Spiritual Transformation, Healing, and Altruism
by
David Glover
Zygon in its December 2006 issue will take a look
at spirit healing and indigenous healing practices in the
cultures of Guatemala, Maya, Peru, Puerto Rico, and the
U.S. In her introduction to the Symposium on Spiritual Transformation,
Healing, and Altruism Joan D. Koss-Chioino argues that there
is often bias against these healing systems in the face
of western health care based upon biomedical science. In
light of this acknowledged bias she asks, does a discussion
of the type found in this symposium belong in the religion
and science dialogue? Her response, and that of the others
in the symposium is yes, there is a place for the study
of other-regardedness and generous self-giving—altruism—within
the religion-and-science conversation.
Scientists have been reluctant to look at ritual healing
because of its subjective nature, its unquantifiableness.
But there is more at stake here. Bonnie Glass-Coffin says
these actions “speak from the heart rather than just the
head.” To dismiss the “subjective” as “non-objective” and
“un-scientific” is to set apart healing, the reinstatement
of the sufferer's wholeness and sense of place in the community,
from the health and equilibrium within and individual's
body provided by science and western medicine. Ritual healing
restores a person's connection with their community, those
living in sym-pathy with one another, which is broken by
disease (dis-ease) and distress. It overlooks the role that
altruism plays in a community.
When science is practiced as a highly specialized and compartmentalized
endeavor, particularly in cultures that emphasize the individual,
it may well overlook humanity's altruistic tendencies. This
is possibly because those tendencies result in actions that
are unselfish (anti-self-interested), and hence appear to
be irrational to individualistic culture. However, throughout
the ages it has been humanity's, and the individual human's,
ability to survive has depended upon its ability to foster
cooperation within a community.
The work in this symposium looks at how a religious experience,
as a societal experience, extends altruism beyond ones immediate
family (those who are subject to biological, or kin, altruism)
to more extended village or clan members. This is particularly
meaningful because the persons seeking ritual healing, those
who are hurt and distressed, are likely to be either the
ones unable to be biologically reproductive in the future
(and hence be unable to rely upon kin in the future) without
outside assistance to their distress, or to be the elderly—those
most likely to help reproduce the cultural inheritance.
That is, altruism may play a role in biological and cultural
survival that can be intuited from who is helped as well
as who is doing the helping.
In that these articles attempt to describe and interpret
the phenomena of ritual healing and the variety of its attendant
outcomes we can begin to understand how it is possible for
this cultural activity to occur and, ultimately, how this
action is helpful for cultural propagation, fostering wholeness
in individuals and communities. As such, they are a “most
unusual” field for the religion-and-science discussion that
may offer insight into the cultural milieus that both science
and religion must inhabit.
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