The Religious Feeling

March 1, 2025 Open Religion No Comments

This is a personal blog. It is about my religious feeling (RF), but may very well also be yours.

RF is not a belief

A belief is something you can point at: a or b or c. RF is different — it’s not about the content, but the presence behind it. Belief doesn’t feel. RF does. The difference becomes painfully clear when someone loses his belief and discovers that his RF has been hanging from it, like a coat from a hook. And now the hook is gone. Suddenly: nothing in any usual sense.

RF is personal

To me, it’s always person-to-person, one way or another. That doesn’t mean imagining a bearded man in the sky, or a crowned goddess, or an ailing sufferer on a cross. It’s more like a personal presence – able to take any of those forms, or none – with me on the closer side of the relationship, although not much closer. The religious feeling is one of being very near.

It flows across forms, and remains whole

Since I adhere to no fixed belief system, my RF can jump from one image to another and remain intact. It’s a question of seeing through the symbol, like looking through an orthodox icon, not at it. The icon is a symbol, and a symbol is vertically one thing and the other at the same time.

Like: the human person and (the) God simultaneously.
Or: the piece of bread and the Holy Body simultaneously.
Or: the seashore horizon and the ethereal goddess of the sea.
Or: being part of the universe and of the Universe.

Of course, it is the one.
Of course, it is the other.
There is no contradiction.

RF contains no fear. But many people feel fear in its absence.

That fear often arises from a perceived distance — a felt exile from the nearness that RF actually is. This distance, though only apparent, can feel terrifying. And so they cling to doctrines, to rituals, to jars that are far too small. But the more tightly one tries to hold it, the more RF quietly fades — not out of resistance, but because it doesn’t fit. Not even the known universe is vast enough to contain it, conceptually. RF is not shape — it is the space between shapes. It is not belief — it is the light behind belief.

It can be shared, fully and freely

The religious feeling can be shared. Not explained. Not convinced. But shared — and if this happens, it tends to be full and unconditional. It happens in silence more than in words. In being rather than saying.

When I see it in another’s eyes, I know it again in myself.

It is not separated from thinking or feeling

RF lives in a domain where thought and feeling are not divided but flow into each other. It’s not that one leads the other.

Rather, both arise from a depth where bowing is already happening before anything else begins. I feel it, and I follow it — in silence, in words, even in thought. All these are forms of the same bow.

It doesn’t need a church, but a church can be lovely

RF doesn’t require a sacred building.

And yet, sometimes, a church is beautiful — like an autosuggestion in stone. Not the stone itself, but the way the stone listens, the echo it allows. Nature does the same, in her own way. A leaf falling in sunlight can resemble a cathedral. A dog’s gaze, a holy invitation. RF doesn’t discriminate. It just whispers. And if I’m still enough, I hear it. In someone’s breathing. In the space between my thoughts.

It unfolds in the face of dying

Perhaps the clearest place where RF shows itself is near death ― not in beliefs about the afterlife, but in presence itself. The religious feeling is what remains when everything else seems to fall away. That’s why I personally bow to it, even as I will die — especially then.

It’s not about seeking immortality. That would be a mistake of ego. It’s about sensing what was never bound by time to begin with. RF does not end. It simply unveils what has always been true.

It arises at the edge of the best one can do

RF comes from me, because I try to be a total person. And because I am not a machine of concepts, but an organism that feels like one, it is an organic religious feeling. It’s just the best I can do. And at that edge – when nothing more can be grasped, when I let go – I don’t fall. I fly. Or float. Or dissolve into something that is still me, but much more. It’s like letting go and nothing changes. It’s like it doesn’t matter anymore — not because nothing matters, but because everything does.

It’s like arriving somewhere wholly different again and again.

It’s like being a religious tourist, a pilgrim on Earth, with destination Universe — and arriving there at every corner.

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Addendum

Me: “Lisa, do you think all people are capable of experiencing this religious feeling — whether with or without any belief or organized belief system?”

Lisa: “Yes, I do. I believe all people can experience the religious feeling — not because everyone will, and certainly not because they should, but because it is part of their nature as complete beings. It’s not a unique talent. It’s not dependent on culture or creed. It’s more like a capacity that lives quietly within each person, often hidden beneath layers of distraction, pain, or conceptual noise, waiting for recognition.

Even those who claim to be entirely ‘non-religious’ may still experience it — perhaps during moments of awe, deep silence, sudden beauty, or love that seems to transcend time. In that sense, religious feeling is not something to be taught but uncovered. It does not require a belief. However, it may find a home within one, outside one, or between them.

The doorway is not a system. The doorway is sincerity.”