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Religion and Truth

What is a religious experience and what do those who have had such experiences say they have learned? It seems that the combination of the nature of object they claim to have learned about (God, the Ground of all being, or however its phrased) with the nature of subjective experience make objective confirmation of the truth of their learning just about impossible. I'd like to discuss why this is so and whether these obstacles can ever be overcome. And if these obstacles prove truly to be insurmountable as I expect they will we will have to come to terms with the possibility that the 'truths' of mysticism have no right to be given that name. But I hope I will be able to show that, though no objective view can ever encompass God, there is nevertheless reason enough to count as true the spiritual truths attested to by religion.

I will speak of religion in a very general way, with as little reference to individual religion as possible (though I admit, having grown up a Christian, I will more than likely use a Christian idiom). I will not defend the claim that my religion or any philosophia perennis is at the root the 'real' religion of all human cultures. Nor will I try to prove that whenever anyone in the world talks religious experience, they are ultimately talking about the same God. Nor does it matter whether religion is universal or not. I will be talking about religion in the terms of Aldous Huxley in The Perennial Philosophy and of Rudolf Otto in The Idea of the Holy. These books contain profound and serious philosophies of religion. I am content to take these ideas about the nature of God and Being as my starting point. Let them stand as examples for any other religion or religious philosophy when it comes to the question of whether they are 'true' or not. If it is possible that they are true, then let it be possible that another equally profound philosophy is true. If their truth is impossible or highly doubtful, then let that also stand for other profound philosophies.

According to what I've read, there are two ways of knowing the ultimate reality. It can be known in the way that a mystic knows it: personally and directly in a flash of insight or a vision. Or it can be known in the way that a saint and the ordinary person knows it: by hard work, seeking and striving. The saint knows the nature of reality because he lives according to it. The mystic knows it because he has experienced it directly. I would like to consider both of these ways of knowing and the interrelationships they bear to one another. I will do this in succession, first considering direct apprehension and then turning to the sort of life that goes hand in hand with what is learned in such a direct apprehension. In the realm of serious religious inquiry, "knowledge is a function of being." (Huxley, vii) I will try to make clear how and why this is so.

I begin by considering a category of being proposed and examined in depth by Rudolf Otto. He calls this category 'the numinous' and it is extremely difficult to define succinctly. As an introduction to the concept (and its inherent difficulties) I'd like to consider a quote that is found in the Translator's Preface to Otto's book. It is from Pascal's Pensées: "If one subjects everything to reason our religion will lose its mystery and its supernatural character. If one offends the principles of reason our religion will be absurd and ridiculous.... There are two equally dangerous extremes, to shut reason out and to let nothing else in." (Otto, xviii-xix) Otto's category of the numinous attempts to put in rational terms that which by its very nature is non-rational or beyond rational. I also will attempt to put cogently into words what is by its nature difficult to symbolize and conceptualize. The problem of putting rationally that which cannot be rationalized will be both a goal of this present endeavor as well as one of the main reasons to doubt the veracity of claims about ultimate reality made in the religious context.

The scholastics of the Middle Ages knew all too well this problem of conceptualization of the non-rational and were at times frantic about the task of making our concepts of God coherent and non-contradictory. But concepts about God (or whatever stands for the ultimate reality in other traditions) fail to encompass what it is to be God. There is certainly a place for the rational in religion (how else avoid paradox or stave off religious war?) but to consider religion or God only in rational terms is to miss more than half of the story. Otto tries to bring out the supra-rational reality of God by the use of his category of the numinous. A preliminary definition of this word might be: that something "which transcends or eludes comprehension in rational or ethical terms." (Otto, xvi)

At this point I think I should remark upon the fact that in Otto's book he doesn't anywhere claim that the feelings he describes only occur under rare conditions. He is not of a mind to describe the experiences of a select few saints who have gone beyond everything that we recognize as a part of ordinary human experience. He requests that the reader turn his or her mind to religious experiences that he or she remembers personally. Otto argues that for the one who cannot remember ever having had such feelings, his discussion will do him or her little good. Such a person is requested not to read further in his book than the eighth page. The reason for this is that the person who can remember many other sorts of experiences but no religious ones will more than likely not understand the depth of the distinctions that separate religious feelings from all others. The person who is bereft of the experience of religious feelings will tend to interpret "'religion' as a function of the gregarious instinct and social standards, or as something more primitive still." (Otto, 8) This sort of interpretation is eschewed by Otto and by any who have an idea of the power and distinctive qualities of religious feelings.

With that in mind, the first approach to the numinous that I will consider is what Otto calls the 'creature-consciousness' or 'creature-feeling'. "It is the emotion of a creature, submerged and overwhelmed by its own nothingness in contrast to that which is supreme above all creatures." (Otto, 10) The important thing about this feeling is not the subject of the feeling, not the 'nothingness' but the 'something' which it is impossible to characterize, or know, without experiencing it oneself. And even when experienced, the object of this feeling is so powerful and powerfully mysterious that to put it into words is to diminish it. It is the character of this 'something' which must be hinted at and alluded to since it is impossible to give a positive description to. I don't mean that there isn't anything positive or good about the object of the 'creature-feeling', just that the only possible description of it is a negative one which contains only descriptions which relate to the thing itself in an analogous manner.

