Relationship Between Religious Texts and Religious Experience
My view on the relationship between religious texts and religious experience is best understood by outlining first how Foucault describes the relationship between power and knowledge. He emphasizes, “we should admit that power produces knowledge (and not simply by encouraging it because it serves power or by applying it because it is useful); that power and knowledge directly imply one another; that there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations.” (Discipline and Punish, pp.27f.)

Foucault presumes that there is a direct relationship between power and knowledge by asserting that they “imply one another” directly. Much like how Foucault argues that power and knowledge are directly related, I argue that religious texts and religious experience assume the same relationship. More specifically, I believe that religious texts are the product of religious experience. Religious experience in this respect refers to a direct encounter or being in the presence of the divine or some supernatural being, and religious texts are writings produced for the worship of a Deity. Thus, it is only when one has a religious experience can they be able to compose a text that focuses on worship of that Deity. On the other hand, through vigorous study of a religious text one can acquire the knowledge of the practices needed to be followed in order to have a religious experience.

In this respect, religious experience needs to be accounted for in religious texts. But, then we ask ourselves, can religious experience be ‘accurately’ accounted for in a religious text? When a text is compiled from experience, there can be no ‘accurate’ account. In other words, a representation of something can never be entirely truthful or correct. I personally don’t think that a religious text should have to accurately reflect experience. At the end of the day, religious experiences are sometimes described to be unexplainable. In this regard the feeling embraced by the practitioner, whether it is a realization of some sort or a transformation, is difficult to put into context. In this view, the religious experience is not accurately accounted for. With any oral tradition, there is bound to be information that is left out or emphasized more according to the person who encounters the religious experience. This is the case because every religious experience brings out different meanings to each practitioner. I guess this can account for why within Buddhism and Christianity we have this divisiveness over the meaning and essence of what religious experience is.

In brief I don’t believe that texts can give an accurate account of religious experience but a somewhat accurate account. Having said this, I do believe that it is important for texts to establish enough details just in order to guide individuals toward a religious experience. As mentioned earlier it is not so much whether religious experience is accurately portrayed in a religious text, but a matter of religious experience and the religious texts implying one another.
Posted by aveisha at 8:29 PM 0 comments