The different forms of religious experience are nothing more than fantasy Essay Example for Free

The different forms of religious experience are nothing more than fantasy Essay Assess the view that the different forms of religious experience are nothing more than fantasy. (45) The term religious experience refers to an experience a person has which has religious qualities and significance. Many people have researched into the idea of religious experiences and it is surprising to find out that a third of people in Britain have said to of experienced some kind of religious experience. These experiences have been researched to discover what impact they have on peoples lives and whether this impact has a positive or negative result. Many scientists research the theory of religious experience to either prove or disprove the existence of God. There are four main forms of religious experience which can be considered when assessing this question that religious experiences are nothing more than fantasy. The first is Mysticism; this refers to an experience where people have had an intimate direct experience with God or some kind of heavenly spirit. William James was a philosopher who approached the idea of religious experiences he wrote a book called the varieties of religious experiences and came up with the idea that there are four main qualities that an experience should have for us to justify calling it mystical. The first is the experience should have a Noetic quality or a divine knowledge after the experience. The next is Transience the experience is only short and lasts only a small while. Passivity which is the lack of control you have when the person is having the religious experience. And the last quality is ineffability which is the fact that the experience is indescribable ands cannot be explained. Julian of Norwich was a famous English mystic who was born about 1342 and at some point during her adult life joined a religious order and became an anchoress living in complete solitude. She lived in a cell which was attached to a church in Norwich, and lived a complete ascetic lifestyle. Julian just before she died became seriously ill and on her deathbed she accounted for 16 visions she had experienced. These experiences are questioned though due to Julians poor health and cannot be used as proof for religious mystical experiences due to this reason. A second mystic is Margery Kemp she was 14th century English mystic who was from Kings Lynn in Norfolk. Margery Kemp became seriously ill after the birth of her first child and suffered from severe guilt from a past sin which had committed during her youth. She was very disturbed going to such lengths as biting through her own veins in her wrist and she also tried to jump out of a window, until one day she looked up to see Jesus and he asked her Daughter, why have you forsaken me when I never forsook thee? From then on Margery seemed to calm and she devoted her life to serving Christ. She had many experiences of Christ and each time Margery was overwhelmed and was seen to be crying. Margery went on many pilgrimages and even at one point was seen being chased by a mob from the shrine of St Thomas Becket after she was crying profusely. From these experiences of which many questions could be asked are very unreliable and couldnt be taken as proof for real religious experiences and meetings with a higher power. The next form of religious experience would be Conversion experiences. These are experiences which change a person and the direction in which there life is going. They transform a persons life and there attitude. A good example of this would be Nicky Cruz and his evangelical conversion experience. Cruz is the author of Run Baby Run which he wrote recalling his life as the leader of a notorious gang the Mau Maus. Cruz was raised by spiritualist parents in Puerto Rico. During his childhood he experienced severe physical and mental abuse. His parents took part in strange and disturbing practises such as when they sacrificed a goat and drank its blood. At a very young age Cruz tried to commit suicide and at 15 he was sent to live with his older brother in New York. This is where he met the gang members and eventually became the leader. Nicky committed many awful crimes and seemed unreachable and unredeemable; this was until he met a street preacher David Wilkerson who told him that Jesus loved him. This is when he experienced a dramatic conversion experience after a Christian meeting. After this he trained as a preacher and set up an outreach programme and teen challenge to help disadvantaged children. And he also managed to convert his parents to Christianity. Another conversion experience which was miraculous was the conversion of John Wesley who saw his conversion as a moment from academic acceptance to personal trust in Christ. At the young age of 6 he was almost killed in a great house fire at his home. From then on he decided to make religion his life and was ordained in 1725. At university he set up a group of people concerned with spiritual matters they nicknamed themselves the Methodists. Wesley became a missionary and travelled to Georgia to try and convert Indian settlers here. On the way back to England he was caught in a strong storm and he feared for his life until he noticed a group of Moravian Christians on board who were remaining calm because they felt so sure of there faith and they knew God would look out for them. And then at a Christian meeting he gained assurance that he was saved on that journey home form America. He stated that his heart felt strangely warmed and had accepted and now trusted Christ this again was an evangelical conversion experience. These are miraculous conversions and could lead to evidence of real religious experiences due to the amazing transformation both these people had, and in both cases the experience had a positive effect on there lives. Visions are also a type of religious experience. One of the most famous visions would be the visions which appeared to three young children. These children lived in Fatima Portugal. Lucia Santos was sent to live as a shepherdess she worked with her cousin Francisco and her 6 year old sister Jacinta. On the same hillside the children saw three visions these were called the three secrets of Fatima. The first vision was a vision of hell which was shown to the children as a great sea of fire with demons and souls in human form. The second secret that was predicted was that Russia would one day return to Christianity. And the last secret was a vision of a man dressed in white falling to the ground apparently dead. This is said to be the attempted assignation of Pope John Paul II. The vision was recalled and Lucia accounted exactly what happened to the pope just before he was shot at. The lady asked the children to do penance and make sacrifices to save sinners. The children wore tight ropes around there waists and deprived themselves of water and food. The lady who had appeared to them also asked them to pray the rosary everyday. The last and most incredible thing about the predictions of the lady was that she predicted the time and date of the death of two of the children. The lady had told them when and the exact hour the children would die and that they would be saved and be with her if they followed her instructions of praying the rosary and giving penance. One thing in which makes these visions different from all the other religious experiences is the fact thousands of people experienced one of the miracles brought by the lady. The children were asked to visit the lady on the 13th October and the news of the visions had become common knowledge therefore the children were followed by great crowds of people who wanted to experience a vision of the lady. At the site where the lady appeared to the children the sun began to dance in the sky and the whole crowd witnessed it. Many visions are recorded in the Bible such as Moses and the burning bush, which recalls the time God spoke to Moses via a burning bush and told him his plans for the Hebrews who had been enslaved in Egypt by the Pharaoh. These visions still have many unreliable qualities it could be said that they are more convincing than the previous religious experiences mentioned. This is because for these visions many of the predictions came true and were also seen by many others. The final form of religious experience is Revelation or divine self disclosure. Revelation can be defined as the communication of some truth by God to a rational creature. Hildegard of Bingen lived in Germany and from the age of eight she claimed that she felt God over shadowing her life. Hildegard recorded the visions she had experienced during her lifetime and she described the fact she felt she had had an insight from God about future events. From these findings of religious experiences, and the many different forms in which they can take, has aided me in answering the question about religious experiences being only fantasy. In many of these cases the individual has been in poor health and has had some kind of traumatic experience in there past. Although some of the explanations and descriptions of the religious experience have been very realistic especially those with more than one witness to them. Many of the experiences have been very miraculous and if they did occur, this could have been blamed on many factors such as ill health or poor diet, or even guilt and their mind was playing tricks on the person.

