ABSTRACT
Many historical traditions of humankind report that individuals as well as groups have seen their god(s) or goddess(es), that divine guidance was felt as the most important motivation for undertaking actions and that a dialogue was taking place between the divine and the human worlds. Human life, thus, was performed in continuous contact with the other world and all interpretations were given with reference to transcendent realities. This, however, seems to be unknown to many Europeans and Americans at
present. They say that they have never ‘made’ any religious experience of this kind and do not even understand how others can claim that they have ‘made’ religious experience.1 The question thus arises whether this dichotomy is due to a total break between traditional forms of life and modern types of thinking, or whether it is produced by different patterns of interpretation concerning one and the same reality of life. If the first case proved to be true, it would lead to the conclusion that there are two different anthropologies: one relevant to the past and the other valid for some parts of the contemporary world. This seems to be a rather unlikely conclusion. The second hypothesis, that is that of different patterns of interpretation, seems much more convincing because it does not imply a total break in the anthropological conditions of humankind but refers only to the explanatory frame concerning the understanding of experience as such. The purpose of this chapter is to follow the second hypothesis by setting
out such a frame and discussing its theoretical implications. In a concluding remark two examples will be given in order to show how such an explanation can be useful for the study of religious experience in the traditions, so that further investigations can be carried out using this framework as a guide.
