Religious experience and the theory of anti-structure

8/10/2019 Religious experience and the theory of anti-structure

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Religious experience and

the theory of anti-structure

Charles Whitehead*

Lampeter ResidentialMA Religious Experience; MA The Worlds Religions; MA Death & Immortality

14.00-15.30 Wednesday 2nd June 2004

Email: [email protected]

Telephone: +44 (0) 20 8664 6714

* Affiliation & research:

Department of Cognitive Science, Harrow School of Computer Science, University of Westminster;Department of Anthropology, University College London;

Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience, University College London


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Religious experience and the theory of anti-structure

Rites of passage

In my previous talk I argued that there is an inverse relationship between complexity of

social structure and the incidence, prevalence, and quality of religious experiences(conscious and voluntary in egalitarian societies, less so in more stratified societies). In

this paper I aim to show that religious experiences are themselves anti-structural

phenomenaThe theory of anti-structure has its roots in the work of Arnold van Gennep. His

book, The Rite of Passage, first published in French in 1909, was the culmination of an

extensive study of sacred rituals in India. However, his broad conclusions about the

nature of ritual are consistent with ethnographic observations world-wide.Firstly, he concluded that all rituals are rites of passage, in the sense that they

have a transformative function. That is, they engineer transitions from one state to

another. Rites of passage are of two types:

1. Life-crisis riteseffect changes of state or station in the lives of individuals or

groups of individuals. Examples of life crises include birth, initiation, marriage,election to office, illness, and death.

2. Calendrical ritesmark the passage of society as a whole, especially from season

of plenty to season of lack and vice versa. Examples include harvest festivals,new year celebrations, etc.

His second observation was that rites of passage have three distinct phases:

1. Separationfrom the everyday world

2. Transition, which takes place in a kind of limbo outside the everyday world a

transitional space in which there is suspension or inversion of the normative socialorder. He also called this the liminal phaseof ritual (from Latin limenmeaning

margin)

3. Incorporation, or return to the everyday world transformed

Few if any rituals in agrarian or tribal societies entirely lack any one of these three

phases, although one may receive greater emphasis than another. For example, funeralstend to emphasize separation. Pregnancy, betrothal, and initiation rituals tend toemphasize transition; and weddings tend to emphasize incorporation.

In the separation phase of life crisis rites all signs of personal identity or social

status are commonly erased. Ndembu initiates, for example, are stripped naked, shorn oftheir socialpersonae- having no personal names, status, property, insignia of rank, role,

or clan membership - and smeared with earth (Turner, 1969). They are treated as animals

creatures outside society and described as dark and invisible, like the moon in

eclipse, or the dark of the moon when it is between phases and neither one thing oranother. Van Gennep notes that initiates are often compensated for the ordeals they


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undergo by a special freedom or sacred power of the weak. Since they are now outside

society no one can have power over them - they are sacred and untouchable:

During the novitiate, the young people can steal and pillage at will or feed andadorn themselves at the expense of the community. (1909/1960: 114)

But when they emerge from the incorporation stage, as fully initiated adults they areexpected to take up their proper roles as responsible members of society.

In calendrical rites, on the other hand, there is often a Saturnalian inversion of the

normative order. For example, in the British army at Christmas it was customary for theofficers to serve Christmas dinner to the men, and the British aristocracy likewise became

the servants of their servants on Christmas Day. Such inversions of authority, however,

are not designed to lessen the power of the ruling classes, but to ensure that it is

reasserted with, if anything, renewed coercive vigour (Turner, 1982).

Other examples of ritual inversion in calendrical rites include sacred incest andcannibalism. Both are universally abhorred during normative life, but may become

mandatory or sacramental in the liminal phase of ritual. Amongst the Eskimos,traditionally, summer was the normative time of year when family groups separated and

went hunting on their own behalf. But in winter the community reunited to enter a

collective ritual phase in which food was shared by everybody. Marital couples wereobliged to separate, and the shaman would reallocate partners into incestuous mating

relationships (since incest here is defined by clan membership, the partners may not be

close relatives in any biological sense). Ritual incest was always infertile because at thattime Eskimo women ceased to ovulate during the long winter darkness.

In Christian communion the central sacrament is an act of make-believe

cannibalism, but the Avatip of New Guinea have actual cannibalism which they makebelieve is not. If you ask, under everyday circumstances, whether or not they are

cannibals, Avatip men will react with horror and absolutely deny it. But during ritualhomicide expeditions they consider themselves and their victims to be no longer human:

Avatip warriors are transformed into hunting dogs and their victims into prey animals,

and so eating them is not considered to be cannibalistic.Mircea Eliade, a historian of religion, in The Myth of the Eternal Return

(1949/1989a), also notes the invisibility of initiates and a high frequency of dark moon

imagery during ritual. The essential metaphor that he saw here is of death andresurrection. Every month the waning moon dies, remains dead for three days, and then is

reborn as the new and waxing moon. Christ harrowing Hell for three days after his

crucifixion, Eliade suggests, is a lunar image.Separation and incorporation the first and last phases of ritual in van Genneps

scheme are frequently thought and spoken of as death and rebirth, as are the

prodromal and recovery phases of ritual trance. In the Bushman case, entry into trance is

quite literally understood as dying. So, in van Genneps central transitional stage, ritualparticipants may be metaphorically, socially, or perhaps even literally, thought of as

dead.

