An introduction to religious and spiritual experience

Interfaith 
Interfaith encounters involve being open to new ideas, which may chal-
lenge our own deeply held beliefs, but are also profoundly enriching, as 
in the case of this Muslim,
My faith, however, has become anything but quiet; it is turbulent, wild, 
rampant and unruly . . .. Learning about Buddhism makes me rethink 
Islamic Sufism; reading Judaism I find myself making analogies with 
Islamic Law; listening to a lecture about Christianity I instantly revisit 
all that I have known about revelation in Islam; and making acquain-
tance with Hinduism I startle from the flow of questions, which could 
never come to my mind earlier . . .. You keep knowing God and you 
thrill with the experience of this most of your time. You welcome what 
others dismiss as doubt because it has become the source of your joy 
and ecstasy.
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Religious and Spiritual Experience
76
Search
In Asia the Ten Ox-herding Pictures are well known. They depict a man’s 
spiritual search for his true self, the ox. He tracks, finds and tames the ox 
but the ox then disappears as the self searched for and found is tran-
scended. Then the searcher also disappears and an empty circle is shown 
as the individual has lost importance and merged with the whole. That is 
not the end, however, as the last picture shows the man back where he 
started. He is back in the world, but now he is no longer of it, he has 
found the wisdom which will enable him to serve his fellows with 
compassion.
People are often led to faith or to a vocation after a search which can 
take years and many different twists and turns of fate.
In my early years I had contact with the Church through Sunday school, 
singing in a choir and later church going, though my parents were 
not regular church-goers. I had some contact with a Christian group 
and church when I was at university. The period that I spent in the 
army was unsettling; I drifted away from the Church and I suppose 
that I would have classed myself as an agnostic as far as belief in God 
and Christ was concerned. 
After demobilization and resumption of university career, I contin-
ued the search for a satisfying philosophy and faith. I met and talked 
to several people who probably influenced me without my knowing it, 
but the turning point came at the time when I became emotionally 
involved with a female student who had recently become a Christian 
and to whom this experience meant a great deal.
During this emotional upheaval I returned to my digs one evening 
and as I sat resting after the evening meal on my own in my room 
I saw a vision of myself wearing a clerical collar and in a pulpit in 
the act of preaching. As the vision faded I was rather disturbed at such 
an unusual and unexpected event, though, as I have explained, the 
incident took place when I was already in a charged emotional state. 
I went on to play badminton to try to take my mind off what I could 
not understand.
Shortly after, I borrowed a new translation of the Bible from the 
library and as I was reading a passage from it one night I felt for the 
first time that God was speaking to me in the words that I was 
reading.
Following closely after I had further mystical/spiritual experiences 
which made me strongly aware of the presence of God, once at an 

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Religious Triggers
77
uncle’s wedding where I was best man and also during Holy Commu-
nion services. It would be impossible to describe these experiences in 
words but they were connected with, and deepened, the setting where 
they occurred.
At one stage I felt consciously that a kind of integration was taking 
place within me and that, as it were, I was being made to face in a