A Whiteheadian interpretation of religious experience

Whitehead incorporates the data provided by religious experience to produce a system by means of which the full range of religious experiences may be understood. Whitehead does not build his doctrine of God on religious experience; however, he uses religious experience as the means of identifying his doctrine with that reality which is venerated by the great religions.

God is prehended in every occasion of experience making up the world, but most of our experiences of him are unconscious. All experience may be divided into three types: (1) mundane experience, in which no religious content is discerned; (2) religiously ambiguous experience, which provides only intimations of a higher reality; and (3) full-blown religious experience of a vivid kind.

In terms of the system, the third type of experience requires a muting or silencing of worldly prehensions. Ascetic and meditative practices of various religious traditions may be seen as attempts to achieve this goal.

According to Smart, two polarities may be discerned in vivid religious experiences. Numinous encounters are experiences of the "otherness" of the divine, while mystical experiences constitute a sense of "sameness" or identity. Whitehead's system can adequately account for both polarities of experience.

Nature mysticism presents special problems in that (1) it does not transcend the natural world, and (2) it contains elements of both mystical experience and numinous encounter. It may be seen as a kind of "sacramental perception" in which the objective world becomes an outward symbol of an inner reality.

Naturalistic arguments against a cognitive dimension of religious experience are convincing only to the extent that one accepts the underlying metaphysical assumptions of naturalism. "Neo-Whiteheadian" attempts to naturalize Whitehead's system produce an alternate system which is inadequate for accounting for religious experience.