Transcendence
Religion, Transcendence and the Fear of Death: A Psychoanalytic Perspective
Religion, Transcendence and the Fear of Death: A Psychoanalytic Perspective
DESCRIPTION: How religions arise from the fear of death and give it form – from the earliest burials through Buddhism to early Christianity, interpreted through the works of Eliade, Lorenzer and Schülein as the co-evolution of the psyche and society.
Religion, Transcendence and the Fear of Death: A Psychoanalytic Perspective
Religions arise from the fear of death and give it form. From the earliest burials, through ancestor worship and the Egyptian bureaucracy of the afterlife, to Buddhism and early Christianity, taboos, rituals, and conceptions of the afterlife address the boundary between the living and the dead
What this is about:
· Religion and the fear of death, and
· The history of religion, interpreted through the works of Mircea Eliade, Alfred Lorenzer, and Johann August Schülein, is understood as the co-evolution of the psyche and society.
*As this text sets out pointed arguments on controversial topics, this essay, as an exception, indicates references.
Why does our engagement with death begin with taboo?
Anyone who speaks of religion is always also speaking of death, even when death is not explicitly mentioned, but rather salvation, immortality, rebirth, karma, judgement, the soul, liberation or eternal life. (Eliade, 1982a) At the very beginning of our engagement with death lies the taboo, even before any doctrine. The dead body, its flesh, its bones, the grave, physical contact, the place of burial, the separation of the living from the dead: all of this is marked, regulated, protected and surrounded by prohibitions from an early stage. (Eliade, 1982a) Even the earliest burials, grave goods and the spatial and symbolic separation of the dead show that death is placed in a zone of its own, beyond mere acknowledgement. (Eliade, 1982a) The same question recurs in all these examples: how does a being experience itself when it knows it will die? And how does a social order endure this knowledge without disintegrating under its weight? (Eliade, 1982a; Schülein, 2025)
Death intervenes early on in bonds, emotion, separation, order, memory, and the succession of generations, and is more than a fundamental fact of life that would later be culturally embellished. (Eliade, 1982a; Schülein, 2025) Taboo is an initial social consequence of this existential upheaval. It creates distance where closeness becomes untenable, and it binds emotion to rules even before elaborate doctrines concerning the soul, the afterlife or salvation have been formulated. (Eliade, 1982a; Schülein, 2025) Comparative religious history reveals this taboo as a symbolic form of interaction that achieves more than merely warding off decay. It determines who may touch the dead, where the dead lie, what offerings are placed with them, how often the grave is circled, when the living must withdraw, and in what ways the dead may continue to be addressed as a relative, an ancestor, a shadow, a soul or a test case. (Eliade, 1982a)
Even the earliest burials, the ochre grave goods, the orientation of the bodies and the contents of the graves provide a social framework for death. (Eliade, 1982a) Eliade’s reference to the Kogi burial demonstrates just how rich symbolic interaction can become in this context: the grave is a house, a village of the dead and, at the same time, a womb. The sealing of the grave is a ritual transformation, more than a mere burial. The grave goods simultaneously express nourishment, sexuality, kinship and cosmic order. (Eliade, 1982a) From the perspective of the history of religion, every archaeological grave artefact is a condensed scene of regulated relationships between the living, the dead, the ancestors, place and the world order. (Eliade, 1982a) The dead are set apart and thereby transferred to a sphere of their own, in which relationship is possible only through ritual mediation. The taboo both separates and shapes communication at the boundary of the no-longer-communicable. (Eliade, 1982a; Schülein, 2025)
In the megalithic cult of the dead, this structure is further developed through the taboo. The stone graves, menhirs and soul holes bear witness not only to the hope of an afterlife but also to a permanent institutionalisation of the boundary between the living and the dead. (Eliade, 1982a) The dead are given a new, imperishable dwelling or even a stone substitute body. It is precisely through this that the dangerous proximity of the dead is tamed, whilst at the same time their power for fertility, protection and prosperity is made available. (Eliade, 1982a) Aversion, reverence and regulated ambivalence: distancing and invocation, separation and communion, untouchability and ritual presence. (Eliade, 1982a; Schülein, 2025)
How did early advanced civilisations regulate their dealings with the dead?
The same logic can be observed in early Chinese religions. Children’s urns with openings, ancestral houses, ancestral tablets and hierarchical mediation through the king keep the dead present: they enter into a strictly regulated system of communication. (Eliade, 1982b) The ancestors may be invoked, fed and represented, but only within prescribed time frames, sacrificial sequences and social roles. (Eliade, 1982b) What persists psychologically as a bond with the deceased is translated socially into calendars, sacrifices, rank and political legitimacy. Thus, emotion and institution, mourning and rule, inner continuity and external ritualisation co-evolve. (Eliade, 1982b; Schülein, 2025)
Egypt radicalises this symbolic articulation of the taboo into a veritable bureaucracy of the afterlife. The journey of the dead, the preservation of the name, the magical formulas, the weighing of the heart, and the trial before Osiris translate death into a tiered scheme of testing and transformation that goes beyond mere defence. (Eliade, 1982a) The dead person remains both a threat and at risk – threatened by a second annihilation, and precisely for this reason must be positioned correctly, both socially and cosmically, through texts, names, rites and incantations. (Eliade, 1982a) Here, the taboo becomes a controlled passage: the transition to the otherworld succeeds only if psyche, memory, language, and cosmic order interlock. (Eliade, 1982a; Schülein, 2025)
How does Buddhism incorporate the fear of death into its teachings?
