CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE

RITUAL '\

A thesis submitted in partial ;:o,atisfaction of the requirements fox· the degree of Master of Arts in

Foundations

by

Deborah Bricklin Zeff The thesis of Deborah Bricklin Zeff is approved:

California State University, Northridge

June, 1974

ii TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ABSTRACT. • .. .. • • • • • .. .. • • 6 • • • • • • • • • • • • • iv

Chapter

1. INTRODUCTION 1

OBJECTIVE . 2

ORGANIZATION . 2

2. SEARCH OF LITERATURE 4

3. AHCHETYPE 14

MYTH .• 16

THEORY OF' SYMBOLISM. 21

4, MODES OF CONSCIOUSNESS 28

A THEORY OF LANGUAGE . 35

GENERAL SYSTEMS THEORY 43

5. RITUAL IN FAMILY LIFE 49

DANCE AS RITUAL • • 55

6. CONCLUSION: SUMMARY. 62

CONCLUSIONS ••.. 63

NEEDED RESEARCH 63

BIBLIOGRAPHY ....•••.. 64

iii ABSTRACT

RITUAL

by

Deborah Bricklin Zcff

Master of Arts in Foundations

June, 1974

The objective of this thesis is to analyze the prevailing

concepts regarding rihtal, setting forth suggestions which may help form a more adequate understanding of ritual and its underlying

symbolism. Under the impetus of Piaget, Bruner, and others, humanistic and developmental psychology have expanded their view of man's nature so that many areas formerly considered in the preserve of other disciplines are now seen as having implications for the psychology of learning and development. Of special concern to this

study will be the essential nature of ritual. with reference t() its place in the theory of social systems.

This thesis adopts the hypothesis presented by S. P.

Nagendra in The_Conccpt of Rit(1_al in Modern Sociolo~ical T~eory, published by the Academic Journals of India in 1970, which defi:les

ritual as symbolic action, the enactment of the myth. Three areas of

concern arise from il1e adoption o:f this construct and are manifested

in the need for a Theory of Symbolism, a Theory of Language, and a

Theory of Modes of Consciousness.

New vigor is given to Nagendra's belief that ritual's

meaning can be understood only dialectically by the inclusion of The

iv General Systems Theory and the acceptance of the importance of the ongoing organization of interaction.

Ritual as symbolic action is a form of communication, and as a form of communication becomes the revealing picture of my world view and my world-to-view. Thus ritual is the dynamic which infuses that which it comes in contact with, with vitality and meaningfulness, at the same time, being the very vehicle of this revelation.

v INTRODUCTION

At first blush it may seem incongruous that a thesis on

ritual is offered in an area of Educational Psychology, but more

study will reveal important connections. Under the impetus of

Piaget, Erikson, Maslow, Bruner, and others, humanistic and

developmental psychology have expanded their purview of man's

estate and talents so that many areas formerly considered in the

preserve of other disciplines are now seen as having implications for

the psychology of learning, development, and self-actualization.

For example, among the most important of these develop­

ments is the new attention given to "cognitive modes of represen­

tation. " Bruner (Gowan 197 4 ;30) calls these modes enactive

(learning in the muscles), iconi_£ (sign-learning), and symbolic (full

cognitive learning). Sullivan (195 3 :xiv) refers to very similar

; material from the affective side as prototaxic (experience before

symbols), parataxic (experience validated in terms of private or

autistic symbols), and syntaxic (experience validated with full

cognitive symbolism).

While these theories were formulated to explain develop-

. ment and learning, it is now obvious that they also have validity in

explaining other aspects of human behavior. In particular, E_i~ual

(according to its form

of enactive and i.conic representation in the prototaxic or parataxi.c

mode. Since these modes underlie learning and development, an

1 2

examination of ritual may serve to clarify some of their character­

istics.

OBJECTIVE

The objective of this thesis is to analyze the prevailing con­

cepts regarding ritual, setting forth suggestions which may help form

a more adequate understanding of ritual and its underlying symbolism.

This expanded understanding should help us to clarify our concepts of learning and development of man's talents and capacities. Of special

concern to this study will be the essential nature of ritual with

reference to its place in the theory of social systems.

What is attempted is a rationale of ~"xplanation which brings that which previously seemed implausible or extraneous- -unnecessary or useless--into the domain of scientific psychological hypothesis.

ORGANIZATION

This thesis is divided into six parts.

Part One is the Introduction. It introduces the question

"What is the nature and concern of that which is known :1nder the name of ritual?" A rationale for the posing of this question is

presented.

Part Two concerned with a general search of the literature for what is subsumed under tbe title "Hitual." The views of the leading thinkers in sociology, ethnography, anthropology, psychology, and religion are put forth and discussed.

Part Three an analysis of the problems met in the usage

of the definiti.on ritcml- -as symbolic action- -the enactment of the myth. 3

Part Four attempts a definition of Modes of Consciousness

and delves into the construct of communication with a brief look at the

General Systems Theory.

P<~rt Five presents some examples of ritual viewed within the

framework of ritual as symbolic action: Ritual in Family Living and

Ritual in Dance.

Part Six is the conclusions drawn from the theories presented

utilizing a general semantic framework and the General Systems

Theory. Chapter 2

SEARCH OF LITERATURE

A careful analysis of definitions of the term "ritual" by well-

known sociologists and cultural anthropologists resulted in three

different insights into the meaning of the term. Some see ritual as a

'"rightness of routine," "a perfect form of drill;" others see it as "a

prescribed series of manipulations, " "a sort of proper combination to

·achieve some purpose, " for example, the content of ritual; the third

deals with its basic objective such as warding off evil, bringing good

luck, or the propitiation of supernatural forces. The etymological

·source is taken from the Latin "ritus" meaning custom. This has led

sociologists to believe that ritual is the routine of an organized

·religion.

(1969;1121) is in agreement with the sociologists, for the definitions

listed are offshoots of the three propounded insights referred to above.

1. The prescribed form or order of condLlcting a religious or solemn ceremony. 2. The body of ceremonies or rites used in a church, fraternal organization, or the like: a system of rites. 3. A book of rites or ceremonial forms. 4. Often plurrrl, (a) a ceremonial act or a series of such acts, and (b) the performance of sach acts. 5. Any detailed method of procedure faithfully or regularly followed, (a) of or characterized by a dte or rites, and (b) prac~ ticed as a rite such as a ritual fire dance.

Bossard and Boll (1956;14) in their second edition of H~,!n

in Family Living develop an interesting view of ritual. 5

Words tend to be known by the company they keep; some­ times that company becomes a jealous mistress, taking a word and keeping it for its own particular use and purpose . . . · . The word "ritual" is a case in point.

Ritual is just such a word. The students of religion have made use of it in three different manners: as the origin of religion, as a technique of magic and worship, and as a part of the ethical and control system of religion. Anthropologists are the~ other group who have featured the term, ritual, prominently. Their emphasis is mainly in the role of ritual in the development of religion; this results in ritual being everywhere interwoven with the discussions of totemism, magic, taboo, and myth. This development has resulted with ritual being identified in terms of ceremonial and worship.

Ritual is seen as a system of procedure by Bossard and Boll.

This conclusion is the most popular one found in literature and common usage. Three characteristics are unvarying in their presence

·in a system of procedure as defined by ritual. According to Bossard and Boll these characteristics are (1956: 15):

First ... ritual means exactness and preClslOn. Second, there is the element of rigidity ... and finally, there a sense of rightness which emerges from the past history of the process.

Bronislaw Malinowski, the social anthropologist responsible for taking anthropology from a discipline concerned with mere

"origin hunting" to the status of an individual "science of culture" does not see ritual arising from social sources. S. P. Nagendra in his book The Con_c:_

(1971:73) quotes Malinowski as saying of ritual:

It arises from purely individual sources although it is always social by nature ... the principle of the ritual bio-psychic. 6

Radcliff-Brown, an anthropologist of the same school as

Malinowski, sees the problem of ritual as being essentially a

semantic one. He does not feel it necessary to look at ritual in the

light of either its purpose or reason. He believes that "whatever has

meaning is a symbol and the meaning is expressed by that symbol. "

The problem of ritual, according to Radcliffe-Brown (Nagendra

197:74)

.•. lies in the interpretation and understanding of the meaning of symbolic action as a component of social structure (for example, an ordered series of social relationships).

There is evident a gradual drawing away from categorizing

ritual as a mere system of procedure. Nagendra (1971 :81) goes so

far as to declare that ritual acts

..• stand in direct contrast to technical acts insofar as the former are purely symbolic while the latter are purposive.

According to Radcliffe-Brown (Nagendra 1971:81) ritual is

essentially an "expressive mode of action" and "leavGs the analysis of

·its meaning at the figurative level (metaphorical)."

Malinowski sees the function of ritual to lie in the role it

plays in allaying anxiety and inspiring confidence in the individual as

he moves and exists in "his life. " He stresses the role that culture

. plays in a system of activities functioning in response to the basic

. needs of the individual.

So we see the concept of ritual as a mere life symbol being

developed with ritual acts practiced by individuals in pursuance of

certain values in society. However, it is no longer dismissed as

a basically primitive mode of action. Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski

reveal the beginnings of a need for a general semantic approach. ,, . 7

Radcliffe-Brown is concerned with the whole of the concept called

ritual; he accepts the functional significance of ritual and takes due

·account of its symbolic character. The emergence of functionalism

in regard to defining that which is considered ritual was considered

a great advance in the understanding of the cultures that the anthro-

polo gists went forth to study. No longer was it necessary to trace the

source of the ritual to attempt to arrive at an understanding of its

. significance in the culture under consideration. Neither was the

psychological concept of "utility" necessary to explain its purpose.

The functional approach developed in sociological theory as

part of the positivistic tradition. It was the result of the realization

of the shortcomings of the utilitarian approach with its norm of social

utility being considered equivalent to the SLtrvival value in biology.

The positivistic tradition according to Nagendra (1971:25)

... rejects the metaphysical foundation of social order and accepts the paramountcy of the law of cansality. Accordingly, it has directed its efforts mainly to the discovery of causal relationships in social phenomena.

This causal functional view of society is not a universally

· accepted view of society as evidenced in the rise of the idealistic

school which (Nagendra 1971:25)

. , . looks upon social phenomena primarily as a complex of meanings or as a reality sui generi.s which cannot be reduced to a system of causal functional .. relatiCnships.

The above definition introduces Talcott Parsons and his boo)<;

The Structure of Social Action in which we are introduced to the

Parsonian view of non-instrumentality.

Two thinkers from the idealistic school, Max Weber and

Emile Durkheim make pertinent contributions to an understanding of 8

the concept of ritual. Weber's emphasis is on the interpretive under-

standing of the meanings of action; this proceeds to put the whole

theory of human action in a different light. Nagendra feels that

implicit in Weber's writings is his declaration that sociological theory

must have a firm grounding in a theory of meaning. Nagendra says of

Weber (Nagendra 1971:27):

He explicitly states that religious and traditional actions are wertrationaL i.e., they are oriented to an end which cannot be ex.plafned in simple zwekrational ... he does not consider the zwekrational and wertraiTonru as wholly disparate realms of action but conflnuousmoi!ghaTfferent levels of rneaning.

