ZGE 4305

Religion, Religious Experiences and Spirituality

MODULE 2
The Nature of Religious Experience and Spirituality
Prepared by ACO

M2. TOPIC OVERVIEW

In our lives, there are occurrences we experience which defy rational and scientific explanations;
we cannot understand how and why they occur. We consider them to be paranormal, miraculous
or mysterious. Have you already encountered such phenomena? Perhaps, you know someone to
be seriously ill, but suddenly healed; or you see the sun dancing, waters flowing uphill, a face
appearing at the bark of a tree. You may be indifferent to them by simply shrugging your shoulders;
you may become superstitious by evoking some magical power; or you may fault yourself by
alluding to the illusion of your senses. But these experiences may also be for you a recognition of
your developing religiosity and deepening spiritual life. The nurturing of religion and spirituality
defends of the subjective way we regard our own personal experiences as works of some being
with supernatural and divine origin. Please watch “What is the point of spirituality?” (in https://ww
w.youtube.com/watch?v=xum35-XplNY), to gain introductory ideas about this topic.

M2. OBJECTIVES
At the end of the lessons, you are expected to:
1. Relate the study of religion to philosophy and psychology.
2. Differentiate religion from spirituality.
3. Describe the various forms of religious experiences.
4. Exemplify religious experiences and spirituality through the lives of devout individuals.
5. Theorize about the nature and value of truth in religion and religious experiences.
6. Compose a story about one’s religious experience and spiritual life.

M2. READINGS

M2. Reading 1. “What is spirituality?” in https://www.ideas.org.au/uploads/resources/550/What

%20Is%20Spirituality.pdf.
M2. Reading 2. George Nickel & Diether Schonecker (2014). “Richard Swineburne’s Concept of
Religious Experience” in https://philarchive.org/archive/NICRSC-2
M2. Reading 3. William James (1896), except from Will to Believe, in https://philosophy.lander.
edu/intro/articles/james-a.pdf.
 M2. VIDEOS

M1. Video 1. “What is the point of spirituality?” (2019), in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xu

m35-XplNY.
M2. Video 2. “Gary Valenciano’s Testimony” (2015), in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lr
Bm4tLnok&t=3s
M2. Video 3. “William James: The Will to Believe” (2012), in https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=3eqoSvs47yI&t=2s

M2. LECTURE NOTES

Meaning of Spirituality

Spirituality is different from religion. By spirituality we mean an individualized kind of religion.

If religion is social, cultural and institutional, spirituality is deeply personal. For instance, in
Catholicism, people are said to be religious if they do things required by the teachings of the
church, like attending mass every Sunday, taking communions, making confessions or performing
penitence during lent. A person is spiritual if he or she do things not necessarily according to
church’s commandment, but out of personal devotions, such as praying the rosary everyday, saying
grace before meal, joining in the Baclaran novena every Wednesday, or going to Quiapo to wipe
the Black Nazarene with handkerchief. Some people may be religious because they actively
participate in the activities of the church, but not spiritual because they don’t bring their religiosity
in a personal level. Similarly, one may be spiritual without being religious. To learn more about
the meaning and type of spirituality, you may read this article: “What is spirituality?” (https://ww
w.ideas.org.au/uploads/resources/550/What%20Is%20Spirituality.pdf).

Another meaning of being spiritual concerns the life of the soul as distinct from the life of the
body. It is opposed to being materialistic, as wanting bodily needs and earthly possessions like
food, money, latest cellphone or designer jeans. Spirituality is a matter of emphasis. Rather than
prioritizing our physical desires and outside appearances, being spiritual favors more our inner
reality and existence, such as engaging in prayers and meditations, nurturing virtues and morals
within us, developing ourselves into becoming good human beings. Living a spiritual life doesn’t
mean that we do nothing and become silent while the world goes on. Instead, we become active in
our inner nature to influence the outside, as Mahatma Gandhi did what he said: “In a gentle way
you can shake the world.”

Forms of Spiritual Life

The religious traditions of the world have forms of spirituality. We will now identify some of them.
But these are only generalizations about the spiritual lives of peoples belonging to the major
religions. We will discuss the details along the course of our lessons.

There are various spiritualities found in Christianity. The fundamental view of Christian spiritual
life teaches submission and humility, as shown by Jesus Christ abiding with the will of the Father,
and by Mary submitting herself entirely to God when she said “Let your will be done”. The
spirituality of the Christian ascetics stresses pain and suffering, as it seeks to emulate the passion
of Christ. Members of the Dominican order cultivates intellectual spirituality through education
and learning, those of the Jesuit order is practical spirituality as it asserts the primacy of everyday
life, while those of the Benedictine order develops contemplative and active spirituality as
expressed in their Latin maxim ora et labora, meaning “prayer and work”. Members of the
diocesan order live a spiritual life of service because they become the priests of the parishes.

