Mod 6

SOC 420 Lesson 6 Subtopic: Religious Experiences and the Paranormal

One of the inspirations for the formation of the Ithaca College research group that conducted the survey was an article published by the American Psychological Association on reducing student beliefs in the paranormal to help them become more critical thinkers (Beins, 2002). While the article focused on using counter-attitudinal advocacy, a technique where students argue against their own beliefs to see if they can be changed, the meta-analysis we are adopting asks why paranormal beliefs were used and not beliefs in religion, family, higher education or democracy. In an assignment where students in the Anthropology of the Paranormal class reflected on the article, some have stated: “I think that this is ethnocentric because the author is completely assuming that there is zero legitimacy in paranormal experiences/accounts.” Another student commented:

“These psychologists are basically saying that there can only be one right answer and it’s a scientific one. I feel it is a very narrow-minded approach to the questions humanity has about the universe. On the other hand, I do feel that students, as well as anyone, should question their beliefs. I do think it’s important to know both sides of the story and try to understand both a divine and scientific answer to the paranormal. An anthropological approach would be less abrasive and more respectful to students’ beliefs in the paranormal.”

— Quote from Hansen, Brooke, with Luke St. Clair and Jessica Mancuso. 2015. “Paranormal Beliefs in College Culture: In My House, We Have a Ghost Named Isaiah.” Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal . Vol. 6 No. 2, pp. 46-47. [Article starts on screen 32.]

Why are religious experiences important in the sociology of religion? As many of you know, encounters with the spiritual realm are often highly prized and sought after among believers. In fact, experiences of communication with deity are not only frequently recorded in texts that believers consider sacred, but direct revelation from the spiritual world plays an integral role in the origin stories of many religious identity traditions, including many Judeo-Christian organizations (such as Catholicism and a wide variety of Protestant subgroups), Islam, Buddhism, and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Even more, believers in many (though not necessarily all) religious groups feel the need for these experiences, thereby giving them communication, if not a relationship or connection, with deity. In the 15th century, for instance, Joan of Arc felt that God had called her to lead the French army, and managed to partially convince the French king of this before their English enemies captured and burned her at the stake. More currently, some evangelical Christians may feel the distinct impression that God has “called” them to do a particular work or follow a particular path in life as a result of fervent prayer or a particular religious experience. Various New Age practitioners seek to experience astral voyages or projections, with their spirits liberated from their bodies then freed to explore unknown realms of the unseen universe. Many, many more examples of religious and spiritual experiences from many more religious traditions have become important to believers. Believers of multiple religious identities and groups seek for experiences with the unseen to confirm their beliefs. In a sense, this search for religious experience may well be the essence of religion itself. To better understand this dimension of religion, let’s start by reading these two very highly recommended articles:

Reading 1: Goldstein, Diane E. 2007. “Scientific Rationalism and Supernatural Experience Narratives.” In Haunting Experiences: Ghosts in Contemporary Folklore. Goldstein, Diane E, with Sylvia Ann Grider and Jeannie Banks Thomas (eds). Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press. Print. See PDF section at bottom of Lessons page. Please read pages 60-78 of the text (PDF viewer screens 71-89); the remainder is optional.

Reading 2: Yamane, David. “Experience.” Encyclopedia of Religion and Society. Ed. William Swatos. New Haven, CT: Altamira Press. (Hartford Seminary.) Online.

Recommended for Further Interest:

Note that this is a somewhat lengthy list, but of course, all are optional. Feel free to save this list and go back to these readings as your time permits if this topic truly interests you.

“Religious Experience,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The discussion of epistemology gets rather confusing, but otherwise a good resource.

Baker, Joseph O., with Scott Draper. 2010. “Diverse Supernatural Portfolios: Certitude, Exclusivity, and the Curvilinear Relationship Between Religiosity and Paranormal Beliefs.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 49, No. 3, pp. 413-24.

Greyson, Bruce. 2007. “The Mystical Impact of Near-Death Experiences.” Shift: At the Frontiers of Consciousness. No. 17, pp. 9-13. Online.

James, William. 1902. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. eBooks@Adelaide (University of Adelaide, Australia). Online. [Yes, it’s more than a hundred years old, but still considered a classical text in the literature of religious experience.]

Lichfield, Gideon. 2015. “The Science of Near-Death Experiences.” The Atlantic Magazine, April 2015. Online.

List of Resources from Boston University, including many summaries of classic and contemporary work on religious and paranormal experience.

Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal .

Joan of Arc, 2015. BYUtv Documentary. This docudrama includes commentary from religious leaders and scholars about this fascinating 15th century historical figure and the spiritual phenomena that inspired her words and actions as she led the French army to several key victories.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, Juan Diego’s reported vision of the Virgin Mary that became a key legend as Catholicism became accepted in Latin America.

Julian of Norwich, a 14th century Catholic mystic and spiritual counselor, from The Julian Center.

