Editing Religious experience (section)

===Christianity===
In [[Evangelical Christianity]], becoming "Born Again" is understood to be essential for a Believer to enter Heaven upon death. The effect is life-changing, and can also be called a conversion experience.{{cn|date=November 2023}}

Noting that religious experience should not be separated from care for one's neighbour, [[Pope Francis]] has observed that "there can be no true religious experience that is deaf to the cry of the world".<ref>Quoted by [[Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales]], [https://www.cbcew.org.uk/synod-plenary-resolution-autumn-2023/ Plenary Resolution: Synod on Synodality], published 17 November 2023, accessed 25 November 2023</ref>

====Christian mysticism====
{{Main|Christian mysticism}}
[[File:Wesley stained glass 9216.JPG|left|thumb|Three early Methodist leaders, [[Charles Wesley]], [[John Wesley]], and [[Francis Asbury]], portrayed in stained glass at the Memorial Chapel, [[Lake Junaluska, North Carolina]]]]
Christian doctrine generally maintains that God dwells in all Christians and that they can experience God directly through belief in Jesus,<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=KjvJohn.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=7&division=div1|title=John 7:16–39}}</ref> Christian mysticism aspires to apprehend spiritual truths inaccessible through intellectual means, typically by emulation of Christ. [[William Ralph Inge|William Inge]] divides this ''scala perfectionis'' into three stages: the "''purgative''" or [[ascetic]] stage, the "''illuminative''" or contemplative stage, and the third, "''unitive''" stage, in which God may be beheld "face to face."<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14596/14596-8.txt|title=''Christian Mysticism'' (1899 Bampton Lectures)}}</ref>

The third stage, usually called [[Christian contemplation|contemplation]] in the Western tradition, refers to the experience of oneself as united with God in some way. The experience of union varies, but it is first and foremost always associated with a reuniting with Divine ''love.'' The underlying theme here is that God, the perfect goodness,<ref>''[[Theologia Germanica]]'', public domain</ref> is known or experienced at least as much by the heart as by the intellect since, in the words of [[1 John]] 4:16: "God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God and God in him." Some approaches to classical mysticism would consider the first two phases as preparatory to the third, explicitly mystical experience; but others state that these three phases overlap and intertwine.

====Hesychasm====
Based on Christ's injunction in the [[Gospel of Matthew]] to "go into your closet to pray",<ref>{{bibleref|Matthew|6:5–6|KJV}}: [[King James Version]]</ref> [[hesychasm]] in tradition has been the process of retiring inward by ceasing to register the senses, in order to achieve an experiential knowledge of God (see [[theoria]]).

The highest goal of the hesychast is the experiential knowledge of God. In the 14th century, the possibility of this experiential knowledge of God was challenged by a [[Calabria]]n monk, [[Barlaam of Seminara|Barlaam]], who, although he was formally a member of the Orthodox Church, had been trained in Western Scholastic theology. Barlaam asserted that our knowledge of God can only be propositional. The practice of the hesychasts was defended by [[Gregory Palamas|St. Gregory Palamas]].{{cn|date=November 2023}}