Transsubjectivity of prayer experience (S. Bulgakov and I. Ilyin)

There are different approaches to the interpretation of religious experience. Some philosophers speak about its subjectivity, its dependence on emotions and excitement of a believer. That is why the prayer, in this sense, is reduced to a state of mind, meditation. Russian philosophy understands experience of prayer as transsubjectivity. In this paper we try to analyze this approach examining the works of S. Bulgakov and I. Ilyin who studied the problems of religious experience, the method of achieving the knowledge of God, and the prayer was of great importance for this study. Russian religious philosophy tried to understand the problems of religious experience from the philosophical position. Russian thinkers considered that the task of philosophy is to develop a theory of the world as a whole. This theory is based on the diversity of experience that is the intellectual knowledge, moral, aesthetic experience and especially the mystical religious experience, which, in turn, establishes a relationship with God. The purpose of the paper is an attempt to analyze the prayer as a part of religious knowledge from S. Bulgakov's and I. Ilyin's points of view. S. Bulgakov considered this problem as the connection of prayer with the Absolute. He defines the religious as a pair of correlative terms ''transcendent immanent''. The crucial point is the meeting with God, the human spirit, the contact of the transcendent and the immanent, the act of faith. S. Bulgakov says that faith is as objective as cognition. I. Ilyin also speaks about the direct contact with God. Such a contact is not a psychological, illusory state, but an objective one. S. Bulgakov and I. Ilyin mentioned that a specific method is required and I. Ilyin called it a religious method. It is neither the study of religion, nor an abstract system of concepts and standards of judgment, but a specific spiritual human effort. So, we see that the study of prayer by S. Bulgakov and I. Ilyin as the direct contact with God gives an opportunity to consider the prayer as a method to approach God as it suggests wholeness, depth and transsubjectivity of religious experience. Such an approach is the feature of Russian religious philosophy. The idea of religious method and transsubjectivity is connected with the essence of religion.

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