Reflection on Religious Experience – Part IV
Over the past three reflections that I have contributed, we have looked at the theological background to religious or mystical experiences, examined the various trigger factors that can initiate such an experience, finally looking at a number of experiences held on the large database retained on the Lampeter campus of the University of wales Trinity Saint David. This week in my last reflection on this subject we shall look at some more extracts from that database, all of them having some connection with visual art.
The account below is of an experience (recorded by a female of unknown age writing in February 1991) induced by seeing pre-historic cave paintings in two locations and separated by many years. The experiences of viewing these paintings seemed to have enabled the respondent who had read William Blake and Kathleen Raine (1908-2003), fully to appreciate the meaning of spirituality:
I read widely: mysticism, Eastern religions, the strange and inexplicable, and poetry – Blake, who said that the world of imagination was the real world and perception was infinite; Emily Dickinson, who expressed so concisely her contact with that wider universe of awe; and Kathleen Raine, who actually wrote about experiences like my own of expansion and awe, evoked by contact with nature. Eventually I came to realise that the ‘scientific’ and ‘spiritual’ perceptions give different views of the world which are complementary and not in opposition. They are describing the world from different aspects and each is true in its own realm; the external scientific view for the world of practical action, and the spiritual view for inner understanding of the inter-connectedness and unity of the universe. I had experienced a little of this inter-connectedness in contact with nature; but I also felt drawn to the past, to the roots and this is the context of the following experiences. Many years ago I had a very vivid experience in the prehistoric painted caves in Altamira in Northern Spain. In spite of the guided tour and the other tourists I felt linked, over 20,000 years, with the painters of these images; I was filled with a great sense of the wholeness of human life, of expansion and freedom, and a feeling that I can only describe as love, not for any individual but for the whole of humankind. I remained exultant for three days after this. It was a joyful experience very much connected with human life. Many years later in Ireland I visited the Celtic and prehistoric remains at Tara. There, peering into the carved chamber called the ‘Tomb of the Hostages’ I had a vivid impression of the huge figure of a woman giving birth. It occurred to me that these carved chambers (officially called ‘tombs’) may have been birth chambers in the days when birth was revered. What could be more sacred than the bringing forth of new life to be celebrated with reverence and awe? These experiences were both joyful and life-affirming. In contrast with many religious philosophies which oppose the carnal and the spiritual they were experiences of reverence for life on the earth. It is this reverence for life which I find lacking in religious systems which see the physical world as an inferior realm to be overcome in the search for ‘ spirituality’. Such beliefs have led to the exploitation of the earth and to the denigration of women who make men aware of their bodies and, in the process of birth, bring new flesh into the world. I have never felt drawn to religions with an external ‘heavenly father’ but find the holy within all life. Spirituality is then a spontaneous consciousness of living, a joy in life, not in withdrawing from the world which is seen as a prison for the soul. I see spirituality as including a responsibility for my own integrity, a recognition of myself as part of the whole of humankind and the living earth, a reverence for the holy in oneself, others and the world which makes the whole of life a sacrament.[1]
The next two accounts relate to paintings by Caspar David Friedrich. The first of these extracts refers to experiences involving Friedrich and poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins(1844-1889) leading eventually to a conversion to the Catholic Church:
Sunday School once a week because it was the ‘done thing’. I viewed religion and the church with mistrust and dislike. At the age of 14 I was introduced to a Baptist church, formed social ties, stayed, and after a year or two became a member. But throughout my late teens and early twenties my only religious feelings were induced by certain paintings, poems, and some music, and were strangely alien to Baptist attitudes. I remember being deeply moved by seeing illustrations of paintings by Caspar David Friedrich, and by reading some Japanese Haiku poems, and the poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, and many other things that seem to be associated with an ecstatic approach to nature. The things that I really found that I associated with a religious stirring were the commonplace romantic trappings of snow, pine-trees, the moon and the sea, and these I could in no way equate with formal Christian teaching, although at the same time I held Christian views on ethics and social matters. Slowly I drifted into a quiet chaos of the mind. I could never decide between two alternatives; one, that I was willing ‘victim’ of the emotional power of much Romantic or Eastern art, or two that these things were an expression of something much deeper and much more fundamental that I shared with these artists. Finally I drifted away from the Baptist church, and after several years in a sort of spiritual vacuum, have finally resolved my problem by becoming a member of the Catholic Church. This I find gives direction to my ethics and is broad enough to allow my particular ‘religious nature’.[2]
