ABSTRACT
The archetypes for meaning in suffering must come from the major global worldviews. Religious cultures and scientific philosophies have each probed the question of higher meaning in life and thus in suffering, that is, meaning beyond the personal level. It is possible to synthesize and summarize these archetypes of meaning in suffering. The synthesis suggests a continuum of truth spanning two major epistemologies. The first epistemology is the secular or scientific worldview; the second is the sacred or religious worldview. Both sufferers and people-helpers interpret the world from some point on this continuum. Each person views the world through lenses ground by the respective worldviews to which they have become attuned. The danger of living by either epistemological extreme is that one can become closed to broader aspects of reality. The closed secularist or scientist may totally reject the possibility of afterlife, mystical communication, prophetic revelation, and spontaneous nonmedical intervention.