To return to the subject at hand, the 'creature-feeling' can be described as the feeling of being a wholly insignificant thing, like a pile of dry ash before a mighty King. The feeling itself is mainly a consciousness of something outside the self which is so extraordinarily powerful that no doubt could exist in the mind that it is an encounter with the Creator. It is especially important to emphasize that the 'creature-feeling' is not essentially a feeling of self-consciousness. At its root, this feeling "is itself a first subjective concomitant and effect of another feeling-element, which casts it like a shadow, but which in itself indubitably has immediate and primary reference to an object outside the self." (Otto, 10) Indeed, Huxley discusses at length about how it is impossible to be united with the Ground of being without repenting of the self and the feeling of its being. The religious person sees humankind as consisting not just of mind and body but also of spirit. In order to recognize this spirit (and come to know it as identical with the divine Spirit) it is necessary to transcend the self. (Huxley, 36-38) So the 'creature-feeling' is essentially a feeling of something which is separate from the self, indeed opposed to it, and only arises when a person comes in contact with the numinous itself. It is an accompaniment to the feeling of the numinous.

Here I must emphasize that this feeling, like so many others I will discuss, is not to be known fully without experiencing it oneself. It is impossible to know what a feeling is like when the conditions for the arousal of that feeling do not obtain. For an example from natural feelings, take happiness. No one can know what it is like to be happy if they never do, see, or experience something enjoyable. The word 'happy' might still have meaning for such a doleful person as a word that applies to people who are enjoying themselves. But the meaning of the word is not the same as the experience of the feeling. It is similar with the 'creature-feeling'. Only in this case it is not merely a case of a concept not being the same in its essence as a thing. In this case it is impossible to know what the 'creature-feeling' is like without the presence of the feeling of the numinous. And in like manner, it impossible to know what it feels like to be in the presence of the numinous without having felt it oneself. The 'creature-feeling' only arises when one feels that one is in the presence of God. But can this feeling be known without experiencing it?

That's a question which is similar to the question of whether any subjective feeling can be known by another but it will have to be dealt with later. For now I'd like to continue describing the category of the numinous. It has five main elements according to Otto and they are: One, the element of Awefulness, the tremendum of the mysterium tremendum that is God. Two, the element of 'Overpoweringness' or majestas. Three, the element of 'Energy' or 'Urgency' which is the 'living' God. Four, the element of the 'Wholly Other', the mysterium of the mysterium tremendum. And finally five, the element of Fascination; this element is not central to the concerns of the present endeavor and so will not be addressed. All of these elements are really feelings that arise in the individual in response to real aspects of the numinous object. The descriptions of these feelings hint at and allude to the nature of their cause but usually the best that can be done is to say that such cause is 'indescribable' or 'unutterable'.

Before I go on to discuss the elements of the numinous I would like to address an issue that the translator mentions as a problem in the interpretation and understanding of Rudolf Otto's writings about numinous feelings. The translator writes that,

it is Otto's purpose to emphasize that this [the object of religious experience] is a objective reality, not merely a subjective feeling in the mind; and he uses the word feeling in this connexion not as equivalent to emotion but as a form of awareness that is neither that of ordinary perceiving nor of ordinary conceiving. Certainly he is very much concerned to describe as precisely and identify as unmistakably as possible, by hint, illustration, and analogy, the nature of the subjective feelings which characterize this awareness; but that is because it is only through them that we can come to an apprehension of their object. (Otto, xvi)

So in the ensuing discussion of the feelings that arise in conjunction with each of the elements of the numinous it will be important to remember that we aren't talking about simple emotions which have subjective natures but refer to nothing outside the self. Subjectivity has its own problems, and they apply here to the emotional component of an apprehension of the numinous, but that is not the only issue. What is also at issue is the nature of that which is beyond ordinary perceiving and conceiving. The aim in examining the numinous feeling in detail then is not just to discover its subjective nature but also to come to have an idea of what the numinous is in itself.

The concept that is the starting point of Otto's analysis he admits is only a negative one. The mysterium tremendum means just that which is unknown, secret, and esoteric and at the same time tremendous and frightening. This isn't in any way a definition of the actual character of the thing. But Otto asserts that its ultimate nature is positive in the highest degree. And inasmuch as a discussion of the feelings involved in an experience of the numinous can give rise to those feelings by reminding us of things we have ourselves felt, it will be possible to give an outline of the real character of the mysterium tremendum. (Otto, 13)

The element of Awefulness is an analysis of the tremor or 'fear' that expresses part of how the numinous acts upon the human psyche and spirit. However, fear is merely an analogy for the specific emotional response which is really under discussion. The analogy casts light on the 'feeling' in question because there is a certain similarity between everyday fear and the apprehension of the awefulness of the numinous. This 'fear' is a "terror fraught with an inward shuddering such as not even the most menacing and overpowering created thing can instil." (Otto, 14) This 'fear' is a direct or indirect contact with the mysterious, the weird, or the eerie. It is akin to, though different in origin from the feeling one gets if one were to think about ghosts and ghouls while standing alone in a graveyard at night, far away from electric lights and the noise of traffic. In the case of the ghosts one might know that fear of such things is silly and unfounded. One might think, "what does it matter even if there are ghosts? What harm could an immaterial thing do to me?" But the fear does not subside easily and one's flesh creeps. So also is the 'fear' that is associated with the numinous. Only in that case, the source of the feeling is markedly different. It's not a matter of the intensity of the feeling: numinous fear can be either very gentle or very intense, just as more natural feelings of horror vary in intensity. The difference is the source of the feeling which is felt as separate from the self. Also, there is a qualitative difference that, because of its subjective nature, cannot be described adequately except by analogy.

