Drees examines a science-inspired naturalism that endorses a fully naturalistic view of reality, but does not exclude religious experience as a category of human experience. He considers some exceptional experiences that apparently conflict with natural events and experiences that coincide with affective responses, such as awe and wonder, proposing that the relevant exceptional experiences and affective experiences are explainable, at least in principle, within a naturalistic purview.

Wettstein examines religious experience from the ancient Jewish perspective of the book of Job, in particular its whirlwind passage where Job is left not with a full explanation of God's ways but instead with a poetic illumination of meaning. Job receives a vision from God that can free him from his own suffering by redirecting him to some joy-enhancing features of the world that also bears crushing evil unexplained by humans.

Webb considers that religious experience typically occurs in the setting of a religion as a social institution, and that the subjects of such an experience typically participate in rituals and ceremonies with other people who share some of their beliefs and convictions. He proposes that this social-embedding of religious experiences is significant with regard to their being understood and evaluated, including in connection with their contribution to the meaning of human life.

Clooney focus on Ramanuja on religious experience as based in the contemplation of Hindu scripture, in tradition, and in ritual practice, and as offering a vision of the divine and of union of the human self with the divine. He suggests that Ramanuja’s work provides an “integrated Vedanta” that supplies the cognitive and affective components for one to move toward an intense spiritual existence in life.

Taves examines some approaches from the psychology of religion to religious experience, focusing on the psychology of religion as represented by researchers associated with the International Association for the Psychology of Religion and the American Psychological Association’s Division 36. She suggests that psychology of religion can treat its subject matter of religious experience as an object in its own right or as something related to another important state, such as depression.

The Introduction identifies some important questions about religious experience, and it considers Tolstoy's position that relates religious experience to the meaning of human life. It also comments on the relation between religious experience and evidence for God's existence and on the bearing of science on religious experience. In addition, it looks at the bearing of religious disagreement on religious experience. Finally, the Introduction offers summaries of the book's chapters.

Burton highlights the complexity of Buddhist attitudes to religious experience, thus challenging a western overemphasis on the role of personal experience and subjective factors in Buddhist religious experience, to the neglect of such social factors as rituals and scriptural components. He considers whether the Buddhist doctrine of no enduring, unchanging self can be justified by introspective experience, and he observes that this is a matter of controversy among Buddhist scholars.

Bowie focuses on some experiences that are self-described or described by others as being “religious,” in order to explore what qualifies an experience to be extraordinary and miraculous. She uses two case studies to illustrate the role experience plays in extraordinary and miraculous events and the relation they have to mystical experience, one involving a near-death experience and the other involving apparitions of Mary.

Peterson focuses on some theoretical and practical matters regarding the experience of evil and suffering in Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism, with attention to their providing resources for responding to evil and suffering. Noting that different interpretive categories produce different directives for responding, he finds that the responses across religious traditions are significant for engaging with human experience while increasing awareness of our shared humanity.

Chittick focuses on Sufism or “Islamic mysticism” as a prominent influence in Islamic history regarding religious experience, noting that its mystical emphasis among Muslims traces back to Mohammad and the Qur’an.He finds that according to the Sufi literature of Ibn Arabi, a soul must be prepared for mystical experience to reap its benefits and to avoid the mistaken assumption that it removes one from the obligation to follow the teachings of the Qur’an.

Focusing on Confucianism and Daoism, Yao suggests that religious experience in these Chinese traditions falls into two broad categories: the human-centered and the transcendent-centered. Even so, he finds that the traditions agree in their tending to include an ultimate concern about human life and human destiny reflected in personal, familiar, and social matters, and that they typically associate their religious experiences with practices that, via self-cultivation, nourish a good human life.