Weber, like Parsons, sees the problem of ritual to lie in the

non-instrumental character of ritual. Parsons seeks to justify ritual

in terms of its being oriented to the need dispositions of the com-

munity. This is the same solution that Emile Durkhim has offered.

Let us review the various theories in which ritual finds a

tenuous resting place. Sociologists and anthropologists classify

·ritual as (Nagendra 1971:112-113)

... a socially necessary act, as one which promotes group cohesiveness (Durkheim); or as one which sacrilizes tradition and acts as a guarantee of legitimate order (Weber), or again as one that allays anxiety, protects the social organi­ zation against the forces of instability and keeps it in a state of balance (lvTalinowski and Radcliffe-Brown) ... ritual a special type of action standing in direct contrast to ordinary actions and that it is a universal feature of both primitive and modern societies.

As long as sociologists could concentrate on studying modern

societies there was little need for them to come to grasp with the

concept of ritual. When the life of primitive peoples began to be

investigated (Nagendra 1971 :22) nritual actions could no longer be

treated as exceptions, They were too normal in these societies to be 9 ignored by the anthropologists. 11

It was at this point that those experts studying in the social sciences had to stop attempting to evade the problem by denying the continuity of primitive mode of life with our own. Help came from the development of psychoanalysis which challenged the hypothesis of discontinuity and brought forth the role of the "unconscious" in human conduct to help explain the dimension of human conduct which became manifest in ritual action.

Two basic psychoanalytic theories of ritual have come down to us from Sigmund Freud and C. G. Jung. Both have as the central point the concept of tbe "unconscious" on the individual and collective planes. Nagendra (1971 :111) sees the Freudian theory

. . • as viewed exclusively on the individual plane and the reference point for the symbolism of ritual is accordingly to be a repressed desire. In ,Jung's theory, on the other hand, the unconscious is viewed mainly on tbe collective plane and the reference point for the symbolism of ritual is consistently shown to be an archetype. The two theories are, thus, radically opposed to each other; the first rejects ritual as a meaningless act; the second considers it as a primordial human necessity.

They both regard ritual as expression of the unconscious.

Their separateness is in the symbolic content of ritual: according to

Freud it is repressed material to be dismissed; according to Jung it is archetypal (see Chapter 3}. Nagendra says (1971 :29):

The prototype of ritual in Freud's view is the obsessional act of tbe compulsive neurotic whereas in Jung 1s view it is the act of individuation.

Individuation can be defined as the process whereby the conscious and the unconscious of an individual learn to not only live at peace with each other, but learn to complement each other. 10

These findings make it evident that there exists a challenge

to the sociological view of ritual. If ritual is a meaningless act,

ritual must be rejected as totally incompatible with a rational order.

If it is not a meaningless act, then the rational concept of social order

, must come to terms with it, must find a place to put it. Nagendra

sees the conflict as a choice between rejecting the concept of ritual

or rejecting the rational concept of social order. Such either I or

, resolution is impossible and totally out of keeping with a general

semantic approach which warns of the dangers implicit in an allnes~

attitnde and in either I or logic. What is necessary is a theory of

action which would show the proper relationship between the rational

and the transrational--between rational and ritnal actions. Thus

, Nagendra (1971 :27) states that the

... positivistic or causal-functional approach consists in the demonstration of the fact that even though ritual is an irrational and thus a prima facie meaningless act, it nc'ver­ theless subserves certain important collective ends, its main function being to protect the social organization from the forces of instability and to keep it in a state of equilibrium ... (it) seeks to resolve the problem of irrational conduct by sub­ suming it under the concept of rationality. The idealistic school ... stresses the intrinsic meaningfulness of ritual and to this extent it steers clear of the fallacy involved in the positivistic interpretation .... It creates an unnecessary hiatus between ritual and rational action.

These definitions of the concept ritual are a portion of what

is a more comprehensive pattern of behavior. Likened to the classic

tale of the blind men trying to describe the elephant, our sociologists,

anthropologists, and psychologists are not climbing up high enough to

get the picture of the entire construct. Each one finds one portion of

the total and proceeds to make a definitive whole from that small

portion. 11

One may think of ritual in terms of "system" but not a

"system of procedure" which is limiting. This construct is developed

in Chapter 4 under the theory of general systems.

The scholars seem to have a difficult time in deciding what

mode of being in the world ritual might illustrate. ··Since its phenom-

enology is incontestable this can present a problem. This problem

will be discussed in Chapter 4, Modes of Consciousness. Subsuming

the concept of ritual under a concept of rationality tends to confuse

·the issue and denies or ignores the possibility of other modes of

being.

We are aware of the fact that no society, not even the

modern secular societies have (Nagendra 1971 :21)

. . . been able to dispense with ritual . . . they worship flags, their heroes, in exactly the same manner as the religious societies revere and worship their sacred objects. Man is congenitally inclined to believe in and to relate himself to powers superior to him .

. Depth psychology, as evidenced in the words of Ira Progoff (1973:171)

; has this to say:

Ceremonials and rituals are the means provided by society for periodically drawing up the sums of energy attached to the symbols, lest the symbols sink back into unconscious.

Ritual is not action for the fun of action whether it be a

mimetic ritual or one of more somber thoughts. It is, as Nagendra

puts it (1 971 :36):

... the most primitive reflection of serious thought, a slow deposit as it were of people's imagination insight into life.

If that is the case then I must agree with Nagendra as he succinctly

summarizes (1971:121): 12

The purpose of ritual is ritual itself; partaking in its performance an end itself and upon the fulfillment of this end, depends the continuity of both the natLtral and social orders.

In following ritual's definition way, we become aware of the difficulties met by sociological, anthropological, and psychological theory. can ritual shake; loose from its "jealous mistresses" of the

past and find its rightful place in the phenomenology of the Aquarian

Age? On the other hand, will we ever blast the parameters of the present and accept ritual action not as a special type of action but as

Symbolic Action? This necessitates the acceptance of a sound theory of symbolism. Symbolic actions are not governed by the laws of logic which govern ordinary actions. Nagendra quotes from A. K.

Coomaraswamy' s Hipcluism an~, Bl~dclhism (Nagendra 1971: 13):

Ritual is not a matter of doing specifically sacred things only on particular occasion but of ... making sacred all we do and all we are, a matter of sanctification of whatever done naturally by reduction of all activities to their principle,

The definition of ritual that has been adopted for this thesis

. is that which Nagendra uses as his conclusion in his book The_f_<::ncep~. of ~!_~"':.1 in ¥S!~~.rn .:Sociological ThE:.?.J:"L,: ritual is symbolic action-­ the enactment of the myth. A. K. Coomaraswamy sayc; in Nagendra's book (1971 :13):

Ritual is the perfect performance of one's task, or con- verseley, the perfect performance of one's task the cele- bration of rituaL

According to Nagendra "thought and action are the existential correlates of language and reality." Ritual as symbolic action might just end up being any action that we participate in which then reveals how we are in this world. Mathematics is a language of symbols revealing relationship between variables; what is the chance of 13 discovering that ritual is a language of symbols revealing the relationship between us and the world in which we live? Chapter 3

ARCHETYPE

The concept archetype belongs to C. G. Jung. Ira Progoff

in his book Jung's Psychology and Its Social Meaning presents an

introdLlctory statement to Jung's psychological theories and an inter-

pretation of their significance for the social sciences. Progoff says

about archetype (Progoff 1973, 1952:58):

When psychic contents come up from the lower layers (referring to the preconscious stn1cture of the psyche), they may become part of the conscious attitude of individual person­ ality, but the first qLwstion is what these contents arc in them·· selves. In this regard Jung has developed the concept of "archetype, " by which he means "forms or images of a collective nature which occur practically all over the earth as constituents of myths and at the same time as autochthonous, individual products of unconscious origin" (C. G. Jung: Psychology and Religion (Terry Lectures, 1937), Yale UniverSity PreS.s;-New Haven,-1938, p. 63).

Archetypes are identified as "fundamental patterns of symbol formation." Not only are they old--they have been present in ancient

days "because they grow out of the nature of the psyche in its most

rudimentary form. " These primordial images, once they have

occurred in human history are then passed on to future generations

as "part of a collective inheritance;" a collective unconscious. Jung

sees these as "inherited" pathways not "inherited ideas''. (Pro goff

1973, 1952:59).

What arc inherited are the same tendencies ... it is the underlying patterns of symbol formation and not their specific details that are always the same.

14 15

We see this to be so in the similarity of symbolic content in fairy tales, religions, sagas, myths, and so forth. Jung refers to these as "motifs. " Their importance is not found in the actual symboL (Progoff 1973, 1952 :60).

It is in what they represent or express of the deeper layers of the psyche.

Jung in his book Man and His Symbols says (1964:88):

Archetypes gain life and meaning only when you try to take into account their numinosity (psychic energy)--thcir relationship to the living individual . . . . Their names mean very little the way they are related to you is all important.

This relation is discussed by Joseph Pearce in his book

The Crack in the Cosmic Egg (1968;50):

As the body must be fed to realize the potential built into the genes ... so must the mind. Jung used the: term archetype to describe "recurrent impressions made by subjective reactions." We inherit such ideas as part of our potential mind pattern.

Pearce talks of archetypes as a kind of readiness "to produce over and again the same mythical ideas." The readiness, which is always present, can be triggered only by a response to a demand. If no demand, no need shows itself- -then this readiness lies dormant.

It diminishes steadily as it waits and waits for the triggering process to shoot it into action. Although it diminishes steadily, it never totally disappears.

Pearce refers to several of the authorities in this field of anthropology-psychology-sociology (Pearce 196 8:50):

Levi-Strauss uses the term "semantic universe" to describe our intellectual-scientific-technological fabric of reality. Jerome Bruner suggested that language is our more powerful means for performing "transformations" on the world. We trans­ mute the world's shape by metaphoric mutations. We recombine our verbal structures in the interest of new possibilities. 16

Jung attributes a functional and not a substantial significance

to the archetypes (Underwood 1971:55).

Dr. von Franz in his Conclusion: Science and the

Unconscious found in Man and His Symbols (Jung 1964:304, 306, 307)

presents a startling parallelism between microphysics and psychology

of the collective unconscious:

We are still far from understanding the unconscious or the archetypes--those dynamic nuclei of the psyche--in all their implications .... But the most promising field for hture studies seems to have unexpectedly opened up in connection with the complex field of microphysics. At first sight, it seems most unlikely that we should find a relationship between psy­ chology and microphysics. The inter-relation of these sciences is worth some explanation. The most obvious aspect of such a connection lies in the fact that most of the basic concepts of physies (such as spo.ce, time, matter, and energy, continuum or field, particle, etc. ) were originally intuitive, semi -myL"l­ ologi.cal, archetypal ideas of the old Greek philosophers- -ideas that then slowly evolved and became accurate and that today are mainly expressed in abstract mathematical terms .... When examining nature and the universe, instead of looking for and finding objective qualities, "man encounters himself, " in the phrase of the physicist Werner Heisenberg .... Pauli believed that we should parallel our investigation of outer subjects with a psychological investigation of the inner origin of our scientific concepts.

