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Abstract

The paper aims at studying the nature and problems of religious experience. Religious
experience is defined as a subjective experience which is interpreted in religious circle as an
encounter with God or gods or higher order realities. The researcher identifies the features
of religious experience, and various activities that can enhance its manifestations. The
philosophical problems of religious experience are also discussed. Despite the challenges of
religious experience, the writer concludes that the experiences cannot be totally disregarded,
but have to be examined discreetly in order not to be deceived, as faith without reasoning
leads one to errors, deceptions and wrong belief. The work is a qualitative research and the
method used is philosophical analysis.

Key Words: Religious Experience, Epistemology of Religion, Religious Language,

Religious Diversities.
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Introduction

Religious experience, sometimes referred to as spiritual experience, sacred experience, or

mystical experience is a subjective experience which is interpreted in religious circle as an
encounter with God or gods or real contact with higher order realities. Norman Habel et al
(1993) defines it as the structured way in which a believer enters into a relation with the
sacred or gain awareness with it within a particular religious sect. Many religious and
mystical traditions hold that religious experiences and the knowledge that come with them
are caused by divine agency rather than natural means. They are, therefore, divinely inspired
and not by human conception. In line with their thought, such experiences are by their nature
preternatural, meaning that they are beyond the natural order of things. Such experiences
include prophecy, revelation, trance, dream, speaking in tongue, charismatic display, falling
under anointing and similar claims as we have in various religions.

However, Charlesworth (1988) argued that most of these experiences can be produced under
drug and alcoholic influences. His argument is true as we know that drunkard and those under
the influence of drugs like cocaine, Indian hemp and even the mad do have similar
experiences. It becomes difficult to differentiate between real religious experiences and drug
influences, but obviously, drug and alcoholic influences are not religious experiences. How
can we differentiate religious experiences from drug and alcoholic influences? What are the
characteristics of religious experience? Can we accept religious experiences as truth and
reliable phenomenon? In the first place, the argument of Charlesword can easily be
dismissed, as according to Habel’s definition of the concept, any experience outside the
religious context cannot be qualified as religious experience. Nonetheless, we need to
highlight qualities of religious experience, activities that enhance manifestations of such
experiences and challenges to its credibility.

Characteristics of Religious Experience

Moore and Habel (1982) identified two classes of religious experience: the immediate and
mediated forms of religious experience. Mediated experiences are those situation whereby
the believer experiences the sacred through mediators as prophets, seers, totemic objects,
symbols or the natural world. Immediate experiences, on the other hand, are where the
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encounter comes to the believer directly without any intermediary or mediator. Religious
experiences are more impactful when the believer is directly involved. William James
highlights four characteristics of religious experience as transient, ineffable, noetic and
passivity. To these, we add numinon and ecstasy.

1. Transient: Religious experience is transient. Transient means fleeting, temporary or

lasting for only in a short time (Hornby, 2015: 1665). The experience is temporal; the
individual soon returns to a ‘normal’ frame of mind. It is something that happens in
few minutes, suddenly, without taking much time. It is like a flash and the subject
soon returns to normalcy.
2. Ineffable: Ineffability means too great and awesome to describe in words. Religious
experiences are so awesome and great to be described vividly by the person involved.
The subject may really have an encounter but finds it too difficult to communicate it
well to depict his actual experience.
3. Noetic: The individual feels that he or she has learned something valuable from the
experience. He feels he has gained knowledge that is normally hidden from human
understanding. Therefore, it opens the individual to new knowledge, which may be
strange and unusual to him.
4. Passivity: The individual is very passive. He does not initiate the experience. The
experience happens to him without his conscious control. Though, there are activities
that are likely to arouse the experience, the individual does not in any way initiate the
experience. He may engage in the activities and the experience may come or not; it
may come when he expects it or when not expecting it. The fact remains that he is not
in control of the encounter.
5. Numinous: This means having a strong religious and spiritual quality of God’s
presence. Religious experience evokes consciousness of God’s presence in the life of
the subject. This consciousness may arouse fear or love for God in him. Rudolf Otto
(1869-1937) in his book, The Idea of the Holy, (1923) identifies two aspects of
‘numinous’. According to him, numinous experience may be mysterium tremendum,
which is the tendency to invoke fear and trembling; and mysterium fascinans, which is
the tendency to evoke love, fascination and commitment to the divine agency or God.
6. Ecstasy: Religious ecstasy is a situation where the individual feels that his state of
consciousness is altered or reduced, that he becomes less aware of physical state,
while his interior mental and spiritual awareness expanded, making visions and
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prophecies possible. Ecstasy is a feature common in many religious experiences. In

