The importance of religious experience

Part 6: Whatever they are, we should cherish our religious experiences – and be willing to act on them!

I am conscious that – having laid out an explanation that rests just on natural, physical explanations – why should we bother introducing the supernatural, metaphysical explanation of God? Partly, this is in an attempt to do justice to the depth and strength of the experience described as “meeting with God”. However, I do return to the key thought, considered under the “just a psychological effect of the mind” option that the practical effect of religious experiences under this understanding is indistinguishable from the traditional understanding of a real encounter with God. Having considered briefly this second option, we reaffirm again that the experience in the life of the believer of having a relationship with God is unchanged whether the cause is a real meeting with God or just a psychological cause.

Perhaps then the problem stems from those who want to dismiss the significance of religious experiences because they choose to understand them as arising purely from psychological causes – as though this somehow made them invalid, or, at least, they certainly want to refuse to consider that religious experiences come from God – because that cannot be proven.

We said all along that the religious experiences definitely exist and the issue is simply whether they are caused by God or by a psychological cause. However, we seem to have discovered that it doesn’t really matter what causes them – the effect of the religious experiences is just the same. Of course, this sounds counter-intuitive: it must make a difference whether they are caused by God or our own minds. Our decision on this point determines whether we believe that God exists or not, so that is a fundamental decision on what constitutes reality: just physical entities or physical and metaphysical entities. It also affects -and this practicality might be the major factor – what we do about these experiences. Those who believe they are a sign that you have met God are able to take them seriously and act upon them, while those who believe they have a purely psychological cause are inclined to dismiss them or, at least, “to park” the experience somewhere in the corner of their minds, with a label attached, “That was an odd experience. Nice, and I wonder what caused it. But no action required”. As a result, they take no action in response to the experience. While others embrace it as the foundation stone to build a new spiritual life in relationship with God. Now that’s quite a difference!

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”.

The importance of religious experience

Part 4: Whatever they are, religious experiences are certainly mysterious and wonderful

This leaves unanswered at the moment as to why anyone had the concept of God in the first place, not unless the idea of God was invented in order to try and explain what this strange religious experience is. This line of thinking does emphasise once again that the experience is definitely real, but we are still unsure what’s causing it. There is an option to argue that what we call “God” is really the supremely wonderful experience. The nature of the experience, which appears to fill us from outside, fooled us into thinking it was coming from an external reality – let’s call it “God”, but in fact it was an internally generated directly experienced state of mind within ourselves. So, our discovery of “God” is really a discovery of this supremely wonderful experience which the mind has the capacity to have.

We should note that just because there are several conducive factors all overlapping, there is no guarantee that you will have a religious experience. Perhaps we will be distracted into simply enjoying the shapes of the clouds, or happily wondering what we will do with our holiday. It’s also possible that individuals’ personal make-up makes them more or less likely to have a religious experience. I would say that everyone has the capacity to have one, but, in practice, some people are very open to, for example, a profound, reflective, uplifting experience, while others would say that their mind just doesn’t think very easily in those terms.

We should also note that – if religious experiences are not within our control to guarantee we will have one – there are still ways to promote or facilitate having one. These include typical religious practices such as prayer, soothing or uplifting music, reading from scripture of the reassurance that we are loved, meeting with like-minded people. These practices still don’t mean that we can create a religious experience at will, but they give us more of a chance of reaching a state of mind in which we might have one.

This does mean that – as there is always something out of our control about having a religious experience –  to some degree, they are “not ours”, but external to us. Perhaps this does justify putting religious experiences into a separate category: something that we are experiencing as a direct mental state rather than communicated to us “from the outside”, from an external physical reality, yet still something that is not completely ours, in the way that our happiness or sadness is immediately within our possession. Once the religious experience is happening, it is immediately within our possession, but we do not have the ability to access it by choice. It is not “just there” waiting for us to turn our attention to it, in the way that our happiness or sadness is. Maybe, in the same way that happiness or sadness arises within us till we can feel it, so religious experiences arise within us till we become aware of them. Yet there still seems to be a difference: my happiness is intrinsically mine, and I can nearly always explain why I am experiencing it, yet it appears to me that I have to wait “until a religious experience is given to me” before I can have it. Though, our thoughts earlier about overlapping, correlating factors might explain why our religious experience has arisen (just as our happiness or sadness arose) but we were not aware of these factors in the same way that the reasons for our happiness were obvious to us.

The importance of religious experience

Part 3: What if religious experiences have an entirely natural cause?

I don’t think there is a way to answer this question with certainty, and each person simply has to decide what they think is most plausible. However, we can return to the issue that there is no doubt that the religious experiences themselves are real. The only issue is what causes them. However, let’s focus on the experiences themselves, because they are powerful and beneficial. And they are, for most people, I think, the basis of religious belief. Something causes them, and the dispute is whether they are caused by a God who really, truly exists, or whether they are “just” caused by our own minds.

