DISKUS Vol.3, No.1 (1995) pp.19-34

Hypnotic Dimensions of Religious Worldviews

Peter Connolly
Religious Studies Dept.
Chichester Institute of Higher Education
Bishop Otter Campus
College Lane, Chichester
West Sussex, PO19 4PE
UK



Brief Thoughts on Maps

Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, who knew a lot about maps 
according to which life is on its way somewhere or other, 
told us this story from the war 
due to which history is on its way somewhere or other:

The young lieutenant of a small Hungarian detachment in the Alps
sent a reconnaissance unit out into the icy wasteland. 
It began to snow 
immediately, snowed for two days and the unit
did not return. The lieutenant suffered: he had despatched 
his own people to death.

But the third day the unit came back. 
Where had they been? How had they made their way? 
Yes, they said, we considered ourselves
lost and waited for the end. And then one of us 
found a map in his pocket. That calmed us down. 
We pitched camp, lasted out the snowstorm and then with 
the map 
we discovered our bearings. 
And here we are.

The lieutenant borrowed this remarkable map 
and had a good look at it. It was not a map of the Alps 
but of the Pyrenees.

Goodbye for now. <1>


The above poem illustrates the way that representations of a terrain can be useful even when they are inaccurate. It also illustrates the need that human beings have for some kind of map. A faulty map can be modified but to be without a map at all is to be truly lost. The following exploration has to do with religious maps and how they are constructed, maintained and modified. It will begin with a consideration of issues about the suitability of various methodologies for the study of religious phenomena, and it will be argued that reductionistic accounts can sometimes provide insights forever denied to the phenomenologist. Such accounts need not, however, devalue religion, though they will inevitably tend to explain that value in ways that religious traditions might have reservations about accepting.


Phenomenology and Reductionism 

Ever since its beginning some 120 years ago, scholars within the discipline variously known as Comparative Religion, History of Religions and Religious Studies have been preoccupied with the search for a methodology appropriate to the subject matter. There is still a lack of consensus on this issue, though there is a growing acceptance of the fact that no single theoretical perspective can do justice to the complex phenomenon generally known as religion. At the same time, it has been increasingly recognised that the subject has more in common with fields of study such as educational studies or environmental studies than with disciplines having a narrower focus such as psychology or sociology, hence the recent appeal of the title 'Religious Studies'. Even so, many writers would argue that religion is an irreducible and discrete dimension of human experience, that it constitutes what philosopher Paul Hirst would call 'a form of knowledge'. In other words, it is something that can only be properly understood in its own terms, it is a sui generis phenomenon. <2>

Consequently, many scholars have argued that the most appropriate methodological foundation for the study of religions is one which emphasises phenomenological procedures, that is, procedures which begin with the phenomena as they present themselves to us. The term 'phenomenology' has a complex history both within and without the study of religion and it would be inappropriate to trace it here. Suffice it to say that as it came to be employed in the service of investigating religious phenomena, the phenomenological method was understood to comprise two primary elements, both derived from Husserl's philosophical phenomenology. They are 'epoche' and 'eidetic vision'.

Epoche is the practice of bracketing off. The idea is that the student of religion imaginatively puts his or her own world view aside and seeks to understand the phenomenon under investigation 'from the inside' as it were. The principle underpinning such a procedure is that of empathy, the attempt to understand someone's experience from their point of view. Eidetic vision is an intuition of the essence of a phenomenon. <3> The apparent subjectivity involved in the intuitive apprehension of 'essences' has led many scholars to question the place of eidetic vision in a field which aspires to the status of a scientific discipline. More recent writing on the subject has, therefore, tended to replace the notion of essences with that of types. <4> Types are abstractions derived from the study of individual phenomena. They represent the patterns or structures underlying all examples of such phenomena and thus set out what the examples have in common.

Sometimes these types are derived from the identification of a spectrum of beliefs and/or practices. One example might be the difference between self power and other power paths. In the former, the religious goal is attained through the effort of the adherent (with guidance from the tradition); in the latter the adherent is taken to the goal by the power that constitutes the transcendental focus of the tradition (God, Allah, Visnu etc.). Religions or sects are then categorized as emphasizing self power, other power or some combination of the two. Another example might be the division of traditions into structured and unstructured types. The former provide the adherent with plenty of information about the nature of existence and detailed guidelines about what needs to be done to remedy deficiencies in the human condition and the stages on the way to the goal. The latter, by contrast, provide little information and emphasize just a few key practices or doctrines. Sometimes types are akin to definitions. So, for example, sacrifice is a distinctive kind of religious activity. Hindu, Christian, Jewish and other forms of sacrifice will have essential features in common, in this case the attempt to create a doorway or bridge between two realms, namely the sacred and the profane, so that some kind of energy can pass between them - usually positive, desirable, uplifting energy from the spiritual realm and negative, undesirable, limiting energy from the profane.

