________________
2. Religious tradition reflect & promote social order in many culture tend to value group over individual In archaic society religious experience is profoundly collective the individual feels his identity secured only when merged with community reenacting.
The mythical acts of its foundation purging himself of idiocrasy many of historical religious traditions also have communal focus the Hebrew Bible is story of people's response to God's acts not the diary of a solitary seeker social character of religious experience is a variable rather than constant. Smith argues it is misleading to generalize fundamental significance as religious community on the basis of particular situation. To make archaic religion the standard is more reasonable.
3. Religion experience is invariably individual smith says to be religious is an ultimately personal act. No matter how communal their society may be human beings are essentially alone in the experience of life & death & in encounter with transcendent values social conditioning is not altered by changing condition of social structure.
NDE records genuine & irreducible personal experience of individuals it is nonetheless a product of the social religion imagination & sign of social character is its individualistic message Pragmatic method is ideally suited for dealing with testimony that can't be verified in other ways should not apply James Pragmatic method without stretching it to include attention to working of religious imagination & the cultural forces that shape it.
James calls cash value of religious conception depends on state of economy in which it is circulated & can't be measured against any universal or timeless rate of exchange.
We can interpret NDE visions with renewed sense of rightness of treating them as socially conditioned imaginative & yet nonetheless real & revelatory experience.
This approach allows us to respect the visionary claim that he experience death even if it did not meet medical criteria.
Shock of danger or expected death opened him to a discovery of what death means to him at core of his being when he stepped on to the stage of otherworld which is inner world, turned inside out he confronted his own deeply held image presentment of death. Perhaps just as he will at the time as his actual death. Thus we say visionary met his death. In every day speech, expression dormantly has potential to spring into full blown imaginative experience we have reason to accord validity to visionary claim. :Same logic applies to survival of death though proves nothing about life beyond the grave. We are entitled to accept an individuals report that he experience of something in himself that surpasses death.
68
Jain Education International
For Personal & Private Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
