Eleventh International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

As religions evolved, supernatural agents became more potent and moralizing, and displays of faith more credible, improving social organization and efficiency: more empathy, cooperation, fairness; less cheating, lying, selfishness (Norenzayan). What role did the mother-infant relationship play? Infant “cuteness” evokes the infant schema and motivates nurturing. The analogous mother schema (MS) is a multimodal representation of the carer from the infant perspective, motivating fearless trust. Prenatal MS organizes auditory, proprioceptive, and biochemical stimuli (voice, heartbeat, footsteps, digestion, body movements, biochemicals) that depend on maternal physical/emotional state. Religio-musical ritual similarly involves mysteriously emotional melody, rhythm, movement, and postures. Ritual may activate MS via implicit (non-episodic), preverbal (transnatal) memory, promoting spirituality (sacred subjectivity; imagination of supernatural humanoid agents). A possible ultimate cause was the obstetric dilemma (Dissanayake): in human evolution, bipedalism and encephalization led to earlier births and more fragile infants. Cognitively more advanced infants survived by better communicating with and manipulating mothers and carers. The ability to connect arbitrary sound patterns to arbitrary meanings improved (proto-language). Later in life, MS was triggered in ritual settings by repetitive sounds and movements (early song, chant, rhythm, dance), subdued light, dull auditory timbre, psychoactive substances, unusual tastes/smells and postures, feelings of enclosure. Ritual behaviors were motivated by emotions characteristic of prenatal MS (operant conditioning). The theory is consistent with cross-cultural commonalities in altered states (out-of-body, possessing, floating, fusing), spiritual beings (large, moving, powerful, emotional, wise, loving), and reports of strong musical experiences and divine encounters.