Such phenomenological typology can be regarded as an intermediate stage between accounts of a phenomenon couched purely in terms of the tradition from which it originated and those in terms of world views derived from other sources, for example, the disciplines of psychology or sociology. Accounts of the latter kind are often labelled as 'reductionist', a highly emotive and contested term. A generous interpretation of reductionism would be that it involves explaining a phenomenon in terms of a world view different from the one which generated it. It is thus a kind of translation of one culture's constructs into those of another or of one discipline's constructs into those of another. An example of cultural reductionism might be the Christian interpretation of Hindu worship as 'bowing down to wood and stone'; an example of discipline reductionism might be explaining the activities of living systems, normally the domain of biology, purely in terms of their chemical processes. I have chosen these two examples because they help to illuminate some of the less generous interpretations of the term 'reductionism'. Here the emphasis is placed on the element of misrepresentation or distortion that occurs in the process of 'translation'. The term thus loses its descriptive function and acquires a derogatory connotation. Consequently, in some circles, to call somebody a reductionist is to cast a dismissive insult.

In the final analysis, however, the student of religion - as distinct from the theologian or buddhalogian, whose job it is to articulate and interpret the faith for the faithful - cannot avoid some degree of reductionism. To function through the medium of empathy alone is simply to mimic the activity of the theologian but to take the step into phenomenological typology is to embark on the reductionist journey. Because they are abstractions, because they emphasize common elements and underlying patterns, phenomenological types inevitably represent phenomena in a rather different way from that found in the original context. The reason phenomenological typology is 'a half way house' rather than a full blown reductionism is that the 'essences' identified in the process of formulating the types are derived from the phenomena as originally presented. By contrast, the explanatory concepts and principles in a truly reductionist account are derived not from the originator's context but from the translator's. Many students of religion balk at taking this second step, but can it be avoided forever? There are at least two reasons for rejecting an affirmative answer.

First of all, the ultimate aim of all scientific endeavour in different disciplines is the creation of a scheme of knowledge where different types and levels of investigation are increasingly found to be complementary and mutually enhancing. Disciplines that are unable to find points of contact and overlap with other disciplines tend to become increasingly marginalized. Thus, unless the student of religion desires to go the way of the theologian or the psychoanalyst and find him or herself addressing an audience made up entirely of the converted he or she needs to explore the interface between phenomenological and more reductionistic methodologies.

The second reason is that anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists and others will continue to explore religious phenomena and offer explanations of them from the perspectives of their own disciplines whether students of religion accept the legitimacy of such approaches or not. Given that this is the case, it would be ludicrous for the phenomenologist to think that he or she can forever avoid a consideration of alternative ways of explaining the same phenomena that he or she is investigating. Indeed, is it not likely that the best explanations of religious phenomena will be those which have taken account of investigations by all relevant disciplines? It is for this reason that Ninian Smart, one of the foremost contemporary phenomenologists of religion, describes the science of religion as a polymethodic discipline. Consequently, the student of religion has to be a phenomenologist _and_ a reductionist.

This is no bad thing, for some of the most interesting and insightful explanations of religious phenomena are generated by the application of reductionistic rather than phenomenological perspectives. Take, for example, the generally acknowledged fact that in all human societies as far back as Neanderthal times there is evidence of religion. This has led writers such as Eliade and Spiro <5> to employ the term 'homo religiosus', religious man, to indicate a primary characteristic that distinguishes humans from other species. But what does it mean to be intrinsically religious? Once the religious tendency among human beings has been identified how does one explain it? The traditions offer answers in terms of access to some kind of ultimate truth. Given the incompatibility between many of these accounts the student of religion has at least to consider the feasibility of an answer from outside all traditions, a reductionistic answer. The great variety of religious beliefs and practices is both a boon and a bane for phenomenologists. On the one hand, it offers an enticingly complex field of study, with innumerable doctrines, rituals, stories and regulations available for investigation. On the other hand, the variety raises the issue of whether religion is a single phenomenon or a family of related phenomena. On issues like this the reductionist often has more insightful comments to make than the phenomenologist since he or she is able to go beyond the classificatory procedures of phenomenological typology and look for causal factors other than those offered by the traditions themselves.