most religious experiences, the power of the fresh seems to be reduced and the spirit
released to have a sacred encounter.

Activities that Enhance Religious Experience

Religious experience is not intentionally or consciously induced by the subject but certain
religious activities can facilitate it. What are these activities? We may not exhaust them,
but highlight the commonest ones among them:

1. Extended Religious Exercise: Various religious sects gather to worship, pray, listen
to their doctrinal teachings, and have communion. When such fellowship is extended,
many religious encounters become feasible. This is very common in Christian religion
where gathering like camp, crusades and set apart become avenues for diverse
miracles, healings and prophecies. This is because of what is called ‘cooperate
anointing’ and mortifying of the fresh through such long fellowship.
2. Mortification of the Fresh: Man is made up of body and soul. The soul is very
powerful but is caged in the body with various bodily desires. The more one indulges
in satisfying the desires of his body, the more powerful the fresh becomes while the
spirit weakens. The beginning of man’s self-realization is mortification of the fresh.
Once one mortifies his bodily desires especially the desires for sex, eating, drinking
and worldly enjoyment, his soul gets more power over the fresh. In that state, the
person becomes susceptible to diverse religious experiences.
3. Praying: Prayer is defined as a “mediums through which man empresses his desires
and needs to his maker, while the maker speaks to him through the scripture”
(Akudolu, 2018:22). Akudolu gives instances of those that lived lives of prayer and
their lives characterised by miracles and diverse religious experiences. Prayer is very
effective, but sins, unbelief and wrong motive militate against its efficacy.
4. Fasting: Similar to prayer is fasting, where one forbids food and stays in prayer.
Lives of many religious leaders were extraordinary because of fasting and prayer.
Think of Jesus Christ, Mohammed, Moses and others. Fasting mortifies the fresh and
empowers the spirit, making it easy for it to have access to spiritual realities.
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5. Singing and Dancing: Music is very powerful. Religious songs and dancing are
known for long as means to receiving religious experiences and miracles as its opens
the spiritual door of a man. Similar stories of religious experiences coming as
consequence of singing and dancing abound in the Holy Bible, Holy Quran, Bhagavad
Gita and other Holy Writs.
6. Meditation: Meditation may be scriptural meditation, where one gives deeper
thought to the contents of the scripture; it may be yoga meditation, focused attention
meditation, transcendental meditation, mental or any form as we have many forms of
it according to various religious traditions. Meditation of any kind can calm the mind
and spirit and makes it susceptible to various religious experiences.

7. Questioning or Investigation: Socrates, Plato, Pythagoras, Thales, Empedocles and

many ancient Philosophers were known for questioning and investigating the truth.
An investigative mind is always powerful and can open one to realm beyond ordinary.
This is the kind of experience common in metaphysical and esoteric investigations.

Problems of Religious Language

Religion has been a problem since time immemorial. This is because religion centres on
God who is invisible. Most of religious issues are spiritual and abstract and this elicits lots
of challenges to its claims. Problems of religious language are more of epistemological
issues. Here, we shall arrange them into five headings for easy comprehension and clarity.

