Personal and/or religious experience is particularly revealing for developing a fuller understanding or ourselves and/God? (35) Examine and comment on this claim with reference to the topic you have investigated? (15) “There is no single thing that can be bottled and neatly labelled as a religious experience”-Harvey. A religious experience is an outward encounter with something divine also known as God. This experience is set apart from any other experience as it is based on religious context.It is the contact of feeling something far greater than one’s self “connection with holiness”. It seems to happen at any time and it is described as likewise being in ‘another dimension’- as one perceive themselves unaware of their surroundings; feeling as if it happens directly outside the body- in a spiritual realm- given the name “supernatural event”.
There are many types of religious experiences that were once very rare and are becoming more and more frequent amongst believers of many faiths and non-believers.During this period of time people feel loved, joyful, peaceful and blessed and other times gain some ultimate truth concerning life as well as, by and large, alters and changes behaviour and attitudes. According to some scholars in view of religious experiences humans cannot fully understand or are not yet equipped to explain the experience and as a result this is where the complex issue lies, posing a question on whether experiences are reliable, credible and are valid in terms of understanding human nature and Gods nature.The purpose of this essay is to identify what religious experiences are, using case studies and scholars to help illustrate how they reveal an understanding of Gods nature as well as human nature.
Richard Swinburne, a 19th century Philosopher quotes “omnipotent and perfectly good creator will seek to interact with his creatures in particular with human persons capable of knowing him”.This highlights the question of why a spiritually supernatural divine and Supreme Being known as God want to reveal himself to his creatures that are of the physical. There are numbers of ways in which God reveals himself to humankind through music, the meditation of Holy Scriptures, people through preaching or an act of love, prayers of supplication, whereby peoples prayers are answered, they feel that God is for that person, and of worship, crises and so on.This is either subjective (private) that is unique or interpreted to be a direct experience from God, although it could be a veridical experience of something genuine, although Swinburne’s says according to his principle if credulity and testimony that we ought to believe the person if he or she has had a religious experience unless there is are reason why you would think they are lying.Moreover there are also objective religious experiences which are cooperate meaning many people experience it a together proving the existence of God being ‘out there’, such as the Toronto blessing (people received tongues, shaking and laughter, falling on ground and much more)which is common in the Christian faith. Testimonies from believers at the Toronto blessing said that they felt an out pour of the Holy Spirit which can be compared with The Day of Pentecost why can be found in the Act 2.
In reference to testimonies people also said it brought out wonderful joy and lifted people up to new spiritual heights as they began to walk much closer to God, like praying more, reading the Bible and evangelizing. It seems to have brought out an overwhelming sense of God’s love in their lives which led to wonderful joy and peace. This reveals to us that God does intend to make him known to human’s weather. According to William James a mystical experience can be defined as an experience that altars the state of consciousness and brings people to a new awareness of ultimate reality.William James identified 4 features that an experience should have in order to justify calling it mystical. Ineffability-This is a state of feeling which defies description.
Example what Teresa of Avilla said about mystical experience ‘I wish I could describe it… but, when I try to discover a way of doing so I find it impossible’? Noetic quality- is a state which allows revelations or insight into the depth of truths. Transiency- a brief experience but has a profoundly significant effect.Passivity is the feeling of being taken over by a superior control. F. C Happold identifies another three characteristics of the mystical experiences. Firstly, consciousness of the ones of everything – this unity can be both extroversive, where external sense impressions are left behind, or extroversive, where the person reports that he feels a part of everything.
Sense of timelessness-The subject feels beyond past, present and future, and beyond ordinary three dimensional spaces in a realm of eternity of infinity. The understanding that the ego is not the real ‘I’: This seems to be a sense that there is an unchanging self that is immoral and that lies behind the usual experience of self.E. g. Jacob Boehme (1575-1624), a Christian Protestant. His first mystical experience was at 25 years.
He was sitting one day in his room, his eyes fell upon a burnished pewter dish, which reflected he sunshine with such marvellous spender that he fell into an inward ecstasy and it seemed to him as if he could look into deepest foundations of things. He said nothing to anyone but praised and thanked God in silence. However Richard Dawkins, in his book, The God delusion, He said a religious experience is a ‘universal neurotic illness’ that is only considered as valid to someone of a ‘mere accident in history’.Dawkins argues the point that religious experiences are simply illusionary, as a God objectively that communicates with us. E. g.
through hearing voices are completely false. He also believed that religious experiences are similar to being psychotic. To illustrate his point; “If someone told you they heard someone who they could not see speaking to them, we would call them mad. But if they said it was God, we would call them religious”.
Dawkins uses examples of the ‘Manx shearwater’ (devil bird) and the evolution mask by Einstein He religious experiences are false and that they give us knowledge about ourselves and not God.If our brains and eyes cannot see the reality of a mask that seems to be hollow how we are able to perceive what is known to be a religious experience. It’s all in the mind. Conversion is a “change of direction” or “to turn around”, there are here types of conversion, from religion to faith, e. g.
St Paul on his way to Damascus, Paul was an apostle (follower) of Jesus, who converted to Christianity after Jesus' death by crucifixion, and there is no evidence he ever personally met Jesus when he was alive.According to Rambo and Farhadian 7 stages of conversion, only a few apply to Saul’s conversion. Paul was originally known as Saul of Tarsus, and a rabid persecutor of Christians. On the road to Damascus, he is said to have been visited by the resurrected Jesus, and struck blind. After his vision cleared Saul took the name of Paul, and began to proclaim the gospel, as revealed to him by Jesus the Christ. Paul's writings and preaching had a heavy influence on the Christian doctrine and is demonstrable in the many epistles he wrote which have been included in the Christian canon of Scripture.
