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Religious Experience in the Light of Discursive Language

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Religious Experience in the Light of Discursive Language Proceeding of Uzbek-Indonesian Joint International Conference Vol. 1 - October 2011 Gunadarma University – Jakarta, 18 October 2011 ISBN: 978-979-1223-95-9 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE IN THE LIGHT OF DISCURSIVE LANGUAGE Hawasi Faculty of Letters, Gunadarma University [email protected] Abstract This paper analyzes the possibility of discursive language as media for explaining religious as well as mystical experience and how discursive language has position in the experience. This paper is based on Iqbal’s thought of religious experience as the main study as found in his masterpiece, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam. Qualitative-descriptive method and philosophical perspective on language were used to elaborate problems of religious and mystical experience in order to find the solution. The result of study shows that there are two aspects that must be considered to understand religious and mystical experience. The first is language of religious or mystical experience which discusses the religious or mystical experience as something uncommunicable, untransformable, and unconceptualized. The second is language about religious or mystical experience which discusses the religious or mystical experience as something communicable and conceptualized through discursive language. Keywords: religious and mystical experience, language of, language about, discursive language, Iqbal’s thought BACKGROUND requires interpretation, like the ordinary experience, in order to become a valid The ultimate aim of human life is to knowledge. know reality and to act in accordance with Actually Iqbal accepts the relative that knowledge. Sharp philosophical dis- autonomy of reason while taking revelation cussions center on human knowledge, and of religious knowledge as the rock upon these discussions occupy a central position in which the structure of religion is built. When philosophy, especially in modern philosophy. discussing ‘Knowledge and Religious Muhammad Baqir as-Sadr (2000:.39) argues Experience’ of Reconstruction, he writes:” that knowledge is the starting point of But to rationalize faith is not to admit the philosophical advance to establish a solid superiority of philosophy over religion. philosophy through investigations, studies Philosophy, no doubt, has jurisdiction to and attempts to discover the primary prin- judge religion, but what is to be judged is of ciples of the powerful intellectual structure. such a nature that it will not submit to the This is very important as it throws light on jurisdiction of philosophy except on its own the basic theory of knowledge as expounded terms ……Thus, in the evaluation of religion, by Iqbal, mainly the role of reason and philosophy must recognize the central intuition in understanding knowledge of God. position of religion and has no other It appears from this that there is a alternative but to admit it as something focal religious “data”, when it is interpreted in the process of reflective synthesis” (Iqbal, properly, which gives us the knowledge of 1960: 16). God. While discussing about ‘heart’ or Iqbal also warns us from the danger of intuition Iqbal says it is something “sees”, other one-sided view of intuition. Its great and its reports, if properly interpreted, are emphasis on intuition, as manifested in some never false. It implies that religious mysticisms, contributes the gap between experience is also a kind of datum which is reason and intuition as happened to al- not sensory or physiological, and which Ghazali. “The technique of mediaval mys- Hawasi, Religious Experience in the Light… L - 9 Proceeding of Uzbek-Indonesian Joint International Conference Vol. 1 - October 2011 Gunadarma University – Jakarta, 18 October 2011 ISBN: 978-979-1223-95-9 ticism by which religious life, in its higher would seem that the two – feeling and idea – manifestations, developed itself both in the are the non-temporal and temporal aspects of East and in the West has now practically the same unit of inner experience” (Iqbal, failed. And in the Muslim East it has, 1960:21). Iqbal gives a further explanation: perhaps, done far greater havoc than “For the purpose of knowledge, then, the anywhere else” (Iqbal, 1960:188). What is region of mystic experience is as real as any important in Iqbal’s thought is that he rejects other region of human experience and cannot exclusive separation between reason and be ignored merely because it cannot be intuition, between philosophy and religion. traced back to sense-perception.” (Iqbal, Rather they spring up from the same root and 1960: 23). complement each other. The mystical experience cannot be so Iqbal makes some interesting obser- subjective and personal that it is impossible vations on the nature of mystical experience to explain to someone else what it is like, or and also accepts its cognitive validity. It is in