Having identified the philosophical views of John Hick and Yoga as two models for talking about religious experience and spiritual experience respectively, an attempt has been undertaken in the present work to analyze these two concepts. After a comparative analysis, we provide a conceptual point of view not only to delineate these two concepts but also to understand them in relation to the common pursuit of spiritual realization.

A philosopher whose name has become almost synonymous with religious pluralism is John Hick. He justifies his position by borrowing insights and concepts from Immanuel Kant and Ludwig Wittgenstein. We argue that Kantian and Wittgensteinian frameworks are inadequate to explain and defend religious pluralism of the kind he advocates. We critically analyze the concepts of religious experience and religious language and then proceed to discuss Yoga school of Indian philosophy as a limiting case against his enterprise.