ABSTRACT
The elephant is neither an inference nor a statement nor the subjective judgment of a creator. It is a phenomenon. But people are so used to the idea that psychic events are wilful and arbitrary products, or even the inventions of a human creator, that they can hardly rid ourselves of the prejudiced view that the psyche and its contents are nothing but people's own arbitrary invention or the more or less illusory product of supposition and judgment. Religion, as the Latin word denotes, is a careful and scrupulous observation of what Rudolf Otto aptly termed the numinosum, that is, a dynamic agency or effect not caused by an arbitrary act of will. A great many ritualistic performances are carried out for the sole purpose of producing at will the effect of the numinosum by means of certain devices of a magical nature, such as invocation, incantation, sacrifice, meditation and yoga practices, self-inflicted tortures of various descriptions, and so forth.
