Religious Experience: What Is It?
Prayer, worship, and ritual; visions, voices, and dreams; hallucinations; meditations; responses to nature and to other human beings. Signs and miracles. Séances and communications from the dead. Conversion experiences – from highly private ones to very public ones.
What do you make of the idea of religious or spiritual experience? Certainly people have referenced a wide variety of phenomena in such terms. Can religious experience be distinguished from experience that is imaginative, psychological, or even pathological – and on what basis?
Lions, tigers, and bears – Ohm my!
What do you make of the idea of religious or spiritual experience? Certainly people have referenced a wide variety of phenomena in such terms. Can religious experience be distinguished from experience that is imaginative, psychological, or even pathological – and on what basis?
Lions, tigers, and bears – Ohm my!
Posted by Paul at 7:03 AM Permalink
34 Comments:
I've read the Varieties of Religious Experience ans I think, if I remember correctly, that James says people like Paul (the falling off the donkey thing) and other mystics had experiences that were really physiological ... like epilepsy. But I think he ended up saying that it didn't matter so much from where the experiences originated, but what mattered was their effect on onthers ... sort of a pragmatic evaluation.
I'm always skeptical of other people's religious experiences, even guys like Paul. But I had one conversion experience and while I constantly doubt it, I didn't doubt it while it was happening.
You have listed several categories here. I am not sure all of them are related. As to religious experiences in general though, I think that some people want that experience so much that they may fool themselves into thinking they have had one. But I would not ever try to judge whether someone's religious experience is authentic or not. What do I know anyway. Besides, it might be in BELIEVING that you have had a religious experience, a conversion experience, that makes it so. Perhaps the test is in the pudding. If fruit follows then there probably is something to it.
I am glad you are back in the blogging business.
I hate to answer your question with a question, but when considering it, this is what comes to mind. When you experience love, how do you know it’s Love vs. something imaginative, psychological or even pathological? For me, there’s a way I can tell the difference that I believe is reliable. To evaluate whether the experience is/was genuine (as opposed to the product of some other source) I take a personal inventory to try to rule out the possibility that other sources were at work for instance:
At the time of the experience, was I activated or in the grips of a psychological complex? Was I intoxicated on alcohol, drugs, or adrenaline? Prior to the experience, had I been depressed for an extended period? Did the experience occur in the absence of meditation or reflection? If the answer to any of these is “yes” the experience for me is suspect. Most important for me, at the time of the experience, was I centered in myself, and residing in the adult (as opposed to resonating in my child-self) and was I in a mindful or conscious state. If “no” again, suspect. Those are a couple of things I look at. Then I also look at what appears to be the source of experience and I check to see if it’s the type of stimulus that is consistent with similar experiences for me. And lastly, there is a qualitative feel to the experience that is beyond description. Notwithstanding everything else, it must feel right. Sorry for the essay.
WHAT is happening is not WHY it is happening nor is it a real explanation. It seems to me that knowing an electrical firestorm happens in the brain coincidentally with spiritual experience does not imply that the spiritual experience isn't valid. Could be just as easily argued that epilepsy is the route to god.
I love reading the science, but I refrain from accepting it as dismissal of religion.
Jeesh - I just realized that is a perfectly sceptical argument. I'm just as sceptical towards science as I am towards religion! As I see it, neither explains NOR denies the other. It's interesting to know the science but not a useful part of discussion on religion, since the "why" still exists along side the question of chicken or egg.
Interesting topics and questions, Paul, I'm enjoying this.
The rest of us with snippets of anecdotal evidence at best, can hardly "make" anything of the "idea". We can only know our own experience.
these days I see no difference between sensual and spiritual experience. Life is intense and beautiful. It is one thing. We are all part of that one thing. One way of looking at experience is "spiritual". there are other ways of looking at the same stuff. You can look at the moon and see a satellite planet or you can see a goddess sailing through the mists. You can have an ecstasy looking at the moon, or perhaps an ecstasy with your eyes shut, drug-assisted or not.
What's the reason behind wanting to distinguish one type of experience from another? To defend religion? To suggest a treatment? To convince one's self or another of the validity of the experience? Why does it matter?
I liked the comment you left for me about Descarte and his "I think, therefore I am."
I always liked this one: I think, therefore I am. I think.
SUSIEQ: I agree. A whole lot of things that don't all seem alike to me either, are sometimes referred to as religious or spiritual experiences.
Sounds like you're inclined toward the "fruitfulness for life" per above too. It reminds me of Jesus on "knowing the tree by its fruit."
DENNIS: I think that the kind of experiencing, reflecting, and sorting out of the kind you just did can eventually lead to truths simple and powerful enough to live by.