To begin, let’s go back to a couple of key terms in Lesson 2. It’s important to understand the critical difference between the paranormal and the metaphysical. The paranormal, as expressed earlier, involves phenomena that can’t be analyzed by our current scientific methods, since they have to do with events and entities that lie beyond our current realm of understanding. Legendary creatures—faeries, gnomes, trolls, mermaids, etc.—for instance, are generally considered part of the paranormal, along with UFO sightings, tales of Atlantis, rumors of spontaneous human combustion, telekinesis, ESP, and so forth.

A related term, “supernatural,” is often considered synonymous with paranormal, but is usually applied to spiritual manifestations—ghosts, angels, demons, poltergeists, and so forth, so see below. Though the vast majority of people today generally consider paranormal phenomena the stuff of legends and folklore, a small number continue to affirm their existence and swear they have found evidence of Bigfoot, been abducted by aliens, passed through time warps, and sure, yes, even seen mermaids. (Always think critically, but if YouTube footage is to be believed and accepted on its face as genuine and not artificially manipulated—reach your own informed conclusions, ahem, ahem— there’s also evidence of mermaid sightings there.) The paranormal may or may not necessarily be considered Objectively Real, in the language of Lesson 2.

The metaphysical, on the other hand, has to do with phenomena that are considered Real in terms of experience on another level of Unseen Existence. This includes much of religious/spiritual experience such as ghosts, dreams and visions, NDEs (near-death experiences), heavenly messages (and messengers), demon encounters, and so forth. Though not used exclusively in a religious sense, the term is often considered most applicable to religious phenomena. For this reason, “supernatural” is often particularly applied to these types of metaphysical experience as well.

Key Difference in Terms

Metaphysical = Other-worldly (spirits, angels, God, Heaven, etc.), usually applied to the religious context. Often considered part of the paranormal.

Paranormal = Beyond current scope of scientific understanding (UFOs, chupacabras, telekinesis, ESP, much of metaphysical phenomena, etc.). “Supernatural” is sometimes used as a synonym for the paranormal or metaphysical, but most typically applies to other-worldly or metaphysical phenomena.

Also interestingly, the relationship between the metaphysical and the paranormal is also sometimes under debate. Many positivist-empiricist scientists consider the metaphysical a mere subset of all that is paranormal—some, in fact, believe there is no difference. Others believe that there is overlap between the two; ghosts are frequently cited as both paranormal and metaphysical, for instance. In that framework, the “supernatural” designation would be applied to that supposed overlap of paranormal and metaphysical. The issue of what is and isn’t Real generally plays into the classification of which phenomena belong where. Few scholars believe that the metaphysical and paranormal are completely distinct, though many people tend to see them that way.

What about the Ultimate Reality of the phenomena we—usually but with rare eerie exceptions—cannot see, hear, or otherwise experience for ourselves? (BTW: My apologies to those of you reading the religion and science subtopic, but this segment will be familiar because it’s relevant here, too.) Not to drag Saxe’s six blind men and the elephant back into class again, but that’s the general idea. There’s so much we don’t accurately perceive or know that we often find ourselves calling a tail a rope or a leg a tree. We just do the best we can to try to figure out what we’re really examining. But Ultimate Reality is a great mystery to be solved. Sometime when you have some spare time to indulge your curiosity and possibly also blow your mind, I invite you to watch all of Richard Hammond's Invisible Worlds series . This shows you how much there is happening out there right now—even in our ordinary world all around us!—that we DON’T see, hear, or know about. It happens too fast or too slow, or on a scale too large or too small, or on wavelengths our eyes and/or ears can’t perceive. Talk about FOMO! (Fear of Missing Out!) Wow! There’s a LOT more going on out there than we can ever truly imagine! So in a very real way, yes, we ARE the six blind men, only seeing and hearing so much with our limited senses.

In terms of what we can determine here and now, though, let’s turn back again to our good friend Harry Potter. To illustrate this, consider the exchange between eccentric believer Xenophilius Lovegood and clear rationalist Hermione Granger in Deathly Hallows (p. 411) about the Resurrection Stone. When Hermione declares that the Resurrection Stone can’t possibly exist, Xenophilius challenges her to prove that it isn’t real. Hermione correctly states that this effort would be absurdly difficult, requiring her to find, examine, and rule out every single boulder, rock, and pebble in the world. She then adds that anything could be considered real if it’s necessary to disprove that it exists; Xenophilius then congratulates her on opening her mind.

Xenophilius Lovegood explaining the the Deathly Hallows to Harry Potter and friends, according to the 2010 Warner Brothers film. Image from es.harrypotter.wikia.com.

