Spiritual Experiences

[Curious George]

People have spiritual experiences. These experiences can vary in form. These experiences can also vary in how they are induced. Some come from groups; some come from music; some come from drugs; some come from trauma; some come from meditation; some come from isolation; and some are even spontaneous. While the substance of these experiences are questionable, the existence of these experiences is often accepted. What I am wondering is:

A) Have you had one or more spiritual experience(s)?

B) what was/were the experience(s)?

C) how was/were the experience(s) induced?

D) Are particular people more apt to such experiences? If so, what commonalities do such people share?

 

[Sunstone]

Since this thread is posted in debates, I'm curious what you want to debate?

 

[Curious George]

Since this thread is posted in debates, I'm curious what you want to debate?

Feel free to move it. I am just rarely opposed to the option. Theoretically some people might want to assert x people are more prone to spiritual experiences and others might want to suggest x people are not prone to such experiences.

 

[Sunstone]

Feel free to move it. I am just rarely opposed to the option. Theoretically some people might want to assert x people are more prone to spiritual experiences and others might want to suggest x people are not prone to such experiences.

Let's leave it for now and see if any debates develop.

 

[David T]

Personally I will frame it as playing music.
A) Have you had one or more spiritual experience(s)?

It's not an isolated moment.

B) what was/were the experience(s)?
Like many other participation experiences.


C) how was/were the experience(s) induced?
Events and occurrences leading up to it.


D) Are particular people more apt to such experiences? If so, whatcommonalities do such people share?
It appears that neurology plays a role. But like a band different people playing different instruments.

 

[Sunstone]

Almost all of my experiences were apparently spontaneous in the sense there was no discernible or plausible cause to them.

 

[Curious George]

Personally I will frame it as playing music.
A) Have you had one or more spiritual experience(s)?

It's not an isolated moment.

B) what was/were the experience(s)?
Like many other participation experiences.


C) how was/were the experience(s) induced?
Events and occurrences leading up to it.


D) Are particular people more apt to such experiences? If so, whatcommonalities do such people share?
It appears that neurology plays a role. But like a band different people playing different instruments.

Just to be clear are we talking about an experience you felt while playing music? I have known many people that have told me they have had spiritual type experiences when they were either playing a show or even practicing. I have known others that have had connected type experiences while using a mdma and dancing at raves. Or are you using playing music as a metaphor for the experience?

Do you have any speculation on how neurology plays a role? (Keeping in mind right handed people do have these types of experiences as well.)

 

[Curious George]

Almost all of my experiences were apparently spontaneous in the sense there was no discernible or plausible cause to them.

Really? I would have pegged you for one of the people that had multiple experiences from music, meditation, group involvement and substance use if nothing else.

 

[David T]

Just to be clear are we talking about an experience you felt while playing music? I have known many people that have told me they have had spiritual type experiences when they were either playing a show or even practicing. I have known others that have had connected type experiences while using a mdma and dancing at raves. Or are you using playing music as a metaphor for the experience?

Do you have any speculation on how neurology plays a role? (Keeping in mind right handed people do have these types of experiences as well.)

I don't separate them really and yes music as metaphor as well. Music is old very old much older than writing.

Right handed people do have religious experiences? I don't believe it. Lol.

We experience and we then interpret them extremely fast so fast we do not realize it. Slowing that part down is really really hard and takes lots of work. But now the conversation is beyond simple forum conversation. At least for me.

 

[Jumi]

People have spiritual experiences. These experiences can vary in form. These experiences can also vary in how they are induced. Some come from groups; some come from music; some come from drugs; some come from trauma; some come from meditation; some come from isolation; and some are even spontaneous. While the substance of these experiences are questionable, the existence of these experiences is often accepted. What I am wondering is:

First I think we need a definition of spiritual experience I think. My own division is spiritual/religious experiences and mystical experiences, where spiritual is the mundane and mystic the more profound.

A) Have you had one or more spiritual experience(s)?

Lost count of spiritual ones. Mystical ones much less.

B) what was/were the experience(s)?

Too many to list. My favorite ones deal with stepping into the stream.

C) how was/were the experience(s) induced?

Mystical ones, by and large by nothing. Spiritual ones by music, intense pain, art, nature, being around pets, meditation, watching the stars... things most people can appreciate I think.

Alcohol and such tend to inhibit having the mystical experiences. Same with anger, hate, political debates...

D) Are particular people more apt to such experiences? If so, what commonalities do such people share?

For spiritual experiences, I'd guess almost everyone has them since the womb. If you choose a boring life being numb to everything, you probably won't have many of them.

For mystical ones... Yes, some people have them, some don't or lose memory of them. I'd guess most have some type of philosophical attitude. Most have God, some don't, but it's more of a preference what we call it. There's plenty of tolerance to different views. I'd think those of us who do have them think they're important to us.

 

[Muffled]

People have spiritual experiences. These experiences can vary in form. These experiences can also vary in how they are induced. Some come from groups; some come from music; some come from drugs; some come from trauma; some come from meditation; some come from isolation; and some are even spontaneous. While the substance of these experiences are questionable, the existence of these experiences is often accepted. What I am wondering is:

A) Have you had one or more spiritual experience(s)?

B) what was/were the experience(s)?

C) how was/were the experience(s) induced?

D) Are particular people more apt to such experiences? If so, what commonalities do such people share?

A. I believe more that one.

B. I believe many with God. One with a demon. Many with my own spirit.

C. I believe I had a need.

D. I believe child like faith helps. With God a godly education helps. The demon came with the movie "Exorcist." My own spirit came with meditation.