HAYDEN: You say "It seems to me that knowing an electrical firestorm happens in the brain coincidentally with spiritual experience does not imply that the spiritual experience isn't valid. Could be just as easily argued that epilepsy is the route to god."
You must be reading Varieties of Religius Experience too!? That's exactly a point that William James made. In his time, the idea of the unconscious mind was new and people argued that religious experience was "nothing but" the result of unconscious processes. In response, James made exactly your argument: unconscious processes may be a route to experiencing God.
n2: Me too. You could describe the way I developed my own perspective is to experience, think about experience, then do everything I could to knock down my own concepts. Critical thinking for me equals honesty with myself and that's a central value. I wish Jesus had said "Love others, love God and love truth." But he was only asked about the two greatest commandments...!
YVES: Yes, I think "judging" the experiences of others has connotations we'd want to avoid. But I think that the attempt to categorize experience can draw distinctions that are worth making.
Take your example of looking at the moon. You could be viewing it esthetically; astronomically; it might produce some memory from childhood with psychological implications... these are different types of experiences.
You characterize sensual and spiritual experience as being the same. To me, it seems more like some types of experience are more closely related than others. For example, I'd see esthetic and spiritual experience as closer cousins, so to speak, than the sensual and the spiritual.
PAULINE: Ha! Sounds like Descartes just prior to his breakthrough...
For me the reason for inquiring into this is to move toward knowing what we're talking about - clearer thinking and clearer communication.
For example, personally I'm inclined to think that some of what's spoken of as religious experience is psychological. This doesn't make it less important. And it might begin to suggest some ways in which psychological growth is related to spiritual growth.
I'm interested in this:
"For example, personally I'm inclined to think that some of what's spoken of as religious experience is psychological. This doesn't make it less important. And it might begin to suggest some ways in which psychological growth is related to spiritual growth."
I've not seen this connection made, but it makes a lot of sense. The important issue is that respect is due, regardless of the catagory of the experience.
Yes Paul, but this is just cultural conditioning, isn't it, just as you consider cargo cults to be rituals beyond the pale, whilst not seeing that many rituals we practise every day are equally irrational.
We have to start seeing for yourselves, and chuck out some (or preferably all) of this stuff we are taught.
i was pondering rather long on whether to post this, but each time i come in here, i felt the need to share. so there. :)
Welcome back. I like the issues and conversation that I see here. Glad to have you back.
I guess I write poetry because so much in life we don't really know, and probably never will. Poetry is very experiential and intuitive, and for me, it takes me "there."
Susieq's points about consciousness are interesting. As I near completion of my two-year program in Consciousness Studies, I can honestly say I've considered the many possibilities relative to consciousness from various philosophical, spiritual and psychological perspectives, and I know no more for certain about consciousness than when I began my studies. But I can say that I am in better touch with my own consciousness and am better able to honor others.
Consciousness is, for me, our "presence," which is imbued with divine spark. It is truly wonderful to be "present."
But notice how people never order atoms with pepperoni? At higher levels new properties emerge, however well we may describe the underlying elements and processes.
YVES: My thoughts about the relation of esthetic and spiritual experience, particularly love, came into focus for me over a period of many years. No doubt they're culturally conditioned in some very broad senses, for example the fact that I learned to speak and think in English.
I haven't discussed ritual as rational or irrational. If you were to ask about the cargo cults, I'd say they're irrational since manufactured goods are produced by factories and not incantantations.
MISTI: Glad you shared that. I don't doubt that something happened there that held significance for you. Many people report experiences along similiar lines.
It raises an important distinction. When it comes to religious experience, unless we think somebody's just making stuff up, which I think is pretty rare, we can certainly accept that they experienced something that was important to them. At the same time, we may not necessarily share the person's interpretation of their experience.
For example, a couple years after having the major religious experience of my life, I described it to an friend. He immediately replied that I'd had an experience of God. I had a pretty good idea of what he meant by "God," and this wasn't my interpretation.
So there is experience and there is interpretation of the experience. In the very act of reporting an experience, people apply some degree of interpretation.
DON I: Thanks Don, and I very much agree. Presence, being, and being changed for the better to be of more use to those around you - that's what it's about for me too.
I'll be glad to get closer to the time when the book's available. I'm thinking about posting excerpts as blog posts.
Its style is very different from the style of my blog posts to date. Although the book does develop some concepts, it's highly experiential, sometimes literary, and not abstract in tone. More fun!