The variety of religious phenomena has led students of religion to abandon the attempt to formulate an adequate one- or two- sentence definition of the subject. The trend since the mid-1960's has been for scholars to generate multi-category definitions such as Streng's three dimensional version, Glock and Stark's five dimensional one and, more recently, Smart's seven dimensional one. <6> These are all classificatory definitions. They suggest that all religious systems exhibit certain general characteristics and, at the same time, that such characteristics are present in different proportions in different traditions. Classifications like these represent phenomenological typology in its broadest application. Yet how much have we really learned once data from any tradition have been categorized under these headings? Typologising renders the data manageable but it fails to make it comprehensible. In fact, it would not be too inaccurate to claim that phenomenological procedures offer useful guidelines for descriptive, empathetic and classificatory tasks but have little to contribute when it comes to explanatory ones.

The legitimacy of this claim is well demonstrated by a consideration of Mencken's catalogue of defunct deities, 184 of them in all. Many of them, he points out, '....were once gods of the highest eminence. Many of them are mentioned with fear and trembling in the Old Testament. They ranked, five or six thousand years ago, with Jahveh himself; the worst of them stood far higher than Thor'. <7> All were worshipped in the past yet in the present none of them has any devotees. Do these powers continue to exist despite being bereft of homage or did they, perhaps, cease to exist when worship was no longer directed at them? What about the multitude of spirits and deities worshipped by people at the present time; do they exist independently of the faithful who offer them homage? No amount of empathetic description or insightful classification can answer such questions.

The fact that these various powers, past and present, are characterized differently, named differently, have different stories told about them and command their devotees to worship them in different ways certainly raises the possibility that rather than existing as entities in their own right these deities and spirits are actually creations of their worshippers or, to be a little more realistic, creations of the cultures in which their worship takes place. For many people such an account is accorded the status of probability rather than possibility. Indeed, it has much to commend it. As Carl Gustav Jung commented, 

     '...since the development of consciousness requires the withdrawal of all the projections we can lay our hands on, it is not possible to maintain any non-psychological doctrine about the gods... everything of a divine or demonic character outside us must return to the psyche, to the inside of the unknown man, whence it apparently originated.' <8>  

Having reached a conclusion similar to Jung's many of those who are inclined to deny the ontological independence of the foci of religious activity and the veridicality of religious experience might also be inclined to devalue such experience. But that might be a mistake. An experience does not have to be veridical, does not have to provide us with accurate information about 'reality' - whatever that might be - in order to be valuable. Some people see a glass with half its volume taken up with water as half full, others see it as half empty. Which view is the most veridical? To think of oneself as capable, is more likely to generate desirable outcomes than the thought that one is incapable. In fact, one could argue that non-veridical representations can often be of more value than veridical ones. The principle of the self-fulfilling prophecy illustrates this well.  Thus, even if one is inclined to understand religious traditions and religious experiences reductionistically, in terms of social and psychological processes, one can still regard them as resources rather than liabilities. Since it is the case that religion has been extremely pervasive in human cultures the likelihood is that it serves some deep need in humanity. This hypothesis has been explored recently by clinical psychologist John F Schumaker in a work entitled Wings of Illusion. In the opening chapter of that book he writes, somewhat contentiously,

      'When we apply the cross cultural litmus test to the entire range of human behaviour... We see that only one category of behaviour is universal by the strictest definition. That is paranormal believing. Cultural anthropologists and cross-cultural psychologists have yet to isolate a single society in which its people do not have long-standing and well developed systems of paranormal belief. Although some other human traits are common to most cultures, none is as widespread and pervasive as beliefs that transcend reality and the normal order of earthly events...

     From a global perspective we can see that we are able to live with - or without - almost anything. We can adjust to and accommodate almost any physical, social or cultural conditions. In that sense we are almost indefinitely malleable. The only exception is that we do not seem able to live without belief, and in particular belief in something, someone, or some force that simplifies and/or supersedes the reality of the human situation. Less than one percent of people, regardless of culture, have no paranormal beliefs at all. The same invariance cannot be seen in any other form of human behaviour'. <10>  

Schumaker argues that as humans began to evolve greater cognitive powers and acquire a more accurate perception of reality - a valuable survival mechanism - certain undesirable effects began to manifest themselves. One of these was the awareness of our own mortality, the awareness of death as our destiny. Death, as John Bowker points out, summarizes the whole field of evil and suffering. <11> It is an issue that all religious traditions have addressed. A second feature of reality, according to Schumaker, is chaos and unpredictability. Such a view finds support from both quantum physics and contemporary chaos theory. <12> Again, a central concern of religious traditions, perhaps best illustrated in Hinduism, is a preoccupation with the conversion of chaos into order and the role of humankind in the maintenance of that order. Many of the great myths deal, in narrative form, with exactly this process of creating order out of chaos.

