ILOILO DOCTORS’ COLLEGE

West Avenue, Molo, Iloilo City

GE Elective 3
Religions, Religious Experiences and Spirituality

Overview

This introductory module aims to shed light on the nature and aspects of religion. Religion is a vital
part of human life. It is one tool used in answering most of our existential questions - about life,
about existence. However, despite our everyday encounter with religion, it is still often
misunderstood. Therefore, this lesson will give us an idea of how religion, together with all the
complicated terms surrounding it, can and must be understood.

MODULE 1: Introduction

From the beginning of human civilization, religion has always been a vital component of the human
condition. It gave us a system of orientation on what we should live for or die for. Our constant
pursuit of religion is a search for an answer to our existential and spiritual burdens. Thus, religion
functions as an anchor at the core of humanity’s existence. Most of the time, it is religion that provides
meaning and sense to our daily existence. Humans, as journeying beings – homo viator – always
seeks to find something – or Someone – greater than themselves. Hence, we give in to a specific
religion that fulfills our search for certainty that determines the course of our lives. God made us,
and we made religion in order to help us in our quest for answers.

Perhaps, when you were younger, you tend to ask your parents or yourself the questions “where
did everything come from?”, or, “who created us?”. These questions only go to show that even at a
very young age, we acknowledge the fact that we are not independent beings who can exist without
a creator. Logical thinking would always bring us to a concept of a maker, which we often identify as
God. This is the very reason why human civilization has established countless religions over the
course of thousands of years. As a matter of fact, a German philosopher named Erich Fromm argued
that religion is an expression of our basic human needs, and all cultures will always have it. We can
never get away from this because it is an inevitable truth of our existence.

Looking at the world’s history, it is difficult to not notice how religions have affected our present
lives, whether in a good or a bad way. There even came a point in the western narrative where
religion became the end-all and be-all of everything; what was considered as true was what the
religious teachings prescribed. A concrete example of this is the belief during the Medieval period
that if you contradict the teachings of the Catholic Church, you are considered a heretic. However,
today, religion as an institution seems to be caught in a kind of stalemate. In this age of religious
extremism, environmental exploitation, racial discrimination, and family disintegration, religion most
often gets the blame. Admittedly, religion has been a real factor in shaping conflicts in world history
– and it continues to be. Religion plays a central role in world conflict. Some claim religion to have
hampered a nation’s growth, that religion is a roadblock to progress. Religious doctrines, beliefs, and
practices cause grave misunderstanding among cultures and nations. But this is only brought by the
misconception that one religion should be above the other. Religion is so beautifully woven into
society that it addresses questions that we, as humans, cannot find an immediate answer to. Religion
is simply misunderstood today. To talk, therefore, about religion is deemed of utmost importance –
religion yesterday, religion today, and religion tomorrow. This course should be able to make you
realize that religion, when properly understood, can be the solution to the problems it has itself
caused.

Aside from religions and their respective traditions, this course should also be able to elucidate on
religious experience. The notion of “religious experience” that will be discussed in this subject is less
of the mystical side of religious experience and more of the day-to-day religious experience, or the
day-to-day experience of God in ordinary life. With this approach, we must go back to our raw
experience, to see everything as manifestations of something greater than ourselves. The religious
experience should be a day to day experience. The goal is to experience God on a daily basis. The
way one experiences God, even in the most ordinary things, can never be discounted.

Spirituality is treated almost in the same way. We will talk about spirituality not in the strict,
monastic sense but more on the simple way of life of the ordinary believer. The discussion dwells
mostly on the ideals which believers follow in order to live a good life, in accordance with the
teachings of their religion. Spirituality here is treated as a path with different signposts, stopovers,
and layovers, but still leads to the same, single destination.

This subject does not aim to expose various religions in order to be subjected to comparison –
after all, no religion is better than the other – but to see each religious tradition as it is and find
similarities with other religious traditions. This way, we may be able to find that which is greater than
ourselves, regardless of our religion.

