Albert Einstein
Religion and Science1930
There is a third level of religious experience, even if it is seldom found in a pure form. I will call it the cosmic religious sense. This is hard to make clear to those who do not experience it, since it does not involve an anthropomorphic idea of God; the individual feels the vanity of human desires and aims, and the nobility and marvelous order which are revealed in nature and in the world of thought. He feels the individual destiny as an imprisonment and seeks to experience the totality of existence as a unity full of significance.
Reference
Albert Einstein (1949) The World as I See It, Philosophical Library, New York, 1949, pp. 24 – 28.
First published as an article in the New York Times Magazine on November 9, 1930 pp 1-4.