1.

Biography of Ninian Smart

Ninian Smart was born in Cambridge in 1927 into a family of Scottish academics. He
attended Oxford University and after graduating was appointed to a lectureship at the
University of Wales. He then taught at the University of London before becoming a
professor at the University of Birmingham in 1961. Smart was a gifted linguist and spoke
Chinese, Sanskrit and Pali which enabled him to study Confucian and Buddhists texts.
Despite his own firm Christian faith he was fascinated by non-Christian religions and
objected to the Christocentric approach of the traditional Theology faculties in universities
which tended to assume belief on the part of students and lecturers alike. In 1967 he was
appointed to Lancaster University to establish a Religious Studies (as opposed to ‘Theology’)
faculty. In 1976 he moved to the University of California. Smart was a prolific author and
published assorted works on the philosophy of religion, the methodology of religious studies
and comparative religions.1 He is perhaps best known for his phenomenological approach to
the study of religion.

2. The Seven Dimensions of Religion

The concept of religion as possessed of various “dimensions” first appeared in what Smart
described as “a general account of religion,” Smart set out the dimensions of religion first in
The Religious Experience of Mankind published in 1969. Originally Smart set out six
dimensions of religion but added a seventh- the “material dimension” later. The dimensions
are intended to present the reader with a way of gathering and classifying information about
religious practices. He described this as a ‘scientific undertaking’ which aims to deal
objectively with facts. He clearly states it was not his intention to investigate the truth claims
made by religious believers. This approach is sometimes terms ‘methodological agnosticism.’
In The Phenomenon of Religion Smart said that ‘the question of truth is a question not asked,
not a question left unanswered.’2 The dimensions of religion according to Smart are as
follows:

2.1. Ritual
The ritual dimension of religion refers to the ceremonies and outward behaviours which are
attached to a specific intention relating to the spiritual realm. They are routinized and
1
Seth Daniel Kunin, Jonathan Miles-Watson, Theories of Religion: A Reader (United States of America:
Rutgers University Press, 2006), 154.
2
Ninian Smart, The Religious Experience of Mankind (London: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1969), 15-25.

1
rationalized according to the system of the religion. 3 All rituals have an ‘inner’ and an ‘outer’
element to them. The ritual elements of religion may be simple or complex. There are also
secular rituals that people engage in.4 Examples: baptism ceremony, closing eyes to pray.

2.2. Mythological/narrative
Myths are essentially applied to stories which refer to theologically significant supposedly
historical events (Exodus, life of Jesus) as well as overtly religious stories about God.
According to Smart, ‘myth’ is used technically to refer to stories of the gods or other
significant beings who have access to an invisible world beyond ours. These collections of
myths, images and stories symbolises the invisible world. There are no facts behind myths,
yet they are not completely irrational, which are the sources of the sacred truth, and are often
passed through oral traditions.5 For example, Hinduism is considered as religion it’s full of
mythical stories while it related with origins of Gods and deities.

2.3. Aetilogical and Cosmogenics Myth

Smart defines myth as stories concerning divinities, typically in a relationship to men and the
world which are celebrated in a ritual context. There is difference between parable and myth,
a major mark of parable is that it is normally a literal tale about ordinary incidents such as
searching for lost money or helping the victim of robbery. But divinities do not occur in
parables. Parable tends to be more illustrative rather than being a material for enactment in a
celebratory context as myths do. Myths have their explanatory power. There are two kinds of
myths, aetilogical myths and cosmogenic myths. Aetilogical myths are myths which give
account of social and ritual practices while cosmogenics are myths which explain the world
in a manner which relates it to the transactions between men and divinities.6

2.4. Sacred Time and Profane Time

Myth, since it related primarily with religion, Smart has divided time into two types. Sacred
time can be considered as time in which myth occurred and profane is a time which
experienced chronologically. Since time is matter of debate while analysing myth, there are

3
Ninian Smart, World Religions: Traditions and the Challenges of Modernity (Britain: Ashgate Publishing,
Ltd., 2009), 84.
4
Ninian Smart, Dimensions of the Sacred: An Anatomy of the World’s Beliefs (Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 1999), 70-78, 96.
5
Ninian Smart, Dimensions of the Sacred: An Anatomy of the World’s Beliefs, 130-133.
6
Muhamed Riyaz Chenganakkattil, “Ninian Smart: The Phenomenon of Religon” (Book Reviews), Religion
and Literature Department of Humanities and Social Sciences IIT Delhi. Np.

