Are Mystical Religions a Fifth Dimension?

DETERMINING THE NATURE of an ecstatic experience during the ritual of any mystical religion seems subjective and unreachable. But some common parallels in these rituals do exist with a broad stroke.

Disclaimer: I have visited Cuba, published about Cuba (EQ 1999)

and lived years in Miami, NYC and New Orleans, cities with large numbers of Afro-Caribbean people. I’ve also been exposed to some of the Santería/Vodoun rituals and icons, but I cannot speak in the first person about Santería possession or trance. However, credible authors such as Maya Deren and Joseph Murphy shared their close experiences with possession, providing a small window.

Are metaphysical encounters, ritualistic or otherwise, merely the by-product of brain synopsis or is there a region outside of our solid awareness, a dimension that our bodily senses cannot easily detect, and could this region be shared by all humans, a realm in which any person from any race or ethnicity can access under the right circumstances?

The religion of Santería or the way of the saints, also called Regla de Ocha, was constructed by West African priests/priestesses kidnapped by slavers, since among many other similarities, the liturgical language is a dialect of Yoruba or Lucumí, a language of West Africa, specifically Nigeria. (1) In the Caribbean, the African religion hid behind the saints inside the Catholic Church foisted on the slaves. Enslaved Africans noted the similarities of their native gods or orishas from their African homeland with that of the Catholic Saints.

The orishas were paired (hidden) behind their Catholic counterparts. Elegguá embodies St. Anthony — fate and justice; Orúla embodies St. Francis of Assisi — divination or wisdom; Changó or Shangó embodies St. Barbara — passion or power or thunder; and Oshún embodies Our Lady of Charity or Caridad (Cuba) — eros or love, marriage and gold. Each orisha is associated with its own color and number.

For example, Oshún’s color is yellow and responds to the number five (Murphy 43). Africans in slavery kept their Orishas alive in their hearts and minds, along with their ancestor rituals, which are seemingly the foundational rituals. According to one Santeria church, “if we stand tall it is because we stand on the shoulders of our ancestors and are reaching for the orishas.”

Joseph Campbell talks about a “fifth dimension” where people experience a bliss or “Earthly Paradise,” even though in the physical world this same blissful person may seem to another observer as “a squalid heathen in a shattered hut” (Deren xii). So, it is all about perception, once again: personal space or fifth dimension? (The vote is out as to whether there is even a 4th dimension, so beware of anyone with so-called facts.) And, where is this other, extra-dimensional space, next to our own or is it simply in our heads, in a room of our own personal space? Whether or not a god appears in this “fifth dimension,” incorporating separately from human consciousness, is entirely another, improvable matter to the scientific community that demands a tangible proof untenable to measure with current technology.

The other choices in this dithering around the sacred are the obvious sneers from the peanut gallery: drugs or hallucinogens. Yes, maybe some, but not all, not even close.

Recent research in the field of DNA genetics, specifically mtDNA, the mitochondrial DNA passed down through the mother, reveals what archaeology has failed to prove, that the human species most likely originated out of Africa, and our ancestral Eve lived around 150,000 years ago; “the oldest genetic lineages are found in people living in central and southern Africa” (Wells 40). If the bodily DNA of all humanity is the same, why wouldn’t the unconscious realm be similar, as well?

Trance-like ceremonies happen all over the world in all types of religions. In Hawaii the ecstatic nature of the Fire Dance invokes the Volcano Goddess Pele to enter the body and give the dancer or chanter strength, energy and creative ideas. Participants of Pele fire rituals experience a “fullness of knowing that the gods of Hawai’i are never so far off that we cannot see their faces, or hear their thoughts, or feel their breath on our necks” (Tangaro xxiv).

One of the biggest exports of India is their culture of possession by Shakti — a snaky Goddess of energy that invades or revives the body, depending on the slant.

Shakti theoretically awakens the sleeping energy of kundalini, a corporal energy situated at the base of the spine, which then enlivens the chakras (energy points) placed at various points along the spine/body and out the top of the head.

In Shakti chants, I have personally witnessed and experienced frenzied bodily movements (kriyas) where the body moves without a conscious effort on the part of the owner, real-life moments of an awareness that does not exist in the physical plane, but in some construct of mind or consciousness, the intangible arenas that are as real (to my mind) as the chair I’m sitting in.

In my own experience, I did not invite or expect an explosion in my stomach, which then traveled up through my spine and out the top of my head or the events that happened thereafter. When I spoke of these events to a swami at the ashram, I expected him to be surprised, as if this had never happened to anyone but me.

Instead, he casually explained it as a common occurrence or kriyas among people in the vicinity of a powerful guru, much like the loa jumping from one person to another — also, reminiscent of Deren’s story about “a man standing on the sidelines […] who keels over […] the loa can come like this, without warning, as a wind” (Deren 255). I wasn’t even in the ashram when my events or kriyas happened. I was reading a magazine article about this guru in the comfort of my home miles away.