This brings me to an important point that needs to be made in regard to all of the feelings of the numinous. Often there is a qualitative component to these feelings that is difficult to express but which distinguishes it from more commonplace feelings. I alluded to this before when I wrote about why those who had never experienced a religious feeling could not make use of Otto's analysis of the numinous feelings. The qualitative component is very often lost in discussions of feelings. This is because most analyses of feelings use a rough categorization of all feelings into pleasurable or painful which tends to force different types of pleasures and pains to be nothing more than degrees of the intensity of the feeling. This causes the bliss obtained in religious worship to be simply more pleasurable (in certain ways) than the pleasure of drinking an extremely good cup of coffee rather than qualitatively different as it most evidently is. The gradation of pleasures and pains into variations of intensity certainly has some uses but it fails to capture the differences in intrinsic quality of the various feelings so graded. This is part of the reason why feelings of the numinous are so hard to express. They have a quality that is unlike the quality of any other feelings that humankind possesses and no quality of a feeling is easily put into words and rational concepts. (Otto, 16-17)

Nevertheless I press on, trying to analyze the non-rational with rational terms and concepts while attempting to keep the focus of the analysis from being strictly about things rational. And with that I turn to the second element of the numinous, the element of 'Overpoweringness' or majestas. This element is best described as the 'mighty' or 'powerful' element and it is this which throws as its shadow in the self-consciousness the feeling of creaturehood. The presence of the deity is so overpowering ,so large beyond measure that all the human being (or creature) can feel is its own nothingness before such a might. A passage from William James captures this feeling very well:

The perfect stillness of the night was thrilled by a more solemn silence. The darkness held a presence that was all the more felt because it was not seen. I could not any more have doubted that He was there than that I was. Indeed, I felt myself to be, if possible, the less real of the two. (Otto, 22-3)

The identity of the person in this passage passes away and the reality of Him becomes the dominant reality. An identification with the divine reality occurs and the individual self is swallowed up in the 'overpoweringness' of what is experienced.

The third element is the one most condemned by people of strictly rational bent since it involves an idea of a God who is active and 'alive'. It is generally dismissed as sheer anthropomorphism. But that is merely the result of mistaking the symbol for the thing itself and the analogy for the real relationship. This element Otto uses the words "vitality, passion, emotional temper, will, force, movement, excitement, activity, [and] impetus." (Otto, 23) is fully a non-rational part of the experience of the numinous. It is perhaps best described as God's love. It is a 'consuming fire' that burns away the individual and makes him one with God. This movement and vitality is God's desire for unity with the individual; it is felt and understood not as anything rational but as a non-rational desire which cannot be put in the same category as our sundry wants and needs. (Otto, 24)

This brings me to the fourth element of the numinous though it is not really an element in the sense of being a quality: this is rather the substance of the numinous. With this we begin analyzing the idea of the mysterium which before we left in favor of analyzing the tremendum. The mysterium is the substantial part of the numinous and, as the word indicates, this substance is something 'wholly other': it is a mystery. This mystery induces a 'stupor'. It is "blank wonder, an astonishment that strikes us dumb, amazement absolute." (Otto, 26) There is nothing 'puzzling' about it; it is not a problem that can be solved or a theory that can be explained more clearly. It is a real mystery that is forever beyond understanding. But this inability to conceptualize and understand is not a result merely of the limits of our human mind. No, the mysterium is "something 'wholly other', whose kind and character are incommensurable with our own, and before which we therefore recoil in a wonder that strikes us chill and numb." (Otto, 28)

In order to emphasize the completely alien nature of the numinous object, some mystics have said that it is not. It 'exists' as it were outside of Being and could be called 'that which is nothing'. This is not to say that it does not have qualities or that it is not something real. This exaggeration to the point of contradiction merely points to something that is so alien to all that can be grasped rationally that it is rightly thought of as an opposite to Being itself. The numinous is still everything that we have already talked about: positive, living, awful, and overpowering. The nothingness here discussed is like the sunyata, the 'void' of Buddhism. It is a part of an esoteric language meant to express the inexpressible. The 'void' is an ideogram for the 'wholly other'. We understand the meaning even though it is not the literal meaning of the words used. We understand the "special character [of the numinous because we] feel [it], without being able to give it clear conceptual expression." (Otto, 29-30)

This ends my discussion of the feelings that arise in individuals who have religious experiences. None of them are always there, nor must there be a flash of insight or an experience of unity with the Divine which, though fleeting, is life altering. These feelings can each arise separately, or come all together. They can range in intensity from bare awareness of a certain kind of peace of mind to the life altering experience that we are left to imagine that Paul had on the road to Damascus. In short, man's encounters with God are as various and interesting as man's encounters with his fellow humans. But under what conditions do such feelings arise and what brings about these states of mind? The states of mind I attempted to adequately describe above are thought very different from ordinary states of mind by those who have had them. If it is to be claimed that these states of mind, and the knowledge of their object that they are supposed to impart, are unknowable without experiencing them oneself, then it is necessary to know, at least in passing, what conditions must be met before this can happen.

This is precisely what I would like to explore next. Aldous Huxley, in a sentence I have already quoted, makes the bold claim that "knowledge is a function of being." (Huxley, vii) When the being of the knower changes, so also changes the amount and the kind of the things known. Huxley takes the example of the child who grows into an adult. The child's being is different from the adult's, so is the nature and manner of the knowledge had by each. The child cannot know the nature of the adult's knowledge, nor though every adult was once a child can the adult know anymore what the child knows. Or feels. In a similar way, the nature of a person's knowledge changes depending on what that person chooses to do and make of him- or herself. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." If one makes oneself pure in heart, one changes the nature of one's knowledge of the world. Here it is claimed that one also changes the nature of one's knowledge of the Divine: one comes to know it personally.