This next extract is a much-shortened account which expresses a vision inspired by nature and a painting (possibly The Wanderer above a Sea of Mists (1818) or of those of the Chalk Cliffs on Rügen (after 1818)) by Friedrich:
After the good God had become for me without a dwelling-place, I often felt how strongly life pulsates in nature, in gentle moods as well as in thunderstorm and tempest, by day and by night, through thoughtful solitude as well as when two are together, in myself, too, when a rhythm carried me away. I do not hesitate to regard such an experience as r e l i g i o u s. Beauty is something originally divine and a heart that beats in tune with nature with its harmonies as with its contrasts, is bound up with everything that comes to pass in blossoming and flourishing, in the love dance as in the struggle of rivals, in dying as in being born. The daily course of the sun with its rosy dawns, with its shining high noon, with its crimson evening symphonies, is for me a religious manifestation, and I experience the work of Nolde, which gives expression to this motley colouring, as a religious empathetic collection and re-creation of a high order. Clouds wander and somewhere there is a lake or the sea, and the sun and the moon are mirrored in their infinite depths. Yonder is a mountain or glacier, and my eye ranges over the world of mountain, over everlasting snows and peaks, and I lapse into contemplation as to the fascination itself. Another time I travel in a storm across the black sea, everything is tossed up, and the ship is snatched down into a valley in the waves and hurled up onto a foamy peak. There are the dunes, like waves benumbed they stand in the sun, like phantom images of sand they dream beneath the moon. Up above the stars twinkle, the big yellow-golden ones, the little tiny white ones, they are ordered in galaxies, they are clustered in nebuli. And then someone stands before it like Caspar David Friedrich in the great silence of the chalk cliffs and contemplates the vault of night, and the friends both feel the same thing, their hearts pound their way into this holy outflow. It is a song without words, that they repeat within themselves, a blissful hymn before the horizon back there, which delimits their view, lest they become giddy with delight.[3]
The following account is in the form of a letter to Hardy which muses on art, beauty and visions and the paintings of Samuel Palmer:
003641 9th December 1975 Dear Professor Hardy, The Church Times invites us to write to you about “religious experience”. In spite of my academic background (MA Oxon Theology 2nd Cl. 1936) religious experience is for me not intellectual at all but visual. Austin Farrer had pointers to this approach in his Bampton Lectures, “Glass of Vision”, but that is only rationalising what is to me real and direct experience. By “visual” I mean two different things: A. Sudden unplanned visualisations during periods of quiet or prayer. One, of a splendid bird, came years ago as a message from outside self of the fact and truth of God – the Spirit, perhaps – caring “even for me” that left me in its grip for longer than I usually meditated. Similarly an actual vase of flowers, “Those flowers are praising God by their nature, as I long to do, though I shall have to will to do it – they just do it!” These have lived powerfully as memories. B. Is a long term result (perhaps) of interest in art, or was it vice versa? A watercolour, if I can see it, remember it, or paint it myself, which conveys a sense of light (from mystery) is a real religious icon. I have only pulled this off two or three times in my own work, but Turner had it supremely. Such pictures stay with me as a central focus in the mind of all I most deeply experience. The Samuel Palmer drawings in the Ashmolean strike me as evidence that he knew my experience from within, though as icons Turner is nearer my own visual imagery. This is not just “an interest” but a way in which “God” lives as truly Wonder. I believe this experience to be quite common, though not readily articulated. I mix much in Isle of Wight art circles and find ordinary people readily know. I am due to talk to a young group in Shanklin next Sunday after church by invitation. Do I articulate it as I do because I am a theologian? (I do local ordination training.) How can one tell. There are visual memories of wonder with me from early childhood. Perhaps all I have done is to treasure and preserve something from preverbal {sic} experience? I would discard my library rather than lose it. Mostly the visualisations are not in the least ecclesiastical. I am also a fly fisherman with a reputation for skill in that sport – the sense of direct contact with beauty and the mystery of underwater life convey the same things in the silence the sport demands. This is terribly ordinary – but life itself to me.[4]
This next account which is much shortened related to a visionary dream which was inspired by Pre-Raphaelite art and El Greco (1541-1614). The respondent was male and of unknown religious allegiance. Many of the experiences described took place when the artist was a young man and were written down in 1980 when he was 45 years old:
