I came across this very interesting perspective on \u201cspiritual experiences\u201d while reading Christopher Isherwood\u2019s book called, \u201cRamakrishna and his Disciples.\u201d I have often wondered what makes an experience \u2018spiritual.\u2019 What is that special quality that can suddenly change even an ordinary experience into something deep and meaningful? Whether we are all capable of experiencing something more True and Real than our everyday existence? Isherwood in a very succinct manner talks about the nature of spiritual experiences. He says,
\n\u201cThese two factors \u2013 the personal nature of experience and its measurement by intensity \u2013 are most significant when we come to consider the kind of experience called spiritual.
\nIf someone tells me about an experience he has had in the world of ordinary sense-perception, I shall usually be able to decide whether he is speaking the truth or lying. I can do this because I can almost always relate the experience he describes to similar experiences of my own. And so his experience is of value to me. But if someone tells me about an experience in the spiritual world I shall probably be in doubt, because I have no similar experiences to which I can relate his. Unless, for other reasons, I have become convinced that this person will never lie to me, his experience will therefore be of no value to me. [\u2026]
\nSo \u2013 a little spiritual experience of your own is of more value to you than all the recorded experiences of the greatest saints. And, indeed, without that minimum of personal experience, you cannot possibly begin to guess at the magnitude of theirs.
\nA spiritual experience can only be judged by its intensity; the intensity, that is, of its after-effect on the experiencer. It is no use trying to decide whether or not a certain experience was spiritual by analysing its circumstances; these may have been produced by some quite external cause, such as sickness or the use of certain drugs. One should not ask oneself \u2018was my experience an hallucination or not?\u2019 but rather \u2018what has my experience left with me, now that it is over?\u2019 A true spiritual experience, even one of lesser intensity, must at least slightly affect the experiencer for the rest of his life.\u201d (pp. 13-14)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I came across this very interesting perspective on \u201cspiritual experiences\u201d while reading Christopher Isherwood\u2019s book called, \u201cRamakrishna and his Disciples.\u201d I have often wondered what makes an experience \u2018spiritual.\u2019 What is that special quality that can suddenly change even an ordinary experience into something deep and meaningful? Whether we are all capable of experiencing something […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0},"categories":[11,7],"tags":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":920,"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544\/revisions\/920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}