Marx argues that “religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of the heartless, just as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people. ” Marx saw religion as an indication that something else is wrong which he believed to be capitalism and the capitalist state. Marx believed that the idea of God is a human attempt to cope with the harshness of human life and the pain resulting from social and economic deprivation.
Feuerbach also believes that Humans feel lonely and vulnerable and depend on God for comfort, as we project the image of what we want our attributes to be such as powerful, all-loving etc., and theology study of God is anthropology the study of humans as we make God and not the other way round. Therefore the only way for society to progress is for us to claim back our traits. Visions are another type of religious experiences which can be defined as something seen other than ordinary sight. An example of what a vision can be about can be places (heaven and hell).
E. g. Guru Nanak’s vision of God. At 28 years, he suddenly disappeared and returned after three days, revealing that he had a vision of God in which He made aware of His mission in life.Declaring himself to be neither a Hindu nor Muslim, he began preaching that there is only one God, who could be worshipped by any name and reached directly by any one, through abiding faith and devotion.
He neither proclaimed God as the creator on whose command moved all things and who being formless and transcendental would not assume any form nor manifest himself physically in our world as an embodied being. Rudolf Otto’s book, Das Heilige (The Idea of the Holy)- Otto tried to identify what about a religious experience that made it religious, rather than just an experience.He wanted to show that it was fundamental to religion that individuals should have a sense of a personal encounter with natural forces which he described as ‘Mysterium Tremendous et Fascinans’. That encounter would bring a sense of awe and mystery, a feeling of strangeness. Otto said that the divine would be recognised as having three main qualities: A mysterious quality, a realisation that God is incomprehensible, that God can be met and His work can be seen and yet that God can never be captured, fully understood or described.Lastly, God is recognized as being of ultimate importance and God has a quality that is both attractive and dangerous.
Otto tried to explain the feeling that God cannot be controlled, but at the same time the individual feels a sense of privilege during a religious experience. This shows that if religious experiences are of God, then they demonstrate that human beings can have communication with God and that human beings can experience God. On the other hand, (Temporal Lobe Epilepsy) Ramachandran is a neurologist who carried out extensive research on temporal lobe epilepsy.He concluded that there is an important link with temporal lobe epilepsy and religious experiences. “God on the brain”; He compared brains of people with TLE and people without TLE measuring skin resistance when looking at different types of words: neutral, sexual and religious. Temporal lobe epileptic patients showed a dramatic change in skin resistance when viewing religious words compared to those not suffering from the condition.
In temporal lobe epileptic patients, certain circuits in the brain are selectively heightened and so more conductive to mysticism and religious belief.When Persinger tested this on Richard Dwarkins he felt ‘nothing’ revealing that some people are more sensitive in the temporal lobe paralysis. Schleiermacher (1768-1834), theologian who claimed and believed religious experiences are ‘self-authenticating’ and the absence of religion was based on religious experiences, meaning it requires no other testing to see if it was genuine. Religious experience is a sincere way to interact with god or an ultimate reality, instead of acting through repetitive religious practices and dogma.A religious experience is simply the important of depending on God.
Schleiermacher believed the nature of God was one which purely spiritual, defying all of the laws of nature. It also implies that god is loving and personal. Lastly, Freud saw religious experience as a “reaction to the hostile world because we feel helpless and seek a father figure”... “Thus, we create a God to satisfy our needs”.
For Freud, a person having a mystical type of experience would be understood as regressing in the psyche to when they were most secure and happy when in their mother’s womb.He believed that religion in itself was simply a product of society who felt the need to raise a father figure. He argues that everything related to the supernatural, especially religious experiences were simply creations of the brain, and that only weak of mind can actually receive religious experiences. His argument is supported by Ramachandran’s and Persinger’s experiments. Other psychological states suggested to account for such experiences include mental illness, sexual frustrations, adolescence, guilt and particular personality types.
External deprivation are Isolation and sensory deprivation are claimed to be significant factors in explaining religious experiences of holy men living in some sort wilderness. Using sensory deprivation, Hood and Morris reported that sensory isolation combined with a religious suggestion, produces religious experiences in those who are high in intrinsic religiosity (defined as the intensity of religious belief). One explanation for this given my Michael Argyle is that the left-brain hemisphere is quietened so that messages from or made by the right hemisphere are more dominant.Most researchers think it unlikely that there will be a single gene for religious activity, but there is evidence that there is some sort of genetic component. Several studies of identical twins separated at birth and brought up separately have claimed to measure religiosity.
One could argue that God intends to communicate with his creatures (human kind) through different ways, which shows his personal and loving nature.Although many critics such as Freud believe it’s our repressed sexual unconscious desires of Oedipus and Electra stage, Feuerbach who believes it is a projection of what we intend to be, religious experiences are becoming more frequent even as subjectively or a cooperate experience, it is the core of most believers faith to seek God and spirituality– despite the fact they can be easily manipulated according to Persinger or can be caused by mental disorders such as temporal lobe epilepsy that can cause religious hallucinations, Overall I believe that there is “no God without a world and no God without a world”, as we see religious leaders and how the help form our faith and influence society as a whole making us stronger as a whole. I also believe that though some can claimed false, there are others religious experiences such as miracles or levitation that seems to break the laws of science, meaning there is a God and we do evidentially want to seek our purpose and gain some ultimate revelation concerning life which God tends to reveal to us.