Still, I found that to develop concepts as simple and I think as well clarified as I ended up with, it was necessary for me to go through a great deal of critical thinking along the lines of what we've been doing here.
ahh the link says Spiritual Diablog but it's actually a link to Original Faith. Kept Spiritual Diablog because i like the name :)
Love!
This is my first fight over a link, LOL...
OK... So if you don't use the new name, then once sis gets my blogroll started, I'll call you Lilac. I like lilacs...
Is there a referee in the house?
There should be one of those advice columnists, only for bloggers.
(my favorite)
Umm--what's good for the goose is good for the gander?
One of my dearest blogging friends has my name wrong on her link ("firebrand")--
I'm too shy to say anything--it's such an honor to have a link at all!
My suggestion is this:
For Ms. Sunflower to leave up her link reading "A Spiritual Diablog".
for people who may be attracted to the concept--it is, after all, a description of what goes on here--
and also to put a link to "Original Faith" for those who know this site.
Paul, may post both links to flowers, if it pleases him.
I feel very few so-called religious or spiritual experiences occur in the same sense that someone like Buddha or the creator of AA had. As imperfect humans it stands to reason our understanding and evaluation of such experiences are going to be tainted. Our desire to become "enlightened" can also be tainted if not wanted for the right reason.
I feel the path to Truth is usually a long and painful one and that very few of us qualify or have the stamina to embark on a journey where all our reasoning and motives must be brought to light and questioned. I do feel a rare few have had a spiritual or religious experience but this has only come from years of extensive study and experience or hitting rock bottom and total acceptance our big ego's cannot rid us of the pain we cause ourselves. Spiritual experiences do not usually happen overnight and require years of painful lessons.
Many claim they are now enlightened but how many have the wisdom of Lao Tzu, Buddha, or Yogananda to name a few? So far I have not met any though I am sure there is probably a few out there. I am a student of philosophy and have studied it for 20 some years. I have passed through the portals of religion, metaphysics and mysticism and yes have even had an "experience". I cannot claim, however, to be enlightened for that term is best suited to a sage - which I am not. The experience I had gave just enough knowledge to stay the path I am treading - a teaser if you will - and that is all it was. To be caught up in it or to loudly proclaim I am now enlightened would be to demean the value of it and lend itself to be actually wishful thinking on the part of the ego.
It appears I too have written a small essay. LOL
JANICE: Yeah, “enlightenment contests” – that concept is pretty funny in light of how you point squarely to what I also see as central to spiritual development: living more and more to more than ego. In Christian parlance, perhaps dying to self and living to Christ – although of course many Christians take this primarily as an exhortation to accept the doctrine of Jesus as the Christ.
Religious experience may be more common than you’d think - although not THAT common or to that degree. The proliferation of "gurus" today in no small part reflects that religion and spirituality has become big business and many celebrities, for example, are cashing in.
That said, for many people authentic spiritual development occurs gradually. But even the more distinct and powerful sorts of experience aren't so terribly unusual. Again, William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience comes to mind as containing numerous examples of ordinary people having pretty profound sounding experiences that changed their lives for the better.
I’ve read similar accounts in other books on what’s often called “mysticism” - another one of those words with a host of connotations that need to be distinguished from each other or there can be a lot of confusion...
It was nice of you to visit my blog. Hope to see you back. I know I'll be back here again -- looks really interesting.
JA LOCKHART: Thanks, I will.
BUT PEOPLE... How come so many of you aren't answering the question? It was a short post...
Are blogmeisters allowed to whine? Is this bad form? Do I ask too many questions?
Still, I insist...
"Can religious experience be distinguished from experience that is imaginative, psychological, or even pathological – and on what basis?"
What we think is in our own minds. What others think about that is in their own minds. What we ultimately label our thoughts doesn't matter as someone is bound to disagree and attach their own labels. I don't think we should worry so much what others think of our own experiences but we ought to pay more attention to what we think of them.
(This said after a day on the beach collecting shells (in February!)and listening to the ocean and the sea gulls sing and realizing anew that my response to life is my choice.)
My long answer, to the rest of your comment, is that to me, there's a difference between making careful distinctions as well as communicating the basis for making them, and labeling. Labeling covers up simplistic or sloppy thinking. Drawing distinctions clarifies one's own thoughts about one's own experiences and also introduces the possibility of honest and meaningful communication with others.
I agree there's no need to worry what others think of our experiences.
I'd also agree that our response to life appears to be our choice - up to a point. The following may sound pretty deplorable in contrast to the day you just described. And admittedly, the specifics of "a day in the life" of me are pretty unique.
In my case, the case of a life considerably derailed beginning in 1994, continual research by my sister and I for more than a decade yielded nothing, and even facilities like NIH and Johns Hopkins couldn't reach a diagnosis.