But Eliade did not see this central state of social death simply as an inversion orcollapse of social norms. He saw it as a collapse of history. Ritual returns people to the

archetypal time of origins the beginning of the world or the present social order - to the


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age of myth, or the Dreamtime of the Aborigines, which ended with the fall of

humankind. Fall myths relate that in ancestral times there was no disease or death or if

people died they came back to life after three days like the moon. There was no need to

work people simply had to reach out a hand to pluck fruit from a tree or to get otherfood. People spoke the language of animals, and could travel between earth and heaven

without effort (Eliade, 1956/1968). There were no divisions between humans, animals,

and spirits; or between heaven and earth.So the collapse of history amounts to the same thing as the collapse of categorical

distinctions, but Eliade emphasizes the archetypal nature of the transitional phase of

ritual, and the opening of the doors between earth and heaven, or the restoration of the

axis mundi the central column, sacred tree, mountain, or ladder between the upper and

the lower worlds. It is this which accounts for the numinous and magical character of

ritual experience. Eliade did not speak of archetypes in the Jungian sense, but in the time-

of-origins sense, the once upon a time of fairy tales. He offers no view as to whether

such archetypes are inscribed in the brain, culturally derived, or divinely inspired, but hedoes suggest an origin in ritual trance.

Eliade gives many illustrations of the collapse of history. For example, theorthodox Christian every week re-enacts the creation of the world in seven days, and on

Sunday the time when God rested from his exertions. At Christmas the origins of the new

world order are re-lived, and the twelve days of Christmas recreate the twelve months ofthe coming year on a primordial pattern. Many new year festivals are twelve days long,

Christmas having been at one time the festival of Yule, the Anglo-Saxon new year.

Similarly, when a shaman prepares to enter trance, he recreates the time beforethe fall. His body becomes timeless and indestructible; he is immune to hunger, old age,

and disease; he speaks secret animal languages and becomes one with them; and so he

restores the ancient time when everyone could fly to other worlds.In summary, van Gennep emphasizes the transformativefunction of the ritual

collapse or inversion of social order an old order is dismantled so as to replace it with anew one whereas Eliade emphasizes the conservativefunction history is collapsed so

that the effects of entropy can be repaired, and the primordial order, ordained by God or

the ancestors, restored and rejuvenated. Both perspectives seem valid, but in simple termsyou could say that transformation is the primary function of life-crisis rituals, whereas

maintenance and repair is the more usual function of calendrical rituals.

The theory of anti-structure

Victor Turner, in his 1969 book The Ritual Processcoined the term `anti-structure' todescribe the transitional topsy-turveydom of the liminal phase of ritual. Using van

Genneps insights into ritual, he developed the idea of anti-structure into a

comprehensive theory in the last book which he published before he died:From Ritual toTheatre: The Human Seriousness of Play(1982). He describes the liminal or anti-

structural phase of ritual as

a transformative self-immolation of order as presently constituted, even

sometimes a voluntarysparagmosor self-dismemberment of order


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whence the normative order can emerge revitalized (1982: 83).

Turner also saw the initiatory experience of the shaman as a voluntarysparagmos

or self-dismemberment. Classic election to shamanism occurs in a visionary experiencein which the neophyte shaman sees his own body dismembered by spirits; the flesh is

stripped from his bones, and everything thrown into a cooking pot. Then his body is

reassembled, and his former mortal organs replaced by magical ones, often made fromrock crystal. It is this new and magical body which enables him to fly at will to spiritual

worlds (Eliade, 1964).

Turner noted the extraordinary degree to which pre-industrial and pre-literatesocieties depend on ritual. Whilst living with the Ndembu, he was most impressed by the

fact that, as soon as he got out of bed in the morning, he could hear the beat of drums

coming from several different directions, and his biggest problem was deciding which

ritual to go and observe. He also had more than a passing interest in the psychological

effects of ritual, when people make contact with the non-social or asocial powers of lifeand death, from ghosts, gods, and ancestors to animals and birds (1982: 27). When

dramatic time replaces routinized social living, there are responses which, he tells us,neurobiologists call ergotropic arousal, heightened activity, and emotional response

(Barbara Lex, Neurobiology of ritual trance in The Spectrum of Ritual1979: 136; cited

in Turner, 1982: 9-10).

Anti-structure as a form of play

Turner notes that it is not only rituals which take place in a transitional space. Authors as

different as Huizinga (1955) and Winnicott (1974) have described both adult games andchildhood play as occurring in a transitional space a space set apart, which is not treated

as part of the everyday world. Formal games have their own idiosyncratic set of ruleswhich may be quite absurd and in no way resemble the rules of daily life. In childrens

pretend play there are no rules at all, and any act, however foolish or brutal, can be

enjoyed in make-believe. The function of pretend play is to explore what if? socialscenarios as in a laboratory, without exposing players to real-world risk. Indeed

experimental science is continuous with exploratory play. Winnicott saw all play as

transformative it is through play that children achieve their own socialization.Turner saw ritual as a kind of culturally prescribed pretend play, in which

imagined or imaginary beings, relationships, and transformative processes are

pantomimed or acted out. Gregory Bateson (1974) and others have developed similarviews. In ritual, we leave the indicative world of everyday working structure, and enterthe subjunctive as if of exploratory play. The liminal phase of ritual is characterized by

subversive and ludic events: grotesque and fantasy rearrangements not otherwise found in

experiential reality; transformation of humans into animals, men into women, and womeninto men; joking relations, sacred games, mock ordeals, holy fooling and clowning even

periods of obligatory spontaneity. Trickster tales are told at ludic times (1982: 32). In

liminality people play with the elements of the familiar and defamiliarize them (1982:27). This is all reminiscent of Malinowskis observation that the perceived efficacy of

magical action seems to correlate with its coefficient of weirdness (1935).


