The feeling as the basisof religious experience
The article deals with a problem of religious experience in conditions of a modern civilization. The introduction considers the established approaches to studying of religious experience which can be conditionally characterized as psychological and actually religious one. The scientific problem is that the psychological approach necessarily establishes a distance between the subject and object of research, while religious experience is investigated as another, researcher itself has no this type of experience or deliberately abstains from it, in the same time the religious approach is offered by carriers of religious experience, they carried it out from within, with deliberate infringement of the requirement of distancing from the object under study, therefore it cannot be accepted by a science and is in obviously losing position. Thus, the conditions of scientific research make it impossible to obtain a reliable understanding of the essence of religious experience. The purpose of the study is to reveal the role of such a form of sensory perception as a feeling in the formation of the ability to find the religious experience, which is defined by the author as a person’s direct feeling of the existence of a power which is higher than him and transcendental to the world, which is the reason, origination and legislator (in some cases - the law) of their existence for the person and for the world. The author proceeds from the hypothesis that there are conditions in which healthy consciousness is able to get religious experience, moreover, in the absence of these conditions it is impossible to get the religious experience, therefore, any conclusions concerning religious experience made in the absence of these conditions will be ineligible. The main part considers the conditions for the formation of a religious type of world view, demonstrates their absence at the present stage of development of society, what includes the unfavorable situation for the development of a sensory way of perceiving the surrounding world, which is the core in the case of experience that has a non-verbal, irrational character. The conclusion summarizes the results and outlines ways to overcome the considered problem. The received results can be used in the teaching the disciplines of the social-humanitarian cycle.