In India, the emphasis shifts in part from the grave to the inner structure of suffering, without the taboo-forming function disappearing. It was precisely in Buddhism that a speculative dynamic of apotropaic defence against suffering and death emerged through the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path. The First Sermon describes the path to the cessation of suffering, and Eliade emphasises that, on the night of his enlightenment, the Buddha recognised the law of the Twelve Links of Dependent Origination, through which the cycle of birth, death and rebirth is sustained. (Eliade, 1982b) However, beneath the somewhat naïve scheme of exchanging good behaviour for paradisiacal salvation, the analysis reveals a self-reinforcing causal chain in which ignorance, reaction patterns, perception, evaluation, desire, clinging, becoming and renewed identity formation continuously give rise to one another. (Eliade, 1982b)
This classic chain of twelve links can be interpreted both cosmologically and psychologically: Avidya as blindness to impermanence and non-self. Samskara is an ingrained tendency. Vijnana is a flash of consciousness. Nama-rupa is the initial structuring into naming and objectivity. Sadayatana is the opening of the six sense fields. Sparsha as contact. Vedana is an immediate emotional tone. Tanha as thirst. Upadana is clinging. Bhava is the emerging dynamic of existence. Jati is the birth of a concrete identity. Jara-Marana is the disintegration of this formed entity and a relapse into suffering (dukkha). (Eliade, 1982b) In this interpretation, rebirth is both a transcendent process and an ongoing psychological phenomenon: from every contact, a small life, a small birth of the self, a small story of death may arise. (Eliade, 1982b) This is precisely why the Buddhist cycle is so fruitful for a theory of symbolic forms of interaction: it describes how the psyche produces its own bonds and how religious practice aims to interrupt this production precisely. (Eliade, 1982b; Schülein, 2025)
Of particular importance is the interface between vedana and tanha. Vedana is the pre-linguistic, rapid classification of an experience as pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, even before any desire arises. (Eliade, 1982b) Only when this emotional tone is followed by the reactive impulse to possess, reject, or deny does perception tip over into clinging, tanha. (Eliade, 1982b) This is also the point at which an existential fear of death manifests itself in everyday psychodynamics: what is pleasant is to be held on to, because its passing heralds loss and thus, on a small scale, death itself. What is unpleasant is repelled, because it reminds us of vulnerability, decay and powerlessness. The neutral is overlooked because it offers no narcissistic security. (Eliade, 1982b) Thus, tanha appears as a constant micro-defence against transience. Upadana then intensifies this process by transforming fleeting impulses into fixed convictions, roles, claims to possession and identifications. (Eliade, 1982b)
How do Orphism and early Christianity deal with death?
Orphism, mystery cults and early Christianity, in turn, work with the same basic motif, but under new circumstances. The soul is understood as being trapped, entangled or sinful. Purity, initiation, baptism, ascetic practice and salvation are forms through which the deadly contamination of the old life is addressed. (Eliade, 1982b) Here, too, the taboo is productive: certain foods, bodily practices, sexual norms, rules of purity and liturgical rites mark who belongs to the community of the saved and who still stands within the realm of death. (Eliade, 1982b) Religions thus produce, beyond interpretations of death, entire symbolic systems in which believers learn to understand themselves as endangered, in need of purification, capable of salvation, or already transformed. (Eliade, 1982b; Schülein, 2025)
Within the paradigm of symbolic forms of interaction, it can generally be said that death is more than an event to which religion responds retrospectively. For Buddhism, this means more precisely that the actual defence against death lies in the very notion of a continuous production of ‘self’-constructs seeking to protect themselves against dissolution, even before the fear of hell or the hope of the afterlife. (Eliade, 1982b; Schülein, 2025) If the concept of rebirth axiomatically presupposes that unredeemed entanglement constantly gives rise to new existences, then the fear of death and annihilation is the driving force behind the development of the entire doctrine. However, this fear is psychologically nuanced in that every moment of attachment can be interpreted as the seed of a new birth. (Eliade, 1982b) This is precisely why Buddhist psychology can appear both naïve and highly sophisticated: naïve where cosmological images of punishment and salvation serve as motivators; sophisticated where dependent origination is speculatively revealed as a feedback mechanism in the production of suffering. (Eliade, 1982b) In the psychology of mindfulness, inspired by Mirko Frýba, the interruption of this mechanism occurs primarily between emotional tone and desire, at the point where the impulse has not yet solidified into identification. (Eliade, 1982b)
Death creates situations in which psychological disorganisation and social disintegration loom. Taboos, rites, myths and semantics of the afterlife are the forms through which society responds to this danger, and this response shapes the psyche. (Eliade, 1982a, 1982b; Schülein, 2025) The psyche learns from social symbols what loss, guilt, danger, purity, hope or continuity mean. Conversely, society only maintains its existence by translating these emotional upheavals into repeatable forms. (Eliade, 1982a, 1982b; Schülein, 2025) From the earliest burials, through ancestor cults and megalithic monuments, to ascetic and soteriological high religions, there is a co-evolution of the psyche and society: inner and outer, emotion and institution, fear of death and world order mutually generate one another. (Eliade, 1982a, 1982b; Schülein, 2025)
This is why religious systems arise from death itself. They respond to an imposition that cannot be resolved psychologically and cannot be faced without social consequences. (Eliade, 1982a, 1982b; Schülein, 2025)
Truth or illusion: how can religion be properly understood?