1953 Dreaming suddenly this dream opened out into another reality. Colours so bright that shadows seemed to be complimentary colours, so clear and real that as I write this, I would not say this is the ultimate reality but that other world I saw was. A brightly lit figure was standing in front of me. He/she spoke to me but I was more interested in looking around me visually than listening. Three other figures were on my left about 10-15 ft away. As my attention wandered from speach {sic} this other reality closed up and I returned to my previous dream then woke up almost immediately. My body felt intensely alive, deep pleasant emotions, almost as if I was on fire. The only words I remember were “Beware of the Church of the East”. From that day I became a Christian believing that I had seen Christ (one of the figures to the left). I had been studying Hinduism at the time. I later on discovered pre-Raphaelite and El Greco which seemed in tune with the reality I saw. Pre-Raphaelite for clarity and colour (the more photographic) El Greco for the self-illuminated visionary figures I saw. The connection with actual painters and styles comes later. However, the attitude towards the “dream” is obviously fundamental to my nature. For Art (visual world put first) after this dream in dream I thought God’s purpose best served by me painting for others plus religious poetry. [marginal note “About 1964”] But I later on discovered that people and ideas meant more to me than visual world, so for a time, despite success (exhibitions, Durham University Mural, Peterlee Crucificion {sic}, work on T.V.) I gave up painting (save occasionally for a friend or to return a favour) to write about education and to study sciences (Field Sciences: Geology, Botany, Natural History etc).[5]
The next account is particularly interesting inasmuch as it involves a Jewish woman who through an experience of the encounter with two Christian iconic paintings gained an impression of the soteriological (saving) quality of the life of Christ:
The Pieta of Michelangelo, the painting The last Supper would arouse in me feelings which were vaguely familiar, as thought {sic} I had been there. I was stirred by this Jesus, the man himself seemed so close, so real to me, and yet everything I had ever been taught was a complete contradiction of what I was feeling. To some it would appear that I had suffered some sort of hallucination, or was in a temporary state of insanity, but this experience will never leave me, the knowledge of Christs’ {sic} existence his love and compassion for all life and the reason for his birth and death will be with me for as long as I live, and for as many lives as I have to live to complete my fulfillment {sic}.[6]
This final extract looks forward to one my other themes when I examine the role of paintings as aids to devotion and their use within a church service. The female Christian respondent here clearly found in her experiences a profundity that was akin to worship. The respondent also wrote a poem on the experience on viewing a grave and noble landscape by Jacob van Ruysdael (c. 1628-1682):
Other instances that come to mind are the overwhelming sight of Tintorettto’s Crucifixion in San Rocces in Venice; & the Giotto frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua were almost a parallel to the Revelation of St.John – a new experience of worship. I have present in mind, always ready, the experience of Klemperer’s conducting of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis & of Britten’s {Benjamin Britten} War Requiem & the Church Dramas, especially the Prodigal Son – One could mention many other instances which have opened another world or a moment of great intensity & complete self-forgetfulness & absorption.[7]
Over the past few weeks I have developed an argument showing a progression of an approach to intuition and religious experience which begun with Schleiermacher and developed to a further and more disciplined stage by Rudolf Otto. Practical examples of religious experience were then recorded by James with the analysis being given an academic social science authority by Happold. The work of Sir Alister Hardy was then highlighted concluding with examples from a number of accounts of religious experience, sent in to the Religious Experience Research Centre at Lampeter, and which relate to either the experience of creating or viewing a work of art. This represents only a minute selection of experiences that are held at Lampeter – experiences covering near death experiences, out of body and many other forms of mystical or spiritual experiences. These can all be viewed on line but you do have to become a supporter of the Alister Hardy Trust in order to gain the magic password. If you are interested Marianne Rankin the membership secretary can give you all the details – her e-mail address is Mariannerankin@iCloud.com
Dr David Greenwood November 2021 d.greenwood@uwtsd.ac.uk
[1] Ibid. Account no. 005067 Female unknown age – account sent in 23-2-91. NB: The poet Kathleen Raine wrote a biography of William Blake .
[2] Ibid. Account no. 000760 Male. Age of first experience 14years. Account sent in 1-3-70, but the first experience was written down in much earlier, the first experience being at the age of 14 in 1929. Christian (Catholic).
[3] Ibid. Account no. 003733 Account sent in from Germany. Christian respondent of unknown gender. Date of writing: 1977. Age at time of writing :82 years.
[4] Ibid. Account no. 003641 Christian male writing in December 1975 at the age of 59 years.
[5] Ibid. Account no. 003880 Male writing in 1980 at the age of 45 years. No particular religious allegiance noted.
[6] Ibid. Account no. 003071 Female Jew writing in 1973 at the age of 46 about an experience which occurred at the age of 44 years. (The typist reproduces the account accurately including spelling mistakes.)
[7] Ibid. Account no. 003436 Female Christian of unknown age writing in November 1974 N.B. The chapel at Padua is almost certainly the Cappella degli Scrovegni which contains probably the greatest collection of Giotto frescoes. See: http://www.cappelladegliscrovegni.it/index.php/en/.
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