The Theories of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Alfred Schutz

Sociological Analysis 1990, 51:1 15-33

Steps Toward a Sociology of Religious Experience: The Theories of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Alfred Schutz*

Mary Jo Neitz University of Missouri, Columbia

James V. Spickard University of Redlands

Sociologists of religion, in their concern for the social effects of religious institutions and the functions of religious meaning systems for people's identities, have neglected to study religious experiences. This paper explores Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's theory of flow experiences and Alfred Schutz' s theory of the tuning-in relationship as possible approaches to studying the experiential dimension of religion. Csikszentmihalyi's notion of "the flow experience," while ultimately reductionist, focuses on the nonconceptual side of autotelic activities. Schutz's analysis of musical performance elucidates the preconceptual sociality of aU experiences shared in inner time. We suggest that both theories offer conceptual tools that can be applied to religious experiences. Taken together they suggest an approach for sociologists attempting to explore this hitherto neglected domain.

In his influential essay, "Religion asa Cultural System," Clifford Geertz criticizes the anthropology of religion in terms familiar from the debates in our own discipline: it is functionalist, positivist, reductionist, sterile, strangled by "the dead hand of com- petence" (see also Beckford, 1985; Friedrichs, 1985; Fenn, 1982, 1985; Robertson, 1985). For Geertz, the problem is not that studies of religions' social correlates are useless, but that they are premature. In the final paragraphs he asserts:

The tracing of the social and psychological role of religion is thus not so mucha matter of finding correlations between specific ritual acts and specific secular social ties . . . . More it is a matter of understanding how it is that men's notions, however implicit, of the "really real" and the dispositions that these notions induce in them color their sense of the reasonable, the practical, the humane, and the moral . . .

The anthropological study of religion is therefore a two stage operation: first an analysis of the system of meanings embodied in the symbols which make up the religion proper,

*An early draft of this paper was presented at the meetings of the Association for the Sociology of Religion in Chicago, August 1987. We benefited from the comments of our colleagues at that forum. We would also like to thank John R. Hall, Peter Hall, Stephen A. Kent, James McCarmey, Peter Mueser, and Michael Schudson for their comments on later drafts of the paper.

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16 SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS

and second, the relating of these systems to social structural and psychological processes. My dissatisfaction with so much of contemporary social anthropological work in religion is not that it concerns itself with the second stage, but that it neglects the first, and in doing so, it takes for granted what most needs to be elucidated (1973:125-25).

As m u c h a s we agree with Geertz's criticism, the passage quoted contains an unstated theological assumption. Geertz equates "religion proper" with % system of meanings embodied in symbols." Other elements of religion -- such as experience - - take a back seat to religion's meaningfulness. For Geertz, in the last analysis, religion is a system of symbols crucial m "formulating conceptions of a general order of existence" within which one discovers one's significance (1973:90).

Geertz is, of course, not alone in this approach. As Beckford (1983) points out, for the last twenty years sociologists of religion have been preoccupied with the func- tional capacity of religion to solve problems of meaning or identity. Bellah (1970:223), while denying that religion can be equated with belief, sees it as % symbolic form within which one comes to terms with one's fate." Ferr› (1970:11) defines religion as "one's way of valuing most intensively and comprehensively." Allport (1937:226) defines it as the "search for the value underlying all things andas such the most com- prehensive of all possible philosophies of life." Stark and Bainbridge (1979:119) define it a s a "solution to questions of ultimate meaning which postulate[s] the existence of a supernatural being, world, or force." All these scholars conform m Tillich's (1959:7-8) description of religion as the source of "ultimate concern."

While we find this approach useful, we notice some limitations. David Laitlin (1986) points out that by focusing on symbols, Geertzian anthropology takes cultural identities - - including religious identities -- as given. Geertz cannot explain why specific identities are taken up and gain specific form in concrete circumstances. Laitlin's point is related to ours; an overemphasis on symbols and meaning leaves unexplored the precognitive origins of the conceptions of the "really real" around which Geertz's theory revolves. Religions -- at least many of them -- speak of gods and demons as en- counterable in human life. For the religious, such beings are not just objects of con- templation but potential experiences. To a believer the call to "let Jesus into your life," for example, is not a conceptual but a experiential act.

Inspirational writings of mystics and seekers of all varities testify to the power of core religious experiences: experiences of "sacred" or "supernatural" beings, feelings of transcendence of the self, feelings of unity with all being or with the void. The following is typical, from George Fox's Joumal:

Now I was come up in spirit through the flaming sword into the paradise of God. All things were new, and all the creation gave another smell unto me than before, beyond what words can utter. I knew nothing but pureness and innocency, and righteousness, being renewed up into the image of God by Christ Jesus, so that I say I was come up into the state of Adam which he was in before he fell (1952:27).

Whether we believe that Fox actually visited heaven, or interpret this as metaphorical language (as Fox himself probably meant it), it is clear that he did not view this state as something achieved through his own powers. Ir was an experience beyond his control. Throughout his work he writes of gifts "given me by the Lord," of "the Father of




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STEPS TOWARD A SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 17

life [who] drew me to his Son by his Spirit," of"the Lo rd . . . let[ting] me see" (1952:21, 11). In each case Fox is the seeker but not the actor, not the chooser but the chosen. This religious language catches something essential that sociology too often ignores. It turns our attention to an experience of othemess. It is our contention that without the periodic experience of such otherness, religion would fade away.1

Alongside Geertz's "first task" -- the analysis of how people's notions of the "really real" color their sense of the reasonable, the practical, and so on -- we therefore place another. We believe that social scientists must also investigate religious experience. We have each been studying people's experiences in the realm of the "really real" among various religious groups throughout the United States. We ate impressed with the social character of these experiences, but think this sociality cannot be reduced to symbols and meanings. Although much of our work also attempts Geertz's two tasks, in this paper we begin to explore how sociologists might include the experiential dimension of religion in sociological studies.