2
two notions of time, cyclical and linear. This cyclical nature of time is more into the
discussion of the myth. Ritual is re-enacted according to the time which comes again
cyclically once in a year. For example in Islam, there are time limits of the five time prayers,
each time prayer is assigned to particular timing, otherwise that will not valid according to
the doctrine of the religion. Same takes place in the celebration of Easter, it happens once in a
year, the particular time is chosen for the celebration. So this shows there is importance for
mythic time in the religion.7

2.5. Macrocosmology and Microcosmology

Space is as important as time in the analysis of myth. There is considerable correspondence in
the mythic and religious milieu between macrocosm and microcosm. This can be further
divided into sacred geography and mythic geography, which is in connection with sacredness
of the myth element involved in the production of religious practices. There should be a
consistent order to both space, mythic and religion. Because of this, every religion has their
sacred places and landscapes where the original mythical event happened. For example, the
holy pilgrimage, and Kaaba are the symbols of original sacred place of the ritual called Hajj.8

2.6. Authority of the Original Event

This should be explained because many myths look back to primordial or founding events.
This is a kind of invoking the real presence of the original event. Religion and its rituals stand
for the event which happened before and they are replication of the first event. There is
power, and likeness of power in the ritual, original power is shown in a repetition which
taken away from its first event, but it still carries the real presence of the original event. So
principle of likeness is so clear in the sacred languages which are applied to names of the
sacred and numinous objects which become signs of what they stand for.9

2.7. Doctrinal
Doctrines are the official teachings and systems of a religion. It attempts to give system,
clarity and intellectual power to what is revealed through the mythological and symbolic
language of religious faith and ritual. The world religions owe some of their living power to

7
Ninian Smart, Phenomenon of Religion (London: Springer, 1973), 86.
8
Peter Coates, Ibn ‘Arabi and Modern Thought: The History of Taking Metaphysics Seriously (Oxford: Anqa
Publishing, 2002), 171.
9
Ibid.

3
their success in presenting a total picture of reality, through a coherent system of doctrines. 10
For example the doctrines of Christianity include belief in the resurrection of Christ and the
holy trinity.

2.8. Ethical
Ethics can be defined as a moral principle or a code of behaviour. Of the ethical dimension
Smart states that “to some extent, the code of ethics of the dominant religion controls the
community.” However, we must distinguish between the ethical teachings of a faith, and the
actual sociological effects and circumstances of a religion. Similarly, it is important to
distinguish between the ethical dimension of religion and the social dimension. The latter is
the mode in which the religion in question is institutionalized, whereby, through its
institutions and teachings, it affects the community in which it finds itself. The ethical codes
taught by a religion are often translated into laws and prevailing attitudes in society. The ideal
of ethical behaviour taught by a religion may not be lived up to by individual believers.11

2.9. Social
Religions have a communal social aspect; they are not just about individual beliefs or values.
As observed by Smart, society is where the specific conditions in which a religion develops
and exists. Smart uses the example of the way ethical principles may be adapted in order to
deal with specific situations. ‘The Christian’s dedication to brotherly love or one’s attitude to
war may be determined more by patriotism and a national crisis than by the Gospel.’12

2.10. Experiential
The origins of a religion often include very powerful experiential elements in the lives of the
believers. Belief is not just about facts talked about. It is a way of life lived. Although human
may hope to have contact with and participate in, the invisible world through ritual, personal
religion normally involves the hope of, or realization of, experience of that world. 13 And in
most cases the experiences tend to be explained and understood in the light of the accepted
doctrines of the time. This means that it is difficult to understand what is actually involved in
a religious experience. Thus fixing the sights of religious experiences on this-worldly aims is
essentially nonreligious.
10
Ninian Smart, Dimensions of the Sacred: An Anatomy of the World’s Beliefs, 196-200.
11
Ibid.
12
Ninian Smart, Dimensions of the Sacred: An Anatomy of the World’s Beliefs, 218.
13
Ninian Smart, The Religious Experience of Mankind, 23.

4
His analysis identifies two or three major forms of religious experience which help to account
for differences in doctrine. One is dhyana and the ‘empty’ experiences of purified
consciousness, another is the experience of the ‘numinous Other’ (which Smart refers to as
bhakti). Shamanism is suggested as “the ancestor, so to speak” of both. Smart goes on to say
that there is another kind of religious experience called ‘mystical experience,’ that does not
seem to have the qualities Otto ascribes to the numinous. Mystical experience arises in the
process of contemplation or meditation and is non-dual, but the numinous experience is very
much dual; the mystical is quiet, but the numinous experience is powerful and turbulent; the
mystical seems to be empty of images, while the numinous experience is typically clothed in
ideas of encounter with a personal God; the mystical does not give rise to worship or
reverence, in so far as there is nothing ‘other’ to worship or revere.

