MODULE 2 (The Nature of Religious Experience and Spirituality)

Spirituality

Spirituality is different from religion

Individualized

By spirituality we mean an ____________ 
kind of religion.

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.

Benedictine order

develops contemplative and active spirituality as expressed in their Latin maxim ora et labora, meaning “prayer and work”.

Diocesan order

live a spiritual life of service because they become the priests of the parishes.

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

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.

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.

Judaism

nurtures a spiritual life consists of respect to the patriarch and obedience to traditional practices and commandments.nurtures a spiritual life consists of respect to the patriarch and obedience to traditional practices and commandments.

miraculuos

experience is one which does not abide with natural occurrence, and believed to be due to a sacred cause.

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.

mystical

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.

Richard Swineburne

The author of ‘‘ The existence of God (2004) ’’

Public

when the phenomenon could be encountered by many people.

Private

when exclusive to an individual and cannot be shared with others.

Category 1 Public

A public experience that is ordinary but a person finds it to be having a divine  origin.

Category 2 Public

A public experience which is not ordinary, in the rational or scientific sense, because it violates the physical and natural laws.

Category 3 Private

A person’s private experience believed to have been divinely inspired, and describable through ordinary, sensory language.

Category 4 Private

A private experience of the divine reality which is ineffable, or cannot be described using ordinary
language.

Category 5 Private

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.

William James

Author of the book ‘‘ Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) ’’