Aniela Jaffe in the same book, Man and His Symbols, talks

of the space -time contimwm of physics and the collective unconscious

"as the outer and inner aspects of one and the same reality behind

appearances."

MYTH

The definition of ritual as "enactment of the myth" neccs-

. sitates the documenting of a definition of ='-tc..h. What were once

called parable, complex metaphors, symbolic personifications,

allegories, and such may now be referred to as ~yths ... ; hardly 17 any general term is more loosely applied than myth It appears that myths seem to be in some sense "explanations. 11 They deal with becoming, and with the motives behind acts of becoming.

The December, 1972 issue of Mana':'_ has a brief exploration of myths. I quote that issue as saying (myths) might be said to provide a simple, "illustrated" psycho-dynamics (Manas :Dec. 27,

1972:1).

It is often maintained that whatever conceptions of ends and means a man lives by can be called a myth, since almost invariably what he regards as his knowledge has so many gaps in it that it does not really serve as a basis for action. A man bridges the gaps in his knowledge by a synthesizing myth.

The etymological roots of myth as put forth by Henry

Murray in his essay "Definitions of Myth" present a most complete researching (Ohman 1962:8):

To the early Greeks mythos meant "the thing spoken" or uttered by the mouth, incTUal.ngthe thing spoken during a religious ceremony. Since these were magical words identical with their meanings, one could say th<:tt mythos referr

The events and the series of actions presented by actors in the time of Aristotle were termed !:l_lYtho~ which might have been translated as "plot. "

According to Maranda, an analysis of myth (Maranda

1972:8)

aims at discovering the rules governing combinations, developments and derivations, i.e. 8.t pointing out the operations that reduce the alien to familiar structures within a given range of possible variations. It is essentially the investigation of the culture-conditioning mechanisms that mold etlmie cognitive systems. 18

A brief review of the emergence of the nature and significance

of myth over the last seventy years reveals the debt we owe to

Malinowski, the renowned anthropologist whose research into the

functionalistic approach did much to lift the study of myth from the

statistical plane of tabulating types of myths. Once the reins were broken, even this approach became too narrow.

It is the linguistic revolution that was ·able to free the study

of myth from its bondage. The first breakthrough occurred in Hubert

and Mauss's monograph on sacrifice in 1897 (Maranda 1972:9):

... a brilliant analysis of the mechanism of sacrifice, or perhaps one should say of its logical structure, or even its grammar.

Evans-Prichard's work in 1965 leading to the formulation of

the concept of collective representations and related to that fundamental

work "Ann~e Sociologigne" which brought about the linguistic revolu-

tion (Maranda 1972:9);

Most relevant to the present purpose is de Saussure1s famous distinction between langue (language) and parole (speech). In effect, as knowlcage of a specific language i.s prerequisite to speech acts, so are specific collective repre­ sentations prerequisite to language.

At approximately the same time as de Saussure we find Boas

coming forth with an equivalent position which bridges the distance

between collective representations and language. Boas' fundamental

point concerning myth--is myth as a conditioning process.

The construct of "ritual as the enactment of myth" presents

myth as source. This concept is controversial; many scholars posit

that the action, the ritual existed and the tale was created from the

need to account for this action. 19

Nagendra wades into the controversy by saying (1972 :32):

In fact the controversy whether myth is prior to ritual or ritual prior to myth arises only because the two are taken to be temporal relatives. If they are viewed as atemporal forms, the question of their temporal origin would not arise at all. When we say that ritual is acting out of a myth we do not suggest that the latter is prior to the former in point of historical origin. What we aim to emphasize is that ritual cannot be understood without myth as no action can be understood without action. And as the action must be logically prior to action so myth must logically precede ritual.

Mukerje says that myth is an embellished metaphor. To him metaphor is the cradle of symbols. This same concept is beautifully stated in Henri Frankfort's illuminating essay on Myth and Reality

(1959:16):

Myth is a form of poetry which transcends poetry in that it proclaims a truth.

Our need for mythic statements springs from our psychic wholeness and is satisfied when we frame a view of the world which adequately explains the meaning of human existence. Meaningless- ness inhibits fullness of life. No science will ever replace myth B.nd neither can a myth be made out of any science.

According to Nagendra (1972:175):

The myth has an "archetypal" rather than a "logical" structure. It is, as Coomaraswamy says, the traditional vehicle of man's profoundest metaphysical insights. What Coomaraswamy calls metaphysical insights, Jung and Eliade call "archetypes" and the primordial images which have con­ stituted the basis of human thinking all through the ages. For every human activity there is an archetypal model; an activity without such a model is nothing but a meaningless gesture. Hence it is, that primitive man considers himself real only to the extent to which he can become archetypal. Modern man extols history over myth, no doubt, but his historical living is only a substitllte for mythical living. The archetypes revealed through myths may be many and varied, but the one archetype which runs through all myths is the archetype of wholeness- -inwardly expressed as identity of opposites in the combat myth ... disorder and order are the 20

dual manifestations of one essence. The division of the whole into parts signifies the breaking of eternity into time.

Cassirer points out (Mukerje 1959:186):

• . . that myth is not a system of dogmatic creeds or abstracts symbols. It consists much more in actions than in mere images or representations. After the song is chanted, the story recited, and the myth created with its life-symbol, solemn and meaningful, and its personalities supernatural and heroic, we have yet to wait for the myth becoming a ritual--a felt experience of human life and activities partaking of the grandeur and mystery of the cosmic order of thing.

Jerome Bruner warns of the temptation to think that the

"grammar of experience, logos" and the "grammar of myth, mythos" are in oppositional contrast. On the contrary, they complement each other, he states in his essay Myth and Identity (Bruner 1962 :32) :

Myth, insofar as it is fitting, provides a ready-made means of externalizing human plight by embodying and representing them in storied plot and characters. What the significance of this externalizing tendency in myth? It provides ... a basis for communion among men. What is "out there 11 can be named and shared i.n a manner beyond the sharing of subjectivity ... externalization makes possible the containment of terror and impulse by the decorum of art and symbolism. It in the fact of fashioning an external product out of our internal impulses that the work of art begins .. , , Myth, perhaps, serves in place or as a filter for experience. The economical function of myth is to represent in livable form the structure of the complexities through which we must find our way ....

And so we find Bruner referring to the art form of the myth as that which "connects the daemonic world of impulse with the world of reason. 11 Myth is both an externalization and a pedogogic image

(Bruner 1962 :36):

The mythologically instructed community provides its members with a libn:try of scripts upon which the individttal may judge the play of his multiple identities. Myth serves not only as a pattern to which one aspires but also as a criterion for self-criticism. 21

Life then produces myth and finally imitates it. Since we are no longer, as Professor Campbell says "mythologically instructed as a community," we find ourselves struggling to find or create a mythic image, one satisfactory and challenging as inspiration (Ohman 1962:

169).

When the myths no longer fit the internal plights of those who require them ... the transition to newly created myths may take the form of a chaotic voyage into the interior, the certitudes of externalization replaced by the anguish of the internal voyage.

Does not the preceding quotation by Professor Campbell strike a responsive chord as one reflects back to the morning paper or last night's news report? It is not too far fetched to accept the

"chaotic voyage into the interior" as bc;ing a prophetic phrase talking about the world in which we live at this moment in time. Where are the scripts, the library of scripts that Bruner talked about? If the patterns to which one aspires are no longer available~ -what blueprint

one to use? By what pattern is one able to judge one's self?

Nagendra, perhaps, gives a clue (1972:178):

As on the poetic level myth is the criterion of truth, so on the level of action, ritual is the criterion of right action. Ritual, therefore, can be understood only as a reflection of myth ... all mythical motives have the same structure and are in the ultimate analysis. the manifestation of the supreme archetype of wholeness.

THEORY OF SYMBOLISM

Of great importance now is a study of a Theory of Symbolism: how does one explain the ;;ignificancc of actions which are neither rational nor irrational although they do form a part of social life.

Symbolism is an essential mode of man's adaptation to reality. 22

Radhakamal Mukerje (1959:vii) in his book The Symbolic Life

of Man, defines symbol "as the basic and most elementary form of

culture. 11

Symbols arise out of the biological ~social needs, strivings, and satisfactions of man, and at the same time show a rationality, impersonality, and universality that embraces all mankind.

Mukerje quotes Allport as saying "symbols are projected realities,

existing quite apart from man and above man. "

Of the ''interdependence of the on~going processes: man~

symbol ~culture" Mukerjee proposes a rediscovery of man as a biological creature, social person, and spiritual being. He calls on

us to be involved in process thinking, an integration between Man~

Symbol~Culture. Mukerjee ascertains {1859:x):

... man cannot attain self-esteem and competence so long as he cannot achieve the kind of self~image that signifies his complete symbolic identity with his total universe.

There are three dimensions, or levels of experience: biological, psychological, and spiritual {11ukerjeo 195 9 :x-xi):

Together they constitute a microcosm corresponding to the Macrocosm of the universe to which man belongs . . . though man's symbolic progress enables him to cross the boundaries of Time and Space and identify himself with the principles of order and continuity in the universe, yet modern psychology and social sciences treat him as if he were only a time-and-space­ bound creature. Symbols direct his consciousness and behavior to and fro constantly between bio-psychological and spiritual dimensions of r·eality and share the nature of both physical and spiritual worlds.

Of "symbolization--as a universal process" Mukerjee sees it as "the generic creative process of Communication that makes

man's life an endless quest. 11 He says (Mukerjee 1959:19):

The study of symbol and the symbolic process provides not only the central of reference for the functional analysis of society, bctt also a new starting point of Philosophy, freed from the Cartesian dualism of matter and spirit, inner and outer 23

world .... The symbol, both psychologically and epistem­ ologically considered is not merely a mental construct but· also a dynamic synthesis of self and its universe.

Perhaps his most revolutionary concept, among many, is the' fact that (Mukcrjee 1959:96):

... the ·symbol is not a substitute for, but is identical with experience or reality and thus becomes the vehicle of new in­ sights and appreciations, and the organization of total conscious­ ness in respect to the reality. This "symbolization," as Melanie Klein aptly observes, "is the basis of all talents. 11

Symbol, then, as Mukerjee concludes, "not only gives us a representation of the process . . . it enables us to share in or to live in retrospect the experience of the process. It is this ability to be the process and the result of the process which has caused great confusion in trying to analyze ritual's nature. Being the process and the source of the process has also been the source of its power."

