An introduction to religious and spiritual experience

Alternative Paradigms
Neale Donald Walsch
Writers such as Neale Donald Walsch have bypassed formal, traditional 
religion for a direct way of understanding the human relationship to 
the divine and alternative ways of communicating with God. Walsch 
wrote a series of bestsellers called 
Conversations with God
in three 
volumes, followed by 
Friendship with God
and 
Communion with God
depicting a growing awareness of the spiritual messages inherent in 
everyday life, if only we would recognize them as such. The books were 
triggered by Walsch writing a letter to God, and then being unable to stop 
writing, as he seemed to be receiving answers. Although at first he felt this 
was just for him, he later thought that his questions were universal and so 
he published the communications – and his sales reflect the response 
worldwide.
Eckhart Tolle
The Power of Now,
followed by 
Practising the Power of Now
and 
Stillness Speaks
are popular volumes which have given people a guide to 
spiritual enlightenment outside the mainstream religions, although draw-
ing on age-old wisdom. Eckhart Tolle uses the word ‘Being’ rather than 
God to describe the 
. . . eternal, ever-present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that 
are subject to birth and death.
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He teaches that to reach this Being, beyond and also deep within, one 
needs to still the mind, to attain a state of ‘feeling-realization’ which is 
enlightenment. His latest work suggests that a change in consciousness in 
humanity would lead to 
A New Earth.
Fritjof Capra (1939– )
A physicist and systems analyst, Fritjof Capra brought modern physics 
and Eastern Mysticism together in his best-selling 
The Tao of Physics
in 

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Less Well-Known Religious Traditions
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1976. This was written at a time when such ideas were considered a risk 
to his professional standing, but now they are increasingly accepted. The 
parallels can be drawn to Western Mysticism too and a new paradigm 
seems to be emerging, which can encompass mystical insights of intercon-
nection and the latest developments in physics. 
Capra’s writing was triggered by a mystical experience, described at 
the beginning of 
The Tao of Physics
.
I was sitting by the ocean one late summer afternoon, watching 
the waves rolling in and feeling the rhythm of my breathing, when 
I suddenly became aware of my whole environment as being engaged 
in a gigantic cosmic dance. Being a physicist I knew that sand, rocks, 
water and air around me were made of vibrating molecules and atoms, 
and that these consisted of particles which interacted with one another 
by creating and destroying other particles. . . . All this was familiar to 
me from my research in high-energy physics, but until that moment 
I had only experienced it through graphs, diagrams and mathematical 
theories. As I sat on the beach, my former experiences came to life . . . 
I 
knew
that this was the dance of Shiva, the Lord of the Dancers 
worshipped by the Hindus.
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