An introduction to religious and spiritual experience

Solitary
William James concentrates on religious experience as taking place in 
solitude. His work looks at many different examples of such experiences, 
and the RERC archive too has many accounts of solitary experiences. 
Many people find that the spiritual is more easily experienced in solitude, 
as there is then an opening to what is beyond the everyday bustle of life, 
to silence and reflection and the silence beyond thought.
Here is the experience of Debendranath Tagore (1817–1905), the eldest 
son of Prince Dwarkanath Tagor.
The silent observation of the stars one night on the bank of Ganges 
beside his grandmother’s death bed filled his mind with wonder and 
the thought dawned on him that the grand universe that he saw before 
him could not have proceeded from any finite being. One day in a state 
of extreme misery, while pacing up and down he noticed a stray leaf of 
a book flying past him. It was written in Sanskrit and those that knew 
better told him it was a page from the Upanishads. Ram Chandra 
Vidyabasgish who explained the meaning of the sloka to him. It was 
the opening verse of the Ishaponishad which said ‘God is immanent in 
all things, in whatsoever lives and moves in the universe; enjoy there-
fore without being attached; covet not wealth belonging to the others.’ 
From that day his course of life was changed forever.
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Debendranath’s son Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) was the first 
Asian Nobel Prize winner, being awarded the Prize for Literature in 1913. 
He also received a knighthood in 1915, but later renounced it in protest 
against British colonial policy in India. Rabindranath’s principal work 
was 
Gitanjali
, a mystical work, and in his writing he felt that his intense 
perceptions of the beauty and complexity of the world around him were 
somehow given greater significance by divine guidance. Even as a child, 
Rabindranath was mesmerised by the beauty of the dawn and would 
leave his bed to watch night turn to day alone.

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When at the end of the night, dawn makes its first stir, its flush 
appears like the weaving of an ornament. In remote corners of the sky, 
embracing the clouds here and there, colour breaks out in varied shades; 
the tops of the trees begin to glisten, the dew-drops on the grass 
start glittering – the whole incident has primarily the quality of 
decorativeness. . . . One realizes also that the deep, solitude-abiding 
tranquillity of the sleeping night has now come to an end and all the 
ache of awakening, striking a chord on the gamut of notes, will any 
moment burst forth with the vibration of a restless tune. Similarly the 
unfolding of the first religious-consciousness in me took rather a deco-
rative form in my literary compositions. It broke out in various shades, 
colouring the peaks of my mental images and tinting the clouds of my 
fancy. 
. . . 
Day and night, life is renewed by death, the evil is outshone by good, 
the commonplace is being enriched by the unexpected. Whenever we 
are aware of it, we see the supernatural being manifested through 
forms, freedom being unfolded through bondage.
. . .
To realize the relationship of perfect love between the Supreme soul 
and the soul of all created beings is indeed true religious-sense – this 
love that holds duality on one side and non-duality on the other, union 
as well as separation, and bondage along with freedom. . .. It is the love 
that by acknowledging this world, truly transcends the world, and by 
acknowledging what is beyond the universe, accepts the universe in its 
true form. 
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The following account by the disgraced government minister Jonathan 
Aitken, was recorded in his 
Pride and Perjury.
It happened on an early autumn walk along the beach at Sandwich Bay 
. . . there was not a cloud in the sky or a breath of wind on the sea . . . 
The beach was totally deserted and I was a good two miles from the 
nearest house, so I was able to drink in this beautiful moment of mari-
time solitude with deep contentment.
Suddenly, yet quietly, I became aware of someone else’s presence on 
the beach. For a moment I thought I heard the crunch of footsteps on 
the shingle behind me, but when I turned round no one was there. But 
someone was – I sensed them, strongly at first, and then overwhelm-
ingly. Again I looked around, particularly on my right, for the presence 

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Religious and Spiritual Experience
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felt as though it had drawn alongside me, but all I could see was the 
sun, whose rays seemed to be blazing even more intensely.
‘Slow down’, said a gentle voice somewhere inside my head. It was 
not an audible or even human voice, but I knew it was speaking to me. 
So I obeyed and slowed my pace.
The next extraordinary happening was that tears started to trickle 
down my cheeks for no reason at all except that I was feeling blissfully 
happy. Once again I felt overwhelmed by the invisible presence that 
was so close to me – in the sun, perhaps, or beside me, or inside me, but 
undoubtedly right there with me. And then amidst swelling feelings of 
joy, that gentle voice spoke again, saying words which were very close 
to this: ‘Slow down. The road ahead of you is longer and harder than 
you think. But keep on it. Keep praying. Keep trying to find the way. 
Trust, believe, and you will discover the path. Do not worry about 
your problems. They will test you but I will guide you. I have work for 
you to do. I will show you the way. I love you.’
Then I shed a few more happy tears, feeling utterly insignificant 
yet totally protected and loved as this amazing presence gently 
faded away and I floated back to reality, wondering what on earth was 
going on.
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