Prosthetic Revelations: Sticking the Teachings to the Body in a Japanese New Religion

Abstract

The Japanese new religion, Mahikari, is known primarily for its practical technique of manual purification, okiyome. However, this article instead focuses on the program of practices that is regarded as being equally important in terms of its purificatory and salvific effects: that of engaging with revelatory teachings, a form of engagement that is often articulated in terms of the expression “sticking the teachings to the body” (oshie o mi ni tsukeru). I consider this particular idiom of attachment and the ways in which it is actualized in devotional practices, and I contend that this notion of somatic yet spiritual “sticking” acts as a conceptual corrective to overly internalizing models of religiosity. In conclusion, I suggest that while Helen Hardacre once proposed that “cosmology” was analytically restricting, and argued instead in favor of “worldview,” the issue with regards to the role of embodied practice in Mahikari calls for a reconsideration of these analytical terms. Accordingly, the article ends by suggesting a turn away from “worldview,” back towards the category of the cosmological.