Analysis of the Descriptive Function of Religion and Myth

Ntroduction. One of the most important functions of textual expression of human states in spiritual culture acts is the formalization, description of the experience gained. The study of religious experience correlates this experience with a certain tradition of confessional interpretation, which inevitably limits the description of the entire range of spiritual experiences and needs. The article offers a description of religious experience outside the religious context; for this purpose, it is correlated with a deeper level of spiritual experience related to mythological consciousness. Content. The author believes that a strict scientific description of religious experience is impossible - scientific experiment and mental experience are different in nature and cannot be reduced to one another. However, a hermeneutical way of interpreting the experience of human interaction with culture and the linguistic design of this experience is possible. The term “religious” in relation to experience requires expansion and clarification, the problem is that what is verbalized within a religious tradition is called religious. The question is, what are the characteristics of a religious experience outside a religious context? It is proposed to differentiate two ideal types of experience description - the religious type and the mythological type. Religion is a person's attitude to the supernatural; myth is dialectical and contains something fundamentally hidden, but expressed in something external, obvious. Classical studies of the mythological level of consciousness consider myth as a necessary element of culture, not only independent, but also inherent in other forms of describing the world (religion, art). A myth is a basic narrative, a structure of consciousness that forms a conceptual apparatus that goes beyond the limits of the mythological narrative itself. For example, sacred texts of new religious movements may contain elements of myth that claim to build a new worldview at the level of linguistic structure. Conclusions. When analyzing religious texts, it is necessary to separate the level of myth (the basic story of being) and the level of religion (the apologetics of professed truth). The nature of the sacred in religious and mythological dimensions can be different and depends on which cognitive need the sacred text addresses. The need for a religious description of spiritual experience corresponds to the level of judgments about the truth, or a socio-psychological need. The need for a mythological description of the experience experienced correlates with a deeper structural need for the verbalization of the “other”, “beyond”.