevant. Now show me the precise definition for "sacred".

[griffen.livejournal.com]

I've already given that. Sociologists of religion have studied what people treat as sacred, and it boils down to "whatever is treated as if it is set apart and isn't to be examined too closely." That's pretty specific since "sacred" is supposedly a quality of so many social objects, actions, expectations, etc.

There are no inherent qualities of social objects. They are all just social constructions.

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

You've given a possible meaning of the word, yes, but not a useful one for any attempt to say that "sacred" exists in the same way that "red" does, and that a sense exists to detect both which some people have and some don't.
We do know exactly what it is people are detecting when they say something is "red". How they determine their actions and preferences based on that colour is irrelevant.
What, exactly, are they detecting when they say something is "sacred"? Again, actions and preferences (such as treating it as if it's set apart) are irrelevant. Not knowing the answer is fine (I had to Google "red"), but if it isn't even a meaningful question, then "sacred" cannot be said to be something detectable.
If there isn't something to be detected, then the objects treated as "sacred" are treated as such for purely arbitrary reasons. That would imply some rather bad things about the minds of those who treat things as sacred, and since many of them are quite obviously rational and intelligent, that's got to be wrong.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

*shrug back* As I said, I don't do solipsism. I gave it up when I was a student. Go too far down that road and all you zombies are reified ideas.

I'm not the first one to draw comparisons between religion and addiction. Maybe Marx was being disingenuous as well. In fact, the more I think about it the more likely it seems.

I choose--and this is a choice, and you can call it a pretence if you like but I never will--to inhabit a world in which "empirical proof" is not the be-all and end-all, to believe that my next-door neighbour exists and that we can communicate, and to use words without peeling off half their nutritional value first and wrapping what's left in plastic. I don't have a god or a religion myself, but I understand that the word "sacred" means very little in any other context. And I certainly do not think it means what you think it means.

And next time the Jehovah's Witnesses come to the door, eager to expose their beliefs to my merciless scrutiny, I might just ask them what they think. It would make a change from pretending I'm not in. :)

[griffen.livejournal.com]

Then you and I are going to have to disagree, because I live in a world where empirical proof *is* the be-all and end-all. I'm a scientist (and an atheist) - it goes with the territory. No empirical proof of a god? Then there is no god.

And why anyone would choose differently frankly mystifies me. Heinlein once said, "You can be warmed by the comforting fire of religion or live in the cold reality of empiricism; you cannot do both." I choose not to give up my rational faculties for any religion, thanks.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Heinlein said a lot of things, not all of which were right or true.

I live in a world where I take ninety per cent of what I know on trust--from books, from the media, from the net, from other people. If I demanded empirical proof of everything I need to know about to live my life I wouldn't be living my life. And I think that as a matter of practical fact, the same applies to everyone in the world.

And again, I don't necessarily care about your implying that I have no rational faculties--though since I have no religion, the question is moot--but I will, if called upon, stand up and defend the rational faculties of my friends Paul and Batya, not to mention others too numerous to name, against the incorrect, cliched, and just plain nasty assumption that religious people are not rational any day of the week and any time of the day. I've done it before and I'll do it again.

I hope that's clear.

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

"everyone has something that they protect from questioning and investigation, about which they react fiercely and defensively if someone else tries to question or investigate. That's what sacred means. "

No. That's how the concept of sacredness often gets *abused*.

"Sacred" means, amongst other things, "kept free from corruption, pollution or degradation". If I say "this puddle of water is sacred to me", I have no problem with you questioning that statement, or trying to find out more about the puddle. I'll even let you draw of a sample of the water for analysis, if you like, as long as you're careful not to drop anything. Just don't you dare start splashing about in it wearing muddy boots!

The people who fiercely defend the puddle against investigation are those who fear that the very act of investigation will somehow pollute or degrade the puddle. That's usually because they're projecting/externalising the fear that if they know to much about the puddle and it turns out to contain ordinary water like any other puddle, they won't be able to still see it as "special". It betrays either a lack of confidence in their own convictions, or a lack of understanding of what sacredness is about.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Yes, thid. Or even this. In fact, I would say that--if the perception of sacredness is real as I contend--those who fear examination of their sacred things are precisely those who don't actually perceive it and therefore have to imagine it.

