Religious Experience

What is religious experience?

• non-empirical
• "mental event" of which you are aware of
• can be spontaneous, can be a mental event of which you are aware
• makes people more aware of God
• used to bring people closer to God
• unique
• personal
• helps people to live a better life
• Saul's conversion (acts 9) was a spontaneous religious experience

Training and meditation of the Sufi

• train themselves to enter a state of sleeping without sleep
• knowledge revealed to them from the Divine 
• disconnect themselves from outward senses
• focus their energy on within

Visions

• when people believe they have seen or heard something supernatural
• intellectual- brings knowledge or understanding from God/ the divine- ie Jacob's ladder
• imaginary- strengthens faith and is seen in the mind's eye
• corporeal- the figure is externally present- ie St Bernadette's vision of the Virgin Mary

Numinosity

• the feeling of the "holy"- awe, fascination, religious awareness, the smallness of self
• Rudolph Otto- feel the presence of an awesome power but feel seperate from it
• Burning bush

Conversions

• regeneration and and assurance of the truth of the divine
• lead to greater understanding of faith
• lead to adoption of that religious faith
• often come as result of a numinous experience
• Volitional- a conscious conversion- slow development og new moral and spiritual habits
• Self-surrender- an unconscious conversion- a man's extemity is God's opportunity
• William James' conclusions on conversion
  1.sudden conversion is very real to those whove experienced it
  2. for methodists, salvation isn't truly recieved until a person has been through a crisis, like conversion
  3.those having a sudden conversion feel it to be a miracle rather than a natural process
  4. even when seen as a natural process, it's thought to have been inspired by the Divine

Mystical Experiences

• a direct and intimate experience of God
• divine- a being that is perfect, all powerful and not comparable to anything human
• factors that enable their recognition:
  -knowledge of the ultimate reality is gained
  -a sense of freedom from the limitations of being human is experienced
  -people feel to be "at one" with the divine
  -a sense of bliss/ serenity 
• described as being being the closest that a human can come to meeting the divine

Types of Mysticism 

• Happold- Mysticism: A Study and Anthology (1963)
• the mysticism of love and union:
  -the longing to escape to loneliness; craving a union with God and loss of self
  -Augustine "our hearts are restless until they find rest in thee"
  -we want to be individual but also want to get back to God
• the mysticism of knowledge and understanding
  -we feel as though we need to work out the "secret of the universe"
  -we want to know the whole story, not just parts
  -we look for answers through intuitive, experiential knowledge

Types of Mystical Experience

• soul mysticism
  - the soul is hidden
  -through mysticism we find the soul and find self-sullfillment
  -relates Buddhist and Hindu philosphies
• nature mysticism
  -God is immanent
  -observing beauty/vastness
  -Psalm 19 v 1- "the heavens declare the glory of God"
• God-mysticism
  -the soul wants…