Spiritual Communication And Religious Experience Of Cultivation Adherents In The Cibedug Indigenous Community

Abstract

This study examines the lived spiritual communication experiences of nine adherents of the Budi Daya belief system in Cibedug Hamlet, Lembang, West Bandung, Indonesia. Employing Moustakas’s (1994) Transcendental Phenomenology — selected for its capacity to systematically uncover essential experiential structures through epoche, phenomenological reduction, and imaginative variation — the study investigates what spiritual communication experiences Budi Daya adherents undergo and how these shape their vertical (human-divine) and horizontal (human-human/nature) communicative relationships. Data were collected from nine purposively selected informants through in-depth interviews, participant observation during community rituals, and documentary review. Three invariant themes emerge from the cross-case analysis: (1) cognitive-reflective experience manifested as inner spiritual struggle and intrapersonal dialogue (textural description: Indra, Ecep, Euis Shelian); (2) ritual-behavioral experience expressed through the symbolic and collective dimensions of the Mipit Amit ceremony; and (3) social-communal experience realized through solidarity, togetherness, and interreligious harmony. The study’s novelty lies in its proposal of a dual-channel spiritual communication framework — bridging transcendental and cultural communication theory — grounded in the indigenous lived experience of a non-mainstream local belief community in Indonesia, advancing existing spiritual communication scholarship by demonstrating that transcendental and cultural communication are mutually constitutive in indigenous religious practice.