Mircea Eliade 1s studies in comparative religion have gone a long way towards rehabilitating the traditional concept of ritual as an enactment of myth. He is also one of the historians who is in tune with symbolism as this thesis propounds. He says (Eliade 195 9 ;9'7):

The World "speaks" or "reveals itself" through symbols, not, however, in a utilitarian and objective language. The symbol is not a mere reflection of objective reality. It reveals something more profound and more basic. ·

1. Symbols are eapable of revealing a modality of the real or a structure of the World that is not evident on the level of imrnediate experience . . . .

An illustration of such a significa tion is the symbolism of wa~er, which is capable of expressing "the pre-formal, the virtual, and the chaotic." Such a concept is not a matter of rational knowledge.

We have here the living eonsdousness grasp reality through the symbol "anterior to reflection. It is by such graspings that the World 24

1 is constituted. "

Eliade continues his construct {1959:98-102):

2. For the primitive, symbols are always religious because they point to something real or to a structure of the world. For on the archaic levels of culture, the real- -that is, the powerful, the meaningful, the living- -is equivalent to the sacred. For this reason archaic religious symbols imply ontology. . . the expres­ sion of a judgment about the world and simultaneously about human existence . . . a judgment that is not formulated in concepts and which rarely tends itself to conceptualization.

3. This capacity of . . . symbolism to reveal a multitude of structurally coherent meanings has an important consequence . . . the symbol allows man to discover a certain unity of the World and, at the same time, to disclose to himself his proper destiny as an integrating part of the world . . .. It is the result of a certain mode of being present.

4. Perhaps the most important function of . . . symbolism-...; important above all because of the role which it will play in later philosophical speculations-- its capacity for expressing para­ doxical situations, or certain structures of ultimate reality, otherwise quite inexpressible.

It is this function which makes possible man's important discovery

that the polarity and the antimonies could be articulated as a unity.

The last value of symbolism according to Eliade is its

'existential value (Eliade 1959:102)

•.. the fact that a symbol always aims at a reality or a situation in which human existence is engaged. It is above all this existential dimension that marks off and distinguishes symbols from concepts.

Symbols and concepts are not hierarchical . they have an.

·entirely different base of operations. They live as a complementary

of the psyche symbol being a function when Concept Individual Reality

{see Chapter 4), Concept being a function of the rational mind when in

Sensory Individual Reality. It is necessary to be in the proper

"individual reality" to get the proper definition- -the proper "feed-

back. " 25

To return to Eliade (1959:102):

Symbols still keep their contact with the profound sources of life; they express, one might say, the "spiritual as lived. 11 This is why symbols have, as it were, a "numinous aura; 11 they reveal that the modalities of the spirit at the same time manifestations of life, and consequently, they directly engage human existence. The symbol not only unvei.ls a structure of reality or a dimension of existence; by the same stroke it brings a meaning into human existence.

Nagendra defines symbol as representation of reality at a

:certain level of reference by a corresponding reality at another. 'i According to Nagendra (1971:135):

A most significant point about . . . symbol that in itself it assets nothing, denies nothing. It becomes meaningful only when it is viewed in relation to the system of representation to 11 which it belongs . . . . The symbols "table" and "value • have meanings only within the system of representation we call language.

A symbol belongs to a system of representation meaning it

·is governed by certain rules of communication (signification). It is

'necessary to know the rules to know what a symbol really means .

. Nagendra designates that of all the known systems of representation,

, Language has the most clear-cut and definite rules of communication.

·For these two reasons it is therefore the best medium of communi-

cation and discourse.

While it i.s true the rules of mathematical symbolism are

more clear-cut and precise than those of language (Nagendra 1971 ;136)

. , . it has been conclusively demonstrated that mathematical language is only a refined version of verbal symbolism.

Since there are no rules of non-verbal symbolism (in common

knowledge) where myth, ritual and art are found--we find experts

wanting to reject these forms as pseudo-symbolic. 26

Nagendra allows (1971:137)

... the distinction between verbal and non-verbal symbolism • . . not a distinction between two forms but two levels of symbolization.

And so we have seen the symbol is a "bridging process, "

bridging the gap between outer existence (the world) and inner

meaning. He who understands symbol participates in this bridging

'process and as Eliade Mircae states (Eliade 1959:103):

not only "opens out" to the objective world, but at the same time succeeds in emerging from his particular situation and in attaining a comprehension of the universal. This is explained by the fact that symbols have a way of causing immediate reality, as well as particular situations, to "burst. "

Let us talk of symbol as being involved in a process that is

energy-evoking-directing. There is no encr!,

, when the process is working efficiently. The focus-intent acts as a

beam on which the energy just wings its way to wherever it is direded.

• Joseph Campbell believes that the messages sent forth while partie-

• ipating in such a process-state, are addressed not to the brain, to be

interpreted there and passed on; but are sent directly to the nerves,

the glands, the blood, and the sympathetic nervous system. Yet they

pass through the brain and the educated brain may interfere, mis-

interpret and so short-circuit the messages. The way to this central

experience of one's organic psychic being is simple and direct.

(1945:27-28) he posits:

The archaic world knows nothing of profane activities: every act which has a definite meaning, hunting, fishing, agriculture, games, conflicts, sexuality in some way participates in the sacred . . . . Thus we may say that every responsible activity in pursuit of a definite end is, for the archaic world, a ritual. 27

Is that not exactly what Coomaraswamilneant when he said.

(Nagendra 1971:13)

. .. . ritual the perfect performance of one's task.

And so it is in the realm of action that ritual is participant in

Symbolization: for is not ritual to be defined as symbolic action? Is

it too far-fetched to allow all action that stands in the flow of one's life by that being meant- -all action which proceeds from the previous

·action in the pursuance of one daily living as "right action" and

hence ritual? One living thusly could claim a ritualistic existence--

, knowing nothing of profane activities (as per Mircac). ' Chapter 4

MODES OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Ritual is the enactive mode of consciousness; it is a . . ·learning which in Bruner's phrase (Gowan 1974:31) is "in the m:.~scles,''

hence involved with the habituation of response in psychomotor

.behavior. It is the experiential mode of consciousness. Roger

Bacon, one of the founders of modern science wrote (Ornstein

·1973:63) in 1268:

There are two modes of knowing, through argument and experience. Argum(mt brings conclusions and compels us to concede them, but does not cause certainty nor remove doubts in order that the mind may remain at rest in truth, unless this is provided by experience.

• These modes are both right; they are complementary and together for.

the complete human consciousness (Ornstein 1973:53).

One mode, the articulate or verbal-intellectual, involves reason, language, analysis, and sequence. The "other" rrwde is tacit, "sensuous, " and spatial, and operates in a holistic, relational manner.

Arthur Deikman delineates the two major modes of con-

• sciousness into the active and receptive modes. His essay Bimoda]

· Consciousness_ appearing in The Nature of Human Consciousnes

edited by Ornstein, presents his most recent efforts at interpretation ·

in this field. According to Deikman, the action mode is a state

organized to manipulate the environment. The receptive mode is a

state organized around intake of the environment; the dominant

agency in this mode is the sensory-perceptual system. In the active

mode the dominant physiological agencies are the striate muscle 28 29

; system and the sympathetic nervous system, with the principal'

psychological systems being that of focal attention, object-based

•logic.

It is proposed that within each mode the components arc

:interrelated to form a system (Ornstein 1973:70).

These two modes are not to be equated with activity and passivity. The functional orientation that determines the mode has to do with the goal of the organ;.sms1 activity; whether or not the environment is to be acted upon, or whether stimuli or nutrient are to be taken in. "Letting it" is an activity, but a different activity than "making it. 11

The relationship to the environment in the receptive mode is

:what Buber (1958) describes as the "!-Thou," in contrast to the

·"!-It" of the action. The choice of the mode being determined by the

motives of the individual organism. The mode choice says Deikman,

. is set by "the general orientation of the individual's culture" how the

individual Is in that culture.

ln each mode, certain activities are facilitated. Ritual

seems to me to be in search of the receptive mode of being. The

intuitive mode of being in the world is essential for a full under-

standing of complex systems ... remembering always it is a

complementarity--neither mode is "right." Human consciousness is

largely an interaction between organism and environment.

Ordinary consciousness is a highly, beautifully evolved

personal construction. It is designed primarily for our biological

survival. Our sense organs and brain serve as filters and select for

us Uwse aspects of the environment which arc most relevant for us at

that time (Orn.3tcin 1972 :45).

Our ordinary consciousness is object-centered; it involves analysis, a separation of oneself from other objects and 30

organisms. This selective, active, analytic construction enables us to achieve a relatively stable personal world in which we can differentiate objects and act upon them. The concept of causality, linear time, and language are the essence of this mode.

If this ordinary consciousness is a personal construct, there,

must be other constructions out there for us. William James put it

.best (Ornstein 1972:46):

Our normal waking consciousness, ra.tional consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different .... No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded .... At any rate, they forbid a premature closing of our accounts with reality.

Lawrence LeShan, Ph. D., a research psychologist, in his

book Toward A General Theory of the Paranormal, a report of work

in progress, presents a most succinct theory of reality. First he

poses three assumptions about the nature of reality which are common

:to all empirical explorations. "We must use them here, " he says,

· "if they are invalid, then all the rest of this paper is invalid. " The

three assumptions are (LeShan 1969:12):

1. ... That something is out there 2. That individuals can respond to certain aspects of reality and not to others. 3. . . . That there is more than one person in the cosmos.

We are interested in what lies out there. And what's out

there makes up the individual reality (IR) of 2.n individual.

C. D. Broad talks of "basic limiting principles" which are a

large number of basic organizing principles which we, as Westerners,

believe to be real, out there, and never changing (LeShan 1969:14).

These are the aspects of reality upon which most people believe, "all reasonable men can agree. " Examples might include that matter is solid and real, that valid information 31

about the world comes to us through the senses, that causes must precede effects in time, and the obJects separated by space are different objects. These, and a variety of others, which people tend to believe, are basic in all IR's.

However, all IR's do not include these basic postulates. We

can live, and are called upon to live in different II{ 's which produce

different interactions between us and reality. Let us compare the

common sense IH which is to be found used in everyday life and what

'we might call the IH, of modern physics, the scientific nt.

Let us contrast these two IR's as we look at a bar of iron.

In the scientific IR this bar of iron appears to us (LeShan 1969;16)

as a field of stresses, interspersed at wide intervals with foci of patterned, rapidly-moving electrical charges.

With this type of IR we could do all sorts of predictions and

, tabulations in regard to pillar collapse, solvent and acid reaction,

'and others. This IH of the physicist would make it difficult to hang

:our clothes on this bar or admire its beauty of form.

