Applying Michel Henry's philosophical framework to the phenomenological analysis of religious experience, the author introduces a concept of material introspection and a new theory of the constitution of religious experience in phenomenologically material interiority. As opposed to ordinary mental self-scrutiny, material introspection happens when the usual outgoing attention is reverted onto embodied self-awareness in search of mystical self-knowledge or union with God. Such reversal posits the internal field of consciousness with the self-disclosure of phenomenological materiality. As shown by the example of Vedantic self-inquiry, material introspection is conditioned on the attitude 'I "see" myself' and employs reductions which relieve phenomenological materiality from the structuring influence of intentionality; the telos of material introspection is expressed by the inward self-transcendence of intentional consciousness into purified phenomenological materiality. Experience in material introspection is constituted by the self-affection and self-luminosity of phenomenological materiality; experience is recognized as religious due to such essential properties as the capacity of being selffulfilled, and specific qualitative "what it's like"(s). Drawing on more than 5000 live accounts of internal religious experience, it is shown that introspective attention can have different trajectories, producing, within a temporal extension of material introspection, different spatial modifications of embodied selfawareness and a variety of corresponding religious experiences.Keywords: phenomenology, comparative philosophy of religion, religious experience, introspection, subjectivity, embodiment, self-awareness, intentionality, Michel Henry, self-inquiry, Vedanta, Christian mysticism "We are invited … to give a new meaning to the concept of 'interior life' ".M. Henry1In The Essence of Manifestation, Henry argues that appearances are a self-manifestation of Life. Insofar as Life is the metaphysical Absolute, all experience can be regarded as religious experience. However, most people distinguish religious experience from ordinary experience. Many have stated that religious experience is internal experience or even experience happening in introspection2. Consequently, in order 1 Henry, The Essence, 45. 2 For connections between introspection and religious experience, see Crowe, Theology, 124-143. For more on religious experience and inwardness, see Flood, The Truth. Flood uses the term "inwardness" whereas Crowe uses "introspection"; neither of them explains their choice of the term. In this paper, the author chooses to use the term "introspection" as is more commonly used in philosophical investigations. For more on interiority and the formation of religious sense, see Ales Bello, "The Divine", 65.