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The parallels between ritual and childhood play prompted Turner to remind us

that except ye become as a little child, ye shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

Anti-structure and cultural creativity

In an earlier work (1969), Turner argued that anti-structural processes and conditions arenecessary for all cultural innovation:

Liminality, marginality, and structural inferiority are conditions in which arefrequently generated myths, symbols, rituals, philosophical systems, and works of

art. These cultural forms provide men with a set of templates, models, or paradigms

which are, at one level, periodical reclassifications of reality (or, at least, of social

experience) and mans relationship to society, nature, and culture. But they are

more than (mere cognitive) classifications, since they incite men to action as well asthought (Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-structure, 1969: 52)

Brian Sutton-Smith (1972) borrowed Turners concept of anti-structure for his research

on patterns of order and disorder in games mainly in childrens games but also in some

adult games. He concluded that games are transformative. Liminoid genres, he writes,

not only make tolerable the system as it exists, they keep its members in a more

flexible state with respect to that system, and, therefore, with respect to possiblechange. Each system has structural and anti-structural adaptive functions. The

normative structure represents the working equilibrium, the "anti-structure"

represents the latent system of potential alternatives from which novelty will arisewhen contingencies in the normative system require it. We might more correctlycall this second system theproto-structuralsystem because it is the precursor of

innovative normative forms. It is the source of new culture (1972: 18-19).

Sutton-Smith suggested that there is a circular relationship between the structural worldof everyday life and the anti-structural world of play, entertainment, and ritual.

Environmental change or crisis in the normative world triggers a response in the anti-

structural world: alternative what if? scenarios are explored in fantasy, and anypromising new ideas are then actualized in social change. There are many examples of

such processes in ethnographic literature. For example, cargo cults in New Guinea, South

America, and elsewhere, are responses to the experience of colonialism. They begin withthe fantastic premise that aircraft cargoes are in actuality gifts from the ancestors. By

building air strips, the white man has deceived the ancestors and stolen the gifts intended

for the indigenous population. So the cargo cultists build airstrips in the forest, and expect

the ancestors to eventually see their mistake, and land their cargoes in the proper place.The initial result may be disappointment and disillusion, but through an empirical process

of reality testing, cargo cults can evolve into effective political movements (Lawrence,

1964; Worsley, 1970). Cargo cults are a specific type of revitalization movement, whichmore generally lead to adaptive social change. Wallace (1956) believed that many higher

religions, including Christianity, originated as revitalization movements.


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Anti-structure and psychological creativity

The notion of anti-structure is not something peculiar to anthropology. Apters (1982)

theory of psychological reversals is a close parallel of Turners theory, apparentlydeveloped quite independently, and in a different field of study. Apter pointed out that

linear reasoning can never arrive at anything new, because logical conclusions are always

implicit in the premises. He described logical thought as telic, which means goal-directed; and playful thought asparatelic, which means not goal directed. Daydreams,

fantasies, and general playing around with ideas, is something we do for fun with no

objective in mind. Apter concluded that all human creativity requires paratelic thought a kind of anti-structural mental play.

Anti-structure as a universal necessity

There is a very simple logic to all these ideas. Whenever transformation occurs

whenever one structure gets replaced by a new one there must be a transitional phasewhich is anti-structural. If you want to create a new community centre in Wandsworth,

you must first knock down a block of flats. For a caterpillar to become a butterfly, it must

pupate. Inside the chrysalis, the cellular architecture of the old caterpillar body with theexception of a few master cells must disintegrate into a kind of custard, from which the

master cells will then orchestrate the creation of the new butterfly body. Equally, if you

want to clone an animal, you must do so from a cell in its quiescent phase one that isnot structurally committed to being a liver cell or a muscle cell. The extraordinary

creative potential of stem cells is a function of their structurally non-committed character.

Anti-structure in agnostic societies: secular alternatives to ritual

Turner was interested in how cultural transformation is achieved in post-industrial

societies, where there is widespread agnosticism and indifference to traditional ritual. Dowe have secular alternatives to ritual liminality? Turners answer is yes: the clue here

being the anti-structural parallel between ritual and play.

Prior to the industrial revolution the primary division of social life was betweensacred and secular work. Ritual activity in non-industrial societies is both play-like, in the

sense that it is anti-structural, and work-like, because it is mandatory. In foraging and

simple agricultural societies ritual is mandatory because if you dont do it the universewill collapse, or, at the very least, the social order will fall apart. Turner dubbed liminalritual activity as ludic-ergic that is, play-like and work-like.

But in the post-industrial world, the primary division of social life is between

work and leisure. Since religious participation is no longer obligatory you dont getburnt at the stake for not going to church even religion has now been consigned to the

leisure sector. Leisure is exclusively ludic the time when you do whatever you want to

do. Leisure has replaced ritual as the basis of transformation in the post-industrial world.Where the Temiars and Bushmen have ritual trance, we have television. Turner reserved


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van Genneps term liminalfor the ludic-ergic central phase of ritual, and coined the term

liminoidto describe the exclusively ludic character of leisure.

There is a wealth of liminoid processes in western societies. Everything playful,

everything that we regard as entertainment or recreation holidays, hobbies, sport,games, theatre, television, and the arts is playful, liminoid., and anti-structural, and

therefore creative and transformative. There are also popular festivals that derive from

ancient liminal forms but have lost much of their sacred character Bonfire Night,Halloween, Mardi Gras, and Carnival. These retain some of their ancient subversive

elements raids, violations, demands for money or gifts, and the obligatory breaking of

rules. But, as Turner points out, these are not always as anti-structural as they once were,because many of the participants in carnivals are rule-breakers all the time (1982: 42).

