ABSTRACT

The term “religious experience” covers an exceedingly disparate array of events–from the vaguest glimmerings of something sacred to rapturous mystical unions with the divine or even to revelations. All religious experiences are therefore occasions defined by those experiencing them as an encounter between themselves and some supernatural consciousness. For analytic purposes, these are treated as inter-”personal” encounters, and an important dimension along which these encounters can be ordered is the sense of intimacy between the two “persons” involved. The most general kind of religious experience, and the one most frequently reported in America, shall be called the confirming experience. Such experiences provide a sudden “feeling,” “knowing,” “intuition,” and so forth that the beliefs one holds are true, that one’s Weltanschauung provides an accurate interpretation of the ultimate meaning of reality. The next most common type of religious experience may be called responsive.