In this preamble I would like to take a look at two background aspects that form the setting for this essay and talk i). This essay is being composed in part as preparation for my upcoming presentation on November the 20th this instance.

Two aspects examined:

The first aspect then, is today’s global religious situation. It is about forty years ago that people, including myself, felt that religions would morph into some generalised secular form of themselves and so live together more or less harmoniously, with a few allowable exceptions. It now appears that the exceptions have become the rule and that secularised religions are a diminishing phenomenon. This has come as a surprise to both, believers and unbelievers. And even though the mutual accusations fill the thought and emotive spaces, the resurgence of this religious fervour is poorly understood and barely explored.

Yet, it is an urgent situation as we can all know from the news casts about street clashes in the various countries. It would appear that a different understanding of the nature of our religions is required as reflected by the ‘post-modern’ in the title of my talk.

The second aspect to address in this preamble is that this essay cum presentation is the latest in a series, which I started some time ago. This one is meant as a second instalment on my preceding talk - July 24 - titled “An Axial Age?” In it we looked at some central convictions of the religions of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. It meant to show the development of the structured agricultural societies in which the central authority became such a new and dominant feature. Yet this authority was revealed within the setting of the prevailing religion, as part of it and of the daily experience. It was not seen by its members as exposed from the outside, on the contrary, this structure was experienced as the natural way that a society should function in accordance with the laws of the universe as these were held to be valid at that time.

Searching the Past with a Purpose:

What were some of the notions that underlay those structured religions, before they became so structured? That is the idea I would like to explore a bit further with this work. Now, you may very well ask: “Why is it that we want to do this?” The answer is that we want to address the events of religious confrontations that we have to deal with in our globalising world. The bankers have their problems in this regard, but so do the leaders and thinkers in the various religions.

Today’s Dilemma:

Distemper is found the world over as we are all engaged in this integration process that humanity now faces and where we need to take the best possible initiatives if we are to emerge from this process with something to show for it.

It is my thesis that identifying our religious roots and understanding the related formative processes will enable us to find a common ground on which we can base a sense of mutual validation, tolerance and respect. It is incumbent on us today that we produce this situation as conscious and responsible members in the realm of humanity.

This responsibility stems from the fact that with all our current scientific knowledge we are in a new historic position to actually learn and know how we as humans emerged and have come to our present position. Such knowledge also obliges us to make good use of it by applying it in ways that benefits all of humanity. After all, if I may paraphrase a well known claim, humanity are god’s chosen people and this planet is the promised land. The questions then become: “How are we to live in this newly emerged situation, with this new knowledge and the handed down traditions? Are we up to this task and how do we best meet its demands?” With this in mind, let us proceed and explore some early roots.

The religions of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt were not what we call religions. It was the Romans in Antiquity who invented the term religion. The Egyptians until that time knew of no such concept. To them their gods ruled the world, made things happen or prevented them, while the priests knew best what to do and how to win the favours of these gods. This was just the way society worked for them. State, justice, economy and the laws of nature were not seen as separate entities, but functioned all within one society as a whole regulated by the gods.

The identity aspect:

These ancient frameworks of reference provided structure, as well as identity for such societies and its members. This is where the functionality of belief framework cum religion comes in. It is the identity of society and therefore also its members that gets defined, taught, learned and passed on from generation to generation. So, when there are conflicts between or within such belief systems, it is often the sense of identity that underlies it. The identity must be defended, asserted or shown to be superior to some other identity. Such identities are often learned at an early age and cannot be changed in the short term, ensuring stability, but making compromise difficult.

Today’s societies too, teach their identity concepts to their own generation. So, we have to be careful about what we teach and not teach! In our globalising world we confront shifting values, criteria and frameworks of reference. Discovering a global common ground on which we can meet as equals is important, but not easy. Hence our essaying in this essay!

Looking at a framework:

Frameworks then provide structure and identity. They are the essential aspects that must be recognised and valued in each and every such framework and there are many.

I suggest that we can discover the mentioned common ground by looking beyond the self proclaimed origin of each traditional belief framework. This can be threatening so some such societies and its members, in that they may see this as a diminishment of their own status. The status may indeed change, but not diminish. The change is that uniqueness is acknowledged, but exclusivity is not. Each and every human tradition is unique in that it has its own stories, teachings, rituals and ceremonies.