Turner believed that the optional and liminoid nature of western leisure genres

provides greater cultural flexibility and capacity for social change than the obligatory and

liminal nature of ritual in pre-industrial societies. Leisure provides freedom from

institutional obligations and the forced rhythms of factory and office; freedom to enjoybiological rhythms again, enter new symbolic worlds, transcend the limitations of social

structure, and play with ideas, fantasies, words, paint, or social relationships (1982: 36-7).Leisure is potentially capable of releasing creative powers, individual or communal,

either to criticize or buttress the dominant social structural values (1982: 37).

The social drama and social change

Like Sutton-Smith, Turner also was interested in the circular relationship between

structure and anti-structure. Whilst in America he developed a collaborative friendship

with Richard Schechner, an experimental theatre director. They were both interested inthe relationship between the structural role-play of everyday life and the anti-structural

role-play of the theatre. The social psychologist George Herbert Mead (1935) was one ofthe first to point out the theatricality of daily life. Anthropologist Erving Goffman applied

Meads views to ethnographic data in The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life

(1959), demonstrating how ordinary routines of daily living are structured as if the actorsinvolved were following a miniature play script. A classic example is going to the

doctor, which prescribes a specific sequence of events and the roles to be played by

patient, doctor, receptionist, pharmacist, and so on.Turner notes that contradiction is an inevitable feature of social structure, and this

frequently leads to dispute and conflict. In industrial societies, for example, there is a

contradiction between the ideology of capitalism and the ideology of the trade unionmovement between freedom and justice. Among the Ndembu, the contradictionbetween matriliny (property and identity inherited through the maternal line) and

virilocality (the requirement that when a woman marries, she goes to live with her

husband) is a continuing source of dispute, frequently inflamed by feelings of moralindignation on both sides.

Turner used the term social drama to describe the process through which

disputes develop and progress to some kind of resolution. The initial breach occurs whenone person, in accordance with one set of values, takes an action which offends another

person who is applying another set of values better suited to that persons own self-


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interest. The initial breach progresses to crisis as other parties take sides, and an entire

community may threaten to fracture along lines of potential cleavage, which may involve

national, territorial, or ethnic boundaries as in the Bosnian war or race riots in Burnley

and Oldham. Those with a vested interest in maintaining the peace will then attempt tointervene, reconcile antagonists, or arrange some kind of redress for perceived offences.

It is at this transitional stage that ritualized anti-structural action is mobilized. This may

be judicial (formal or informal courts), religious (threatening supernatural retribution oroffering propitiatory sacrifice), or military (feuding, headhunting, or warfare). This

redressive stage is a powerful stimulus for social self-examination and reflectivity. Since

theatre (and all the arts) acts as a social mirror - a reflective medium of socialcommentary - Turner saw its function as an extension of older redressive processes in the

social drama. Theatre represents the hypertrophy of jural and ritual processes:

investigative, judgmental, and at times even punitive. At the same time there are

elements of the numinous and sacred, even of sacrifice. All the arts, in Turners view,

ascribe meaning to social dramas. The final phase is resolution. If redressive processeshave succeeded, antagonists will be reconciled; if not, there will be public recognition of

the breach, and disgruntled parties may move away to live in a different area.The four stages of the social drama are summarized below:

Four stages of the social drama

1. Breach2. Crisis

3. Redress Ritualized action: Legal (formal or informal courts)

Religious (supernatural retribution andsacrifice)Military (feuding, headhunting, war)

Theatrical/artistic

4. Resolution Reconciliation, or

Recognition of breach

Turner regarded the social drama as a universal dramatic process aimed at resolving

social contradictions, and a universal mechanism of social change. Social life, he argued,alternates between the structural role-play of everyday life and the anti-structural role-

play of ritual, theatre, and the arts. Although it is true that art reflects life, it is equally

true that life imitates art'. He comments: There was a lot of Perry Mason in Watergate

(1982: 90).Turner adopts Schechners (1977) model of the circular relationship between the

social drama and stage drama. In the diagram below, everything above the line is public,

overt, and dramatic. Everything below the line is hidden and implicit the set ofassumptions, ideologies, and beliefs about society which underpin overt behaviour.


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The alternation of structural and anti-structural drama

Truth in anti-structure

Anti-structure is a paradoxical state, and Turner noted one outstanding paradox. It is in

the anti-structural world the world of artifice and pretence of ritual pantomime, make-believe, and theatrical illusion that poets, artists, and mystics claim to find `ultimate

truth'. They find `ultimate falsehood', on the other hand, in the everyday world thereal world in which we confront practical problems, earn our daily bread, and care for

our children. Turner explains this by contrasting the here-and-now immediacyof anti-

structure with the mediacyof structure. Social structure exists to mediate its own relationswithin itself and with its environment. It is committed to fossilized pasts and intended

futures - a world of masks, customs, habits, static paradigms, and conventions. The actor,

whether in ritual or theatre, dons a mask to reveal the false mask of convention.

When social structure has been swept aside, when the initiand has been strippednaked, deprived of his personal name, smeared with earth and rendered dark and

invisible, little is left other than the raw potential of the human being. This opens the doorto multiple human possibilities. Turner cites Kennelm Burridge (1979), who says thatduring initiation rituals, when social persona is erased, what is revealed is the proto- or

ur-individual. He goes on:

In this situation most initiands, responding to past pressures of kinfolk and

conformists, yield to the more obvious and overt side of the ritual. Some, intuitivelygrasping that symbols and symbolic activities contain a mysterium a latency, a

promissory note, an invitation to realize that which lies behind the obvious andovert may perceive and order a truth which, because they cannot withstand


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conformist pressures, they will hold in their hearts all the years of their lives (cited

in Turner, 1982: 114).