Religions, religious experience, and spirituality must be understood with care. A single misstep
can lead the believer, the family, and the society in the wrong direction. But with influence both on
the personal and the societal level, religion, when properly understood, must transform the believer
and, eventually, move society forward. In every religion is an element of transcendence, and a vision
of searching for the deepest values of humanity that can only be found through an authentic
connection with the destination, the Supreme Being – God.

On Religion

There is much controversy and little clarity as to the etymology of the word “religion”, and this
topic has been debated since. One such perspective was presented by the philosopher Cicero who
proposed the Latin relegere, which roughly means “to read or go through again in speech or thought”.
On the other hand, the most commonly accepted etymology is the Latin religare, which means “to
bind”. However, Cicero and other early etymologists all share in the idea that religion is a system
which binds a human person to a social, moral, and legal duty or contract and compels that same
person to follow or avoid particular courses of actions.
 The said definitions of religion only provide us with its nominal meaning, but do not give us a full
and real understanding of the concept. In other words, they only explain the word “religion” but
never made us understand what the concept really means. Maybe, that is the funny thing about
religion – we keep trying to give it some definition, but it still, up to this day, remains as a mystery
waiting to be discovered. As a matter of fact, numerous scholars, philosophers, sociologists,
theologians, etc., have attempted to explain what religion is. For example, the German idealist
Immanuel Kant said that “religion is the recognition of all our duties as divine commands.” For
Kant, religion is never separated from ethics as a way of life. Also, Emile Durkheim, a French
sociologist, described religion from a sociological perspective. He defined religion as, “a set of
ceremonial actions, assembling the group, heightening its emotion, and focusing its member on
symbols of their common belongingness.” Further, Karl Marx would say that religion is the “opium of
the masses”. According to him, religion, just like opium, clouds the mind of the people in order to
not recognize the oppressions existing in society. These are only some of the definitions of religion
and there are thousands more out there.

It is true that the discussions about religions have come a long way; however, no matter how hard
these scholars try to explain religion to us, we will never understand the concept if the definition
does not fit our context. It’s like the scene of a baby boomer trying to explain how life must be lived
to someone who belongs to the generation Z. It will only remain unknown and misunderstood. In
this journey in knowing religion, we must not fall into the trap of subscribing to only one definition,
or else we might just end up imposing the prejudices and biases of the person explaining the concept
rather than really knowing the concept for what it is. Hence – and this is very important – I encourage
all of you to suspend all your prior knowledge and judgment on religion in order to really know the
essence of this subject we are trying to explore. To know the meaning of religion, it must first be
lived, explored, and experienced. In this way, we might be able to create a fuller understanding of
religion. Alluding to the ideas of William James, we must first acknowledge the fact that in our journey
in knowing religion, it is very likely that we might not find a single essence or explanation. However,
that does not mean that the journey is not worth taking, because every meaning we find is equally
important. It will take an open mind to understand religion.

I hope that at the end of this course, although given only six weeks, we will be able to find our
own unique definition of religion using the basic knowledge that we will learn.

Fundamental Features of Religion

Some of the basic fundamental features of religion are the following:

a) Cosmological Dimension

Religion is an avenue to answer big questions about our existence. It provides explanations about
our faith, the universe, creation, nature, meaning, and form of the universe and the place of humanity
in it. Religion tries to put meaning into the world. Religion achieves this through myths, theories and
visions of the creation, nature, meaning and forms of the universe, and our place in it.
 b) Soteriological Dimension
Religion provides a scheme for salvation. Most religions, if not all, have their soteriological or salvific
dimension. It tries to give an answer to the question “what happens after death?” and how do we
make sure we have a good destination when we die, e.g. heaven and earth for Christians, samsara
and moksha for Hindus, and nirvana for Buddhists.

c) Anthropological Dimension

While religion teaches us to live together properly, it also teaches us that there is more than this
mundane world. It encourages us to seek beyond the finite human experience and aspire for what
is greater which our mind could not comprehend.

