An introduction to religious and spiritual experience

A. J. Ayer (1910–1989)
In 1936, at the age of 24, A. J. Ayer published 
Language, Truth and Logic
which established him as a Logical Positivist philosopher. He had been 
influenced by the Vienna Circle of philosophers as well as the British 
empiricists, Locke, Berkeley and Hume. His main thesis was that meta-
physics was meaningless. The ‘Principle of Verification’ had to be applied 
to all statements and led to just two kinds of sentence being acceptable: 
analytic, sentences of definition, in which no new data was introduced 
and sentences which could be empirically verified by evidence from the 
senses. Nothing beyond sense data could be verified, so talk of God or 
spirituality was meaningless.
It is particularly interesting therefore that A. J. Ayer had a NDE. 
In 1988 Ayer’s heart stopped for four minutes while he was in London 
University Hospital. On resuscitation, Ayer apparently admitted to his 
doctor that he had seen a Divine Being, and would have to revise all his 
previous books and opinions. He did not speak so openly again, and as 
this would have indeed have entailed a complete reversal of his philoso-
phy, he subsequently altered his language in articles in 
The Sunday 
Telegraph
and 
Spectator
which were written later. There he referred to a 
red light which seemed to be responsible for governing the universe and 
the River Styx, but continued to maintain that 
My recent experiences have slightly weakened my conviction that my 
genuine death, which is due fairly soon, will be the end of me but 
I continue to hope it will be.
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Interpretation of Experience
247
W. T. Stace (1886–1967)
The ways of the mystical extrovert and introvert, rather than being in 
opposition, are seen by W. T. Stace as being different stages on the same 
path. Extrovert mysticism, seeing the unity in diversity is a stage on the 
way to the ultimate goal of the introvert mystical experience of full unity 
with the divine.
Stace maintains that experience and interpretation are separate, and 
that students of mysticism will inevitably be dealing with accounts of 
experience and thus interpreted experiences. He feels that the normal cri-
teria of logic break down as attempts are made to describe the mystical 
experience which is beyond words, leading to apparent paradox and 
ineffability.