This article examines the psychological regression that takes place in religious experience and demonstrates how that regression does not have to be pathological, but instead can be reparative. First, the article investigates the regressive nature of the three stages of religious experience, from the loss of ego strengths (purgation) to the recovery of archaic unconscious processes (illumination) and finally to the restoration of symbiosis (unity). By then comparing these stages of religious experience to the stages of creativity, the role of regression in religious experience is highlighted. Hence, the religious individual's disciplined purgation of self can be similar to the artist's disciplined attempt to pierce the superficial self, with both resulting in the recovery of repressed primary processes that lead to illumination in religious experience and to inspiration in art.