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M2. Lecture PPT Presentation in Rel. Ex

This document provides an overview of the nature of religious experience and spirituality. It discusses key topics such as the meaning of spirituality, forms of spiritual life, descriptions and categories of religious experience. It also examines the pragmatic truth and value of religious beliefs, arguing that beliefs can be proven true by first putting them into practice and evaluating the results. Religious experiences are described as personal encounters with the divine that may be miraculous, numinous, or mystical in nature.

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MILES BESO
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111 views

M2. Lecture PPT Presentation in Rel. Ex

This document provides an overview of the nature of religious experience and spirituality. It discusses key topics such as the meaning of spirituality, forms of spiritual life, descriptions and categories of religious experience. It also examines the pragmatic truth and value of religious beliefs, arguing that beliefs can be proven true by first putting them into practice and evaluating the results. Religious experiences are described as personal encounters with the divine that may be miraculous, numinous, or mystical in nature.

Uploaded by

MILES BESO
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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MODULE 2

Nature of Religious Experience


and Spirituality
By Dr. Allan Orate
Modified by Prof. Kong
Nature of Religious Experience
and Spirituality

TOPICS
Meaning of Spirituality
Forms of Spiritual Life
Description of Religious Experience
Labels of Religious Experience
Categories of Religious Experience
The Truth-Value of Religious Experience
Pragmatic Truth and Value of Religious Belief
SPIRITUALITY

a. Individualized kind of religion.


• Religion is social, cultural and institutional
Spirituality is deeply personal.
Religious person Spiritual person
• does things required by • Out of personal devotion
your church.
Attend regular services, Praying before going to bed,
formal and institutional rites. before meal, or doing voluntary
acts of charity
SPIRITUALITY

b. Concerns the life of the soul distinct from the


life of the body.
Opposed to being materialistic, attachment to bodily needs
and earthly possessions like food, money, latest cell phone or
designer jeans.
SPIRITUALITY

c. A matter of emphasis and priority


Favors more our inner reality and existence

prayers, meditations, virtues, morality within,


how to be good human beings

Physical desires and outside appearances become secondary


SPIRITUALITY

d. Becoming active in our inner nature to influence the


outside.
Not doing nothing and become silent while the world goes on.

“In a gentle way you can shake the world.” (Mahatma Gandhi)
FORMS OF CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALITY
•

1.Fundamental Christian spirituality: Submission and Humility


• Christ: "Not my will but yours be done"
• Mary: “I am the handmaid of the Lord”
2. Christian ascetics: Value of sacrifice, pain and suffering
•Christ’s passion- way of the cross
3. Dominicans: Intellectual spirituality
•through education and learning
FORMS OF CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALITY

4. Jesuits: Practical spirituality


• In everyday life
5. Benedictines: Contemplative and active spirituality
• Ora et labora- “Pray and work”
6. Priests/Pastors/Ministers: Service spirituality
• to the parish, the community
•
OTHER FORMS

1. Hindu Spirituality: Fatalistic (law of karma), Non-violence


2. Buddhist Spirituality: “Other worldly”
• elimination of material desires
3. Zen Buddhism: Simplicity
• least desires, speech and movements
4. Confucian Spirituality: Respect to authorities
• elders, parents, leaders
OTHER FORMS

5. Taoist Spirituality: Bodily health and mental well-being


(inner peace & harmony with nature)
6. Muslim Spirituality: Obedience and humility to Allah
7. Judaic Spirituality: Respect to the patriarch (fathers of the human
race) and obedience to traditional practices and commandments
•

RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

•Encounter with the divine.


•An inner thought, feeling, intuition, or anything within us, which
make us experience the reality of God in ourselves, in others or in
the world.
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

Examples:
• The burning bush, parting of the red sea, Lazarus rising from the dead
• Being fascinated with an ordinary event- sunset or flower blooming
• Seeing Jesus or Mary on the clouds, or the sun dancing
• Being healed from incurable illness after touching the Black Nazarene
• Passing the board exam after praying the novena
• Getting pregnant after dancing in Obando, Bulacan
LABELS OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

•“Miraculous”: not a natural occurrence and due to a divine cause


•“Numinous”: Feeling the presence of a divinity
the sense of awe that creates spiritual insight and intense
emotional response
LABELS OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

• “Mystical”: Direct communication or union with a


divine reality through a vision, being totally engulfed
by it.
WARNING

• A very thin line separates hallucination


(psychological condition) and genuine religious
experience.
CATEGORIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
Richard Swineburne, The Existence of God (2004)

• Experience is a “conscious mental event”


• Religious experience is “a personal experience of God”

CATEGORIES :
• Public: phenomenon encountered by many people
• Private: exclusive to an individual and cannot be shared
with others
SPECIFIC CATEGORIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

1. An ordinary public experience with a divine origin


• Waking up every morning may be ordinary
but for a religious individual- it could be a grace and miracle

• An astronomer-starry sky as ordinary


Religious- God's presence is felt with his littleness and the
vastness of space.

• A gardener- a sprouting plant as a product of work


Religious person, behind it is the divine power.
SPECIFIC CATEGORIES OF
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

2. A public experience which is not ordinary, in the


rational or scientific sense, because it violates the
physical and natural laws

• Miracles like healing of an incurable disease, or


water turning into wine.
SPECIFIC CATEGORIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

3. Divinely inspired private experience, describable through


ordinary, sensory language

• Moses seeing the burning bush, or the annunciation of Mary

• Mohammad’s vision of an angel dictating to him the Qur’an


SPECIFIC CATEGORIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

4. Indescribable private experience, expressed


negatively and with metaphors.

• Mystical experiences
“not like any others”
“like beings tossed into the abyss”
“the soul abandoning itself fully into the arms of
God”(Therese of Avila)
SPECIFIC CATEGORIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

5. A constant and regular feeling of the existence of a divinity

•A monk meditating in yoga position, so relaxed and


unmoved, like being engulfed by the ultimate reality.

•After meditating under the fig tree, Gautama


transformed into the Buddha; so serene and calm,
always in the state of enlightenment.
Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
William James

• Religion is “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.”
Varieties of Religious Experience

Truth of religion is not intellectual, nor it is social and


institutional.

Religious truth is profoundly personal, based on a


person’s experience.
Varieties of Religious Experience

• Starts with a feeling of uneasiness from being


wrong or a difficulty

• Affirming the truth of a being with sacred


manifestation and power who could solve the
problem
Pragmatic Theory of Truth
Pragmatism: A New Name for an
Old Way of Thinking (1907), James

• Bible: “You shall know them by their fruits.”


• Pragmatic theory and value of truth: “truth happens to an idea”.
• An idea is first acted out, then
the result determines the truth.
Pragmatic Theory of Truth

• Idea becomes true by the result of doing it.


• Belief is an idea which we are prepared to act.
• Truth is a belief proven useful to us as believers.
The Value of Believing in the Truth of Religious Experience
James, The Will to Believe (1896)

The Will to Believe


• An essay in justification of faith
• A defense of our right to adopt a believing attitude in
religious matters
The Value of Believing in the Truth of Religious Experience

• Beliefs in religious matters are proven true by first


putting them into practice

• Then the result determines their truth.


The Value of Believing in the Truth of Religious Experience

Ex.
Belief in God and eternal salvation
• Practice by doing good
• Result- world peace, personal contentment or deeper
understanding of human suffering.
The proof that God exist and there is eternal salvation
comes with the result of beliefs put into practice.

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