The common dichotomy of treating religion either as a search for truth or as an illusion fails to grasp this connection. Those who reduce it solely to matters of belief overlook its performative, ritual and institutional forms. Those who denounce it merely as error fail to explain why it has clung so tenaciously to the same point of rupture for millennia. (Eliade, 1982a, 1982b) What is needed is an approach that goes beyond mere theology and mere psychology. Religious systems can be understood as symbolic orders that seek to transcend the reality of death. An end becomes a transition, decay becomes continuity, loss becomes a trial, annihilation becomes judgement, and ‘powerlessness becomes hope for salvation or liberation. (Eliade, 1982a, 1982b) It is precisely here that their power lies. They soothe emotions and transform fear into form, and form here always also means: ritual, commandment, sacrifice, asceticism, obedience, renunciation, promise. (Eliade, 1982a, 1982b)
Contemporary psychology of religion is insufficient to grasp this connection more precisely. It typically operationalises and measures the consequences of an attachment to pre-existing symbolic systems for well-being—however that may be defined—and thus remains at the level of already advanced institutionalisation. (Schülein, 2025) The crucial question has a considerable historical background. How is it that death comes to be organised as a passage, a question of guilt, a scene of judgement or a problem of salvation, rather than as mere finitude? (Eliade, 1982a, 1982b) Why do the corpse, the grave, the ancestor, the spirit, the soul, sacrifice and law become components of social order so early on? (Eliade, 1982a, 1982b) Anyone wishing to understand this must consider psychological and social realities together, rather than treating them sequentially. (Schülein, 2025)
What are symbolic forms of interaction according to Lorenzer?
This is where Lorenzer’s concept of forms of interaction proves useful. Forms of interaction crystallise the complete experience of real interaction, beyond mere inner contents and external institutions. (Lorenzer, 1992; Schülein, 2025) In them, psychological and social reality are intertwined from the very beginning. Pre-linguistic, sensually immediate forms of interaction arise in real relational processes. Symbolic forms of interaction are formed through presentational symbols, whilst language-symbolic forms of interaction are formed through language. (Lorenzer, 1992; Schülein, 2025) In Merleau-Ponty’s sense, this means that the inner and the outer overlap chiasmatically from the very beginning, not merely retrospectively. (Merleau-Ponty, 2016; Schülein, 2025) Death marks a point at which this chiasm cannot be overlooked. It affects the body and bonds, the individual and the group, memory and order, all at once. (Eliade, 1982a, 1982b; Schülein, 2025)
From this perspective, religion is a historical formation of symbolic and linguistic-symbolic forms of interaction, rather than merely a collection of dogmas. Within it, death is ritually overcome. (Schülein, 2025) The cult of the dead, the presence of ancestors, sacrifice, underworld myths, judgement, salvation and rebirth are regulated processes in which relationships with the dead, ancestors, gods and future generations crystallise and, at the same time, become inscribed as psychological scenarios. (Eliade, 1982a, 1982b; Schülein, 2025) Religion thus lies beyond mere inwardness and mere institution. It belongs to the historical forms in which the inner and the outer, emotion and law, the body and order come into being together. (Schülein, 2025)
From the earliest graves to Mesopotamia: how is finitude addressed?
For this genealogical analysis, it is therefore crucial that, in the early layers of religious history compiled by Eliade, death never appears merely as a natural phenomenon. Even burials, grave goods and ‘houses of the soul’ demonstrate that material finitude is not culturally accepted. (Eliade, 1982a) The dead are preserved, equipped, addressed, cared for or feared, rather than simply disappearing. (Eliade, 1982a) These practices already establish a relationship with finitude that simultaneously addresses psychological attachment and social structure. (Eliade, 1982a; Schülein, 2025)
Mesopotamia provides an early paradigm for this. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the hero seeks immortality and fails to attain it. (Eliade, 1982a) This failure gives form to the quest rather than bringing it to an end: human beings are mortal, and it is precisely this limit that is addressed mythically, ritually and normatively. (Eliade, 1982a) Egypt, too, organises death as a transition into an afterlife regime that links kingship, cosmology and morality. The later extension of the afterlife to other groups demonstrates the extent to which the defence against death can be socially generalised. (Eliade, 1982a)
Lorenzer offers a more precise formulation of this. Burial, grave goods, the cult of the dead and reference to ancestors are forms of interaction. The dead person remains socially addressable because they cannot be psychologically abandoned. At the same time, they remain psychologically effective because social rituals, images, narratives and forms of language continually re-establish their presence. (Eliade, 1982a; Lorenzer, 1992; Schülein, 2025) Religion, therefore, belongs to the historical matrices in which the inner and the outer are jointly shaped, rather than being merely a secondary interpretation of an already existing inner realm. (Schülein, 2025)
How has the way we come to terms with death changed throughout the history of religion?
