Religious Consciousness And Experience

It is one of the ironies of our times that, as the practise of religion wanes, a theoretical interest in it on the part of many anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists and philosophers waxes. Among these, only philosophers bring to their task a long history of theological and reli gious relations. Hence their renewed interest has been hailed as a break down of isolationism, heralding, perhaps, a new era of interdisciplinary peace. To celebrate this new ecumenism, a Chicago seminary, consis tently with its purpose, sponsored a colloquium to explore the future of philosophical theology. If some of its participating professional philosophers initially felt a twinge of embarrassment over their presence at an ostensibly theological meeting, they soon were at ease. No one was called upon to define the topic, or even to suggest its relationship to a philosophy of religion. Conveniently, everyone could role up his sleeves and get to work on a job he personally felt needed doing. Can we wonder that the lay observer appeared somewhat confused? Was the purpose to analyze "God talk," or to find a place for 'God' in a metaphysical scheme? Or if not these, something else? It soon became evident that the participants in the colloquium ranged from the free swinger to the severely inhibited, depending upon the role each assigned to dogma and creed.

The Cosmotheandric Experience is not a Christian, or an Indic, or a Buddhist study, but an interdisciplinary study with a firm foundation. It aims at an integration of the whole of reality: We have to reconstruct the body of Prajapati, even if some of the parts feel unworthy, are shy or run away ... We have to think of all of the fragments of the present world in order to bring them together into a harmonious--though not monoliithic--whole. The Cosmotheandric principle, which the author advocates, could be formulated by saying that the divine, the human and the earthly are three irreducible dimensions which constitute the real.

Religion is not a theory about reality; it is a reality. And yet we must not forget that it is a reality, which includes a theory. ~ ~ ~ In The Religious Experience philosopher James Bissett Pratt attempts to describe religious consciousness as an unprejudiced observer who has no thesis to prove. He demonstrates the universality of religious experience, however varied the verbal descriptions employed by persons who have had it. Topics covered in the book include the Religion of Childhood, the Belief in Immortality, the Cult and its Causes, and the Place and Value of Mysticism. JAMES BISSETT PRATT (1875 -1944) was strongly influenced by his deeply religious mother who awakened him to the phenomenon of religion and one's personal relationship with God. Pratt obtained his doctorate from Harvard University under the aegis of William James, who influenced his philosophical development, and became a mentor and good friend. Shortly afterwards he was hired by William College, where he became a professor of philosophy. Although raised an American Protestant, he did his best to experience Roman Catholicism in Europe, and Hinduism and Buddhism in India, Burma, and Sri Lanka.

The Point of Origin investigates the evolution of religious consciousness as an integral reality in the human person. The evolution of religious consciousness is an experience found throughout human history beginning with the earliest known human species, the Cro-Magnon. In this work Br. Thomas identifies empirical data that lends itself to his theory that spirituality is not a bi-product of the human phenomena but an essential characteristic of being human. The author delves into conscious acknowledgement of the natural law as a universal norm guiding human activity in the wake of the plurality of religious expressions (Atheism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, etc.). In a crescendo effect of his work Br. Thomas illustrates how mysticism becomes the ultimate expression of religious consciousness in the human experience.

How is religious experience to be identified, described, analyzed and explained? Is it independent of concepts, beliefs, and practices? How can we account for its authority? Under what conditions might a person identify his or her experience as religious? Wayne Proudfoot shows that concepts, beliefs, and linguistic practices are presupposed by the rules governing this identification of an experience as religious. Some of these characteristics can be understood by attending to the conditions of experience, among which are beliefs about how experience is to be explained.

Are mystical experiences formed by the mystic's cultural background and concepts, as ""constructivists"" maintain, or do mystics sometimes transcend language, belief, and culturally conditioned expectations? Do mystical experiences differ throughout the various religious traditions, as""pluralists"" contend, or are they somehow ecumenical? The contributors to this collection scrutinize a common mystical experience, the ""pure consciousness event""--The experience of being awake but devoid of intentional content--in order to answer these questions. Through the use of historical Hindu, Buddhist,

Reproduction of the original: The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James

Despite the recent ferocious public debate about belief, the concept most central to the discussion—God—frequently remains vaguely and obscurely described. Are those engaged in these arguments even talking about the same thing? In a wide-ranging response to this confusion, esteemed scholar David Bentley Hart pursues a clarification of how the word “God” functions in the world’s great theistic faiths. Ranging broadly across Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Vedantic and Bhaktic Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism, Hart explores how these great intellectual traditions treat humanity’s knowledge of the divine mysteries. Constructing his argument around three principal metaphysical “moments”—being, consciousness, and bliss—the author demonstrates an essential continuity between our fundamental experience of reality and the ultimate reality to which that experience inevitably points. Thoroughly dismissing such blatant misconceptions as the deists' concept of God, as well as the fundamentalist view of the Bible as an objective historical record, Hart provides a welcome antidote to simplistic manifestoes. In doing so, he plumbs the depths of humanity’s experience of the world as powerful evidence for the reality of God and captures the beauty and poetry of traditional reflection upon the divine.