[griffen.livejournal.com]

"The people who fiercely defend the puddle against investigation are those who fear that the very act of investigation will somehow pollute or degrade the puddle. That's usually because they're projecting/externalising the fear that if they know to much about the puddle and it turns out to contain ordinary water like any other puddle, they won't be able to still see it as "special"."

That's the main indicator of sacredness. Needing to see something as special and set apart and most of all above investigation. It is not a real quality. It's a made-up social construct.

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

"That's the main indicator of sacredness. Needing to see something as special and set apart and most of all above investigation. "

Says who? Not the dictionary, and not anyone who I've ever heard use the word before you, today.

I think perhaps you're using the word in a technical sense that relates to your specific field of study, and does not reflect the common usage.

[griffen.livejournal.com]

It may not be the common usage, but more's the pity for that. Those who have studied what people define as "the sacred" have come up with this common set of qualities that all supposedly "sacred" things are labeled with.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

And I wish people would pronounce "lingerie" in either a proper English or a proper French manner. "Lonjeray" is no language I've ever heard of. But the world is as it is, and if your definition of a word differs from both standard dictionaries and common usage, and in fact only functions in the rarefied atmosphere of a particular scientific discipline where the actual meaning doesn't matter, then, if it comes down to right and wrong, you're wrong. How's that for empirical proof?

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

If sacredness is a perception, people who want their perceptions honored by those of us who don't share them can expect to have to demonstrate that the perceptions are real. If sacredness is an unreliable I-can't-do-it-with-you-looking-at-me-like-that perception, that kind of goes twice over; now even if you demonstrate you *can* perceive it sometimes, how do I know you perceived it correctly about this *other* thing you say is sacred?.

Also you ask if sacredness is a mental model why is it sometimes sad or scary or surprising? Well, dreams come out of our own heads too, and they are sometimes sad or scary or surprising. A mind is not one thing all the way through, like the water in a glass, but a bunch of strands braiding and we only perceive the thoughts in a few of the strands.

I get that mentally modeling sacredness doesn't work for you--but different people have different experiences of sacredness; just because it won't work for you doesn't mean much for others. Maybe that's even *why* it won't work for you.

It does occur to me that there might be another possibility. The two I can think of are perception and a mental model, but can you think of something I might be overlooking here?

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

If I ever thought I could think of something you had overlooked, I would go and splash my face with cold water and think again. :)

The choice to honour the perceptions of another is up to the individual. Since I can't think of a way that the reality of the kind of perception I'm envisaging could be convincingly demonstrated, I choose as a default* to do so, but I can fully understand why your default might go the other way.

Dreams also share with the sacred the quality of not ordinarily being subject to our conscious control. We don't mentally model our dreams, or at least to the best of my knowledge most of us don't. Sometimes, indeed, they can be a response to an objective phenomenon, such as a surfeit of cheese or a full bladder.

I don't doubt the possibility that some people who lack the godsense might succeed in mentally modelling it, though as I said, if I can't succeed in deceiving myself about that I can't imagine who can. But if I've succeeded in suggesting to you that there might be ways of experiencing it that don't involve self-deception, deliberate fraud or mental derangement, then I'm happy.

*That is, unless it's obvious that someone's perception of the sacred is inspiring them to acts of bigotry, terrorism or other unacceptable obnoxiousness.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Oh, okay--I think I see our point of disagreement, and perhaps why my statement appears to seem so rude to you.

For me "mental model" includes pretty much any representation created by the brain, including by those parts of the brain we don't consciously perceive. (For example the motion of visible objects is a mental model--people with specific kinds of brain damage may be able to see perfectly well, but still not able to pick out which objects are moving.) So for me, dreams are a form of mental model.

Or rather, my tentative mental model :-) for what is going on there is that when sleeping, parts our brains toss up flashes of memories and imaginings and a different section of our brains tries frantically to organize these into a story, and the resulting mishmash of sense (smoothly flowing story) and nonsense (discontinuous or counterintuitive story) is the dream. Which is why telling a dream results in saying things like "I don't know why, but suddenly we were flying through the air with no clothes on and Mark had turned into a talking pumpkin, or maybe Mark was gone and a talking pumpkin was there."

And so is my expectation of what another car on the road will do in the next few seconds a mental model, and so is my unthinking flinching away from touching the outer handle of my car when it's static season--even though the latter action takes place without conscious thought. Some buried part of my brain thinks "that stung you last time you touched it" and it's like the door handle develops a repulsor field.

