ABSTRACT
Bracketing, for the moment, the relationship between language and experience, questions concerning the cognitive content of religious claims are slightly different to the purely philosophical inquiry, ‘Just what is out there?’ or, as someone once asked, ‘Are there any medium-sized pieces of dry goods in the universe?’ Such experiences lead a thoughtful person of any culture to consider the value of existence, the cultural values of a given society, the origin and destiny of a ‘person’. Reacting to a history of slights such as these, Indian scholars of the twentieth century began to use the expression ‘religious experience’ in Indian thought and practice in ways that the original authors could not have foreseen or intended — as apologetic devices used to exalt the pre-eminence of Indian religion and philosophy over Western rationalism. For Edwards, however, religious experience was pre-cultural, pre-linguistic and immediate, in accord with the Enlightenment assumption of a universal, shared, fundamental religious experience behind all cultural differences.
