An introduction to religious and spiritual experience

Surprised 
by Joy
,
 
which makes it clear that many a convert is half-hearted or even 
unwilling to acknowledge the change of heart and mind, which eventually 
becomes unavoidable.
You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, 
feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the 
steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not 
to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the 
Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and 
knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant 
convert in all England.
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Regenerative Experiences
People of faith at times experience a deepening of their beliefs or an 
increase in depth of awareness. This happened to Joseph Estlin Carpenter,
 
who
 
was the founding Vice-Principal and from 1914 to 1919 Principal of 
Manchester College, Oxford. Brought up as a Unitarian, and with a belief 
in Darwinism as the mechanism of a more profound Divine creation, he 
had no ‘intellectual doubts’, but ‘no sense of personal relationship to God’ 
either. This religious apathy was changed by his experience, which he 
describes in a letter to a friend.
I went out one afternoon for a walk alone. . . . Suddenly I became 
conscious of the presence of someone else. I cannot describe it, but 
I felt that I had as direct a perception of the being of God all around 
me as I have of you when we are together. It was no longer a matter of 

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inference, it was an immediate act of spiritual (or whatever adjective 
you want to employ) apprehension. It came unsought, absolutely 
unexpectedly. . . . This experience did not last long. But it sufficed to 
change all my feeling. I had not found God because I had never looked 
for him. But he had found me; he had, I could not but believe, made 
himself personally known to me. . .. I could now not only believe in 
him with my mind, but love him with my heart. . .. This event has never 
happened to me again . . . it was not necessary. The sense of a direct 
relation to God then generated in my soul has become a part of my 
habitual thought and feeling.
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Healing
Healing is a way in which people experience help from beyond.
Just a brief line to tell you of my experience of the nearness of God. 
I had pains in my leg for a few days, and this particular night it was 
worse when I got to bed. After turning from side to side and not being 
able to get to sleep, I suddenly said, ‘Oh, God, 
make
my leg better’ and 
immediately I felt the pain being drawn out, and my leg was quite 
better. This made me realize how near God is to us and that he does 
answer prayer.
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Some people are able to heal through what feels like energy in their 
hands, with no need of medication or any physical techniques. They stress 
that they themselves are not responsible for this healing, but that they are 
merely serving as a conduit for a higher power. Those healed say that they 
felt the power or warmth or flow of energy, quite different from ordinary 
treatment:
I was working as a woman doctor in a remote mission hospital in West 
Africa at the time. For a variety of reasons, one other MO and I were 
temporarily the only doctors in a 160 bed hospital with a large outpa-
tient department.
The other doctor suddenly became acutely ill and had to be off duty 
for 10 days.
It looked an impossible situation but had to be faced. I prayed 
that I might somehow be made adequate. The thought came at once 
that, as it was manifestly impossible to examine the patients in the 
wards as one would normally do, at least I could touch each one with 
an unspoken prayer for healing. This I did, unobtrusively, in the guise 

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of feeling the pulse, made a snap diagnosis of the new patients and 
ordered treatments.
In the Outpatients department one of the sisters saw the old patients; 
I saw numerous new cases and dealt with emergency surgery. In this 
way we got through those 10 days without, as far as I was concerned, 
undue fatigue but with a real sense of peace.
That alone was remarkable, but what impressed me most was the 
extraordinary number of rapid and rather inexplicable recoveries that 
took place during those 10 days. It was so noticeable that the staff 
remarked upon it though no-one knew what was in my mind at the 
time. I had not myself expected it, rather the reverse, in view of the lack 
of normal medical procedures.
The experience was pin-pointed months after when one of the 
African nurses at the end of the morning round, asked me to go back 
and see one of my patients who was crying. When we asked her what 
was the matter, she said that she knew she would not get better because 
I had not ‘touched’ her. She said that people in her town who had 
recently been in the hospital had returned home ‘cured’ saying that it 
was because I ‘touched’ them.
This I know can be explained away easily, but there remains the fact 
that in normal examinations, such as I had already performed on the 
patient in question, I had certainly touched a good deal. I think I always 
had a basic prayerful longing for each patient’s recovery, but in the 
crisis described above there was obviously something else at work.
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This account traces the development of a capacity to heal:
Some years ago I spent a day receiving my first ‘attunement’ for Reiki 
healing. This involved spending a lot of time just sitting quietly, 
‘meditating’.
While in this state of mind, my grandmother (whom I had loved 
most dearly as a child) ‘came to’ me – that is, she suddenly came into 
my mind for no apparent reason, very strongly.
In the few days that followed the attunement I felt very different. 
Looking back on it I suppose I might call it ‘Love’ but what it felt like 
was more an absence of anything that would stop me loving, like worry, 
anger, anxiety, insecurity.
I was omnipotent and omniscient, but only in what mattered 
(I wouldn’t have attempted to jump off the roof, or known how to get 
to the moon, or how to get hold of a fortune.) And I never tested these 

