Pilgrimage and Paradigm Shifts: The Role of Experience in Identity Transformations

Some kinds of knowledge can only be acquired by direct experience. Engaging in a pilgrimage can transform a person by allowing them to inhabit different worldviews, or paradigms, that would otherwise remain inaccessible to them. The pilgrim then learns to see the world in a new and different way; has ideas not imagined before the experience, and; may even change their life in ways unforeseen before the pilgrimage. It is uncertain just how, and in what unexpected ways, one might change. Most often these changes are welcomed; however, it is unclear whether one’s prepilgrim- self, before the change, would approve of the end-result. How can one rationally choose to undertake a pilgrimage that might cause change, when one cannot really appreciate whether that change will be for the better until after one has leapt into it? This makes the choice seem irrational and arbitrary. This paper argues that the most likely changes that come about on pilgrimage are a matter of reorientation, rather than a complete metamorphosis (although those happen). Religious experiences that change one’s identity are most often a matter of reorientation of commitment, rather than radical transformation of self. The permanence of the change depends on the commitment to that identity after the change is made.