The facts of death and chaos, once perceived, can be and are likely to be psychologically crippling. Our evolutionary solution to the problem of survival, namely the expansion of our cognitive powers, generated, in turn, a new set of problems, those connected with issues of meaning. As Schumaker puts it,

    'Successful coping and survival became dependent upon our being able to convert chaos into imagined order... Magic, religion and all forms of reality distortion are simply species-specific responses unique to the human animal. These act in our service'. <13>  

Religions provide, as John Bowker explains from a theological perspective, '... the means through which to construct a route from birth to death - and in the case of most religious contexts, a way through death as well'. <14> Thus, paranormal believing, and religious paranormal believing in particular, enables us to make use of our recently evolved intelligence without being overwhelmed by the unpalatable features of reality revealed by that intelligence.

This view finds some support from psychologists Lee Ross and Gustav Jahoda. Ross has argued that the cause of at least some kinds of paranormal beliefs '... can be traced back to the human brain's difficulty in coping with the perception of random events'. <15>  Jahoda, in a systematic study of superstition, one form of paranormal believing, presents a good deal of evidence, which can be supplemented from other sources, <16> that as the environment becomes more uncontrollable so superstition increases. Such superstitions, argues geneticist Kenneth Mather, may have a positive survival value if they support social norms beneficial to human groups. <17>  They are, suggests Jahoda, '... part of the price we pay, an inevitable by-product of the constant scanning for patterns in which we are engaged'.<18>  


Religious Maps and Hypnotic Processes 

To appreciate just how paranormal beliefs are rendered convincing and transmitted down the generations we need to understand how cultures make use of our innate suggestibility. As Schumaker points out, suggestibility is a prerequisite for us becoming paranormal believers. We had to become, as he puts it, 'hypnotic animals'. All of us are suggestible. If we were not the complex cultural learning that contributes so significantly to our sense of identity would be impossible. In fact, as a number of writers have pointed out, hypnotic states are natural for human beings.<19> Even the more profound forms of hypnotic trance are simply amplifications of regularly occurring mental processes.<20>  

Normally our attention alternates between awareness of a world most people regard as external to themselves (made available through the five senses) and an internal world (where experience is constructed through representation systems - purely mental analogues of the five senses). That is, our inner experience is constructed in terms of visual representations (we can all make images in our minds), auditory representations (we can all create sounds, e.g. our mother's voice, in our minds), feeling representations (the internal analogue of tactile sensation) and, on occasions, olfactory and gustatory representations. These internal experiences can be manipulated in a variety of ways. We can, for example, make a picture in our minds come closer or move away; we can sharpen the focus or soften it; make the picture move or hold it still. Similarly, we can make the music or voices in our minds loud or soft, we can increase or decrease the tempo and so on in all the systems.

The nature of these internal representations has a profound effect on the way we relate to the world. If, when we think of dogs, the image that comes to mind is a close up of a snarling, slavering pit bull terrier then our external experience of dogs will be profoundly influenced by that frightening representation. Dogs are dogs, but the person whose inner representation is like the one described above experiences them differently from the person who imagines a faithful, loyal, loving friend. What Paul Watzlawick calls the first order reality, the one '... that is thought to exist objectively, "out there" and independently from us...' <21> is the same for both people. The second order reality, the one '... which is the result of our "opinions" and our thinking, which thus constitutes our image of the first...' <22> is, however, significantly different. In many cases it is the second order reality that determines whether we experience the world as benign or threatening, as pleasurable or painful. This second order reality is, at root, substantially derived from the first and is thus subject to the distortions which inevitably characterize the representation of one thing in terms of another.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, however. All maps delete information and distort the territory they represent. The London Underground map provides us with a good example of this. Its value as a map derives from the fact that it does delete a great deal of information and does distort the distances between stations. Problems only start to arise when the map is mistaken for the territory. Thus, although we all live in the same world, the first order reality, we simultaneously live in individual ones, our second order realities. These second order realities will all have certain things in common. All will be constructed in terms of the five primary representation systems and language. People from the same cultural and/or religious background will share many representations. At the same time, every individual has a set of experiences unique to them and these also play a part in the construction of their model of the world.