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powers. I didn’t have to, I just ‘knew’. My self-confidence was confi-
dence not so much in myself, but in everything (in ‘God’ perhaps).
I no longer needed to worry about whether I was doing the right 
thing, doing right. There was no conflict between what I wanted to do 
and what was right to do. Being ‘good’ or ‘nice to others’ was not my 
loss, but my gain. This was a revelation. It felt wonderful; so easy, 
so perfect, so 
right
. (I was reminded of a beautiful experience, many 
years before, due to smoking dope, when a door was opened, and I saw 
a similar chink of light – but the effect was not as lasting or as strong, 
as real, as this time. I remember walking along the street, meeting a 
friend who said, ‘Hello, I’ve come to annoy you!’, and I said ‘you 
couldn’t possibly annoy me now. Nothing could annoy me right now.’ 
He grinned knowingly.)
I remember loving my houseplants, cyclamens, so that they also 
loved me. I felt a two-way love for our horse as well. I found it a lot 
easier to love people, too.
I think it might have been the first time I was really aware of love.
During the next days and weeks the door slowly closed again, (but 
not completely). During this time, for the first time in my life I think, 
I was aware that people came to me, liked being with me. On one par-
ticular day someone said ‘thanks for the vibe’, and another person said 
of me that day, that I was ‘bloody 
radiant
’.
The experience taught me about love, about being ‘open’, and how 
to see outside of myself – outside of my self. 
Healing: 
To do healing, I have to be open, calm, detached almost, non-emo-
tional (though I sometimes sigh involuntarily). A bit like meditating, 
my mind as clear as possible. 
It’s not me doing the healing – there is something that comes from 
somewhere else, and goes through me. It feels good. I have to be ‘clear’ 
for it to go through me.
I think that when it’s most successful, there is a feeling that all is 
well. That any pain or illness is not there, will not be there, or perhaps 
rather that it is in a different dimension or place and is not important. 
That all will be well, and all 
is
well. It is (obviously) very difficult to 
describe. A lightness and detached selflessness.
Sometimes I feel the person’s pain or ‘dis-ease’ in my hands or arms, 
as physical pain, but never as emotional pain.
I also do the healing for myself, as a kind of meditation, connection, 
tuning in. Sometimes I see a momentary deep blue flash of light or 
colour a little in front of my eyes (my eyes are closed, but I’m really 

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seeing it - it’s not ‘in my mind’s eye’). A friend (a priest and healer) said, 
‘that means there’s healing going on’. Someone else said that blue is 
‘the colour of healing’. [005455]
The influence of saints may be associated with healing:
Five years ago I suffered an accident to my right leg and it was broken 
in many places. . . . I was told by the consultant that he did not know 
how I would eventually walk. However, I have the personality that 
conquers most things and I eventually started to walk again.
However, since that time I always suffered pain in my leg, usually 
about three o’clock in the afternoon until the end of the day, and 
I thought that it would be something that I would have to grit my teeth 
and bear.
Three years ago I was on holiday in France and I was with four 
friends. It was in the afternoon and we had been walking a lot and 
I was longing to sit down and rest my painful leg. However, I walked 
into the cathedral at S and, as I was looking round at the statues of the 
saints, I suddenly felt an intense warm feeling in my leg, just like some-
one was filling my leg up with warm liquid. All I know is the feeling 
was so very strong. I looked up at the statue facing me and it was of 
Saint Teresa. So overwhelmed at that moment, I remember emptying 
all the francs in my handbag and lighting the biggest candle I could see. 
Tears were streaming down my face and it was days before I could tell 
my friends what had happened.
Ever since that day I have not had any pain in my leg. 
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Healing is sometimes performed by shamans in a trance state, and there 
has been a resurgence of interest in shamanic practice in recent times 
although belief in spirit possession is no longer prevalent. Japanese reli-
gion is particularly noted for healing practices, and the use of amulets is 
common. Many Hindus and some Christians buy little models of arms, 
legs or whatever part of the body is ailing to aid in supplication for 
healing.
A concern for holistic health has led to a new understanding of the con-
nection between what one eats and what one is, reflected in a healthier, 
more balanced diet. Many young people want to avoid unnecessary slaugh-
ter of animals and have become vegetarian. Concern for all life-forms and 
respect for all creatures also leads to a vegetarian diet being chosen. Jains 
and Buddhists do not kill sentient beings and so most are also vegetarian. 
Positive thinking is also now considered part of the healing process, as we 
become more aware of the interconnectedness of mind and body.

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