The importance of religious experience. Part 5

The importance of religious experience

Part 5: What if religious experiences do indicate that we are having an encounter with God?

So, we seem to affirm once again that religious experiences are definitely real. They exist as a capability of the human mind. They are supremely wonderful experiences – so wonderful that we might want to call these experiences themselves, “God”. This seems to me to be a valid way forward to explore as the basis of a spiritual and religious life. Certainly, the experiences contain the exhilaratingly uplifting and loving elements that people use as justification for their claim, “I have just met God”. If, in practice, there is no discernible difference between having a religious experience understood in an entirely natural, psychological way, and having a religious experience understood in the traditional way as an encounter with God, then is there any need to argue about the matter anymore? And – crucially – is there any need to question the validity and authenticity of religious experiences, or to refrain any longer from living your life in ways that make you conducive to having religious experiences?

However, there is still the vital issue of understanding exactly what it is that you’re experiencing when you have a religious experience.

So, having considered the option that religious experiences just have a psychological cause, let’s now consider the other option that they happen because we are “meeting with God”. What are we saying when we say this?

God is a spiritual reality, perhaps best understood as a spiritual being (though some Hindus, for example, conceive of the ultimate spiritual reality in non-personal terms) and in Western religious and spiritual traditions, God is a spiritual being. This means that there is a new category of beings that make up part of reality:  metaphysical beings, who have a spiritual being but not a physical one. As God is spirit, he is able to exist within physical beings in a way that other physical beings cannot – 2 physical things cannot occupy the same space at the same time. Earlier, we noted that internal mental states are directly present in our minds, whereas external physical reality can only enter our minds indirectly via our senses. However, God, as a spiritual being is able to be present in our minds directly without having to be mediated by any physical thing Therefore, our minds are able to perceive God’s presence directly. In the same way that I am immediately aware of my own state of happiness or sadness, so I can be immediately aware of God’s presence.

Theologically speaking, God is always, everywhere, so he is always in our minds, but we can easily conceive that much of the time God is not actively doing anything and so we are not aware of him. However, when God wishes to, he can “call to us” or make his presence manifest in our minds in order to communicate something to us. Every time we experience anything at all from God, that is in itself a religious experience. So, although so far we have concentrated on those “once or twice in a lifetime” extremely significant experiences, anything that God does within us is also a religious experience. So, if God gives us a word of encouragement while we pray, or a feeling peace, or of being loved, that is a religious experience. While, by our other option, this is “just a psychological effect”, which we can understand through “the faith effect” – that is, that if we believe there is a God who loves us, then when we pay attention to that thought, then we may well experience a feeling of love – now through considering our other option that God is an actually existing being, we are saying that our relationship with God has its effect on us. In minor situations, we may simply experience a mild sense of being cared for, because God is, in that moment, communicating to us that he cares for us. However, in those particular moments of significance, when the reality of what is happening in our lives makes us conducive to experiencing God, then he is able to pour into us overwhelming experiences of love, joy, peace, reconciliation, forgiveness, guidance, revelation – whatever it is we need at that point in our lives. The very strength of the experience is evidence that it is God whom we are encountering, for, while we are rarely “bowled over” by “ordinary” strong emotions from the natural physical world, the emotions that come from meeting with the metaphysical reality of God are just “too much for us”.