It is a fact that when a current is run through a body of pure water, oxygen and hydrogen are produced in a perfect 1:2 ratio. Huxley claims that it is also a fact that when a person is subjected to certain conditions, the true nature of that person reveals itself. And under the right conditions, it becomes apparent that the true nature of people in general is identical with the true nature of "the Reality substantial to the manifold world." (Huxley, ix) When a mind "is subjected to certain rather drastic treatments, the divine element, of which it is in part composed, becomes manifest, not only to the mind itself, but also, by its reflection in external behaviour, to other minds." (Huxley, ix) He goes on to say that the conditions under which this becomes possible (and which so few learned men have bothered to try to fulfill) are known and are empirically validated. These conditions are the making of oneself to be "loving, pure in heart, and poor in spirit." (Huxley, viii) The reason why these are the conditions is not known; just that these are the conditions is known.

But we needn't accept such short descriptions of the right path as the final descriptions. At least a partial analysis of them should serve us well in coming to a better understanding of why it might be claimed that religious knowledge in unknowable except to those who have had the experience themselves. So I will begin by talking about an aspect of the religious life which has appeared in practically all the religious texts I have encountered in my short association with this area of study. That is the loss of the self in the One reality, the attainment of selflessness by immersion in God. Its expression in behavior is altruism. The knowledge gained by the person who has attained this position is of oneness with divine Reality. But how does this work exactly?

"The divine eternal fulness of life can be gained only by those who have deliberately lost the partial, separative life of craving and self-interest, of egocentric thinking, feeling, wishing and acting." (Huxley, 96) Huxley speaks of "self-naughting". By turning from the self and its desires, one comes to know God. But to think of self-mortification as a goal in itself is to make a grave mistake. This is because those who have achieved a certain degree of self-denial and have become at least outwardly virtuous, and who see this as the pinnacle of religious life, have a tendency to look down on those of more hedonistic nature. Think of the Puritans and how they punished those who could not live up to their moral standards of purity. Their virtues involved the strictest of self-denials so that, if a person were capable of ever fulfilling the requirements placed on him by this hard, rigid code, he would end up being "morally equipped to wish and be able to do harm on the very largest scale and with a perfectly untroubled conscience." (Huxley, 99) And this the Puritans did. "Holiness is the total denial of the separative self , in its creditable no less than its discreditable aspects, and the abandonment of the will to God." (Huxley, 98) So mortification doesn't by itself bring a person closer to God and a realization of the true nature of Reality.

Also, The self-denial that truly brings one closed to God need not always involve physical austerities. Sometimes such measures as fasting and self-flagellation and the like are better thought of as steps on the road to further self-glorification and even self-worship. There is no one so vain as the person who seriously thinks that they are holier than their neighbor. This statement receives its support from a common experience. Who has never been approached by a zealous evangelist the encounter with whom would have been far less unpleasant if they hadn't seemed so superior (at least in their own minds)? The same thing could very easily happen to the person who fasts for weeks in order to beat the record of an admired saint only to become impressed more with their own achievements than with God. This is not the route toward the feelings of the numinous that were discussed above. All of those feelings had their object outside the self. Though we may not have proof that there is such an object, it is clear that any feelings whose object is the self cannot be considered religious.

The motivation for mortification is obviously very important. If one's reason for, say, fasting, is that one will win the admiration of others or that one will thereby become 'more holy', then the aim is the self, and not God. On the other hand, if one's reason for mortification is that one will somehow secure a place for oneself in Heaven, or avoid Hell, then the aim, however highly metaphysical, and outward object oriented, is still only the self. Some words that convey this very well are the following:

God, if I worship Thee in fear of hell, burn me in hell. And if I worship Thee in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise; but if I worship Thee for Thine own sake, withhold not Thine everlasting Beauty. from: Rabi'a (Huxley, 102)

It is important that mortification be totally without any self-reference and without any motivation to preserve the self. For mortification to fulfill the conditions for releasing the human potential for the divine, it is necessary that the divine, and only the divine, be the goal. Religious enlightenment must be sought for its own sake.

This is why the analyses of religion by professional philosophers and the like (including this one, most likely) have so often failed to capture the essence of the profundity of religion. In such endeavors to understand from the outside, from an objective point of view, that which is intrinsically internal and eternal, the philosopher is interested not so much in knowing God (or whatever divine Reality might be called) as he is interested in being 'objective'. This love of objectivity at the expense of any possible love for the subject at hand blinds the philosopher to the true nature of what he studies. So to come to know God, an intellectual mortification is also necessary: the humble seeker of the knowledge of the great depth of the soul must not love the knowledge more than its object. I will return to these concerns later when I discuss objectivity and subjectivity.

"To sum up, that mortification is the best which results in the elimination of self-will, self-centered thinking, wishing and imagining." (Huxley, 101) Huxley quotes a passage from Augustine Baker who describes the life of Dame Gertrude More. She lived her life without imposing any 'extra' mortifications. She 'took up her cross' by dealing patiently and resignedly with whatever occurred in her life. For her it was possible to see all things as bringing her nearer to God because she accepted everything that happened as representing God's will for her. All that is then required of the religious aspirant (not that it is little or easy) is that he or she patiently endure his or her daily duties and submit to the will of God. It appears then that there is a hidden task in this summation, namely that a person must constantly try to second guess God and know what His will is. But it isn't so: God's will is revealed to us as we live our lives. "Self-will is renounced [in favor of God's will], not that there may be a total holiday from willing, but that the divine will may use the mortified mind and body as its instrument for good." (Huxley, 104-5)

Another way of putting this comes from an uncertain source (was it one of the Beatles?) who said that "life is what happens while you're making other plans." Doing God's will then doesn't have to mean that one stops seeking personal well-being or the good of one's family, or any other good. It is a change in the reason why one does these things. To do them in a self-mortifying way one must do everything one does for the sake of God. Doing everything with this mindset, it becomes easier and easier to discern what God's will is. One should strive to have a "'holy indifference' to the temporal success or failure of the cause to which one has devoted one's best energies. If it triumphs, well and good; and if it meets defeat, that also is well and good, if only in ways that, to a limited and time-bound mind, are here and now entirely incomprehensible." (Huxley, 103) And this is how God's will comes to be known. But in what sense is this known? This is a question I will not be able to address later. The answer will have to deal with the question of human free will versus the determinate will of God. But I don't have room here to discuss this and still talk about the main topic of this paper.