As in ritual, so also in art. Citing the German hermeneutic anthropologist WilhelmDilthey, Turner tells us that artists have found the perfect expressive form for experiential

truth: they offer us a prehension of a liminal space where life discloses itself at a depth

inaccessible to observation, reflection, and theory (Dilthey, 1927: 207; cited in Turner,1982: 15). Great theatre, Turner points out, even brings incest and parricide on stage from

behind the masks of kinship (1982: 115). Anti-structure strips away the masks that hide

reality:

We have to go into the subjunctive world of monsters, demons, and clowns, of

cruelty and poetry, in order to make sense of our daily lives, earning our daily

bread. And when we enter whatever theatre our lives allow us, we have already

learned how strange and many-layered everyday life is, how extraordinary theordinary. We then no longer need in Audens terms the endless safety of

ideologies but prize the needless risk of acting and interacting (1982: 122).

Communitas

It was during Ndembu initiation ceremonies that Turner (1969) first noticed a

phenomenon which he called communitas. Having been stripped naked and shorn of theirsocialpersonae, and having endured together a series of painful and humbling ordeals,

there emerged a distinctive sense of unity, fellowship, and intimacy among the novitiates,

a loving oneness and equality, reminiscent of Martin Bubers I-thou relationship.Turner had difficulty defining communitas:

I find myself forced to have recourse to metaphor and analogy. For communitas has

an existential quality; it involves the whole man in his relation to other whole men.

Structure, on the other hand, has cognitive quality a set of classifications forthinking about culture and nature and ordering public life. (1969: 127)

He assembled evidence for communitas being a universal phenomenon, noting thatgoodwill to all humankind seems to be a principle with considerable cross-cultural

appeal. Turner stressed that communitas exists in contrast and not in opposition to social

structure (1982: 51). Nor is it a regression to some kind of primordial herd instinct orinfantile lack of ego boundaries. Communitas depends onsocietas and cannot existwithout it. And it must inevitably revert to societas any attempt to sustain communitas

automatically turns it into a set of rules for living in communitas. Spontaneous

communitas is like the wind which bloweth where it listeth and cannot be madepermanent as in the utopian goal of Marxist ideology, or the holy rule of religious

orders.


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Flow

Turner (1982: 55-6) compared communitas with the experience of flow as defined by

Csikszentmihaly & MacAloon (Play and intrinsic rewards, unpublished):

Flow denotes the holistic sensation present when we act with total involvement a

state in which action follows action according to an internal logic which seems toneed no conscious intervention on our part we experience it as a unified flowing

from one moment to the next, in which we feel in control of our actions, and in

which there is little distinction between self and environment; between stimulus andresponse; or between past, present, and future.

Flow is described as the ultimate pay-off in ritual, art, sport, games, and even gambling

more rewarding than goals, prizes, praise, or cash. When a footballer is in flow, he

seems to be in tune with the entire game; he seems to know what every other player isgoing to do even before they know it themselves, and he knows just which way the ball is

about to go. If the referee awards a penalty in favour of his team, he is frustrated, becauseit breaks the flow, and flow is more valued than any number of goals. So even in the most

competitive sports, flow is non-competitive, a feeling, like communitas, of oneness with

others and with the environment.American athletes refer to the flow experience as being in the zone. Some such

experiences are capable of becoming religious experiences with feelings of unity with

humankind, nature, or God. Rhea White (1998) mentions an American long-distancerunner who, having discovered that his ancestors originated in Cornwall, decided to run

from John o Groats to Lands End. Near the end of this super-marathon, he felt he had

reached the point of terminal exhaustion. But then, in a state of semi-trance, heexperienced the spirits of his ancestors helping and supporting him, and an inexhaustible

source of energy was made available, enabling him to complete his run without furtherdifficulty.

Csikszentmihaly & MacAloon list six features of flow experience:

1. The experience of merging action and awareness; absence of dualism; actors are

not aware that they are aware

2. Centring of attention on a limited stimulus field (past and future must be givenup only now matters): by simplification with drugs or alcohol; by

intensification by means of rules, motivation, or competition, or by rewards for

knowledge, will, or skill (but the flows the thing not rules or rewards)3. Loss of ego no self is needed to bargain4. Actors find themselves in control of their actions and environment (though they

may not know this at the time). Skills arise to meet demands; there is a positive

self-concept; worry and fear vanish5. There are coherent non-contradictory demands for action and clear unambiguous

feedback from actions. Critics do not matter to a pro the final judge is you.

Rules make action and the evaluation of action unproblematic. There is noinclination to cheat because cheating breaks the flow.


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6. Flow seems to need no goals or rewards outside itself (it is autotelicor self-

motivating). To flow is to be as happy as a human can be. People will

manufacture situations favouring flow, or seek it outside flow resistant

situations.

Communitas and flow share the experience of oneness, unity, unconditional acceptance

of self and others, self sufficiency, and so on. But flow can be an individualisticexperience, whereas communitas is inevitably social; and flow depends on doing,

whereas communitas is more concerned with being.

