The Nature of Religious Experience

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Visions

Visions are perceptions beyond normal experience that typically include dream-like qualities; and/or intellectual content (a message or insight). They can be corporeal (physical) in nature (Saul – ‘bright light’), or spiritual. They can be collective (Angel of Mons) or individual (St. Bernadette).

Teresa of Avila (16th century nun) suggested that the highest form of a vision was a sense of G-d’s presence without sensory aspects. Visions are often a part of another type of religious experience.

Conversion

Conversion usually refers to a positive psychological change in conviction and orientation (James). For example, a conversion from atheism/agnosticism to belief (Alister McGrath) or, from one religion to another (Muhammed Ali). It may be intellectual (C.S. Lewis) or moral, in pursuit of forgiveness of sin (Augustine).

Like visions, conversions can be a collective (disciples in the upper room Acts 2) or individual experience (Saul on the road to Damascus). They can be sudden (Saul) or gradual (C.S. Lewis). They can be free (volitional) or coercive (instigated by some ‘other’). They can be active (the participant is engaged with the experience), or, passive in which the participant is taken over by the experience.

Mysticism

Mysticism is a unique experience of direct access to the divine realm. It is transcendent; this is an experience that is ‘otherworldly’ or of a different spiritual dimension that may apprehend a greater reality or insight e.g. Sufi Muslims or Hindu ascetics during meditations.

The ecstatic element involves ‘standing outside of oneself’ and complete absorption with one’s spiritual focus; it may take the form of a trance. The defining element is the sense of oneness with the divine or a sense of wholeness within reality, removed from the barriers of the physical realm.

Prayer + Teresa of Avila

Prayer is communication with G-d. This ‘communication’ can be an independent request from the devotee, a form of praise or, alternatively take on a more mystical and collaborative encounter with the divine object.

Teresa of Avila saw the ultimate goal of prayer as union with G-d. She wrote of types and stages of prayer through the use of two analogies.

A garden being watered:

1. drawing water from the well is the hard work to help the individual focus
2. using a winch is becoming more withdrawn from the world and focused
3. irrigation is being open to the flow of G-d
4. heavy rain is the moment when all sense of self is completely diminished and the flow of G-d is directly united with the soul.

The Interior Castle:

1. mansions 1-3 are the stages just before one achieves unity with G-d
2. mansions 4-5 are when one first achieves unity with G-d and G-d is implanted in the soul
3. mansions 6-7 depict spiritual marriage in which there is a sense of spiritual ecstasy and painful longing, and a mystical marriage entailing intuitive and constant awareness of G-d

QUOTE BANK!!

Yeats: “Mysticism… ever will be one of the great powers of the world.”

Eckhart: “G-d is in all things. The more he is within, the more he remains without. The more he is inside, the more outside.” 

Teresa of Avila: “Prayer and comfortable living are incompatible.”

Teresa of Avila: “Whoever has G-d lacks nothing; G-d alone suffices.”

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