We have an example of two IR's brought about by a simple

. change in attitude. This change in attitude causes our reaction to

whatever is out there, to be different to a great degree. Although

these two IR's are different, both of them are true. There is a

complementarity. Different IR's present different possibilities of

interaction between the individual and reality; different IR's present

different Weltbild, "the concept of this-is-how-the-universe-works,"

LeShan calls the c:cmmon spnse viewpoint about how the

universe works built on information received by the senses- -the

Sensory Individual Reality or S-IR. 32

He calls another way of looking at reality theC-IR O:oeShan

1969:54):

The Clairvoyant IndividLtal Reality . . . this particular IR (Individual Real.ity) produces a disruption and dislocation in the unities and relationships perceived in the common sense view of reality and finds new and different unities and relationships.

Let us take the two major modes of consciousness as

:presented by Robert Ornstein in The Psychology of Cons_cious~_ess and

:combine them with LeShan's construct: The rational-analytic, S-IR

and the intuitive-holistic, the C-IR. The job of the S-IR is to test

, hunches and create a manageable environment and it must be coupled

, with the C-IR to provide the hypotheses and the new directions. When

• the two are joined in complementary fashion, understanding can be

greatly expanded.

The heart of the difference between these two IR's lies in the

way one views a person, an object, or a thing (LeShan 1969:58).

If one sees its uniqueness, its isolation, its I-stand-along quality; if one sees its this-is-a-so-and-so, its what-·are­ important-are-its -boundaries -and- cut-off-poiYJ.ts quality, its this-is -where-it-ends -and-something-else-begins quality, one views it from the S-IR. If, however, one sees ns its most important characteristics its harmonious relationships-to-other-parts-of-the-total quality, its part-of-a-pattern-that-is -part-of-a-larger-pattern quality, its Eeld-theory quality, one views it from the C-IR.

Whatever we see is what is reality for us at the time of

seeing. There are many realities out there for us to see for we

know, according to Bruner, that our nervous system is not a "one-

way street" but is a policy-making mec:hanism determining what is

to be perceived.

Now theIR--the Individual Reality--those aspects of reality

which the individual perceives, responds to or interacts with--has an 33

'infinite number of variations. We have chosen two- -both.of which ar·e·

equally natural for mankind, equally available (LeShan 1969:65).

The S-IR is useful for getting things done, for the maintenance of life. The structure of Western language is so tightly related to S-IR perceptions that perceptions in the C-IR arc widely regarded as ineffable.

The reason for this discussion in regards to Ritual is most

obvious when one recalls the reaction one may have as one reads

. about a particular ritual. It usLtally doesn't make sense to see a

• group of people participating in some act or series of acts. Why are

• they doing that- -or even how could they be doing that- -so what ...

are they doing that for.

By using LeShan's construct we are able to see that partie-

ipating in a ritual usually necessitates being in the C-IR .... One

. may use the behavior of the ritual to get there. ()nee there, there is

an intensified feeling of action--one is "fed" while there ...

energized.

The ritual is empty action until one can experience the

· ritual in the C-IR. And it can be the means by which one gets there

to the C-IR. There are certain techniques that have evolved to help

those of us living in the S-IR to attain some information available in

the C-IR without losing the security of our center of being,

In the light of the recent developments in Physics we find

the world picture of modern physics and that of mysticism essentially

the same. For this reason LeShan posits that S-IR is a special case

of the C-IR. Pearce said (Pearce 19G9:1G5):

With reality-adjustf~d thinking went an unambiguocts single­ minded organization similar to Bruner's "thinking for the left hand. " Once this kind of thinki11g was practiced, the world was 34

no longer split against itself, and there was freedom to "inter­ vene in the ontological constitution of the universe, " as Eriade put it, since conscious thought then had ready access to that point in the continuum where there was no judgment, no dis­ tinction between kinds of organization.

There is a catalystic quality in Ritual--and it hinges on its non-judging aspects (Pearce 1969 :76)

where the energy of thought and the energy of adhered to forms of matter appear to merge ... nothing either true or false. It simply

Levy-Bruhl, an anthropologist of note said (1966 :xiii):

The primitive sees the objects of his world as total Gestalten, often infused with magical powers and mythic illeanlrigs.

It is to Levy-Bruhl that we can credit the concept of the law of participation which is {Levy-Bruhl 1966 :xiii)

... the conviction that "objects, beings, phenomena can be, though in some way incomprehensible to us, something other than themselves ... , That they give forth and l'eceive mystic powers, virtues, qualities, influences which make themselves felt outside without ceasing to remain what they are. " When a Zuni dancer says he is god, he does not mean that he is impersonating the god, but rather that he ls expressing his identity with the god, he is participating in the life forces of the universe.

Are not all symbolic systems actually involved in this principle of participation? Are not all symbolic in the C-IR? According to Willis Harmon in his "The New

Copernican Revolution" published in Stanford Today, Winter, 19G9

(1969:25}, we ar·e engaged in a new revolution today as revolutionary as Copernicus 1 revolution and of the exact same nature {Campbell

1972 :243).

Wh:tt Copernicus proposed was a universe no eye could see but only the mind imagine; a mathematical, totally invisible construction of interest only to astronomers, unbeheld, unfelt by others of this human race, whose sight and feelings were locked still to earth. 35

Are we not being asked to unlock our gaze? It is fout; and

one-quarter centuries later; the abstract construction of Copernicus

and our visible world correspond. How absolute is the separation of

the abstract world of the mind and the visible world? What is there

and what is not there? By whose construct is that which is there,

'there? Our Astronauts walked on the moon. We all saw them. Of

:this epic occasion Giuseppe Ungaretti wrote (Campbell 1972 :243):

What are you doing, Earth, in heaven? Tell me, what are you doing, Silent Earth?

Who is now so absolutely sure of what he cannot see?

A THEORY OF LANGUAGE

By contrast with the syntaxic aspects of language and thought,

, ritual is an action-oriented symbolism in which images are predomi-

; nant. Howard Gardner (1972:243) in his book The st For Mind ~~~~,~~~,~~-~ states that

Chomsky's assertions that language reflects the unique logic of the human mind and that ordinary langctage use is permeated by creativeness may portend the inuninence of a meaningful synthesis of the major structural approach to cognition.

Ribal as symbolic action is perhaps another mode of

language and thought revealing to us relationships which can be

· expressed only in the images which are manifested. If one accepts

a theory of symbolism then it is merely a matter of setting about to

become acquainted with the symbolism '.nvolved, even as we learn

the symbolism of mathematics.

Ernst Cassiter, in An Essay on Man (I-Iayakawa 195:1:131),

says: 36

... man lives in a symbolic universe . No longer can man confront reality immediately; he cannot see it, as it were face-to-face .... He has so enveloped himself in linguistic forms . . . that he cannot see or know anything except by the interposition of this artificial medium.

According to Hayakawa "human beings live in a 'semantic environ-

'ment, 1 which is the creation of their symbol system. 11 Edward

, Sapir went so far as to claim (Pearce 196 9 :4)

... the real world is to a large extent built up on the language habits of the group.

To say that a symbol belongs to a system of representation

, is to say that it is "governed by certain rules of signification"

'(Nagendra 1972 :136):

Of all the known systems of representation, language has the most clear-cut and definite rules of signification ...

The mathematical language is the most definite and clear- cut of all

languages (Nagendra 1972:136).

The mathematical language is only a refined version of verbal symbolism.

The symbol is, as Susanne Langer says .. the basic instru-

· ment of thought. Thought is a shaping force in reality. It has been

noted tha.t our minds screen out far more than we accept; we would

live in a chaotic world if this was not so. This screening process of

ours is a necessary but arbitrary one and is the source of our

·Individual Reality (see Chapter 4, Modes of Consciousness).

This process in which one picks up some characteristics

and ignores or fails to pick up others is called "abstracting" by

Korzybski (Cerminara 1972:57)

.. from a Latin root word which means to "draw from~" The selection and omission of characteristics arc related to such factors as eyesight, hearing, interest, training, temper­ arnent, and recent experience. 37

Giants in the field of Linguistics such as Benjamin Lee

Whorf and Edward Sapir, Susanne Langer and Ernst Cassirer believe

that thought and language are not independent processes. The

traditional idea that thought comes first to be followed later by a

linguistic formulation of that thought is no longer a prevalent one.

The process of transforming all direct experience into language, that supreme mode of symbolic expression (Lee 1949 :7) to quote Susanne Langer in her essay "The Phenomenon of Language"

..• has so completely taken possession of the human mind that it is not only a special talent but a dominant, organic need.

Langer sees in this all-important craving for expression the

source of his powers and his weaknesses (Lee 1949:8).

The special power of man's mind rests on the evolution of this special activity ... . • . his primitive mental function is not judging reality, but dreaming his desires . . . . man has a constant and crying need of expression. What he cannot express, he cannot conceive; what he cannot conceive is chaos and fills him with terror.

To Susanne Langer this process of symbolic transformation

which all our experiences undergo (Lee 1949:8)

, .. is nothing more noT less than the process of conception, which underlies the human faculties of abstraction and imagi­ nation. . . . Language is the highest and most amazing achievement of the symbolistic human mind. The power it bestows is almost inestimable.

According to Langer the figure of speech "I can make nothing of it"

is more true than we realize when we are confronted with a failure to

understand something (Lee 1949 :8).

Thought and memory are processes of making the thought, content, and the memory, image.

We pattern our ideas through the symbols by which we express them. 38

According to John Dorsey in his book Psychology of·

Language every word is a name:

It is helpful to recognize that wholeness is the nature of my every mental event-sensation, emotion, per.ception, or consciousness. Aristotle felt this wholeness also in respect to body sensations and feelings of mind, "the soul is all in the whole and all in every part. 11 The same indivisible living is all that is active in any mental functioning.

Mind-conscious Cassirer observed and recorded that the Greek

language designated thought and speech by the same term.

"The essence of language is symbol, 11 says Susanne K.

Langer, "not signific; we use it first to formulate and hold ideas in our minds. 11 Knowing, conception, and not social control is its first

and most important benefit. Langer says (Lee 1949: 10)

... a small child first talks to himself. This is his way of forming and fixing the conception of the object in his mind, and around this conception all his knowledge of it grows.

Both Cassirer and Langer conclude that names or naming

are the essence of language. Cassirer in .!:-anguage and A View of the

Worl~ (Lee 1949:259) says:

Without the help of the name

Langer specifically puts it this way (Lee 1949:10)

... the name is what abstracts the conception of the horse from thee horse itself, and lets thee mere idea recur at the speaking of the name.

This is called, in mythica-linguistic thought, "the law of the

leveling and extinction of spcccific differences" (Cassirer 1946:27),

Every part of the whole is the whole i.tself .... The part does not mccrely rccprccsent the whole . . . they are identical with the totality to which they belong; not merely as mediating aids to reflective thought, but as gccmtine prccsences which actually contain the power, significance, and efficacy of the whole. 39

All mythic thinking is governed by thisprincipie (Cassirer ·

1946 :27).

Whoever has brought any part of a whole into his power has thereby acquired power, in the magical sense, over the whole itself.

The metaphorical function of language should be more easily

.understood in the light of this basic principle of mythic metaphor

(Cassirer 1946 :29).

