Preview

Personal and/or Religious Experience Is Particularly Revealing for Developing a Fuller Understanding or Ourselves and/God? (50))

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
2438 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Personal and/or Religious Experience Is Particularly Revealing for Developing a Fuller Understanding or Ourselves and/God? (50))
|

Personal and/or religious experience is particularly revealing for developing a fuller understanding or ourselves and/God? (35)
Examine and comment on this claim with reference to the topic you have investigated? (15)

“There is no single thing that can be bottled and neatly labelled as a religious experience”-Harvey.
A religious experience is an outward encounter with something divine also known as God. This experience is set apart from any other experience as it is based on religious context. It is the contact of feeling something far greater than one’s self “connection with holiness”. It seems to happen at any time and it is described as likewise being in ‘another dimension’- as one perceive themselves unaware of their surroundings; feeling as if it happens directly outside the body- in a spiritual realm- given the name “supernatural event”. There are many types of religious experiences that were once very rare and are becoming more and more frequent amongst believers of many faiths and non-believers. During this period of time people feel loved, joyful, peaceful and blessed and other times gain some ultimate truth concerning life as well as, by and large, alters and changes behaviour and attitudes. According to some scholars in view of religious experiences humans cannot fully understand or are not yet equipped to explain the experience and as a result this is where the complex issue lies, posing a question on whether experiences are reliable, credible and are valid in terms of understanding human nature and Gods nature.

The purpose of this essay is to identify what religious experiences are, using case studies and scholars to help illustrate how they reveal an understanding of Gods nature as well as human nature.

Richard Swinburne, a 19th century Philosopher quotes “omnipotent and perfectly good creator will seek to interact with his creatures in particular with human persons capable of knowing him”. This highlights the question of why a

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Best Essays

    Health Care Provider

    • 341 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Barber, C. (2012). Spirituality within non-Christian faiths: HCA/AP approaches. British Journal Of Healthcare Assistants, 6(10), 484-487. retrieved from http://ehis.ebscohost.com.library.gcu.edu:2048/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=8&sid=18f3e2fd-4b14-4a0b-81a6-7e0fdd68cdc8%40sessionmgr15&hid=116…

    • 341 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Religious actions and attitudes reflect who one is in one’s real self, and thus who they are in relation to his/her ultimate reality. In addition, religious symbols and rites give us the chance to participate in it, affording us the opportunity to be related to ultimate reality. Furthermore, humans view symbols, concepts, objects or acts, which create bridges in our minds, where we are transcended. Naturally, this transcendence evokes feelings related to the supernatural.…

    • 479 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Since the beginning of mankind, man has sought some form of a higher entity and a basis for humanity. Since the beginning, it has always been important to find a greater purpose for human life--to discover life’s meaning. Naturally, due to cultural differences, incongruities arose in man’s interpretation of how best to live and how best to be faithful, and eventually man focused more on those differences rather than the similar theme that was emphasized in each of the Holy Books: to love our neighbors and to love God, or whatever higher entity we chose to worship (Interview). As time progressed, these differences in opinion began to become forms of identification, and man began to use faith and religion to distinguish themselves from one another.…

    • 1796 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    A religious experience is a subjective experience which is interpreted within a religious framework. Refer to cases where a person encounters God in a direct way. Otto said the central element of direct was an ‘apprehension of the wholly other’, called the numinous. This means the world that is beyond the physical observable universe in which we live. They are experiences of the wholly other; completely outside our possible knowledge and experience. The ways religious experiences are described are often with words such as awe, wonder and beauty, but the actual nature of the experience was ineffable; James agreed with this. Direct experiences involve experience of God and are ineffable. One reason for this is that experiences are always of an object, but of a sensation, feeling or awareness directly in the mind of the person. Direct experiences aren’t just about seeing God, but being aware of him in an intimate and personal way. Ordinary experiences do not involve God, though they may be ineffable. Indirect experiences refers to experiences where the mind of an individual focuses on god. Acts of prayer and worship are also indirect experiences, as God is not directly revealed to the person or knowledge revealed. Instead the person learns something about God through what they observe. Some people suggest they are not different to ordinary experiences, but just have significance to the individual.…

    • 914 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    According to William James, a 20th century philosopher; every religious experience has four characteristics. Ineffability, meaning that these experiences can’t be expressed or it is challenging to express them; people often gain an insight or they learn something from the experience of how to carry on with their life. Transiency, although to the person who experiences it may think it seems to last a long time, in reality it will only have been a couple of minutes; and passivity, the person feels helpless and they weren’t expecting it or looking for it.…

    • 785 Words
    • 23 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Psych 341 Research Paper

    • 2509 Words
    • 9 Pages

    Elkins, D. N., Hedstrom, L. J., Hughes, L. L., Leaf, J. A., & Saunders, C. (1988). Toward a humanistic-phenomenological spirituality definition, description, and measurement.Journal of Humanistic Psychology. doi:10.1177/0022167888284002…

    • 2509 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Donovan Implications

    • 2251 Words
    • 10 Pages

    (b) Do you agree with the idea(s) expressed? Justify your point of view and discuss its implications for understanding religion and human experience. (20 marks)…

