Religious experiences can be characterized generally as experiences that seem to the person having them to be of some objective reality and to have some religious import. That reality can be an individual, a state of affairs, a fact, or even an absence, depending on the religious tradition the experience is a part of.
What is a religious experience?
Religious Experience. Religious experiences can be characterized generally as experiences that seem to the person having them to be of some objective reality and to have some religious import. That reality can be an individual, a state of affairs, a fact, or even an absence, depending on the religious tradition the experience is a part of.
Why can’t we explain religion?
Since we can’t account for religious language by linking it to experiences of the physical world, such language is meaningless. Even though religious claims look in every way like ordinary assertions about the world, their lack of empirical consequences makes them meaningless.
What is a spiritual experience?
A spiritual experience is an encounter with something or someone other than yourself that is not based upon material phenomena. The experience leaves a person with a new and profound sense of awareness or understanding regarding God, a truth, or other religious expressions.
Do religious experience claims really work?
The most natural thing to say about religious experience claims is that they work the same way (on the assumption that they give the subject of the experience, who is making the claim, any justification for his or her beliefs).
What are the elements of religious experience?
All religious experience can be described in terms of three basic elements: first, the personal concerns, attitudes, feelings, and ideas of the individual who has the experience; second, the religious object disclosed in the experience or the reality to which it is said to refer; third, the social forms that arise from ...
What makes a spiritual experience?
A spiritual experience is described as an incident that goes beyond human understanding in how this experience could have happened in the first place. These types of experiences include situations like dodging death when you were in an otherwise dangerous scenario or unexplainable monetary gain.
Why is religious experience important?
A religious experience has significance for the person who experiences it. It involves a sense of the holy or numinous . A person may say they had personally 'seen', 'heard' or 'felt' God. The experience cannot be proved, but the individual will be convinced of the reality of what has happened.
What is the effect of religious experience?
Researchers show that the religious experience also have therapeutic implications. It is able to change the views of a person to themselves, their own lives, the world and to other people. It liberate more creative power in man (Płużek 1986). Religious people discover in themselves the feelings of gratitude to God.
What is a religious experience examples?
Examples include experiencing God in nature, in the starry sky, or a flower, or the like. A second person standing nearby would see exactly the same sky or flower, but would not necessarily have the further religious content to his or her experience.
What are some examples of spiritual experiences?
Music, art, literature, nature, religious worship, prayer and meditation, psychosis, sex, stress, alcohol, and drugs have all been shown to trigger transcendent spiritual episodes (27).
What is the argument from religious experience?
The argument from religious experience is an argument for the existence of God. It holds that the best explanation for religious experiences is that they constitute genuine experience or perception of a divine reality. Various reasons have been offered for and against accepting this contention.
How common are religious experiences?
Within the population in general, he found between a third and one half feel that they have had a meaningful religious experience.
Are religious experiences illusions?
Perhaps religious experiences are not pure delusions or illusions. Perhaps religious experiences are only encountered by those who have an ability to experience them. Perhaps there are people, even many people, who are "deaf" to such experiences.
What causes mystical experience?
Reveries can also be induced voluntarily. During waking consciousness, visualizing and dwelling emotionally on a mental image can induce a reverie in which a vision may occur. Mystical use has also been made of hypnagogic states, which immediately precede sleep.
What is the relation between love and religious experience?
THE BASICS Both love and religion are perceived to be central to human life. In many respects, romantic love resembles a kind of religion. Both are similar in that they dictate basic beliefs, demand fundamental moral standards, and bestow a high moral status upon their objects.
How do I know if I have had a spiritual experience?
If you're frequently experiencing mind-blowing synchronicities, like thinking about someone and randomly running into them the next day, or seeing angel numbers all the time, that's a sign you're on your spiritual path, Kaiser says. Similarly, feelings of déjà vu aren't uncommon either.
How do you develop a spiritual experience?
Whether you're curious about developing a practice for the first time or you're eager to deepen your spirituality, consider trying the following:Prayer & Meditation. ... Give Back With Time & Money. ... Attend a Spiritual Retreat. ... Hold Space for Rituals. ... Experience “Carbonated Holiness”More items...•
What is a spiritual experience in AA?
What is a spiritual experience? The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, (pg. 567-568, 4th Edition) defines spiritual experience as: “…the personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism (addiction) has manifested itself among us in many different forms.”
What is a spiritual experience in Christianity?
A spiritual experience in a Christian context signifies the interaction of God. Furthermore, spiritual experience is an important aspect of Christian spirituality that in essence indicates a relationship and interaction between the believer and God.
What are the elements of religious experience?
