Everyday Religious Experience

​ Everyday Religious Experience
 
William James and Mysticism
 
The recognition of religious experience as a legitimate subject for serious academic study is usually traced back to William James’ classic 1902 work, The Varieties of Religious Experience, in which he famously stated, “Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.”           
     
Using this recognition of multiple modes of consciousness, James then proceeded to categorize and describe several types of religious experience, resulting in the first scholarly attempt to give serious consideration to religious experience as a real psychological phenomenon. But the chapter in Varieties which attracted the most attention, and continues to do so today, was the chapter on mysticism, which James does not hesitate to identify as the most basic and valid type of religious experience, and that which mostly closely approximates the fundamental human awareness of a spiritual dimension to the Cosmos. In this chapter, James presents multiple first-person accounts of mystical experiences, all characterized by a sense of unity, ineffability, and a sense of deep wisdom about the ultimate spiritual nature of reality.
 
Although James examined both common and exceptional types of religious experience, the impact of his chapter on mysticism had the effect of the academic fields of both religion and philosophy gravitating toward the study of non-ordinary experiences as the primary, if not sole, expression of religious experience. Since the publication of James’ book, mysticism has acquired a privileged position in the study of religion in general, and religious experience in particular, and rightfully so. Although the very word “mysticism” is difficult to define, its basic characteristics, as articulated by James and his many successors, constitute one of the few universal elements of religion, found in various forms in all of the contemporary world religions. At the same time, mysticism is not constrained by association with the beliefs and doctrines of any single religion: while present in all, it is restricted to none. Mysticism provides empirical evidence that there is a mode of consciousness which humans can attain, quite different from our everyday consciousness, in which one can experience empirical verification of the existence of Something More than the material realm.  
 
The Privileged Status of Mysticism
 
And yet, as a type of non-ordinary experience associated with a temporary altered state of consciousness, mysticism can be characterized as rare and exclusivist. For those who have such an experience, the impact can be lasting and life-changing (as attested in the Varieties). But as James acknowledged, mystical religious experience is usually brief, transient, and rare.
 
This raises a somewhat troubling question which derives from this portrayal of mysticism as something that is a rather exclusive and privileged type of experience: what about the many who don’t have such a non-ordinary, altered state of consciousness type of experience? If mysticism provides the fullest and most meaningful direct access to Spirit, but mystical experiences are quite rare, where does that leave the many who never have such an experience?
 
The Alternative: Everyday Religious Experience
 
We would like to suggest (without in any way diminishing the value of mysticism) that there actually is an alternative mode of spiritual awareness, one that is not only available to everyday consciousness, but also is regularly experienced as an ordinary part of everyday life, even though those having the experience might not recognize its spiritual significance.
 
For lack of a better term, we will refer to this type of experience as “everyday religious experience,” which can be found in four complementary varieties:
 
1. The Experience of Spiritual Expansiveness
 
The consciousness of contemporary humans makes it possible to experience the vastness of the Cosmos in a sense that previous generations lacked. Ironically, scientific knowledge (tracing the history of the Universe and the complexity of its evolution, especially from a Big History perspective as presented by the likes of David Christian, Brian Swimme, and many others) and technological advances (the Hubble and Webb telescopes, particle accelerators such the Large Hadron Collider) have resulted in a conscious awareness of the vast, grand, majestic nature of the Cosmos in a manner that often evokes a sense of sacred awe, wonder, and mystery. This scientifically-rooted “spirituality” is represented by the proponents of what has been labeled as “Religious Naturalism,” and is expressed beautifully in the work of Ursula Goodenough and others.
 
Religious Naturalism is certainly not a “religion” in the traditional sense, and many religious naturalists see no need to affirm belief in any sort of supernatural entity. But it’s difficult to read the words of religious naturalists without sensing that they are talking about an experience of reality that sounds more like ancient Vedanta and Neo-Confucian spirituality than it does objective scientific description. Indeed, words such as awe, wonder, mystery, and even sacred are commonly used by Religious Naturalists to describe their experience of the Cosmos, which is an experience that is available to everyone, regardless of scientific knowledge. Simply gazing at images of galaxies, contemplating the vast complexity of the 14 billion year evolutionary process, and marveling at the images generated by particle collisions provokes our consciousness to recognize a quality to the Universe that can legitimately be designated as Sacred.
 
2. The Experience of Moral Goodness
 
Leaving aside and quite independent from the feeling of spiritual expansion that derives from our awareness of the vastness of the Cosmos, there is another source of everyday experience that confirms the reality of Spirit: our experience of moral goodness.
 
By moral goodness we don’t mean knowledge of and obedience to a specific set of moral laws, principles, or traditions. Rather, we are referring to the deeper sense of the very nature of moral goodness that we encounter at more of an experiential than cognitive level: the very notion that we should act in certain ways, and that through such actions we establish a right relationship with a transcendent reality. Certainly moral laws are important, and sociologically speaking, they became an evolutionary necessity as human groupings developed beyond the size of the clan or tribe, where the personal authority of a leader was no longer effective in a growing population. But the notion that we should obey such moral laws is the function of a deeper sense that there really is such a thing as Goodness. The sense of “shouldness” of everyday human existence cannot be fully accounted for as merely a sociological necessity, a desire to fit in, or blind obedience to others. And the sense of shouldness cannot be derived from a purely materialist model of reality. Rather, the existence of a deep sense of moral shouldness is a rather peculiar human quality which, even though we aren’t usually aware of it, points to the presence of something beyond the material realm and beyond our individual existence, to the presence of a transcendent spiritual reality, or the Good in the sense that it was recognized as far back as Greek thought in the characterization of the transcendent realm as the locus of the ontologically real Truth, Goodness, and Beauty (an idea that was further developed in Christian theologizing on the existence of Transcendentals, and also found in varying expressions in Buddhism, Neo-Confucianism, and Hinduism).
 