Even Quintillian pointed out that this function does not constitute any part of speech, but that it governs and character- izes all human talk . . . . If Metaphor . . . not just a certain development of speech, but must be regarded as one of its essential conditions- -then any effort to understand its function leads l\S back, once more, to the fundamental form of verbal conccnvlflg. Such conceiving sterns ultimately from that same process of concentration, the compression of given sense experiences, which originally initiates every single verbal concept.

Both language and myth find their consummation in the same

inner process (Cassirer 1946 :26):

they are both resolutions of an inner tension; the representation of subjective impulse and excitations in definite objective forms and figures.

We have progressed here to a conclusion of great importance.

in regard to our definition of Ritual as the enactment of the myth--and

the question raised in the previous chapter- -about the temporality of

ritual/myth. Cassirer quotes Usener (1890 Gotternamen: Versuch

einer helve von der religiosen Begriffs bildung, Bonn) (Cassi.rer

1946 :26):

People do not invent some arbitrary sound-complex, in ordt~r to introduce it as a sign of a certain object, as one might do with a token. The spiritual excitement caused by some object which presents itself in the out world furnishes both the occasion and the means of its denomination.

According to this idea, the liveliest sense impressions are 40 the ones striving for vocal expression and they are the ones which become the bases for language as we know it.

John Dorsey sees the relation of thought to word not as a thing but as a process (Dorsey 1971:125)

... a continual movement back and forth. A thought is not merely expressed in words; it comes into existence through them. Every thought tends to connect something with something else, to. establish a relationship between things .

. Dr. Dorsey goes so far as to state "a word is a microcosm of human

:consciousness (153)."

The constant interaction and interpenetration of myth and

!language, 'attests the unity of the mental principle from which both are sprung," says Cassirer. They are different grades, different manifestations, different expression. Does my own language aware-

'ness open "an original phase of spiritual and intellectual life, " as

Ernst Cassirer believed?

Perhaps Wilson Van Dusen in The Natural Depth ()!_Man said it most movingly that "the mind speaks in symbols because only the richness of imagery can convey the complex interrelationships of things to one another and of ourselves to the other. 11 Is not the

Is not ritual the abstracting of the symbolic action from the myth? Cassircr says (Lee 1949:261):

The function of a name is always limited to emphasizing a particular aspect of a thing, and it is precisely this restriction and limitation upon which the value of a name depends ... single out and dwell upon a certain aspect ... (In) the act of denomination we select, out of the multiplicity and diffusion of our sense data, certain fixed centers of perception.

Language and Myth, according to Cassirer share a "com- munity of fnnetion. 11 In his essay "The Power of Metaphor" which is 41

·Langer, but originally published in 1923, we find him talking of a

·"common center" which is demonstrable between language and myth

(Cassirer 1946 :23)

.. for, no matter how widely the contents of myth and language differ, yet the same form of mental conception is operative in both. It is the form which one may denote as metaphorical thinking.

So we become aware of the fact that language and myth are

11 'aS CaSSirer noteS tWO diVerse ShOOtS from the Same parent stern. II

'This "parent stem" is the "impulse of symbolic formulation"

' (Cassirer 1946 :2 6)

. . springing from the same basic mental activity, a concentration and heightening of simple sensory experience.

In The Poet Emerson said (Dorsey 1971:5):

Words and deeds are quite indifferent forms of the divine energy. Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.

'So interrelated are we that John Dorsey posits the (1971:114)

... greatest health consequence is the way I use the naming power of my wonderful mind, for it directly affects what I do with my consciousness itself.

Paul Watzlawick, the author of Pragmatics of Human

Communication, propounded this most provocative idea: that

seemingly unrelated examples remain unexplainable as long as the

range of observation is not wide enough to include the contex in which

the phenomenon occurs. How true this is in regard to a concept such

as Ritual with its "jealous mistresses 11 of the past (Watzlawick

1967 :22).

Failure to realize the intricasi.es of the relationships between an event and the matrix in which it takes place, between an organism and its environment, either confronts the observer· with something "mysterious" or induces him to attribute to his object of study certain properties the object may not possess. 42

We find language playing a dominant role in the shaping of

our world view and the world-to-view. In a recent newspaper article

"On the Political Abuse of Language," by Dr. Liane Norman (Los

Angeles Time, March 17, 1974}, Dr. Norman states that,

The larger implication of modern linguistic theory that through language we are able to exist socially. Language permits LlS to organize, to perceive, and to communicate, to solve problems, to conserve what is valuable, to compare experiences and ideas. None of these things would be possible unless the bases of language would be common to us all. And without language, each person would be isolated, excluded from the community, or threatened by overwhelming unpredictability and incoherence.

Language is necessary and must be predictable if we are to

function comfortably in this world. Language is the mode of com-

munication in the S-IR. Through language we come to terms with our

·environment. But there are some aspeets of our environment that

language does not communicate to us. Dr. Norman listed six functions

of language. I propose that ritual as the language in the C-IR is able

to fulfill these functions: to perceive and communicate, to solve

·problems, to conserve what is valuable, to compare experiences and

ideas. It is the work of future research to delve into the possibilities·

of such an idea.

According to Pearce (1969:143}:

Speech serves no adaptive purpose ... yet speech was developed by life, and its purpose can be understood from its real function, a function long championed by Langer . . . . It was a part of the development of a system of logical choice, of value judgment, and of projectcasym1lol-maldng, through which new possibilities ~or reality could be consciously directed.

The creation of language, the facility whereby we communi-

cate with our world and those in it, is according to Pearce, a case of

the "cause of the need" becoming the "cause of the fulfillment of the 43

··-- ·- .., • need. " Language is the means by which we become comfortable in

·our world. It is through language that we name our world, and

·through naming our world we create the world that we name.

GENERAL SYSTEMS THEORY

Communication is a condition sine qua non of human life and

social order. No matter how one may try, in no way can one not

·communicate for all activity or inactivity, words or silence, have

• message value. The General Systems Theory is based on the study of

• the pragmatics of human communication, the behavioral affects of

human communication (Watzlawick 1967 :22).

All behavior, not only speech, is communication and all communication--even the communicational clues in an imper­ sonal context- -affects behavior .

. The focus is on the sender-receiver relation, as mediated by

communication (Watzlawick 1967 :2 2).

Since this communicational approach to the phcnomene1 of human behavior, both normal and abnormal, is based on the observable manifestations of relationship in the widest sense, it is therefore, conceptually closer-to rnathematics than to traditional psychology, for mathematics is the discipline most immediately concerned with the relations between, and not the nature of entities.

Ray Birdwhistel wrote in 1959 (Watzlawick 1967:70)

... an individual does not communicate, he engages in or becomes part of communication ... he does not originate communication; he participates in i.t. Communication as a system, then, is not to be understood on a simple model of action and reaction, however complexly state d. As a system, it is to be comprehended on the transactional level.

The General Theory of Systems concerns itself with the nature of

interactional systems (Watzlawick 1967: 121). 44

Interactional systems ... shall be two-or-more commu­ nicants in the process of, or at the level of, defining the nature of their relationship.

What is important is the relationship aspects of the communication.

For (Watzlawick 1967 :28)

... even man's awareness of himself is essentially an awareness of functions of relationships in which he is involved, no matter how much he may subsequently reify this awareness.

Ritual as symbolic action is a form of communication and as

; the enactment of myth becomes the revealing picture of how I am in

; My world. All behavior, according to the systems theory, is an

• interactional situation (we are never not in an interactional situation

·for when we are alone we are still with ourselves) and has message value, for example, co1nmunication. No matter how one may try,

·one cannot not commLmicate. It docs not matter whether there is

success or failure; communicative value will still be manifested through the very nature of the activity.

In human communication (Watzlawick 1967 :61)

, . , objects--in the widest sense--can be referred to in two entirely different ways. They can either be represented by a lil<:eness ... or they can be referred to by a name.

These two types of communication are equivalent to the concepts of

. the analogic which is a self-explanatory likeness or the concept of

-the digital which is reference by a name, a word. According to

Watzlawick, analogie communication is virtually nonverbal communi-

cation but is not restricted to body movement only (Watzlawick

1967 :61).

We hold that the term must comprise posture, gesture, facial expression, voice inflection, the sequence, rhythm, and cadence of the words themselves, and any other nonverbal manifestation of which the organism is capable. 45

Analogic communication with its roots in an a"rchaic period

"of evolution is more generally valid than the relatively recent, more

:abstract digital mode of verbal communication. \:vherever relation- ship the central issue of communication, digital language i.s almost meaningless. Wherever relationship is the central issue

"there is a reliance on analo communication which is very little

,changed from the analogic inheritance handed down to us from our mammalian ancestors. Man is the only organism gifted with the use of both the analogic and the digital modes of communication; and has

/ound the use of these modes of communication to be in a comple­ ment<:>xity. There is a great diJficulty as man, in his necessity to combine these two languages must constantly translate from the one into the other (Watzlawick 1967 :67).

Digital language has a highly complex and powerful logical syntax but lacks adequate semantics in the field of relationship, while analogic language possesses the semantics but has no adequate syntax for the unambiguous definition of the nature of relationships.

How helpful would be a formal representation of some kind.

Watzlawick (1967 :43) talks about a search for a formal system of a calculus to be used in the field of human communication.

. . • there exists an as yet uninterprcted calculus of the pragmatics of human communication whose rules are observed in successful, and broken in disturbed, communication.

I propose that ritual in its defined form of symbolic action-­ enactment of the myth will, at some future time, be able to be considered just such a calculus (Watzlawick 1967 :39)

.•. a method of resting upon the employment of symbols, whose laws of combination arc known 2.nd general, and whose resultn admit of a consistent interpretation. ;' . 46

I call upon Watzlawick's own words (1967 :20} to help me

'establish an atmosphere of tolerance to this idea:

. . . a phenomenon remains unexplainable as long as the range of observation is not wide enough to include the context in which the phenomenon occurs.

To do this the phenomenology of ritual must become the source of

•research. Proposed hypotheses must be checked out as applying in

. successful communication and broken in disturbed communication.

·But that is a task of the future. As the research in Kirlian photo-

graphy, biofeedback, and energ'J fields proceeds with such success,

why can we not dream of a calculus for the field of human communi­

: cation? Cannot ritual be considered the feedback loop? Feedback

has been (Watzlawick 1967:32}

... accurately referred to as the secret of natural activity. Systems ">Vith feedback distinguish themselves not only by a quantitatively higher degree of complexity: they are also ... self-regulating.

I propose ritual as just such a system. Let us refer to

Bruner's and Sullivan's (Gowan 1974:31) terminology in regard to the

·cognitive representation of experience.

