It is not a ritual that one performs in a social sense. It eludes the grasp of intellectual analysis. It is something which consists purely in experience, and hence it cannot be explained in empirical terms. Religion is the highest experience possible in man, the plumbing into the depths of one s own soul, in which act one comes in contact with the very essence of the cosmos, because this Deity that is mentioned, the nisus as Alexander calls it, or the urge which is spiritual, that is, the uniform impulse present in all things in the universe, the call of the Infinite, is the deepest essence of anything. When man plumbs into the depths of his own being, he spontaneously comes in contact with the roots of all things.
Religious experience is tantamount to cosmic experience in a very important way.
It is not an exhilaration that one privately feels within oneself. Religion is not an emotion. Nor is it a psychic phenomenon. It is impossible to describe it in available expressions. It surpasses the limitations not only of language, but also of the rules and regulations of society and the traditions of behavioural norms.