Forsøg på en profan tilnærmelse til det sakrale

Abstract

Searching for possible profane answers to the strange experience and lore of sacredness, it is assumed that the phenomena of sacredness are rooted in the general problem of the simultaneous unity and disunity of subject and object. This problem fundamentally manifests itself as the defining core of life, psyche and human society, all being different realisations of simultaneous unity and disunity. The article therefore tries to relate the phenomena of sacredness to these realms. Two tentative ideas are put forth as to the nature of sacredness. Firstly sacredness is viewed as a subspecies of spirituality, and spirituality is seen as a special human manifestation with the express purpose of mediating the non-natural societal relation. Basically this spiritual mediation takes the form of a social relation of reciprocal identity, which draws upon the symbolic and ontogenetic early workings of the mind. While religion could probably be accounted for with this type of answer, sacredness as such, however, could not. It is more than a mere socio-psychological function, no matter how complex.
This brings forth a second tentative idea. Here the unique experience of sacredness is seen as a phenomenological reversal. Following the lead of Leibniz, who claims mind to be prior to Locke's sensual experience, the psychic act is held to be creating a unifying intentional field, or setting a scene whereupon the senseborne objects of the world presents themselves. It is then suggested that the experience of sacredness could be  the experience of this unifying ground itself. That is, the non-experienceable ground could under certain conditions become an experienceable figure. The strangeness of the phenomenon could be accounted for by such a figure-ground reverval. In this case, however, sacredness is much more than a freak of experience. As the
psychic relation is a true relation of living unity and fully describable in scientific terms, this true relation is directly revealed in the sacred experience. As claimed by the mystics, the sacred experience therefore does touch fundamental layers of being. The truth of
the mystic, however, needs not itself be rnysterious. It can be reached for by ordinary understanding and thus by profane science.