And just because my estimate of something is a mental model doesn't mean I'm assuming that thing is not real. The static is surely real. The other car and driver I accept as real. It merely means it *might not* be real, and *might not* is a sliding quality that ranges from "almost certainly not" for dreams to "probably not" for supernatural things to "probably so" for things I perceive to "almost certainly so" for things that have been scientifically demonstrated.

Now, I think our ideas about how to behave around people who are telling us about some supernatural experience might be close than I thought. When people say this or that pool or grove or music or whatever felt sacred to them, I'm not usually going to fight about it. Among other things that could mean anything from "its beauty moved me" on up to "it's supernatural" and I can't argue with "its beauty moved me" and while I disagree with "it's supernatural" I don't care until they start saying "so you shouldn't use birth control" or draw Mohammed or go out without a veil or eat beef or object to prayers (of *my* faith) in school or a whacking great "war memorial" (of *my*) religious symbol in a public park--and I suspect at least some of this aligns fairly closely with your unacceptable obnoxiousness exception.

So when people start sending death threats, or want their religious rules written into laws, then I think it's perfectly reasonable to require they demonstrate they can really perceive what they are claiming as the reason they should have power over me.

And I get that in your experience religious people don't *want* power over you, so pushing back as if they did is rude, and may even look hair-trigger paranoid. England sounds like a lovely country that way. But in my country religious people and religiously motivated groups very definitely do want power over me, and pushing back while the bed is still widely acknowledged to be mine and not the camel's is only good sense.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

I think you're right, and I do agree with your last line.

[griffen.livejournal.com]

I get that in your experience religious people don't *want* power over you, so pushing back as if they did is rude, and may even look hair-trigger paranoid. England sounds like a lovely country that way. But in my country religious people and religiously motivated groups very definitely do want power over me, and pushing back while the bed is still widely acknowledged to be mine and not the camel's is only good sense.

Yeah, it must be really nice to live somewhere like that.

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

The more I read this, the more I'm convinced that what poeple are talking about isn't what I understand by the word "sacredness" at all, but rather something like "specialness (of spiritually- or religiously-related kind)".

I've always understood sacredness as a status that we, as thinking and (potentially) worshipping people, *give* to certain things by choosing to hold them sacred. I'm pretty sure that's how the Bible uses the term, and it also seems to be consistent with the main dictionary definitions: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sacred

The act of consecration, for example, is a rite by which some authorised person, on behalf of a community, marks a thing as being sacred *to that community*.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I thought consecration bestowed the quality "sacred" on the object, which the object then retains until it is deconsecrated or besmirched in some way?

For example the Host is a wafer that starts out mundane (if specially unbesmirched) but becomes sacred when consecrated?

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

It's possible there's a divergence here between Catholic and Protestant uses of the terms...? (My experience/affiliation is "generic protestant evangelical".)

For (mainstream)catholics, the wafer *becomes* the body of Christ; it's seen as an objective change of state of the object (though not necessarily a *physical* chage of state. For Protestants, it *symbolises* the body of Christ: The change is in how we think about the wafer, and the effectives with which we focus on what it symbolises, as we prepare to eat it.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

See first line of post. This is fascinating.

In seeing "sacredness" as not only what you describe, but as a quality that may be perceived by people who haven't necessarily made the decision to hold a thing sacred, I know I'm on rocky ground. I've swallowed the rice paper (I don't know if it is rice paper, but that's what it tasted like to me), and it never felt sacred, not once. I only have the word of others to go on when they talk about what seem to be unexpected (and definitely unwanted) experiences of the sacred, and the only thing to which I can compare them in my own experience is that moment in the fake grotto (which is probably about as far from being a sacred place as anywhere short of Tesco car park), which someone who wasn't me might put down to anything from sudden claustrophobia to indigestion to a chance subsonic vibration from a passing lorry. I don't know, and probably never will.

[batyatoon]

I have spent my life imagining things, and some parts of my life trying to pretend that the things I imagined were real, and it doesn't work. I did actually try it with religion, and it didn't work then.

I've tried it myself.

The one time in my life I have actually had a religious experience, I knew it was real precisely because it wasn't going the way I would have imagined it if I were imagining.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Thank you. *hugs*

[eintx.livejournal.com]

I really hope you like it! :)
To me, this thread is a perfect example of how the presence of one single self-opinionated smartass who is not willing or not able to listen affects a complete discussion that otherwise would be very interesting.