To be sure, Xenophilius here rather absurdly commits a rather flagrant logical error—the utter lack of evidence and inability to disprove is hardly tantamount to proof of his outlandish beliefs! Even further, the fictional exchange helps metaphorically illustrate the tension between paranormal-metaphysical claims and empirical science. As Goldstein (2007) attests, and others as well, religion and science have long had a hard time mixing. More on that in the religion and science subtopic, of course. But this observation further extends to reports of the paranormal and religious experience alike. In a cultural environment where science has become increasingly normalized as a standard by which much if not all experience is to be evaluated, whatever is not easily explicable by scientific standards tends to be rather easily dismissed.

For instance, taking a broad look at the paranormal, despite thousands of reported sightings, scientifically admissible evidence confirming the existence of UFOs (Roswell notwithstanding), Bigfoot, and other phenomena is absent. No wreckage, no bodies. That is, at least not that anyone will confirm—and it’s doubtful that even storming Area 51 (yeah, that never really was a thing anyway, for those who remember that a few years ago) will reveal any further information. Despite a fair amount of anecdotal evidence, Western medical science has never confirmed and documented an actual case of spontaneous human combustion. Even the would-be-empirical evidence collected by “ghost hunters” is usually far too ambiguous to be accepted as scientifically valid, even though collected via modern technology. Faint and cryptic voice recordings, video of erratic moving lights and objects appearing to move all by themselves, blurry photographic images, and so forth don’t convince either scientists or skeptics that their evidence of ghosts is genuine. In metaphysical terms, for better or worse, religious experience from the dramatic (visions, dreams, angelic visitations, etc.) to the subtle (feelings of “being prompted” or “being called,” etc.) tends to be painted with the same brush.

Yet, despite Xenophilius’ absurdly illogical and backwards conclusion, the problem he presents to Hermione remains real: Though little if any concrete empirical evidence exists to support the paranormal (and religious/spiritual experience), ruling out most paranormal/religious phenomena would require a virtually impossible empirical test. Like Hermione, many otherwise brilliant, highly rational scientists fall into an error almost as bizarre as our Mr. Lovegood’s, though at the opposite end of the spectrum. There’s a false equivalence at work, even among some otherwise highly trained and brilliant scientists. To explain, consider the epistemological difference between two statements that are frequently confused with each other, though they actually mean VERY different things:

Mermaids are Real! At least some people even today still say so, based on Internet lore. There are centuries’ worth of anecdotal evidence, after all. Of course, most historians think sailors under the influence of heatstroke or grog really saw manatees or sea lions. Still, mermaids are indisputably very real—as part of our modern folklore. We lack evidence to confirm mermaids’ real-life existence, but we cannot empirically prove that they don’t exist. Image from myths.e2bn.org.

1) We have no evidence to support this idea and cannot possibly conclude that it is true;

2) We can safely conclude, based on the known evidence discovered, examined, and presented, that this idea is false.

Again, the two statements are NOT synonymous. Think it through carefully. This is one example of a false equivalence. Empirical evidence cannot and does not support the Ultimate Reality of virtually any metaphysical experience. In fact, concrete and scientifically valid evidence confirming the paranormal, metaphysical, and/or supernatural often can’t really be gathered. However, it is likewise empirically impossible to rule out the possibility that the experience really did occur. An utter lack of evidence that the experience DID happen is FAR from the same as possessing valid, credible, and incontrovertible evidence that the experience did NOT happen. A lack of data is just that—a lack of data. No, an absence of data can’t prove the Ultimate Reality of any idea, experience, or observation, outlandish or not—but neither does it refute it or provide “proof” that it didn’t happen or isn’t real.

Therefore, from an epistemological perspective, no truly informed empirical conclusions really can—or should—be drawn about whether paranormal phenomena, including religious experiences, actually have occurred. In the absence of data, what remains is opinion—and only opinion. Every scientist and student out there should feel free to have and hold opinions, of course, but in the full knowledge that without data, they ARE merely opinions. Empirical evidence and religious experience make different claims about different aspects of existence and are hardly interchangeable. Religious experiences such as answers to prayers, miracles, conversions, and the numinous—the feeling that one has made a spiritual connection with deity or something greater than the self—may not be able to be confirmed via empirical scientific methods. But on the other hand, their existence and validity cannot be ruled out—especially since these religious or spiritual experiences have long been and still are a key area of study and concern in the field of the sociology of religion.

It is also unnecessary to believe in all paranormal phenomena at once, which is likely the exception, not the rule. Some believers may, for instance, readily accept the idea of unseen spirits and demons but scoff at the notion of mermaids, the Jersey Devil or Loch Ness Monster. Others may accept miracles and prayer but reject UFOs and spontaneous human combustion. It is a rare believer indeed who like our good friend Xenophilius accepts virtually all paranormal phenomena as plausible in the “real world” of everyday experience. Usually, individual or group belief-system rationales can be compatible with some paranormal phenomena, while others are seen as more problematic. In short: Paranormal phenomena exist on a range of plausibility, and some phenomena are more plausible to individual believers than others. Yet, given the limitation of our senses—who knows?

