Otto’s definition tended to ignore the mystical forms of religious experience. These experiences are intense feelings of union with God and not the distancing affect suffered under the numinous. A more concise definition of Religious Experiences could be ‘an experience in which an individual is aware of the immediate presence of the divine.’ This concise definition covers both Schliermacher and Otto, and includes the mystical form of Religious Experiences. It leaves open the nature of God and whether the experience is delusory or veridical.
Further explanation of Religious Experience comes from William James. James described the experience as “feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.”
All the definitions run into the same major problem that religious experience is extremely diverse and is difficult in itself to define. Not all definitions are clear and not all cover the types of religious experiences. Richard Swinburne developed a categorisation of Religious Experiences which is useful as an aid to study in this area. It also useful is distinguishing the different types of Religious Experiences and where they fit. These experiences are divided into Public/Private.
Public Religious Experience refers to ordinary, everyday events that can occur to one many people at the same time.
God’s action is seen in a public object or event. This experience is public and indirect, as it does not involve the immediate working of a divine. Examples of this include seeing God in a night sky or in the beauty of nature. Although believers may believe that God acts through nature in creation, God still holds no divine intervention on the behalf of the believer to make them appreciate the stars or the nature surrounding them.
The second public type of Public Experience is some breach of the natural order, otherwise known as a Miracle. In general, a miracle is a wonderful thing performed by supernatural power as signs of some special mission or gift and explicitly ascribed to God (divine/deity). Miracles throughout religious history include turning water into wine (without fermentation), Moses splitting the Red Sea, Jesus curing the blind and sick.
Private R.E are internal and are split into three categories. 1) An experience that can be described in normal language. 2) Experiences that provoke ineffability (inability to describe in normal language.) 3) No specific experience but the individual feels the hand of God guiding them.
The experiences are very fruitful and life transforming. The fruits of an experience are the after-effects that occur after an experience has occurred. In NDE’s, the individual can become less materialistic but more distant from family and friends. The fruits are positive though and anything that changes the person for the good is deemed a fruit.
There are also ten features detailed in religious experiences that include a sense of timelessness, feelings of transcendence, great peacefulness, noetic qualities and a sense of love/comfort/joy. These are separate from fruits, instead they are characteristics that make up the experience. They can lead to fruits arising but are mostly seen during the experience. Feelings of joy and comfort are normally seen as high factors in NDE’s that depict for people, that the afterlife is comforting, joyful and peaceful.
Religious experiences have occurred in many different cultures and countries worldwide. All these experiences seem to have a similar structure in that the fruits are present and so are elements of definitions. It is understood then that this evidence is valid and very valuable. David Hay at the Oxford Centre for religious experience claim that a high proportion of those that declare a religious experience feel a power beyond themselves. The experiences are also not of a majority of mentally disturbed religious people.
With religious experiences, every experience is unique. Within the context of visions, conversions and mysticism, every individual has experienced different things that are unique to them. This uniqueness links directly back to Raymond Moody who wrote the top-selling book entitled ‘Life after Life’ about Near Death Experiences.
A near death experience (NDE) can be put as an experience that occurs to an individual when they are on the verge of death / clinically dead but survive. Going back to Swinburne’s categorisation of religious experience, the NDE can be put under, though with some disrepute into Type 3. The experience is Direct and the experience can normally be described in normal language though with a few exceptions. The experience is private because it’s personal and of mental nature.
In Moody’s book, many of the characteristics found in Religious Experiences can be located also inside his book. William James in his characteristic analysis of Religious Experiences but down four qualities that were - ineffability, noetic, transience, passivity.
‘Life after Life’ conveys through its 150 NDE Case studies, these characteristics alongside many others located in Moody’s ‘theoretical ideal’ of an NDE. This ideal contains 15 common traits that have been found by Moody analysing transcripts and accounts. These commonalities include ineffability, peace and tranquillity, out of body (paranormal), the review, the border, telling others, hearing noises and hearing news of their death.
Raymond Moody explains that no two experiences are precisely identical, no experience has ever had every component and the experiences don’t come in any particular order. It is through finding common traits in most experiences that Moody developed his ‘theoretical ideal’ and 15 common traits. Near Death Experiences themselves, involve many of the types of religious experiences that have been found.
If we look at the three examples of Visions, Mysticism and Conversion; one could find that NDE’s contain similar characteristics found in some of these religious experiences. For instance, many people are converted after an NDE experience, many see a vision of light or even corporeal beings and finally, some have described the unity or oneness between themselves during or after the experience. These common traits could lead one to believe that the high commonality between these could portray NDE as a Religious Experience.
Here are examples below of similarities between Conversions, Visions, Mysticism and the NDE:
However, for an experience to be deemed ‘religious,’ it must comply with religious teaching on the subject. Any information that doesn’t comply cannot be deemed as religious but can still be listened to. In the case of an NDE, The spiritual treasure found within these NDE testimonies has the power to transform faith because of the light they shed on particular problematic Christian doctrines.
Christian Scripture has its specific teaching into the afterlife (resurrection and the idea of the Kingdom of God) but if something within the religious experience were to contradict normal teaching then it cannot be taken as absolute truth.
Visions of light, dark tunnels, loud noises may all be characteristics of an NDE but Christian doctrine does not have this in their teaching. Though, religious experiences have been found to have high religious authority. Some people rely on miracles, visions and other religious experiences to substantiate their beliefs while others don’t rely on experiences but on scripture and teaching.