At this stage of conceptualization "religious experience" is more a native category than a scientific one. Traditional religious images -- of God or gods, demons or angels -- portray the universe as active in human life. In the accounts of seekers and mystics we hear of gods who call, devils who tempt, of being in the grip of a great power that will not let go. Taking a cue from our informants we suggest that the experiences we want m understand are experiences of"otherness," of transcending the boundaries of the everyday self.

While recognizing the philosophical difficulties inherent in any notion of experience, 2 we believe that sociologists' neglect of this topic is partly due to a cultural stereotype. The social sciences in the twentieth century have been influenced by behaviorism's methodological individualism. Experience is conceived as something that happens to individuals; sense data are considered private phenomena that can be reported with more or less accuracy, but never fully viewed by outside observers. Similarly, transcendent experiences are viewed as being inaccessible to outsiders. Encounters with "otherness" are popularly seen as solitary phenomena, occurring on mountaintops and deserts or in meditation and cloistered prayer.

IAlthough not all those touched by religion have transcendent experiences, the experiences seem more widespread than usuall• acknowledged by those who study religion. Gallup's special poUs on religion in America, for example, found that 31 percent of respondents report having religious experiences of a sudden or dramatic namre (Gallup, 1978:53-54; see also McCready and Greeley, 1976). Believers may indeed use the supernatural as consolation for life's hardships or find the core of religion in a trusting atª toward the universe, as many observers have noted (e.g., Stark and Bainbridge, 1979; Friedrichs, 1985). But experiences of otherness are common enough in religious literature and in survey data (when relevant questions are asked) that to leave them out of an account omits something essential.

zWhile we advocate the investigation of religious experiences, we do not believe it possible to investigate them "raw." Both of the theorists we discuss here contend that experiences are socially apprehended -- even though they deny that the social aspects of such experiences are exhausted by the socially-supported meanings attributed to them. We might not have to insist on this, were it not for the efforts of many theologians since Schleiermacher to use "pure" religious experience as an argument for the existence of God. Proudfoot (1985) points out several difficulties with their arguments, some of which we find cogent. But we are not interested in talking about God in this article; we wish to limit ourselves to investigating the experiences people call religious.




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Indeed, even when sociologists talk about religious experience, it is not their full focus of concern. Strauss (1981), for example, discusses in detail the sociocultural structuring of religious experiences: the ways in which groups frame, predispose, program, and finally trigger religious experiences in individuals. But he is unable to treat the experiences themselves in a social mode. McGuire (1983) notes the difficulties sociologists have handling such seemingly "personal" events, and calls for new theories and research me•hodologies to overcome them. The present paper explores two theories that offer some useful possibilities for comprehending these experiences of "otherness" in social terms.

We have chosen Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's theory of flow experiences and Alfred Schutz's theory of the tuning-in relationship as possible tools for opening religious experiences to sociological study. Neither focuses on religion in bis own work, but each suggests ways of thinking sociologically about transcendent experiences of individuals. We find many parallels between what our informants reportas "religious experiences" and what Csikszentmihalyi calls "flow experiences." We believe that Csikszentmihalyi's detailed analysis of the specific structural conditions necessary for the production of the flow experience is a useful beginning for sociologists interested in getting at religious experience.

Although we find Csikszentmihalyi's set of conditions exceedingly thought pro- voking, we find the definitive characteristic of flow experiences -- their autotelic nature -- insufficiently social. It excludes the quality of "otherness" we have suggested is central to religious experiences. Schutz's analysis of the quality of "we-ness" shared by composer, musician, and audience in the production of a musical work offers a way to explore the experiential without sacrificing the possibility that religious experiences are inherently social.

We begin with an analogical argument for including experience in any theory of religion. We then proceed to examine the two approaches and their ramifications for the sociology of religion.

AN ANALOGICAL DEMONSTRATION3

Here is our analogy: religious experiences of transcendence have certain important similarities to sexual arousal. Consider sexual arousal. Most people over the age of 15 know the feeling: after a certain amount of foreplay something clicks, and one's body starts running the show. One experiences a sense of drivenness, a "kick" into another gear that carries one along with ir. Not that this means losing control; one can turn oneself "off" (with more or less struggle). But something besides the conscious mind becomes active, and its power can inspire awe. Fulfillment comes from riding that power to its conclusion.

Religious experiences are certainly similar. O n e can likewise prepare for them, but their occurrence remains beyond human control. Some accounts describe an ex-

3Our demonstration is analogical, and therefore subject to all the limitations of analogical reasoning. However we find the analogy works well and primes us to notice elements of experience that might otherwise be overlooked. Analogical reasoning is exceptionally well suited to communicate to the "religiously unmusical," without falling into the language of any particular religious sect.




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perience outside of the self, something more elemental, taking charge and carrying the seeker forward. Others describe something overcoming the senses and filling the field of their experience. Seekers may feel that something is being revealed to them by someone no t at their command. A n individual can fight these feelings, as one can fight arousal, bu t doing so ends the experience. A religious experience suppressed is as sterile a s a sexuality denied. 4

These need not be earthshaking occurrences. Justas some arousals are mild, religious experiences may be, so to speak, mundane . The Quakers speak of various levets of " the presence of the Holy Spirit." These range from visions, which are rare, to the more c o m m o n "sense of gatheredness" which occurs in worship (see Steere, 1984:esp. 26). None o f these are seen as "subjective. ''5

Not everyone has experienced sexual arousal, justas not everyone has had transcendent religious experiences. Yet arousal is a c o m m o n enough occurrence tha t theories of sexuality must take it into account; a researcher who failed to do so would stand convicted of misrepresenting the topic. The same, we argue, should be true for religion. Religion is more than the experience of transcendence, j u s t a s sex is more than the experience of arousal. But a theory tha t leaves such experience aside is seriously deformed.