In contrast, as we know, the scientific perspective requires evidence. The best scientists follow the data, wherever that data lead—or, perhaps much better said, where they believe the data lead. (Data are always interpreted according to a particular set of beliefs, but we will leave that can of worms unopened until you want to get into the philosophy of science.) This sometimes produces some intriguing outcomes. For instance, consider Dr. Jeff Meldrum, an anthropological scientist at Idaho State University, who has rather controversially concluded that the evidence he’s analyzed—at least what appears to him to be valid and reliable— provides support for the existence of Bigfoot, according to NBC News.

Dr. Jeff Meldrum of Idaho State University holds what he believes is an authentic Bigfoot print. This is his argument that some of these prints are in fact real. Image from duluthnewstribune.com.

Still, let’s keep our shoes on, as it were. Meldrum also concedes that a fair amount of so-called “Bigfoot evidence” is obviously fictitious, produced by hoaxers and practical jokers. Yet to him, some collected data and materials not only lack some hallmarks of deception, but has striking commonalities and consistencies. This leads him to conclude based on his reading of the evidence available (such as it is) that Bigfoot’s reality is the most reasonable explanation for the evidence that can be considered genuine. From the social construction view, this obviously clashes with the current academic-public paradigm that Bigfoot is merely the stuff of legends and tall tales. This has earned him some “blowback” from some of his colleagues in and out of his university. Meldrum may be a bit of a poor stepchild right now with his peers, but he is at least going where he believes the evidence leads, willing to play the fool—or perhaps one day be recognized as ahead of his time. As noted in the NBC News link above, no less than primate expert Jane Goodall is keeping an open mind on Bigfoot. So if any of the rest of us follow her lead, no worries with me.

This is precisely why it’s important to reach for the social meaning of metaphysical and paranormal experiences. Meldrum’s position illustrates the generally perceived status of paranormal claims in academia. Examining the paranormal is an interesting but controversial enterprise. It is, nearly literally in terms of social construction, the meeting of two very different socio-cognitive worlds. As Goldstein (2007) attests in her folklore-oriented analysis, the empirical-rational school of thought assumes the public at large—the other camp, which belongs to the world of ordinary experience—will eventually “evolve” to their way of thinking and old “superstitions” of the past will disappear. This is essentially the secularization thesis that we discussed in Lesson 5, though as noted there, religion and spiritual belief seems to be intriguingly persistent.

At best, this gap between the cognoscenti and the vulgi ignobilis has taken the form of a condescending elitist put-down of the proverbial unwashed masses; at worst, it has approached repression of belief due to self-assumed greater wisdom. Professing actual belief in Bigfoot—or ghosts, ESP, gnomes, UFOs, leprechauns, angels, and the like—is far from welcome in the empirical world, much as true believers may truly believe it. Even further, those who have experienced various paranormal or religious/spiritual phenomena are often beyond mere “belief,” as those who have actually had such experiences are usually convinced of their veracity. Those who have encountered the otherworldly may even have the sense of living in two places or in a liminal state between them.

As a result, even bringing up religious experiences in an academic context can be a bit dicey. I can attest to this myself. Still, TBH, I have had several events occur throughout my life that I cannot explain in any other terms than as religious experiences, and others that would be better described as paranormal events as well. (The day many years ago that as far as I knew, I was home alone in my family’s basement, but distinctly heard footsteps pacing up and down the hallway floor above me for a very nervous ten minutes or so? When I found nobody there when I finally went to look—and no outside doors opened or closed, ever, since they were noisy and I would have heard them if they had—and I ended up being so creeped out that I had to leave the house? Yeah, that paranormal event happened. Undeniably. But really, I’m still sane! I hope!)

Long story short: These events are very Real to me, whatever the ultimate explanation may be. But here and now is not the time or place to discuss these experiences in depth; what they mean to me is not necessarily the same as what they would mean to all of you, perhaps even for members of my own faith tradition. Still, even setting aside the question of whether the phenomena is Real, it is abundantly clear that any given religious experience means something to the believer(s). That—the social meaning of the phenomenon to the group—is an empirically valid social proposition. Illuminating that is our goal.

[Modern ghost narratives] “are typically told as though one were on the witness stand, detailed and careful, incorporating numerous strategies that outline the nature

of the observations, the testing of alternative explanations, and

often including an indication of reluctance to interpret what

occurred as ‘supernatural.’”

—Dianne Goldstein, 2007, Haunting Experiences: Ghosts in Contemporary Folklore, p. 70. Logan: Utah State University Press.

