Religious experience

What is religious experience?In a broad sense, religious experience refers to

any experience of the sacred within a religious context, including religious feelings, visions, and mystical and numinous experiences

Three common featuresUniversality – significant portion of populationDiversity – some similarities, many differencesImportance – can result in world view change

RegenerativeExperience in which the experiencer

undergoes life transformation or conversion Charismatic

Experience in which special abilities, gifts, or blessings are manifested

MysticalIneffabilityNoetic qualityTransiencyPassivity

Ineffability: the experience cannot be adequately described, if it can be described at all

Noetic quality: the experiencer believes that he or she has learned something important from the experience

Transiency: the experience is temporary, and the experiencer soon returns to a “normal” state of mind

Passivity: the experience occurs without conscious decision or control, and it cannot be brought to happen at will

God/Absolute RealityIdentity or union with God or Absolute

Reality Natural

Experience with nature, even an atheist can have one

NuminousAn encounter with a separate self , will,

or power which unexpectedly and profoundly forces itself upon the consciousness of the experiencer

Briefly explain the three categories of religious experience described in this chapter. Do you think the variety of religious experiences fall neatly within them? Is there overlap?

How might a person having religious experiences differentiate between real experiences of God or the Absolute on one hand, and delusion or hallucination on the other?