d) Symbolic Dimension

Religions have symbols and rituals. Symbols are signs used for sacred objects or ideas and are used
to give meaning to human behavior. Religious rituals and practices are prescribed, repeated
behaviors with desired and intended outcomes for the enrichment of the religion and the person.
Symbols and rituals help in creating a sound tradition and transform through religious tradition, e.g.
cross for Christians, “om” for Hindus, and male circumcision of Jews.

e) Moral Dimension

Every religion provides a moral compass. All religions have a sense that there is a right way to live
and act – morality. To live a moral life is to live out the precepts of the religion. The idea of good
and evil has been an effective doctrine in providing us with moral guidance. It must be noted,
however, that the major religions vary in their definitions of what constitutes a good life, and the line
between moral philosophy and religion is far from clear.

f) Organizational Dimension

All religions recognize an authority. Religious matters are often settled by religious authorities. Most
religions today are headed by priests or pastors who undergo years of training and education to fulfill
their religious role as leaders. In other religions, the emphasis is placed on an internal authority and
personal understanding of how to live in the world.

g) Theological Dimension

Religions introduce the existence and nature of a supreme being. This is the defining feature of
religion. A god is the primary object of all religious practice and devotion. The understanding of a
particular religion mainly involves the necessary knowledge and appreciation of the supreme being
or beings. All forms of religious devotional systems are considered expressions of the divine.
 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

Religious experiences can be characterized generally as experiences that seem to the person
having them to be of some objective reality and to have some religious import. That reality can be an
individual, a state of affairs, a fact, or even an absence, depending on the religious tradition the
experience is a part of. A wide variety of kinds of experience fall under the general rubric of religious
experience. The concept is vague, and the multiplicity of kinds of experiences that fall under it makes
it difficult to capture in any general account. Part of that vagueness comes from the term ‘religion,’
which is difficult to define in any way that does not either rule out institutions that clearly are religions,
or include terms that can only be understood in the light of a prior understanding of what religions are.
Nevertheless, we can make some progress in elucidating the concept by distinguishing it from distinct
but related concepts.

First, religious experience is to be distinguished from religious feelings, in the same way that
experience in general is to be distinguished from feelings in general. A feeling of elation, for example,
even if it occurs in a religious context, does not count in itself as a religious experience, even if the
subject later comes to think that the feeling was caused by some objective reality of religious
significance. An analogy with sense experience is helpful here. If a subject feels a general feeling of
happiness, not on account of anything in particular, and later comes to believe the feeling was caused
by the presence of a particular person, that fact does not transform the feeling of happiness into a
perception of the person. Just as a mental event, to be a perception of an object, must in some sense
seem to be an experience of that object, a religiously oriented mental event, to be a religious
experience, must in some way seem to be an experience of a religiously significant reality. So, although
religious feelings may be involved in many, or even most, religious experiences, they are not the same
thing. Discussions of religious experience in terms of feelings, like Schleiermacher’s (1998) “feeling of
absolute dependence,” or Otto’s (1923) feeling of the numinous, were important early contributions to
theorizing about religious experience, but some have since then argued (see Gellman 2001 and Alston
1991, for example) that religious affective states are not all there is to religious experience. To account
for the experiences qua experiences, we must go beyond subjective feelings.
Religious experience is also to be distinguished from mystical experience. Although there is
obviously a close connection between the two, and mystical experiences are religious experiences, not
all religious experiences qualify as mystical. The word ‘mysticism’ has been understood in many
different ways. James (1902) took mysticism to necessarily involve ineffability, which would rule out
many cases commonly understood to be mystical. Alston (1991) adopted the term grudgingly as the
best of a bad lot and gave it a semi-technical meaning. But in its common, non-technical sense,
mysticism is a specific religious system or practice, deliberately undertaken in order to come to some
realization or insight, to come to unity with the divine, or to experience the ultimate reality directly. At
the very least, religious experiences form a broader category; many religious experiences, like those
of Saint Paul, Arjuna, Moses, Muhammad, and many others come unsought, not as the result of some
deliberate practice undertaken to produce an experience.
 SPIRITUALITY

