The Faith Instinct (15 page)

Pahnke scored his subjects on nine elements of mystical religious experience, including the 5 listed above. He found the subjects who received psilocybin scored significantly higher than those who didn’t. In a follow-up 25 years later, most of the subjects who could be reached reported largely positive memories of the experience.
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Are natural mystical experiences and those induced by drugs the
same? “The two experiences appear to be very similar or identical,” con
clude the neuropharmacologists David Nichols and Benjamin Cheme
l. They suggest that the normal flow of sensory information to the brain’s out
er cortex, the seat of consciousness, is somehow reduced or cut
off. But instead of shutting down, as a computer might, the cortex “will fil
l in or extrapolate missing information, creating sensory constructs where none exis
t,” they write. Alternatively, as the usual torrent of sensory information fro
m the outside world is shut down, the cortex may become unusual
ly sensitive to interior information of a more introspective kind.
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Consciousness itself is so little understood that it is impossible to interpret the abnormal state of it from which subjects report mystical experiences. People using hallucinogens sometimes report frightening sensations, not the mystical experiences felt by Pahnke’s
subjects. This suggests that subjects are to some extent cued by their surroundings as to how to interpret the experience. Is there some module in the brain that is attuned to communication with the supernatural and which comes to the fore in mystical experiences, whether natural or drug-induced? What seems more likely is that all the methods of achieving the trance state distort the usual data processing system of the conscious brain, and that these distortions are experienced as unusual, sometimes deeply affecting, states of mind. When suitably primed, the subjects, or those who observe them, view their experiences as communications with the supernatural realm, and interpret them in the context of their particular religious tradition.

It’s easy to see how a society might manipulate its rites and ceremonies, even at an entirely unconscious level, so as to secure desired social goals, such as observing agreed moral standards, punishing cheaters, and preparing people to sacrifice their lives in the community’s defense. If everyone believed that a supernatural agency would punish theft, for example, high standards of honesty would prevail. Religion emerged as an effective means for an egalitarian community to govern itself. The rituals and ceremonies established agreed rules of desirable behavior, and the supernatural agencies secured compliance with them. It was a remarkable solution to the problem of getting highly intelligent primates to put an abstract goal—the good of society—ahead of the self-interest they could all now calculate so finely.

In a state of constant warfare, such as prevailed through much of the hunter gatherer era, societies that used religion to best advantage would have prevailed over others. Probably through the mechanism of group selection, the essentials of religious behavior became engraved in the human genetic repertoire. These would have included a propensity to commit to the religious practices of one’s society, starting around the age of puberty; a liking for group rituals and the sense of community they generated; and a tendency to believe in punitive supernatural agents.

The genes that shape religious behavior provide merely an inclination to such behaviors. Each society specifies its own religious culture, shaping its religious tradition so as to fit its political and ecological circumstances. It is now time to trace the steps by which the earliest forms of religion, brought into being by the evolutionary forces described above, were transformed over the last 50,000 years into the very different religions that are familiar today.

BRONISLAW MALINOWSKI
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C
athedrals, sacred music, the aroma of incense, theological treatises, matins and compline—the religions of today are enriched with the cultural accretions of many centuries. None of these adornments seems a plausible advantage in the struggle for survival. But run the clock back to the earliest forms of religion from which today’s are derived, and the survival value of religion becomes much clearer.

The earliest religion seems to have taken the form of sustained communal dancing that invoked supernatural powers and promoted emotional bonding among members of the group.

All known human societies have some form of religion and so too, almost certainly, did the ancestral population of modern humans which evolved in northeast Africa and was confined in its ancestral homeland there until some 50,000 years ago.

It would be of the greatest interest to know the religious practices followed by these ancestral people. But the ancestral human population of 50,000 years ago has left no direct trace of its existence, and there is no good archaeological evidence of whatever religion may have been practiced by its forebears. Only later, in the Upper Paleolithic age that began in Europe around 45,000 years ago, does the first copious evidence appear of art and of burials, both of which imply ritual process.

The nearest one can get to the religious practices of the people who lived 50,000 years ago is through studying the rites of living hunter gatherer peoples, or at least those whose way of life was recorded before the encroachment of more powerful cultures. The hunting and
gathering way of life has remained essentially unchanged for 50,000 years and, assuming that religions are shaped to the societies they serve, their religion may have retained the same general form.

Of course culture can change quite significantly between generations—witness the change in the English language since Chaucer’s day—and some 2,000 generations separate people today from the ancestral population. Still, there are two reasons why some hunter gatherer religions may still reflect the ancient forms.

One is that many preliterate or primitive peoples place great importance on carrying out rites exactly as their forebears did. The justification of their rituals is that this is how they have always been performed. So religious practice is handed on with as much fidelity as possible. Among the Klamath and Modoc Indians of the northwest coast of America, certain myths may be recited only in the presence of three people who know the story and can check the rendition for accuracy, and the myths may not be told by children lest they garble them. These rules are reported to keep the myths intact over many generations
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A second reason is that new genetic evidence has established surprisingly direct lines of descent between the ancestral population and certain long-isolated groups, such as Australian Aborigines. Anthropologists long assumed that several waves of migration had reached Australia at various times since its original founding. But a new genetic analysis has shown that, until modern times, no one but the original founders reached the continent. Having traveled from Africa to the Arabian peninsula and along the coastlines of southeast Asia, they were established in Australia by 45,000 years ago, and presumably managed to fight off any later visitors.