Wi thout pushing our analogy too far, we see no reason that a recognition of the centra l i ty of the experience of t ranscendence to religion should make the sociological task any less important . Numerous social factors remain active in religious experiences. We can, after all, have a sociology of sex without questioning the reality of sexual experiences. We can even have a sociology of arousal - - noting, for example, the social circumstances under which arousal occurs and the persons to whom it is directed. We can thus speak of the ways arousal is "socially constructed" wi thout denying that arousal occurs. 6

Once it occurs, religious experience must be absorbed into an ongoing social world - - perhaps changing tha t world, if only in limited ways. Humans tend to locate their experiences in a meaningful universe. As parents and teen counselors can attest, the reabsorption and guiding of sexual experience is a major social task. The reabsorp- t ion a n d guiding of religious experience is crucial in its own right.

A n adequate sociology of religion must be as sensitive to the experience of t ranscendence as the sociology of sex is to arousal. It does not define the topic, but constitutes a crucial part of it. Rather than specify all the things such a sociology would

4An interesting example of this is reported by Kenneth Clark in his autobiography, The Other Hall (1979). There he describes both the immediate power of the religious experience and his decision to ignore it because he was "too deeply embedded in the world" to change his direction.

5Quakers do, however, distinguish between "false" and "true" leadings in their spiritual life. The former are seen as subjective, coming from the worldly self. The latter come from "that of God" within each person. When individuals are not capable, in the moment, of telling one from the other, they are advised to test their leadings against Meeting asa whole, in corporate silent worship (Steere, 1984:30-32). Charismatics claim that the ability to make such judgments, which they discuss in terms of "discern- ment," is itself a gift from God (Neitz, 1987:49-52).

6Counterfactually, popular ideology maintains the illusion that individuals rail into love (and lust), unable to help themselves; see Bean (1976).




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irtvestigate, we shall now look at two perspectives tha t seem to us to offer possibilities for supporting such inquiry.

G O WITH THE FLOW

We first look at the ideas of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a psychologist who has investigated "autotelic" activities: those for which the activity is its own reward. 7 Play activities such as chess and rock climbing are two of his examples. In them, participants: "devote time and effort to their activity because they gain a peculiar state of experience from it, an experience tha t is not accessible in 'everyday life' " (1975a:35). Based on his informants ' reports, Csikszentmihalyi calls this experience "flow." In his words,

Flow denotes the holistic sensation present when we act with total involvement. It is the kind of feeling after which one nostalgically says: "that was fun," of "that was enjoyable." It is the state in which action follows upon action according to an internal logic which seems to need no conscious intervention on our part. We experience it asa unified flowing from one moment to the next, in which we feel in control of our actions, and in which there is little distinction between self and environment; between stimulus and response; or between past, present and future (1975b:43).

Play, artistic creation, and religion are the activities most of*en cited as producing flow, though engaging in these activities does not guarantee a flow experience.

By "flow," Csikszentmihalyi clearly means something more than the kind of enjoyment obtained th rough everyday activities like watching television (see Csikszent- mihalyi and Kubey, 1981). T h a t en joyment is no t on the Ievel tha t he is trying to examine. Flow is not part of everyday life. It is the product of activities which, Csikszent- mihalyi argues, exhibit a particular structure. This structure is conducive to extra- ordinary experiences - - experiences for which popular language has few words. Of the several structural characteristics Csikszentmihalyi notes, we shall ment ion only three: (1) selflessness, (2) limited sensory input, and (3) the match between the challenge of a task and one's ability to complete it. As we describe these, the flow-concept will become clearer - - enough, we hope, so that we can apply it sociologically.

Selflessness. Csikszentmihalyi argues that in everyday life, the "self" is an intra- psychic mechanism which mediates between the individual and the demands of the world. This self is the basis of interpersonal negotiat ion - - it allows one to integrate one's actions with those of others (1975a:42). 8 Flow-producing activities are structured in such a way as to make the self relatively superfluous. Activities which allow flow to occur - - such as games, rituals, or art - - usually do not require interpersonal negotiation. "Since they are based on freely accepted rules, the player does not need to use a self to get along in the activity" (1975a:42). Csikszentmihalyi does not mean tha t

"/Csikszentmihalyi and his associates interviewed rock climbers, dancers, chess masters, surgeons, and others who engage in activities requiring a great deal of concentration. In a later project they gave remote- control pagers to individuals who reported their states at random moments when they were paged.

SCsikszentmihalyi cites Mead (1934), Freud (1927), and Berger and Luckmann (1967), among others; see Csikszentmihalyi and Bennett (1971).




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a person in flow loses consciousness. Instead one overcomes one's normal separation from the world. For example, a composer comments about writing music: "You feel as though you almost don' t exist. I've experienced this time and time again. My hand seems devoid of myself, and I have nothing to do with what is happening. I just sit there watching it in a state of awe and wonderment. A n d it just flows out by itsell ~' (1975b:50). A n d a rock climber comments: "One tends to get immersed in what is going o n around him, in the rock, in the moves that are involved . . . search for h a n d h o l d s . . , proper position of body - - so involved he might lose the consciousness of his own identity and melt into the rock" (1975a:43). 9

Sensation. Rock climbing, of course, requires concentration. Ir one stares off into space of watches the scenery, one may fall. Csikszentmihalyi argues that flow-experiences generally require concentration. They arise in circumstances where sensory input is limited. In rock climbing the risk stimulates the sensory focus necessary to produce the sought-affer experience. While chess, dancing, and composing do not involve danger, they similarly restrict one's stimulus fiel&

The chess players !nterviewed by Csikszentmihalyi and his associates are clear that the game limits their perceptions. All they ate aware of is the game and the board. Ir they ate distracted -- by crowd noise or by their own thoughts - - they lose. "When the game is exciting, I don' t seem to hear nothing -- the world seems to be cut off from me and all there's to think about is my game" (1975b:47). A s a composer put it: "I am really quite oblivious to my surroundings after I really get going. I think that the phone could ring, and the doorbell could ring, or the house burn down, or something like that . . . when I stop I can let it back in again" (1975b:48).