1. Problem of Justification: Religious experiences are not physical and cannot be

verified empirically. They not depend on our sense organs like other experiences, yet
religious adherents tend to take them seriously as something real. We may therefore
ask: What reason there is to think they are right? That is to say, is there any good
reason to believe religious experience? In other words, how can we justify religious
experience? One answer to this question is what is called the Argument from
Religious Experience. According to the argument, religious experiences are in all
relevant aspects similar to sensory experiences. Sensory experiences are excellent
ground for belief about physical world; in the similar way, religious experiences are
excellent ground for religious belief (Swiburne, 1979; Alson 1991; Plantinga 1981
and others). Critics of this argument generally find ways in which religious
experiences are different from sensory experiences, and argued that those differences
are enough to undermine the evidential value of the experiences. The proponents
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insists that religious experience are in the domain of the spiritual and should not be
judged with the instrumentality of the senses. The problem with this is that everybody
is not spiritual and therefore cannot understand the religious experience.
2. Problem of Religious Diversities with conflicting Religious Experiences: In
sensory experience, there is similarity in what people observe but in religious
experience, there is a wide range of differences in what people claim to have seen,
even within the same religious group. I cannot forget my experience in one prayer
team where a lady started speaking in tongues. At the end, she prophesied to one
brother, “The Holy Spirit says that you must marry me”. The brother started his own
speaking tongues and ended with this prophecy, “Sister, Holy Spirit says I must not
marry you”. Which of these two prophecies is to be accepted as true? The problem of
conflicting religious experience becomes worse with the existence of diverse religious
sects. What a particular religious group believe in is quite different from the other.
How can we reconcile this? In response to this, John Hick(1989, 2006) adopted
Kantian phenoumena and noumena. Kant (1970) has said that the phenoumena is the
reality as people see it but noumena is the reality as it is which is incomprehensible.
According to him, how people experience the reality may differ because of certain
factors, but that does not make the reality non-existent. Truly, people perceive
realities in diverse ways. Human frailty, condition of the mind, aspiration, background
and difference in belief can affect how people perceive and interpret issues. The work
of philosophers are therefore to search out the truth uncorrupted. In addition to this,
Alston (1991) and Plantiga (1981, 2000) argued that each religious tradition has its
epistemic resources. Members within that particular religious circle understands the
experience within the circle. They do not require epistemic resources outside their
circle. Those within that circle understands their religious experiences, but those
outside may not understand it. Therefore, religious experience is meaningful within a
particular circle. But the problem remains unsolved: How can they help others outside
their religious circle to understand their religious experiences? How can they, within
the same circle reconcile their conflicting ideas since within a particular circle,
conflicting experience do happen? The case of “The Holy Spirit says you must marry
me” is a typical example. More so, our society is characterised by many religious
sects, how can we reconcile their conflicting views (which are products of their
diverse experiences) to have a harmonious and peaceful society? These are serious
challenges indeed!
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3. Naturalists’ Explanations for Religious Experiences: The naturalists give diverse

