Inner space as sacred space: the temple as metaphor for the mystical experience

Amidst graceful pines and dried cow turds there is a shrine atop a steep sloping hill. I go there to make offerings on its sacrificial alter. To begin I offer the sacrifice of time, then the dimensions of space--of height, breadth and width. Next comes the offering of speech, followed by breath, individual will, ego and craving. Lastly I lay down the sacrifice of thought.

Sukumar Deva

Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.

from Walden by Henry David Thoreau

Since the dawn of civilization, humans have had a need for sacred gathering places--spaces designated for worshiping the omnipotent force or forces to which we all inevitably succumb. Originally, such gathering places were unconfined, open and integrated into the natural world. Often set in relation to the movement of the sun, moon, and stars, they were left subject to the elements with which the devotee was to seek harmony. Two noted examples are Stonehenge in England and the configuration of mounds built by Native Americans near Anderson, Indiana. Both designs are said to be aligned with movement of the sun to mark the changing seasons, a feature important to agrarian and hunter-gatherer tribes. (1) Another example is the well-known Serpent Mound in Ohio, perhaps built to represent the regenerative force in what was perceived to be a cyclical Creation, undergoing continual death and renewal. In addition, the sacrificial altars mentioned in the oldest scriptures, the Rig Veda, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the five books of Moses, are generally thought to be open-air altars. (2)

As time went on and cultures developed masonry skills, sacred spaces were enclosed and became increasingly more ornate. While this may be seen as an outgrowth of sophistication in architecture, it also reflects the belief that humans became separated from God through either ignorance (as asserted in Eastern philosophy) or the transgression of Divine Law as depicted in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It therefore became necessary to prepare appropriate, holy, and protected places for people to again draw near to the Divine. The problem inherent to this development is that sacred buildings and their adornments run the risk of becoming distractions along a person's spiritual path. This occurs if, in the eyes of the devotee, the shrine and its religious artifacts become more valued than the spiritual essence they represent.

Revivals in spirituality, particularly when they are grounded in the experience of spiritual enlightenment, include views that run counter to the notion of sacred adornments and confined sacred space. Buddha's enlightenment took place under the Bo tree, not in a sacred temple filled with decorative icons. The Christian book of Acts asserts: "The God who made the world and everything in it...does not live in shrines made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything...." (Acts 17:24,25 RSV). In the Hindu faith, a series of texts known as the Upanishads were written in an effort to shift the attention away from physical representations of the sacred and return the emphasis to inner experience; i.e., the realization that the divine is omnipresent and beyond limits, dwelling everywhere including within us. Thus from the perspective of the mystical experience, the temple that is closest to us is our own body in which the Spirit of God, the spark or light of divinity, dwells. Or as the Chris tian Apostle Paul writes: "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you...?" (1st Cor. 6:19 RSV).

A tangible application of this ancient concept still exists in India today where Hindu temples are said to symbolize both the body of God on a macrocosmic plane, and the human body on a microcosmic plane--the parts of the temple being designated with names used to refer to parts of the human body (Harshananada, 1992). The image on the following page shows the human body superimposed over the layout of a typical South Indian temple. In this diagram, the placement of deities corresponds to the navel, heart, forehead, and other key centers deemed spiritually significant in Indian philosophy.

I will now explore the concept of temple as a metaphor for the mystical experience. In addition, I will propose ways sacred space can be designed so as to minimize the risk of it becoming a material attachment that retards, rather than advances, spiritual growth.

The Inner Sanctuary

The sanctuary is the part of any shrine in which one finds refuge from the world. The equivalent within the "temple of the body" is our "inner sanctuary." There are several ways we can enter and experience our own inner sanctuary. Most of these spiritual practices fall into the category of "meditation." Here I am referring to a very specific genre of meditation procedures that enable a person to experience "awareness by itself." "Pure awareness," as it is sometimes called, is the unmanifest status of the mind, the source of thought and all mental activity, referred to in the Upanishads as "Pure consciousness." One such method in which I give instruction, that comes to us through the discipline of music, applies an ancient form of East Indian singing. Certain Sanskrit texts set to a tonal melody on the backdrop of a properly configured drone and listened to for the correct length of time, enable a person to effortlessly enter meditation and attain a heightened state of awareness along with a deep state of rela xation. This particular technique, derived from a musical tradition in India by the same name, is called Gandharva Meditation. During the practice of this and other comparable forms of meditation, four experiences become apparent that relate to the temple metaphor.