From this perspective, the history of religion can be read as a history of ever-renewed engagements with death. The Vedic and post-Vedic traditions shift the problem into the realms of sacrificial metaphysics, non-death, the Atman-Brahman identity and the knowledge of liberation. (Eliade, 1982a) Buddhism initially appears to be a counter-example, as it denies the soul, permanence and a substantial self. Yet even there, the question of death does not disappear. Eliade explicitly describes Nirvana as ‘Immortal’ and ‘Unconditioned’. It can only be attained through strictly regulated techniques of meditation and self-emptying. (Eliade, 1982b) A negatively formulated form of immortality replaces personal continuity. Non-attachment addresses death in an ascetic way, without abolishing it. (Eliade, 1982b)
The same pattern is found in other traditions. Orphism and Pythagoreanism combine the immortality of the soul, the transmigration of souls and purification into a new eschatology. Iranian religions develop the concept of the soul’s journey, judgement and the resurrection of the body. Early Christianity links the imminent expectation of the end to the Church, the sacraments and obedience to salvation. (Eliade, 1982b) First, material death is symbolically suspended; then this suspension is socially regulated. (Eliade, 1982b) Transcendence is thus an operator in the co-evolution of psychological and social reality, rather than merely a harmless speculation. (Schülein, 2025)
This structure can be arranged chronologically. Hordes, city-states, early advanced civilisations, antiquity, the pre-modern era and the modern era constitute different regimes of symbolic and linguistic-symbolic forms of interaction. They are all symbolic, not just the later societies. (Schülein, 2025) In segmentary societies, forms of connection to the dead and ancestors that are closely tied to the body and ritually intensified dominate. In city-states and advanced civilisations, these scenarios are reshaped in cosmological, legal and authoritarian terms. In antiquity and the pre-modern era, philosophical, mystical and institutional language games emerge. In the modern era, many of these functions are secularised, without the basic structure disappearing. (Eliade, 1982a, 1982b; Schülein, 2025) The chiasmus remains; only its media change. (Merleau-Ponty, 2016; Schülein, 2025)
What does a functional perspective on religion and transcendence achieve?
To dismiss religion merely as an illusion is to fall short, and to celebrate it as the ultimate source of meaning is equally so. Religious figures of transcendence translate the scandal of physical death into forms that are socially acceptable and psychologically bearable. (Eliade, 1982a, 1982b; Schülein, 2025) It is precisely for this reason that they generate norms. Anyone wishing to participate in karma, judgement, salvation, resurrection, the presence of ancestors or liberation must submit to practices of purification, obedience, asceticism or self-discipline. (Eliade, 1982a, 1982b) It is precisely because of their promise to overcome death that religious systems become orders of life.
Such an approach interprets religions in functional, genealogical and interactionist terms, without scrutinising their claim to truth. (Schülein, 2025) The great religious traditions then appear as arrangements in which collectives and individuals learn that death is biologically inevitable but culturally unacceptable. (Eliade, 1982a, 1982b) Transcendence marks the point at which this non-acceptance takes shape. (Eliade, 1982a, 1982b)
Key points in brief
· Dealing with death begins with taboo: burial, graves and the separation of the living from the dead are regulated at an early stage, long before any elaborate doctrines are formulated.
· From the megaliths through Egypt to China, rituals place the dead within their own, strictly regulated system of communication.
· Buddhism bases its teachings specifically on the alleviation of suffering and the fear of death: the doctrine of dependent origination describes how the psyche produces new ‘self’-structures – and thus small deaths – from every contact.
· Orphism, mystery cults and early Christianity address death through purity, initiation and salvation.
· Following Lorenzer and Schülein, religions can be interpreted as symbolic forms of interaction in which psychological and social reality arise together.
· Transcendence translates material death into manageable forms, thereby generating norms such as purification, obedience, asceticism, and renunciation.
Bibliography
· Eliade, M. (1982a). A history of religious ideas. Vol. 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries (W. R. Trask, Trans.). University of Chicago Press.
· Eliade, M. (1982b). A History of Religious Ideas. Vol. 2: From Gautama Buddha to the Triumph of Christianity (W. R. Trask, trans.). University of Chicago Press.
· Lorenzer, A. (1992). The Council of Accountants: The Destruction of Sensuality; A Critique of Religion. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag.
· Merleau-Ponty, M. (with Lefort, C.). (2016). The Visible and the Invisible: Followed by Working Notes. Gallimard.
