Snowdon - 2/9/22 - Spirituality Confined to the Material World in The Spell of the Sensuous

 2/9/22


In reading The Spell of the Sensuous, I came across Abram’s juxtaposition of the view prevalent in oral cultures, by his assertion, of all things, living and dead, being present in the physical world around us, as detected by the senses, and the Christian view, which Abram describes as being characterized by an extrasensory Heaven and Hell, outside of the physical world. 


On the one hand, I think immediately to our discussion of the Aboriginals, and their views of the intimate connection between the human form and the natural world around them, with the names of different body parts being the same as the names of features of the physical landscape, and the connection between a man and the natural creatures which may lend their names to a clan, or simply a spiritual connection. Furthermore, I think of the assertion that there is no “supernatural” in an oral culture, as the things which we commonly associate with that descriptor are intimately intertwined with what we might call “natural.” These two thoughts lend themselves nicely to understanding Abram’s argument, detailing the connection to the world, and how the human being is a natural part of it. 


Additionally, I do acknowledge the fact that Christianity, along with most every literate religion prevalent in the modern day, Buddhism especially, highlights the evanescent and transitory nature of the physical world, discouraging practitioners from being overly (emphasis on that word, overly) attached to it, and promising that the ultimate fate of humankind lies beyond.


That said, I do not think that Abram is being entirely truthful here, either by ignorance or willfully, as it seems that the great majority of oral peoples as well have a spiritual reality outside of physical existence in the sensory world. Even if these may manifest at times in the world around the living, oral cultures commonly tell tales of spirits being taken somewhere else upon their death, and cultures where ancestor worship is prevalent commonly believe that the essence of those deceased people can be recalled through ritual or ceremony.

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