Encountering the Ultimate in the Bhagavad Gītā: An Experience of Pratyabhijñā (Recognition)

Religious conversion challenges the constructivist view that religious experience is always shaped entirely by a specific tradition. The paper argues that if experiences were purely constructed by one tradition, conversion between traditions would be difficult to explain, because the convert's new experiences would contradict their prior framework. This suggests that religious experiences may involve an objective ultimate reality that exists independently of human concepts, rather than being merely a product of cultural or doctrinal conditioning.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Is religious experience necessarily the product of one specific tradition? The constructivist approach to religious experience which prevails in the contemporary academy certainly suggests that this is the case. But is this not at odds with the idea of an ultimate reality that exists objectively and independently of what any given group of human beings may think about it? This paper argues that the phenomenon of religious conversion militates against the constructivist account.