introduction-to-religions-religious-experiences-and-spirituality_compress.pdf

Religious Experiences

1. INTRODUCTION TO
RELIGIONS, RELIGIOUS
EXPERIENCES AND
SPIRITUALITY

2. OVERVIEW
This introductory lesson aims to make student understand the
nature, dimensions and features of a religion. Religion is an
important aspect of a human person’s life. The richness of religion
can be encountered through a religious experience an access to the
Divine that draws the human person to relate to a higher being. From
the religious experience, one could generate a spirituality, or a way of
life.

3. OBJECTIVES
1.Understand the essence of religion and its fundamental features.
2.Explain the human-Divine relationship in the religious
experience.
3.Expand on the idea of spirituality.
4.Differentiate religiosity from spirituality.

4. WHICH SYMBOL?

5. WHAT ABOUT THIS?

6. TRIVIA
Each religion in the world is known to have a “golden rule”, a
principle which asks believers to treat others the same way one
would want to be treated. The Golden Rule which follows the law of
reciprocity is expressed differently by each religion.

7. GOLDEN RULE IN DIFFERENT
RELIGIONS
BUDDHISM:
“Hurt not others in ways that you
yourself would find hurtful.”
Udana-Varga, 51
HINDUISM
“This is the sum of duty: Do
naught unto others what thou
would have them do naught unto
you.”
Mahabharata 5,1517

8. GOLDEN RULE IN DIFFERENT
RELIGIONS
CONFUCIANISM:
“Do not do unto others what you
would not like yourself. Then
there will be no resentment
against you, either in the family
or in the state.”
Analects 12,2
TAOISM
“Regard your neighbor’s gain as
your gain, and your neighbor’s
loss as your loss.”
Tai Shang Kan Rin P’ien, Ch.9

9. GOLDEN RULE IN DIFFERENT
RELIGIONS
JUDAISM:
“What is hateful to you, do not
do to your fellow man. This is the
entire Law; all the rest is
commentary.”
Talmud, Shabbat 3rd
ISLAM
“No one of you is a believer until
he desires for his brother that
which he desires for himself.”
Forty Hadith of an-Nawawi 13

10. GOLDEN RULE IN DIFFERENT
RELIGIONS
CHRISTIANITY:
“Do unto others what you would have others
do unto you.”
Luke 6:31

11. TIMELINE OF THE HISTORY OF
RELIGIONS
1500 BC
Birth of Hinduism
586 BC
Destruction of the First
Jewish Temple
1000-600 BC
Birth of
Zoroastrianism
600 BC
Birth of Taoism
Birth of Jainism
Birth of Confucianism
1500-1350 BC
Birth of Judaism
560 BC
Birth of Buddhism
550 BC
Construction of the
Second Jewish Temple
476 BC
Fall of Rome to the
Barbarians
300 BC
Spread of
Buddhism in South
East Asia
4 AD
Birth of Jesus Christ
30 AD
Birth of Christianity
70 AD
Destruction of the
Second Jewish Temple
570 AD
Birth of Muhammad
610 AD
Birth of Islam
633 AD
Spread of Islam in
the Mediterranean
800 AD
Birth of
Shintoism
1469 AD
Birth of
Guru Nanak
1499 AD
Birth of
Sikhism
1517 AD
Protestant
Reformation
1938 AD
The Holocaust
2000 AD
Islamic Radicalism
2020
AD
GEC 3

12. RELIGION
•A religion is a cultural system or organization of behaviors,
practices, worldviews, sacred texts and places that build
connection between humanity and the supernatural or the
transcendent.
•Religion is one of the essential ingredients. It is a basis for
determining the character of a person or a group of persons.
•Man has the innate tendency to resort to religion and to relate to a
higher being.

13. RELIGION

14. RELIGION

15. RELIGION

16. RELIGION
Religion is that which grows out of
and gives access expression to
experience of the holy in its various
aspect.


Rudolf Otto
THE IDEA OF THE HOLY, 1917

17. RELIGION
Religion is the state of being grasped
by an ultimate concern, a concern
which qualifies all other concerns as
preliminary and which itself contains
the answer to the question of the
meaning of life.


Paul Tillich

18. RELIGION
Religion is the recognition of all our
duties as divine commands.

19. RELIGION
•There may be many meanings when it comes to religion, but they
all pertain to a single commonality.
•From these definitions, one could conclude that the reality of
religion has a positive aspect in one’s spiritual life.
•This means that religion shapes and forms what goes on in the
inner self of a human person.

