religious experience; experience, religious

One can describe a „religious“ experience as a human experience which underlies, and is common to, certain types of theistic, as well as nontheistic, atheistic, or even antitheistic conceptualizations. What differs is the conceptualization of the experience, not the experiential substratum underlying various conceptualizations. This type of experience is most clearly expressed in Christian, Moslem, and Jewish mysticism, as well as in Zen Buddhism. If one analyzes the experience rather than the conceptualization, therefore, one can speak of atheistic as well as of a nontheistic religious experience. ― (1966a: You Shall Be as Gods. A Radical Interpretation of the Old Testament and Its Tradition, New York (Holt, Rinehart and Winston) 1966, pp. 56f.)