I will be accused of playing Devil’s
advocate when I argue that we ought to un-invent the Sacred and the Holy, but I
feel someone has to argue this position. For a start, I will be accused of
holding that the ideas of the Sacred and the Holy are human inventions, and
this I do hold. However, it appears exactly the opposite to many people who
question how the feeble human imagination could create such sublime ideas?
The answer is not that the human
imagination is feeble, but, rather, the understanding. Our imagination is
incredibly strong, and at time hides itself behind certainties not vouchsafed
by any ordinary experience. Everyone just knows that there are sacred springs,
Holy sites, temples or objects, each of which has a patina upon it of the
supernatural, spiritual or invisible world. The mythical and religious word is
handed down through the generations, so that the products of the imagination
begin to glow with an almost hyper-reality.
The understanding takes a back seat to the
sensuous imagination of invisible powers invested in the ideas of the Sacred
and the Holy. Now, after thousands of years of reflection, it becomes possible
to see, against the background of altered perspectives, that the ideas of the
Sacred and the Holy are human inventions after all; covering over the giant
holes in our understanding that existed for so long. Now it is possible to
UN-invent them, but is it desirable?
Grant for the purpose of argument that we
could live without these supernatural ideas; does this not go against the
universal experience of mankind? For as long as humans have gathered together,
they have done so around something connected with the Divine. A Sacred spring,
stone, building or physical site is a place where the mundane is bathed in
Divinity and becomes a place for reverence, meditation and prayer. Sacred
places and objects become holy sites of worship and veneration, matters of
respect, and self-respect, to maintain and to defend.
How does the universe look when we subtract
from it all thought of anything Sacred or Holy?
Have we lost anything? Is anything ‘not there’ that was there just a
moment before? Or does the subtraction of the Sacred and Holy leave everything
as it is, was, and always will be? Does
the water of a holy spring taste any different from an ordinary well nearby?
Does the denial of the Holy pollute the water in some way? I suggest not. The
universe is so amazing, so full of wonders and incomprehensibilities that we
need no longer imagine the Sacred and Holy to add to its luster.
The world would be a better place without
Holy sites and Sacred objects. We are worshipping our own imaginations, laying
a narrative on the world that was never asked for or demanded, and which we now
have a means to transcend, relieving the world of a not inconsiderable source
of conflict and discomfort.
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