Womens Roles in Epic of Gilgamesh, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and

Changing Women's Roles in The Epic of Gilgamesh, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Canterbury Tales Over the course of time, the roles of men and women have changed dramatically. As women have increasingly gained more social recognition, they have also earned more significant roles in society. This change is clearly reflected in many works of literature, one of the most representative of which is Plautus's 191 B.C. drama Pseudolus, in which we meet the prostitute Phoenicium. Although the motivation behind nearly every action in the play, she is glimpsed only briefly, never speaks directly, and earns little respect from the male characters surrounding her, a situation that roughly parallels a woman's role in Roman society of that period. Women of the time, in other words, were to be seen and not heard. Their sole purpose was to please or to benefit men. As time passed, though, women earned more responsibility, allowing them to become stronger and hold more influence. The women who inspired Lope de Vega's early seventeenth-century drama Fuente Ovejuna, for instance, rose up against n ot only the male officials of their tiny village, but the cruel (male) dictator busy oppressing so much of Spain as a whole. The roles women play in literature have evolved correspondingly, and, by comparing The Epic of Gilgamesh, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and The Wife of Bath's Prologue, we can see that fictional women have just as increasingly as their real-word counterparts used gender differences as weapons against men. The epic poem Gilgamesh is the first heroic epic of world literature. The role of the primary mortal woman mentioned in it is only to benefit and please men, and with little or no consideration as to how she feels... ...orks Cited Burrow, J.A. "From The Third Fitt." Twentieth Century Interpretations of 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.' Ed. Denton Fox. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1968. 27-45. Cox, Catherine S. Gender and Language in Chaucer. Gainesville, Florida: U of Florida P, 1997. Everett, Dorothy. "From The Alliterative Revival." Twentieth Century Interpretations of 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.' Ed. Denton Fox. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1968. 3-26. Harris, Rivkah. Gender and Aging in Mesopotamia. Oklahoma: U of Oklahoma P, 2000. Lawall, Sarah, et al. The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. Vol. I. 7th ed. New York: Norton, 1999. Nelson, Marie. "Biheste is Dette: Marriage promises in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales." 2001. Dept. of English, Wentworth University. 15 July 2003 <http://www.wentworth.edu/nelson/chaucer>