ChaUenge. Csikszentmihalyi also connects flow experiences to an individual's ability to match the requirements of the task to his or her skills. A rock climber able to scale a class 5.5 wall will be anxious on a 5.10 pitch; on a 5.0 pitch, she of he will be bored. 10 Flow can occur only in between. Similarly a chess grandmaster will be bored playing a novice, while the novice will be made anxious. Neither will experience flow.

Csikszentmihalyi quotes Steiner on the difficulty of maintaining the flow experience in chess:

The bright arcs of relations that weld the pieces into a phalanx, that make one's defense a poison-tipped porcupine shiver into filaments. The chords dissolve. The pawn in one's sweating hand withers to mere wood or plastic. A tunnel of inanity yawns, boring and bottomless. As from another world comes the appalling suggestion.. , that this is, after all, "only a game." If one entertains that annihilating proposition even for an instant, one is done for (1975b:45).

9Csikszentmihalyi notes that: "by no means all of the climbers in our sample reported these deep-flow experiences; only nine out of thirty consistently did. Others apparently had brushed with them at one time or another but either paid them little attention of even denounced them as mystical tommyrot" (1975a:88).

l~ ate classed according to difficulty, with higher numbers being more difficult. Ranking systems differ, but a common formula runs from 1.0 -- "an easy walk" -- and 2.0 -- "a scramble" -- up to 5.15, which requires the use of ropes, anchors, and other hardware to protect the climber from falling. In general, climbs above 6.0 require the climber to climb on ladders and mechanical aids rather than on the rock itself. Climbs above 7.0 require supernatural aicls: an example is overhanging sand dunes.




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Somewhere between boredom and anxiety, where one's at tent ion is uniquely concen- trated on the mat ter at hand, where one can be so totally involved in what one is doing that the self becomes superfluous, the flow experience is possible.

Flow in Religion

Though he does not analyze religious experience in any great detail, Csikszent- mihalyi does suggest that religious rituals produce flow. He likens flow-states to Maslow's "peak experiences," De Charms ' s "origin" state, and the practice of Zen, Yoga, and "other forros of meditat ion."

In a variety of human contexts, one fin& a remarkably similar inner state, which is so enjoyable that people are sometimes willing to forsake a comfortable life for its sake. In many cases, the importance of this experience is blurred by what appear to be the external goals of the activity -- the painting that the artist wants to create, the theory that the scientist strives to prove, or the grace of God that the mystic seeks to attain. On a closer look, these goals lose their substance and reveal themselves as mere tokens that justify the activity by giving it direction and determining rules of action. The doing is the thing (1975a:37).

We can, with some modifications, generalize Csikszentmihalyi 's model of flow to what we observe in the reports of our respondents. The parallel with overcoming the everyday self is clear: in many traditions it is a religious goal, whether described as cultivating "no-self" or as developing "chari ty ." Like rock climbing and chess, religious rituals manipulate sensory stimuli to focus their participants' concentration: Zen tightly controls the body; Eastern Or thodoxy uses music, incense, special clothing, and so on to fill the senses and evoke a sacred realm (see Needleman, 1980:30-33).

Finding a parallel to the challenge and experience of mastery that Csikszentmihalyi describes is a more complex problem. Most observers more easily comprehend the challenge of scaling a cliff t h a n the challenge of a church service. Religious seekers, however, use words like "discipline" a s a synonym to "spiritual path" implying tha t they seek something like mastery even though what they may be mastering is the art of "letting go" of this-worldly concerns. We believe that m a n y religious practices do combine routine with uncertainty, producing a challenging state "beyond boredom and anxiety." Rituals offer enough drama to avoid boredom, but not so much as to arouse uneasiness. Practiced participants know each step of a ritual, but cannot predict precisely what will be experienced in it. God m a y o r may not speak. 11

11Csikszentmihalyi suggests that other social scientists have described something like flow-states. He argues that flow is typically .present in the states Victor Turner calls communitas, andat times of what Durkheim calls "collective effervescence" (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975a:30ff.). Yet whereas Csikszentmihalyi interprets communitas experientially, Turner's concept is social, and its operation is symbolic. Turner sees communitas asa set of social relationships typified by equality and communion -- a situation radically different from the normal social order. Anti-structure has no meaning except in relation to structure. For Turner communitas is primarily expressive -- a critique of the established order. Although Durkheim saw "collective effervescence" as something people could experience, he was more concerned than Csikszent- mihalyi with what people do with that experience: how they interpret it and use it to integrate the social order. Durkheim shares Csikszentmihalyi's suspicion that believers' interpretations of their




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Csikszentmihalyi gives us the impression that people engage in flow-producing activities because they "get off on" the flow-experience. As he remarks: "[T]he importance of this experience is blurred by what appear to be the external goals of the activity . . . [e.g.] the grace of God that the mystic seeks to attain. O n a closer look, these goals lose their substance and reveal themselves as mere tokens that justify the activity" (1975a:37).

In modern pluralist society there are many avenues to flow, but religions continue to be an impor tant source. For example, out of one of the authors ' interviews with Quakers comes the following:

I go to Meeting to get a "hit." I don't think much about God and all that stuff. That's just words to me. But when I sit in Meeting and center m y s e l f - when I can center myse l f - I feel such bliss! It's like I'm being picked up and o p e n e d . . . I really like that feeling -- it's what I'm looking for (Spickard, Field Notes).

One might expect such expressions ffom such relatively untheological groups as Quakers. Yet the striving for experience can be found among others as well. Here is comment by a charismatic Catholic:

My peak experiences were religious experiences. Like matrimony, seeing that I could find Jesus in my husband. God's presence in the delivery room - that's got to be a peak experience of a lifetime. But my peak experiences were religious experiences. They just weren't frequent enough. They just whet my appetite. I wanted more of that, more often. Which is probably why I looked to the Charismatic Renewal. To have more (Neitz, 1987:162).

