Lecture 9: Religious Experience

• It includes a whole range of subjective experiences in which individuals report to perceive (see, hear, feel) something out of the ordinary that is related to transcendence. 
• It is often in the context of religion, but sometimes out of it; generally mediated through nature, silence and meditation.
• Mystical experience’ is related to the generic religious experience, but is often within a particular religious tradition.

CHARACTERISTICS OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE ACCORDING TO WILLIAM JAMES

1. INSIGHT INTO REALITY: The religious experience gives a direct insight  into the depths of reality, which cannot be gained by pure intellec­tion.  The knowledge gained through this is real and significant.

2. UNITY: In this experience of knowing there is no subject‑object di­chotomy, but an integral undivided consciousness. As a result, the privacy of the individual self is broken into, and invaded by an universal self, which the individual feels as his own.

3. TRANSCENDENCE OF TIME & SPACE: The subject passes into an realm of  eternity. One experiences positive feelings like joy, peace, love, etc. One does not view death fearfully.

4. SENSE OF SACRED : The presence of sacredness in reality is recognised  – what some religions call, “God”. Whatever the subject experiences, they are experienced as “numinous” ‑ clothed in glory, charged with intensi­ty of being.

5. TRANSIENCY : Just as the mystical experience is always “given”, it  cannot be prolonged by effort. It just passes into an afterglow and remains as a memory, though it may recur.

6. INEFFABILITY : The content of the experience defies all lingual ex­pression.  No adequate report of its contents can be given in words. One has to  have the experience of the same, to adequately comprehend it. Like, one should have been in love to understand a lover’s state of  mind.

James: Outcome of Religious Experience – ‘Saintliness’, a set of inner conditions:

1. A feeling of being in a wider life than that of this world’s selfish little interests; and a  conviction, not merely intellectual, but as it were sensible, of the existence of an Ideal Power – God or abstract moral ideas, civic or patriotic utopias, or inner versions of holiness or right – something larger than our life.

2.  A sense of the friendly continuity of the ideal power with our own life, and a willing self‑surrender to its control.

3.  An immense elation and freedom, as the out­lines of the confining selfhood melt down.

4.  A shifting of the emotional center from the self to a loving and harmonious affection towards everything around (compassion).