Some of my genetic ancestors are from the Religious Society of Friends or Quakers. Derisively called Quakers, the word “quaker” is how outsiders described what the Friends did while meditating in silence, their way to personally receive the “indwelling Spirit of God” without the aid of a priest or ornamental ritual.

Considered devilish in 17th century England, the Quaker belief system incurred the wrath of the King, the Church of England and even The Puritans. (3) “Their intensity of focus sometimes resulted in involuntary physical quaking and weeping” (Larson 19). What these trancelike states have in common is that they are all altered-state experiences of the human mind — altered or theoretical, only in the sense that it is a mode of being that our current science cannot explain, or in some cases, even acknowledge as purposeful events. 

The physical bodies and psyches are affected in all these rituals.

Since humans share a common ancestor, it seems plausible that our mental maps, wherever they lead, may also share some similarities in our journey of the mind.

For those who practice Santeria, “the trance opens the doors to spirit possession, and the gods, or orishas, briefly enter the trance-induced body and use it for earthly advising” (Gage). A sensitive person involved in the ritual dance propelled by the drums willingly becomes possessed or “mounted” on an orisha who can then communicate to the group or answer questions. While in this state the person does not look like himself and talks with the authority of the orisha, (4)“the animating force of his physical body” (Deren 16).

The Haitians have a saying, “When the anthropologist arrives, the gods depart” (Deren xvii), much like the old saying “a watched pot doesn’t boil.” And even though a watched pot does boil, there is a question of how we measure the time it takes to boil and that leads to the woo-woo world in science called quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics can offer a way to think of these in-between states of circling gods or pre-boiling water, curious events that seem to be affected by the attention, maybe even intention of our thoughts.

I lack the 15 years of mathematics needed to even approach quantum mechanics, a scientific theory that defies the usual rational explanation, but I am not alone in this quantum conundrum. Richard Feynman, a nuclear physicist, famously said, “No one knows why it is that way. That’s just the way it is” (qtd. Sagan 249). Quantum mechanics research shows through repeated experiments that light (and therefore matter) is neither a wave nor a particle until the collapse and this prequel arena, the waiting area for a temporal existence for the light or matter, is what physicists call a state of complementarity.

In his analysis of the relationship between quantum physics (mechanics) and psychology, C. G. Jung noted the synchronicity, especially in the two fields sharing this aspect of complementarity, comparing the unconscious state of the mind before action in the body to the prequel state for matter/light, that arena of neither/nor. In this state of complementarity “the consciousness is once more isolated in its subjectivity” (qtd. in Romanyshyn 32).

Consciousness is a certainty. Without consciousness, there are no thoughts available to imagine objects and then manifest them in the real world. An architectural draft created in the mind of an architect becomes manifested in the material world with the building of a skyscraper from the draft. We know we have a consciousness, but without tools to measure it in the scientific method, we have no way to prove its existence other than the fact that we know we are thinking, just as I must think the word before I type it. Not typing the word does not mean I didn’t think the word. The word existed as a thought whether or not it exists as a word on a page.

But how do we determine if our thoughts are our own or that of another entity’s thoughts? And how do we prove that thought entities or deities exist without tools to measure them? One way may be to measure the affects on a known object, such as the way astronomers find planets, not by direct observation, but by using the “wobble method” as a way “to track the host star as it is tugged to and fro by the planet’s gravity” (Overbye).

If there is an entire field of science devoted to examining planets not visible to the naked eye, then why shouldn’t thoughtful people examine the possibility of a “fifth dimension” not visible to the naked eye, as well?

“In quantum physics, objects are not determined things — objects are possibilities. Possibilities of what? Possibilities for consciousness to choose from” (Goswami The Quantum Activist). Consider this: in the practice of Santería, the body is the object of a consciousness or an orisha and the body (light) as an object can be possessed by an orisha (wave) from somewhere (which I am arbitrarily calling a fifth dimension), or not possessed but experiencing something (a particle?) in her/his personal space triggered by ritual. The animating influence, whether that of the person animating himself or something “other” animating him in a “fifth dimension,” is an indeterminate by the current laws of science, but nonetheless, the possibility of this animating “other” from somewhere (a fifth dimension?) exists and the proof of that possibility is the affected body of the possessed person like the wobble of a host star.

In quantum mechanics’ experiments, the result of whether light becomes a wave or particle depends on the type of measuring device used, and by comparison, in Santería, the appearance of the gods or orishas depends on the type of measuring minds in attendance and the procedures taken to create the fertile ground to attract the orisha, such as the use of certain colors, candles, chants, rhythms, incantations etc., that are particular to the orisha the group wishes to invite.

For example, Erzúlie or Oshún, the goddess of love expects sacrifices of jewelry, perfume, sweet cakes and liqueurs, and is attracted by the colors gold, pink, blue and white. Philbert Armenteros, an Afro-Cuban musician and Santería practitioner believes the music is not enough to attract a deity, that “the full effect is more likely when all the right elements are present in a ceremony” including the aforementioned items, as well as, a spiritual Santería leader or babalawo” (Gage).