Here the focus of religion is not its institutions, rituals, or theology. Religions may maintain society, and they may postulate supernatural beings - - bu t these ate side effects in Csikszentmihalyi 's view. Like Durkhe im (1915), he treats religion as objec- tive: something can happen to people in religious circumstances that they experience as real. Theology is an ex post facto at tempt to tell what was "really" going on: to tame the experience and bring it into everyday life. 12

Contra Durkheim, however, Csikszentmihalyi 's approach does not claim that religious experience comes only while one is in groups. As with o ther kinds of flow, it can occur when one is either solitary or social. ReligŸ experiences can therefore be private, but are not entirely so: flow arises from structured activities, which must be learned.

O n the basis o f Csikszentmihalyi 's work one could argue that the sociology of religion, either as the study of religion's social functions o r a s the study of the social correlates of theological attitudes, must take a back seat to religious phenomenology

experiences do not necessarily describe reality. But he does not see experience as the core of religion. Society, not individual experience, is key for him.

12Some passages in the chapter on rock climbing, written with John MacAloon, move away from this strict emphasis on the autotelic nature of the activities. Here they offer an interpretation that some mountain climbers found that the flow experience induced them to reexamine their lives and their values in order to generalize the experience of flow. In these pages Csikszentmihalyi is closer to Turner and, perhaps, Durkheim.




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(see Pinto, 1987). We do not wish to go so far. We simply claim that the concept of flow allows us to bring sociology closer to understanding the experiential com of religion withot~t embroiling us in considerations of the truth claims of particular religions. 13

A Sociology of Flow Experiences

How might flow experiences interact with social factors in religion? Imagine a person who has not h a d a flow experience. Once day, in some religious sitting, this person

feels action and awareness merge. She or he becomes so concen~rated on whatever is happening that all sense of individual self vanishes. The person feels in a time out of time, connected to "the way things really are" (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975a:96-97). Perhaps it happens in a meditation class; perhaps it happens accompanying a friend to Mass. Whatever the setting, the person becomes involved, enjoys the experience, is sorry when ir is over. What does the person then do?

After such a state passes, some will simply dismiss it, as Slater (1977) argues our culture trains us to do. Some people, though, will seek an explanation, turning to a friend or teacher and to ask what happened. Then the experience will be named.

In Csikszentmihalyi's view, it is with naming that religion enters. Depending on the symbol-system of the namer -- and also on the degree to which the namer is versed in its preferred means of interpretation -- the experience might be called the Kiss of Universal Peace of the Presence of Jesus Christ. The newcomer could be told to beware of such experiences for they are the work of a demon. One dabbling in Gurdjieff work might be told to swallow the experience "bones and all" -- to accept it as a whole without dissecting ir.

In each case, a complex interplay of experience and symbol begins that leads one deeper into the symbolic world of the group, if one chooses to become involved. One learns the rudiments of the group's conceptual universe. One learns their methods of structuring experience so as to produce flow. One may become adept at generating such experiences. Of one may decide that conceptual meaning is more important than flow, and become a theologian. In any case, our imaginary subject has become religious.

Actually, the interplay begins earlier, before a person even enters the church, temple, or compound. No one normally socialized in our culture lacks mental images of what one "should" experience in religious settings. As Neitz (1987) demontrates, individuals learn - - or are trained -- to "speak in tongues," "prophesy," and engage in other authorized religious activities. We ate not likely to find individuals experiencing samadhi in the Assemblies of Gocl, nor entering "the seventh dwelling place" among

13Other sociological schools have occasionally broached the question of experience. George Herbert Mead, for example, built the experiencing self into his system of thought in the form of the "I." For symbolic interactionists, however, even subjectively experienced, intrinsically rewarding activities are meaningful in terms of their relation to other parts of the individual's life. In developing bis concept of "action," for example, Goffman chooses examples where the challenge itself is a social one. Rather than seeking out situations where negotiation with others is avoided, as does Csikszentmihalyi, Goffman and other symbolic interactionists have shown how negotiation itself can be, in Csikszentmihalyi's terms, a flow experience (see "Where the action is," Goffman, 1967:149-270). In this paper, however we are interested in those aspects of our respondents' experiences which are closer to the rock climber's "flow experience" than the poker player's "action."




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Presbyterians. Flow experiences are culturally transformed -- before and after the fact.

Such interplay between thought and experience is central to what occurs in religious settings. Theologians and Geertzian social scientists have profitably probed the conceptual half of this process. The concept of flow lets us focus on the experiential side while noting how the conditions that generate flow in rock climbing, chess, and composing are replicated in religious life. Csikszentmihalyi's approach allows us to treat religious experience as sui generis without presupposing that any particular form of it is more basic than all others -- within or outside of religious contexts.

Clearly such an approach does more than merely focus on the social functions of religious beliefs and institutions -- Geertz's "second task." And ir is more than his "first task": an analysis of the system of meanings embodied in religious symbols. The concept of flow gives us a way to look at religion "in the midst of ritual, where it engulfs the total person, transporting him so lar as he is concerned, into another mode of existence" (Geertz, 1973:120). Ir gives us a perspective on the ways human individuals and groups interact with what happens to them, interpreting and reinventing their experiences in the framework of sociaIly received ideologies.

Why is it that some people experience flow in religious settings and others do not? Which practices, institutional structures, and beliefs facilitate flow experiences and which inhibit ir? Among what groups, social classes, and so on is flow most common -- and why might these rather than others find flow congenial? How do people learn to tune themselves to flow, or conversely, learn to suppress it? Is flow experienced differently by people with different theoiogical beliefs? And how does it change beliefs, if the believers' experiences seem to disprove them? All these empirical questions may be explored if we see flow -- or somthing like it -- as central to religious life.

Is Flow Adequate?

Though he frequently alludes to religions as possible sources of flow experiences, Csikszentmihalyi has not, to our knowledge, investigated religious experience directly. In print he has limited his explorations to sports, play, ancl other leisure pursuits. Though we find his theory promising, we have not yet sought to apply it in our own research. As scholars of religion, we see two major problems with his approach. Neither of these is fatal to the theory, but both deserve comment.