· Schülein, J. A. (2025). Difficult Dioscuri: The Co-evolution of Social and Psychological Reality. Velbrück Wissenschaft.
Related:
DESCRIPTION: How religions arise from the fear of death and give it form – from the earliest burials through Buddhism to early Christianity, interpreted through the works of Eliade, Lorenzer and Schülein as the co-evolution of the psyche and society.
Religion, Transcendence and the Fear of Death: A Psychoanalytic Perspective
Religions arise from the fear of death and give it form. From the earliest burials, through ancestor worship and the Egyptian bureaucracy of the afterlife, to Buddhism and early Christianity, taboos, rituals, and conceptions of the afterlife address the boundary between the living and the dead
What this is about:
· Religion and the fear of death, and
· The history of religion, interpreted through the works of Mircea Eliade, Alfred Lorenzer, and Johann August Schülein, is understood as the co-evolution of the psyche and society.
*As this text sets out pointed arguments on controversial topics, this essay, as an exception, indicates references.
Why does our engagement with death begin with taboo?
Anyone who speaks of religion is always also speaking of death, even when death is not explicitly mentioned, but rather salvation, immortality, rebirth, karma, judgement, the soul, liberation or eternal life. (Eliade, 1982a) At the very beginning of our engagement with death lies the taboo, even before any doctrine. The dead body, its flesh, its bones, the grave, physical contact, the place of burial, the separation of the living from the dead: all of this is marked, regulated, protected and surrounded by prohibitions from an early stage. (Eliade, 1982a) Even the earliest burials, grave goods and the spatial and symbolic separation of the dead show that death is placed in a zone of its own, beyond mere acknowledgement. (Eliade, 1982a) The same question recurs in all these examples: how does a being experience itself when it knows it will die? And how does a social order endure this knowledge without disintegrating under its weight? (Eliade, 1982a; Schülein, 2025)
Death intervenes early on in bonds, emotion, separation, order, memory, and the succession of generations, and is more than a fundamental fact of life that would later be culturally embellished. (Eliade, 1982a; Schülein, 2025) Taboo is an initial social consequence of this existential upheaval. It creates distance where closeness becomes untenable, and it binds emotion to rules even before elaborate doctrines concerning the soul, the afterlife or salvation have been formulated. (Eliade, 1982a; Schülein, 2025) Comparative religious history reveals this taboo as a symbolic form of interaction that achieves more than merely warding off decay. It determines who may touch the dead, where the dead lie, what offerings are placed with them, how often the grave is circled, when the living must withdraw, and in what ways the dead may continue to be addressed as a relative, an ancestor, a shadow, a soul or a test case. (Eliade, 1982a)
Even the earliest burials, the ochre grave goods, the orientation of the bodies and the contents of the graves provide a social framework for death. (Eliade, 1982a) Eliade’s reference to the Kogi burial demonstrates just how rich symbolic interaction can become in this context: the grave is a house, a village of the dead and, at the same time, a womb. The sealing of the grave is a ritual transformation, more than a mere burial. The grave goods simultaneously express nourishment, sexuality, kinship and cosmic order. (Eliade, 1982a) From the perspective of the history of religion, every archaeological grave artefact is a condensed scene of regulated relationships between the living, the dead, the ancestors, place and the world order. (Eliade, 1982a) The dead are set apart and thereby transferred to a sphere of their own, in which relationship is possible only through ritual mediation. The taboo both separates and shapes communication at the boundary of the no-longer-communicable. (Eliade, 1982a; Schülein, 2025)
In the megalithic cult of the dead, this structure is further developed through the taboo. The stone graves, menhirs and soul holes bear witness not only to the hope of an afterlife but also to a permanent institutionalisation of the boundary between the living and the dead. (Eliade, 1982a) The dead are given a new, imperishable dwelling or even a stone substitute body. It is precisely through this that the dangerous proximity of the dead is tamed, whilst at the same time their power for fertility, protection and prosperity is made available. (Eliade, 1982a) Aversion, reverence and regulated ambivalence: distancing and invocation, separation and communion, untouchability and ritual presence. (Eliade, 1982a; Schülein, 2025)
How did early advanced civilisations regulate their dealings with the dead?
The same logic can be observed in early Chinese religions. Children’s urns with openings, ancestral houses, ancestral tablets and hierarchical mediation through the king keep the dead present: they enter into a strictly regulated system of communication. (Eliade, 1982b) The ancestors may be invoked, fed and represented, but only within prescribed time frames, sacrificial sequences and social roles. (Eliade, 1982b) What persists psychologically as a bond with the deceased is translated socially into calendars, sacrifices, rank and political legitimacy. Thus, emotion and institution, mourning and rule, inner continuity and external ritualisation co-evolve. (Eliade, 1982b; Schülein, 2025)
Egypt radicalises this symbolic articulation of the taboo into a veritable bureaucracy of the afterlife. The journey of the dead, the preservation of the name, the magical formulas, the weighing of the heart, and the trial before Osiris translate death into a tiered scheme of testing and transformation that goes beyond mere defence. (Eliade, 1982a) The dead person remains both a threat and at risk – threatened by a second annihilation, and precisely for this reason must be positioned correctly, both socially and cosmically, through texts, names, rites and incantations. (Eliade, 1982a) Here, the taboo becomes a controlled passage: the transition to the otherworld succeeds only if psyche, memory, language, and cosmic order interlock. (Eliade, 1982a; Schülein, 2025)
How does Buddhism incorporate the fear of death into its teachings?