Here was my day:
About eighteen of my twenty four hours were spent flat on my back in bed intermittently dozing - I wake up pretty much on the hour from intractable pain, being now in my twelfth year of an undiagnosable progressive disorder featuring severe muscle, nerve, connective tissue and bone damage.
Out of bed, all my shades are drawn and I use dark glasses and low monitor illumination at the computer: if I don't actually have a migraine, then I'm on the verge of one. Contractures and spasm run along even tiny muscles in my neck, right up into the base of my skull.
I'm able to stand and walk just enough for a few trips to the kitchen for pre-prepared food - there's no padding left on the soles of my feet, so I'm basically walking on damaged nerves and can barely make the trips to kitchen/bathroom. I can't use crutches because of the damage to the brachial nerves under my arms. I've become too fragile for safe transport by any means and haven't been outside the house for over two years.
I'm unable to sit because of the extent of the nerve, tissue, and bone damage in my low back. Unable either to stand or sit to get work done,
most of my out of bed time is spent kneeling on a polyutherane pad on a chair. I get up briefly every fifteen minutes, reminded by a timer. The pad and timer are to try to keep the stage one pressure sores that had started to form underneath my knees at bay.
A great deal of my out of bed time is wasted. For example, I spent probably a couple hours today between organizing for the home health aide's arrival and dealing with the consequences of another no call/no show, which happens a lot in the world of for-profit home health aide agencies featuring underpaid, low skill workers.
I have one sister. A lot of stuff falls on her. I can't be put in an institution because I'd immediately be fully bedridden - my adaptive needs are too unique. We looked into it.
Millions and millions of people around the world have choices even more limited than mine due to famine, war, poverty, and from suffering and often dying because of diseases that are known and curable.
So I'll be doing posts sometime about suffering! Ironically I did my masters thesis on the book of Job...
I'll also be posting experiential stuff from time to time. Critical analysis in religion and spirituality comes fairly easy to me. During the years I wrote my book, I employed it to see if the concepts I'd worked out really seemed to make sense.
But like you, what I'm really interested in is experience - and concepts that stay close enough to experience to actually add a bit to its meaning.
Imo, a lot of concepts in religion and spirituality obscure experience and take people away from it rather than help to lead people toward their own potentials for significant experience.
I'm glad I was healthy until age 37. I think we can learn from great suffering but also from great joy. And that, in the end, we learn something similar from each if we can stay with it.
But I liked the beach better too!
This litany of woes isn't meant to evoke sympathy or make people feel bad about going to the beach - I only wish more people in more nations had opportunities for joy that many of us can take for granted.
I offer a little of my own story to draw attention to suffering's reality and the limit it often places on choice. To this I should add the reality of social injustice, which is often the source of suffering or acts to amplify it.
Labeling doesn't always cover up sloppy thinking. We label things to find a place to put them. Religion, spirituality - these are labeling words. We seem to have a need to label in order to identify, to categorize, so that we can find which bit of stored information to tie all our new thoughts to.
Choices are often limited, sometimes to the point where it seems there is no choice, or at least no good choice. I don't believe events discriminate; I do believe we make a choice about how we feel about an event, and those feelings dictate to a great degree how we act or react.
Suffering gives one another perspective, doesn't it? Life is not always beautiful according to our definitions, yet I am sure you are acutely aware of beautiful moments (sure because some of that awareness shines through your posts. A very subjective observation, I know. We may have entirely different ideas of what's beautiful). I am sorry you suffer so.
I still think that no matter what category we eventually put our experiences into, no matter what words we use to describe them, those experiences are unique to us because they happen to us. A million poeple still have a million experiences, even though they witness or participate in the same event.
We hold tight to what helps us most, and why not?
The answer is yes.
If one rationally evaluates the experience he will know if it just comes from wishful thinking/imagination or whether it is a true spiritual experience. By rationally I mean without any emotion attached to his thinking - based on the facts only. This is where it becomes tough as it is hard for most to view any experience without using their own personal prejudices, emotions or past experiences.
My RC grandparents centered their lives around the pageantry of their icon filled mini basilica and my Lutheran grandparents stuck to the independent austerity of the forlorn little clapboard hut out on the Prairie...they were all great people..I couldn't understand it.
Went through my PentecHOSTILE phase at the worst possible time (80s) trying to expunge my teenage years and find an answer to what's it all about Alfie! Failed miserably thanks to the war in my brain over the historical accuracy of the source (especially Genesis) since we were supposed to accept every comma as divine.