interpretations to religious experiences which if not properly defended undermine the
reality of such claims. This is because if naturalistic explanations are sufficient to
explain the experience, we have no ground for believing anything beyond the
naturalistic cause. Freud (1927) and Marx (1976/1977) are notable for positing such
claims. Freud claimed that religious experience can be explained by his
psychoanalytic theory as mechanism having their roots in early childhood experience
and psychodynamic tensions. Marx attributed them to materialistic economic forces.
Their followers argued that religious experiences are products of material world as
what you see in material world determines the kind of dream you may have in the
night. When you see a beautiful lady, you may end up dreaming having sex with such
lady or another beautiful lady in your dreams. This, according them, are products of
your physical experiences. In similar way, they see religious experience as the product
of the mind which is the product of our brain. Our brain, being a matter, means that
religious experience can be interpreted in materialist term. More recently,
neurologists explain religious experience as something similar to seizure,
hallucination and mental deranged which can be produced by certain narcotic drugs
(Guthrie,1995). Responding to these, Gellman (2001) points out that most of these
naturalistic explanations (like psychoanalytic and materialistic interpretation) are
mere hypotheses, not established facts. Similarly, the effects of drug and hallucination
cannot be qualified as religious experience since by our definition, religious
experience must take place within a religious context. Obviously, most subjects of
religious experiences are non-alcoholics, people of sound mind and integrity. The
issue of dreams are easily dismissed as many dreams and religious experience take
place without premeditations. Therefore, the positions of naturalist may be
disregarded. But Ellwood (1999) brings up another challenge, claiming that every
experience, no matter the source, corresponds to a neurological state, and therefore
illusory. But if every experience corresponds to neurological state or brain state and
therefore illusory, it means that everything is illusory, not only religious experience.
This leads to scepticism.
4. Difficulty in convincing others to believe your Experience: We have seen that
religious experiences may not be understood by persons who are not within a
particular religious tradition; in that case, how can you convince someone outside
your tradition to believe you? In other words, how can religious experience
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necessitate belief? Even within the same religious circle, there are conflicting
experiences and doubts as we have noted. Some, like Oakes (1976) claim that it is
epistemologically possible to form a belief based on such experiences, but you may
also be justified in not forming a belief. According to them, if we can believe the
testimonies of others concerning event that happened when we are not there, why not
religious experience. It depends on whether the testimony is compelling enough for us
to believe it or not. In that case, we have to evaluate the contents of what is said, the
coherency and logicality, epistemological and mental situation of the speaker, and
then the context. Though, these may be acceptable criteria, they are not so reliable as
we are aware of fraudulent activities and deceits going on in various religious circles,
nowadays.
5. Linguistic Problem: Another problem of religious experience is its language. The
positivists, in their verifiability principles, hold that language must picture reality; for
a proposition to be true, it must be verified; and it can also be falsified. Exception to
these rules are analytic statements where the subject is contained in the predicate.
Example of such statements is “A bachelor is unmarried man”. Here ‘bachelor’ means
‘unmarried man’. Such statement is always true. Religious language does not pass any
of these test and therefore regarded as meaningless. In response to this, Akudolu
(2019) and Okoro (2014) hold that verifiability principles of logical positivists and
empiricists are not verifiable and therefore fall victim to its claims. Religious
experience is spiritual experience and should not be judged with empirical tools. This
is the main emphasis of Wittgenstein’s language game (Wittgenstein, 1978).
Language is like a game, every game has its language and can be judged within that
context. Therefore, religious experience and language can only be judged in a
religious and spiritual context.

Conclusion

From what we have done so far, we can affirm that religious experiences are subjective
experiences which can have meaning within religious context. It includes experiences like
prophecy, revelation, trance, dream, speaking in tongue, charismatic display, falling under
anointing and similar claims as we have in many religions. These experiences are divinely
inspired but can be enhanced through certain religious practices. Transience, ineffability,
noetic, passivity, numinous, and ecstasy are common features of such experiences. Religious
experiences are highly valued in religious circle but have some epistemological and linguistic
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challenges, which we have examined. We therefore hold that despite all these challenges,
religious experiences cannot be totally disregarded, but we need to examine and judge them
with maturity in order not to be deceived. Faith without reasoning leads one to errors,
deceptions and wrong belief.

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About the Author

Dr Linus Oluchukwu Akudolu is a lecturer at the Department of Philosophy/Religious

Studies, Alex Ekwueme Federal University, Ndufu-Alike, Ikwo, Ebonyi State, Nigeria. He
has his Diploma in Theology from Paul’s University, Awka, BA, MA and PhD from
Department of Philosophy, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka. He also has a PGDE from
National Teacher's Institute, Kaduna, all in Nigeria. He is an Anglican priest, happily married
to Mrs Nkiruka Akudolu (Nee Uzoagu). The marriage is blessed with four children.