Religious Experience

Ultimate reality =

> The absolute nature of all things 

3 main understandings:

• A personal being 
• An impersonal being- Transcendent. God is the "unmoved mover" or the "first cause with no cause". Does not get involved with creation = ambiguous  
• Internal truth or principle

Christianity :

• Apostles creed = God is the maker of heaven and earth 
• Bible =God is one. New testament = "God is love"
• Nicene Creed= God return to earth to judge the dead " he shall come to judge the quick and the dead". Baptism is needed to repent and forgive sins 

Buddhism:

• the truth is "seeing things as they really are" (Cush)
• Buddhism isn't fixed and the idea of UR is fixed 
• Ultimate reality= impermanent 
  

David Greely: Triggers

• Prayer
• Beauties of nature 

Alistair Hardy: 21 Triggers

• Beauty of nature 
  
• Illness
• Drugs 
• Prospect of own death 
• Prayer or meditation 

David Hay 

• Believes that RE is a part of our biological makeup
  
• RE's are natural and part of our position as advanced animals of evolution 

Rudolph Otto

• Otto used the term numinosity to refer to being in a presence of an awesome power
  
• Religion must be derived from a being separate from this world 

Ninian Smart

• Invisible and visible world 

A.E.Taylor 

• It is the person with the artists' eyes sees beauty everywhere and similarly, the religious person sees everything in terms of reality of God
• Believer who sees things correctly

John Wisdom

• Gardener example 
• Two people looking at a neglected garden. One is convinced that there must be a gardener.
  
• They have own interpretations 
• Subjectivity 

Martin Buber 

• Talks of an encounter with God as "I/Thou" encounter- not an it 
• He is a personal reality 

Carolin Davies

• "Something akin to sensory experience"
  
• Feelings like a reality - feeling is consciously aware of 
  

W.T.Stace

• Blessedness- previously unknown bliss and calm generated
• Unified Vision- All things in harmony and united 
• Sense of reality- Noetic knowledge or awareness is gained 
• Timeless and spaceless- Time stands still and has no meaning 
• Paradox- rules of logic don't apply 
• Appreciation- Appreciation of divine and Holy 
• Ineffability- Can't communicate the feelings generated by experience
  
• Lost sense of self- priorities, and will of divine are all important 

Swinburn:

Public:

• Individual sees God in action in public e.g. "the sunset is really the hand of God 
• A breach of natural law.

Private:

• Experiences which cannot be described using normal language 
  
• Individual 

Schleiermacher 

• We all have a sense of total dependence 
• We have a deep intuition that enables us to perceive and appreciate the numinous 
• "Sense of absolute dependence"- parts of the mind which are different from that used for rational thinking 

St Bonaventure- 3 stages to mysticism 

1. Purgative stage - purified and prepared by prayer and disciplines 

2. The Illuminative stage- Mystic enjoys an experience which is emotionally and spiritually illuminating. Begin to realize truths and develop deeper understandings 

3. The Unitive Stage- Mystic enjoys a sense of oneness or closeness with God 

Hans Kung 

• Closing the senses and the external world 
• Dissolving the self in God 

William James 

4 features:

1. Passivity 

2. Ineffability 

3. Noetic

4. Transcience 

William James hierarchy of mystical experience:

1. Sense of deeper meaning 

2. Surrounded by unexplained

3. Feeling of unity 

Bernard McGuinn 

2 ways of knowing:

Mathein:

> Intellectual effort 

> God and truth don't exist here 

Pathein:

> Direct experience 

> Truth and God are here

Dionysius 

World of sense:

> What we see,smell,touch,hear

> Not real world 

World of ideal form:

>Invisible to us 

> Truth exists here

M.Persinger 

• Suggested that RE occur at the same time as micro-seizures in the temporal lobe of the brain (which controls higher process thoughts)

Ludwig Feuerbach 

• Experiences of god were simply human projection - imagination 
• Humans are driven by fear of their own mortality and uncertainty of world 
  

Walter. Pahnke 

• Transiency- Passing quality which makes it different from day to day religious experience
• Lasting positive changes such as:
•  Personality integration 
  
• Greater sensitivity to others 
• Greater appreciation of the value of life 
• Greater sense of the value of mystical experience 

Researchers in Houston and Masters

• Developed programs which enable subjects to sustain religious type experiences
  
• Subjects gave following reaction:
• Distortion of time and body perceptions 
• Muscular relaxation 
• Euphoria 
• Anxiety 
• A trance like state