Spiritual activity experience or metaphor? (funeral, coffin, choices, choice)

[BalanceFx]

Originally Posted by stephenw

Hi Bishadi,
I was at my aunts funeral and I experienced it, she had been baptised in the font that was right beside her coffin, so had many of my relations, that really struck me. This, this spirituality is real. After the funeral service we went to the graveyard, many of my relations and ancestors are buried there, it just became apparent to me that while I may well spend the rest of my life trying to rationalise the feeling that came to me, to do so (i.e. rationalise it) may well be beyond me. That does not take away from the authenticity of the experience. Spirituality is experience that it may or may not be possible for me to rationalise, I was approaching it the wrong way around.
I wasn't looking to find peace but this experience has given it to me.

Personally, espcially at a time of extreme emotional anguish, I would not accept anything I was feeling as spirituality and leave it at that.

I would want to find out what it is. I have almost died once and been in a coma before. I have been to about 10 funerals in my lifetime and was bedside when my step father died. I have never felt a profound sense of anything other then what one would expect. If anything ever happened to me that I would personally consider to be supernatural then it would be come my life long goal to discover what it was. It would be my drive and focus to uncover it. My curouisity and stubborness would never allow me to do otherwise.

I would suspect neuroscience would hold the answer. Some may say psychology or hypnosis but my bets on neuroscience. hehe.

[stephenw]

Originally Posted by BalanceFx

I would suspect neuroscience would hold the answer. Some may say psychology or hypnosis but my bets on neuroscience. hehe.

Neuroscience is fascinating but I am convinced the idea that mind = brain is flawed.

[Runt]

There is no such thing as an unmediated experience. By that, I (well, actually Katz or King, the author who originally stated it) mean that any and all sensory (or in the case of a mystical experience, supersensory) input is immediately incorporated by an individual into various culturally-constructed schemas about "how the world works". Therefore the interpretation of sensory or supersensory data is part of the experience, and generally speaking, these interpretations generally serve to reinforce, rather than challenge or reconstruct---an already-held paradigm.

So what then is a mystical experience? It is the interpretation of sensory or supersensory data by an individual inbedded in a particular cultural context. In that way, then, mystical experiences are symbolic representations not of reality, but rather are symbols of symbols of reality, in that they are symbols of particular paradigms to which mystics belong. A specific piece of sensory or supersensory datum which helps generate the experience, on the other hand, is a phenomenon, not symbol...

[Guitar's Cry]

Originally Posted by Willamena

It wouldn't be illogical if "the greatest reality" was equated with "God".

Or if "spiritual" were equated with "greatest reality."