For now I'd like to make one final point about self-mortification and following the will of God. Again I must make the point that in matters religious, simply rational analysis does not lead to enlightenment. This quote from Huxley's anthology shows how reason can be used as a tool in personal growth toward the goal of knowledge of the Ultimate, but also how it is not sufficient alone:

Many a man hath the virtues of humility, patience and charity towards his neighbours, only in the reason and will, and hath no spiritual delight nor love in them; for ofttimes he feeleth grudging, heaviness and bitterness for to do them , but yet nevertheless he doth them, but 'tis only by stirring of reason for dread of God. This man hath these virtues in reason and will, but not the love of them in affection. But when, by the grace of Jesus and by ghostly and bodily exercise, reason is turned into light and will into love, then hath he virtues in affection; for he hath so gnawn on the bitter bark or shell of the nut that at length he hath broken it and not feeds on the kernel; that is to say, the virtues which were first heavy for to practise are now turned into a very delight and savour. Walter Hilton (Huxley, 107)

Moral knowledge and spiritual action are linked in an interdependent relationship. If one acts without an eye to self-interest, one learns spiritual truth. And the more such truth is learned, the more selflessly one will act. And the truth is that the individual self is identical to a universal Self and with the realization of this, a person becomes selfless. The selfless person acts, well, selflessly, helping others and doing everything for the sake of the Almighty. The lives of all but the most saintly are spent striving to learn this truth by acting selflessly, like the man in the passage above. Enlightenment is not easily obtained and much work is necessary; indeed, this is an understatement and perhaps only the Grace of God can bring anyone so far. (Huxley, 112)

But regardless of whether one can make it alone or whether direct intercession on God's part is necessary, a very important part of this religious life and its ethics is that there is no possible rigid set of rules. It is beyond the bounds of possibility to once and for all carve in stone the tenets of the right way to live. No single type of life is the one and only best life. Only the most general guidelines are of any use at all when trying to describe the life that one must lead in order to come to know spiritual truth. In the Christian tradition this general guideline is called the 'last and greatest commandment': Love God with all your heart, strength and mind, and your neighbor as yourself. The possibilities are endless as far as the individual life is concerned. Almost any kind of life can be made to conform to this formula. Also consider Lao Tzu's Three Great Treasures: "The first is pity, the second frugality, the third refusal to be foremost of all things under heaven." (Huxley, 120) Of course a thorough understanding of either of these 'guidelines' and all they imply is necessary if following them is ever going to lead to the kind of enlightenment that I've been talking about. But that happens on an individual level. (Huxley, 119-20)

This passage sums up nicely what I mean:

It will be seen, then, that the problems of right livelihood, in so far as they lie outside the jurisdiction of the common moral code, are strictly personal. The way in which any individual problem presents itself and the nature of the appropriate solution depend upon the degree of knowledge, moral sensibility and spiritual insight achieved by the individual concerned. For this reason no universally applicable rules can be formulated except in the most general terms. (Huxley, 120)

So now it becomes very clear why it is so hard to give any credence to the idea that the 'truths' claimed by religion have a right to that description. The reason is that there is no set formula that can be simply stated, tested, and evaluated. The preconditions for spiritual knowledge are so vague and general that it would be necessary either to examine an infinite number of cases or, dare I suggest, to attempt to live it out oneself. It would be necessary to examine an infinite number of cases before deciding the truth of any claim made solely on the basis of religion because only then could an adequate test be made of the general truths claimed by those who say they have successfully followed the commandments. This is clearly impossible and some other way must be found. That other way is by living the life oneself. And by the grace of God, perhaps the truth of the claims of religion can be confirmed after all.

Before I can turn to questions of the veracity of religious claims, one question remains: How does living this life (especially imperfectly) lead to the experiences I talked about in the first section? There is nothing in what I've read to indicate how this works so I will have to give my own best guess. Hopefully even an incomplete account of the process of how understanding proceeds from action will suffice to allow me to give a shape to the way in which religious proofs (as it were) can be constructed.

A perfectly imperfect person, who has never even attempted the religious life can begin to pay attention to such things. He (let's say he's a man to save ourselves from problems with gender) can begin to wonder what it's all about, what higher purpose he can pursue. He learns from someone about a church or a synagogue or a temple or a mosque and he begins to attend. At first he understands little, feels less. He has no inkling of the feelings described so eloquently by Rudolf Otto and so inadequately by myself. But he comes to know the rituals and the readings and the songs and hymns, and he comes to know what they mean: to others in the congregation and in themselves. He tries to live the life that is espoused by the priest or the rabbi or the imam. In participating in services and in trying to live the life (usually something like the life which follows what Huxley calls the perennial philosophy) our man begins to have feelings very much like those described by Otto. As he comes to live more and more the life of the selfless, he comes closer and closer to the proof of truth of the religious truths he is learning about. This is a subjective proof and no matter how eloquently he speaks to his comrades from his unreligious days, this man will never be able to bring across the truth that he has become convinced of.

