What is meant by a religious experience?'
AS Religious Studies Luke Hyde
Q. 'What is meant by a religious experience?'
There are various interpretations of the definite meaning of a religious experience, where each are unique and different.
There have been many, many stores put forward by certain individuals who have claimed to have such an experience. Various people have studied them, and have come to the conclusion that in most cases, very similar subjects are brought up in them.
Some say that a religious experience involves having some sort of contact with God. For example, it has come to our awareness that people over the years have 'heard the voice of God'. It is usually described as a 'mental event' which is undergone by someone, and to which they are conscience about it all.
A religious experience can also be described as 'spur-of-the-moment' situations that come completely out of the blue. These situations could be the result of months, perhaps many years, of praying and showing devotion and great loyalty to God.
Usually, when people talk about there experiences, they speak mainly about the fact that an extremely special and sacred bond has developed between themselves and God, which has allowed them to become closer spiritually.
There is also a big difference between genuine religious experiences and fictional ones. For example, real experiences tend to be hopeful and heartening. They try and help the individual to live an enhanced life and to get the best out of it. Religious experiences normally puts the message across that to have an improved lifestyle, the main way to achieve this is to help others.
Most experiences usually last only minutes, to perhaps a couple of hours. However the information gained and the knowledge obtained is massive, in comparison to its actual duration. It is similar to dreaming in a way. One could dream about something in a few minutes, when realistically it would take hours, or the other way round. However, unlike dreams, religious experiences are remembered by individuals for the rest of their lives due to the impact and effects of them. This process is called transciency.
A variety of famous scholars have come to the conclusion that whilst going ...
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Most experiences usually last only minutes, to perhaps a couple of hours. However the information gained and the knowledge obtained is massive, in comparison to its actual duration. It is similar to dreaming in a way. One could dream about something in a few minutes, when realistically it would take hours, or the other way round. However, unlike dreams, religious experiences are remembered by individuals for the rest of their lives due to the impact and effects of them. This process is called transciency.
A variety of famous scholars have come to the conclusion that whilst going through an experience of religions importance, the person involved is most likely to lose complete control over themselves because of the bigger force around then, called God. The effects could be a personality disorder, where the characteristics of an individual are completely wiped out and changed due to the astounding effects of the religious experience that the person went through.
As stated previously, there are different forms of religious experiences. Firstly, most experiences are said to have been 'mystical'. By this I mean that the individual feels closer and more united with the Divine as a result. The Divine means a absolute perfect being that has phenomenal power and cannot be compared to anything - God. Mysticism involves 'the spiritual recognition of truths beyond normal understanding', and is it is also said that it is the closest a human come actually come to meeting the Divine.
William James, a famous religious commentator, suggested that the term mystical had several contexts, and emphasised the point that 'any person who believes in thought-transference or spirit return' is too uncertain and unclear.
Several religious experiences are also have said to have been resulted from 'prayer'. When a person prays to God either through meditation, reflection etc, then it is not unusual for an incident of religious experience to take place as a result of this.
People with great religious authority believe, that when some does go through this type of experience, then they usually take a different outlook on life until the day they pass away. This is because of the massive importance of it, due to the fact that a character has actually been involved with God, with the outcome being that there lives have changed for the better. These types of experiences are known to some as 'conversion' experiences.
Several scholars from around the world, from today and from many years ago, have written about there take of religious experiences, and what there general feelings are about them.
An example of this is a man called Martin Buber, (1878-1965). He believed that personal relationships can subsist without the numinous, and that God can show himself to a being on a personal level, 'taking a relationship further by 'probing deeper'' (Buber).
The numinous is a word to describe the feeling when someone is in the presence of an overwhelming power - a religious experience.
Soren Kierkegaard, another famous scholar on the religious front, regarded faith as a miracle, and that the only way a person could actually be in direct contact with God would be through a 'leap of faith'. He stated that 'knowledge' from God is different for someone depending on the situation in hand. For example, someone who has a high level of faith compared to someone who doesn't would have a completely different experience to one another.
Many of these religious experiences noted could be muddled with the consequences of alcohol or major drugs which can affect one both physically and mentally. William James, (mentioned previously), noticed this and stated it publicly: 'The drunken consciousness is one bit of the mystic consciousness, and our total opinion of it must find its place in our opinion of that larger whole'.
In conclusion to James' statement, it is clear that mystical experiences take place when someone is aware of them, (i.e. not unconscious), and that they either spontaneous or induced.
The term conversion plays a large part when in discussion about the subject of religious experience. It means, 'regeneration'. Religious conversion leads to the adoption of a positive religious attitude, or a religious lifestyle.
Edward D. Starbuck, a famous professor, showed that the non religious younger generation, when converted, showed that there were very similar conversions experienced by most adolescents, suggesting that, 'Conversion is a normal adolescent phenomenon, incidental to the wider intellectual and spiritual life of maturity'. (Edward Starbuck)
However, William James disagrees and thinks that there are some people around in the world who cannot be converted, mainly because religious ideas could never become the centre of their spiritual and religious energy. Perhaps they are extremely negative and pessimistic, or maybe it is because they refuse to believe anything with religious importance.
