An introduction to religious and spiritual experience

particularly those relating to the natural world, and considers their effects. 
He had a spiritual experience himself, and draws on the RERC archive for 
examples. He gives an overview of different critical approaches, including 
spiritual, psychoanalytical and neurophysiological and an appraisal of 
the work of R. M. Bucke, Estlin Carpenter, W. R. Inge, Evelyn Underhill, 
Rudolf Otto, Sigmund Freud, Aldous Huxley, Steven Katz and Robert 
Forman. He considers explanations ranging from an acceptance of genu-
ine experiences of a metaphysical reality to postmodern and deconstruc-
tionist perspectives.
Grahame Miles
Science and Religious Experience, Are They Similar Forms of Knowledge? 
is a consideration of how we acquire knowledge of different kinds: 
biological, personal, moral, religious and scientific. Grahame Miles looks 
at how knowledge is established in science and religious experience. 
He finds in both a pattern of perception, interpretative understanding 
and subsequent acceptance by the believing community (scientific or 
religious).
All these interpretations of religious and spiritual experiences enhance 
understanding, as the subject is investigated from many, often conflicting 
academic perspectives.

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Conclusion
This book has brought together many accounts of a great variety of 
religious and spiritual experiences, some short, some told at length and in 
detail. They reflect moments and even lifetimes of awareness of some-
thing beyond the everyday world. Spiritual experiences take people 
outside their normal parameters and at the very least seem to indicate an 
extension of the limits of human consciousness. They deepen everyday 
experience, indicating a dimension underlying the world of the senses. 
More than that, they seem to be evidence of a power greater than our-
selves, which some might call God. This may be experienced dramatically, 
perhaps as light or love, or as a deeper awareness throughout life, a sense 
of being guided. People become aware of a source of strength and com-
fort. When they sincerely respond to it, they find that it works, even if 
they do not quite understand it. Despite the protests of sceptics, the expe-
rients themselves have no doubt that the reality revealed to them is more 
real than the world around them and that the messages given are 
compelling.
Many who have spiritual experiences interpret them as such. They 
value them as grace given by God. If they are not religious, they still view 
them as comfort or help from somewhere other than the world around 
them. They take from them a renewed sense of wonder at the natural 
world and above all, a profound love for all creation. This has trans-
formed many lives as such people feel a deep motivation to work for the 
good of others. Even in times of doubt, people have found that they can 
call on this power, and it works. It is hard for those who have never had 
any such awareness to view these experiences as anything other than 
merely the products – or aberrations – of the mind, interpreted according 
to particular religious expectations and so they are apt to dismiss them as 
delusions.
Whatever the interpretation, however, for those who have them, their 
experiences serve to deepen their apprehension of the mystery of life and 
intensify their appreciation of its intricate complexity. Many experiences 
also seem to indicate an afterlife of some kind, the possibility of a contin-
uation of consciousness beyond death, and even contact with the deceased. 

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Spiritual experiences set life in the greater context of eternity, which is in 
line with the teachings of the religious traditions.
Most people would hesitate to say that such experiences offer conclu-
sive proof of the existence of God or of divine intervention. However, as