Explaining Religious Experiences in Other Religions

[FuzzyBunny116]

From the Catholic point of view, how does one explain the existence of “religious experiences” in other religions? I have my own theories, but I’m not sure I’m quite satisfied.

 

[LISA_Annette]

From the Catholic point of view, how does one explain the existence of “religious experiences” in other religions? I have my own theories, but I’m not sure I’m quite satisfied.

Do you mean other Christian religions? I don’t have difficulty believing that other Christians have authentic religious experience, as long as they truly love Jesus and follow his teachings as best as they have been taught. The Catholic Church still posesses the fullness of Truth.

If you mean other religions as in Buddhism, they achieve their enlightenment despite the existence of God. They do not necessarily believe in God. Other non-Christian religions…? Diabolical influences and/or delusion. Is this what you were already thinking??

 

[wjp984]

If I had to guess I would say God is not going to punish people for their ignorance. God is with all of us including those that do not know Him. Therefore, everyone can experience God in their lives even if they don’t know it is God.

 

[BarbaraTherese]

A certain type of religious experience from one angle anyway can only be described, I think, by trying to depict the actual experience…though very often the precise words, hence explanation, cannot be found. Once can approximate or say “something like”. It could well be that the religious experience is so unique one just cannot find the words to describe it.

Blessings and Peace…Joy…Barb

 

[blessedstar]

From the Catholic point of view, how does one explain the existence of “religious experiences” in other religions? I have my own theories, but I’m not sure I’m quite satisfied.

Whether people believe in God or not, are Catholic or not, they are all going to have a religious experience at the end of their life.

Therefore people may experience God as part of a conversion process.

However if such religious experiences result as a period of prayer where the person ‘blanks’ their mind as in some faiths they may well be the result of their own mind. It is very difficult without the gift of discernment to know what one is experiencing.

Now if I sit here and will to see a vision I will not see it, I can spend hours 'focusing ’ my mind and trying to see such things and I will not see it. A vision or such things like these has sudden onset (God assails the soul) and the mind cannot prepare itself, but rather the mind is stilled and God subdues the mind, the soul and the will and then the vision is gifted or whatever experience in this deep prayer of contemplation. Such experiences are always difficult to articulate so I believe.

I think therefore that as all souls are created to contemplate God that souls can believe they have experienced as the soul is longing for it even if they do not know Whom the soul is longing for or not knowing that they are longing to contemplate God and this intense longing can produce counterfeit experiences. Religious fervour unchecked and unschooled can also produce counterfeit experiences.

If a soul should experience a true experience of God they will instantly recognise the counterfeit experience within themselves and duly dismiss it whatever the origin is of this experience, that being either the ‘self’ or the evil one. The counterfeit is nothing like the true experience, so I am led to believe. Still the counterfeit can produce in the soul feelings of well being and joy, of consolation etc, this is what can make it difficult to discern.

What also must be remembered is God does nopthing trivial or ludicrous. God is not going to give a soul a religious experience to aid them to remember to put the trash can out! Religious experiences always carry a solemn reason and bind that soul.

Then there is no accounting for the crank. I say that with the best possible intentions. Some people seek after attention and fame, some people desire to be ‘special’, some people are simply deluded, some are hysterical and easily led and some people simply lie and that can be within the Catholic Church as well as in other faiths.

Even the true religious experience is not God, it is an experience of God, so to stop and be fixed on the experience is to stop striving towards God.

True religious experiences always carry with them great crosses and good fruit that endures.

Even if a person was to have a true religious experience it still requires faith to believe in the One whom they have experienced and to have faith in what they have exprienced.

However if a Jew say, or a Muslim for example told me they had a vision of Jesus and wanted to become Catholic, I would believe it to be a true experience. I know of one woman who was not Catholic and she had one vision of Jesus and converted to Catholicism on the strength of that one vision.

In the Living Prayer of my life

 

[robertaf]

From the Catholic point of view, how does one explain the existence of “religious experiences” in other religions? I have my own theories, but I’m not sure I’m quite satisfied.

’
Must be the Holy Spirit!

 

[Dale_M]

’
Must be the Holy Spirit!

Pope John Paul II agrees with you.

It must first be kept in mind that every quest of the human spirit for truth and goodness, and in the last analysis for God, is inspired by the Holy Spirit. The various religions arose precisely from this primordial human openness to God. At their origins we often find founders who, with the help of God’s Spirit, achieved a deeper religious experience. Handed on to others, this experience took form in the doctrines, rites and precepts of the various religions.

In every authentic religious experience, the most characteristic expression is prayer. Because of the human spirit’s constitutive openness to God’s action of urging it to self-transcendence, we can hold that “every authentic prayer is called forth by the Holy Spirit, who is mysteriously present in the heart of every person”.

catholicculture.org/library/view.cfm?recnum=535

 

[blessedstar]

Not every religious experience is the work of the Holy Spirit.

In the Living Prayer of my life

 

[puzzleannie]

From the Catholic point of view, how does one explain the existence of “religious experiences” in other religions? I have my own theories, but I’m not sure I’m quite satisfied.

I don’t think religions have “experiences” I think people have experiences, and God can grant such a spiritual experience to anyone he chooses. All such experiences must be discerned under reliable spiritual direction.

 

[FuzzyBunny116]

Thanks a lot everyone. I was interested, and rather glad to see, that John Paul believed that legitimate religious experiences can be found in other religions.