Even if it’s something from the “fifth dimension” is it a self-contained entity with a life of its own or is it an energy or color or wave or particle that inhabits a collective unconscious outlined by Jung as a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature,” (Jung, Archetypes 43).

The psychic contents or the orishas animating bodies in Santería rituals could be the inherited collective unconscious of the African experience.

During a Cuban bembe, a sacred style of drumming, Joseph Murphy, a scholar and Santería initiate witnessed a possession, “an altered state of consciousness both in the “horse” of the orisha and in the community in the orisha’s presence” (Murphy 165). “One woman in particular is carried by this energy […] Her eyes are closed, and she is whirling and whirling. […] she falls to the ground. {…} Her eyes are open now and gigantic, their focus open to the whole world. Her face is illuminated with an enormous smile, and she moves her shoulders and hips with sensuous confidence. Oshun has arrived” (96).

This woman had mounted the divine goddess, Oshun. She changed her clothes to gold trappings and moved around the crowd possessed with the mannerisms of the erotic goddess, blowing kisses and laughing. Murphy had already gone through weeks of initiation rites before the event and was very much a sympathetic observer and participant. He looked into the woman’s eyes and was “paralyzed.”

He wrote “this is not a human being before me. It feels as though the drums are inside my head.” Murphy then experienced “strange sensations and deep calm […] and can see every slap of the drummer’s hands.” He was aware but not alarmed about his voice changing and the unfamiliar words he spoke — African words.

It seemed he had channeled the majestic orisha, Shango. Murphy hyperventilated, but his handlers blew in his ear and calmed him (97). He felt this was “the heart of the religion at last, a harmony of the human and divine in dance and joy” and called this “paradise,” but even after all that he stated “the people have brought the orishas out of themselves” (98) an indication that even after his own close encounter with the god, even then he can only be sure that it came from somewhere inside of himself, origins still unknown. The drum rhythms, the chanting and the dancing seem to be “directly conducive to the state of possession, suggesting the possibility of self-hypnosis as a precursor to the trance state (González-Wippler 8).

After the loa (vodoun) (5) or orisha left the body, the return to reality was accompanied with spasms or jerking movements, but in all the cases the return left the possessed with a new clarity. “How clear the world looks in this first total light” (Murphy 261) — “a call to a new reality” (98). This same description could be applied to an encounter with the angels of Christianity or those who are “born again.”

Depth Psychologist Carl Jung was convinced “the collective unconscious is common to all; it is the foundation of what the ancients called the ‘sympathy of all things’” (Jung, Memories 138). If the “fifth dimension” or the abode of the collective unconscious exists, the nature of this dimension, whether it is a shared area of complementarity, the area of pre-material existence in quantum mechanics or a doorway for unexplainable entities to interact with humans remains a mystery. These experiences of possession in African ritual are too ritualized, too similar, not only among their own African religions of origin, but also with many religious experiences around the world.

The African cosmos (and other rituals) may offer a gateway for studies in the new frontiers of metaphysical dimensions with or without the scientific method — hard for me to say since I’ve subscribed to skeptics.com since forever. Regardless, at the very least, the religions of Africa are a powerful tool. A people so abused, so tortured as African slaves survived unimaginable horrors with the help of this powerful, humanitarian tool: a mystical religion.

And so, I am happy to entertain these ideas and experience the joy of being in the company of a powerful, life-enhancing dynamic, especially with a seemingly golden goddess, either real or imaginary.

Notes

(1) In the African Yoruba tradition, there are over 600 orishas or elemental spirits, a complex intricate system of ritual, dance and lifestyle. African religions, of which there are many incarnations on the continent, all share some similarities of a spiritual hierarchy, a monotheistic religion “where secondary divinities, spirits and ancestors provide measured access to sacred power” (Grillo).

(2) Oshun altar found here.

(3)P“Shaking Quakers” in a dance: http://www.utopia-britannica.org.uk/Assets/Shake2.jpg 13 Dec 2012

(4) A Santero priest prays during a ceremony in honor of slaves rebelliousness, as part of the 30th Caribbean Festival in Loma del Cimarron, El Cobre, Cuba. http://news.discovery.com/human/santeria-trance-spirituality-brain.html 12 Dec 2012

(5) Loa is the term for the Haitian deity (Vodoun), which is called an orisha in Santería. Although there may be some cultural differences in names or vevers (sacred symbols), for this discussion of the fifth dimension, loa and orisha are interchangeable. The loa-possessed person transmits energy or even the loa deity to other people with the left hand.

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(Written in response to Dr. Laura Grillo’s “African and African Diaspora Traditions” Graduate Class Fall 2012 @Pacifica Graduate Institute. Edited for Medium readers.)