First, we have to ask: Does Csikszentmihalyi's description of flow capture the essence of the reports religious practitioners have given us of their experiences? That is, stripped of the theological interpretations given them by various traditions, are religious experiences sufficiently flow-like to make Csikszentmihalyi's approach useful? We have to answer: sometimes yes, sometimes no.

Though most of the accounts of transcendent experiences we have collected sound very much like flow, not all do. Specifically, flow seems to lack the dimension of "otherness" we cited at the beginning of this paper as central to at least some forms of religious experience. Listen, for example, to a participant in the Gurdjieff work describe one of his more arresting experiences"

I was working in the garden at [the Gurdjieff center]. I had been pruning roses earlier, and now was repairing a fence. We had been given some [mental] exercises




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to do while working, and I was having trouble with them . . . You've got to keep your attention on your body without letting it get in the way of your task. Hard to keep a split focus at a boring job without drifting off in dreamland . . . .

I just became aware of them, all of a sudden -- these huge beings walking through the garden. I mean, I couldn't see them -- not with my eyes anyway. The air was a bit fuzzy around them, but that wasn't how I knew something was there. I just knew it. I mean, it's embarrassing to hear myself talk about it how: it sounds like I'm a druggie ora religious nut. But something powerful was there, as sure as you [the interviewer] are. They were just walking, seemingly on some business, taking no notice of me or anyone (Spickard, Field Notes). 14

Regardless of what we think of this experience, it is hard to reduce it to "flow." This is not "the holistic sensation present when we act with total involvement" (Csikszent- mihalyi, 1975b:43). At least, it is not only that. Certainly the mental exercises in the midst of which this experience occurred were structured like those Csikszentmihalyi calls flow-producing. They were apparently designed to enable a person to stand aside from the interior dialogue out of which the everyday self is made, and to limit sensory input by focusing attention on the body. But Csikszentmihalyi's flow concept lacks the "otherness" so striking in this informant's account.

Not all transcendent experiences exhibir such otherness, just as not all religions believe in gods. But some do. I t i s interesting that the examples Csikszentmihalyi cites - - "peak experiences," Zen, rituals -- concentrate on the consciousness of the partaker. For these, perhaps, flow is a good place to begin. But any theory of religion that fails to take account of these other experiences is incomplete. The flow-concept needs emendation.

This brings us to our second point: Csikszentmihalyi's description of flow carries with it some theological baggage that must be made explicit. Like Durkheim, Freud, Marx, and the other great demystifiers of religion (prophets of suspicion, to use Ricoeur's phrase), Csikszentmihalyi is a reductionist. As noted above, he regards the flow experience as primary, and treats any interpretation of that experience a s a secondary gloss, possessing less empirical importance. Interpretations justify the activity by giving ir a rationale in everyday life. For Csikszentmihalyi, "the doing is the thing" (1975a:37).

Flow, in fact, is an essentially humanist concept. It allows for religious experience, but assumes the experience is solely the result of participation in activities structured in such a way as to produce a pleasurable state of consciousness. To Csikszentmihalyi, religion is "fun," and participants construct for themselves ontological justifications in order to engage in it. Like scientists who claim a higher purpose, but pursue their work for enjoyment, religious virtuosi enjoy the states of consciousness flow brings. 15

14Note how this experience made the informant question his religious beliefs: "And that's what's disturbing. Here are these things, as big as the trees, and they don't care about us at all. We're not their concern! Christianity says that gods and angels care about us, but these guys didn't. At least we weren't on their agenda that day. I don't know what to make of it, but they were something e/se" (Spickard, Field Notes).

15Csikszentmihalyi argues that surgeons regard healing -- accomplished instantly through surgery -- as a "feedback to the surgeon's activity" rather than an "extrinsic goal." Compare his, "perhaps legendary," story of the surgeon who was so absorbed in his task that he failed to notice when the ceiling of the




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Readers of Luther and Kierkegaard, among others, will be justified in responding that religion is not necessarily "fun." The experience that some religious persons find deepest are full of awe and terror. They are not consoling, as the classical explications of theodicy claim, nor are they "the kind of feeling after which one nostalgically says: �9 . . ' that was enjoyable' " (Csikszentmihalyi, 1976:43).

The flow-concept lacks the sense -- present in some religions and among some practitioners -- that the deepest experiences of the world can be explained only by the existence of something outside oneself, beside which humans are as dust. We turn now to the work of Alfred Schutz for concepts that allow a sociological exploration of the sense of"otherness" that is so strong in some accounts of transcendent experiences.

THE TUNING-IN RELATIONSHIP

Alfred Schutz is best known for his description of "typification" -- the process by which actors call on their socially accumulated store of knowledge to interpret the world around them. The central focus of his sociology is n o t a s well understood: he sought to develop a thoroughgoing sociology of the subjective life (see Wagner, 1983:15). Though people's understandings of what occurs in religious settings clearly depend on typification, other elements of Schutz's sociology can be applied to religion. They allow us to talk about religious experience without over-individualizing it.

In his essay "Making Music Together," Schutz attempts to investigate what he calls the "mutual tuning-in relationship." For Schutz this is a precommunicative process in which self and other are experienced as sharing "we-ness," a sense of being together in the vivid present. At the beginning of his essay Schutz poses the problem as follows:

[T]he basic issue [is] whether the communicative process is really the foundation of all possible social relationships, or whether, on the contrary, all communication presupposes the existence of some kind of social interaction which, though it is an indispensable condition of all possible communication, does not enter the communication process and is not capable of being grasped by it (1951:161).