Anti-structure and altered states

The term altered states of consciousness, or ASCs, is considered problematic

nowadays. Psychologists have argued that consciousness is in such constant state of fluxthat to talk about altered states is virtually meaningless, and ASCs are a non-

explanandum (Littlewood, 1994). The problem, according to them, is to explain how wehave any continuous sense of identity at all. In the state versus non-state debate in

hypnosis research, the non-state lobby argues that hypnotic and other altered states

such as multiple personalities and demonic possession are nothing but sociallyprescribed role-plays. Well, role-play is a remarkable human ability so we might question

this nothing but. What they actually mean isfakeas opposed to genuine. Spanos

(1989) claims to have proved experimentally that genuinely hypnotized subjects areindistinguishable from fakers but he failed to observe one important difference: fakers

do a better job. So, if genuinely hypnotized subjects are regressed to the age of five

years, and asked to write the word psychology, they will adopt a convincing five-year-old handwriting, but make the mistake of spelling the word correctly. Or, if told that a

certain chair has vanished, they will be astonished by its abrupt disappearance; but whenasked to walk across the room, they will be careful to avoid walking into it. Fakers, in

contrast, deliberately spell psychology wrongly, and make a point of colliding with

invisible furniture.Anthropologists also have their problems with the idea of altered states. What is

altered in one culture may be normal in another. Relativists also argue that any

generalization about ASCs is not valid because just about everything in humanexperience is culturally constructed and specific to its time and place.

In answer to all these doubters I think it is fair to say that there certainly are

clearly demarcated altered states which are innate and universal in humans and manynon-humans as well. Sleep, for example, follows a 24 hour cycle and is clearlydistinguishable from wakefulness both experientially and physiologically (it may be

culturally significant that western psychologists are at a loss to explain the function of

sleep). Then there is REM sleep, which follows a 90 minute cycle, and daydreaming,which also follows a 90 minute cycle and appears to be continuous with our REM cycle.

If you are an anaesthesiologist, it is a pragmatic necessity for you to distinguish reliably

between anaesthesia and full consciousness. Whilst it is true that trances and otherreligious phenomena do vary cross-culturally, they clearly have common features and


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presumably depend on universal human abilities which make cultural construction

possible in the first place.

Not only are many altered states clearly definable by changes in physiology, brain

activity, EEG measurements, and so on, but they are also divisible into definable phaseswhich parallel the three phases of ritual defined by van Gennep:

1. Separationfrom the everyday world2. Transition: the liminal or anti-structural phase

3. Incorporation, or return to the everyday world transformed

Many ASCs have prodromes and postdromes resembling the first and last phases of

ritual, and are distinctly anti-structural in between. Sleep, for example, begins with

hypnagogic visions and ends with hypnopompic ones. Sleep itself is characterized by

dream episodes in which there are bizarre inversions and distortions in the customary

laws of nature. Dreams are clearly anti-structural, a kind of playtime for the mind. Then,after sufficient sleep, we awake feeling renewed or refreshed, which surely testifies to the

transformative function of sleep.

Ludwig (1969: 9-22), following an exhaustive survey of human ASCs, including

religious experiences, compiled a list of their recurring features. The following is basedon his account, with additional material from Deikmans (1969) study of mystical

experiences, Pahnke & Richardsons (1969) study of mystical experience under the

influence of psilocybin, and other authors.

1. Separation

The prodromal or separation phase of ASC is characterized by the alteration, collapse,or breakdown of everyday conceptual structures and perceptions of the self. There is

commonly a sense of letting go, which may take the form of mystical self-surrender

(Hay & Morisy, 1978; James, 1960) or shamanic willingness to die (Katz, 1982). As thefamiliar constants of everyday experience begin to shift, fragment, or alter, there may be

a fear of losing ones grip a common cause of bad trips. Surrender of control or ego-

loss, on the other hand, may be welcomed with pleasurable anticipation in those who seekmystical or psychedelic experiences. Loss of control is often associated with affective

changes including disinhibition of emotion. Affective changes vary enormously, ranging

in intensity from detached to all-consuming, and in sign from extreme positive to extremenegative.

Many changes in consciousness are associated with changes in body image.

Perceived distortion of the body may begin with somatic sensations such as dizziness,

blurred vision, muscle weakness, numbness, or tingling, and may lead todepersonalization, derealization, separation of body and mind, out-of-body experiences,

and loss of ego boundaries. These may be experienced as strange and frightening, or may

lead to the oceanic experience typical of mystical states.


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The initiatory visions of shamanism, in which the neophyte shaman sees his own

body defleshed, disarticulated, and thrown into a cooking pot, could be taken as a fit

metaphor for the prodromal phenomena of all anti-structural processes.

2. Transition

The disintegration or surrender of everyday patterns of thought leads into the anti-

structural or transitional phase of ASC. Alterations in perception, cognition,

concentration, attention, memory, and judgement are virtually definitive of ASCs, and allauthors mention the frequency of paradoxical experience: the collapse, conflation, or

confusion of cognitive and culturally-defined categories; blurring or inversion of usual

cause-and-effect distinctions; subject-object merging; violations of Aristotelian logic; the

coexistence of contradictory ideas without any sense of incongruity; and conflation of

sensations normally thought of as opposites (e.g. white darkness in a case of voodoopossession described by Sargant, 1962). There is increased archaic or primary process

thought; reality testing is usually impaired or absent; or what is experienced as real maybe judged as unreal (Deikman, 1969).