In India, the emphasis shifts in part from the grave to the inner structure of suffering, without the taboo-forming function disappearing. It was precisely in Buddhism that a speculative dynamic of apotropaic defence against suffering and death emerged through the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path. The First Sermon describes the path to the cessation of suffering, and Eliade emphasises that, on the night of his enlightenment, the Buddha recognised the law of the Twelve Links of Dependent Origination, through which the cycle of birth, death and rebirth is sustained. (Eliade, 1982b) However, beneath the somewhat naïve scheme of exchanging good behaviour for paradisiacal salvation, the analysis reveals a self-reinforcing causal chain in which ignorance, reaction patterns, perception, evaluation, desire, clinging, becoming and renewed identity formation continuously give rise to one another. (Eliade, 1982b)
This classic chain of twelve links can be interpreted both cosmologically and psychologically: Avidya as blindness to impermanence and non-self. Samskara is an ingrained tendency. Vijnana is a flash of consciousness. Nama-rupa is the initial structuring into naming and objectivity. Sadayatana is the opening of the six sense fields. Sparsha as contact. Vedana is an immediate emotional tone. Tanha as thirst. Upadana is clinging. Bhava is the emerging dynamic of existence. Jati is the birth of a concrete identity. Jara-Marana is the disintegration of this formed entity and a relapse into suffering (dukkha). (Eliade, 1982b) In this interpretation, rebirth is both a transcendent process and an ongoing psychological phenomenon: from every contact, a small life, a small birth of the self, a small story of death may arise. (Eliade, 1982b) This is precisely why the Buddhist cycle is so fruitful for a theory of symbolic forms of interaction: it describes how the psyche produces its own bonds and how religious practice aims to interrupt this production precisely. (Eliade, 1982b; Schülein, 2025)
Of particular importance is the interface between vedana and tanha. Vedana is the pre-linguistic, rapid classification of an experience as pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, even before any desire arises. (Eliade, 1982b) Only when this emotional tone is followed by the reactive impulse to possess, reject, or deny does perception tip over into clinging, tanha. (Eliade, 1982b) This is also the point at which an existential fear of death manifests itself in everyday psychodynamics: what is pleasant is to be held on to, because its passing heralds loss and thus, on a small scale, death itself. What is unpleasant is repelled, because it reminds us of vulnerability, decay and powerlessness. The neutral is overlooked because it offers no narcissistic security. (Eliade, 1982b) Thus, tanha appears as a constant micro-defence against transience. Upadana then intensifies this process by transforming fleeting impulses into fixed convictions, roles, claims to possession and identifications. (Eliade, 1982b)
How do Orphism and early Christianity deal with death?
Orphism, mystery cults and early Christianity, in turn, work with the same basic motif, but under new circumstances. The soul is understood as being trapped, entangled or sinful. Purity, initiation, baptism, ascetic practice and salvation are forms through which the deadly contamination of the old life is addressed. (Eliade, 1982b) Here, too, the taboo is productive: certain foods, bodily practices, sexual norms, rules of purity and liturgical rites mark who belongs to the community of the saved and who still stands within the realm of death. (Eliade, 1982b) Religions thus produce, beyond interpretations of death, entire symbolic systems in which believers learn to understand themselves as endangered, in need of purification, capable of salvation, or already transformed. (Eliade, 1982b; Schülein, 2025)
Within the paradigm of symbolic forms of interaction, it can generally be said that death is more than an event to which religion responds retrospectively. For Buddhism, this means more precisely that the actual defence against death lies in the very notion of a continuous production of ‘self’-constructs seeking to protect themselves against dissolution, even before the fear of hell or the hope of the afterlife. (Eliade, 1982b; Schülein, 2025) If the concept of rebirth axiomatically presupposes that unredeemed entanglement constantly gives rise to new existences, then the fear of death and annihilation is the driving force behind the development of the entire doctrine. However, this fear is psychologically nuanced in that every moment of attachment can be interpreted as the seed of a new birth. (Eliade, 1982b) This is precisely why Buddhist psychology can appear both naïve and highly sophisticated: naïve where cosmological images of punishment and salvation serve as motivators; sophisticated where dependent origination is speculatively revealed as a feedback mechanism in the production of suffering. (Eliade, 1982b) In the psychology of mindfulness, inspired by Mirko Frýba, the interruption of this mechanism occurs primarily between emotional tone and desire, at the point where the impulse has not yet solidified into identification. (Eliade, 1982b)
Death creates situations in which psychological disorganisation and social disintegration loom. Taboos, rites, myths and semantics of the afterlife are the forms through which society responds to this danger, and this response shapes the psyche. (Eliade, 1982a, 1982b; Schülein, 2025) The psyche learns from social symbols what loss, guilt, danger, purity, hope or continuity mean. Conversely, society only maintains its existence by translating these emotional upheavals into repeatable forms. (Eliade, 1982a, 1982b; Schülein, 2025) From the earliest burials, through ancestor cults and megalithic monuments, to ascetic and soteriological high religions, there is a co-evolution of the psyche and society: inner and outer, emotion and institution, fear of death and world order mutually generate one another. (Eliade, 1982a, 1982b; Schülein, 2025)
This is why religious systems arise from death itself. They respond to an imposition that cannot be resolved psychologically and cannot be faced without social consequences. (Eliade, 1982a, 1982b; Schülein, 2025)
Truth or illusion: how can religion be properly understood?