Spirituality, just like religion and religious experience, is a concept we often hear but barely know
what it means. In order to understand what spirituality is let us first discuss what spirituality is not.

a) Spirituality is not similar to spiritism, or the belief that spirits exist apart from matter. It is also
the conviction that when the spirit splits from the body, the spirit haunts the world as ghosts.
b) Spirituality is not the same as Spiritualism, or the belief in the survival of the human personality
and in communication between the living and the dead. An example of spiritualism is the use
of a Ouija board.
c) Spirituality is not mesmerism or animal magnetism. Mesmerism is an activity that is performed
which makes the subject dazed and be subordinated to the operator.
d) Spirituality is not hypnotism.
e) Spirituality is not similar to religiosity. Religiosity is oftentimes confused with spirituality.
Religiosity concerns itself with religion, traditions, and beliefs; hence, it is man-made, external,
and visible to the eye. Religiosity is the outward show of religion.

So now, what is spirituality? The word spirituality is impossible to define precisely, since it points
to moments that can’t fully be captured in words. Some people have said these moments are like an
“oceanic feeling” because the experience feels as big as an ocean. Others call it a “peak experience”
or a “religious experience.”
A quick answer to the question is that spirituality is concerned with the problems connected with
the spirit or soul. This definition presupposes that we are embodied spirits. What this means is that
we are composed of a body and a spirit. In addition, according to Sawan Ashram, “Spirituality…is the
science of developing higher consciousness in Man on the level of the soul, and making one transcend
from mere bodily consciousness into cosmic consciousness, so as to enable one to understand the
working of the divine plan.” Simply put, spirituality pertains to “self-realization” and “God-realization”.
Man has the innate ability to transcend from the physical world to a higher dimension of life which is
the spiritual world. It is a personal quest to seek something beyond the physical world. Thus, self-
transcendence is very essential in understanding one’s own spirituality.

Definitions worth considering

Brené Brown, author of Daring Greatly

“Spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by a
power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded
in love and compassion. Practicing spirituality brings a sense of perspective, meaning, and purpose to
our lives.”

Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

“Spiritual intelligence represents our drive for meaning and connection with the infinite. Spiritual
intelligence also helps us discern true principles that are part of our conscience, and are symbolized
by the compass. The compass is an excellent physical metaphor for principles, because it always
points north.”

Lisa Miller, author of The Spiritual Child

“Spirituality is an inner sense of relationship to a higher power that is loving and guiding. The word
we give to this higher power might be God, nature, spirit, the universe, the creator, or other words
that represent a divine presence. But the important point is that spirituality encompasses our
relationship and dialogue with this higher presence.”

To put things into context, this example might help. Imagine that you have every material thing
that you would want and need. You have a nice house and a car. Your bank accounts are loaded with
money. You can afford to go to different places. You get to eat whatever you want whenever you
want it. However, all of these nice things do not guarantee you a happy and contented life. There is
something that goes beyond the material realm because we are embodied spirits. This is perhaps a
manifestation of our spirituality. We always seek something beyond what we can see, touch, hear,
smell, and feel. We have an inner dimension where we experience reality.

Spirituality can exist without religion. A person does not have to believe in any religion in order to
pursue spiritual growth. However, we may say that both religiosity and spirituality would grow more
if they are practiced together. The terms “religious but not spiritual” and “spiritual but not religious”
are becoming a trend today. The problem with the former is that there is a practice of religion but
lacks an internalization. An example of which is a person who attends worships regularly but does
not embody the teachings of their religion. On the other hand, the danger with the latter is that
everything is possible if spirituality is not guided by religion. However, if spirituality and religiosity
will be practiced together, it would produce a better outcome. Spirituality can give better meaning
to religiosity while religiosity can guide our spirituality.

Summary and Conclusion

In this module, we have tried to elucidate different concepts such as religion, religious experience
and spirituality. We have learned that there are many ways to define each concept that is why it is
necessary for us to keep an open mind in order to understand them properly. The study of religion is
harder and more technical than we think it is. However, as we move along our discussions and start
studying a particular religion, these concepts will hopefully make more sense to us.