As mentioned already, our conscious experience is one of attention oscillating between the perception of "internal" and "external" worlds. Each constantly influences the other. Rather crudely, we can think of hypnotic states occurring when our attention is absorbed in ongoing experience, and when mental processing is both non-conceptual and flexible, i.e. prepared to experiment with new or novel possibilities and/or responsive to suggestions. <23> If a person has been guided into that state by another then they will tend to remain receptive to suggestions made by that other. Hypnosis then, as Schumaker argues, is a fundamentally human phenomenon. Cultures make use of it by moulding human experience through the influence they exert on our internal representations and, ultimately, our perceptions of the world. They do this in a variety of ways.

Upbringing within the family is one of the primary vehicles. Children seem to be programmed to copy their parents. <24> Such copying goes extremely deep. The posture of parents is frequently replicated in remarkable detail. Even emotional states are often reproduced with unnerving accuracy. Because children are so dependent on parents for their survival they seem to be neurologically receptive to all information coming directly from that source. Parents' opinions and beliefs are often taken as truths by children. Since parents and other family members also tend to act as transmitters of wider cultural values through social skills training and the sharing of stories with their children, it is not uncommon for such messages to be accorded some kind of absolute value. Stories take children deeply into internal experience where they remain receptive to the suggestions of the storyteller who led them there. Traditional cultural stories, myths, legends and folk tales usually embody sets of values to which a culture subscribes. In the trance state of inwardly experienced story images the listeners to the story - and traditional stories are ideally transmitted orally - unconsciously internalize those values. The structure of many traditional stories often amplifies the trance state and hence suggestibility in the listeners. To take one example, a common pattern in myths from many cultures is the embedding of one story within another story which itself is embedded in another story and so on. One of the most powerful and elegant techniques for inducing hypnotic trance employs just this method. Bandler and Grinder call it 'stacking realities'. <25> It works by overloading the conscious mind, thereby enabling the hypnotist to communicate directly with the unconscious which is, of course, far more responsive to suggestion when freed from the constraints of conscious processing.

Group factors also play an important part in the structuring of an individual's experience. Indeed, Batson and Ventis claim that the ability of Social Psychologists to predict the kinds of religious experiences children will have on the basis of information about social background alone, '... suggests that each child is actually living out a script written by society; each is free to choose only the religious stance that his or her place in society dictates.' <26>  

If these authors are correct, then social factors control not only the general features of individuals' behaviour but also many aspects of internal experience. Even so, as was pointed out above, every individual has a unique experience of life and this too contributes to their internal model of the world. Moreover, many of the most profound experiences recorded and preserved by religious traditions were had in a solitary environment. The Buddha's enlightenment, Moses' encounter with Yahweh in the burning bush and Mohammed's receipt of the Qur'an from the angel Gabriel all exemplify this well, so too do many lesser mystical encounters with a deity or some putative reality. Perhaps such experiences are indicative of ways in which individuals can transcend their cultural conditioning. This is certainly a view that has considerable currency in many quarters. It is, however, one that is open to serious challenge.

Steven Katz has argued, convincingly in my view, that mystical experiences are not, as some writers have claimed, fundamentally the same in all traditions, nor even classifiable into a small number of types. Rather, he suggests, the experience of the Jewish mystic is distinctly Jewish, that of a Buddhist distinctly Buddhist and that of a Christian distinctly Christian. This is because religious traditions define the goal of religious endeavour, provide the means for the attainment of that goal and condition the expectations about the content of the experience. They condition the consciousness of the mystic before, during and after the mystical experience. Katz describes his essay as a plea for the recognition of differences. <27> If one accepts his conclusions and treats mystical experience as an inner encounter with the religious constructs of the mystic's own tradition rather than as an escape from conditioned experience leading, in turn, to an encounter with 'reality' how is the sense of veridicality reported by many mystics to be explained? How too are we to account for the unusual perceptions and powers frequently reported as accompanying mystical experience?

With regard to the first question, there is an interesting parallel between the induction of mystical states through various techniques of mental culture and the induction of hypnotic states. In the case of the former, the mystic usually practices some form of mental concentration as a means of accessing the insights which characterize mystical experience. Descriptions of concentrative states leading up to the experience of insight tend to emphasize the progressive reduction of mental processes up to the point of absolute or virtually absolute stillness. By contrast, the mystical perception made possible by such a calming of the mind is often portrayed as being more real than ordinary experience. Some philosophers have actually gone so far as to claim that just as waking experience reveals the unreality of a dream so mystical experience reveals the unreality of ordinary consciousness. The parallel with hypnotic states is suggestive. In his description of an hypnotic state Charles Tart writes,

     'Typically, if a deeply hypnotized subject is asked what he is thinking about or experiencing the answer is "Nothing". However, this state is also characterized by greatly enhanced suggestibility, a greater mobility of attention/awareness energy, so when a particular experience is suggested to the subject he usually experiences it far more vividly than he could in his ordinary d- Soc [discrete state of consciousness], often to the point of total experiential reality'. <28>  

Both states then, are introverted and experiences in them are preceded by an absence of cognitions though they are extremely vivid in themselves.