Bruner (1866 :11) speaks about enactive representation (when the learning is in the musclesl,.-ic-onic representation (when it concerns signs), and symbolic-representation (which is our normal full cognition). SUITivan (1953:xiv) •.. defines three similar modes as prototaxic (experience occurring before symbols), parataxic (experience-using symbols in a private or autistic wan ana-·syntaxic (experience which can be communi- cated}. ~~---

We are concerned with the prototaxic (enaetive) and the

. parataxic (iconic) levels of representation in the body which arc the

source of the feedback and the feedback itself. Systems (Watzlawick

1967 :32} 47

. . . with feedback require a philosophy of their own in which the concepts of pattern and information arc as essential as. those of matter and energy were at the beginning of this century. Search with these systems is, at least for the time being, greatly hampered by the fact there exists no scientific language sophisticated enough to be the vehicle for their explanation, and it has been suggested ... that the systems themselves are their own simplest explanation.

The similarities between ritual and the general systems

theory reveal many interlocking patterns. Future research is called

for. Human interaction is described as a communication system, and

,is characterized by the px·operties of general systems such as time

. as a variable, wholeness, feedback, and equifinality. (The same

• results may spring from different origins because it is the nature of

the organization which is determinate.) These characteristics are

also to be found as characteristics of the C-IR (see Chapter 4,

Modes of Consciousness): objects and events are a part of a pattern

·which itself is part of a larger pattern, sequences of action exist in

·the eternal now, and perception cannot be externally blocked since

·knowledge comes from being part of the All.

In a circular system, there exists the built-in aspect of

·self-modifying (Watzlawiek 1967:127) .

. . . "results" (in the sense of alteration in state after a period of time) are not determined so much by initial conditions as by the nature of the process, or the system parameters.

Susanne Langer in Philosophy in a New Key is much involved

in this concept of genesis (Watzlawick 1967:12 8).

There is a widespread and familiar fallacy, known as the "genetic fallacy, 11 which arises from the historical method in philosophy and criticism: the error of confusing the origin of a thing with its irnport, of tracing the thing to its most -prirri.1tive form and thencalling it "merely" this archaic phenomenon. 48

- ...... ·"~] The import for this paper is our acceptance of the l importance of the ongoing organization of interaction rather than our

'concentration on the specifics of product. Nagendra's thesis

regarding ritual and its meaning only being understood dialectically,

·and thus understood "it becomes the founding act of society and the reference point of determining the rationality, irrationality, and

·morality, immorality of human action, 11 takes on new vigor in the light of the General Systems Theory. .Chapter 5

RITUAL IN FAMILY LIFE

It is most fitting to define the family unit as a system.

According to the family- rules theory (Watzlawick 1967 :134) the

, family unit

. fits the initial definition of a system as "stable with respect to certain of its variables if these variables tend to remain within defined limits.

·The validity of using this communicational approach to the family can .

readily be assessed through the enumeration of some of the char-

acteristics of an open system and their application to the family as a

·system. There arc four characteristics: wholeness, nonsummativity,

·feedback, and calibration. What is their applicability to the family

unit? Watzlawick (1967 :134-148) summarizes:

1. Wholeness: the behavior of every individual within the family is related to and dependent upon the behavior of all the others. All behavior is communication and therefore influences and is influenced by others. 2. Nonsummativity: the analysis of a family i'? not the sum of the analyses of its individual members. There are character­ istics of the system, there are interactional patterns, that transcend the qualities of individual members. 3. Feedback and homeostasis: inputs {actions of family members or of the environment) introduced into the family system are acted clpon and modified by the system. 4. CaHbration and step-function: constancy within a defined r«.nge. There a calibration of customary or acceptable behavior within which indiviclLmls must operate.

The family unit when viewed as a system focuses in on the

interactional aspect of the family. All behavior, according to the

systems theory, is an interactional situation and has message value,

49 50 ifor example, communication. No matter how one may try, one

cannot not communicate. This sentence is repeated from Chapter 4

to show the relationship and the validity of applying the General

Systems Theory to this study of ritual.

In Bossard and Boll's definitive study Ritual in Family

Living first published in 1950 and then in 1956, the authors declare

:that the best starting point for the study of family culture patterns is

·ritual. For, as they state, family rituals are the core of the family

• culture. Family is society in miniature. As Quintilian, the famous

Homan rhetorician of the Silver Age once said: "For exploring human nature, one household is large enough. "

Findings from Bossard and Boll's Th~ Large Family System,

1956, reveals the necessity for the family doing things together to

manifest stability. Interaction is necessary, however, even no interaction is communicating. We are in the presence then, of an

·equation: communication being behavior, any interaction sets up

vibrations (there is no such thing as non-behavior). Things done and

not done in the family interactional pattern serve as the feedback loop

for disclosing the essence of the family.

Before we continue, let us establish a definition of family in

terms of its dynamic, in terms of its fundamental human experience.

I quote the findings from Bossard and Boll (195 6 :7):

The family is man's, nature's, and God's device for the perpetuation, not only of the race but also of civilization. The family is the connecting link between successive generations. It serves to reprodctee mankind chronologically, i.e., biologically and culturally. Other functions of the family are secondary. 51

Ritual, in terms of the practice of certain behaviors iri the family system indicates many things and serves the three purposes of symbol in the life of a family (Bossard and Boll 1950:200).

As Adams pointed out years ago, the feeling of satisfaction that accompany the performance of ritual, and the "pause of satisfaction" that follows the achievement of the ends in mind, constitute the essence of the aesthetic experience. In other words, the aesthetic experience is a concommitant of successful participation in the ritualistic act. "The rite is performed; control is achieved; the participants rest satisfied."

Participation in ritual implies a considerable amount of likemindedness among the members of a family. Ritual in terms of symbolic action--indicates a type of behavior pattern participated in by the members in the fami.ly. The pattern is not necessarily of any order or duration or content. The deciding factor which causes a behavior pattern to become a Ritual in the life of the family is the

. acknowledgment that this is so. The pattern is strengthened as the

:family participates in the pattern--but it could still be considered a ritual if the family made attempts at following it or even paid merely lip service to the past event.

It is obvious from the research that ritualism and formalism in family relations make for predictability of behavior response which in term may tend to reduce strain and disorder. And implies a considerable amount of likcmindedness among the family members.

It reveals a common interest in family life. The presence of rituals that are vital and lovingly followed by the family is indicative of the presence of some "dynamic presence 11 in the life of that family.

Perhaps the "myth" of "family" is burning.

In emphasizing ritual as a significant index of family inte-

gration and conserver of family valuec: we run the risk of being 52

----1 !misunderstood. The ''Saturday night pizza dinner" is incidental and

trivial, what is of significance is that the family gathers on Saturday

'and engages in a common experience, relaxes togc:ther, shares of

itself, c:xchanges information and feelings.

Bollard and Boll (1950:200) see

. . . ritualizing as a process of family integration and culture transmission. Its role depends upon its content and the manner of its utilization. A ritual, appealing in content and manipulated wisely, becomes a powerful and constructive weapon in the integration of a family. An ill-adapted ritual or a good ritual misused may become an agent in the family disintegration.

A ritual which involves the refinements of living and

stimulates a common interest in such refinements such as dressing

in special clothes for certain meals during the week might become a

burden and an empty gesture and then a source of much conflict in the

house.

The weekly gardening stint on the front and back lawn could

be the source for family pride in the finished product. Common

participation in a chore is a ceremony in itself and carries with it

·often a sense of rightness. The ceremony need not be participated in

by more than one at a time to carry with it some fcc:ling of common

participation.

The development of ritlmls are manifold. If all the rituals

in the family are ones inherited from the past or passed on due to

historical commitments, or religious affiliations one not utilizing

the broad spectrum for ritual-making. Rites handed down from

preceding generations like Thanksgiving dinner are in appearance the

closest parallels to rituals as described by anthropologists. But

even these become the family's own as they add various variations 53 initiated or modified to suit the family's need or pleasure .... ·····-·· '

The presence of rituals in a family may be the determining factor of a resonance within. And the spontaneous rite arising out of the immediate family interaction in a specific situation is as dynamic as one of long standing. Chance performance which crystallized because something happened, like everyone washing his hair on the same night at the same time span, might be repeated because of the hilarity involved as the entire family gets involved in the "ceremony."

For a family to be possessed of ritual means that the members must be together, at specifi.c times for specific purposes to fulfill definite roles and to perform them in relation to other's roles and obligations. Form is the object through which principle becomes

. manifest; but the dynamics of the form are not guaranteed by the forrn.

It seems that due to the very nature of ritual that the more

. family life is formalized by them, the less haphazard would be the socializing process, regardless of whether the rituals practiced were : healthfully socializing or not. The analysis of rituals suggests that the molding of many personality traits may be accomplished through repeated practice of obligatory actions which, when taken in combi­ nations, tend to form habits of social stability and adaptability. It depends on the my_!!; with which one is concerned as to whether the ritual chosen and followed will lead to ease or dis-ease.

One must decide therefore what it is that one is concerned with. The world one views is the world that one is to view. It is necessary for one to know what one "prizes 11 before one pern1its an old ritual from maintaining status quo or a new one from being 54

developed.

Willis Harmon {19G9:2-5) speaks of current scholars of the

'future

... such as Robert Heilbroner, Kenneth Boulding, and Freel Polack have made much of the concept that it is the image of the future which is the key to that future coming into reali- zation. "Every society has an imagcl of the future which its real dynamic . . . " To whatever extent the science of the past may have contributed to a mechanistic and economic image of man and a technocratic image of the good society, the new science of subjective experience may provide a counteracting force toward the enabling of the image of the individual's possibilities, of the educational and socializing processes, and of the future. And since we have come to understand that science is not a descrip­ tion of "reality" but a metaphorical ordering of experience, the new science docs not impugn the old. It is not a question of which view is "true" in some ultim

Organisms are called open systems, as postulated partie- ularly by General System Theory, when they maintain their steady

·state and even evolve toward states of higher complexity by means of

·a constant exchange of both energy and information with their environ-

mont. Communication and existence are inseparable concepts for in order to survive any organism must gain not only the substances necessary for its metabolism but adequate information about the

world around it. Existence is a function of the relationship between

the organism and its environment.

Miller, Galanter, and Pribram, in their Plans and the

Structure of Behavior {19GO) in Watzlawick {1967 :262), have proposed·

that

purposive behavior is guided by a plan, very much as a computer is guided by a program. Their concept of plan is 55

highly relevant . . . and is one of the most important recent breakthroughs in the understanding of behavior.

The doing was the key, the form merely the vehicle but their undoubted efficacy was due to the mental forces they at once symbol­ ized and set in motion. As Don Juan the Yaqui sorcerer in Carlos

Castanada 's A Separat':'_B._':'_ality (1971) cautions to have a path with a heart made for a joyful fourney and was the only conceivable way to live. Don Juan advises Castaneda to think carefully about our paths before we set out on them, for by the time a man discovers that his

'path "has no heart" the path has killed him. We are then encouraged to seize the tiller by which realities are made and the process by which paths function. The myth which is manifest in ritual is this

"heart" which Don Juan talks about. Ritual as symbolic action, both psychologically and epistomologically considered, is both a mental

·construct and a dynamic synthesis of self and universe.