20. Fundamental Features of Religion
COSMOLOGICAL DIMENSION
•Religion gives explanation to the dimension of the
religious world.
•Religion stands as an avenue to answer big questions
about faith, as well as questions about the aspect of the
life of the universe.
•Religion portrays the world as something that is
meaningful.

21. Fundamental Features of Religion
SOTERIOLOGICAL or SALVIFIC DIMENSION
•All religions provide a scheme of salvation.
•Religion provides an answer to the proverbial human
problem of destination after death.
•Religions’ salvation theories propose a life in accordance
with the teachings of one’s religion in order to attain
salvation or a state of perfection.

22. Fundamental Features of Religion
ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIMENSION
•This dimension is religion’s sense of mystery.
•Religion empowers the people to transcend from the
finite boundaries of human experience and offer a means
for negotiating that which the human mind cannot fully
comprehend.

23. Fundamental Features of Religion
SYMBOLIC DIMENSION
•A religion cannot be called a religion if there are no
symbols and rituals.
•Repeated ritual can give way to create a sound tradition,
and transform through religious tradition.

24. Fundamental Features of Religion
MORAL DIMENSION
•All religions have a sense that there is a right way to live
and act—morality.
•The idea of good and evil is fundamental to many faiths,
and religion often has a function of offering moral
guidance to society.

25. Fundamental Features of Religion
ORGANIZATIONAL DIMENSION
•All religions have a sense of authority with regard to
religious matter.
•Most religions today are headed by priests, pastors or
clerics.
•In other religions, the emphasis is placed on an internal
authority and personal understanding of how to live in
the world.

26. Fundamental Features of Religion
THEOLOGICAL DIMENSION
•This is the defining feature of religion as it introduces the
existence and nature of a supreme being, or supreme
authority.
•All forms of religious devotional systems are considered
expression of the divine.

27. Fundamental Features of Religion
•Cosmological
•Soteriological or Salvific
•Anthropological
•Symbolic
•Moral
•Organizational
•Theological

28. RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

29. RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
•The term religious can refer to divinity or something that is
holy or sacred. This can include believing or reverencing a
higher power of being. It can also refer to a set of beliefs.

•The term experience is something that one goes through,
something that occurs in life, often subjective in nature.

30. RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
•From these distinct definitions, a religious experience is a
personal experience and encounter of the Supreme Being
which is interpreted within a religious framework.
•A religious experience is also known as a spiritual
experience, sacred experience, or mystical experience.

31. RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

It can be characterized commonly as
experiences that seem to the person having
them to have some religious import in his/
personal life.

William James

32. RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

“The readers who cannot reminisce the religious
feelings of their past may not understand the
discussion on religious psychology and
phenomenology of religion. People who do not
know how to remember and re-awaken their
religious consciousness may find the work
senseless.”

Rudolf Otto

33. RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
Otto presents certain determinations of what
religious experience is. In his discussion of the
“creature feeling” – the feeling of absolute
dependence of the subject before an
encompassing Divine – Otto describes
religious feeling as “the submergence of the
nothingness before an overpowering, absolute
might of some kind.
Rudolf Otto

34. RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
It is fundamentally a feeling of “Something”
which is outside of the human person. This means
that the religious experience contains an element
of OBJECTIVITY- that “Something” that is
present. This “Something” which is present is
what Otto calls the ‘numinous’ or the ‘Numen’.
Therefore, the experience of objectivity is a
unique encounter with the ‘numen praesens’.
Rudolf Otto

35. Spirituality

36. Spirituality
There are two essential approaches to understanding spirituality.
1.Spirituality is beyond human senses.
2.Spirituality involves and beckons the reality that man is
an embodied spirit.
These approaches are the springboards to fully fathom the true
essence of spirituality.

37. Spirituality
Spirituality is beyond human senses.
•There are levels of reality not immediately apparent; there is more
than meets the eye. Its entirety cannot be understood because of its
depth in nature.
•Spirituality has a metaphysical aspect because of its spiritual
dimension

38. Spirituality

39. Spirituality
Spirituality involves and beckons the reality that
man is an embodied spirit
•This is the quest for personal integration in the face of forces of
fragmentation and depersonalization.
•Thus spirituality involves a personal task to reconstruct every important
piece of human experience in order to realize the richness of spirituality.