With this said, as Yamane notes in The Encyclopedia of Religion and Society, the literature of religion is replete with discussion of the human spirit and encounters with deity. In a very literal sense, this can be seen as the purpose of scripture in many faith traditions—a record of the interaction between deity and humanity. It is important to note that, even though we tend to remember the more dramatic religious experiences, even more common are the quiet and subtle encounters with deity ( Ibid.). Relatively few religious believers actually see or hear spiritual phenomena, at least not with the proverbial “five senses.” Many religious experiences come in the form of “feelings,” “promptings,” flashes of suddenly realized knowledge that turn out to be true, or various forms of other-worldly perceptions.

Many stories of the Bible illustrate the more dramatic variety of religious experiences, beginning with Adam and Eve, who the record testifies were able to walk and talk with God, especially before the expulsion from Eden. The dramatic types of experience actually tend to predominate: Noah hearing the divine command to build the ark, Moses receiving the stone tablets, Samuel hearing the voice of God, Isaiah seeing angels, Ezekiel being visited by the ring of fire in the sky, Jesus Christ communing with God in the wilderness and being transfigured before his disciples, various people throughout time being suddenly healed of particular illnesses, Peter seeing the vision about preaching to the Gentiles, Paul’s vision and conversion on the road to Damascus, and so forth. Yet in the story of Elijah as recorded in 1 Kings 19, he experiences several strong phenomena—a wind, a fire, an earthquake, and so forth—but all of this is followed by a “still, small voice” yet is nonetheless unspeakably powerful, and according to the story, Elijah recognizes this as the true voice of God. Though the Bible records many dramatic spiritual events, it may well be that most believers over time have actually encountered much more subtle religious experiences such as that “still, small voice.”

Religious experiences are far from limited to the Judeo-Christian tradition; for one, the Bhaghavad Gita tells of accounts of mortal encounters with Hindu deities. There is no written record, but legends and tradition hold that Buddhism originated as Prince Siddhartha Gautama meditated all day and all night on the issue of mortal suffering and attained Enlightenment. In Islam, the Qu’ran itself is a record of the religious experience of Mohammed receiving what Muslims accept as God’s word. In the faith tradition to which I belong, the Book of Mormon tells of many dreams, visions, angelic visitations, spiritual promptings, and other divine encounters. Even Egyptian and Greco-Roman mythology relate tales of how the gods of the Pantheon favored various mortals, at times communicating with or even visiting them directly. Religious experience—which may range from divine encounters to “still small voice” feelings and perceptions of otherworldly expressions—is key in many religious traditions.

Neither are sacred experiences merely a matter of stories told in ancient scripture. Earlier, we mentioned Joan of Arc, who as somewhat glowingly described here not only helped keep France free from English conquest in the 15th century but seemingly did so on divine command. A 14th-century nun today known as Julian of Norwich reportedly had several encounters with the divine that were afterwards written down in a volume today known as The Revelations of Divine Love. The legend of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Juan Diego’s reported vision of the Virgin Mary in 1531 near present-day Mexico City, was also instrumental in spreading Catholicism to the area’s native population. In even more modern times, in his most well-known account of his vision (and in all fairness, several accounts were attributed to him), The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints founder Joseph Smith relates how he was called as a modern prophet. Mary Baker Eddy experienced a miraculous healing that inspired her to go on to found the Christian Science movement. Also notably, Mother Teresa embarked on her life’s work because of a religious experience, though her personal correspondence reveals that she suffered intensely from doubt and depression throughout her life.

Joan of Arc, who claimed visitation from several divine messengers, convinced the French king that her experiences were authentic and led a French army to victory over English troops. The English captured and executed her for heresy, witchcraft, and dressing like a man, as she had done for her own protection. Image from keen.com.

William James, reviewing a wide variety of spiritual accounts, concludes in his 1902 classic text Varieties of Religious Experience that virtually all major religions originated from a religious experience of some sort (Yamane). Of course, religious experiences aren’t reserved for major religious figures; even intellectuals such as Blaise Pascal, Carl Jung, and C.S. Lewis (as discussed in Lesson 5) are said to have had religious experiences. Moreover, ordinary rank-and-file believers experience them as well. For only two of countless instances, see Juan Diego’s reported vision above as well as John Groberg’s ordeal in Tonga, recounted in previous lessons. I even get students relating their own experiences or those of relatives to me in the occasional Assignment 6. Moreover, an online repository of stories (see http://www.spiritual-experiences.com/real-spiritual-stories.php) purports to recount real-life religious experiences of ordinary people. British academic researcher Alister Hardy also collected accounts of religious experiences, with some shown on that link, though apparently the full repository is available for a fee. Some accounts are fairly dramatic, though here again, the quiet and subtle tend to predominate (Yamane). So for every spectacular account such as Moses seeing the burning bush, there are many more like that of Elijah’s “still small voice” that was not in the fire, wind, or earthquake.