Perceptual changes include hallucinations, hyperacute perception, and

synaesthesias in which possibly primordial metaphors such as dark sound, loudcolours, or sweet sensations achieve experiential reality. Increased visual imagery is

common; content may be determined by group, cultural, or individual expectations or

may be abstract. So-called entoptic images abstract patterns of lines and light formedinside the eye are common cross-culturally in the early stages of trance. Lewis-

Williams and Dowson (1988) compared entoptic images drawn by research subjects,

images in contemporary shamanic art known to be of entoptic origin, and images inPalaeolithic cave paintings. They inferred that such great cave paintings as those of

Lascaux and Altamira are probably shamanic trance visions.What is interesting here is that, as in ritual, these anti-structural phenomena are

commonly associated with other phenomena that could be described as mystical or

religious. As boundaries disappear between self and world the result is a sense of unity with the world, with the cosmos, with nature, with the community, with all humankind,

or with God. Unity is the hallmark of mystical experience (Pahnke & Richards, 1969)

we become one with the universe and aware of our oneness (Deikman, 1969). What isnot explained by the anti-structural mechanism alone is why this should be so moving,

beautiful, or inspiring. Although healers in animistic societies do not report any sense of

mystical unity during trance, images of the heart recur cross-culturally in the way peopletalk about trance or ritual experience. The Temiars speak about the yearning of the heartfor trance (Roseman, 1994), the Bushmen healer must have an open heart to enter kia

(Katz, 1989), and the Huichol peyote hunter prays that the group should be of one heart

(Furst, 1995). A shaman may weep at the beauty of his song (Eliade, 1989b), just as thegirl in the Eland Bull dance weeps at the beauty of it all (Katz, 1989). Peter Brown a

hypnosis researcher considers that all trance has as its goal both social and

psychological integration, and several authors (Bliss, 1986; Brown, 1991; Laughlin et al.,1992) agree that trance states reflect a holistic imperative an integrative tendency in

all psychic and self-regulating systems.


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A second feature of ASCs which may be experienced as religious is

transcendence of time and space. Velocity and distance may be altered, delivering the

power of seven league boots. Time may be accelerated or slowed, of infinite or

infinitesimal duration. There may be a sense of timelessness, suspension of time, timecoming to a standstill (Ludwig, 1969), or a direct perception of eternity or infinity

(Pahnke & Richards, 1969).

Loss of orientation and radical perspective change may lead to a sense of standingoutside time, and of past and future being coterminous with the present (Pahnke &

Richards, 1969). The experient, from this extratemporal vantage point, may survey the

totality of history, seeing:

from the perspective of the Timeless, my life in retrospect and prospect, [knowing

that] I have been here before and will be here again, [able to] go back, to work

through unresolved problems in relationships [and to see] the suffering ahead. My

own death was dimly sensed and strangely accepted. The continuity of my past withmy future is not contradicted by the feeling that the present experience remains with

me, [leading to] deep changes. The fact that all was preordained did not contradictliving in freedom, fighting for truth and against evil (Pahnke & Richards, 1969).

Experience in ASC sometimes carries revelatory conviction that one has been given themeaning of everything. The conviction may persist for the rest of the persons life, or

may appear, in the cold light of day, to be the veriest nonsense as William James

described his own anaesthetic revelation. In a study of mystical experiences induced bypsilocybin, Pahnke and Richardson (1969) describe a sense of humility, awe, and

reverence associated with a nonrational, intuitive, hushed, palpitant response in the

presence of inspiring realities.A universal feature of ASCs, according to Ludwig (1969), is hypersuggestibility.

Suggestions may derive from the silent inner voice of the subjects own wishes, fears,or conscience; or from a shaman, hypnotherapist, or other social authority; or from the

expectations of ones culture or group.

Deikman (1969) speaks of the intense realness of mystical experiences and theirself-vindicating sense of truth. Pahnke and Richards (1969) refer to a conviction of

illumination by direct experience, a certainty of ultimate reality, and what William James

calls noetic quality a feeling state that is simultaneously a knowledge state depthsof truth unplumbed by discursive intellect.

Ludwig describes this as an extended eureka experience. He describes a visit to

the mens room under the influence of LSD, the thrill of revelation inspired by the signPlease Flush After Using, and his subsequent difficulties trying to make a friendunderstand how these four words condensed the entire meaning of the universe.

However, we should bear in mind Apters theory of psychological reversals that anti-

structural mental play is the only possible source of creativity. It is clear from readingWilliam Jamess account of his own anaesthetic revelation that he found the experience

intellectually productive precisely becauseof the manifest absurdity of its content.

Not all such noetic experiences seem absurd subsequently. One of Pahnke andRichardsons subjects describes a revelation of emanationism, in which the


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infinite light of God [creates and sustains] descending degrees of reality, [revealing

the] layers of Hindu and Buddhist cosmology and psychology [as] now objects of

direct and immediate perception. Beyond accounting for their origin, my experience

testified to their absolute truth.

The self-validating quality of mystical experience leads Deikman to point out that our

sense of reality is not based on evidence, and that thefeelingof reality, and realityjudgement, are discrete functions.

All authors emphasize the ineffability of mystical experiences. Shamanic trance,

on the other hand, yields lucid verbal reports, perhaps testifying to a well-integratedtrance-ego and trance-body image. Lucid memories may also follow psychedelic

experiences, marijuana intoxication, and revelatory states (Ludwig, 1969). Rudolf Otto

points out that love is just as ineffable as the numinous, but the same is true of the taste of

coffee. All sensations are ineffable.

Deikman (1969) comments that in what he calls the pre-verbal state the subjectmay feel blissfully enfolded, comforted, bathed in love which he postulates to be a

regression to and activation of infantile longing by the promise that a benign deity wouldreward childlike surrender with permanent euphoria. He does not rule out the possibility

that mystical experiences might provide veridical insights into reality not obtainable by

other means, and suggests that ineffable revelations, particularly those induced by drugs,are often just too complex to verbalize. Many simultaneous levels of meaning may be

understood in their totality. Linear logic may give way to a new vertical organization

of concepts. He invites us to imagine GibbonsDecline and Fall, TolstoysWar andPeace, and HendersonsFitness of the Environment(1917), melting into a single

metaconcept.

