Pafford produces a book that is largely descriptive of particular
or ecstatic experiences, and not everyday ones. Each chapter gives an
account of a particular type of religious experience. There is some
reflection and interpretation of these experiences, but the author does
not clearly categorise the experiences, so that really it is no more
than a list. He starts however with a simple threefold classification
of: Adamic, Noetic and Unitive experiences and consider that these three
are an order of hierarchy of experiences, each one of greater value.
The other important opening statement is that he considers that such
experiences are more common in youth than in old age.
"They are commoner in youth than in maturity, out of doors than
in, in the evening than earlier in the day, and in solitude rather
than in company" ( p 9).
He also warns that "Religious and aesthetic knowledge is existential
not demonstrable like scientific knowledge but part of the individual's
experience." (p 9) and so is difficult to assess and prove or
disprove.
The book then looks at experiences described as : Intensive joy (ch
1); seeing the world differently (ch 2); the sudden return of memories
(ch 3) which may be triggered by sights, sounds, smells, etc.; nature
mysticism (ch 4) which are described as panenhenic not pantheistic;
love beyond desire (ch 5) and those experiences that give good feelings;
distraction and idleness and trances (ch 6); inspiration, illumination,
wisdom and knowledge (ch 7); unappeased spirit, which brings both
joy and pain (ch 8); inner freedom and dealing with the inner person
(ch 9); words, music (ch 10); place and history, romantic emotion
(ch 11). He also acknowledges that there can be spiritual experiences
that are negative, depressing and the "dark night of the soul"
(ch 12).
Throughout the descriptions he occasionally refers to the relationship
between the experience and faith with three notable quotations:
"The experience can certainly strengthen faith ... and when
that faith is inextricably connected with ethical injunctions like
loving one's neighbour it may be more helpful in leading a better
life than holding other religious beliefs or none. But to say this
is to say something about the moral value of Christian teaching rather
than about the experience itself". (p 55). Interpreting this
implies that the author does not consider the Church to value or appreciate
experience as much as it should, and particularly about its outworking
in society.
Quoting Hugh Fausset (A modern Prelude, p 144)
"For the first time in my life something of the eternal mercy
which underlay all the unreality of religious creeds and factions
dawned on me. There was a necessary relation between the spirit that
animated the secret places of the earth and the vast circumference
of the sky and hill and the words which I so often unwittingly heard
and glibly repeated in church and chapel - "O Lord, make clean
our hearts within us, and taken not thy Holy Spirit from us."
(p 91)
Quoting Mark Rutherford (The autobiography of Mark Rutherford, OUP
1936, p 22 -3) who on reading Wordsworth said:
"Wordsworth unconsciously did for me what every religious reformer
had done - he re-created my Supreme Divinity, substituting new and
living spirit for the old deity, once alive but gradually hardened
into an idol." (p 96)