The common dichotomy of treating religion either as a search for truth or as an illusion fails to grasp this connection. Those who reduce it solely to matters of belief overlook its performative, ritual and institutional forms. Those who denounce it merely as error fail to explain why it has clung so tenaciously to the same point of rupture for millennia. (Eliade, 1982a, 1982b) What is needed is an approach that goes beyond mere theology and mere psychology. Religious systems can be understood as symbolic orders that seek to transcend the reality of death. An end becomes a transition, decay becomes continuity, loss becomes a trial, annihilation becomes judgement, and ‘powerlessness becomes hope for salvation or liberation. (Eliade, 1982a, 1982b) It is precisely here that their power lies. They soothe emotions and transform fear into form, and form here always also means: ritual, commandment, sacrifice, asceticism, obedience, renunciation, promise. (Eliade, 1982a, 1982b)
Contemporary psychology of religion is insufficient to grasp this connection more precisely. It typically operationalises and measures the consequences of an attachment to pre-existing symbolic systems for well-being—however that may be defined—and thus remains at the level of already advanced institutionalisation. (Schülein, 2025) The crucial question has a considerable historical background. How is it that death comes to be organised as a passage, a question of guilt, a scene of judgement or a problem of salvation, rather than as mere finitude? (Eliade, 1982a, 1982b) Why do the corpse, the grave, the ancestor, the spirit, the soul, sacrifice and law become components of social order so early on? (Eliade, 1982a, 1982b) Anyone wishing to understand this must consider psychological and social realities together, rather than treating them sequentially. (Schülein, 2025)
What are symbolic forms of interaction according to Lorenzer?
This is where Lorenzer’s concept of forms of interaction proves useful. Forms of interaction crystallise the complete experience of real interaction, beyond mere inner contents and external institutions. (Lorenzer, 1992; Schülein, 2025) In them, psychological and social reality are intertwined from the very beginning. Pre-linguistic, sensually immediate forms of interaction arise in real relational processes. Symbolic forms of interaction are formed through presentational symbols, whilst language-symbolic forms of interaction are formed through language. (Lorenzer, 1992; Schülein, 2025) In Merleau-Ponty’s sense, this means that the inner and the outer overlap chiasmatically from the very beginning, not merely retrospectively. (Merleau-Ponty, 2016; Schülein, 2025) Death marks a point at which this chiasm cannot be overlooked. It affects the body and bonds, the individual and the group, memory and order, all at once. (Eliade, 1982a, 1982b; Schülein, 2025)
From this perspective, religion is a historical formation of symbolic and linguistic-symbolic forms of interaction, rather than merely a collection of dogmas. Within it, death is ritually overcome. (Schülein, 2025) The cult of the dead, the presence of ancestors, sacrifice, underworld myths, judgement, salvation and rebirth are regulated processes in which relationships with the dead, ancestors, gods and future generations crystallise and, at the same time, become inscribed as psychological scenarios. (Eliade, 1982a, 1982b; Schülein, 2025) Religion thus lies beyond mere inwardness and mere institution. It belongs to the historical forms in which the inner and the outer, emotion and law, the body and order come into being together. (Schülein, 2025)
From the earliest graves to Mesopotamia: how is finitude addressed?
For this genealogical analysis, it is therefore crucial that, in the early layers of religious history compiled by Eliade, death never appears merely as a natural phenomenon. Even burials, grave goods and ‘houses of the soul’ demonstrate that material finitude is not culturally accepted. (Eliade, 1982a) The dead are preserved, equipped, addressed, cared for or feared, rather than simply disappearing. (Eliade, 1982a) These practices already establish a relationship with finitude that simultaneously addresses psychological attachment and social structure. (Eliade, 1982a; Schülein, 2025)
Mesopotamia provides an early paradigm for this. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the hero seeks immortality and fails to attain it. (Eliade, 1982a) This failure gives form to the quest rather than bringing it to an end: human beings are mortal, and it is precisely this limit that is addressed mythically, ritually and normatively. (Eliade, 1982a) Egypt, too, organises death as a transition into an afterlife regime that links kingship, cosmology and morality. The later extension of the afterlife to other groups demonstrates the extent to which the defence against death can be socially generalised. (Eliade, 1982a)
Lorenzer offers a more precise formulation of this. Burial, grave goods, the cult of the dead and reference to ancestors are forms of interaction. The dead person remains socially addressable because they cannot be psychologically abandoned. At the same time, they remain psychologically effective because social rituals, images, narratives and forms of language continually re-establish their presence. (Eliade, 1982a; Lorenzer, 1992; Schülein, 2025) Religion, therefore, belongs to the historical matrices in which the inner and the outer are jointly shaped, rather than being merely a secondary interpretation of an already existing inner realm. (Schülein, 2025)
How has the way we come to terms with death changed throughout the history of religion?