Edgar Allan Poe’s “A Dream within a Dream”

Edgar Allan Poe’s â€Å"A Dream within a Dream† (1849) is a poem dramatizing the losses of a man, and his reflection if his life is real or unreal. The narrator is reflecting about the elusiveness of things and people he value, since they all seem to disappear. The poem questions if reality is fantasy, thus the title, â€Å"A Dream within a Dream†. Since this was published in the year of Poe’s death, some assume that the narrator is talking about the death of his loved ones, and the troubles in his life.The poem begins with an image of parting and addresses a specific person. This person is only mentioned in the first stanza; the second stanza does not mention any person at all. Others interpret this person as abstract, meaning that the narrator talks to life or love personified, or any abstract idea, and not a real person. The narrator, talking to this person, ponders whether his â€Å"days have been a dream† (5), and speaks of losing hope. He sees his life as if he is trapped, as shown in the lines, â€Å"All that we see or seem/Is but a dream within a dream† (10-11).But first, to define the word â€Å"dream† is relevant in understanding this poem. A dream can either be images, ideas or sensations while sleeping, an aspiration or ambition, or an illusion or trance. Upon reading the poem, there is no question that the definition of the word â€Å"dream† in the poem is the last one given above, an illusion, but not necessarily a beautiful or happy illusion. There is no mention of sleeping or daydreaming, so then it is safe to assume that â€Å"dream† meant an illusion.One of Edgar Allan Poe’s well-known poems, the poem uses rhyme and meter, but it has inconsistent rhythm. Repetition is also used to emphasize the feeling of sadness and frustration, as in the fifth, eleventh, and twenty-fourth lines. These poetic elements and romantic characteristics such as the dramatization found in the lines , â€Å"O God! Can I not grasp/Them with a tighter clasp?† (19-20) and the use of simple but powerful images, make this poem compelling when read aloud.The images, especially in the second stanza, are striking and memorable. The lines, â€Å"And I hold within my hand/Grains of the golden sand/How few! Yet how they creep/Through my fingers to the deep,/While I weep— while I weep!† (14-18) might be alluding to either time or material wealth. The â€Å"grains of the golden sand† (15) is said to have been referencing to the gold found in California in 1848 (Silverman 402).This image of grains slowly trickling down evokes a feeling of frustration over the elusiveness of things that the narrator values, and that might or might not include money and personal possessions. Time could also be an allusion due to the fact that Poe had lost his loved ones in the past. The narrator might be saying indirectly that he is already feeling his death nearing.The last six lin es of the poem express the desperation to â€Å"grasp† and â€Å"save† (19, 22) the things he value. There is also a feeling of helplessness as the narrator watches the grains creeping through his fingers, and he cries, as shown in the line, â€Å"While I weep— while I weep!† (18)However, in the end he seems to question, not to state that he is in â€Å"a dream within a dream† (24). Unlike the ending line of the first stanza in which the line is written as a statement as though the narrator really believes that his life is all a dream, the last line of the poem is written as though the narrator is in doubt, or perhaps there is a little bit of hope in him.Some say that Poe wrote this poem after the death of his wife from tuberculosis, and that the person that the narrator is talking to in the poem is a woman. But that might not be, because this was published long after his wife’s death, unless he did write the poem from way back. Whether or n ot Poe wrote this because of his troubles or his depression is not certain.What is certain is that the poem tells of a person’s thoughts about what is real and unreal. Losing all the things he values makes him think, out of sadness, and perhaps, denial, that his life is just â€Å"a dream within a dream†.Works CitedPoe, Edgar Allan. Poetry and Tales. Ed. Patrick F. Quinn. New York: Library of America, 1984.Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance. New York: Harper Perennial, 1991.Sova, Dawn B. Edgar Allan Poe: A to Z. New York: Checkmark Books, 2001.   

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