1. By the end of today’s lesson you will
Be able to define ‘religious experience’.
Understand the nature of the following types of religious experience:
Visions
Conversions,
Mysticism
Prayer

2. Theme 3 – Religious Experience Spec check …
AO1 – Knowledge and Understanding
AO2 – Issues for Analysis and Evaluation
The Nature of Religious Experience with particular reference to:
Visions – sensory, intellectual, dreams.
Conversions – individual/communal; sudden/gradual
Mysticism – transcendent, ecstatic and unitive
Prayer – types and stages of prayer according to St Teresa of Avila
The impact of religious experience upon religious belief and practice
Whether different types of religious experiences can be accepted as equally valid in communicating religious teachings and beliefs

3. What is a ‘religious experience’?
What is an ‘experience’?
“An experience is an event that one lives through (either as a participant or an observer) and of which one is conscious or aware.” – Michael Peterson.
THINK-PAIR-SHARE:
What makes an experience religious?
What is the nature of a religious experience?

4. What is a ‘religious experience’?
Friedrich Schleiermacher ( )
… a feeling of absolute or total dependence upon a source or power that is distinct from the world.
Distinct from the world - transcendent

5. … an interpretation of the wholly other.
Rudolf Otto ( )
Ninian Smart ( )
A religious experience involves some kind of ‘perception’ of the invisible world, or a perception that some visible person or thing is a manifestation of the invisible world.
Wholly other – unlike anything we’ve ever encountered. Beyond the sphere of the intelligible.

6. Religious experience involves:
Mel Thompson
Religious experience involves:
A sense of wonder.
A sense of new insight and values.
A sense of holiness and profundity.
Profundity = deep insight; great depth of knowledge.

7. Types of Religious Experience

8. 1. Visions – sensory, intellectual, dreams
A vision is something seen other than by ordinary sight.
They are revelatory
Visions can be individual or communal.
They can involve seeing religious characters
Visions can fall under one or more of the three categories.

9. 1. Visions – sensory, intellectual, dreams
Sensory visions:
These have a sense experience – the recipient may actually see objects or people in front of them.
Can be group based (where more than one person sees something extra-ordinary) or individual.

10. 1. Visions – sensory, intellectual, dreams
Example:
The Virgin Mary appeared to St Bernadette in Lourdes, France, known as the apparition of the Virgin Mary.
The Virgin Mary then appeared to several people at the same spot.
Bernadette's Vision

11. 1. Visions – sensory, intellectual, dreams
Intellectual Visions:
Visions are intellectual when the vision brings the recipient a message of inspiration, insight, instruction or warning.
Example = when God told the Moses from a burning bush to lead his people to the Promised Land.

12. 1. Visions – sensory, intellectual, dreams
Being in an unconscious state where knowledge is gained through a series of images or a dream-narrative, which would not normally be available to the conscious state.
Example = What examples do you know from the Christianity component?
Wise men warned in a dream not to return to Herod.

13. 2. Conversions
Conversion = to change direction, to change from one set of beliefs to another.
Example:
Saul's vision and conversion

14. 2. Conversions Read page 82 in your textbook.
Make a note of 4 key features of a conversion:
Gradual or sudden
Volitional or self-surrendering
Passive or active
Transforming

15. 2. Conversions – individual/communal, sudden/gradual
Individual = When an individual has a conversion or a ‘unifying of inner self’ (William James)
An example is the conversion of St Paul on the road to Damascus.
Communal = where several people come to a unifying realisation at the same time
For example, Acts 2 and the conversion of disciples from ‘faith (believing) to faith (trusting).
The Pentecost
“Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.” (Acts 2:37-41)

16. 2. Conversions – individual/communal, sudden/gradual
Some conversions are instant such as St Paul on the road to Damascus
Other conversions happen over a longer period of time where the individual grows to a fresh understanding of God.

17. 3. Mysticism – Transcendent, Ecstatic, Unitive
Mysticism = a religious experience where union with God or the absolute reality is sought or experienced.

