Religious Experiences Flashcards
Religious experience
Visions
A vision has a sensory characteristic and it is where external objects, sounds or figures appear before the recipient. They can also have an intellectual quality if it brings the recipient(s) a message of inspiration, insight or instruction. Some dreams can involve visions which provides the recipient images or dream-narrative not normally available to the recipient. Sensory can be seen by groups or individuals. Imaginative or dream-based tend to be seen by only individuals at a time.
Religious experience
Conversion
William James
Conversions are usually personal expenses but can be communal. Conversion usually relates to a situation where people change religion from one to another or from a non religious standpoint to religious belief and it does not have to be due to another experience although they can lead to conversion.
William James understood them only in psychological terms but he discussed a number of features they had. They are gradual or sudden. They involve giving up of free will either freely or with resistance. It can be sought or unexpected.
Religious experience
Mysticism
Ed Miller
Mysticism is a wide area but there are key similarities in that it usually involves a platonic view of reality where there is a ladder which can be climbed through regular practice and divine assistance so that the individual can transcend the reality and gain unity with the ultimate reality.
There are five notable forms of mysticism
1. Transcendent, not localisable in space or time
2. Ineffable, not expressible in language
3. Noetic, conveying illumination, truth
4. Ecstatic, filling the soul with bliss, peace
5. Unitive, uniting the souls with reality
Religious experience
Prayer
Teresa of Avila
Prayer in itself can be seen as a religious experience as it is a form of communicating with God and uniting oneself with him. Teresa of Avila believed there were four main stages to prayer in order to reach true union with God.
The first known as Prayer of quiet is when one is completely captivated by God’s love. Operating on a musical level where they experience peace and spiritual delight. Can lead the individual to faint
The second is prayer of simple union. God implants himself in the soul. God has been it and it has been God.
The third is spiritual marriage. It includes a painful longing of wanting to spend every possible moment alone with the divine spouse and rejection all which prevent this.
The final is mystical marriage. It is where complete union with the divine is felt to the extent of intimate and perceptive awareness and knowledge and understanding of the person of the divine is felt.
Religious experience
Mysticism
William James interpretation
He believed there were four classifications of mysticism.
Ineffability, the recipient is unable to give an account of the experience in words and that it’s quality must be directly experienced and cannot be transferred to others. It’s is more of a feeling than knowledge.
Noetic quality, states of insight into depths of truth. Revelations and illuminations full of significance and importance and provides a sense of authority for after time.
Transiency, states which cannot be maintained for long, beyond the limit which they fade into light of day. Can be imperfectly reproduced in memory and is recognised when there is another occurrence and leads to development of inner richness and importance.
Passivity, the feeling of being grasped and held by a superior power and can lead to an action such as speech or writing which the recipient may not remember or on the other hand they may have some recollection of what happened along with a sense of importance. The divide here is full of a mix of experiences.