It’s well worth noting here, just as an aside, that religious experiences are not only valued by believers, but also by religious organizations. Organizations thrive when believers are energized by experiences that underscore their belief and loyalty to the collective body. This may be partly a manifestation of what Joseph Campbell once called “the power of myth.” Deep within our psyches lie psychological patterns on conscious and unconscious levels from which our most cherished thoughts and ideals arise. We value various archetypes and other patterns that Carl Jung believed were part of our collective unconscious. These can be fully expected to emerge in our religious thought and behavior as well, as archetypes such as The Hero are omnipresent in religious settings. Fully extending the archetypal analysis, Jesus Christ for one can be seen as an ultimate example of The Hero archetype, though other mythologists would add that the Savior or Messiah seems to have become an archetype all its own. In any case, in religious experience, we may be connecting deeply to the power of myth and finding a place for ourselves within that archetypal structure.

Religious art such as this famous Michelangelo painting from the Sistine Chapel of the creation of Adam may serve as a structured pathway for religious experience and tap into the power of myth. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

Religious organizations likewise draw substantial energy from the power of myth that emerges as they both acknowledge and promote religious experience in their settings. To that end, as mentioned in Lesson 2, religious organizations frequently incorporate (in the words of venerable sociologist Thomas O’Dea) “structured pathways” that are intended to evoke religious experience. In a sense, this is like trying to trap lightning in a bottle, as institutions try to tap in to the power of the believers’ experience. That helps them maintain their membership, if not grow their numbers. Even more, back to Berger’s Sacred Canopy argument, religious organizations have a clear and compelling interest in any religious experience that helps legitimate the institution. Believers having experiences that support the church or religious body is a really good thing for the institution. How does the structured pathway happen? The original experience, or at very least the complex amalgam of feelings associated with the experience, is represented in music, art, literature, or other concrete form—sometimes even in the architecture of a building itself. Through the iconography, which is one technique for these structured pathways, believers are then reminded of the experience’s value and encouraged to seek religious experiences themselves. Such representations link back to the power of myth and confirm the institution’s validity in the eyes of believers. Conversely, religious institutions tend to be threatened by structured pathways that fail to confirm the institution, or that might even suggest the institution is incorrect.

In the context of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, such structured pathways could take the form of several hymns and artwork about Christ, visions experienced by Joseph Smith or other leaders, and so forth. Catholics might concentrate on relics of saints, representations of visions of the Virgin Mary, or various accounts of miracles in which traces of the divine appear in ordinary objects or materials. Buddhism and Hinduism, for their own part, are quests for the Ultimate Religious Experience—unification of the soul with a higher state of being. Representations of the samsara and Wheel of Life for Buddhism or the Hindu deities of Vishnu, Shiva, and Devi would serve much the same purpose. Mantras and mandalas could also serve similar purposes in those contexts.

In any case, what is the appeal of religious experience to individual believers? Two religious philosophers, Rudolf Otto and Martin Buber, help answer that question. Otto explores the emotions associated with divine encounters, asserting that even though believers desire to encounter the Divine (or in Otto’s terms, the “numinous”), when they do, they tend to feel a sense of dread and awe, or the mysterium tremendum. Believers sense the power of deity and their own nothingness relative to the numinous. Hence the frequent accounts of believers falling to their knees and so forth during religious experiences, as well as the occasionally recorded refusal of angels to accept gestures associated with worship, as in the biblical account of Revelations 22:9. In Christian theological traditions, angels are seemingly mere representations or representatives of the numinous rather than the numinous itself, and they accentuate the sense of awe rather than accept it. Even the more common “still small voice” religious encounters in their various forms tend to evoke this sense of awe among those who accept the accounts as fully Real (Yamane).

In a sense, then, those who seek religious experiences with deity may rather paradoxically desire yet also fear them. So why seek them at all? This is where Buber comes in, arguing that seekers desire not only acceptance, but closeness to the Divine. Keep in mind that Buber does not see the mysterium tremendum (dread) as the only aspect of the religious experience. Also recalling somewhat the power of myth, there is also a sense of comfort and familiarity that transcends the fear, if the individual wishes to maintain and explore the connection with divinity despite the initial sense of dread. There is a mythical connection here to a profound primordial origin—in a sense, a mythical Return Home. So even if the initial encounters may be fearful, over the long term, they lead to a sense of familiarity and ultimately turn to joy.

To Buber, the Divine not only inspires awe, but may also awaken in believers a craving for dialogue, connection, and spiritual intimacy—because the Divine is more loving and familiar with us than we are with our own selves. Buber designates this quest for dialogue and connection the “I-Thou” relationship. Relationships to other things and people, particularly rather distant ones in which the end goal is more control than connection (“I-It”), may feature various degrees of objectification by comparison. Even an “I-You” relationship between people tends to be partial and incomplete. However, the I-Thou relationship fully involves a sense of immersion of identity; nothing is withdrawn or held back in the sense of warm closeness and dialogic connection with deity. In a way, this is part of the mysterium tremendum, since the Divine knows us well enough to know what is non-divine about our own selves. But the Divine has the capacity to love us, regardless, and desire to establish a relationship with us.