Let’s consider the “just in our minds” option, referring to the evidence that can be gathered about the nature of religious experiences.

A Professor Persinger has created a helmet that stimulates the brain in such a way that people have experiences that echo what believers say about religious experiences. This is meant to be evidence that religious experiences are “not real” in the sense of existing because we are in contact with God. They are just in our minds because this helmet can create them. However, these simulated religious experiences only happen with the help of an expensive, high-tech piece of equipment, while real religious experiences can happen without it.

Nevertheless, it raises the possibility that particular circumstances can create an experience that is misunderstood as a religious experience of God.

So, perhaps a religious experience is a product of the correlation of a number of external and internal factors that by chance happen to overlap on this particular occasion. This would explain why religious experiences are for most people very rare, but also explain why a very large proportion of people have at least one very impressive experience in their lives that has all the hallmarks of a religious experience.

So, let’s suppose that you are looking at a beautiful sunset, after a lovely meal, at the start of your summer holiday. So, you have a number of external features all conducive to well-being. Suppose that today is also the end of a long period of stress at work, and you’ve also had a phone conversation with an old friend whom you’ve not seen for years, which has reconnected you with a happy period of your life. So, you also have overlapping internal states conducive to well-being. So, it is a possibility that this unusual, coincidental correlation of good factors is sufficient to stimulate or trigger the mind into an experience of overwhelming well-being, feeling as though you are on top of the world, at peace and at one with the whole world. Normal experiences of well-being are enough to make you feel good, but not enough to trigger this “religious experience”. In this explanation the “religious experience” is a real experience, but is being wrongly attributed to experiencing the presence of God.

In a way, we might even want to keep the term “religious” in calling it a religious experience because it is so overwhelmingly wonderful, but accept that it is an entirely natural product of the way our minds work. We can even explain the phenomenon to ourselves that – because people have heard of the concept of God, and this concept is of a supremely wonderful person – when people have a supremely wonderful experience they – mistakenly – assume that they must be having the experience because they are meeting God.

The importance of religious experience

Part 2: What’s going on when we experience anything?

The argument from religious experience is a very strong one. If I am experiencing now things in the external world – eg I can see trees and houses, and tables and chairs and people – then I am happy to accept that I am experiencing this table because there is a table in front of me. If I experience internal states – eg feeling happy or sad – I accept that I am indeed experiencing these emotions for real, as I know that this is what I’m experiencing, and, in nearly every case, I can give an explanation of why I’m experiencing these emotions. It would seem strange to be asked to validate these experiences of feelings as though it was possible to argue, “I know you’re feeling happy at the moment, but is it a “real” happiness or is it just something that you’re experiencing in your mind?”. With internal states, I know directly that what I’m experiencing is real, because I have access to my own mind, and with external realities, I am experiencing things in my mind because my senses have communicated them to me – eg I can see a table. There are some difficulties, for example, when people perceive external realities incorrectly, such as colour blindness, or are having hallucinations. However, these objections tend to be of the “on a technicality” basis, and for nearly everyone, nearly all the time, life in practice becomes impossible if we do not accept that the images in our minds exist there because we are sensing an actually existing external reality.

So, when I say that I am experiencing the presence of God, why should that experience be questioned? I experienced the table because there is a table; I experienced happiness because I am happy; I experience God’s presence because there is a God who is with me now.

Of course, God is in a special category here: a reality that is known directly in the mind, rather than communicated to us through our senses from the external reality of the physical world. This sets off alarm bells for many – but perhaps because they are refusing to accept this special category, whereas for believers, that’s why God is God – precisely because he is in a special category of his own. Nevertheless, it is a valid objection: if all the other things we experience directly in our minds are there because they are the product of our internal minds, then surely this must mean that God too is a product of our own minds, rather than an independently existing reality?

The importance of religious experience

(A theological and philosophical reflection in 6 parts)

The importance of religious experience

Part 1: Two options: “I’ve met God” or, “It’s just all in the mind”.

I have believed in God all my life. There have been periods of extreme doubt, when I could easily have given up, but I hung on in there. In recent years, even while teaching philosophy, which is very challenging to faith, I have felt very secure, and this is down to my confidence in the power of my religious experiences. This, ultimately, is the foundation of my faith: I experience his presence. I have no doubt at all about the reality of the religious experiences, and am happy to make the connection and say, “I experience the presence of God because there is a God”. Of course, the alternative explanation is that I have religious experiences – that is not in doubt – but the experiences have a psychological explanation. And in the alternative, there are always heavy overtones of “it’s just” a psychological experience. In many ways, this deflation is justified because the religious explanation is that the experiences have a supernatural explanation, so it is a direct counter to say, “No, there is no such thing as the supernatural; your religious experiences – though undoubtedly impressive – have an entirely natural, psychological explanation. It’s just all to do with how the mind works”.

