Religious experience

Religious Experience

An experience which is interpreted in a religious way, form of revelation

Mystical experience

Can be form of religious experience, however can also be outside of religion - simply ineffable, sense of oneness/ transcendence

Happold’s study of mysticism

Mysticisim is based upon what is the “raw material of all religion”

• Depends on non-rational, intuitional side of human understanding

Strikingly similar features and conclusions of mysticism across cultures:

1) Understanding that this material world is only part of reality, and that it comes from a “Divine Ground”

2) Human nature is such that people can know “Divine Ground” through intuition

3) Self consists of ego (conscious) and spiritual self - “eternal self”

4) Purpose of humanity is to discover the “eternal self” and unite it with the “Divine Ground”

Numinous

Coined by Otto

Sense of complete otherness and insignificance compared to majesty of God