The latter four aspects work together to form that unique tradition which coherently emerges meeting differing circumstances at various times and places for a unique people. This is a particular uniqueness, but not a universal one. If we are to live together, then we will need to learn to appreciate each other’s uniqueness and grow in this experience, expanding our horizons as we learn to honour and validate the other.

In my forgoing presentation titled “An Axial Age” ii) we looked at the way the ancient planter societies were structured with a central authority which was informed be an hierarchical religion where the humans were created by the gods since the latter had grown tired of doing all the work. This was the handed down tradition in Ancient Mesopotamia. Central to the functioning of these societies were the priests and their skills in oracle reading in order to discern the will of the gods.

The contribution of Shamanism:

As we go back into time from here, we have to rely on archaeology, oral history and anthropology. These sciences inform us that hunting and gathering societies were the preceding stage of culture, though the transition between the two stages took many centuries. In these early (hunting and gathering) societies shamanism was prevalent. We should at this time not think of religion as separated from daily living, it was all together in one framework that structured the experience of the members of these early societies. So, shamanism was a part of daily life.

The function of the shaman [say: sharmarn] iii) was and is, to explain the unusual events and to support the important milestone events in society. Unusual could be draught, floods, the absence of hunting animals, sickness and others. And when the village shaman could not help, more distant and more famous ones were called on. Here comes to mind the frantic buffalo calling by these medicine persons, -women were no exception- around 1890, when these animals had all but been exterminated.

The shaman possesses power objects, is assisted by familiars – often animals – and makes journeys rising up the ‘world axis’ assisted by the drum. In the Northern hemisphere the world axis penetrates the other world near the Pole star, around which all other stars rotate as can be observed in the night sky. On such journeys he or she discovers the way forward out of unexpected difficulties that the local society is facing. The shaman then is the enabler to help her or his people proceed into the new and the unknown, overcoming the obstacles that stand in the way of daily life proceeding. The phenomenon of the shaman is found the world over, as are the methods used adapted to local conditions.

In addition to the figure of the shaman, the early human societies also had songs, dances and stories that were a part of their reference framework. Even though these were all local and particular in execution and content, they also form a record. These frameworks form a record of how consciousness of the world of experience came about and was formulated in a particular setting. They are a record of experience and so provided structure and identity in the many centuries that preceded the more structured planter societies.

Some aspects of shamanism are preserved today in the keeping of relics in the various religions and in the rituals of consecration or de-consecration of objects and buildings. And not to forget, today we have the activities of modern shaman as you can find in the reading iv) mentioned at the beginning.

The modern shaman too faces a newly emerging unknown that calls for a new conscious awareness. He or she, in using shamanism, is bypassing the old frameworks of today utilising the open ended nature of the shaman’s approach. Whereas new experiences maybe effective in freeing oneself from the old traditions, the new discoveries must not become disconnected from the past lest one looses what was learned.

Relating Past and Present:

It is not common in the thinking of the West to refer back to the beginnings of human civilisation and culture, other than in a scientific setting. The West has been inspired by a progress belief that started with the Enlightenment around 1800, reaching an escape velocity around 1910. The general conviction then was that the old and archaic ways had been overcome and needed to be left behind in order for humanity to fulfill its destiny and it was the West that had the lead of this process of perceived progress.

This belief framework supported an attitude of competitive individualism as expressed by the adage ‘survival of the fittest’. What fittest is, only becomes clear after the survival, not before! That lesson was hard to learn, but post-modernism acknowledges as much. It lets go of the old myths, including progress belief, as it claims in its literature. What it should replace it is not made clear. Post-modernism delimits itself by saying what it is not. These post modernists are not going to be caught by a false belief framework a second time. Once burned twice shy so to speak or write!

This undefined-ness, if I may call it that, is itself defining of the present day situation where a multitude of beliefs, new and old are explored in their various aspects. It makes up a cacophony of slogans, all asserting their own truths and insights; witness the reading on modern shamanism mentioned above. Diversity can be advantages, but can lead to confusion. This situation is prevented by fundamentalism, which makes things simpler and maybe too simple. How to navigate between these two current positions?

The answer to this question is that the new must be explored and adopted, while the past remains valued and is adapted. It is not an either or, but both. And as I mentioned above, humanity today is in a unique position to build this bridge between past and present. This is due, in part to the new knowledge that we have gained in the last few decades, about our own origins as humans.

