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A key pillar of modern morality is the sanctity of romantic love. We reel in horror at the thought of “backward” societies, including our ancestors’, who arrange marriages without intense emotional romantic love. While they think it nice if arranged partners have such romantic feelings, if that does not happen such partners are not to look for love elsewhere. They think a life without romantic love can be a fine life.
An intense emotional religious conversion is not the same as an intense emotional romantic love, and one is not a substitute for the other. But the two have much in common. In fact, one could argue that someone who has lived a life without ever experiencing an intense religious conversion is nearly as emotionally impoverished as someone who had never experienced an intense romantic love.
Yet our modern sensibility does not reel in horror at the thought of a life lived without an intense religious conversion. In fact, among our cultural elites religious feelings are seen as embarrassing, and low status; they think lives are usually better without such conversions. Why?
Yes, religious conversion can lead to false and destructive beliefs. But then so can romantic love; it is not at all clear which one is worse by that measure. An obvious if shallow explanation: in our society religion is low status, while romantic love is high status. Perhaps either a life without romantic love isn’t nearly as bad as we think, or a life without religious conversion is much worse than we think.
Love Vs. Conversion
Personally I view love on completely equal footing with lust - a sin that should be discouraged but cannot be completely stamped out (and one who claims to have stamped it out entirely should have an eye kept on them for mental instability).
My parents are not big lovers and neither am I; I do not expect to experience romantic infatuation in my lifetime. As my mother described it (excuse the paraphrase; it's not like I recorded her):
I had been on lots of dates and I was never so totally comfortable being with anyone as I was with him. And I decided there in the car [as he drove] that I would be totally comfortable spending the rest of my life with him.Not very romantic; but perhaps that's what romance is in the relative absence of baser and short-term-oriented human tendencies.
I think this is the most sustained comment thread I have ever read that, despite some strong differences of opinion, has remained both civil and on topic throughout. Amazing given that religion is one of the taboo topics! That said, like Reasoner above, the most important single experience of my life comes from meditation. While my experience of Romantic love was intensely emotional, I have to report that meditation lead to a changed inner experience of energy within my body - what is generally referred to as Kundilini experience. It is probably a different species of religious experience than a highly emotional conversion experience. It really was not at all emotional, and it has continued to be present for a year waxing and waning at times unlike the brief experiences of spiritual wonder that I would call satori - experiences that I also have had. So I would speculate that emotional religious conversion does have some features in common with falling head over heels in love, but that there are also kinds of mystical experiences that are not primarily emotional and have little in common with the experience of romantic love. This post makes me want to reread James The Varieties of Religious experience. I am also strongly reminded of the tradition of falling in love with the Shake in Sufism or Guru in Eastern traditions. Personally, I think living in a scientific age allows me to question my experience and hold it to a higher standard and not fall into mistaking my personal experience for universal truth while still respecting my own experience and giving credit to those who think me delusional.