…the world is neither mute nor opaque,…it is not an inert thing without purpose or significance,….the cosmos ‘lives’ and ‘speaks,’ -Mircea Eliade

The Ontological Dimension
We all long for connection to what really matters, to what we can experience as absolutely real, enduring, and effective reality. We all want to taste the Bliss of Being, the plentitude of Paradise. It is the heart which connects and opens us to this ontological dimension of life, the dimension of inexhaustible mystery, depth, value and meaning.

The root of the word “ontos” means Being in ancient Greek. Being is a rather open concept that yet suggests the experience of the mystery and depth, value and meaning, as well as hope. We can contrast it with the surface of life, with merely functional, technological, and economic modes of living. A good way to get a felt-sense of the ontological dimension to pay attention to what you experience as of intrinsic and infinite value, as sacred or holy, or evoking a sense of wonder, or of reality.

The longing to experience this dimension of life is very ancient and predates the development of the worlds great religions, extending back to early human life in the Paleolithic period. As a young graduate student I had come to a place in my life where I no longer could affirm the ‘faith of my fathers.’ I was hungry to find something based on my own experience that I knew I could build a life on. The traditional doctrines and beliefs no longer worked for me. I had to find the experience, direct and fresh. In time the numinous world opened for me, but not before I had come across the work of the historian of religions, Mircea Eliade. His work, fairly descriptive in nature, was taken up by me as a kind of key into how I might experience the Sacred, the world as saturated with Being, in a culture that was primarily materialistic, and technological and economic in orientation.

Eliade was particularly interested in expressions of the religious forms of indigenous peoples of the past and present, which he called ‘archaic religion.’ I found this term makes it sound pre-historical, of the very distant past only. But the phenomena he described are yet still alive for numerous indigenous peoples in Africa, Oceana, and amongst some tribes in South and North America. In his method of writing he suspended beliefs and opinions in phenomena, in an effort just to describe the experience of the sacred. He chose to illuminate the experience of the sacred in terms of Being, rather than speaking the language of deity. I found it very lucid and helpful. I would like to share his ontological insight with you, and pair it with an earth-honoring and compatible ontological vision from the work of Martin Heidegger.

Ontological Thirst
For the person of traditional [and in some places, still living] indigenous societies, who lives mythically, that is heart-open to the Mystery of the Cosmos, anything and everything can be seen as sacred, as saturated with Being, shimmering with Isness. The people of these traditional societies are possessed on an ontological thirst, a real desire to dwell in a Sacred world, as it came ‘fresh, strong, and pure from the Creator’s hands.’

Because these peoples live[d] in closed contact with the earth and its elements, he called their way of life ‘cosmic religion’ driven by a “Nostalgia for Paradise.” The experience of Paradise is an experience of living in a Natural World that is saturated with Being, and in which any natural phenomenon can become a revelation of the Sacred.

Eliade called this mythical mode of being-in-the-world ‘homo religiosus’ [traditional humans connected or linked to the Sacred /Source] a contrast with ‘homo modernus’ [humans living in the culture of modernity without such a connection]. The former live a cosmic sacrality, a spirituality in which the world is alive with mystery, and generated by inexhaustible and prodigous fertility of the Sacred. The later, the person living in modern society is likely to experience things in a profane way that views them as instruments and functions, and as opened to causal explanation rather than mystery.

We mentioned that Eliade was not particularly interested in the great religions that founded civilizations [Christianty, Hinduism, Islam], but with the far more ancient legacy harkening back to Paleolithic times, and still alive amongst many indigenous peoples, and still mixed in with some of the great religions, such as you find in Eastern Europe and India, where the enchantment of sun and moon and stars, of fire and water and all the elements , and trees and vegetation are all viewed as alive and infused with the sacred, and are approached with respect and care.

