Religious Experience Flashcards
Corporeal visions
- empirical, as they are mediated through the physical senses
- the visionary sees the figure/object in the same way as someone would see a chair
Example:
- the 18 visions of Mary that Bernadette experiences (she saw a ‘small young lady’)
Imaginative visions
- visions mediated through ‘the mind’s eye’ and not through physical sight
- often take the form of dreams
Example:
- Joseph’s dream, where he was told that Mary was pregnant due to the Holy Spirit and that he was to marry her
Intellectual visions
- no visual image
- defy description
- the experience enlightens/illuminates the soul
- direct cognition of reality
Example:
Saul’s conversion
An experience of the numinous
- a presence and reality that cannot be understood with the senses or intellect
- a sense of the holy, minus its moral character
Elements of the numinous
- creature-feeling
- Mysterium tremendum et fascinans
Creature-feeling
the emotion of a creature, abased (degraded) and overwhelmed by its own nothingness in contrast to that which is supreme above all creatures
Mysterium tremendum et fascinans
A Latin term that means ‘fearful and attractive mystery’
Mysterium - something far removed from humanity that can be experienced but not understood, which elicits a response of awe and wonder
Tremendum - the fearsome experience of God’s overwhelming majesty and energy, elicits creature-feeling
Fascinans - the compulsive and attractive nature of the experience creates desire for a relationship with this Being
Explanation of the numinous - C.S. Lewis’s example
- if you were told there was a tiger in the next room, you would feel fear
- if you were told it was a ghost, you would feel fear, but of a different kind due to its uncanniness
- if you were told it was a spirit, you would feel wonder and awe but also dread
The four marks of mystical experiences
- Ineffability
- Noetic quality
- Transiency
- Passivity
Ineffability
- a private experience that makes sense only to other mystics
- it cannot be adequately described in words
Noetic quality
- the encounter gives a genuine insight into truths
- it gives rise to knowledge, causing the recipient to learn something
- they consist of non-rational and intuitive rather than intellectual knowledge
Transiency
- the experience is usually short, almost always no more than 1-2 hours
- with time, it becomes more difficult to reproduce in the memory, but its continuing significance is seen in any further experiences
- it has a life-transforming effect on the individual’s view of life
Passivity
- the experience controls the mystic, whose will is unable to direct what happens
- this may result in unusual activity, e.g. Teresa of Ávila is said to have levitated
Religious experience
An experience of or encounter with God within a religious framework. These are spontaneous - the recipient does not seek the experience
Mystical experience
Often transcends religious boundaries and involves a direct, ineffable encounter with what is perceived as ultimate reality. These are sought in some way.
What mysticism is not (according to Stace)
- misty, foggy, vague, or sloppy
- mystery-mongering (deliberately mystifying others, mystery in the sense of parapsychology (e.g. telekinesis), hocus-pocus (meaningless talk)
- visions and voices
What mysticism is (according to Stace)
- non-sensuous, non-intellectual
- formless, shapeless, odorless, soundless
- involves the apprehension of an ultimate non-sensuous unity in all things
Features of introvertive experiences
- pure consciousness
- non-spacial and non-temporal (not related to space/time)
- sense of reality
- sense of absolute peace
- sense of the holy
- ineffable
Features of extrovertive experiences
- all things are One
- a sense of the One as inner subjectivity or life in all things
- sense of reality
- sense of absolute peace
- sense of the holy
- ineffable
Introvertive mystical experiences
- the ultimate mystical experience
- sense experience is totally suppressed
- there is no awareness of the world
- there is no intellectual function
- ordinary human experience is replaced with mystical consciousness in which the ‘I’ is absent
Example - Arthur Koestler floating in the river, where the river and ordinary consciousness both cease to exist
Extrovertive mystical experiences
- a halfway house to the introvertive experience
- normal objects are seen with the physical senses, but they are transfigured so that the non-sensuous unity of all things shines through them
Example - American N.M. observing a backyard, where everything suddenly seemed to have an ‘inside’, where the glow of light came from within
Principle of Credulity
If it seems to a subject that x is present, then probably x is present; what one seems to perceive is probably so
Special considerations that limit the Principle of Credulity
- Unreliable perceptions e.g. LSD
- Claims that cannot be repeated
- The cause of the experience was probably not there
- If the cause was there, it probably didn’t cause the experience
Principle of Testimony
The experience of others are (probably) as they report them
Michael Martin: objections to Swinburne
- Strongest man of County Cork
- Virgin Mary and Kali
- Reverse Principle of Credulity
- If the Principle of Credulity is believed, then it is possible for anything to exist
Michael Martin: the strongest man of County Cork
- you cannot tell from only the voice that the being you heard was omnipotent, omniscient and completely free
- you cannot distinguish the voice from that of an enormously powerful but finite being
- you cannot tell that it is not an infinitely powerful evil being
Michael Martin: Virgin Mary and Kali
- Kali, the goddess of death and destruction, with bloodshot eyes, fangs etc.
- the Virgin Mary was beautiful and gentle
- however, they are both associated with creation and fertility
- it is absurd to say that God appears to different religious individuals in different forms
Michael Martin: Reverse Principle of Credulity
if it seems (epistemically) to a subject S that x is absent, then probably x is absent
Michael Martin: if PC is to be believed, anything could exist
one would land oneself in the ‘swamp of gullibilism’
anything could exist, ranging from lesser beings to creatures of legends and myths
Challenges to religious experience
- mainly experienced by the unsupported evidence of individuals
- subjective and private
- ineffable
- can be accounted for by natural explanations
Sigmund Freud’s challenge to religious experiences
- religion is wish-fulfilment by the unconscious mind
- the idea of God helps us control fear of the unknown and death
- religious visions are hallucinations caused by our need to have control over our helpless state
Temporal Lobe Epilepsy - challenge to religious experiences
- people who suffer from this are prone to having religious experiences
- when the temporal lobes seize, misfiring neurons can affect memory, emotions, processing of sounds and smells, and feelings of conviction and insight
God Helmet - challenge to religious experiences
- uses magnetic coils placed on either side of the head to stimulate the temporal lobes
- leads to experiences akin to those of religion
Hallucinogenic drugs - challenge to religious experiences
- these are known as ‘entheogens’ - generating/becoming the Divine from within
- people who take them can have intense spiritual and religious experiences
