Mountain Peaks and Pantheism
by Gary Suttle
From time immemorial, humans have climbed mountains to gain renewal, perspective, and
enlightenment.1 For Pantheists, who possess a kinship with nature more richly
developed than the population at large, to stand atop a mountain often instills a special
spiritual inspiration. "In the lowlands, we manipulate the environment; on a
mountain, nature has control and we adapt to the natural surroundings. In touch with
elemental forces, we gain a feeling of oneness with nature and recapture a vital bond too
often weakened by the distractions of modern life."2
Highlands kindle "peak experiences," we described by psychologist Abraham
Maslow, who studied health well-adjusted individuals' feelings of transcendence. These
feelings include awe, wonder, rapture, bliss, ecstasy, euphoria, reverence, aliveness, a
sense of mystery, and joy.3
A mountain hike requires pulse-quickening exercise to literally rise above crowds and
complexity. This exercise stimulates circulation and seems to clear out cobwebs in our
mind. increasing the clarity with which we observe ourselves, our surroundings, and our
relationship with the creative force of the universe.
Mountains enhance ways of knowing the creative force or god. Harold Wood describes
three basic ways to know god, through knowledge, through devotion, and through works.4
The way of knowledge encompasses nature study. Animals, plants, and other natural
features stand readily observable on mountains because highlands resist human development
due to their rugged topography. The way of devotion comes easily to summit-seekers,
imbued by the mountains' might and majesty. The peak need not be lofty. I like to tell
people I'm in church when I'm outdoors, and my favorite local cathedral rises within the
city limits of San Diego, 1591 ft. Cowles Mountain. The way of works follows as the
mountains' strength and serenity fills the being of those who identify with nature and
with the mountains. They return to the lowlands refreshed and revivified, inspired to
engage in conservation activism. I also find myself reaffirming a desire to help supplant
biblical myths with pantheistic precepts.
The Biblical mode, as anthropologist Joseph Campbell explains, "is based on a view
of the universe that belongs to the first millennium B.C. It does not accord with our
concept either of the universe or of the dignity of man. It belongs entirely somewhere
else. We have today to learn to get back into accord with the wisdom of nature and realize
again our brotherhood with the animals and with the water and the sea. To say that
divinity informs the world and all things is condemned as pantheism. But pantheism
is a misleading word. It suggest that a personal god is supposed to inhabit the world, but
that is not the idea at all. The idea is trans-theological. It is of an undefinable,
inconceivable mystery, thought of as a power, that is the source and end and supporting
ground of all life and being."5
Mountains evoke this undefinable, inconceivable power better than anything else I know
of. Arnold Toynbee, one of the major interpreters of Western Civilization in the 20th
century (who is quoted on the contents page of Pantheist Vision , elaborates on the
spiritual evocation of the highlands: "I have gazed with awe at some of the high
peaks of the Himalayas... I was overwhelmed by their beauty and their majesty, and at the
same time, I realized that here Nature was revealing to me something that is beyond
herself. The splendor that shines through Nature is imparted to her from a source which is
beyond Nature and which is the ultimate reality. If there were not this invisible
spiritual presence in and beyond the visible universe, there would be no Himalayas and no
Mankind either; for Mankind is part of Nature, and like non-human Nature, we owe our
existence to the reality that is the mysterious common source of non-human Nature and
ourselves."6
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Notes
1. See Edwin Bernbaum, Sacred Mountains of the World, Sierra Club Books, 1992.
2. Gary Suttle, California County Summits, A Guide to the Highest Point in Each of
the 58 Counties, Wilderness Press, 1994.
3. Abraham H. Maslow, Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences, The Viking Press,
Inc., 1970.
4. Harold W. Wood, Jr., "Modern Pantheism as an Approach to Environmental
Ethics," Environmental Ethics, Vol. 7, Summer, 1985.
5. Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth, Apostrophy S.
Productions, Inc., Doubleday, 1988.
6. Arnold Toynbee, from the preface to the book Himalayas by Yhoshikazu
Shirakawa.
Reprinted from Pantheist Vision, Vol. 15, no. 3, September, 1994.