Music is an ideal event for exploring this question because it is "a meaningful context which is not bound to a conceptual scheme. Yet this meaningful context can be communicated." Unlike verbal communication, musical communication is "not [founded] primarily upon a semantic system used by the communicator a s a scheme of expression and by his partner a s a scheme of interpretation" (Schutz, 1951:159). Rather it is direct, involving shared inner time, or dur› (to use the term Schutz borrowed from Bergson). We believe that Schutz's anslysis of music can be fruitfully applied to religions.

Schutz looks at musical performances as involving interactions between composers, performers, and audiences, all mediated by the music. In the course of analyzing the relationship between performer and composer, Schutz establishes what he thinks

operating room fell to Goffman's more nuanced view of the surgeon's task in managing the operating room (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975:129-39; Goffman, 1961:115-32).




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is essential about people tuning-in to one another . He uses the example of a pianist who is about to play music from a score he has never before seen, writ ten by a minor master of the n ineteenth century. He claims that there is a meaningful social relationship between the dead composer and the pianist, as well as between the pianist and the audience.

First, the pianist brings a certain stock of socially acquired knowledge to a performance. She or he knows the musical style of a period, the types of ha rmony used, ancl so on. But this knowtedge merely sets the stage for the music: it is only par t of the social relationship.

More important is the fact that a piece of music cannot be grasped "monothe¡ to use Husserl 's term. Tha t is, it canno t be summed up conceptually, k must be gone through, passage by passage. In Schutz's words:

The social relationship between composer and beholder as it is understood here is established exclusively by the fact that a beholder of a piece of music participates in and to a certain extent recreates the experiences of the -- let us suppose, anonyrnous -- fellow-man who created this w o r k . . .

Two series of events in inner time, one belonging to the stream of consciousness of the beholder, are lived through in simultaneity . . . [T]his sharing of the other's flux of experiences in inner time, this living through a vivid present in common, constitutes what we call . . . the mutual tuning-in relationship, the experience of "We," which is at the foundation of all possible communicaiton (1951"169-70, 173).

Schutz therefore finds in music an acute consciousness of the other, a sense of the other 's presence so vivid tha t its occurrence in " inner t ime" takes precedence over o ther realities. This consciousness depends on the musical performance. Partners in m u s i c - - composer, performer, audience - - coexist in the musical experience.

Schutz suggests that performing a composer's music differs from reading philosophy in this regard. When one reads, one also participates in the author 's thought , step by step, line by line. The meaning of a writ ten passage, however, can be grasped monothetically. One understands a philosophical conclusion without having continuaUy to recreate its proof. Unlike conceptual thought , art is polythetic: it takes as much time to reconstitute the "meaning" of a piece of music as it did the first t ime one experienced it: one must play or listen to ir again. 16

Schutz asserts that it is in the nature of music tha t it "cannot be grasped monothet ical ly ." He states, "It consists in the articulated step-by-step occurrence in inner time, in the very polythenc constitutional process itself" (1951:172). Thus sociality in music does not lŸ in typification - - a monothe t ic process. Instead, it lies in the pianist's participation in the composer's stream of consciousness. Semantic communica- t ion presupposes sociality ra ther t han the other way around. For Schutz, sociality is built on " the possibility of living together s imultaneously in specific dimensions of t ime" (1951:162). It depends on sharing a vivid present. Semantic unders tanding is

16poetry, though using words, resembles music more than philosophy. "I can tell in one or two sentences the story of the ancient mariner. . . [but] in so lar as it is poetry[,] I can only bring it before my mind by reciting or reading it from beginning to end" (Schutz, 1951:173n).




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one form of such living together, but not the only one. 17

Making Religion Together

The feeling of we-ness, of sharing the vivid present that Schutz describes here as underlying all communication has much in common with the way people often describe religious experiences. For these people, beliefs cannot express the meaning of religious participation, only "experience" can do that. Like many of our informants, Schutz insists that it is the experience of tuning-in to the other that makes ir meaningful.

Schutz suggests several mechanisms through which tuning-in may be accomplished. Justas playing a score that one has not seen before is facilitated by having musical knowledge, knowledge of religious culture most likely facilitates having religious experiences. Being sympathetic to religious understandings and explanations helps as well. Additionally, some religious subcultures may be more likely to foster religious experiences than others. The awakenings sponsored by evangelical revivalism, for example, created the expectation that religious experiences occur commonly -- and helped define what counts as religious experience within these groups. As a result of revivals, individuals conceivably became more open to such experiences. The Gallup data show Protestants more likely to report having hacl a "religious experience of a sudden or dramatic nature" than Catholics, as this hypothesis would lead us to expect.18

While tuning-in is facilitated by such general knowledge, it requires more than that- ir requires recreating the consciousness of the other. In the example of making music, the beholder goes through each step in recreating the music in order to achieve the sense of being co-participants in the vivid present. As Schutz claims is the case for music, religious experience cannot be grasped monothetically. One has to participate in religious events in order to encounter it. Religions that stress the experiential aspect often favor participation over theology and offer practitioners devices that attempt to produce the experience. Repetitive prayers and Zen koans offer ways of "doing it," to use Csikszentmihalyi's phrase. More elaborate rituals that reenact events in the lives of gods and goddesses, such as the Eleusinian mysteries or the Catholic Mass, are structured so that participants may achieve "communion" at the appropriate moment.

After such communions, of course, typification enters. Based on his or her store of knowledge, the participant interprets the experience monothetically. He or she grasps its "meaning." Much sociality is tied up in such interpretation. But for Schutz, as for the participant, the meaning is not the experience. A polythetic event cann0t be subsumed by a monothetic interpretation. Both processes are social, but in different ways. Tuning- in to shared inner time is the ground on which all communication -- and thus meaning -- is based.

But what is being tuned-in? Certainly one's co-participants -- those with whom one performs a piece of music or enacts a ritual -- must be included. But Schutz's

17Schutz (1951:174) cites Brahms's famous statement: "Ir I want to listen to a fine performance of 'Don Giovanni', I light a good cigar and stretch out on my sola."

18One imagines that ir we separated the various Protestant denominations -- the Unitarians from the Assemblies of God, for example -- then the survey results would be even more striking.




