Throughout history and around the globe, religious people who seem to be of sound mind have reported incredible encounters with non-human sentient beings, both visible and invisible. The “religious experiencer” and the scientist have different ways of evaluating what has occurred and what can be known from these experiences. The sense of encounter or union with cosmically important persons such as God, angels, demons, goddesses, idols, ancestors, or communicating trees commonly constitutes evidence for the reality or intentionality of such beings for religious people. However, as scientists, psychologists tend to limit themselves to an objective, materialistic, mechanistic worldview so that what they can know must be observable and measurable.

Consequently, scientists could and do investigate the emotions, values, and personality changes attendant to religious encounters, but subjective experiences remain unconvincing as evidence of the existence, sentience, or intentionality of non-human beings. Thus, religious experiences are often characterized by psychologists as irrational or overly emotional and, sometimes, as pathological (Freud, 1927/1961). In a paradigm that cannot consider the objective existence of metaphysical beings or the intentionality of non-human beings or objects, it is difficult to richly and non-reductively understand the experiences of the bhakti saint, Pentecostal revivalist, or animist.

In this paper, we consider psychological, philosophical, and anthropological approaches to put forward an explanatory framework that respects the cosmological commitments of both scientists and religious participants. We propose that the scientific (objective vs. subjective) interpretive paradigm and the religious worldview can be bridged by studying religious experience as an interpersonal, relational phenomenon: that is, how religious experience is framed in terms of social or interpersonal relationships and how it both shapes and reflects the individual’s cultural and intrapsychic world. Although religious experience can be primarily about beliefs or feelings, religiosity is more commonly concerned with reciprocal, social relationships between humans and between humans and other-than-human, cosmically important persons. We suggest that viewing religion as relationality more accurately describes the self-reported experiences of theists as well as the cosmologies of indigenous peoples. In the final section of the paper, we propose potential lines of inquiry for mental health practitioners, psychologists, anthropologists, philosophers, and theologians, set within the theoretical framework of religiosity as relationality.

Religious experience and the subjectivity/objectivity problem

Ninian Smart (2000) has identified two general types of religious experience, the mystical and the numinous. Mystical experiences, according to Smart, are serene and meditative, directed inwardly, and accompanied by an altered sense of self. The mystic experiences a purifying of the consciousness so that all self-identity and thoughts of the world are abandoned and the Self is lost in unity with the Divine Being, Ultimate Reality, the One, or the real essence of the cosmos. According to Smart, the prototype of this kind of religious experience is Zen, or forms of Buddhism, Hinduism, or Christianity.

The numinous experience, on the other hand, is focused on the external Other. Borrowing the term numinous from Rudolph Otto (1869-1937), Smart characterizes this kind of religious experience as an encounter with an entirely separate Other in which powerful feelings of awe or fear are invoked. This kind of experience is most similar to that of Arjuna meeting Krishna in the Bhagavad Gîtâ, or the experiences of the Apostle Paul, Isaiah, or Muhamad. Numinous experiences can also be much less dramatic, but they are always associated with a sense of community or interaction with an other in an interpersonal or intersubjective relationship. It is this intersubjective sense of communing with the other that is the subject of this paper and, we will argue, an important kind of knowing in the world.

In The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James (1902/2002) describes a multitude of religious experiences of theists who profess to have encountered the divine. From Saint Teresa of Avila, whose heart was pierced with the lance of an angel, to the devoted Shiite dervish who would utter no other word than “Ali,” to the anonymous convert who reports sensing the presence of God in nature, James details the religious experiences of both famous and ordinary folk, from many different religious traditions.

More recently, the influential Pentecostal preacher, Tommy Tenney, has encouraged Christians to pursue God in a way that will “catch His heart” (1998: 5). Tenney says that during services in Houston, Texas, in 1996, the presence of God was so “thick” and so concentrated that the congregants were weeping throughout the church. According to Tenney, as he gripped the pulpit to speak, it was split in two with a loud thunderclap. “The presence of God had hit that place like some kind of bomb. People began to wail and weep…when I gave the altar call, I had no idea that it would be but the first of seven [italics in the original] altar calls that day” (8). Tenney continues, “God only cares about your answer to one question: ‘Do you want me?’”

Religious experiences, in which an individual or group of individuals claims to have had a direct encounter with the divine or other kinds of cosmically-important, non-human beings, make for incredible and interesting stories. However, such experiences are strong tests of the explanatory and interpretive abilities of both scientists and religious adherents. William James contended that religious experiences are in some sense genuine because the experiencer encodes a memory, whether endogenously or empirically perceived, of an encounter with an “other.” James argued, however, that regardless of how vivid, meaningful, or convincing an encounter may have been for the experiencer, others need not view the experience as either authoritative or even “real.” In other words, scientists should (and do) recognize the subjective nature of religious experience, but they cannot and are not willing to grant that such experiences are objectively valid.