Now I am presently satisfied that religious experiences are electro/chemically inducted and that our species has yet to adapt to living outside of a clan setting.
I adore the calm respite of Agnosticism. Not the fence sitting waiting to be a full blown Atheist kind..just the OK I honestly think that 'Someone' had to have dreamed up the Big Bang and we will probably NEVER know why there is a disconnect between us...but that's alright. We have only seriously (and honestly)started examining ourselves for a couple of hundred years at best.
I won't be around when we get to a point where the whole world stops playing mygodisbiggerthanyourgod and that's OK. All I know is that I am at peace with admitting that we don't know..and that those zealots on all sides who say they do know are trying as hard to convince themselves as they are trying to tell me.
We are at the centre of it all simply naked Hominids who advanced at a glacial pace (but drag around a HUGE sack of crude survival traits) that are just beginning to find ourselves...hopefully it will happen just before we perfect how to destroy ourselves...50/50 at best.
Sorry for being so tedious but this is the very reason that I started blogging..although I do get sidetracked but most people are reluctant to engage in honest discussions about their faith..everything else is fair game but for some reason it is off limits. Whatever.
boy thats a mouthfull...
I wish i had a whole day to read in more depth the plethora of responses, I enjoyed many of them.
But, to get to the point, if it is possible.
You ask a question that I've been asking for many years, and continue to this day. It is my conviction, now, at this time, that the answer is a gift.
Certainty is a gift, a blessing, and a burden. I think, that if God were to give this gift of certainty with no strings attached, we'd possibly take it for granted. I think God wants us to work very hard in seeking a experience of Him.
To be more direct, the basis, that I understand, is having a clear heart that knows through experience, the difference between ego and "not ego" (not a good term, but we have a lack of common terms that conjure similar notions.)
Some signs that I have learned to discern a "religious" experience from a imaginative one are:
a) it should point to God, and not the ego
b) It would come from 'outside' one's self, in the sense that it is different that just a thought that occurs in your mind. Anyone who has had had a vivid inspiration I think understands this.
c) referring to a) the experience could highlight some characteristic of God such as Peace, Love, Unity, Compassion, Power, Expansiveness, etc. One's cultural/spiritual leanings might color how this is perceived.
This is a incomplete list that I understand to define such an experience, as I am still seeking, and am hoping through reading and listening to you all here and elsewhere in discovering more and other means to knowing the difference.
No doubt, Paul will have a number of questions and suggestions to toy with my response and I can't wait!
oh, I just noticed your long response Paul, I will have to read and digest that too.. I wish I saw that before I typed all this...
Suffering is a topic I definitely plan to go into… (I guess I can't really avoid it... Ouch!)
The uniqueness and the common features of human experience... both exist, so I think it's a matter of whichever one we may want to focus attention on.
JANICE and HOMO ESCAPEONS: It seems to me that you're each pointing out, in different ways, how reluctant people can be to apply critical thought to religion and spirituality - or even listen to it! Why is that, anyway? That might make for an interesting post. Maybe H.E.’s “mygodisbiggerthanyourgod” suggests at least one important part of the answer.
KEVIN: It's late and I want to address your comment thoughtfully - either here tomorrow or maybe I'll turn it into a post, not sure which.
Looking over this thread, I have to say I continue to be struck by the group of people who post comments. I've got to rate my blog A+ on the thoughtfulness, in all senses of the word, of the commentators who stop by. Thanks!
Of 40,400,000 Google entries for
"Original Faith",
your site is up there as number one!
A fine and wondrous sight to see...
(but you probably already know this--)
I lost the address and had to Google it...
You said it...
Hello Paul
(My tiny input)
Miracles - absolutely!
Visions or psychosis – either or both.
Of course, nowadays there are a lot of theatrics and mass psychosis at huge events. There is also a lot of "peer pressure" to act and react a certain way.
However, that does not mean that the "individual" experience is not a highly spiritual one.
Does it really matter how one does arrive at a spiritual experience?
But, I do think it matters how one arrives at a “religious” one.
There is so much we are yet to understand about quantum and entanglement physics that even speculating of any “impossibility” is somewhat “un-cool”.
(And, what about the "God" gene?)
Keep well
:)
It is wonderful to have you back!
I am so sorry, but somehow I missed seeing your comment on my blog a little while back!
It was while I was away from blogging!
Hope you are doing well!
Margie
ANGELDUST: Good point. Sometimes there's drama/acting involved...
As far as the science connections to religion go, I sure don't know enough about science. A lot of what I've happend to hear along these lines strikes me as pretty speculative.
MARGIE, glad you're back thanks for stopping by -
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