A number of you who will have heard my sermons will have noted my occasional references to religious experience and the Alister Hardy Trust. For this reflection I will examine this subject in more depth highlighting, next week, the work of the Trust which exists to support academic research into religious and spiritual experience.
A good starting point for this review is to start by mentioning the two theologians who more than any others were concerned with the way one can experience God or that which lies beyond – Schleiermacher (writing in 1830) and Otto (writing in 1917). Both of these theologians were anxious to set out a theological basis of experience (perhaps the earliest well known example being that of St. Paul’s Damascus Road commissioning) but it was the psychologist William James who famously wrote The Varieties of Religious Experience.[i]
The approach adopted by James was that of the psychologist who proposed as an hypothesis that ‘whatever it may be on its farther side, the “more” with which in religious experience we feel ourselves connected is on the hither side the subconscious continuation of our conscious life. In other words he is suggesting that the external power to which the theologian refers is validated or felt in the controlling of the higher faculties of the hidden mind – leading to a ‘sense of union with the power beyond us (which) is a sense of something, not merely apparently, but literally true.’ The description here is what I would consider to be the ultimate in religious experience as seen in such phenomena as in the twentieth century by a number of revivalist meetings where religious fervour has been achieved by the oratory of a gifted preacher. In addition, Otto’s and James’ thoughts are quite close to those of Sir Alister Hardy (1896-1985) who described religious experience as ‘a deep awareness of a benevolent non-physical power which appears to be wholly or partly beyond, and far greater than the individual self’.[ii]
Having considered the basic definitions of religious and spiritual experience the next question to consider is how one can attain such experiences. In discussion with Marianne Rankin (author of An Introduction to Religious and Spiritual Experience 2008) she emphasises that from her researches she has established that religious experience can rarely be self-induced. Even if one places oneself in the same situation (as far as one is able) in which such an experience had previously been encountered it would be most unlikely for that experience to be repeated. This is consistent with Otto’s view that the nature of numinous consciousness is such that it cannot be taught or transmitted. It must be ‘awakened from the spirit … which can only be induced, incited and aroused’.[iii] He cites the only direct means of experiencing the numinous as possibly being through reading, suggesting that for example that unless one feels a sense of the numinous when reading of Isaiah’s call vision (Isaiah 6: 1-8) then one is very unlikely to be made aware of the numinous by instruction.
At this stage in the development of the concept of religious experience, I would cite two other authorities – John Macquarrie (an established existentialist theologian, born in 1919 and who died recently) and Frederick C. Happold (whose book on mysticism first was published in 1963, is still available (3rd edition 1991) and is quoted by the specialist in Social Science and Theology, the Revd Canon Professor Leslie Francis). Happold lists a number of features which are characteristic of the mystical state.
These include the quality of ineffability which Happold defines, in a way with which Otto would be in entire agreement, as ‘expressing in terms which are fully intelligible to one who has not known some analogous experience’.[iv] Whilst acknowledging that the mystical state is one of feeling, there is also a suggestion of the appreciation of some inner knowledge to which Happold (and William James) give the name noetic (from the Greek noesis – intellectual comprehension). Such states of experience very rarely last long in time leading to another essential characteristic in religious experience, that of transiency. Entirely consistent with the researches of Rankin, another feature highlighted by Happold is that of passivity where the one receiving the experience is unaware of any activity on his or her own part to achieve that experience.
The two final characteristics that Happold identifies are a sense of timelessness and the loss of the sense of ego. Expressed differently, in a mystical state one may experience that which has been described as the ground of the spirit or spark of the soul, for the experience of which Happold quotes the mystic Meister Eckhart (1260-1327):
For the power of the Holy Ghost seizes the very highest and purest, the spark of the soul, and carries it up the flame of love … The soul-spark is conveyed aloft into its source and is absorbed into God and is identified with God and is the spiritual light of God. [v]
A number of these features are picked up by Macquarrie – direct relation to God, cognition, self-knowledge, passivity, and a sense of wholeness.[vi] With regard to the characteristic of ineffability, Macquarrie discusses apophaticism – expressed simply this means that we can only speak of God in terms of what God is not, sometimes referred to as negative theology. This theology emphasises that while we cannot apply any characteristics directly to God we can do so only by the use of analogy or symbol. In discussing passivity, the existentialist approach is much to the fore in Macquarrie’s writings where we are thrown into existence, able to think and to be aware of and wonder at the fact of our own existence. Indeed this might be, as Macquarrie expresses it that:
the basic fact that we exist (may be) the strongest evidence for the reality of God and our right to speak of a knowledge of God … This is not another fallible argument for the existence of God, but an insight given in and with the gift of existence. It is the cosmos coming to thought in us at its growing edge.[vii]
At this juncture it is appropriate to examine the ways in which a religious experience or mystical state may be induced. The most likely way of experiencing the numinous is through some external trigger factor, for example music or a religious service. Rankin in her Introduction to Religious and Spiritual Experience devotes some 40 pages to describing trigger factors dividing them into religious and non-religious categories. The religious factors would range from worship and prayer through contemplation and meditation to pilgrimages and the effects of sacred places. The non-religious triggers range from medical conditions, for example depression to experiences encountered in the outdoors by particular scenery, by music, by the paintings or by sounds. It is on these latter factors that I will concentrate next week..
Dr David Greenwood June 2020
[i] James, W. The Varieties of Religious Experience London Collins (Fontana Library) 1971.
[ii] Rankin, M. quoting Hardy in An Introduction to Religious and Spiritual Experience London Continuum 2008 p. 5. (taken from Spiritual Nature of Man (1979) by Alister Hardy reprinted 1997 Religious Experience Research Centre, Lampeter, Ceredigion).
[iii] Otto, R. The Idea of the Holy 1958 (1923). OUP p. 60.
[iv] Happold, F.C. Mysticism – A Study and an anthology London Penguin Books 1964 p. 45.
[v] Ibid. p. 49. – Happold quoting Eckhart
[vi] Macquarrie, J. Two Worlds are One London SCM Press 2004 pp. 1-34.
[vii] Ibid. p 27.
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