Richard Swinburne tries to bridge the gap between internal and external belief by using two important principles:
Principle of Credulity – ‘An experience provides sound reason to believe a claim to be true provided there is no reason to think otherwise’
Principle of Testimony – In the absence of evidence, we should rely on the actual reports made and make judgement. Was the person on drugs? Is this person normally responsible and not normally associated with deception?”
These two principles are very important when determining whether evidence should be taken at face-value for that it is. These principles can be used to distinguish between a ‘believed’ religious experience and an experience with has doubts. Swinburne maintains that if we don’t apply these or don’t believe the testimony, we land in a “sceptical bog.”
Caroline Franks Davies culminates with Swinburne’s argument in her book ‘The Evidential Force of Religious Experience’ that if we take all evidence for the existence of God, the scales are even. However, if we apply religious experiences, the existence of God scales are tipped, in favour of God’s existence. These arguments are persuasive to existing believers but those not believers in God, still perceive the matter of NDE’s, God’s Existence and Religious Experience as mere subjectivity.
William James through the Unanimity Principle assumes because religious experiences have occurred in all ages, to all sorts of people in all religious traditions and because they conform to certain patterns then they cannot be dismissed as delusory.
By this point in time, I would personally accept NDE’s as a valid form of religious experience but this is without analysing the actual NDE itself from a psychological and physiological approach.
In terms of frequency of the experience, in 1982, 5% of all Americans had a Near Death Experience and there are no demographic differences which would comply with the Unanimity principle.
Psychologists and Scientists apply ‘reductionism’ theories. That is to say, biologists and physiologists, in general try to reduce the NDE argument to biological or psychological reasons.
“Death is unimaginable” are the words put forth by Sigmund Freud, the great psycho dynamic psychologist. A further follower of Freud proposed that because of this unimaginability, a “stimulus barrier” of hallucinations are created to distract one away from the pain and the emotional side of death.
Another psychological approach is the process of Regression. The individual, being unable to cope with the prospect of death, escapes deathly feelings by going back to child consciousness.
Other explanations for NDE’s as non-valid include drugs and oxygen deficiency. Drugs given to patients including stimulants, sedatives and analgesics have been linked to dissociative, visionary experiences. In terms of O2 deficiency, this reduction causes ‘Limbic Lobe Dysfunction’ which affects areas of the brain dealing with memory recall, emotion etc causing the individual to have visual hallucination, a panoramic recall of their life and intense feelings of both loneliness and joy.
“Believers” counteract these arguments saying “but that individual wasn’t......” The individual wasn’t on drugs or without oxygen. Drugs don’t cause moral and social changes.
In conclusion, arbitrary/subjective knowledge should not be rejected. People don’t live lives always by scientific explanations. This goes back to the idea of Science and Religion harmonising and both sections differences in answering different questions.
Challenges have been put in place to challenge and sometimes undermine Religious experiences. For instance, the ‘vicious circle’ argument by Anthony Flew proposes that all experiences are culturally conditioned. The experiences seem to “depend on the interests, background and expectations of those who have them rather than on anything separate and autonomous.” A Roman Catholic is more likely to see St.Bernadette at Lourdes rather than a Hindu. Caroline Franks Davies personally rejects this explanation on the grounds that it largely applies only to visions. She claims that the person in one tradition will tend to use the language and ideas of a tradition to explain it but Conversions are necessarily culturally conditioned and neither are Mystical Experiences.
One other argument that tries to challenge Religious Experiences is the ‘Conflicting Claims’ argument that states that “it is a frequent claim made by Western Liberals that all religions are really the same, but the basis for the claim is often scanty (Peter Vardy).” If an experience justifies one religion as having a superior being / divine then surely another experience cannot justify another God, hence another religion.
This is a powerful challenge as if there is a common transcendental core giving rise to mystical and other religious experiences. It is likely to be so vague that it will have little in common with the claims about ultimate reality made by any one religion.
These objections to religious experiences and the objections to NDE’s, leave the question of Near Death Experiences as religious experiences still hanging. Without scripture to support Near Death Experiences and with so much criticism surrounding it psychologically and biologically, it hard to accept it as an experience itself, let alone a religious experience. For accepting its validity first, then comes the problems of subjectivity, matching with Catholic Teaching and then arguments put forward by scholars that oppose religious experiences.
It must be also noted that there are contradictory instances of negative Near Death Experiences that are total opposite to the positive ones. Feelings of loneliness, barren wasteland, and zombie-like corporeals are seen. These negative experiences can be life-transforming in two ways as well. Firstly, the individual can interpret that they are sinful and not doing all they can to enter Heaven and thus become more loving, generous, forgiving. Or secondly, the person can reject the experience all together. This rejection could be a rejection of God or just an ignorance/disbelief in the experience.
This issue is two-sided and very difficult to weed out. Subjectivity is a main issue in this debate along with the reduction of experiences. However, the universality of experiences and the fact that all experiences follow a particular trend and appear valid from testimony balances the argument out.
On a final personal note, it could be true that NDE’s are a valid form of religious experience. However, does religion belong in a science lab? Unfortunately, to test the testimony of experiences and to test the overall idea of an NDE, it must be scientifically tested. However, many religious and non-religious people would rather leave the argument to their own personal judgement and not to science that has intervened enough in religious questions. Science can only answer the How, not the Why.