One model that we can propose about the way religious experience has developed is as
follows, there are two developments of shamanism, which can be call the right wing and the
left wing. The right wing focuses on the numinous experience of the other, and the
experience of the prophet is a special form of this. Institutionally, the successor of the prophet
is the preacher, who tries to recapture something of the spirit of prophecy. The left wing
focuses on the mystic or yogi, the one who practices the art of contemplation, institutionally
the successor of the mystical teachers of the past is the monk or nun. These experiences (of
the invisible world) shape and are also shaped by the mythology and doctrine of religion.14

2.11. Material
The material dimension of religion refers to the artefacts or objects important to religions
such as icons, statues, symbols, aids to worship and places etc.15

2.11.a. Experiential and Emotional Dimension

Smart’s expansion of the experiential dimension into the experiential and emotional
dimension has certain connected implications. Experience would commonly be seen as a
datum, an experience of an object or event. Emotion is different. It is the emotion itself that
one experiences. The emotion may be in response to x, certainly. However, the emotion is not
simply of x. A clearer though itself not completely unproblematic distinction would be that of

14
Steven T. Katz, ed., Mysticism and Language (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 102.
15
Muhamed Riyaz Chenganakkattil, “Ninian Smart: The Phenomenon of Religon,” Np.

5
stimulus and response. The stimulus is an object or event. The response is an internally
generated reaction to the stimulus. One may infer that for Smart the experiential dimension is
the combination of stimulus and response. However, in his description of the experiential and
emotional dimension in The World’s Religions, Smart describes what would be considered
responses rather than stimuli, “awe,” “fear,” and “feelings aroused by” certain experiences. 16
So an understanding of this dimension as primarily involving response rather than stimuli
seems to be justified. Religious experience (or the expression of such experience) is what
many take to be the defining characteristic of mysticism. 17 Smart takes a firm stance against
those theorists, dubbed “particularists,” who argue for the exhaustive cultural conditioning of
religious experience. Smart argues from similarities in The Cloud and the Visuddhimagga
(Path of Purification) to a natural basis for mystical experience in against the exhaustive
cultural conditioning of religious experience.18
There are evident problems with such a methods as Smart himself pointed out that “in all our
experience, we superimpose knowledge gained from elsewhere.” He gives the example of the
patch of red perceived outside his window. How does he know that it is bougainvillea? “not
simply by looking, but out of my complex learning of the past.” If this is true, and cognitive
psychology seems to agree that it is, then it is not possible to have, never mind to describe, a
completely “non-ramified” experience. Yet Smart concludes from his inspection of the “less
ramified” that there is a natural, or culturally unconditioned, religious experience behind it.
Although Smart insists that the claim that ‘mysticism is often or everywhere the same’ must
not be taken too literally.19 He also holds that religious experience is “a natural product of
humankind and that “core-type religious experiences are intrinsic to the human psyche in
some way. These core-type experiences are, again, bhakti and dhyana, numinous and
contemplative, which he associates with dualism and non-dualism respectively to which he
adds the shamanic and the panenhenic experience.20

3. Evaluating Smart’s Approach to Religion

It is important not to over-simplify Smart’s approach to religion. In The Religious
Experience he began by stating categorically that ‘Religion is not something that one can
see.’ There are physical aspects to religious belief and practice which can be described but to
16
Bryan S. Rennie, The View of the Invisible World: Ninian Smarts Analysis of the Dimensions of Religion and
of Religious Experience, vol., 28, no. 3, 6-12.
17
Ibid.
18
Steven T. Katz, ed., Mysticism and Language, 103-104.
19
John J. Shepherd, Religious Experience and Philosophical Analysis, 122.
20
Steven T. Katz, ed., Mysticism and Language, 118.

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understand these fully one needs to understand their symbolism and their relationship
between other aspects of the faith. Therefore, Smart is not saying that religion is no more
than a collection of unconnected elements.

Furthermore, Smart did not believe that the phenomenological approach was the only way to
study religion. He believed it had to also be studied historically, anthropologically and
sociologically, philosophically and psychologically. However, he believed that a
phenomenological approach to religions could provide a very useful starting point in that it
could be used to create an objective overview of the facts. Just as it would be unwise to make
claims about the nature and scope of science without understanding something of the present
state of the sciences together with their methodology and history, so it would not be helpful
to speculate about religious truth without a proper knowledge of the facts and feelings of
religion. The aim then is to try to convey these facts in relation to the experiences that
religion attempts to express. The intention is to describe rather than pass judgement on the
phenomena of religion. The intention is not to speak on behalf of one faith or to argue for the
truth of one or all religions or of none.21

21
Peter Connolly, Approaches to the Study of Religion (London: A&C Black, 1999), 89.