Tart's account of the hypnotic state introduces the idea of an experience being suggested to the subject by the hypnotist. In mystical experience no such person plays a part in the generation of the mystical state. Here the two experiences do seem to be different. Yet I would suggest that even this distinction is not as great as first impressions might imply. Later in his account, Tart points out that the hypnotic state '... is also characterized by a quality called rapport, a functioning of the Sense of Identity subsystem to include the hypnotist as part of the subject's own ego'. <29> The mystic's teachers may not be present in the same way as the hypnotist but it would be fair to say that they and their instructions, along with the imagery and expectations from the wider tradition, would be fully internalized by the mystic prior to the experience. Those elements, often implanted during periods of heightened suggestibility - through story, ritual and so on - would thus tend to function as varieties of post-hypnotic suggestion, triggered under appropriate circumstances.

The paranormal powers and perceptions frequently reported in mystical literature also have parallels in accounts of hypnotic states. Telepathy, clairvoyance, both spatial and temporal, and encounters with spiritual realms of existence and their inhabitants can be found described in works on both subjects. <30> Thus, whilst it may be the case that the full range of paranormal phenomena attested in mystical literature is not exactly paralleled in that on hypnosis, the overlap is considerable. In fact, given that both mystical and hypnotic states are attested in most cultures, that the characteristics of one are paralleled in the other and that both are associated with a variety of paranormal phenomena it seems reasonable to infer at least a family resemblance between them. A more bold hypothesis would be that they are examples of the same kind of mental activity. If so, mystical experiences can legitimately be regarded as complex cultural constructs designed to enhance the elaborate second order realities created by religions and cultures to bring meaning into life, thereby keeping the spectres of mortality and chaos at arm's length. Such a view certainly fits better with the results of psychological investigations than does the claim that mystics somehow transcend social constructions of existence and break through to some kind of ultimate truth beyond or behind the world. It is also better than the empathetic acceptance of numerous descriptions of that truth, most of which are incompatible with each other.

Other, perhaps more mundane, religious activities can also be seen to exhibit parallels with hypnotic processes. A common way in which cultures and religious traditions mould individual experience is through ritual. All societies have their rituals, many of which are to be found in a religious context. From a phenomenological perspective, a primary function of religious ritual is the setting up of a channel of communication between sacred and profane realms, as with the sacrificial rituals mentioned earlier. Often religious rituals are carried out in conjunction with the narration of a myth, which supplies the cosmic context for the ritual activities. The frequency of this association led some earlier scholars to claim that myth and ritual always go together. Not surprisingly, they came to be known as The Myth and Ritual School. <31> Subsequent research has demonstrated, however, that not all myths have a ritual accompaniment and not all rituals are embedded in mythic structures. Even so, the close connection between the two is undeniable.

This relationship between myth and ritual has been explored in some interesting ways by psychiatrist Eugene d'Aquili and anthropologist Charles Laughlin Jr. <32> According to these writers, the primary function of ritual is to reduce the sense of distance and separation between members of the same species whose survival depends on co-operation with their fellows. The reason ritual is able to generate feelings of connectedness with others is that, in group contexts, ritual generally involves the repetition of rhythmic patterns which have the tendency to arouse the limbic system of the brain, the centre of control over the emotions. <33> In human beings, it appears to be the case that '... repetitive auditory and visual stimuli can drive cortical rhythms and eventually produce an intensely pleasurable, ineffable experience...'. <34> In group situations such rhythms are synchronized in all participants. Thus, participation in group rituals provides human beings with a biologically-based method for creating group solidarity.