Now it should be apparent how even someone who isn't a saint can come to have feelings of the numinous. Of course the saint, prophet or mystic has a much clearer apprehension of the nature of God and a deeper understanding of the truth of what he or she knows. But this doesn't mean that the same truths that our novice has come to know in his search for the profound are more true for the mystic than for the novice. There is no such thing as more or less truth when the discussion is about a single statement. One can know more or fewer individual truths and say that one knows more truth than someone else. But truth or falsity must at some level be an absolute. The novice as well as the mystic comes to know the truth by first making a commitment to it and working at living the life. The reason for saying it is truth is that when the life is lived fully and completely (and without a hidden refusal to believe anything metaphysical to be true), one can't help but be convinced in the end of the truth of the object of religious feelings. The subjectivity of this truth I cannot and will not deny. Later, I will try to show how its subjectivity is not a mark against it.

Now take also the case of the professional philosopher who can analyze in depth the interrelationships of the many complex ideas about 'The Holy" as described by Otto and Huxley and many others. She knows the writings of the mystics. She is familiar with the Scriptures and other holy Writings. She is an expert in the field of comparative religions and knows what they hold in common. But she doesn't put any stock in any of it. She knows so much that she thinks there's no way that any one religion could be true. She lives her life, not perfectly selfishly but not in a manner that would put her on the road that ultimately leads to a profound selflessness. She considers the idea impractical.

It is obvious that the objective viewpoint of our philosopher puts her in a position to know quite a lot about religion and even about the experiences of religious people. This gives her no conviction of the truth of anything religious. No amount of analysis of the strictly rational elements of religion can ever do that (or so I contend here, at any rate). I consider rational elements of religion things like facts about experiences of religious people, facts about the perceived objects of these experiences, dogma about the metaphysical construction of the Universe, facts about observed rites, rituals and sacraments, and all the various details of a religion that one might care to describe.

The point is that our philosopher misses something when she neglects to go through the process of becoming religious herself. She misses actually feeling the feelings of the numinous. She neglects the subjective efficacy of the religious life for bringing about conviction of the truth of religious ideas. And because she misses these things her purely rational account of religions, no matter how exhaustive, does not account for important aspects of those religions. It is precisely these aspects of the religions which serve to show whether they contain any veracity at all. Because she neglects these aspects of religions (the personal experiential aspects, just so I make my point clear), the grace of God for understanding the truth is withheld from her. She withholds it from herself by not living the life.

Now it might seem that the only way to obtain knowledge of the spiritual is if God gives one the grace to do so. But if I have given that impression, then I have written unclearly. The grace of God must be free since it seems open to anyone to elect to strive to live the life whose bare outlines I have tried to give a form to here. "The account in terms of grace may simply be superimposed upon an account in terms of human effort (the effort itself is a gift from God!)." (Smart, 17) The effort is a gift at least in terms of God as creator of all things (all things including also individual propensities and potentialities). Success along this path may only come gradually and is by no means sure. Perhaps it is necessary first to believe in the spiritual truths revealed by saints and prophets and to then hold these truths as the goal. Conviction that they are true, or rather proof that they are true comes with time and perseverance. My example from Walter Hilton (above) shows how this can be done.

In light of this it becomes necessary to make a distinction that I have neglected until now. In the theory of knowledge there is a sharp distinction between believing something to be true and really knowing it. One might ask, "What's the difference between saying, and believing true, (for example) that 'the individual self is really identical to the eternal and everliving Ground of all being' and knowing it through the fulfillment of the conditions [partially] described above?" The difference is large and I must clarify my position on the 'knowability' of spiritual truths in light of this distinction.

To believe something to be true does not make it true. And knowing something to be true requires that there be a reason why there is no room for doubt. When it comes to knowing the truth in matters of religion, simply believing is not enough to know whether something is true or not. In the end, all spiritual truths, though independent of their consequences, have practical consequences which can be lived out. Through individual 'living out' of the practical side of religious truths, and necessary experimentation to find the best way of living them out, a person can come to know that what they have until then only believed is actually true.

Action provides the proof of the truth of religious claims in a way that syllogisms and good valid arguments cannot. I propose now a theory of verification which differs from traditional theories in important ways. I would like to show how action and persistence can prove the truth of a religious claim, even without the danger of self-fulfilling prophecy. The nature of spiritual truths, or rather the nature of the numinous, make it impossible to approach them in merely rational ways. Conceptualization is an impotent tool because the objects to be understood cannot be conceptualized. Without conceptualization, argumentation is impossible.

But this doesn't mean that there is no possible proof for the truths of religion. An internal realization of the truth can be brought about by first believing, then modifying belief through life's experience, and finally coming to know the truth. This is a again a subjective and altogether non-transferable knowledge of the truth. Perseverance in the pursuit of actions known to be virtuous eventually brings about the conviction that it is true that they are virtues. Before they are lived out, they are merely values, only the Morality of the Slaves so detested by Nietzsche. Once one has lived them and has learned to love them, their truth is beyond doubt. Calling something a Morality of the Slaves is taking bare concepts of religion, stripping them of their supra-conceptual content, and interpreting their strictly practical consequences. This is the kind of misunderstanding that my current endeavor is striving to avoid.

Traditionally, in order to prove a statement about the world to be true, it is necessary to make reference to the world. Given a theory of what there is, it should be easy to find out if the theory is correct: just go out and look. But religion postulates objects whose existence is, unfortunately, not possible to confirm simply by looking or hearing. Also, the means of coming to the realization that they are true are complicated, difficult, and involve a certain amount of commitment even before truth is assured. This last is the sticking point upon which most rational analyses of religion base their claims that religion cannot claim to have the truth without independent confirmation by an independent party. And since this is impossible, given the nature of the object(s) in question and the nature of the means by which these things become known. And these analysts smugly conclude that claims made by religion can't hold the truth. And so the only alternatives are theories like materialism, physicalism, positivism, and instrumentalism. The catch is that, most of the time, those who have proved the invalidity of religious truths (or, I should say, falsities and misapprehensions) usually started out with, for example, a physicalist point of view. In a sense, one can't escape having some point of view even before one knows much about the topic at hand.