18. 3. Mysticism – Transcendent, Ecstatic, Unitive
The most important, the central characteristic in which all fully developed mystical experiences agree, and which in the last analysis is definitive of them and serves to mark them off from other kinds of experiences, is that they involve the apprehension of an ultimate nonsensuous unity in all things, a oneness or a One to which neither the sense nor the reason can penetrate. In other words, it entirely transcends our sensory intellectual consciousness.
~ W.T Stace, ‘The teachings of the mystics’

19. 3. Mysticism – Transcendent, Ecstatic, Unitive
Ed Miller tried to answer the question ‘what is the nature of mystical experience?’
Unitive: Uniting the soul with reality
Noetic: Conveying illumination, truth, knowledge
Ineffable: Not expressible in language
Transcendent: Not localisable in space or time
Ecstatic: Filling the soul with bliss, peace

20. 3. Mysticism – Transcendent, Ecstatic, Unitive
Associated with mystical experiences which take the recipient ‘beyond’ the realm of the normal everyday experience.
Transcendent experiences often can’t be explained in normal language and are ineffable
Example = Rumi – 13th century Sufi saint
Sufi dancing to a transcendent state
Read the last two paragraphs on page 84 and the first paragraph on page 85 to make more notes about Rumi and Sufism

21. 3. Mysticism – Transcendent, Ecstatic, Unitive
An ecstatic experience is one where the recipient experiences immense pleasure, joy and sweetness.
It is often seen as the closest a human can get to being in the presence of God.
Ecstasy relates to the inner sense of being utterly fixated on one pleasurable thing, as well as the exterior feelings of being ‘senseless’ and an out of body experience.

22. 3. Mysticism – Transcendent, Ecstatic, Unitive
Example = St Teresa of Avila
St Teresa wrote in her book Autobiography that she developed an ecstatic relationship with Jesus in her mystical experiences
She believed that Jesus ‘walked in her garden’, ‘watered her garden’ and then inserted a spear into her making her burn with ecstasy.

23. 3. Mysticism – Transcendent, Ecstatic, Unitive
Refers to the ‘union’ that the mystic has with the Divine.
The separation between the recipient and God is ‘removed’ so that the recipient is at one with God.
Example = Henry Suso described his mystical union with God like ‘a drop of wine falling into a jar of water’.
Meister Eckhart described the union a ‘mutuality of love’.

24. 4. Prayer – types and stages of prayer
St Teresa of Avila
Also known as ‘Teresa of Jesus’
Claimed her ‘visions’ gave an insight into the nature of God.
Claimed to reach a ‘spiritual marriage’ in 1572 with Jesus.
She was the first to catalogue ‘stages’ in mystical experience.
Her accounts of her own experience gave a scientific description of the Christian ‘life of prayer’.

25. 4. Prayer – types and stages of prayer
St Teresa used analogies to describe her mystical experiences.
Teresa describes her experience with God through ‘stages’ of prayer.
This again relates to the ladder of ‘climbing’ to Christ.
TASK: As a class we will read p86 about her garden analogy. After each paragraph, you will have time to discuss what we have read and ask questions.

26. 4. Prayer – types and stages of prayer
What does the garden represent?
What do the weeds represent?
Who can de-weeds the garden? You or Jesus?
Is it an instant cleanse?
Who waters the garden?
When the garden is fully watered and in bloom, what will happen?

27. 4. Prayer – types and stages of prayer
Room
Explanation 4
The Prayer of quiet 5
The prayer of simple union 6
Spiritual Marriage 7
Mystical Marriage
TASK:
Read the last paragraph on p86 and all pf p27.
Write in your own words what happened in the last 4 rooms in the interior castle
13:17 – Vision of Christ and ‘the spear’
Summary

28. Consolidation Task Plan an AO1 response for the following questions:
Explain the nature of religious experience with reference to visions and conversions. [20]
Examine the nature of mystical religious experiences [20]
Explain prayer as a type of religious experience [20]

29. Plenary - Quiz 1. What is an example of a communal vision?
2. What are the three types of visions?
3. Define conversion
4. Distinguish between individual and communal conversion
5. Which scholar gives 5 types of mystical experience?
6. What does a ‘unitive’ mystical experience mean?
7. What are St Teresa’s 4 stages of prayer?