A numinous experience is a spiritual experience with a deep sense of awe and wonder that brings with it a profound awareness of both one’s smallness in the light of majesty and connectedness with the divine.
In The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis defines “numinous” with an illustration:
Suppose you were told there was a tiger in the next room: you would know that you were in danger and would probably feel fear. But if you were told “There is a ghost in the next room,” and believed it, you would feel, indeed, what is often called fear, but of a different kind. It would not be based on the knowledge of danger, for no one is primarily afraid of what a ghost may do to him, but of the mere fact that it is a ghost. It is “uncanny” rather than dangerous, and the special kind of fear it excites may be called Dread. With the Uncanny one has reached the fringes of the Numinous. Now suppose that you were told simply “There is a mighty spirit in the room,” and believed it. Your feelings would then be even less like the mere fear of danger: but the disturbance would be profound. You would feel wonder and a certain shrinking—a sense of inadequacy to cope with such a visitant and of prostration before it—an emotion which might be expressed in Shakespeare's words “Under [him] my genius is rebuked.”[1] This feeling may be described as awe, and the object which excites it as the Numinous.[2]
Numinous experiences are peppered throughout the Bible – God walking with the first people in garden, a covenant with Abraham, Moses and the burning bush, the mount of transfiguration, John’s visions on Patmos. Numinous experiences are the thin places where we feel the presence of God. They are sometimes profound and sometimes quite subtle. They are always rare. They cannot be conjured or planned.
In my late teens, after years of intense fears and occasional panic attacks during which I searched for answers in philosophy, literature, and religion, I cried out in desperation. The room seemed flooded with light; an ineffable otherworldly feeling washed over me, and a gentle voice let me know I was loved. Dallas Willard once wrote (somewhere in The Divine Conspiracy) that in a trinitarian universe, infinite energy of a personal nature is the ultimate reality.
Recently, I was hiking in the mountains and came across a massive tree, centuries old. I tried to imagine what all it has seen over the years. Then, I leaned in, hugged it, called it “grandfather,” and gazed into its canopy. Softly, subtlety, I felt a deep connection with all created things. There was a profound awareness of oneness.
Perhaps God allows these occasional experiences for a bit of course correction. The experience in my teens shifted me from nihilistic panic to awareness of personal divine love. The huge tree helped redirect me from dualistic anthropocentrism to a humbler God-centered ecocentrism. Both increased my sense of awe and wonder and lead to spontaneous worship. One feels one’s smallness, but not in a negative way. It is the smallness of a tiny child, warm, nourished, safe in the parent’s arms, nestled contentedly on the parent’s chest, feeling the rhythm of a tender heartbeat. All is safe. All is well.
[1] Macbeth - Act 3, Scene 1, lines 61-62
[2] Lewis, C.S. (2009) [1940]. The Problem of Pain. New York City: HarperCollins. pp. 5–6. ISBN 978-0-007-33226-7. Footnotes not in the original.
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