No doubt religion means much or little according to the stage of development that has been reached, but, in its earliest as in its latest form. The whole being of the religious man is filled with the divine as it appears to him, and therefore in religion he feels that he is in perfect unity with himself and the deeper nature of the universe. The possibility of religion is bound up with the essential nature of man as a rational and spiritual being, and rationality or spirituality presupposes as its primary condition the consciousness of a unity, which embraces all distinctions of the world and the self. Now, when man, as a rational subject, finds, or believes that he finds, the world to be a cosmos and human life intelligible, and refers both object and subject to a supreme principle, he adopts the attitude of religion. Thus religion is not one sphere alongside of

These theories have been much debated by others and have shift is evident in the evaluation of religious experiences to a much more philosophical analysis of mysticism and a pluralistic approach to the different mystical phenomena in the world's various religion's.

So to sum things up, the term religion is from the Latin religare which is “to bind fast”, usually the term refers to an institution with a recognized body of communicants who gather together regularly for some form of worship, and at the same time accept a series of doctrines offering some means of relating the individual to what is taken to be the ultimate nature of reality. The history of religion is coterminous with the history of mankind. It started with its roots in animism and sympathetic magic; the high religions have passed through many stages of development. Take Greek religion it marks an interesting, transitional stage on the way to high religion. The major religions of the world include Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism. Of course within these religions there are sub-divisions. Kant interpreted religion in moral terms, restricting its scope to that of reason alone. Herder was one of the first to find religion to being intimately related to myth and poetry. Whereby for Hegel religion was a substitute for philosophy but, among religions, Christianity is the absolute truth in pictorial form. Schleiermacher on the other hand, he related religion to that of the feeling of dependence. Ritschl and Troeltsch regarded religion as having autonomy beyond the power of reason to affect. In fact, the approach they took in reference to religion for example that of Christianity, was historical; however their view of Christianity emerges from history as an absolute. Durkheim viewed religion naturalistically, holding its function to be the creation and maintenance of social solidarity. Paul Tillich interpreted God as the ground of being and religion as that of being man’s ultimate concern.

Examples of mystical experience can be found throughout the world's religions. For most people mystical experience is only indirectly accessible through mystical literature, which exists, in many different genres. Common to them is the insistence on an experience of fundamental unity or oneness transcending the diversity of everyday life. Some maintain that mysticism is the 'heart' of all religion, which is similar to spirituality, and the key to a unity of all religions. Many religions prescribe techniques of contemplation and meditation, and a variety of spiritual disciplines and aesthetic practices as a means to reach spiritual experience. Mystics maintain that their experience is fairly indescribable, yet this claim does not preclude the deceivability of such experiences to which the mystical literature in all religions bears witness.

In this essay I have examined the meaning of religion and what in fact religion entails, it encompasses a whole variety of fields and in the end it is what man makes of it and he decided to incorporate it in everyday life.

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