2. Religious Experience
“Religious experience” too can be given a wide and a narrow definition. In its wide
sense, “religious experience” would refer to any experience appropriate to a religious
context or that has a “religious” flavor. This would include much of mystical experience,
religious visions and auditions, nonmystical Zen experiences, and various religious
feelings, such as religious awe and sublimity. Also included is what Friedrich
Schleiermacher (1963) identified as the fundamental religious experience: the feeling of
“absolute dependence.”
In the narrow sense, “religious experience” would take in all of these save mystical
experiences. Thus, “religious” and “mystical” become exclusive categories, even when
the mysticism belongs to a religious tradition. In what follows, “religious experience”
will appear in the narrow sense.
2.1 Numinous Experience
We can call numinous (from numen, meaning divine or spirit) experience the category of
religious experience left over when you subtract mystical experience in the narrow sense
from mystical experience in the wide sense. That is, a numinous religious experience
would be a nonunitive experience (purportedly) granting acquaintance of realities or
states of affairs that are of a kind not accessible by way of sense perception,
somatosensory modalities, or standard introspection. Your garden-variety sense of God's
presence would count as a numinous experience. Numinous experiences contrast with
religious experiences that involve, for example, feelings but no acquaintance with
nonsensory realities or states of affairs.
Rudolf Otto (1957, section 15) reserved the term “numinous experience” for experiences
allegedly of a reality perceived of as “wholly other” than the subject, producing a
reaction of dread and fascination before an incomprehensible mystery. In the sense used
here, Otto's numinous experience is but one kind of our “numinous” experience.
Typically, mystical traditions establish disciplines of contemplation, meditation, and
other techniques intended to transform a mystic's egocentric self-enclosure. This is
deemed crucial for inducing mystical consciousness, and is often a distinguishing mark of
what precedes mystical, rather than religious, experience. Not all such practices and
disciplines, however, hope for unitive experiences. For example, Native American
practices involve lengthy preparation for experiencing sacred realities solely in what we
are here calling “numinous” experiences (Brown 1991, 111–12).
end p.141