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notion of"the other" is intriguing. His example speaks of a dead composer, not someone who could possibly be "present" to the beholder in "outer time." The composer has structured experience in the forro of the score now in the hands of the beholder. Shared "inner time," not actual physical presence, is the key.

Schutz's notion that the perception of we, in the vivid present, occurs in "inner time" is essential for him and for us. The central point of his analysis is that individuals can share inner time though separated in outer time and space. In some sense, participants in religious rituals tune-in with all who have partaken of them in the past and all who will partake of them in future. Schutz's analysis does not preclude the possibility that the communicant in a Catholic Mass communes with Jesus or that the initiate in the Eleusinian mysteries was able to recapitulate Demeter's feelings for her daughter Persephone. It is n o t a great extension of his thesis to talk of feeling tuned-in to Nature, an important inspiration of religious experiences (see Capra, 1975:11). That this is an experiential as well as a cognitive tuning-in is the critical point here.

CONCLUSION

Csikszentmihalyi and Schutz present two approaches to religious experience, yet they work together for us. To see how, it is useful to return our analogy between sexual and religious episodes.

The sex manuals written since the early seventies (especially those on masturba- t-ion for women) suggest that with the appropriate cognitive set and a practiced technique anyone can achieve sexual orgasms. Similarly, Csikszentmihalyi suggests that enyone can achieve flow. Yet many people find that their most satisfying sexual experiences occur in the context of meaningful relationships. Not only is the act shared, but the context in which the experience occurs helps determine its meaning. Similarly, Schutz locates the significance of music in the context of its performance and in the time its participants share. Music's sociality is pre-communicative; ir is the basis for communication and meaning.

w e suggest that transcendent religious experiences differ from flow activities in that they are more apt to be like intercourse with one's beloved than like masturba- tion. Something happens in religious settings that is "really real" -- is not merely cognitive or meaningful. Yet it is not just individual: it is shared, then made meaningful in a social process of interpretation. 19

The sociality of a flow experience, for Csikszentmihalyi, lies in its surroundings: in the structured activity that produces the flow state, not the flow itself. In the state itself, extrinsic motivations are superfluous, interpersonal interaction or negotiation is negligible. Rock climbers do not experience flow during belaying (which requires focus on the other); a chess player is only aware of "the game," not the other person. In Csikszentmihalyi's description, flow experiences are experiences of a very individ- ualistic sort.

19Neitz (1987:86-89) found that some Catholics who did not become charismatics experienced "trans- formative moments" without becoming transformed. Although in some sense both those who became charismatics and those who did not had the same experiences, in another sense they did not.




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Csikszentmihalyi is exciting, in part because the examples that he gives -- being largely stripped of context -- are so very recognizable to us. 2~ And he gives us the beginnings of a systematic way of looking at these experiences. But Schutz is necessary if we are to understand the social side of such experiences, and what it might mean for our informants to say that "the doing is the thing."

Schutz's distinction between monothetic and polythetic experiences suggests that "doing it" may not be an isolated activity even when an individual carries out the activity alone. Repetitive prayer, for example, which Csikszentmihalyi would see as a device for producing transcendent experiences, becomes the experience itself when entered into polythetically (but see Needleman, 1980:32-33). Like reading poetry or performing music, Schutz suggests, such activities are part of sharing time with others, even those not present.

And for Schutz, motivations can be important. They are an aspect of the experience, through which the experience is interpreted. Despite his reputation as "as the great ethnographer of the head world" (Smith, 1973), however, Schutz does not think that interpretation is all. Interpretation -- like typification -- is a monothetic process. It occurs after the experience is over.

Both Schutz and Csikszentmihalyi give us an appreciation for the experience itself. Intrinsically rewarding says Csikszentmihalyi. Schutz agrees. But that is not what Schutz finds most interesting. He believed that the ability to "tune-in" is a basic social process, an indispensible condition of sharing meaning prior to verbal communication. Ex- periences of the vivid present need not be "purposeful" to be social. But they are sociologically interesting because of the purposes to which they are put. Schutz speculates that they are necessary for construction of more familiar meanings tied to our everyday reality of concepts and expressions.

One place where these conceptual tools can help us is in understanding the interplay between tradition and particular experience in ritual. Healing rituals, for example, do produce something like flow experiences for those participating in them. Many people initially attend because they want healing of specific physical ailments. As they participate in the activity the importance of a specific physical healing recedes, and perhaps like Csikszentmihalyi's surgeons, they come to enjoy the activity itself. A researcher could use Csikszentmihalyi's categories to attempt to specify how that flow experience is produced, looking at "selflessness," "limitation of sensory input," and "challenge" in the context of the ritual.

Yet such an analysis of the experience of participating in a healing ritual would be incomplete. The healer, the receiver, and the audience are extraordinarily aware of each other and the power that passes between them. In many cases all present become "healers," and all are "healed" as they participate in a shared "vivid present." Incor- porating Schutz's notion of the tuning-in relationship helps to capture what it is that is experienced in religious rituals. Bringing the concepts of flow experience and the tuning-in relationship to bear on healing rituals enriches our understanding of such basic questions as why it is that healing rituals can be judged effective when there is no immediate evidence that a claimed healing has taken place.

2~ everyone who offered comments on previous drafts of this paper had his or her own favorite applications of the perspective to offer.




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Our intention is not to develop a sociology of pure experience. For us, experiences of transcendence ore important because they ore a groundwork for religions. Under- standing their sociality lays the basis for Geertz's first and second tasks mentioned in our introduction: the analysis of the system of meanings embodied in the symbols that make up the religion and the relating of these systems to social structural and psychological processes.

The sociology of religion needs tools that allow it to understand what people experience and how they themselves understand that experience; then we can look for the consequences of religion. For us, the clear but limited depiction of flow in Csikszent- mihalyi, and Schutz's more subtle but social notion of tuning-in, ore two analytic tools for the task.

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