how to acquire it. This sort of problem led to religious or mystical experience that man the creation of the concept of ‘ilm al-hudhuri apprehends the complex aspect of this (knowledge by presence), a key notion in dynamic reality. This experience has an out- illuminationist thought. The idea is that there ward or rational character as well as an is a form of knowledge which is so obvious inward or mystical one. The test of its and so simple that we cannot doubt it; so the genuineness is not exclusively pragmatic; but skeptic who would try deny it is unable to philosophical or speculative as well, since insert his wedge. Iqbal realizes that there is a such an experience is not without cognitive problem by accepting this account of content. Intuition has been conceived for knowledge. The trouble with using the nature instance by al-Ghazali and many other of personal experience to establish un- mystics as a faculty of knowledge which is derstanding of the self is that the only sort of unique and is of a different kind from thought self which emerges is rather weak one. That and perception. This has led many to doubt is, all one can prove is that there is some the validity of intuition. But Iqbal differs notion of a subject which accompanies here. He holds intuition to be a faculty of experience, but no real information about that knowledge the same like other faculties of subject is given by that sort of experience. On knowledge. It is indeed a higher form of the other hand, what an emphasis on the knowledge, but it is qualitatively of the same subject reveals is that, to a degree, the nature nature as ordinary faculties. It is true that it is of personal and private experience is problem of feeling but it does not mean a significant. We should not reject mystical descent into subjectivism. It is also objective experience merely because it has no as sense-perception. “ The feeling ends in the connection with what we tend to regard as the consciousness of an object. No feeling is so ‘real’ world. blind as to have no idea of its own object” (Enver, 1944:19). RESEARCH METHOD According to Iqbal religious experience is an intuitive experience which is different The paper using qualitative research from perception and different from thought. methods originated in the social and In fact, religious experience is a unique behavioral sciences such as sociology, experience different to every other kind of anthropology and psychology. Today, experience. It is feeling, but it does not mean qualitative methods in the field of marketing descent into subjectivism. Feeling is research include in-depth interviews with essentially cognitive in its character, and it is individuals, group discussions (from two to objective as sense-perception. ten participants is typical); diary and journal “It must, however, be noted that mystic exercises; and in-context observations. feeling, like all feeling, has a cognitive Qualitative-descriptive method and philoso- element also; and it is, I believe, because of phical perspective on language were used to this cognitive element that it lends itself to elaborate problems of religious and mystical the form of idea. In fact, it is the nature of experience in order to find the solution. feeling to seek expression in thought. It L - 10 Hawasi, Religious Experience in the Light… Proceeding of Uzbek-Indonesian Joint International Conference Vol. 1 - October 2011 Gunadarma University – Jakarta, 18 October 2011 ISBN: 978-979-1223-95-9 RESULT AND DISCUSSION they are related each other. In other words, there is concomitance between presential In his Reconstruction, Iqbal actually knowledge and acquired knowledge. The tries to give a solution of explaining religious explanation of Taqi Misbah Yazdi can gives a experience. He states that we have to make clarification to understand Iqbal’s distinction experience as a natural fact, signi- epistemology: “……the mind always takes a ficant of the normally observable behaviour picture of what is present to it like an of reality, and experience as significant of the automatic machine. From these it gets inner nature of reality. As a natural fact it is specific forms and concepts and then explained in the light of its antecedents, analyzes and interprets them. For example, psychological and physiological; as signify- when one becomes afraid his mind takes a cant of the inner nature of reality we shall photo of the state of fear which it can have to apply criteria of a different kind to remember after the state has left. clarify its meaning. (1960:26). Furthermore, it apprehends its universal Religious experience as well as concept and by apprehending ‘I am afraid, ‘ mystical experience, however unusual must or ‘ I have fear,’ or ‘Fear exists in me.’ It be regarded as a perfectly natural experience. interprets the appearance of this Therefore, according to Iqbal, it is the func- psychological state with a marvelous alacrity tion of Sufism has been to systematize in the basis of its previous knowledge and mystical experience. Iqbal, 1960: 127).
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