Such effects are mediated through the autonomic nervous system with its sympathetic and parasympathetic divisions. The former excites the organism, producing, as one of its outcomes, the fight or flight response, whilst the latter maintains the homeostatic balance in the body and is responsible for the baseline functioning of many organs. Normally, these systems are complementary. When one is active the other is dormant. Exposure to rhythmic stimuli, however, can eventually lead to both discharging electro-chemical stimuli into the body at the same time. It is this simultaneous high discharge that generates the pleasure. En route to this state a reversal phenomenon is often observed. This occurs when the active system starts to respond to stimuli that would normally trigger its counterpart. Another, possibly related, kind of reversal phenomenon occurs in what Pavlov called the ultra paradoxical phase of transmarginal inhibition. In this condition the brain's response to stress manifests as a reversal of conditioned behaviour patterns, e.g. affection might be replaced by aggression or an 'enemy' interrogator might become a 'friend'. According to William Sargant, all phases of transmarginal inhibition (which can be induced by a variety of means, including trance-generating dances) have one thing in common, it is that the activity of the brain exhibits characteristics similar to those observed in hypnotic conditions. <35> Stephen Gilligan makes a similar point about methods of inducing trance states. These can be created, he claims, by means of rhythmic and repetitive movements, chanting, attentional absorption and balancing of muscle tones through relaxation, massage etc. Stresses and traumas can also produce trance states which, however, lack the flexibility of trances induced by the abovementioned means. <36>  

Myths, as already observed, can also cultivate hypnotic states of mind. For structuralist thinkers such as Claude Levi Strauss, myths are primarily concerned to explore and resolve antinomies and polarities in human experience such as those dealing with nature and culture, order and chaos, life and death, individual desire and social obligation. These polarities are reflected, according to d'Aquili and Laughlin, in the structure and functioning of the brain itself. Following the work of Lex, they argue that the two hemispheres operate according to a system of reciprocal inhibition. Perception is built up through rapid alternations of hemispheric dominance. At any time, the human subject experiences the world in two quite distinct ways. The left hemisphere functions in a logical, sequential and temporal fashion whilst the right hemisphere functions in an impressionistic, holistic and spatial one. The integration of the two is, not infrequently, problematic. Myths then, can be understood as narrative devices for addressing and resolving problems that typically arise out of the way our brains operate.

Where d'Aquili and Laughlin part company with the structuralists is on the issue of resolution. Structuralists tend to argue that the cognitive resolutions contained within myths are adequate to human needs. d'Aquili and Laughlin, on the other hand, suggest that such resolutions lack 'existential reality', the emotional dimension. This, they suggest, is supplied by ritual. Humans who share in collective exposure to and participation in the rhythmic patterning of ritual activity will find themselves experiencing a sense of connectedness with fellow participants. The greater the number of vehicles promoting such participation the greater the sense of 'communitas' created. Combining rhythmic movement with rhythmic sound amplifies the effect, thus enhancing the sense of rapport between those involved. That state of rapport is, of course, one of heightened suggestibility. Involvement in the rhythmic patterns of rituals thus makes participants open to the suggestions about resolution of existential problems embedded in the associated myths. Myths and rituals then, offer religions and cultures powerful media for the promotion of group-specific supernaturalist beliefs which, in various ways, shield human beings from the harsh realities of life and enable them to function in the world with a considerable degree of effectiveness.

The price to be paid for this security and effectiveness is, however, a high one. The most efficacious internal representations are usually those which are regarded as truths, that is, they are most powerful when the map is mistaken for the territory. But when groups seek to assert the infallibility of their own maps and, consequently, come into conflict, then, once again, the solution to one problem has generated another. Because of this, Schumaker is pessimistic about the future of humankind. In his view, we cannot escape from paranormal believing yet this is putting us onto collision courses with each other and, given the potential for destruction that now lies in our hands, the consequences of such collisions are likely to become catastrophic. This may well be the case, though it is not inevitable. Our representations of the world are mutable. The recognition of the difference between the map and the territory, coupled with a willingness to accept that no map is perfect, could at least provide a foundation for the resolution of conflicts generated by our possession of different and seemingly incompatible mental constructs of what the world is really like. The hypnotic resources that helped to create them in the first place are available to help in the formation of more beneficial second order realities. Whether human beings will agree, on a grand enough scale, to explore such possibilities is, however, another matter.

References.

 <1> Holub M, Notes of a Clay Pigeon (trans. Milner J and I) Secker and Warburg, 1985.

<2> E.g. Eliade M, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries. Collins, 1968, p. 29; Otto R The Idea of the Holy Oxford University Press, 1958, p. 7.

<3> For a discussion of these terms see Sharpe E J, Comparative Religion - a History. Duckworth, 1975, p 224.  The term 'world view' also warrants further explication yet it would be inappropriate to attempt anything approaching a comprehensive treatment here.  I take its meaning to include the idea of a 'philosophy of life' (weltanschauung) and that of a 'generalized reality-orientation' '... a structured frame of reference in the background of attention which supports, interprets, and gives meaning to all experiences' (see Shor R E, 'Hypnosis and the concept of the generalized reality-orientation' in American Journal of Psychotherapy (13), 1959, pp. 582-602).      

