Cavallarin is a PhD candidate at the Tilburg School of Theology, the Netherlands. His work could be broadly categorized as epistemology of religion, with a specific interest in the social epistemology of extraordinary (spiritual, religious, psychedelic, mystical, etc.) experiences. His doctoral project focuses on the interaction between disagreement and these experiences – questions such as: can extraordinary states of consciousness pave the way for resolving disagreements? And what do we make of the fact that those who have these experiences disagree with each other over their nature and meaning? Some specific topics that he worked on concern hinge epistemology, deep disagreements, perennialism, the noetic quality of mystical experience, and the neural correlates of altered states of consciousness.
For registration and additional details, email: clnr@theol.eu.
Date: February 26th, 14:00–16:00
Venue: Seminarraum 1, Rabinstr. 8, 53111 Bonn
Digital participation is possible as well.
Description of the workshop
Religious experiences are central to the worldviews of many religious people. This is true in two senses. First, the founders of many religions, or at least various central figures within said religions, have had religious experiences, and these experiences have often played an important role in shaping religious beliefs and practices. Mohamed, for example, is said to have dictated the Quran in a series of ecstatic revelations. One might otherwise think of Siddhartha Gautama’s experience of enlightenment, or the apparition of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. Second, many religious people, to this day, have religious experiences, and surveys appear to indicate that they are more common than most secular people would give them credit for. These experiences can include a deep feeling of appreciation for existence, hearing God’s voice, having religious visions, interacting with spirits (angels, demons, dead relatives, etc.), and experiencing a cosmic union with “Something Greater” (so-called “mystical experiences”).
Despite these fairly straightforward facts, one can find in most contemporary academic and public debates on religious pluralism and religious diversity little to no reference to these experiences. We might say that, with the exclusion of certain niche discussions within some academic and religious circles, the modern, or at least Western world largely takes for granted that these experiences are at best irrelevant, and at worst delusional. Either way, they are a private matter that the religious person should deal with in the privacy of their own room or community: religious experiences are not a public concern.
This resolution is not necessarily undesirable; that is, after thorough research, one might still conclude that religious experiences are of no public interest. What Cavallarin rather wishes to point out is that this attitude largely consists in a taking for granted. And Cavallarin would argue that, by treating the public irrelevance of religious experiences as our starting point, we run the risk of missing something in our understanding of religious pluralism and, therefore, in the way we both honor differences and avoid conflicts. What if, for example, certain experiences at the core of two religious worldviews make them fundamentally irreconcilable, or even inescapably hostile towards each other? What if certain religious experiences make certain religious people radicalize in their beliefs, thus hindering interfaith dialogue? Or what if some of these experiences point to certain deeper commonalities between religious belief systems, thus paving the way to new ecumenical and peacebuilding approaches?
The meeting will be divided into two parts. In the first part, Cavallarin will introduce the participants to a major debate in the literature on religious experiences: the debate surrounding “perennialism” (and its recent revival as “neo-perennialism”). Perennialists argue, roughly, that religious experiences share some cross-cultural, universal features (perennialists traditionally focus on mystical experiences alone, but as we will see, the claim might be pushed to include all sorts of extraordinary experiences). What the opponents of perennialism often remark, however, is that this alleged unity is a fabrication, the product of a dogmatic cherry-picking from the history of religion. In light of this critique, we will explore how perennialism fares against the challenge of religious diversity. Is the perennialist justified, or seriously misguided in their search for universal trends in religious experiences? What are these trends, if they exist? And at what point does the search for universal trends become evidently dogmatic? By the end of this part of the meeting Cavallarin will share some common ground, or some theoretical tools, for a broader and informed discussion on the interaction between religious experience and religious diversity.
In the second part the participants will discuss whether this debate – universality vs contextuality in the realm of religious experience – is relevant to the public domain, and if so, at what level (policymaking, peacebuilding, ecumenical initiatives, religious education, etc.) and to what degree. Our guiding question will be the following: are religious experiences nothing but an obstacle in the public realm – meaning that we should indeed treat them as a strictly private matter – or does taking them seriously open up new opportunities? This second part of our meeting will be structured as a guided conversation.