From this perspective, the history of religion can be read as a history of ever-renewed engagements with death. The Vedic and post-Vedic traditions shift the problem into the realms of sacrificial metaphysics, non-death, the Atman-Brahman identity and the knowledge of liberation. (Eliade, 1982a) Buddhism initially appears to be a counter-example, as it denies the soul, permanence and a substantial self. Yet even there, the question of death does not disappear. Eliade explicitly describes Nirvana as ‘Immortal’ and ‘Unconditioned’. It can only be attained through strictly regulated techniques of meditation and self-emptying. (Eliade, 1982b) A negatively formulated form of immortality replaces personal continuity. Non-attachment addresses death in an ascetic way, without abolishing it. (Eliade, 1982b)
The same pattern is found in other traditions. Orphism and Pythagoreanism combine the immortality of the soul, the transmigration of souls and purification into a new eschatology. Iranian religions develop the concept of the soul’s journey, judgement and the resurrection of the body. Early Christianity links the imminent expectation of the end to the Church, the sacraments and obedience to salvation. (Eliade, 1982b) First, material death is symbolically suspended; then this suspension is socially regulated. (Eliade, 1982b) Transcendence is thus an operator in the co-evolution of psychological and social reality, rather than merely a harmless speculation. (Schülein, 2025)
This structure can be arranged chronologically. Hordes, city-states, early advanced civilisations, antiquity, the pre-modern era and the modern era constitute different regimes of symbolic and linguistic-symbolic forms of interaction. They are all symbolic, not just the later societies. (Schülein, 2025) In segmentary societies, forms of connection to the dead and ancestors that are closely tied to the body and ritually intensified dominate. In city-states and advanced civilisations, these scenarios are reshaped in cosmological, legal and authoritarian terms. In antiquity and the pre-modern era, philosophical, mystical and institutional language games emerge. In the modern era, many of these functions are secularised, without the basic structure disappearing. (Eliade, 1982a, 1982b; Schülein, 2025) The chiasmus remains; only its media change. (Merleau-Ponty, 2016; Schülein, 2025)
What does a functional perspective on religion and transcendence achieve?
To dismiss religion merely as an illusion is to fall short, and to celebrate it as the ultimate source of meaning is equally so. Religious figures of transcendence translate the scandal of physical death into forms that are socially acceptable and psychologically bearable. (Eliade, 1982a, 1982b; Schülein, 2025) It is precisely for this reason that they generate norms. Anyone wishing to participate in karma, judgement, salvation, resurrection, the presence of ancestors or liberation must submit to practices of purification, obedience, asceticism or self-discipline. (Eliade, 1982a, 1982b) It is precisely because of their promise to overcome death that religious systems become orders of life.
Such an approach interprets religions in functional, genealogical and interactionist terms, without scrutinising their claim to truth. (Schülein, 2025) The great religious traditions then appear as arrangements in which collectives and individuals learn that death is biologically inevitable but culturally unacceptable. (Eliade, 1982a, 1982b) Transcendence marks the point at which this non-acceptance takes shape. (Eliade, 1982a, 1982b)
Key points in brief
· Dealing with death begins with taboo: burial, graves and the separation of the living from the dead are regulated at an early stage, long before any elaborate doctrines are formulated.
· From the megaliths through Egypt to China, rituals place the dead within their own, strictly regulated system of communication.
· Buddhism bases its teachings specifically on the alleviation of suffering and the fear of death: the doctrine of dependent origination describes how the psyche produces new ‘self’-structures – and thus small deaths – from every contact.
· Orphism, mystery cults and early Christianity address death through purity, initiation and salvation.
· Following Lorenzer and Schülein, religions can be interpreted as symbolic forms of interaction in which psychological and social reality arise together.
· Transcendence translates material death into manageable forms, thereby generating norms such as purification, obedience, asceticism, and renunciation.
Bibliography
· Eliade, M. (1982a). A history of religious ideas. Vol. 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries (W. R. Trask, Trans.). University of Chicago Press.
· Eliade, M. (1982b). A History of Religious Ideas. Vol. 2: From Gautama Buddha to the Triumph of Christianity (W. R. Trask, trans.). University of Chicago Press.
· Lorenzer, A. (1992). The Council of Accountants: The Destruction of Sensuality; A Critique of Religion. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag.
· Merleau-Ponty, M. (with Lefort, C.). (2016). The Visible and the Invisible: Followed by Working Notes. Gallimard.
· Schülein, J. A. (2025). Difficult Dioscuri: The Co-evolution of Social and Psychological Reality. Velbrück Wissenschaft.
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