As human beings we all have a potential window into the spiritual experience, but our ability to access the divine will be impeded if we are full of doubts.

The philosopher and Harvard Professor William James wrote about the commonality of spiritual experience in his 1902 book “The Varieties of Religious Experience.” There he attempted to write about religious experience objectively by avoiding theology and doctrinal religion.

He states that religious experience is outside of normal conscious experience:

“It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded.”

He writes about some of the characteristics of the mystical experience, two of which are:

Ineffability –

“…it defies expression, no adequate report of its contents can be given in words. It follows from this that its quality must be directly experienced; it cannot be imparted or transferred to others. In this peculiarity mystical states are more like states of feeling than like states of intellect. No one can make clear to another who has never had a certain feeling, in what the quality or worth of it consists. One must have musical ears to know the value of a symphony; one must have been in love one’s self to understand a lover’s state of mind. Lacking the heart or ear, we cannot interpret the musician or the lover justly, and are even likely to consider him weak-minded or absurd. The mystic finds that most of us accord to his experiences an equally incompetent treatment.”

Noetic quality –

“Although so similar to states of feeling, mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge. They are states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain; and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority for after-time.”

James also states that the spiritual experience carries with it a sense of coherent understanding:

“Looking back on my own experiences, they all converge towards a kind of insight to which I cannot help ascribing some metaphysical significance. The keynote of it is invariably a reconciliation. It is as if the opposites of the world, whose contradictoriness and conflict make all our difficulties and troubles, were melted into unity.”

The spiritual experience is a window to another dimension that is not saddled with the constraints of time and space. It has a numinous quality, allowing the experiencer to come face to face with the singular and all-encompassing and timeless Truth and Wisdom. The experience feels more real than ordinary reality, and therefore leaves a footprint of upmost significance. Further, the illumination of a spiritual experience lives within the experiencer for the rest of her life undiminished, and remains a constant source of joy and guidance.