The life of Gandhi suggests that one aspect of Hindu spirituality is non-violence; also, the Hindu
people tend to be fatalistic due to the belief that their lives are govern by the all-pervading law of
karma. Confucian spirituality, as it teaches about loyalty and filial piety, focusses on respect to
authorities, such as the elders and parents in the family, and the leaders of the community. Buddhist
spirituality is described as “other worldly,” because it teaches about the elimination of material
desires towards attaining Nirvana. Particularly, Zen Buddhism stresses a spiritual life of simplicity
by having least desires, speech and movements. Spirituality for the Taoists is bodily health and
mental well-being, because they tried to live in inner peace and in harmony with nature. Muslim
spirituality is obedience to the determining will of Allah, and humility before the Most Gracious
and the Most Merciful God. A religion by covenant, Judaism nurtures a spiritual life consists of
respect to the patriarch and obedience to traditional practices and commandments.

Description of Religious Experience

In general, religious experience may be described as a person’s encounter with the divine or
ultimate reality. It is an inner thought, feeling, intuition, or anything within us, which make us
experience the presence and workings of God or a divine reality in ourselves, in others or in the
world. Religious experience is an event which the person regards as something extra-ordinary or
supernatural; one believed it to be caused by an entity whose power lies beyond this world. It is
unique to every individual; although others may encounter the same phenomenon, but experienced
it differently in their own personal ways. The experience has a life-changing effect to the
individual, in such a way that through it, and through the belief that it is divinely inspired, one
becomes a better person. Without this good consequence happening in life, the religiosity of the
experience is questionable.

Examples of religious experiences are the following: being fascinated with the sacredness of
ordinary events, like a rainbow appearing in the sky, or a flower blooming; beholding the image
of an angel on the clouds, or hearing glorious music coming from the sky; seeing the burning bush,
the parting of the Red Sea or Lazarus rising from the dead; and witnessing what one considers a
miracles, like being healed from incurable illness after having touched the Black Nazarene, passing
a very difficult board exam after praying the novena to Our Lady of Perpetual Help, or getting
pregnant after dancing the fandango in honor of St. Claire in Obando, Bulacan. And the individual
having these experiences believes that the phenomena are due to the workings of a divine power,
so that his or her life is transformed in better ways; the transformation itself is a religious
experience for that person. For a very good example of religious experience, please check out the
video about the testimony of the famous Filipino singer and dancer Gary Valenciano
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lr Bm4tLnok), where he shares what he believed to be a life-
changing encounter with God.
Labels of Religious Experience

For easy understanding, we may label or name religious experiences according to whether they are
called using the adjectives “miraculous,” “numinous” or “mystical”. A miraculous religious
experience is one which does not abide with natural occurrence, and believed to be due to a sacred
cause. A numinous experience is one of being in the presence of a divinity, but separated from it;
the presence is such that there in the person the sense of awe that creates intense emotional
response. A mystical experience is one of being in direct communication or union with a divine
reality, such that the person encountering that reality has been totally engulfed by or lost into it.
We will give common examples for these labels of religion experiences after we categorize them.

Categories of Religious Experience

Richard Swineburne in his book The Existence of God (2004), defines experience broadly as a
“conscious mental event”, and religious experience particularly as “an experience that seems to
the subject an experience of God”. According to him, there are five specific categories of religious
experiences, which may be divided into two general categories: public or private. The experience
is public when the phenomenon could be encountered by many people; and it is private when
exclusive to an individual and cannot be shared with others. The difference defends upon the
perspectives of people. For example, seeing a monk in yoga position floating on the air is a public
experience for people witnessing the event, but it is private for the monk himself. Seeing a priest
lifting the chalice and host during the consecration is a public experience for the people attending
the mass, but believing that the bread and wine turn into the body and blood of Christ is a private
experience for the person. For a complete analysis of religious experience by Swineburne, you
may read the article by Nickel and Schonecker (in https://phil archive.org/archive/NICRSC-2).

Under the public religious experience, according to Swineburne, there are two specific categories.
Category 1: A public experience that is ordinary but a person finds it to be having a divine
origin. For example: a person would regard waking up every morning still alive an ordinary
experience, but for a religious individual, it could be a miracle by thinking about the inevitability
of death for all people. An astronomer would consider it ordinary to look at the starry sky at night
through the telescope, but for a devout person, it could be a numinous experience for having awed
in his littleness by the vastness of space, thereby feeling the presence in the universe of a supreme
creator. For a gardener, seeing a plant sprouting on the ground is just another day of work, but for
a religious person, it could be an occasion for experiencing the working and manifestation of a
divine entity. Category 2: a public experience which is not ordinary, in the rational or
scientific sense, because it violates the physical and natural laws. Miracles usually fall under
this type, for instance, the healing of a person with an incurable disease, or water turning into wine.