<4> E.g. Smart N, 'Scientific Phenomenology and Wilfred Cantwell Smith's Misgivings' in Whaling F, (ed) The World's Religious Traditions: current Perspectives in Religious Studies. T and T Clark, 1984.

<5> Eliade M, The Quest, History and Meaning in Religion. University of Chicago Press, 1969 pp. 8-9, 68; Spiro M E, 'Culturally Constituted Defence Mechanisms' in Spiro M E, (ed), Context and Meaning in Cultural Anthropology. Free Press, 1965.

<6> Glock C Y, and Stark R, Religion and Society in Tension. Rand McNally, 1965, ch. 2; Smart N, The World's Religions. Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp. 10-21; Streng F J, Understanding Religious Life. (2nd edition) Dickenson, 1976, pp. 1-7.

<7> Menken H L, Prejudices. (third series) Jonathan Cape, 1923, pp. 232-237.

<8> Jung C G, Psychology and Religion. (2nd edition) Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978, p. 85.

<9> There is a substantial body of research which indicates that the human capacity to create benign illusions is a major component in the maintenance of mental health.  See Schumaker J F, 'The adaptive value of suggestibility and dissociation' in Schumaker J F, (ed) Human Suggestibility - advances in theory, research and application. Routledge, 1991, for details.  

<10> Schumaker J F, Wings of Illusion, the origin, nature and future of paranormal belief. Polity Press, 1990, pp. 6-7.

<11> Bowker J, Problems of Suffering in Religions of the World. Cambridge University Press, 1970, p. 7.

<12> This is the case for individual events.  Large populations, even in the quantum realm, behave in statistically predictable ways.  Similarly, non-linear phenomena tend to behave in non-repeating but regularly patterned ways.

<13> Schumaker, op. cit. pp. 15-16.

<14> Bowker J, The Religious Imagination and the Sense of God. Oxford University Press, 1978, p. 10.

<15> Schumaker, op. cit. p. 25.

<16> E.g. Thomas K, Religion and the Decline of Magic. Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1971.

<17> Jahoda G, The Psychology of Superstition. Penguin, 1969, p. 145.

<18> Loc. cit.

<19> E.g. Brown P, The Hypnotic Brain. Yale University Press, 1991, ch. 5; Tart C, Waking Up. Element, 1988, ch. 10.

<20> Gilligan S, Therapeutic Trances. Brunner-Mazel, 1987, ch.2.  <21> Watzlawick P, The Language of Change: Elements of Therapeutic Communication. Basic Books, 1978, p. 42.

<22> Loc. cit.  This account is unashamedly constructivist.  A footnote in a short essay is not, however, the place to argue the pros and cons of realism, idealism, constructivism etc.

<23> Gilligan S G, loc. cit.

<24> Hinde R, Individuals, Relationships and Cultures. Polity Press, 1987, p. 65.

<25> Bandler R, and Grinder J, TRANCE-formations, Neuro-Linguistic Programming and the Structure of Hypnosis. Real People Press, 1981, pp. 85-7.

<26> Batson D, and Ventis L, The Religious Experience, a social-psychological perspective. Oxford University Press, 1982, pp. 28-9.

<27> Katz S, 'Language, Epistemology and Mysticism' in Katz S, (ed) Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis. Sheldon, 1978.

<28> Tart C, States of Consciousness. Dutton, 1975, p. 81.

<29> Loc. cit.

<30> See, for example, Crabtree, A Multiple Man: explorations in possession and multiple personality. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1985 for details of such phenomena in literature on hypnosis. The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali offers an account from the Hindu mystical tradition whilst Jayatilleke K N, Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge. Allen and Unwin, 1963, contains a useful discussion of the higher knowledges and powers (abhinna) in Buddhism.

<31> See Harrelson W, 'Myth and Ritual School' in Eliade M, (ed) The Encyclopaedia of Religion. Vol. 10, Macmillan, 1987.

<32> d'Aquili E, and Laughlin C Jr., 'The Biopsychological Determinants of Religious Ritual Behaviour' Zygon (10), 1975 pp. 32-58.

<33> The limbic-hypothalamic system also plays a central role in therapeutic hypnosis.  See Rossi E L, The Psychobiology of Mind - Body Healing. W W Norton and Co., 1986.

<34> d'Aquili and Loughlin, op. cit. p. 37.

<35> Sargant W, Battle for the Mind. (revised edition) Headly Bros., 1959.

<36> Gilligan S G, op. cit. p. 44. 

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