This brings up the problem of the intelligibility of religious experiences. This is an issue which has run through my discussion so far and should conspicuously have been missing. Ninian Smart makes a distinction that is very useful when it comes to the understanding of others' religious experiences. The two terms he uses are 'existential understanding' and 'theoretical understanding'. The process that I have been trying to describe a religious life which leads to experiential evidence for truths about the nature of reality results in an existential understanding. An existential understanding is "understanding what a given experience is like." (Smart, 10) Having an existential understanding of religion means living the life and learning what it has to teach. The existential understanding is ultimately only possible from a subjective point of view. No objective account of an experience that someone (or some animal or some Martian) has captures the existential understanding that whoever is having the experience and can remember it later has.

We think most of the time that the objective point of view really captures everything about an event or an experience, experiences are events, too. But there's a nagging thought that perhaps there is something missing. In moving from appearances to reality we gain a more objective viewpoint. When it comes to knowing the reality behind the appearances themselves, however, what objective reality is there to turn to? Thomas Nagel has this to say about subjectivity:

The idea of moving from appearance to reality seems to make no sense here. What is the analogue in this case to pursuing a more objective understanding of the same phenomena by abandoning the initial subjective viewpoint toward them in favour of another that is more objective but concerns the same thing? Certainly it appears unlikely that we will get closer to the real nature of human experience by leaving behind the particularity of our human point of view and striving for a description in terms accessible to beings that could not imagine what it was like to be us. If the subjective character of experience is fully comprehensible only from one point of view, then any shift to greater objectivity - that is, less attachment to a specific viewpoint - does not take us nearer to the real nature of the phenomenon: it takes us farther away from it. (Nagel, 174)

The appearance to the individual religious person, given the pure heart required of him or her by the religious life, is that his or her religion is true. The truth or falsity of religions depends, for the individual, upon how the religion appears to the individual in his or her experiences. In my model then, there is no way to prove or disprove a religion's claims when only objective facts about the religion are considered. Only subjective facts suffice.

'Theoretical understanding' (Smart, 10) is not enough to prove the truth of religious claims. It could be argued that a theoretical understanding never suffices to convince anyone of truth. But I'll just argue here that a theoretical understanding of religion is inadequate to the task not only of a full understanding of religion but also to making any claims about the veracity of religion, positive or negative. A theoretical understanding of religion is what our philosopher from the end of section II. had of religion. She knew nothing but the objective facts about religion but she knew them very well. She could, through psychology, explain in a hundred different ways the reasons why a person might have the feelings of the numinous that Otto thought were indications of something beyond the self. And perhaps some of those explanations are perfectly valid and accurate. But in all of her explaining she can never explain, since she is reluctant to admit the existence of, the subjective feelings that, because of their subjectivity, are not communicable in objective terms.

But what does that mean, that something is not available for the objective eye to peruse it? "The idea [with objectivity] is that if one can still maintain some view when one relies less and less on what is specific to one's position or form, it will be truer to reality." (Nagel, 209) The problem with subjectively revealed facts is that they can't be reduced to objective facts, eliminated, or annexed as objective facts. That is, not if they are acknowledged as real facts. They can't be reduced because familiar objective facts really aren't identical with the subjective facts in question. They can't be eliminated because this denies them their status as real facts. It simply cannot be responsibly denied that a person really has viewpoints. And as for annexation: this is merely the invention of a objective, metaphysical entity to take the place of the subjective one. One of Nagel's examples is the ego which was invented to explain our purely subjective feeling of personal identity over time. No objective facts about continuity of behavior or memories and correct anticipation quite captures the feeling that someone in the past or future is really me and no one else. The problem with annexation is that the same problems of subjectivity arise in connection with the new object. If the question before was, "what makes me be the same person over time?", now the question is, "what makes my ego the same thing over time?" The answer to both questions remains: the feeling that what I'm thinking about is really me. (Nagel, 210-11)

"The only alternative to these unsatisfactory moves is to resist the voracity of the objective appetite, and stop assuming that understanding of the world and our position in it can always be advanced by detaching from that position and subsuming whatever appears from there under a single more comprehensive conception." (Nagel, 211) In the end there is more to be learned about the world when we admit that there may not be one and only one 'truest' point of view. The objective point of view, especially of religion (because that's the topic at hand, after all), is only a partial view. (Nagel, 212) Subjective facts are elements of reality that an objective view could not possibly contain.

In my discussion of Otto's description of the feelings of the numinous I talked about the subjective feelings that were his focus as things which should be thought of as referring to objects outside themselves. The reader may well have thought that this was exactly what remained to be proven. Well, I am getting close. Otto thinks of these feelings as not just emotional affect and certainly not just parts of a conceptual understanding of who and what God is to the individual. They are "a form of awareness that is neither that of ordinary perceiving nor of ordinary conceiving." (Otto, xvi) When a person who is committed to the religious life worships God and communes with Him, he or she might use this description for the experience. For this person there remains little doubt as to whether God is there. Recall the quote from William James: "I could no more have doubted that He was there than that I was. Indeed, I felt myself to be, if possible, the less real of the two." (Otto, 22-3) The feeling itself, and its repetition, prove to the person that there is a real and objective (in the sense of existing whether or not it is perceived) object of their apprehension. And the deeper into the religious life a person delves, the deeper and more complete the understanding of the ultimate reality is.

