An introduction to religious and spiritual experience

participants had. He reported his findings in a paper entitled 
The Varieties 
of Religious Experience Of Muslims in Turkey: Some Results of a Natio-
nal Survey In 2006–07, 
given at the British Association for the Study of 
Religions Conference 2006.
He explained that although the 
fact
of religious experience is found 
among the Muslims in Turkey, the 
concept 
of religious experience (
dini 
tecrübe
) is a new concept translated from English and is not readily under-
stood by many people in the street. He defined it with simple words in the 
first main question, and described its various types in the second one in 
similarly plain terms. He took the classical ‘Alister Hardy Question’ and 
other similar questions into consideration and transformed them into the 
most easily understandable and culturally appropriate form of question. 
Thus, his first question was: 
Have you ever had an extra-ordinary, exceptional or supranormal 
experience which you would qualify as ‘religious or spiritual’ experi-
ence (state or event)?
The percentage of the answers given to this question was:
a. Yes 
45.9%
b. Perhaps but not sure 
19.6%
c. No 
34.5%
Once the substance of the question had been clarified, with the use of 
examples, those in group b. above were able to decide, and the following 
result obtained.

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237
In this case, the precise percentage of the answers of Muslims living in 
Turkey concerning whether they have ever had a religious experience or 
not is as follows:
a. Yes 
63.7%
b. No 
36.3%
In conclusion, Professor Yaran sums up:
Our first question was concerned with the proportion of having 
religious experience among Muslims in Turkey; and it came out that 
64% of people report to have a kind of religious experience.
The second question was about the varieties of religious experiences 
lived in Turkey. And it came out that receiving God’s help in answer 
to the prayer is the most widely reported religious experience. After 
that, awareness of the presence of God, awareness of God’s guidance, 
awareness of God’s punishment, experiencing that prayers for healing 
are effective, having a guiding dream coming true, having intuition and 
insights coming true, are the other varieties of religious experience that 
are frequently experienced. There are some other types of experience 
which is reported much less than these.
India
A Religious Experience Study Project was set up in Tamil Nadu, South 
India. This was a pilot study project set up by Jonathan Robinson in 
2006 through the Alister Hardy Society and with the help of Rev. Peter 
Ravikumar at Tamilnadu Theological Seminary in the city of Madurai. An 
orientation day was held at the college for the people who were to carry out 
the interviews, who came from different parts of the state of Tamil Nadu.
Interviews were conducted at random, for people of all religious back-
grounds and none. The interview paper itself sought to strike a balance 
between appropriate inculturation and a form that could be related to 
other global projects, with an individual page for different categories of 
religious experience, namely experience of power, new understanding of 
life, dreams, mysterious feelings, mysterious events, experience of ‘one 
body’ and any other experiences. It also sought some information about 
the background of the person being interviewed and questions about their 
ideas and beliefs.

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206 case studies were carried out, and from this it was estimated that 
68.4% of the people interviewed had what could be regarded as a valid 
religious experience. Also that 78.5% of the people would see themselves 
as ‘religious’ – a very high figure, but for those who know this part of 
Southern India it will not perhaps come as a surprise. For those who 
claim a belonging to a particular religious tradition, 68.8% of Hindus 
claimed a particular religious experience, 75.9% Christian and 70.5% 
Muslim. So it would seem that belonging to a religious tradition increased 
the chances of people having a religious experience (as a few people said 
they did not belong to any tradition). The most common type of religious 
experience was for Hindus, a sense of power, and for Christians and 
Muslims, miraculous answers to prayer.