WHAT IS A SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE?
What exactly is a spiritual experience?
A spiritual experience can only properly be assessed by its intensity, which is to say by the intensity of its after-effect on the experiencer.
Attempting to analyze the circumstances of the event in an effort to decide whether it was spiritual or not is a waste of time, for some quite external cause, such as certain drugs or an illness may have been behind it.
Some will want to know whether the experience was an hallucination, but it is better to ask what the experience has left one with, now that it is over. A true spiritual experience, even one that is not particularly intense, must at least slightly affect the experiencer for the rest of his life.
The highest spiritual experiences can only be known in "samadhi." Samadhi is quite unlike the other states of consciousness--waking, dreaming, and dreamless sleep--for it is really a kind of superconsciousness. In samadhi, a person knows his absolute identity with the Atman, who he really is.
A spiritual experience can only properly be assessed by its intensity, which is to say by the intensity of its after-effect on the experiencer.
Attempting to analyze the circumstances of the event in an effort to decide whether it was spiritual or not is a waste of time, for some quite external cause, such as certain drugs or an illness may have been behind it.
Some will want to know whether the experience was an hallucination, but it is better to ask what the experience has left one with, now that it is over. A true spiritual experience, even one that is not particularly intense, must at least slightly affect the experiencer for the rest of his life.
The highest spiritual experiences can only be known in "samadhi." Samadhi is quite unlike the other states of consciousness--waking, dreaming, and dreamless sleep--for it is really a kind of superconsciousness. In samadhi, a person knows his absolute identity with the Atman, who he really is.
posted by Donald L. Simons at
12:46 PM
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