One speculative possibility is that the numinous is an experience comparable tothe singularity from which came the big bang that started the universe something like

infinite meaning condensed into zero space and time resulting from the collapse ofcategorical boundaries and the unification of opposites: the ultimate anti-structural

experience.

3. Incorporation

Not all authors mention a third stage in ASC comparable with van Genneps

incorporation phase, though hypnopompic visions certainly mark the end of sleep, and

shamanic otherworld adventures are framed by an outward and a return flight. Someauthors, such as Laughlin, McManus, and dAquili (1992: 140-5), argue that, at thebeginning and end of cognitively salient altered states or stretches of experience, there are

always well-defined boundary processes, which they call warps, though these warps

may be too brief to attract conscious attention and recall.The transitional phase of ASCs may end with an episode of sleep, or there may be

a gradual return to a conscious state that the experient regards as normal. However, as

with van Genneps account of ritual, it is often a return to normality transformed.Mystical, religious, peak, and conversion experiences regularly generate

feelings of new hope, rejuvenation, and rebirth. These and other ASCs may give rise to a


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sense of increased energy, wholeness, contact with ones true self, or at least feeling

rested or refreshed. Such subjective feelings of revitalization, according to Ludwig, may

be far from universal in the vast panoply of ASCs, but he acknowledges such effects

following psychedelic states; CO2abreaction; methedrine, ether, or amytal intoxication;hypnosis; religious conversion; trance and meditational states; insulin coma therapy;

spirit possession; puberty rites; and of course sleep.

The revitalizing and rejuvenating effects of ASCs are among the likely reasons forthe widespread use and success of trance in healing.

Following mystical and psychedelic experiences there are regular reports of

positive changes in attitude and behaviour towards the self, others, life, and mysticalconsciousness in general (Pahnke & Richards, 1969). Reported benefits include

psychological integration; increased self-worth; relaxation of ego defences; increased

confidence to confront problems; faith in creative potential; increased sensitivity,

tolerance, and compassion towards others; an I-thou relationship with the world; and

new insight. The permanence and extent of such changes, however, needs research(ibid).

Religious experience as anti-structural

In my previous talk I argued that there is an inverse relationship between complexity of

social structure and the incidence and prevalence of religious experiences, as well as the

consciousness and autonomy of those who have them. If structure is antithetical to REs,then it would not be surprising if the experiences are themselves anti-structural, and most

common in anti-structural situations.

It seems clear that religious experiences, along with other altered states, areindeed intrinsically anti-structural. Recurring features such as loss of ego boundaries,

self-surrender, collapse of categorical distinctions, conflation of opposites, paradox,oceanic feelings of unity, transcendence of space and time, and ineffability, are self-

evidently anti-structural. Other characteristics, such as revelation, numinosity, and noetic

quality are anti-structural by implication, and by association or logical continuity withother anti-structural manifestations.

Not only are these experiences anti-structural, but they also occur under anti-

structural conditions. Institutionalized religious experiences or states, such as shamanictrance, possession trance, glossolalia, and charismatic phenomena, commonly take place

in the anti-structural phase of ritual. But even the more spontaneous types of religious

experience reported in post-industrial societies seem to occur in anti-structuralcircumstances.

If we consider the list of antecedents or triggers of REs in the first three thousand

cases collected by Sir Alister Hardy (1979: 28-9), all those which occur in more than

10% of reports are distinctly anti-structural. They are: (m) depression, despair: over 18%;(d) prayer, meditation: over 13%; (a) natural beauty: over 12%; and (c) participation in

religious worship: almost 12% (see table). The fact that depression and despair top the

list is an intriguing and suggestive finding: perhaps REs cannot occur in manycontemporary individuals until the need for them becomes desperate.


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I am aware that Hardy (1979: 24) himself points out that such percentages are not

really suitable for arriving at statistical conclusions:

It has never been our intention that any mathematical treatment should be made ofthis essentially observational material except to give mere indications of possible

trends (Hardy, 1979: 24)

But he himself lists all the over-10% features in order of decreasing incidence, which is

really mixing apples and pears. Hardys triggers are themselves problematic: to what

extent is natural beauty separable from silence and solitude? Why should literature,drama, and film be counted as a single category, but music and visual art counted

separately? How many of these factors are causal, and how many coincidental?

But, regardless of the problems of interpretation, most, and quite possibly all, of

the twenty-one triggers listed by Hardy are anti-structural in some sense.

Antecedents or triggers of experience(Hardy, 1979: 28-9)

%

(m) Depression, despair 18.37(d) Prayer, meditation 13.57

(a) Natural beauty 12.27

(c) Participation in religious worship 11.77(g) Literature, drama, film 8.20

(n) Illness 8.00

(e) Music 5.67(r) Crises in personal relations 3.73(q) The death of others 2.80

(b) Sacred places 2.60

(f) Visual art 2.47

(h) Creative work 2.07(j) Relaxation 1.67

(p) The prospect of death 1.53

(s) Silence, solitude 1.53(w) Drugs (anaesthetic) 1.07

(i) Physical activity 0.97

(o) Childbirth 0.87(l) Happiness 0.73

(x) Drugs (psychedelic) 0.67

(k) Sexual relations 0.40


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Religious experience and the theory of anti-structure

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