Of course, it’s not a complete undermining of the believer’s position to say, “It’s just all in the mind”, for where else are we meant to experience anything except in our minds? Nevertheless, it is a valid alternative explanation, and, as I reflect now on my life, I want to consider as carefully as I can, the validity of my religious experiences. I have hung the validity of my faith on them, so I don’t want to have made a mistake!

Awestruck

Part 4: Whole

And so now, at the reflective end of my life (I mean, as opposed to the setting out, beginning, and striving, and lots to do end of my life) I am wondering what it would mean – and is it even possible – to stitch together these two aspects of my life into a coherent whole. On the one hand, I have the practicalities of my everyday living, and on the other hand I have my reflective wonder, just at being here. I feel that there is something broken, or torn, in the way these two things are separate in my mind. I am not berating myself: I may just be mistaken, and it may be an inevitable part of the mystery of life that this is just so. Yet I do feel that perhaps I could have done better. So, perhaps like an expert embroiderer fitting together different pieces of cloth into one extravagant whole, or maybe like a surgeon stitching together two sides of a wound that will not otherwise heal, I want to see if it is possible to fit the two sides together into one whole.

What would this mean? Again, I don’t really know. Not even sure what it is I’m trying to do – so how will I ever do it? Maybe, it’s like this:-

We must live with an awareness of the wonder of life. Of the sense of giftedness. Of the exultant joy and unplumbable depth of being here. We must look up regularly to give thanks, and allow deep gratitude to sink into the reservoirs of our souls, till, full to the brim, we overflow in springs of reverence for life.

And now the difficult bit. When we turn our attention from the wonder of the horizon to the intimate work of our hands and minds, this must not be a wrenching away of our attention from wonder, but a conscious pouring into this moment of the creative joy of being here. It is our particular expression of what it means to live. Our contribution to the whole. It is the unity of the finite with the infinite, of the temporary with the everlasting, of the particular with the universal. It is the creative task of choosing from the infinite possibilities of what I might do in this moment of time and place the particular thing that I want to do, and then committing myself to that, to produce something ourselves that is beautiful and good. Something that is ordinary and wonderful. It is the way that our everyday living produces something wonderful – something that cannot be seen when we are up too close to it, but it can only be viewed by looking back from a distance, and then we understand what this wonderful thing is that we are doing. The two things do belong together; each one creates the other. We do not have to be afraid that whenever we look at one we are losing the other. But I think, perhaps, it just is impossible to look at both at the same time, just as it’s impossible to look at the sun, and even when it’s setting, it’s still too bright until there is just the tiniest fragment left, for the last moment before it slips down out of sight. Such are the two aspects of our lives. Never seen together, yet utterly reliant on each other, we can understand their unity, even if we cannot see it. And, if not being torn in confusion, but gently resting in this understanding, though we cannot see their unity side by side, yet we can experience oneness.

Awestruck

Part 3: Stitching together

I may well just have made a mistake. I have noticed something – that life is ineffably wonderful – good – but have been knocked off course by this, when our task is to notice the beauty and then get on with what we’re doing. Certainly, up till now, I have found it impossible to do both things at the same time. And perhaps it just is impossible. And this discord that I have found – the thing that makes me feel torn – is just one of those mysteries of life that we cannot plumb. But I do want to consider now if it is possible to “stitch together” the two variations of awareness – our awareness of what we’re doing and our awareness of the wonder of being able to do anything. And I wondered just now if I have been “knocked off course” somehow, but this suggests a going wrong in some way. When perhaps I would be better to return to our starting illustration that I have been “stopped in my tracks”. We felt that that was an entirely positive and good experience.

So, I am puzzled, but not too distraught by this mysterious dilemma of wanting to place my attention in two mutually exclusive places, for I am aware that life is something that we do when we’re too busy to notice. As we pay our close attention to what it is that we’re doing, perhaps it is then that we are creating the precious wonder that we then notice the next time we look up. Yet, is there more? I don’t know. But I will explore and see what I can find.

At some point in my teenage years, I became overwhelmed by the beauty of nature and the wonder of life. I remember looking at flowers and the blossom on trees and I could not believe that anything could be so beautiful. This is “ordinary” life, yet it is so extravagantly extraordinary. No wonder, walking home from school, I would look up to the sky and it was just so overwhelmingly obvious that God was beaming down his love. How else could you explain this wonder and love?

Yet you have to go to work. And do the washing up. And go to work again. You get drawn into the tasks of building a career, of making a home, of building a family. You get drawn into routines and many things become oh so familiar. But still, at the corner of your vision, and when you have a moment to look up – and it only takes a moment – there is the wonder and beauty and joy of it all, and you discover that you have not lost it; it has not left you; it has been running alongside you in a racing wave of exhilaration, and of deep peace, keeping you company through all your busyness – though you were far too busy to notice its company – till you looked up again. And there it was. And there it is.