So this “I-Thou” quest to approach divinity is the end goal of many religious traditions from an experiential standpoint. Whether becoming One With The Universe, developing a personal relationship with Jesus, returning to the presence of the Father, entering Valhalla, going to Heaven, attaining Nirvana, or other ways of conceptualizing becoming one with deity, believers may experience and even pursue this sense of mythic spiritual connection. Often, and interestingly, as Yamane points out, this sense is not found in the spectacular but in the subtle: spiritual promptings, an answer to prayer that is felt in the heart, a particularly overwhelming feeling that deity has taken notice and/or been nearby, and so forth. But once realized, the believer attains the sense of the Ultimate Reality that Berger (1973) discussed in The Heretical Imperative, as we considered in Lesson 1. For some believers who attain that understanding of the Ultimate Reality via fairly dramatic experiences—or perhaps a long series of subtle “still small voice” types—that other-worldly experience becomes what is Real and the day-to-day world around us becomes the illusion.

In a 2009 Pew Forum study…

… 49% of respondents reported having a religious and/or paranormal experience sometime during their lives,

… 29% said they’d been in contact with someone who had died,

… 18% responded they’d had encounters with ghosts, AND

… all three trends represented increases when compared to the results of previous research!

See the full study results report here. Some may also find this 2015 paranormal update interesting.

Yamane points out some facilitators and consequences of religious experience. Likely the most significant consequence is a sense of satisfaction from the believer, not necessarily with his or her immediate life situation but in a long-term sense of purpose. No matter what happens, the believer understands that deity has taken notice of that situation and that all will turn out for the best. How do believers approach the religious experience when trying to approach deity? What do they do to attempt to bring the experience about? Yamane cites a set of psychological facilitators, chief among which seems to be a form of “cognitive restructuring” in the face of a crisis. The religious experience helps produce a different way of seeing the crisis and situation, such as Groberg’s observation: Finding the link between Heaven and Earth makes everything meaningful, even death, while in its absence, all is meaningless, even life. This connection seems to be both mythical and mystical. Interestingly, social factors such as religious participation seem less influential than the subjective, since the experience often takes an individualized form. Presumably, though the group can contribute a conducive setting and principles, the religious experience is often a result of individual effort.

Yet the problem of studying these accounts by empirical means remains. Bridging this gap between the empirical world and that of everyday experience, as suggested by the quote at the top of this module, as well as Lesson 2, is a small but significant third camp. The anthropological perspective basically takes a phenomenological approach to religious experiences. Well, welcome to camp!

Let’s briefly recap phenomenology, which is essential to correctly understanding this approach. Some past students have grossly misunderstood this perspective. One student once summarized phenomenology more or less this way: “Any rational human being clearly knows the idiot I’m hearing is pathologically delusional, but hey, I was told I had to accept this complete load of #5@%X& as Absolutely True, so I guess I’ve got to humor this #%#@.” Uh, no. Not at all, and actually really rather sad, my friends. Remember, as in Lesson 1, we are inductionists! So, as we’ve previously mentioned (several times, actually), we’re not declaring those paranormal experiences as truly Real; neither are we saying they’re fictitious or delusional. Admittedly, maybe some could be, though we just don’t know about others, and we aren’t in any position to assess that question anyway. We are after a different objective: Finding out what such experiences ultimately mean!

Image from slideshare.net.

We want to “reveal what is hidden,” as Bourdieu once put it. So we attempt to unearth the social meaning of these experiences. Phenomenology is all about this: Understanding the individual and social meaning of the subjective experience, including religious and/or supernatural phenomena as social facts. “The Basics of Philosophy” sufficiently recaps the basic points of phenomenology; the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy gives a much more in-depth treatment. As in the Dumbledore example from Lesson 2, what is happening in the head is assumed to be real— even if only to the person who is experiencing it. The experience is real to that person and can be assessed as that person’s subjective reality, along with the social effects of others who may also believe the experience. (Researchers can believe what they like about the actual experience itself, of course. The main idea is that the account of the experience exists to be analyzed.) As two of its key proponents, Edmond Husserl and Martin Heidegger, conceptualized phenomenology, it studies how the experiences are structured in the minds of those who perceive them, as well as the intentionality of those experiences—that is, the way those who receive these experiences then intentionally relate them to the outside world. Hence, the actual experiences might or might not be Objectively Real, but the intentionality is very real indeed.