    • 2251 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Religious experiences are experiences we have of the divine or God. These experiences may be Mystical experiences, conversion experiences or revelatory experiences. Paul Tillich states that religious experience is a feeling of ‘ultimate concern’, a feeling that demands a decisive decision from the one receiving it. He describes it as an encounter followed by a special understanding of its religious significance.…

    • 777 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Within the chapter, Ellens adamantly presents a recurring theme involving the importance of recognizing and understanding the functionality of psychology and spirituality as they pertain to the operation of the human spirit (Ellens , "The Unfolding Christian Self", 1992). It is his belief that one’s psychological development and spiritual growth are intrinsically connected, consequently presenting us with the dyad of the unfolding Christian, the duality being the unpredictable growth of the spirit and the predictable patterns of psychological development (Ellens , "The Unfolding Christian Self", 1992). In the interest of further delving deeper into this matters, Ellens briefly analyzed the works of Jean Piaget, via Margaret Krych, Erik Erikson, Lawrence Kohlberg, James W. Fowler, and Robert C. Fuller. Upon the conclusion of his transitory assessment of the Fowler’s work, Ellens transitioned an in-depth…

    • 851 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    My Emerging Model of Spiritual Formation The primary purpose of “My Emerging Model of Spiritual Formation” is to present and explore the focus of Spiritual formation in the Christianity aspect relates to humanity itself as an entity. This emerging process into human growth spiritually has many traditional and denominational appearance thru church history. Through the evolution of humanity as explained by post-modernism, human beings have veered off the course of spiritual formation since they tend to believe in other possibilities rather than what God through the Bible advise them. Spiritual formation is a growth process over a period of a lifetime. As Christian one should aspire to transform into maturity improvement in everyday life.…

    • 1826 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    ‘A religious experience is a non-empirical occurrence, sometimes perceived as supernatural. A religious experience can be described as a ‘mental event ' which is undergone by an individual, and of which that person is aware. Such an experience can be spontaneous, or it ay be brought about as a result of intensive training and self discipline. '…

    • 2845 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The experiential dimension is the religious experience. People come to know their religion, their God or the ultimate reality through experience. According to Smart, there are different types of religious experience. The numinous experience is having God or the subject as holy and very other than our human condition. On the other side, the mystical experience is having the subject be inside the object, the inner quest to experience ultimate reality. The there is the experience that is a combination of both. The Shamen experience is situating oneself into transit to connect with the spirit world. And the Pananhenic experience where the individual feels unity with all of nature and the spiritual world, therefore find the spirit in everything around it. In every religion, the religious people go through at least one of these experiences to come to know God or attain the ultimate reality. In Christianity a monk or nun may experience a combination of mystical and numinous, always starting numinous because of the basis of Christianity. The duality is obvious with constant worship but a close embrace develops creating unity in love and not in identity. In the same way while Hinduism and Mahayana Buddhism one may also find a combination beginning with mystical y Theravada Buddhism it is mainly mystical finding that ultimate reality is found within. There is no sense of worship and one must work for its own liberation by being quiet, peaceful and becoming detached.…

    • 2484 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    World View Reflection

    • 296 Words
    • 2 Pages

    In the book, Be thou my vision: Pursuing God’s perspective in a pluralistic world it states , “provides life events and experiences that deposit eternal truths in our minds and lives, and make room for intimacy with Christ”.…

    • 296 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    The psychoanalytic model of religion underlines that the main source of religiousness lies within a person’s unconscious mind. This model explains that individuals have unconscious, intuitive needs, and that those needs can be met by becoming religious and accepting a higher being. If an individual falls into the psychoanalytic model, they could potentially be looking to God, or some other higher power, for answers never previously given or a sense of belonging with a group that was never made available before in their life. These examples both meet common needs of knowingness and a sense of belonging.…

    • 1116 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Argument from Religious Experience The argument from religious experience is the argument that personal religious experiences can prove God’s existence to those that have them. One can only perceive that which exists, and so God must exist because there are those that have experienced him. While religious experiences themselves can only constitute direct evidence of God’s existence for those fortunate enough to have them, the fact that there are many people who testify to having had such experiences constitutes indirect evidence of God’s existence even to those who have not had such experiences themselves. The Argument from Miracles When and where do religious experiences occur? Religious experiences can happen to anyone, anywhere and at any time. Although religious experiences are somewhat unique, it is not uncommon for them to occur in some very ordinary places. In the Bible there are many examples of people doing some very ordinary things, yet suddenly becoming aware of being in the presence of God. For example: Moses was out tending to his father-in-law's sheep, when he suddenly saw a burning bush from which God spoke to him (Exodus 3:1-4). There are also examples of people having religious experiences in the midst of ordinary satiations in other religious traditions. Muhammad (PBUH) was said to be in a cave on Jabal al-Nour, when he received his first revelation from Allah (Qur'an 96). Arjuna was in a chariot on a battlefield, when Krishna revealed his divinity to him (see The Bhagavad-Gita: An introduction). Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, was bathing in a river when he was taken into the presence of God, and shown that there was one divine reality behind the cosmos (Guru Granth Sahib p.1). Some issues Although atheists deny the existence of God, religious experiences may offer proof that God does exist. People have done some rather inexplicable things because they believe God told them to, even at…

    • 1304 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays