GOD: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher - The Podcast

275. Spiritual Discernment and Religious Experience- Radically Personal

• Jerry L. Martin, Scott Langdon

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What if spiritual experiences are real — but deeply personal?

In this episode of God: An Autobiography, The Podcast, philosopher Jerry L. Martin explores one of the most difficult questions in religion: how do we discern whether a spiritual experience is genuine?

Drawing on William James and the long philosophical tradition of spiritual discernment, Jerry examines why religious experience varies from person to person.

Different temperaments, histories, and cultures shape how individuals encounter ultimate reality. But if spiritual experiences differ so widely, how can they be evaluated?

Can one religion judge another? Is there a neutral standpoint from which competing belief systems can be assessed?

Jerry explores the philosophical challenge of spiritual discernment beyond the boundaries of any single tradition. Along the way he discusses thinkers such as Ignatius of Loyola, Jonathan Edwards, and William James.

The episode also introduces the idea of the “clarified soul,” the cultivated inner capacity that allows us to perceive spiritual truth with greater clarity and depth.

In a world of many religions and worldviews, the question remains: how do we responsibly seek what is ultimately true?

Get the books: Radically Personal: God and Ourselves in the New Axial Age | God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher

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Scott  Langdon [ 00:00:17,220 ] This is God: An Autobiography, The Podcast — a dramatic adaptation and continuing discussion of the book God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher by Jerry L. Martin. He was a lifelong agnostic, but one day he had an occasion to pray. To his vast surprise, God answered — in words. Being a philosopher, he had a lot of questions, and God had a lot to tell him.

Scott  Langdon [ 00:00:58,800 ] Episode 275: Welcome to God: An Autobiography, The Podcast. I'm your host, Scott Langdon, and Jerry Martin is back this week with the fifth installment of our limited series, Radically Personal.

Scott  Langdon [ 00:01:20,810 ] Based on Jerry's new book, Radically Personal, God and Ourselves in the New Axial Age, Jerry talks today about taking our religious experiences seriously while also effectively exercising spiritual discernment. How do we go about employing that spiritual discernment? By what criteria are we to judge an experience and the meaning of it? Is there a place from which we can judge another belief system that is not our own? If so, is it a neutral place? Here's Jerry Martin. I hope you enjoy the episode.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:02:10,440 ] Thanks for joining me. This is the fifth set of reflections based on my new book, Radically Personal, God and Ourselves in the New Axial Age.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:02:23,890 ] Religions and other cultural developments are based on experience. Somebody had to experience something for a revelation or enlightenment to happen. And be told. Usually, religious experiences are tied to a particular religion that has anointed them in its traditions. But in the writings of the great American philosopher and psychologist William James, experience becomes personal. One person's experience does not replicate that of any other person.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:03:04,520 ] We have different temperaments, histories, cultural situations. We face different personal and spiritual challenges and encounter the ultimate in different venues, individual and communal. Different people may need different religions, James said.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:03:25,380 ] Nobody needs a false religion. But persons may rightly be drawn to the religion where ultimate reality is most available to them. Or where they have a vocation or calling. William James drops the assumption.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:03:43,440 ] So, common and conventional soteriology, that is, theories of ultimate salvation or purpose, that there's a single fundamental human condition that's the same for everyone.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:03:56,550 ] So many men, so many minds, James writes. I imagine that these religious experiences can be as infinitely varied as are the idiosyncrasies of individuals. James poses an interrelated series of questions. Ought all persons to have the same religion? Are they to approve the same fruits, follow the same leadings?

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:04:28,510 ] Are they so like in their inner needs that, for hard and soft, for proud and humble, for strenuous and lazy, for healthy-minded and despairing, exactly the same religious incentives are required? Or are different functions in the organism of humanity allotted to different types of person? James goes on.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:04:56,420 ] If an Emerson were forced to be a Wesley or a Moody forced to be a Whitman, the total human consciousness of the divine would suffer. These observations are not only psychologically relevant, they bear on the question of the divine or ultimate reality itself. One person may be sensitive to one aspect of ultimacy, another person to another.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:05:28,030 ] Even if they seem to be opposites, the priest and the prophet, the dualist and the non-dualist, the devout traditionalist and the iconoclastic dissenter. The personal and the transpersonal. They may all be responding to genuine aspects of ultimacy. What does this diversity tell us about the ultimate? James concludes, 'The divine can mean no single quality.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:06:00,340 ] It must mean a group of qualities.' By being champions of which, in alternation, different individuals may all find worthy missions. We take turns, you might say. James goes on. Each attitude being a syllable. In human nature's total message. It takes the whole of us to spell out. The meaning completely.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:06:29,200 ] This diversity gives each of us the task of discerning not just what is true in each religion or other living body of thought, but where our own place is. It is not just that people happen to be diverse.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:06:46,400 ] This diversity itself reflects how the world ought to be. The result is many more kinds of virtues, talents, human excellences, values achieved, emotions expressed, and human possibility actualized. If the divine relates vibrantly to each person, the divine reality itself must have many aspects. Perhaps it's multiple sides waiting to be manifested, even to be actualized, are actually helped by human recognition and response. The diverse experiences, James believes, clearly show the universe to be a more many-sided affair than any sect, including the scientific sect, allows for.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:07:38,610 ] This observation contradicts our usual theological and philosophical urges toward a simple ultimate reality with a single identifiable relation to the plurality of persons. However, we cannot just treat our spiritual and intellectual lives as a kind of tossed salad with random ingredients. It is important to make distinctions between the true and the false, the various approximations, and the wrong-headed.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:08:10,960 ] The religions are not wall-to-wall wonderful, and some religions or aspects of them are quite limited, or worse. Even if we believe in trusting experience, as I do, this can never be blind trust. Spiritual discernment is necessary.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:08:33,110 ] It does not advance truth-seeking simply to anoint our own religion as the metric and measure all others by it. Spiritual discernment must not itself be bounded. Limited by religious walls. Many doubt whether it's possible to evaluate a religion other than our own, or another worldview, let's say. Where can we stand, they ask.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:09:04,770 ] Can there be spiritual discernment without walls? If so, how would it work? We do judge other belief systems. We're right to do so. We're able to do so. How do we do it? And why is it not only right, but necessary? The objection to judging another belief system is usually stated rhetorically, and too simply, as I just did: how can one religion possibly judge another?

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:09:37,810 ] The implicit reasoning is that judgment requires criteria, and criteria must be neutral, and the only way that would be possible would be if one could stand outside the belief systems involved. Perhaps outside all belief systems. That premise is buttressed by another rhetorical enthymeme. There is no neutral space. No view from nowhere. For making judgments.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:10:09,280 ] Typical of the looseness in these discussions, neutral space and view from nowhere are equated even though they're quite different concepts. The first, neutral space, is meaningful. The arbitrator, for example, occupies neutral space vis-à-vis the parties in dispute. However, that sort of neutrality in a single respect is not available to judgments of whole worldviews and ways of life.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:10:41,430 ] One might think that maybe the agnostic or the non-believer occupies the neutral space required. But in fact, they lack the requisite experience and sensibilities. It would be like judging music without listening to any of it or being tone deaf. Does the person making judgments need a view from nowhere?

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:11:05,510 ] This is an expression that sounds conclusive, but actually has no meaning at all. A view is always, by definition, a view from somewhere. It is a spatial metaphor. You can view the Taj Mahal only if you stand somewhere. Someone might well advise you get a better view of the Taj Mahal if you stand over here.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:11:31,580 ] But they would be a poor travel guide if they said you get a better view of the Taj Mahal if you stand nowhere. Stand nowhere. Well, there are no criteria to be found in nowhere. These arguments all commit what we might call the fallacy of a priori criteria.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:11:54,520 ] Criteria cannot and need not be located in a neutral space or in a view from nowhere. Well, where, then? Can they be found? When I had my own shockingly concrete religious experience, I called a friend who taught philosophy at a religious college and asked him, 'If anyone had tried to figure out.' How you can know if a divine voice is, to use philosopher's jargon, veridical. The real deal.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:12:29,130 ] He told me, yes, that's the problem with spiritual discernment, which I'd never heard of before. That's the problem with spiritual discernment, he said, and pointed me to writers on the subject.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:12:40,370 ] I started with the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius, probably the most famous source on this topic, but then went on to other writers. Jonathan Edwards, John Calvin, Jean Gerson, John Cassian, and others. The literature is extensive, and much of it is subtle and penetrating. But these writings typically... Treat the issue too narrowly. They talk about discernment within walls. For them, the overriding criterion is whether the voice or vision conforms to the beliefs and authorities of the writer's own tradition.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:13:21,610 ] If your inner voice, experience, or intuition agrees with me, my tradition, my theology, the author says, then it is veridical. If not, it's delusional or perhaps the work of the devil. However, spiritual discernment is needed prior to and outside the boundaries of religion. It is part of a larger context. How? In fact, do we make judgments?

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:14:07,610 ] How? In fact, do we make judgments? We do make judgments between alternative belief systems, such as competing scientific theories or schools of historical research. Do we do that? By stepping into a neutral space with no intellectual furnishings? Did Copernicus revise?

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:14:39,400 ] Aristotle or Einstein, revised Newton or quantum mechanics, upset Einstein's universal formulae by taking a view from nowhere? No, as philosopher Otto Neurath noted, science is a ship that repairs itself at sea. It doesn't have to go into dock and start all over again. All over, you repair it as you go. We assess and revise theologies and everything else as a tentative outcome of ongoing explorations. All knowledge, all culture, all religion is a work in progress.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:15:19,720 ] The fallacy of a priori criteria overlooks the actual process of thinking. In theology and other fields. The fallacy assumes that criteria must be known in advance. It is assumed that criteria must precede investigation. But in fact, investigation precedes criteria. Criteria are essentially retrospective in wine tasting. We do not conjure criteria a priori. First, we taste many varieties of wine and only slowly discern the relevant criteria.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:15:59,490 ] Thus, we have to start with the spiritual experiences and adduce the criteria, which are really no more than rules of thumb, from our evaluation of the actual experiences. Dennis Prager's radio program used to feature a Religion Fridays. If I was out and about on a Friday, I would tune in. One day, there was a young man on the line. Charlie was explaining his own approach. This guy, Charlie, was explaining his own approach to religion. Well, I just pick what is best in each religion. And that's what I live by.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:16:37,590 ] Prager stopped him there. Then what do you have? The religion of Charlie? Well, that certainly does not sound like much. And how can this stitched-together understanding compete with the world's great religions? Thousands of years of spiritual wisdom have gone into them. Why rely on your own meager insight when you can outsource discernment to one of the name-brand religions?

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:17:07,410 ] Each religion gives us a prefix menu. No substitutions, please. But for Charlie and the rest of us, there is an alternative: a la carte. The analogy is somewhat apt, but not really fair to the religions, the best chef in the world is not comparable to an entire religious tradition, institutions, creeds, sacred writings, spiritual practices, theological debates, iconic figures, and spiritual community.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:17:37,380 ] The individual is much better qualified to select healthy, tasty foods than to identify divine wisdom. We do have available to us a premier menu of great world religions. Wouldn't one might ask, wouldn't it be better to select one of them than to create an eclectic mix, a fusion cuisine of our own fabrication? Well, quite possibly, but not entirely to the point.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:18:11,200 ] The task of choice of discernment remains. Even if I decide to choose from the current religious menu. I mean, that itself requires discernment, that it's better than... some alternative. And I would still have to exercise my own discernment with regard to which religion to choose. This decision is intensely personal. But that does not mean that it is arbitrary. Or that one decision is just as good as another.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:18:45,960 ] It is a personal choice, yet it has a divine pull, hopefully, whose magnetic draw one hopefully detects. Even if I stay in the tradition in which I was raised, or most prevalent in my own culture, I must still determine which texts, which thinkers, ideas, practices in that tradition are the truest.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:19:11,440 ] Oh, I might decide to be a Christian, but should it be Protestant or Catholic? Roman Catholic or Eastern Catholic? Traditional or Reformist? This denomination or that, this theologian or that theologian. Even then, if Hinduism persuades me, do I have to accept the caste system?

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:19:32,930 ] If I find wisdom in the Roman Catholic tradition, do I have to oppose contraception and abortion? All these decisions require spiritual and moral discernment.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:19:47,290 ] That may seem like a tall order. But people make these determinations all the time. They sometimes make them too casually. But they can also make them with thoughtful care. More fundamentally, one has to decide for oneself whether the available menu of religions includes one's own best discernment of what is truest and deepest.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:20:13,590 ] Perhaps we will find profound insights in a great poet, or a philosopher, a psychologist like Jung, or scientists, humanitarian or social activists. Insights that add additional choices to the menu of religious options.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:20:30,810 ] Spiritual discernment does not restrict the menu in advance. It only requires that such decisions be made. With the most earnest seriousness, deliberation, and attunement.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:20:45,990 ] This effort requires intellectual and spiritual virtues. We must ask: Am I being closed-minded? Am I being gullible? Am I being sensitive, fair, thoughtful, sincere? Am I doing due diligence in reaching conclusions?

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:21:05,690 ] According to one textbook, epistemology, then, is not or ought not to be concerned merely with the piecemeal appraisal of individual beliefs. But with what kinds of persons we are and are becoming.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:21:21,900 ] Whether we are intellectually humble rather than arrogant, studious rather than merely idly curious, insightful rather than dull, wise and not fools. Like other virtues, the intellectual ones are diverse and are circumstantial. As with the ethical life, intellectual virtues are in the middle. One can be too gullible, swept away with every enthusiasm, or too skeptical and cynical, prejudicially dismissing every spiritual prompt.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:21:56,460 ] Moreover, the intellectual virtues do not only seek knowledge, as if stacking up facts were the aim of life. But something deeper. Do I have insight? Do I know which things in life are important? Do I have wisdom? These are matters of sustained intellectual character.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:22:23,190 ] Have I developed intellectual integrity? And ability and willingness to understand other points of view. A dedication to real and deep answers, not just snappy comebacks.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:22:36,530 ] On this view, spiritual attunement and discernment would be intellectual virtues. Shallow scoffing, feed in concrete unwillingness to acknowledge the spiritual dimension of experience, would be intellectual or epistemic vices or failings. We do have the capacity. For religious experience, for glimpses of the divine or ultimate reality— which I call apperçus.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:23:04,400 ] We seem to have something like a sixth sense or spiritual detector. The challenge is to become open and attuned to this reality. What I call the clarified soul. It's the instrument of spiritual discernment.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:23:23,980 ] This is analogous to making sure you have a clear head— that you're not flustered, agitated, distracted. Before you tackle a difficult problem. In whatever it is— family matters, career choice, medical treatment—you want to get the clutter out of the way.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:23:41,380 ] In my own experience, spiritual discernment is improved by learning to tune in with less distraction, less static on the line. When I'm properly attuned, the divine signal or prompt comes through. More clearly. Seemingly with less distortion.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:24:03,180 ] What is at issue, one theologian writes, what is at issue? Is purity of heart. And that's why I speak of the clarified soul. It is the challenge of improving, expanding, refining, and purifying our own spiritual sensibilities.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:24:24,780 ] Speaking of religious opinions, William James writes, their value.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:24:30,550 ] Can only be ascertained by spiritual judgments directly passed upon them, judgments based on our own immediate feeling, primarily, and secondarily, on what we can ascertain of their experiential relations to our moral needs and to the rest of what we hold as true.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:24:53,550 ] James summarizes these three elements of judgment as immediate luminousness, philosophical reasonableness, and moral helpfulness. We can test our spiritual insights by general reasonableness and moral consequences, as James suggests. However, it is important to keep in mind that reason and ethics do not stand in isolation either.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:25:23,540 ] They are understood differently in light of religious understanding. It is not as if spiritual illumination stands in the dark before a tribunal of secular reason and ethics. No, they interrogate one another, and must be understood in light of each other. James gives primacy to a luminosity.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:25:46,690 ] which is embedded in the religious experience itself. We want to know. What shows spiritual truth and depth? As distinguished from what is superficial, deceptive, or demonic. We know something of divine or ultimate reality. Because it discloses itself.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:26:09,710 ] It does so in glimpses, apperceives that are luminous and authoritative. It is these experiences and insights that rightly light our way. The rest is up to us.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:26:26,680 ] Thank you for joining. 

Scott  Langdon [ 00:26:46,280 ] Thank you for listening to God: An Autobiography, The Podcast. Subscribe for free today wherever you listen to your podcasts and hear a new episode every week. You can hear the complete dramatic adaptation of God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher by Jerry L. Martin by beginning with Episode 1 of our podcast and listening through its conclusion with Episode 44. You can read the original true story in the book from which this podcast is adapted — God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher — available now at amazon.com, and always at godanautobiography.com. Pick up your own copy today. If you have any questions about this or any other episode, please email us at questions@godanautobiography.com, and experience the world from God’s perspective — as it was told to a philosopher. This is Scott Langdon. I’ll see you next time.