 

[Muffled]

Personally I will frame it as playing music.
A) Have you had one or more spiritual experience(s)?

It's not an isolated moment.

B) what was/were the experience(s)?
Like many other participation experiences.


C) how was/were the experience(s) induced?
Events and occurrences leading up to it.


D) Are particular people more apt to such experiences? If so, whatcommonalities do such people share?
It appears that neurology plays a role. But like a band different people playing different instruments.

I believe that is not spirit but emotion and some people confuse the two because a spiritual experience can be emotional. However not all emotional experiences are spiritual.

 

[Muffled]

Almost all of my experiences were apparently spontaneous in the sense there was no discernible or plausible cause to them.

I believe that raises the question s to how you came to believe they were spiritual and not just something generated by mind or emotion.

 

[Sunstone]

Really? I would have pegged you for one of the people that had multiple experiences from music, meditation, group involvement and substance use if nothing else.

Nope. Almost all of them were spontaneous. The one sole exception was substance induced, but I scarcely think of it as a spiritual experience, if only for that reason alone. I've always considered it in a category by itself. More of a hallucination or delusion than a spiritual experience -- at least to me.

Another one did have precursors, and in that respect, it was unusual. Strange feelings that I hadn't experienced before, and simply could not identify, on and off for about a week prior to the event. But I don't know that those feelings were causal.

As for meditation induced experiences, I guess some would call them spiritual, but they pale so much in comparison to the spontaneous experiences that I hesitate to think of them as in the same pea pod. That's not to say some of the meditations weren't illuminating.

 

[sayak83]

People have spiritual experiences. These experiences can vary in form. These experiences can also vary in how they are induced. Some come from groups; some come from music; some come from drugs; some come from trauma; some come from meditation; some come from isolation; and some are even spontaneous. While the substance of these experiences are questionable, the existence of these experiences is often accepted. What I am wondering is:

A) Have you had one or more spiritual experience(s)?

B) what was/were the experience(s)?

C) how was/were the experience(s) induced?

D) Are particular people more apt to such experiences? If so, what commonalities do such people share?

The post I made earlier may be relevant.
If You Were Asked to Write a Spiritual Autobiography of Your Life...

 

[Sunstone]

I believe that raises the question s to how you came to believe they were spiritual and not just something generated by mind or emotion.

I interpreted the OP to be referring to what I call "mystical" experiences, rather than what I call "spiritual" experiences. To me, a spiritual experience is any experience that in one way or another influences the manner and extent to which a person deals with or manages their psychological self, or "ego". I think I'm like most people in that I've had too many of those experiences to count, let alone recall all of them.

Mystical experiences can also influence how we deal with our psychological selves, but that is not what -- to me -- defines them. What defines them, more than anything else, is that they cannot be rationally explained in terms of any current body of inter-subjectively verifiable knowledge. About the best you can do is accept that they happened, accept that they have no known explanation, and try, if you can, to forget them. Forget them, because I think it can easily become a spiritual liability to make too big of a deal out of them.

 

[David T]

I believe that is not spirit but emotion and some people confuse the two because a spiritual experience can be emotional. However not all emotional experiences are spiritual.

I wish you were right. When the unconscious becomes conscious that is to experience something far older deeper and omnipotent to the beginning.of time. And it's older than that because time does not define it. Buddha actually expresses it well his failure to become enlightened nearly kills him, and in the moment of not trying giving up his finger touches the earth and he becomes grounded and cascades off not to unconscious as he becomes directly aware of it . A mystic swims a madman drowns in that.

I understand more than I care to actually!

 

[sun rise]

A) Have you had one or more spiritual experience(s)?

Yes

B) what was/were the experience(s)?

I think this is best answered by an image I used in another thread. My sense was moving closer to "what we are" away from "what we think":

C) how was/were the experience(s) induced?

This excerpt from a song, Change Can Come, expresses this very well indeed:

Change can come in the twinkling of an eye,
In the ripple upon a lake.
Change can come in the color of a flower,
In the sparkle of morning dew,
When the Light catches you.
In that tiny moment, you are transformed.

D) Are particular people more apt to such experiences? If so, what commonalities do such people share?

The inner readiness for such experiences is not something I know anything about. I do know people who were totally astonished when they had a profound experience because they had ignored religion and spirituality all their lives up to that point. I've read about atheists who had spiritual experiences. So to me it's not a matter of belief or intellectual knowledge but something else.

 

[Sunstone]

I believe that raises the question s to how you came to believe they were spiritual and not just something generated by mind or emotion.

I'm not sure how that's more than a technically interesting question. If it could be shown, for instance, that there was at root nothing more to love than the neural wiring of our brains in combination with various chemical transmitters, would that make our subjective experience of certain kinds of love as "rebirths" or "life changing events" any less so?

If you have, say, "a mystical experience" that you interpret as "being of god", and that experience proves to be life-enhancing, life-renewing, life-changing in positive ways, then who but a born philosopher really cares about whether or not the experience was "genuinely of god"? That's a bit like killing the goose that laid the golden egg to see where the egg came from, isn't it?

I knew someone who had a mystical experience and never even after 40 years figured out whether it was or wasn't "genuine" in the sense of somehow originating with something supernatural Yet, according to her, the experience taught her to love wholly and freely and without strings. Should she "demand a refund on it" because she never figured out the source?

 

[Jumi]

I think I agree with @Sunstone here when I say spiritual experiences tend to have the same feel as emotions. I'm not sure about mystical ones... well emotions can come as a by-product, or maybe later.