Each individual maintains and acts on the basis of a deep and personal understanding of how the Universe works, how life unfolds, and his/her role in it. This worldview, as used here, is the ordered and integrated total of all that the individual has learned or imagined to the present moment. The worldview carries the standards and the methods by which the individual examines all new perceptions and experiences – all new information – weighs them against all prior understandings, assigns meaning to them, and decides whether or not to allow them to be integrated into the total. It includes memory and also the linkages among memories and reflections on memories. The worldview is the totality of the unique and fluid configuration of thoughts, beliefs, memories, processes, perceptions, and awareness in each moment, roughly analogous to Carl Jung’s psyche: a combination of spirit, soul, and idea, conscious and unconscious.
From “… and prate about an Elephant …”
On the Disambiguation of Religion: Identifying its attributes for empirical investigation
by Rev. Sandra Lee Harris (Khalila RedBird HPs)
8 December 2011