But this experience of moral goodness, full of spiritual significance, is not an extraordinary experience made possible by an altered state of consciousness. Unlike mystical experience, the experience of moral goodness is something that happens in small, ordinary, everyday moments.
 
And unlike the experience of spiritual expansiveness which we described above, the spiritual sense of moral goodness is something that is encountered in the preciousness of ordinary beings, human and otherwise, as we simply recognize the beauty and sacredness of the limited present, the poignant beauty and goodness of a very transient and restricted miraculous moment in space and time where we recognize the sacred quality of another being, our sense of responsibility to that other being, the consequent establishment (however brief and outwardly insignificant) of a relationship with that being, and, in the establishment of that relation with a single transient being, the concurrent establishment of a relationship or connection with Spirit.
 
So every time that we generate an act of moral goodness, we implicitly recognize that there is more to reality than matter and energy. We recognize, or more precisely, intuitively experience, a qualitative aspect of the Cosmos, a transcendent ontological reality, namely moral goodness.
 
In countless gestures of everyday moral goodness (not just in saintly or heroic acts, but in a simple gesture, a glance, a patient pause, a kind word, and in countless ordinary ways) we are actually affirming the experiential presence of Spirit – even when we don’t recognize what we’re doing or the immense significance of it. As evolved conscious entities that know and act according to moral goodness, we affirm/experience a transcendent spiritual reality. Subtle, quiet, everyday acts of moral goodness are nothing less than unrecognized affirmations of Spirit.
 
3. The Experience of Meaning: What We Do Matters
 
With the experience of moral goodness, there simultaneously occurs, in a similarly intuitive, dim, and often unconscious manner, an experiential sense of the meaningfulness of existence. The experience of moral goodness goes hand in hand with the experiential affirmation that things matter: what exists, what we do, how we (and other beings) think and feel.
 
Precisely how things matter might remain elusive, mysterious, and beyond our ability to articulate in precise statements. But in such moments there is a confident, intuitive, experiential sense that, in some mysterious way, they really do matter. Of course, we’re not talking about meaning in the sense of propositional statements which articulate a complex philosophical account of the meaning of the Cosmos. Philosophers and theologians produce such accounts, but all are inadequate as essentially nothing more than well-intentioned guess-work, produced by creatures who are attempting to employ quite limited epistemological capacities to express comprehensive affirmations about the ultimate meaning of existence. That never works. But what does work is the simple acceptance of what our capacity for spiritual perception tells us in a very quiet, direct, and confident sense. We know that there is meaning, in the sense that things really do matter, even though we cannot articulate the nature of that meaning, especially in the context of an honest 21st century sensibility where the use of mythological narratives is no longer credible. Not to reduce something so profoundly important to the level of triviality, but like the Chipotle restaurant commercials that are popular as I write this, one can also say of the experienced meaningfulness of existence, “When you know, you know.”
 
Moreover, the affirmation of meaning does not derive from the experience of some sort of exceptional event. As with moral goodness, we are talking about experiences that occur as part of everyday, ordinary human life. Sometimes these meaning-affirming experiences are experiences of great joy (the birth of a child, the experience of beauty), some are experiences of deep sorrow (suffering and death), and some are, superficially at least, just ordinary moments of sensing the precious meaningfulness that saturates each moment of existence in space and time, however transitory that might be. But they are not experiences which necessitate entering into the non-ordinary, altered mode of consciousness associated with mystical experience. Ordinary people, operating in an everyday mode of consciousness, have the capacity to experience meaning in the same sense that they have the capacity to experience moral goodness.
 
4. The Experience of Consciousness
 
We’ve covered the spiritual significance of the experience of consciousness, and especially the uniquely human capacity for consciousness of consciousness, elsewhere on this site (see blog posts from June, August, October, and November 2024) and in the book, Thinking About Religion in the 21st Century: A New Guide for the Perplexed, so we will limit our comments here and refer readers to those earlier remarks.
 
The key point is simply that consciousness itself is another aspect of everyday experience which offers a window to the presence of the spiritual dimension. In fact, the three areas of everyday religious experience identified above (spiritual expansiveness, moral goodness, and meaning) are only made possible through the presence of consciousness. In a sense, consciousness, especially in its evolved human expression, is the starting point for all things spiritual. Consciousness provides immediate, experiential confirmation that there is Something More than the physical dimension of the Cosmos, and consciousness makes it possible to fill in the content of that Something More with the kinds of experiences described above.
 
 
Religious Experience in Everyday Life
 
The above account of the nature of everyday religious experience is not intended to in any way deny or diminish the significance of mysticism and exceptional, non-ordinary states of consciousness. Such experiences occur, and as James emphasized, for those who have had such experiences, they impart an ineffable sense of meaning and wisdom (what James referred to as the “noetic” quality of mystical experience) which can be life-altering, even when such an experience occurs only once and for just a few minutes or even seconds.
 
But we are suggesting that, aside from the rare and exceptional mystical experience which is encountered by only a fortunate few, aspects of everyday experience which are available to everyone also provide experiential access to the presence of a spiritual dimension of reality, even though these everyday experiences are so commonplace that we typically take them for granted and do not fully appreciate the spiritual import that they carry. Furthermore, there obviously is no contradiction between mystical religious experience and everyday religious experience. One can have both or either: occasional intense experiences in a non-ordinary mode of awareness might be more intense and produce a stronger sense of immediacy, but even in the absence of such special experiences, awareness of Spirit is available to those who dwell in the ordinariness of the everyday – which, in reality, is not ordinary at all.