Introduction to Religions, Religious

Experiences and Spirituality

  This introductory lesson aims to make
students understand the nature,
Overview dimensions and features of a religion.
Religion is an important aspect of a
human person's life. 
  At the end of this lesson, student should
be able to: 
 a. Understand the essence of religion and
its fundamental features; 

Objectives  Explain the human-Divine relationship

in the religious experience; 
 Expand on the idea of spirituality; and 
 Differentiate religiosity from
spirituality. 
 Identify the
religion and
explain the
meaning behind
the symbols.
 A religion is a cultural system or
organization of behaviors,
practices, world views, sacred text
and places, and ethical systems Discussion
that build connection between
humanity and the supernatural or
the transcendent. 
 Religion is one of the essential ingredients
of human life. It is a basis for determining
the character of a person or a group of

Discussion persons. Man has the innate tendency to

resort to religion, and to relate to a higher
being. For many, religion is considered as
a way of life as it brings about the culture
and life of people. 
  Religion's etymology comes from the
Discussion Latin word "relegere" meaning, "to read
or go through again in speech or
thought." But the most accepted
etymological definition is the Latin
"religare" which means "to bind."
 Religious as access to decode the
mysteriousness of the Divine through the
experience of awe or fascination. 

Rudolf Otto
…"that which
grows out of the
holy in its various
aspects." 
 "Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate
concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as
Paul Tillich preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the
question of the meaning of life."
Fundamental
Features of
Religion
  Soteriological dimension
 Anthropological dimension
Fundamental  Symbolic dimension
Features of  Moral dimension
Religion  Organizational dimension
 Theological dimension
 Religious
Experience
  The term religious can refer to
divinity, or something that is holy
Defining or sacred. An experience, on the
religious other hand, is something that one
experience goes through, something that
occurs in life, often subjective in
nature.
  Religious experience, then, is a
personal experience and encounter
Defining of the Supreme Being (or more
religious accurately, Being-Itself or the
experience "ground of being") which is
interpreted within a religious
framework.
According to William
James, religious
experience can be
characterized as
experiences that seem
to the person having
them to have some
religious import in his
personal life. 
 Defining
religious  These experiences are life-changing,
experience ongoing experience and relationship to
God (or gods). It is a transformation that
leads the human person to devote
himself to the religion more fully. 
 According to Rudolf Otto,
religious experience is not
something which is
automatically given to anyone.
It is not something obvious.
Any religious experience, therefore,
carries a certain undeterminable
character in its form. 
Fundamentally, however, religious
experience is a feeling of
"Something" which is outside of the
human person.
 This "Something" is what
Rudolf Otto calls the numen
or numinous. This Numen or
phenomenon is felt as Numinous
objective and outside of the
self.
The phenomenology of religious experience

 There is in every human person the tendency to be stirred by

any establishment or scenery outside of himself. The awakening
of religious a priori happens when it is evoked by anything
outside the human person. "Religious sense may arise out of a
striking existential situation, it may come upon us as a vague
feeling of ultimate reality" (Steinbeck, 20017).
  In that respect, religious experience is
a situation of anyone being enveloped
Sense of the by a sense of sacredness. The Holy is
experienced fundamentally among
Sacred religious places which are in
themselves chief sources of the
manifestations of the Holy.
Spirituality
  "An awareness that there are levels
of reality not immediately
Understanding apparent; there is more than meets
Spirituality the eye." -Michael Downey
 "The capacity for self-
transcendence."-Joann Wolkski
 "Spirituality is an important element in
human nature and experience."-Bernard
McGinn
 "Spirituality is the inner dimension of
the person wherein the ultimate reality is
experienced."-Ewert Cousins Understanding
 "Becoming a person in the fullest Spirituality
sense."-John Macquarrie
 "Spirituality is an expression of the
dialectic movement from the inauthentic
self to the authentic self."-Edward
Kinerk
  All these definitions pertain to one
commong thing: spirituality is engaging,
discovering, and understanding the self.
Understanding In this sense, to be fully human is to be
Spirituality spiritual. Within every human being,
there is an internal force that urges the
human person to become a spiritual
person. 
  The quest for spirituality is not
only confined in academic
discussion. It has also an existential
Understanding
or experiential aspect as one of its
Spirituality nature. In other words, spiritual life
is born in the spirit of one's
reflection of his experience. 
Understanding
 The type of question that spirituality
Spirituality
demands of a persons are questions of
ultimate concern. Hence, one of the
questions that it addresses is the question
fo what it means to be a human person.
 "Human beings are vision-creating
beings rather than merely tool-making
animals." This line from Evelyn
Underhill (1993) probably captures the Understanding
enterprise of religion and that is, that the Spirituality
world is not so much seen as objective
reality but a meta-narrative where the
self discovers its place and purpose. 
  Religion is a formalization and
institutionalization of beliefs, rituals, and
practices in an official religious system that
claims to get a person in a right relationship
with God.
Religiosity and
Spirituality   Spirituality is a focus on spiritual things and the
spiritual world instead of physical things, all to
pursue the natural inclination of the human
person to serch for the meaning and purpose of
existence. 
  One of the greatest threats towards the pursuit of holiness
is that one is ending up being religious and not spiritual.

Religiosity "The former is human; the latter is divine. The law could
make people religious, but not spiritual. Religiousity is
and taken up with the external, visible things. Spirituality is

Spirituality  primarily a matter of the heart" (Poonen, 1992). But there

can be no division between the two. One's religious
beliefs—that is, belief in the Divine—shape and define
one's spiritual life. 
  Established as an organized system of behaviors,
practices, worldviews, sacred texts and places, as well
as ethical systems that build connection between man
and God, religion is a vital aspect of man's life.
Summary Spirituality, on the other hand, describes the depth-
dimension of all human existence as a constitutive
element of human nature. As these two concepts are
related, the human person is guided by religious beliefs
portrayed in his deep sense of spirituality.