Religious Experiences in America

Religious spaces and its relationship with communities cannot be defined by specific terms. In several places across the world, entire cities depend on this space for economic sustenance and socio-cultural development. I have come across a wide variety of locations marked off as religious or sacred spaces. Otto Friedrich Bollnow defines space in his work Man and Space (1963) as: “not homogenous and a perceptional development between man and environment and that a large spectrum of spaces related to resting and dwelling and moving along paths, deals extensively with day and night spaces, euphoric space, momentary space, etc.”

In a religious parlance the concept of “sacred space” is usually abstract and flexible to the extent that mundane places such as beaches, river banks and mountain tops can attain sacrosanct status. In short a place becomes a ’sacred space’ when man perceives it as such, these need not necessarily be specific sites constituted by architectural, ritualistic, and artistic definitions.

So can we conclude that a temple is a religious space? Yes, though the term ‘Temple’ is used to indicate religious shrines following the Hindu faith, the broad meaning of the word is “Sacred Space”.  According to the definition in Theosophy Dictionary, temple is derived from the Latin word Templum, meaning a spot marked off for sacred purposes by the augur with his staff. This spot could be on the ground or in the sky, but it is a region designated for the observation of omens. Over the period of time this templum not only changed to Temple but also evolved from a mere marked-off spot into elaborate edifices. When a temple in ancient days was constructed by experts in temple architecture to act as a receptacle of spiritual energies.

Keeping America in mind, a temple can be defined as a space where religious activities take place or where god is invoked. Be it a large church, the altar at someone’s home, few religious symbols placed on the desk of a devout executive or any such space can be construed as a temple. It is only in the US that I have come across classified listings advertising prayer spaces for rent, temples being shifted from building to building, spaces being leased for religious events.

But the bottomline is that the temple is a place of divine presence and as such plays a predominant role in all cults, appearing as a Holy of Holies, a tabernacle, etc., and with many elaborations and accessories, such as special chambers, images, sacred vessels, and the like. Since time immemorial temples have served many more functions than just places of worship. Several activities take place in temples: worship, rituals, festivities, birthdays, betrothals, marriages, funerals etc. Some places of worship even serve as courts, archives, libraries, market places, centers of culture, art, martial art, spiritual discourses, meditation, and education. History is evidence to few temples even being used to store food grains. There are examples of temples which served as forts or centers of refuge in times of war, dacoit attacks and natural calamities. Purandara Dasa (AD 1485-1565), exponent of Bhakti movement in Karnataka, observed that people attend sermons not to learn puranic wisdom but to find suitable matches for their children, find buyers for their property, find customers for their profession. Hence a temple is essentially a religious or sacred space protected by the lord and can be used for an array of uses by the community.