An introduction to religious and spiritual experience

Steven Katz (1944–)
If in fact the mystic does not mean what he says and his words have no literal 
meaning, then nothing at all can be proved, pluralistic or otherwise, accord-
ing to Steven Katz. In his view, interpretation affects not only post-experien-
tial evaluation but is fundamental to the mystical experience itself. He 
maintains that preconditioning leads to the type of experience one has, mys-
tical or otherwise. For him there are no pure or unmediated experiences.
In his paper 
Language, Epistemology, and Mysticism
, Katz takes the 
view that all experiences of ultimate reality within the different traditions 
are inherently different because these are all defined within their own con-
text. Any attempt to abstract low ramification descriptions, which omit 
specific understandings associated with them, in order to arrive at a com-
prehensive theory, renders them meaningless. In other words, Nirvana 
cannot be compared with God.
Ninian Smart (1927–2001)
The author of many wide-ranging works on the world’s religious tradi-
tions, Ninian Smart made a major contribution to religious studies through 
his classification of religion into seven dimensions: ritual, mythological, 
doctrinal, ethical, social, material and experiential. 
The Religious Experi-
ence of Mankind
gives a global overview of all these aspects of religion 
from the primal world to today. Of the experiential dimension, he sug-
gests that not only were the inaugural experiences vital in the founding of 

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the religious traditions, but that personal experience is what keeps reli-
gion alive for the practitioner.
He looks at the two main strands of mystical thought, the contemplative 
or mystical, leading to peace and serenity, and the numinous sense 
of fear, awe and humility. He also maintains that a religion must incorpo-
rate both the numinous and mystical strands if it is to have universal 
appeal. Smart illustrates the difficulty of keeping any one-strand religion 
pure, with the examples of Sufism in Islam (an explosion of unitive experi-
ence within a religion stressing the gulf between man and God) and Pure 
Land Buddhism (in which one attains salvation by worshipping Amida 
Buddha in a tradition which at its origin had no place for such worship).