The other three types of religious experience are private. Category 3: A person’s private
experience believed to have been divinely inspired, and describable through ordinary,
sensory language, for examples: Moses seeing the burning bush, the annunciation of the Virgin
Mary, or Mohammad’s vision of an angel dictating to him the Qur’an. Category 4: A private
experience of the divine reality which is ineffable, or cannot be described using ordinary
language; it is explainable only by talking in negatives and metaphors. Included in this type are
mystical experiences put in words as “simply not like any others,” or “like beings tossed into the
abyss.” The mystical experience brought by contemplative prayers was described by Therese of
Avila as “the soul abandoning itself fully into the arms of God”. Finally, category 5: A constant
and regular feeling of the existence of a divinity, such as a monk meditating while he sits in
yoga position, so relaxed and unmoved, as if he is being engulfed by the ultimate reality. This is
shown by the facial appearance and bodily posture of Gautama Buddha, in the pictures and
sculptures; after he meditated under the fig tree, he was transformed into the Buddha; since then,
he looked so serene and calm, having been always in the state of enlightenment.

The Truth-Value of Religious Experience

Related to the consolatory definition of religion, the basic framework that we will use in the course
concerning the nature of religious experience, is the model presented by William James in his
psychological and philosophical studies about the truths of religion and the nature of religious
experience and belief. In his book Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) James defined religion
as “the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they
apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.” Religion
is purely personal which concerns an individual alone. It is the way a human being regards self
and his own subjectivities in relation with what he believes to be a divine being.

For James, the truth of religion is not intellectual that can be demonstrated by logic, neither it is
natural that can be validated by the method of science, nor it is social and institutional that is
determined by the doctrines and teachings of the church. This truth is experienced by an individual
in a profoundly personal way. Religious experience starts from a person’s certain feeling of unease
which is found to have originated from a sense of being wrong or having a difficulty about
something that concerns his life; then out of his uneasiness, he affirms the reality of a being with
sacred manifestation and power whom he believes could solve the problem he is facing in life.

Pragmatic Truth and Value of Religious Belief

In The Will to Believe (1896), James discussed the pragmatic theory and value of truth in religion
and religious experiences. You may read an excerpt from his book (https://philosophy.lander.
edu/intro/articles/james-a.pdf) for additional discussions about this topic. James described this
book as “an essay in justification of faith, a defense of our right to adopt a believing attitude in
religious matters, in spite of the fact that our merely logical intellect may not have been coerced.”
According to him, there is a value from the act of believing in something that has not been proven
true by rational justification and scientific validation. Beliefs have a practical value to human life,
particularly in the case of religious beliefs, like belief in God, in eternal salvation or in going to
heaven through good deeds. In pragmatism, such act of believing makes the object of the belief
true. To explain this further, we need to refer to the pragmatic theory of truth which James fully
discussed in another work.

The theory by James had a biblical reference. In his book Pragmatism: A New Word for an Old
Way of Thinking (1907), he cites the verse: “You shall know them by their fruits,” which he
interprets as the pragmatic theory and value of truth stated as “truth happens to an idea”. This
means that an idea is first acted out or put it into practice, and then at the end there is result of the
act which in turn determines the idea to be true because it works. In other words, the idea becomes
true by the result of doing that idea. For James, truth is subjective; there is no truth that is purely
objective, because it is totally outside human interest. Belief is an idea in our mind, it is that upon
which we are prepared to act. Truth is a belief valuable to us as believers. It is “the function of the
beliefs that start and terminate and among them.”

For James, beliefs in religious matters are proven true by first putting them into practice, and then
having the result afterwards which in turn determines their truth. For example, the proof that God
exist, and that there is eternal salvation, come along with the result of believing in them put into
practice. If we believe in God and in eternal salvation, then we would do good in our actions, and
our actions would result to world peace, personal contentment or justification of human suffering.
These practical results are those that make God’s existence and eternal salvation true. Approaching
religion and religious experience from pragmatic point of view, we can value the truth-making
capacity of our beliefs, and make them the source of our spirituality. Please watch “William James:
The Will to Believe” (in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eqoSvs47yI&t=2s) for you to have
additional inputs about the pragmatic truth and value of religious belief.

Prepared by Dr. Allan C. Orate