All religious experience can be described in terms of three basic elements: first, the personal concerns, attitudes, feelings, and ideas of the individual who has the experience ; second, the religious object disclosed in the experience or the reality to which it is said to refer ; third, the social forms that arise from the fact that the experience in question can be shared. Although the first two elements can be distinguished for purposes of analysis, they are not separated within the integral experience itself. Religious experience is always found in connection with a personal concern and quest for the real self, oriented toward the power that makes life holy or a ground and a goal of all existence. A wide variety of individual experiences are thus involved, among which are attitudes of seriousness and solemnity in the face of the mystery of human destiny; feelings of awe and of being unclean evoked by the encounter with the holy; the sense of a power or a person who both loves and judges humanity; the experience of being converted or of having the course of life directed toward the divine; the feeling of relief stemming from the sense of divine forgiveness; the sense that there is an unseen order or power upon which the value of all life depends; the sense of being at one with the divine and of abandoning the egocentric self.
What is social expression of religious experience?
The social expression of religious experience results in the formation of specifically religious groups distinct from such natural groups as the family, the local society, and the state. Religious communities, including brotherhoods, mystery cults, synagogues, churches, sects, and monastic and missionary orders, ...
What are the two most important concepts that have been developed by theologians and philosophers for the interpretation of the divine?
The two most important concepts that have been developed by theologians and philosophers for the interpretation of the divine are transcendence and immanence ; each is meant to express the relation between the divine and finite realities.
Why does Whitehead put emphasis on the solitariness of religious experience?
There has been some difference of opinion on the point; Whitehead, for example, put emphasis on the “solitariness” of religious experience precisely in order to deny the claim of those who, like Émile Durkheim, a French sociologist, characterized religion as essentially a social fact.
Is religious experience a personal concern?
Although the first two elements can be distinguished for purposes of analysis, they are not separated within the integral experience itself. Religious experience is always found in connection with a personal concern and quest for the real self, oriented toward the power that makes life holy or a ground and a goal of all existence.
Is the divine immanent?
The divine is said to transcend humanity and the world when it is viewed as distinct from both and not wholly identical with either; the divine is said to be immanent when it is viewed as wholly or partially identical with some reality within the world, such as humanity or the cosmic order. The conception of the divine as an impersonal sacred order ...
How to know if your spiritual experience is true?
The only way to know if your spiritual experiences are true experiences from God is to compare them with Scripture. The Bible is the final authority in all things spiritual. So, if a religious experience in any way contradicts with the word of God, then it is not from God. However, if it does not contradict the word of God, ...
What is spiritual experience?
A spiritual experience is an encounter with something or someone other than yourself that is not based upon material phenomena. The experience leaves a person with a new and profound sense of awareness or understanding regarding God, a truth, or other religious expressions. The religious experience can be visual, auditory, ...
What do people in the occult see?
People in the occult have claimed to see manifestations of spirits that appear and disappear, hear voices, see objects move, etc. Other people have claimed religious experiences when they say they have suddenly and inexplicably “known” that something is going to happen, and it does. Sometimes a spiritual experience can be a heavy feeling ...
Can God put a thought in our mind?
God could put a thought in our mind that we might think is ours, or direct our paths without us being aware of it. I have had spiritual experiences and will describe them. Believe them or not. Because spiritual experiences are by nature “experiences,” they are inherently subjective.
Can you have a spiritual experience without knowing it?
It’s possible to have experiences that are combinations of the two extremes. It’s possible to have a spiritual experience without even knowing it. Biblically speaking, we could encounter angels in the form of people and not know it ( Heb. 13:2 ). God could put a thought in our mind that we might think is ours, or direct our paths without us being ...
Types of Religious Experience
- Reports of religious experiences reveal a variety of differentkinds. Perhaps most are visual or auditory presentations (visions andauditions), but not through the physical eyes or ears. Subjects report“seeing” or “hearing,” but quickly disavow anyclaim to seeing or hearing with bodily sense organs. Such experiencesare easy to dismiss as hallucinati...
Language and Experience
- Many have thought that there is some special problem with religiouslanguage, that it can’t be meaningful in the same way thatordinary language is. The Logical Positivists claimed thatlanguage is meaningful only insofar as it is moored in our experiencesof the physical world. Since we can’t account for religiouslanguage by linking it to experiences of the physical world, s…
Epistemological Issues
- Since the subjects of religious experiences tend to take them to bereal experiences of some external reality, we may ask what reason thereis to think they are right. That is to say, do religious experiencesamount to good reasons for religious belief? One answer to thatquestion is what is often called the Argument from ReligiousExperience: Religious experiences are in all relevant res…
The Diverse Objects of Religious Experience
- Just as there are a variety of religions, each with its own claimsabout the nature of reality, there are a variety of objects and statesof affairs that the subjects of these experiences claim to be awareof. Much analytic philosophy of religion has been done in Europe andthe nations descended from Europe, so much of the discussion has beenin terms of God as conceived of in the Jewish, …