While granting that religious experience is in some sense genuine (excluding cases of trickery), some scientists may still contend that ecstatic states, visitation by angels, or animistic communications with rocks and trees may be symptomatic of a neuropathology. James, however, cites the altruistic life and eloquent writings of St. Teresa and others, and argues that such experiences can have a positive effect in one’s life. In fact, we note that many religious experiencers report increased life satisfaction, more altruistic behaviors and increased well-being following those experiences (Hill, 1999). Moreover, judgments of “normal” cognitive functioning vary cross-culturally. Thus, what might otherwise be thought of as pathological from a reductionist or materialist perspective can actually produce culturally endorsed behaviors, positive personal attributes, and increased well-being in the experiencer’s life.

Moreover, James asserts that mystical states and religious experiences are often characterized by a noetic quality in the sense that they produce profound memories, impart new knowledge, or add significance to previous knowledge. What is striking is the extent to which such experiences add meaning to life’s empirical data and offer new ontological hypotheses, particularly new ways of knowing and thinking about the cosmos. For James, mystical and religious encounters constitute another class of experience that we might interpret as another way of knowing. James writes, “[Mystical states and religious experiences] break down the authority of the non-mystical or rationalistic consciousness, based upon the understanding and the senses alone. They show it to be only one kind of consciousness. They open out the possibility of other orders of truth, in which, so far as anything in us vitally responds to them, we may freely continue to have faith” (2002: 41).

All that we can say (in Jamesian terms), however, is that religious experience is a subjective phenomenon and the knowledge derived from such experiences is personal, idiosyncratic, and subjective. We grant that the experiencer “knows” what has been experienced; but, as James asks, “Is the sense of the divine presence a sense of anything objectively true?” (43). Accepting religious experience as a wholly subjective perception resists empirical verification and violates the underlying scientific assumption of an entirely material cosmos. Consequently, the knowledge acquired or worldview constructed through such experiences is marginalized. The logical positivism of objective science is at odds with the personal subjective knowledge of religious folk.

Philosopher William Alston (1991) has addressed these concerns with his “theory of appearing.” Alston admits his theory is not applicable to all manner of religious experience but, instead, seeks to explain experiences in which the divine supposedly presents himself (or herself) to the experiencer in the way St. Teresa encountered Jesus, for example. Alston argues that perception is not necessarily limited to the five empirical senses. He explicitly states that his argument is not a proof of the existence of God and he does not intend to say that religious experience “constitutes genuine perception of God” (48). However, Alston does emphatically claim that if God exists, and if God interacts with humans, it is entirely plausible that he could and does appear to religious experiencers.

Alston goes on to argue that such sensations and perceptions are difficult to explain verbally, and are often labeled “ineffable,” but experiencers resort to the best comparative explanations available. Those comparative explanations are no different from ones we use to describe the smell of popcorn, physical pain, musical pitch, or beauty. Establishing the veracity of those kinds of sensory-derived claims should be no different from verifying perception of the divine. Alston argues that if God exists, perception of God constitutes a real (social/interpersonal) interaction (53). The conclusion, for Alston, is that religious experience should not be construed as entirely subjective (as James has done) unless we can demonstrate that God does not exist. In Alston’s view, the subjective religious experience ought to be granted a certain degree of objective validity unless the observer can provide sufficient evidence to the contrary.

Alston’s theory begs the question, however, what sort of causal contribution does God make to this “felt” perception? He suggests that we are looking in the empirical/sensory domain for the causal contribution, but perhaps God is perceived through some other sensory capacity, some other way of knowing. Alston’s argument resonates with the psychoanalyst who deals with whole realms of non-conscious, non-linear “thinking”, and “feeling.” However, for experimental psychologists, as scientists, the only beliefs warranted and worth holding are supported by empirical evidence, collected using scientific methodology. The belief that the earth is round, for example, is supported by all manner of scientific observations and deserves the rating of knowledge. Religious experiences cannot provide the kind of knowledge that meets today’s scientific criteria.

Whether or not we accept Alston’s hypothesis of other sensory capacities and other ways of knowing, Alston leaves numinous experiences outside the purview of psychological science, whose philosophy and corresponding methodology is to identify measurable, predictable, empirical causes of events. How would we develop other kinds of tools or new methodologies for verifying the God-and-human interaction, for example? We are left wondering just how to apply "scientific thinking" to religious experience. The private, subjective knowledge of encounters with cosmic beings remains in conflict with the public, objective demands of science.

Nancey Murphy (2007) attempts to bridge this epistemological distance by proposing that both scientific findings and religious claims are components of separate rational systems of thought and, as such, can be authenticated within those systems. She contends that the philosophy of science is shifting away from a foundational approach in which every hypothesis and theory is built upon an underlying set of “facts.” Instead, claims Murphy, scientific knowledge can be understood holistically – in the metaphor of a net, rather than a structure. In the center of the net is a core theory, knit together with surrounding theories validating the co