experienceWhether stimulated by group practices or triggered by internal subjec-
tive incidents, religious experience often transforms the individual,
changing their prior thought and behavioral patterns. Sometimes an indi-
vidual chooses a life of isolation, while in other cases the individual gath-
ers together a small community or returns to the original community and
transforms, revitalizes, redirects, or reshapes it.
Over the last couple of centuries, various people have argued for a residue
in conscious experience that cannot be reduced to something else; this is
called pure consciousness or subjectivity, ur-consciousness, or pre-reflective
consciousness. This type of non-reducible consciousness is free from the
individual ego. Numerous scholars are critical of this type of perennial
thought that claims that there is a common ground to all religious experience.
According to these scholars, even “pure experience” is an experience of
something because humans are able to experience things at different levels
of consciousness: a primary consciousness shared with animals lacking an
awareness of awareness and a secondary level of consciousness when
humans experience things without thinking about it. Below the levels of
primary and secondary experience, there is also a variety of mental activity
that occurs. Due to the subjective nature of conscious experience, neither side
can verify their claims, although it is important to acknowledge that religious
experiences are often shaped and even determined by the history, doctrine,
communal, or cultural context in which a particular experience happens.
Religious experiences neither occur in a vacuum nor are they static.
Among the Native American Indians of the northern plains, young men
go on a vision quest, which can result in hallucinations, dreams, and
unusual auditory or visual stimulus. These various phenomena are inter-
preted by Indians as a communication with supernatural beings. The pri-
mary motivations for going on a vision quest include the following:
seeking visions during times of disease and death in order to receive help;
to become brave before war expeditions; at childbirth to discern the
proper name of a child; as an act of thanksgiving; or to realize an indi-
vidual’s oneness with all things. Once motivated to seek a vision, an
individual passes through two phases: quest and action. The second phase
is a process by which an individual’s vision is legitimized. As a result of
having a vision, an individual may acquire power, advice, or certain ritual
privileges. This solicited type of vision comes after a period of fasting
and self-mortification; or the visions can come suddenly, spontaneously,
and totally unexpected in the form of dreams.
The solicited type of vision follows a pattern of purifying baths, sacred
smoking, nightly vigils, isolation in a remote place, meditation, and visit
by a spirit. The process includes self-mortification, which can include
offering pieces of one’s flesh, a form of self-torture, and fasting and going