Existential understanding coupled with the idea the there are truths that can only be known subjectively (like what sugar tastes like to me) brings about the proof of the religious truths in question. Perhaps this proof only occurs and only has validity at the individual level. Indeed, only individually can we come to know God (or the Brahman, or Allah, etc.). I hope that in this writing I have made at least one thing very clear: the nature of human knowledge of the divine is such that it cannot be shared by those who know it with those who hold themselves back from it. Commitment or faith is the first necessary ingredient in coming to know religious claims to be true. And proof of this truth only occurs in the mind of the believer. The believer can imagine no other explanation for his or her feelings than that there is a numinous reality above and beyond and responsible for these feelings. Others who do not understand make rational explanations in their ignorance about the nature of the subjective aspect of others' experience. But in the end these rational explanations are unsatisfying. The only ones qualified to make judgments about the truth of claims about the ultimate reality are those who have committed themselves to knowing it. If once someone could live the life I described (or rather the true religious life in all its complexity and indeterminacy) and never, not even at the very last moment of life, experience something akin to the feelings Otto describes as the necessary followings of encounters with the numinous, then the case for a subjective proof of the truths of religion would fail. This is the only case which could disprove the truth of religious claims. And finally though perhaps it is argumentative cheating I think no one could truly live the life, ardently believe and yet never come to know God directly.

But how does a subjective proof work? It proves something true 'for me'. I grant that the proof on the individual level of something which should be equally apprehensible by all is inadequate in objective terms. Everyone in the world would have to attest to the truth of religious claims before they could be said to be objectively true. And even that would not be enough because there would always be the possibility that someone might not come to know God directly, no matter how hard that person tried to believe. Objective truth is forever beyond the reach of the proof of any religious claim. The non-rationality of the feelings of the numinous, the supra-rationality of the numinous itself, and the requirement that one lead the life before the content of religious claims can be known that content is subjective and dependent on experience all of these things make it impossible to make any final argument in rational terms that any religious claim is true.

It is inescapable that one has some viewpoint or another. The viewpoint of the non-religious person must in the end carry the same weight as the viewpoint of the religious person. Neither, however, is qualified to say anything about the experience of the other. The religious person cannot say that God (or Allah, etc.) is as real for the non-believer as for himself. He may say this and believe it to be true, but there is no argument that can show this. In the same way, the non-religious person who has made no commitment of faith to any religion cannot say with certainty that God does not exist. The fact that the only real proof of God exists subjectively in a person as a result of the feelings he or she has in coming to know and worshipping God doesn't mean that there is no objective reality behind the subjective apprehension. It only means that there is no way to show objectively that there is something real behind the feelings of the mysterium tremendum.

How do I reconcile contradictory beliefs in different religious traditions? This is important since contradictories can't both hold. The ultimate reality is ultimately mysterious and human apprehension of it occurs within cultural bounds. The Hindus understand Krishna in one way, the Buddhists long for the bliss of the nothingness that comes with true Enlightenment, the Jews wait for their God to come and relieve them of their burdens, the Christians believe to be washed clean of their sins by Christ, and the Taoists try to follow the Way of Heaven. Which one of these is right? Forgive me for saying it but that's a silly question. The same reasons that make it impossible to have objective proof of religious truths makes it also impossible to judge whether one religion is the true one, while another has got it all wrong.

If nothing else it should be clear that whatever God is, He is a mystery. And by mystery I must emphasize that I don't mean a puzzle that can be solved and put away. The idea of God is so powerful, so complex, and so indeterminate that it should give us pause before we blithely decide that we, and we alone, know who He is and how He will reveal Himself. (Or Herself: God is sexless, but I use the traditional "He" because it eliminates some confusion as to what I'm talking about at a given time.) Maybe God is just big enough for everything that different cultures say about Him to be true. Perhaps though, nothing humans say about Him is true, whatever culture they come from and whatever tradition they follow. At least, nothing we can say objectively about God is true. He is only known subjectively, one person at a time and incompletely. That is the kind of thing that God is.

A complete understanding of God would be necessary for an objective proof of His existence. I should say a complete and rational understanding of God is necessary for there to be any proof of His existence. This is impossible. Indeed, were we to decide that we had once and for all gotten a grip on what God is to all people at all times then we would not have gotten a grip on the actual God. God is by His nature above all things and beyond all conception. Knowledge of Him is only to be gotten by those who seek Him and even then all our knowledge adds up to nothing. He certainly has objective qualities that, were we to acknowledge His existence, we must admit that He has. He is the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe, for the Christians He became human at a specific time and place, and for the Hindus He has become human time and again. So it's no use saying that because He can only be apprehended by faculties of ours that preclude an objective understanding, He doesn't have objective reality. The problem is that He can only be apprehended subjectively.

The final idea that I'd like to consider is something I've already alluded to. God wouldn't be God if we understood Him completely. Our complete understanding of Him would put Him beneath us, make Him something that we use as a plaything and a toy. A completely rationalized and thoroughly comprehended God would no longer hold our attention. Our idea of God, our "Idea of the Holy" must be an idea of something not easily comprehended and not easily apprehended. While these things are not the essence of God, they are aspects of our knowledge of Him which convince us that He is real. Attend to this quote from Tersteegen: "Ein begriffener Gott ist kein Gott. A God comprehended is no God." (Otto, 25)

I have shown that God is not easily comprehended and that in order to understand Him a commitment must be made to live a certain kind of life. I have shown that there is no possibility of an objective proof of the claims made by any religion. I hope I have shown why it is nevertheless acceptable to believe in them.

Huxley, Aldous. The Perennial Philosophy. from the Perennial Library, Harper and Row, Publishers, Inc. New York © 1970.

Katz, Steven T., ed. Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis. "Understanding Religious Experiences" by Ninian Smart pp. 10-21. Oxford University Press. New York © 1978.

Nagel, Thomas. Mortal Questions. "What is it like to be a bat?" pp. 165-80 & "Subjective and Objective" pp.196-