Considering, for instance, the story of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the task before us is NOT to discover how to time-travel back to early Mexico City in 1531 and hold some sort of stakeout. Armed with our iPhones on video or special paranormal investigative equipment, could we actually see if Juan Diego really saw the Virgin Mary AND document the whole experience for the entire world? It seems unlikely. Rather, we take it for granted that he reported the series of visions of Mary and that it became accepted among church leadership and natives alike that the visions were real. So what happened because of that? Millions of local natives were converted to Catholicism very quickly! Because so many people believed this story, the land that became Mexico became a predominantly Catholic country, not only in the Spanish who had either invaded or settled (depending on circumstances) but among the natives as well. This is the phenomenological significance of the Our Lady of Guadalupe experience— it essentially changed the religious landscape in 16th century Latin America. THAT is what we are trying to capture here.

So we leave the actual confirmation of whether the experience actually occurred to the true believers, psychologists, theologians, and other interested parties. Given our scientific approach, our primary source of empirical data is always a piece of observable information, preferably one we have actually obtained first-hand. This includes a self-reported response to a survey, an act or decision observed in a laboratory, the actual account(s) of believers, and so forth. Interestingly, we find religious experiences among all social categories, even among the highly educated, as Goldstein (2007) attests. It is not necessarily true that either education or sophistication preclude the ability to have religious, supernatural, and/or paranormal experiences. Goldstein further observes a curious tension between rationality and the paranormal in personal narratives. Those she interviewed were often able to treat accounts of second- and third-hand paranormal encounters in a casual, almost joking way. But first-person supernatural accounts were often more serious—even somewhat defensive—as if the storyteller wanted to assure the interviewer as well as him- or herself that he or she was still sane despite the subjective reality of the experience. This is our modern sense of rationality; we can shrug off the paranormal in others, but we may find unsettling what we can’t explain in our own lives.

With this said, an interesting development continues to unfold: studies of near-death experiences, or NDEs, are gradually becoming more prevalent, particularly in the medical field. Physician and medical researcher Bruce Greyson has extensively researched NDEs from a medical standpoint, for instance. ( Neuropsychiatrist Peter Fenwick has also extensively researched the dying process, as in this TED talk.) Intriguingly, medical-type studies have managed to imitate and replicate some NDE elements, as well as identify common brain patterns and body chemicals employed during such experiences. Entheogenic studies further link particular chemicals such as peyote to the ability to generate mystical out-of-body experiences, and the hallucinogenic effect of particular substances and drugs is very well-documented and established. Yet no medical researcher has to date artificially reproduced anything close to an entire NDE in a clinical setting, despite briefly replicating various aspects. Brain-stimulation studies might well illuminate brain function and help us understand some aspects of NDEs, but as a satisfactory explanation of how they occur, they still have a long way to go.

An NDE illustration from theatlantic.com, found here.

Foremost of what is lacking is a logically consistent psychological-biological explanation for how NDEs occur—much less how people seem to be capable of accurately observing events from outside their own bodies that occur while sensory organs in the body are non-functional. The explanation so far seems to amount to a sort of “somehow, individuals sense what’s happening outside their own bodies anyway, even if there are no sensory organs in play that would allow this” kind of rationalization. Notably, the theological explanation in many religions—that bodies have independent consciousness and identity, often called a spirit or soul, released from the body at the time of death—is not on the table as a possible scientific explanation for NDEs. It isn’t even in the same room—or building, for that matter. Still, some researchers have tried to explore the possibility anyway, as in this intriguing Psychology Today article. Nonetheless, there’s a bridge to be built here between these perspectives that doesn’t yet exist, or at least exists in ideas that haven’t been voiced and articulated.

After all is said and done, what remains as primary evidence for religious and spiritual experiences? Story and narrative. How do we examine story and narrative as social scientists? Phenomenology and anthropology. This allows for the sense of mythological connection and respects its place in the minds of the believer. (More on the value of narrative and mythology in STS 494, BTW…) As the anonymous student at the top of the module suggested, the anthropological explanation—a close cousin to phenomenology and nearly identical in its approach—may be something of a bridge between ideological camps. Because of the difficulty of using empirical methods to examine religious experience, the phenomenological-anthropological approach remains our best—and to date, only—alternative for examining the social value and meaning of these experiences. All else is insufficient.

The soaring arches in this cathedral in Barcelona, Spain are designed to draw the believers’ eyes upward, while also focusing attention on the worship area at the front. The architecture embodies a sense of awe and grandeur that can be considered a structured pathway to religious experience. Image from besttourism.com.

In conclusion, there is substantial value in questioning and interrogating one’s own beliefs. A search for Truth generally requires the admission that the believer needs to understand much more than he or she already knows, and science may well yield some of that understanding. However, there is also much worth in finding lasting and permanent answers to highly puzzling questions, and this is partly what religion is all about. The search for religious experience is at the heart of many faith traditions, as believers seek contact with the unseen world around us to help give them answers to questions that have long plagued humanity. Keeping an open mind as we all search for Truth is therefore paramount, and uncovering the social meanings of paranormal and metaphysical experiences is our core objective as social scientists.

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