Religious Experience Flashcards
Quote from St. Theresa of Aveila
” I saw nothing with the eyes of the body, nothing with the eyes of the soul.”
Give the three classifications of religious experience
Key quotation used by Otto
“Holy, holy, holy” Lord- Isiah 6:3
What three words did otto use to describe Numinous exsperiences
Rudolf Otto on Numinous experiences
Otto defined mystical religious experiences as “numinous”, deriving from the latin word ‘numen’ meaning divine power. It involves feelings of awe and wonder in the presence of an all-powerful being. It is an experience of something ‘Wholly other’ – completely different to anything else.
Otto thought too much focus had been put on the idea that God could be known through logical argument. He insisted numinous experiences were non-rational. This does not mean irrational, it means a way of knowing that doesn’t involve reasoning.
Otto uses language to describe the experience but insists that the feelings involved are unique and unlike anything ordinary.
William James on mystical experiences
James was a philosopher and a psychologist who claimed that religious experiences occur in different religions and have similar features. People who engage in practices to have religious experiences are often called ‘Mystics’. Their experiences are called ‘Mystical experiences’, meaning intense and totally immersive. They don’t just involve distorted visual experience, seeing images and visions or hearing voices. They are unlike anything in normal experience. They often involve a sense of unity with some kind of higher power or even with the universe itself. He wasn’t concerned with proving miracles, but thier psychological benefits, and believed they could be induced even by drugs.
James’ four criteria which characterise all mystical religious experiences:
▪︎Ineffable – the experience is beyond language and cannot be put into words to accurately described.
▪︎Noetic – some sort of knowledge or insight is gained
▪︎Transient – the experience is temporary
▪︎Passive – the experience happens to a person; the person doesn’t make the experience happen
Quote from James about the innefability of Mystical experiences
They “ defy expression “
James’ pragmatism argument
James was not satisfied with the attempt to dismiss religious experiences as mere hallucinations. He pointed out that, unlike hallucinations, religious experiences can have positive and profound life-changing effects, which we can observe. This is a reason to think religious experiences are not just hallucinations.
James was most interested in the effects religious experiences had on people’s lives and argued that the validity of the experience depended upon those effects. This is because James was a Pragmatist – a philosophical view on epistemology which states that if something is good for us or works, then that is evidence of its truth.
James’ argument of plurality
James’ argument is that there must be an explanation of why these four criteria are found in religious experiences in different cultures across the world. This is an interesting point that comes out of James’ observations. It clearly can’t be chance. So, what is the reason for religious experiences having these similar features?
James’ explanation is that religious experiences really are coming from a higher spiritual reality. Writers such as W. Stace developed this argument much more explicitly, claiming that the universality of certain features of religious experiences is good evidence that they are real.
Walter Stace on mystical experiences as extroverted and introvertive
Extrovertive mystical experience is non-sensuous. The world of material objects is still seen but seen with non-sensuous unity. The division of the world into separate objects is dissolved and everything appears to be unified.
Introvertive mystical experience involves the transcendence of all sensory experience and our sense of self is replaced by mystical consciousness. We lose the sense that we are a self that is separate from the world. The normal intellect is not functioning; it is a non-intellectual experience. Meaning sub conscious, non rational. This is a higher form.
Challenges to and of verifying religious experiences
Hume - Maximally improbable. The fact they are so personal means they can never be empirically verified.
Freud- it is “ wish fulfillment” we see what we desire to see.A person lost in a desert can be so desperate for water that they hallucinate it. This is called a mirage. Similarly, humans can be so desperately afraid of death and the difficulties of life that they can delude themselves that there is a God who will take care of them and an afterlife
A naturalistic explanation is one which attempts to provide a scientific account of why something happens. In the case of religious experiences, naturalistic explanations could be:
Psychological: e.g., prayer, meditation, mental illness, mass hysteria, social compliance.
Physiological: e.g., random brain hallucinations, drugs, alcohol, fasting, sleep deprivation.
Quote about mystery of God from James
” God is either a mystery or nothing at all”
What does Otto say about the importance of religious experiences ?
Otto claims Numinous experiences are the core of any religion ‘worthy of the name’. For Otto, it is fundamental to true religion that individuals should have a sense of a personal encounter with the divine. This means that Numinous religious experiences are the true core of religion, whereas the teachings and holy books and so on are not the true core of a religion.