For homo religious, Eliade said, the sky reveals transcendence and spaciousness, and communicates holiness, emptiness, and a sense of the changeless and infinite. Sun, Moon, Stars evoke mystery and cosmic wonder, and the night sky gives us a sense of the vast cosmic scope of existence. The daylight experience, by contrast, reveals the world closer to hand, the earth, the vegetation, the rivers and lakes, the forests and animals, the natural rhythms, cycles, and seasons. These too, were viewed as holy, as infused with aliveness, saturated with Being, and because closer to hand, evoking a bond with the surrounding landscape and social world.

Ontological Loss
Eliade believed that we who live in the culture of modernity [Western civilization in particular] have succumbed to a functional and technical view of things, and this mode of consciousness which has become the ordinary and everyday mode, shuts out the radiance and shimmering numinosity of things. Their mystery is reduced or lost, and the world becomes flattened into one dimensionality explored and colonized by reason and modern science. The depths of experience are lost as we become preoccupied with surfaces, exteriors, security, comfort, and profit making.

But we are not born into a world like this. It is our upbringing or enculturation into modern society that teaches us to view the world in this way. This is the profanizing mode of consciousness and it gives rise to a deep mourning and longing for the sacred, for Being. This deep longing is the resurgence of the “ontological thirst” that resides in the heart of everyone, like an instinctual urge. But the real implication of Eliade’s work is to call attention to the fact that the other mode of consciousness is possible for modern people, one that can return us to the sacred earth and cosmos: sacralizing consciousness.

Peoples who live in close relationship to the earth and the natural elements usually live in reciprocity, respect, and gratitude for that upon which their life depends. Reciprocity, not domination, not wanton use, but in a kind of natural give and take friendship. There is an affective or feeling bond with life. The human heart is the organ of connection. It hierohpanizes, that is, can see the sacred in anything or anyone.

Ontological Festival
To contrast the two modes of consciousness, let us give an example, one close to my heart, living as I do in a rural area. I live where I do because I deeply enjoy and take delight in the rhythms and seasons of wild nature, and love quietly gazing across paddocks and neighboring farm fields. Living here in the woodlands and marshes of southwestern Michigan, I feel I am living in paradise.

I know a number of farmers, and I know my experience of their fields often differs from theirs, because I do not depend on it to make a living. It would be a mistake to idealize a farmer’s life. It is hard work, few vacations, and lots of worry about: weather, insects and uncertainties that can devastate crops and bank accounts. With those uncertainties and that kind of pressure, one is inclined much of the time to look at an open field in terms of its utility, of what it can yield, and at the weather conditions in terms of whether it will help or hurt a crop. In this mode of relating to an open field, homo modernus is operating, wondering what chemical fertilizers or insecticides may help maximize the yield of crop and cash.

But of course a farmer is not always in the techno-economic work mode. They too, occasionally enjoy walking in their fields, enjoy the quiet, and occasionally, they too allow themselves a holiday to take in the beauty, and if and when they do, the sacralizing mode of consciousness can awaken.

The word holiday gives intimation of the sacred. The word etymologically says ‘holy day’ and it is experienced particularly if one allows oneself a festival (or fiesta) of being rather than doing, of opening the heart to the mystery rather than letting the mind keep on calculating the yield and costs. Friedrich Holderlin gives us a potent sense of what I am trying to communicate, in a passage from his poem, “As when on Holiday”

As when on holiday, to view fields
Forth goes a farmer, at break of day,
When all through the sultry night cooling flashes
Have fallen and thunder still rumbles afar
And back into its channel the stream retreats
And newly grows the grass,
And heaven’s gladdening showers
Drip from the vine, and gleaming
In peaceful sunlight stands the grove of trees.

I’ve always loved this passage because it reveals the mode of consciousness which is open to the natural radiance and beauty that is always there if we slow down enough to notice, behold, and let it in.

When we open to the world this way, we are on “ontological holiday”, for the Being of the world shines through the natural forms everywhere around us, and these natural forms and beings become sacraments, numinous bearers of mystery and value. As we feel it and take it in, we experience replenishment, renewal, or healing and centering effects. We are brought into Presence, and the freshness of the Now. Our minds become still, arrested by beauty, as our whole being loosens and opens to receive.