This finding, if confirmed, means that Australian aboriginal culture is home grown, without significant outside influences. So aboriginal religious practices probably reflect a very ancient tradition, one that derives from the ancestral population without intervening influences.

Another long-isolated people with a possible claim to a very ancient religious tradition are the Andaman Islanders studied by Radcliffe-Brown. The Andaman Islands lie in the Bay of Bengal, some 120 miles off the coast of Burma. Their inhabitants have dark skins, suggesting that they are descendants of the original migration from Africa to Australia. Their genetics, too, fit with the idea of an ancient origin. Since at least A.D. 871, the Andaman Islands have had a fearsome reputation among sailors. The Islanders routinely killed the survivors of the many ships that shipwrecked on their islands, and burned the victims’ bodies so that their spirits would not return to haunt them. The practice suggests they did not particularly welcome outside influences on their culture.

A third very ancient and somewhat isolated people are the Kung San bushmen of the Kalahari desert in southern Africa. The ancestral human population had split into three branches before the exodus from its homeland. These three branches, identified by the genetic element k
nown as mitochondrial DNA, are designated L1, L2 and L3. Everyone in the group that left Africa is descended from daughters of the L3 lineage. The ! Kung San belong to L1, the most ancient branch point of the mitochondrial tree of descent, and as hunter gatherers they may have been quite isolated ever since.

Contributing to that isolation was a remarkable technology that long helped them resist encroachment from other peoples. The San discovered how to poison their arrows with toxin from the pupae of chrysomelid beetles. A single arrow carried enough poison to kill a large antelope within 6 to 24 hours. Their lightweight hunting bows were also effective in warfare. They fought regularly with their pastoralist Bantu neighbors, killing their cows and fending off counterattacks with their poisoned arrows. The southern San held off the better armed and mounted Boers for 30 years until overwhelmed by the Boers’ greater numbers.
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The religious practices of these three ancient people—Australian Aborigines, the Andaman Islanders and the Kung San—are probably as close as one can come to reconstructing the religion of the ancestral human population. And though the religions of these three peoples may have absorbed foreign cultural influences, the features they all share can reasonably be assumed to stem from a common source: the religion practiced before modern humans dispersed from Africa 50,000 years ago.

From the accounts written by anthropologists, it is clear that the religions of these three hunter gathering peoples differ greatly from religions familiar in Western countries. Primitive religions have no priests or ecclesiastical hierarchy. They are practiced by the community as a whole, with no distinctions of rank. No separate organization such as a church is recognized—the entire community is the church.

A second special feature of these three hunter gatherer religions is that their rituals, as noted in the previous chapter, are characterized by rhythmic physical activity, with singing and dancing that may go on for 8 hours or longer. These dance marathons, with everyone moving in time together, evoke intense emotion and bind together all who are present with a sense of community and shared exaltation. The focus of their rituals is communal activity and needs, not individual psychic satisfaction.

Third, the sacred narratives of primitive religions convey moral or practical lessons of relevance to the community’s survival, just as do those of Western religions. But the sacred narratives are integrated with the rituals and ceremonies and are not the focus of religious practice.

Fourth, primitive religions are little concerned with matters of theology. They focus on practical issues such as initiation rites and on problems of survival that include healing, hunting, and control of the weather. Another practical goal, of the greatest importance for maintaining the group’s social cohesion, is that of settling feuds between people in dispute and wiping the slate clean of enmity.

The distinctive aspects of primitive religion are more easily appreciated by considering the specific practices of the ! Kung San, the Andaman Islanders and Australian Aborigines.

The ! Kung ritual healing dance, as practiced by the Nyae Nyae ! Kung who live in the Namibian part of the Kalahari desert, has several features typical of these three religions. The dance is the !Kung’s principal religious rite. It bears very little overt resemblance to a routine service in a church or synagogue, where a sedate audience gathers at a fixed time every week to watch a priest chant the words of a sacred text. In the !Kung dance, everyone participates. Anthropologists have named the rite a healing dance because it incorporates some of the concepts and gestures used by healers when treating individuals. But in the ritual healing dance, few people are actually healed.

The dance has a larger purpose, that of healing the community. The !Kung do not call it a healing dance but a
nlum
dance,
nlum
being a supernatural force. (The /, like !, indicates one of the many click sounds in their language; others used below are // and =.) A dance may be held at moments of crisis or to ease tensions with a neighboring group. Or the dance can also occur as a celebration, such as after a successful hunt, when it serves to soften the tensions that may arise after the distribution of meat. Following is an account based on the description by the anthropologist Lorna Marshall, who observed 39 such dances between 1952 and 1953.
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The
nlum
dance is an intricate interplay of physical movement, music and song. It is physically and emotionally demanding, and so intense that many of the men go into a deep trancelike state, achieved naturally and entirely without drugs. Many of the healers do attain trance and perform their rituals in that state, but trance is not necessary for healing. Any of the men can become healers, though some are better than others.

The dance may start around 9 P.M., after the evening meal. The first sign that one is about to happen occurs when a woman carries a burning branch to light a small fire in the middle of the dancing space. Soon other women join her. They sit close around the fire, squeezed together with shoulders and knees touching. There is no special clothing for the dance. The women wear their usual skin cloaks. They start to sing in high register, often quite loudly.