DANCE AS RITUAL

In viewing dance as ritual let us take a phenomenologist's attitude toward the phenomenon of dance. With dance as phenomenon we describe the lived experience of dance and its analyzable structures, such as time and space, inherent in the total experience and existing within the total form of life (Sheets 1966 :37).

Dance, although something more than the phenomenon of body movement, is nothing less than the phenomconon of body movement. Hence, within the context of dance we arc immedi­ ately directed to a description of the dancer as the moving center of a moving form: What is the relationship between the dancer and the form, and how is the form created as a spatial­ temporal totality? 56

We are led to the awareness of the essential relationship

,between consciousness and its world as manifested in the phenomen-

ology of dance in its world (Sheets 1966:29).

Dance is not only a kinetic phenomenon which appears, which gives itself to conscioctsness; it is also a living, vital human experience as both a formed and performed art: the experience for both dancer and audience is a lived experience.

As Sheets in the "lived experience of a dance, the

dancer is one with the symboli.c form. 11

The question is--what symbolic form is brought into con-

sciousness? Susanne Langer in Feeling and Form (Sheets 1966 :24)

states that

... virtual force is the primary illusion which comes to life with the making of the dance . . . . The phenomcmological basis for maintaining that virtual foree is the primary illusion of dance is that movement itself is primarily a n~velation of force . . . . What may be given secondarily are the spatial or temporal illusions ... "which are really devices that support the total creation or enhance its expressiveness. 11

We must remember that symbol is never a substitute for,

but is identical with experience or reality and (Mukerjec 1959:96)

••. thus becomes the vehicle of new insights and appre­ ciations, and the organization of total consciousness in respect of the reality. This "symbolization, " as Melanie Klein aptly observes, "is the basis of all talents. "

Susanne Langer writes at length of the development of

language and symbolic gesture. She shows how man developed

certain stylized ways of expressing himself. In her essay "Virtual

Powers" written in 1953, Susanne Langer states (Nadel and Nadel

1970:24):

Gesture is vital movement; to the one who performs it, it is known very precisely as a kinetic experience .. i. e. as action, and somewhat more vaguely by sight as an effect. To others it appears as a visible motion .. , it is seen and under­ stood as vital movement ... virtual gestures are not signals, 57

they are symbols of will ... the "powers" (i.e. centers of vital force) in dance are created by the semblance of gcstLuc.

Thus we sec Susanne Langer talking of the phenomenology of dance in terms of Power--not the actual, exerted power as we know it but as "virtual gestures- -symbols of will. " The dancer "wills" the

.use of his body and within directives of time-space, the lived experience of dance as an experience (Sheets 1966 :32) of sheer dynamic flow of force becomes manifested. And this "sheer dynamic

. flow of force" is then viewed by man or participated in by man and man discovers the basic symbolic rhythms and (IVIukcrjee 1959:278)

... infuses these into natural events and hun1an experiences by abolishing the opposition between subject and object, between concept and knower, which is the familiar procedure of scientific and philosophical speculation. The gulf between Being and Becoming can be fully bridged by him only through the perfect understanding of the highest and most inclusive rhythm of the self that in its most intense moments identifies itself with the cosmos around.

The etymological source of the word dance according to

Lincoln 1\irstein in his definitive work of dance, Dance: A Short

.. is based on the root combination of letters tan, found in the original Sanskrit, meaning tension, or stretching.

I believe that the "sheer dynamic flow of force" which Sheets uses to talk of the lived experience of dance is in essence the tension which the root definition talks of. Dance, hence is related in an enactive way to the classic diastolic-systolic aspect of tension assumption and release which we find everywhere as a cyclic property of nature as exemplifying the property of rhythm.

It was the Greek philosopher Pythagor:J.s who, in his

H~rmo_~J.'_of_!l1~- Spheres "looked at the universe as a symphony of 58

;waves and rhythms, all forming together the music o1Goo 11

;(Meerloo 1960:12, 17).

Man uses many forms of rhythm and dancing to reveal himself .... The rhythm within me and the impact of rhythm from outside change me, bringing me temporarily into a different state of tremor and reverberation. This individual dance-oscillation, as response to outside influences, starts already very early in the biological world. It is the way in which animals intercommunicate. Bees make specific dancing move mcnts by means of which they communicate to each other where honey has been found.

Our scientists have let us know that everything is rhythm

. (Meerloo 19130:11).

Tiny particles inside the atom dance their various orbits in an ultramicroscopic cosmos while in the greater universe, stars and galaxies move along their immense pathways in steady eontinuity. Molecules arc in continual agitation and tremor. People, too, however quiet and immobile they may appear, are in constant rhythmic movement . . . we may look at dance and rhythm as a universal means of communion and communication.

We are aware that body movement is life itself and as Ted

Shawn states "to move is to satisfy a basic and eternal need." As

· Meerloo says, dance "lets man rediscover his body as a tool of

• expression. 11 In primitive societies (Kraus 1969:16)

the life of primltive man does not make a clear distinction between work and rest, and rituals and playlike experience arc thoroughly integrated with the productive work of the society.

The reason for this closeness is the fact that dance to the

primitive, it is believed, was communication in the C-IR. Through

dance man was able to get in touch with the source of his world. This

would explain why ritual was the manifestation of energy, of power,

and the source of the power.

One of the oldest drawings that has been found is that of a

figure dancing in the skin of a buffalo; this is drawn on rock by, it is 59

believed, paleolithic man. This same type dancedtualcanbe found

'even now among tribes. In the imitating of the movements of a wild

animal, in wearing the animal's mask--the belief goes--a magic union is formed between man and animal. Meerloo believes that this

is only one explanation of dance. The formal dance-rituals also

serve to ward off common feelings of anxiety as well. New power and

encouragement become infused into the participants as they go through

the dance procedure (Meerloo 1960:21).

Many initiation dances of primitive tribes and early religions rites represent this very archaic magic strategy of man's fight against, as well as his submission to the rhythm of the world. Initiation, becoming an adept, gathering knowledge, dancing one's own free rhythm, are the beginnings of the liberation of man from being merely a biological and instinctual animal.

Susanne Langer in Philosophy in a New Key which is a study

in the symbolism of art says (1951 :138-139):

The apparently misguided efforts of savages to induce rain by dancing and drumming are not practical mistakes at all; they are rites in which the rain has a part. White observers of Indian rain dances have often commented on the fact in an extraordinary nu.mber of instances the downpour really "results." Others of a more cynical turn remark that the leaders of the dance know the weather so well that they time their dance to meet its approaching changes and dimulate "rain-making" ... A "magic" effect is one which completes a rite ... he dances with the rain; he invites the elements to do their part ... if !leaven and earth do not answer him, the rite is simply uncon­ summated.

Kraus quotes Curt Sachs, the eminent cultural-historian

(Kraus 1969:9)

... in the lives of primitive peoples and in ancient civilizations, few experiences or cornmunal functions approached the dance in importance. It is not view as an activity that is external to survival; indeed, he writes, it "provides bread and everything else that is needed to sustain life." 60

As communication in the C-IR we can readily see why Curt 'Sachs talks of dance as the provider of all things which sustain life for dance as communication in the C- IR is communicating with the source of the provisions who or whatever these people called it. For sure, it was a very serious business; a sacred act. There was no

.occasion in the life of primitive peoples where dance could not be found (Sachs 1937:4).

Birth, circumcision, and the consecration of maidens, marriage and death, planting and harvest, the celebration of chieftains, hunting, war and feast, the changes of the moon and sickness--for all of these the dance is needed.

Curt Sachs (1937 :4) quotes the empassioned Persian dervish, ·

·Rumi:

Whosoever knoweth the power of the dance dwelleth in God .

. For in dane

·and the other world. " The dan~e breaks down the distinction of body and soul.

So we sec that tl1e outward form of the dance and the inward form of the dance are the manifestations of the power that Susanne

Langer talks of. Power in this sense is the will of conscio:.1sness which is manifested in the form of the dance; it could just as well have been the form of a poem, or a baked cake, or a washed floor, or any activity that had to be done. Remember, the concentration is no longer on form or product but the process which coupled with the principle brings forth this form. It is trw ~lyna':',lic which we are now concerned with. And according to the findings as recorded in this paper, ritual is just that dynamic for which we have been in need.

The dynamic portion is achieved from the myth which is enacted: 61

And so we have come full circle and we are back to r:ltua.l as symbolic action. And now we can view symbolic action as the dynam­

ic essence which infuses that with which it is in contact, with vitality and meaningfulness. This dynamic essence can be termed "intent. "

And it is this "intent" which is the "program" (myth) which infuses or.

does not infuse the behavior. Ritual is based on the law of the indi-

·vidual, for I can only do for Me. And my "intent" dependent on the

very essence of me whether it is valid or sufficient.

The operational process of transforming sensory percepts

·into concepts or symbolic forms of experience can be the job of

Dance. And happy are those who have this facility. True, there are

others, but none so in touch with the source of the powc;r and its

manifestation. '

Chapter 6

CONCLUSION: SUMMARY

In this thesis a search has been made of literature of

anthropology, sociology, psychology, and ethnography for the

language of ritual. Once a workable definition as cited in Nagendra's

•The Concept of Ritual in Modern Sociological Theory was acquired, it·

was necessary to come to terms with the concepts appearing in the

:definition: ritual as symbolic action--the enactment of the myth.

The nature of ritual in terms of archetype, myth, and

·symbol was then researched. A theory of symbolism evolved which

brought into focus ritual and its relation to the universe. The

. General Semantics approach, which is concerned with the nature of

·the universe, the nature of the knowing process, and the nature of

the communicating process was the very essence of the research

because I sought out definition and relationship as I tried to find a

· workable pattern. The General Systems Theory was found to be a

most fitting pattern for all the pieces. Ritual in family life was

discussed.

Dance as example of ritual was discassed phenomena-

logically and historically. Dance as a manifestation of will was the

ultimate conclusion drawn. The ability to be the source of one's will

was inferred.

62 63

CONCLUSIONS

1. Ritual is the enactive mode of consciousness manifested

on the parata:x:ic level of experience.

2. Ritual is evidenced in the process of interaction. It is

the dynamic which moves the principle to whatever form is desired;

.it is integrated into man's needs and values and "canalizes" them

along specific demands.

3. Rit11al is symbolic action, symbolic of the inner "word­

myth" of our being. Our myth is that word which we have chosen to

1 represent us, it is the intent of our being.

4. Ritual as symbolic action is a form of communication

and as the enactment of the myth becomes the revealing picture of

my world view and my world-to-view.

NEEDED RESEARCH

The concept of ritual fron the functional, stntehtral, and

·process point of view barely "min11tes" old. Much work has to be

done in this field from all angles: systems, semantics.

Modes of consciousness are just in their infancy. LeShan's

construct of the C··IH and the S-IR were taken from work in process.

Ritual as the calculus for interpersonal interactions is

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