Some Examples and applications:

Our first case is an application and an illustration from Fukuyama’s new book “The Origins of Political Order” v). The author puts an end to the notion that humans started off as competing individuals. In the first chapter the author shows, using modern findings, that human societies came about through cooperation. This cooperation must be learned and does not come by itself. It is acquired and is based on a deliberate decision to do so. Secondly we note that Jared Diamond reports in his “The Third Chimpanzee” vi) that adjacent tribes in New Guinea learn to compromise through intermarriage.

This cooperation involves actual behaviours that are deliberate and sustained. This shows that one must take action with the purpose of bringing about cooperation and compromise. The process is deliberate and not automatic. It is based on taking conscious and considered decision making.

I am emphasising the need to make conscious choices, because that is what we have to do today. We have the tools available, but we are shying away from taking responsibility for pursuing a solution to resolve the conflicts. Things will not work out well if at all, unless we take informed and deliberate action based on what we know now today.

A third example is the archaeological illustrations from the distant past are the many cave paintings found in Southern France and Northern Spain. The most recent such find are the paintings in the cave of Chauvet, France, discovered in 1995 and dated at 35 000 years before the present. This is more than 10ky before the well known Lascaux cave paintings. Both caves show a figure, shamanic in nature, which may be interpreted as an ‘animal master’, since the image is theriomorphic in nature.

These caves were not lived in, but were visited regularly suggesting a ceremonial use and I think in preparation for the upcoming hunt. And taking a leap across time we come to “Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump” in southern Alberta as another example. The museum there shows the ingenious cooperative techniques the Native People had established to hunt the Buffalo on foot.

Religious aspects:

The religious aspects are not immediately obvious from such evidence, but we know that these early societies held religious beliefs and that these were an integral part of daily living. It was the shaman who knew the ways of the animals as to their coming and going, while the hunt itself was the domain of the various special groups or ‘societies’.

This shamanic state of experience and awareness from which emerges the knowledge of how to act, is illustrated and described by Wade Davis in “The Way Finders”. In chapter two the author describes the training of the way-finder by experiential methods vii), as well as their ability to navigate across thousands of miles in the Pacific. Other recent sources also give accounts of similar experiences and are now better understood as to their validity. In the world as described by the Evenken of Siberia viii) (Rosenbohm), it is the shaman only, who can contact the entities who live above and below the world layer of the humans ix).

Through accepting and validating such human experiences and world views, we gain a better understanding about the roots of modern notions of religion and spirituality in our human culture, behaviour and our own ways of relating to the unknown.

As the ‘Way Finders’ guided the Polynesians in populating the islands of the Pacific in the last millennia, we find ‘Way Showers’ in other times. Some of these are well known figures such as Muhammad, Mani, Jesus and the Buddha. They in turn were preceded by Hammurabi (1750BC) the Babylonian law giver and by Akhenaton (1350BC) the monotheist pharaoh of Egypt. Each one of these represents a defined reference framework in history.

This essay seeks to show that humans structured their world of experience long before that, albeit in an oral tradition. This is clear from modern Archaeology and Anthropology, which show us those early frameworks with their religious aspects, values and teachings. This earlier structure is set in the shamanic tradition the world over, at various times and in different ways.

They have in common songs, music, dance, stories and the shamanic journeys and various ceremonies. This almost universal tradition forms the first stage of what humans at times experience as a revelation. And the latter is then interpreted in ways to guide the community at times of difficulty. A situation I have called a boundary situation in which we encounter the limits of the known world. Such situations are still with us today and a case in point is the integrating world of today.

Making A Beginning:

The inclusivity of our new perspective must start with the acknowledgement of the common ground that all religions share from the early beginnings of human societies. Uniquely different in identity and circumstance, time and people, but similar in the nature of the difficulties that had to be faced and the way that early world was structured.

The values, teachings, functionality and traditions should be compared to gain a mutual appreciation of the common and differing aspects of each tradition. This much we can do without making privileged claims. We will probably discover similarities and recognise that present rituals have ancient roots. As soon as we decide to celebrate the diversity of solutions that our human traditions bring to the table at this present time, then we can also celebrate our own unique contributions.