by Dr. Michael Smith

Created on: February 21, 2009

Introduction

Mircea Eliade, in The Myth of the Eternal Return, expresses his belief that humans are distinctive in that they were religious. That religious nature can be understood in terms of what constituted reality to humans from their earliest history. He is primarily concerned with man's view of himself in what he called archaic societies, and the place he assumes in the cosmos based on these views. He contrasts the views of archaic man with those of his later counterparts in more modern societies. In the former, man feels himself vitally connected with the cosmos in a cyclical motion, and innately attuned to the rhythms of that cosmos. In the latter man is connected with history in a linear fashion that changes his concepts of both time and history.

What did the archaic man perceive as ultimate reality? As with Durkheim, the existence of religion in a society is an expression of reality (Durkheim 1995, translation by Karen E. Fields). Eliade surveys many of these older, primitive societies to propose that reality was perceived in symbols, myths, rites, and expressions which constituted metaphysics to them. He argues that for these people the moment of transcendence occurred with a breakthrough of the sacred when it reveals itself to the profane. It is this sacredness that provides meaningfulness. These acts become meaningful and acquire a value, and in so doing became real, and that reality is transcendent (Eliade 1954)[1]. In Genesis, the sacredness of Bethel was denoted by Jacob by erecting and anointing a stone to mark the sacredness of the place. Israelites returned to this sacred place repeatedly to worship and sacrifice because it was designated with meaning[2] (The Scofield Study Bible, JKV 1917).

Archaic man sees himself as simply repeating the cyclical patterns of those who came before him. His life is a ceaseless repetition of gestures and patterns initiated by others. Huston Smith talks about this idea as it is found in Buddhism (Smith 1991). Belief within Buddhism constitutes a continual cycle of renewal and recombination in perpetual reincarnation. A person has been here before, and participates in a cycle in which he will come back again, until he earns enough karma to reach nirvana.

Eliade proposes that these conscious repetitions of patterns or "paradigmatic "gestures are a repetition of a primordial act. Man fashions his acts and rituals from what he perceives to have occurred at the beginning of nature or creation, and thus they attain their

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