40. Spirituality
Many spiritual writers use spirituality to describe the depth
dimension of all human existence as a constitutive element of
human nature and experience
•Ewert Cousins: “spirituality is the inner dimension of the person
wherein the ultimate reality is experienced”
•John McQuarrie: “spirituality is concerned with becoming a person in
the fullest sense”
•Abraham Maslow: “spirituality is a form of self-actualization”

41. Spirituality
•Edward Kinerk: “spirituality is an expression of the dialectic movement
from the inauthentic self to the authentic self”
•Raimundo Panikkar: “spirituality is a typical way of handling the human
condition”
•Sandra Schneiders: “spirituality is the realization or actualization of the
human spirit,a nd the experience of consciously striving to integrate
one’s life in terms not of isolation and self-absorption but of
self-transcendence toward the ultimate value one perceives”

42. Spirituality
•The self is inseparable from spirituality
•Spirituality is used to describe an element in human experience precisely
as experience and precisely as human. Spirituality refers to the human
quest for ultimate value, or the human person’s striving to attain the
highest idea or goal.
•In this sense, to be fully human is spiritual.

43. Spirituality
•Spiritual life is born in the spirit of one’s reflection of his experience.
•In theology, human experience is the locus of spirituality, or the starting
point of spiritual pursuit.
•Human growth and maturation are prerequisites for growing and
maturing in spiritual life.
•The more familiarity one has with one’s experience the more
familiarity there is in his spirituality.

44. Spirituality
•In the Philosophy of the Human Person, the greatest and ultimate
question concerns identity: “Who am I?”
•The question of personal identity is the most existential question a man
must ask himself. To ask this ultimate question is to attempt to have a
better understanding of the meaningfulness of existence.
•Socrates was right: “Know thyself.”

45. Spirituality
•As one tries to understand, know, and appreciate himself and his experience,
he strives to understand, know, and appreciate his spirituality.
•The self, through human experience is the inner core of spirituality
•Ignorance to one’s self is also a form of ignorance of one’s own spirituality
•Human beings have the capacity for self-transcendence. One of the natures of
man is to respond to the call of the Spirit (Divine) to be spiritual being. It is the
deepest center of the person, where the divine Spirit touches the human spirit.

46. Religiosity and Spirituality
Religion is a formalization and institutionalization of beliefs, rituals
and practices in a particular official religious system that claims to
get a person in a right relationship with God.
Spirituality is a focus on spiritual things and the spiritual world
instead of physical/earthly things, all to pursue the natural
inclination of human person to search for the meaning and purpose
of existence.

47. Religiosity and Spirituality
▪One of the greatest threat towards the pursuit to holiness is that
one is ending up being religious and not spiritual.
▪Religiosity is often associated with spirituality and are used
interchangeably by others.
▪However, they are different in their nature.

48. Religiosity and Spirituality
▪“Religiosity is human, Spirituality is
divine. The law could make people
religious, but not spiritual.
Religiosity is taken up with the
external visible things. Spirituality
is primarily a matter of the heart.”

49. Religiosity and Spirituality

50. Religiosity and Spirituality

51. Religiosity and Spirituality
When they
say, “I am
spiritual but not
religious.”

52. Religiosity and Spirituality
▪A religious person can be a member of one among the many
world religions and adhere to its belief and rituals, but his
religiosity is not automatically translated into spirituality, whereas a
spiritual person is someone who is committed to experience
inner transformation in his life with or without the help and
guidance of a religious institution.
▪In the person’s character and way of life, one can easily sense the
person’s deep spirituality.

53. Religiosity and Spirituality
▪However, ultimately there can be no division between religiosity
and spirituality.
▪One’s religious beliefs—that is, belief in the Divine—shape and define
one’s spiritual life. They are inseparable.

54. ▪Religion is established to be an organized system of behaviors,
practices, world views, sacred texts and places and ethical systems
that build connection between humanity and the supernatural.
▪As independent systems, religions have fundamental dimensions
such as an explanation of the cosmos, a theory of salvation, a
moral system, a set of symbols and rituals, and the existence of a
supreme being.

55. ▪From these, religions provide avenues for its believers to
experience the Divine in what is known as a religious experience,
and extraordinary contact with the supernatural wherein the
human is fazed in fear and trembling.
▪Spirituality on the other hand, describes the depth dimension of all
human existence as a constitutive element of human nature
▪Spirituality begins and is rooted in the knowledge of the self.

56. ▪Though religiosity and spirituality are often used interchangeably,
it is essential to recognize their differences. When a human person
is guided by religious beliefs, his actions must also portray his deep
sense of spirituality.