Why does a spiritual epiphany have to mean...

[_Coggins7]

I find it interesting, if not ironic, that after you decring letting anyone tell us the meaning of our spiritual experiences, you quote Maslow, who is essentially tells us the meaning of our spiritual experiences--I.e. that they are "religiously" the same, perfectly "natural", and may be defined at "peak experiences", or "ecstasies" or "transcendent" experiences, that may be examined by psychologists. ;-)

And this is a very important point. The entire thrust of the argument here is essentially self negating, and makes explicit what is implicit in both Maslow's work and the beliefs of other psychologists quoted: they had not the slightest idea, in any substantive way, what visionary spiritual experiences actually were, and had no methodological way to determine what they were. The ideas of Maslow and James were purely speculative hypothetical constructs based in a preexisting naturalistic world view.

Amantha tells us that we have no business interpreting our own spiritual experiences for anyone else (while indulging herself in leftish fantasies of institutional church control of other's minds), and then holds forth Maslow as an arbiter of these very phenomena.

LDS would agree with Maslow that such experiences are "natural", but without the reductiionistic implications secular materialists attach to the term.

[_huckelberry]

Truth Dancer, I was wondering if it would correct to include the revelation of polygamy along with the flaming sword angel to be an example of a peak experience?

I do not think it would be a good example but my reason would be different than I woud expect Charity to think of.

I am not a close follower of Maslov,so am only posing a question not making any claim on what he said.

I could wonder why he refers to peak experience instead of odd experiences. I get the impression he is looking for a commone foundational quality in religious type experience which is valuable. I think that is an ineresting question for him to ask and to investige with. I am not sure why or how one would turn that investigative process around to declare all mystical experience to be the same. After all the very definition of mystic is so vague that it might include all sorts of things. Some of those may be creative and healthy others might not be. There are examples one might think of even less healthy than than that flaming sword vision.

To say that a particular experience is all enterior seems to me to be a sign that a particular and somewhat unusual experience is being considered. After all though all our experience in interior it is not usually all interior. I hear a friend say hello, it is an event in my mind yet in the cases I am thinking of the experience is initiated by the voice of my friend.

If, and obviously in terms of discussion it would have to be only an if, there are some spiritual mystical experiences which are in some way are initiated by an outside source it still would be important to look at what the inward experience was. I could imagine theoritically that there could be experiences intitiated form outside which result in a peak experience where a new healthy creative mental synthesis is formed and an other where no such thing happens. (pardon my casual characterizatin of peak experience).

When I review my own spiritual experiences I find myself sure that they are not all of the same nature. It is true they all happend inside myself and the quality I value or do not value what it meant form my own consciousness. Was it a help, healthty, opened creative possiblities? If not I view it with suspiciion and keep a protective distance.

I was thinking of an experience where I was with a small religious group I was curious about a bunch of years ago. There was conflict in the group and people wanted spritual help to resolve it. The room filled with a sense of lignt and everybody seemed rather suddenly in thrall. Subsequestly everybody acted as if all problems vanished without any actual change or even looking at the problems. I felt under threat in this whatever it was (Sottie are the shields up and holding ??) It may well have been an illusion of a spirit created by the minds of the people there. In any case I do not think it was a peak experinece but one I rememeber as bad and threatening.

[_amantha]

Dr. Wade said:

I find it interesting, if not ironic, that after you decring letting anyone tell us the meaning of our spiritual experiences, you quote Maslow, who is essentially tells us the meaning of our spiritual experiences--I.e. that they are "religiously" the same, perfectly "natural", and may be defined at "peak experiences", or "ecstasies" or "transcendent" experiences, that may be examioned by psychologists. ;-)

Yes Wade, I can see how all the terms Maslow used really narrows the bandwidth on the possibilities for peak experiences. Terms like "natural" and "peak" and "ecstacy" and "transcendent" preclude people from using other adjectives.

Maslow's intent was to "tell us" what our spiritual experiences should mean. I see that now. Thank you.

Did you find another area where you can build bridges between believers and non-believers? You are my hero.

[_truth dancer]

Hi Huck...

Well, I am certainly not qualified to speak for Maslow but here is my guess. :-)

If I claimed to receive a revelation that you were to give me all your money, I doubt Mazlow would suggest I was having a peak experience. Similarly, my guess is that he would not suggest Joseph Smith was having a peak experience in bringing forth the idea of polygamy. To be fair, I doubt Maslow would suggest any married man who claimed God told him to engage in intimate relationships with girls and already married women actually had a peak experience.

In terms of your personal experience, my guess is that Maslow would indeed suggest that these sorts of experiences originate from within... some might consider it a spiritual and peak experience, others might experience it more as a feeling of peace and comfort.

Just guessing here... :-)

~dancer~

[_amantha]

I find it interesting, if not ironic, that after you decring letting anyone tell us the meaning of our spiritual experiences, you quote Maslow, who is essentially tells us the meaning of our spiritual experiences--I.e. that they are "religiously" the same, perfectly "natural", and may be defined at "peak experiences", or "ecstasies" or "transcendent" experiences, that may be examined by psychologists. ;-)

And this is a very important point. The entire thrust of the argument here is essentially self negating, and makes explicit what is implicit in both Maslow's work and the beliefs of other psychologists quoted: they had not the slightest idea, in any substantive way, what visionary spiritual experiences actually were, and had no methodological way to determine what they were. The ideas of Maslow and James were purely speculative hypothetical constructs based in a preexisting naturalistic world view.

Amantha tells us that we have no business interpreting our own spiritual experiences for anyone else (while indulging herself in leftish fantasies of institutional church control of other's minds), and then holds forth Maslow as an arbiter of these very phenomena.

LDS would agree with Maslow that such experiences are "natural", but without the reductiionistic implications secular materialists attach to the term.

Of course, you KNOW what a REAL spiritual experience is, without a doubt because your interpretation is infallible. You are God incarnate. Your ideas are definitely NOT speculative.

All other mortals who take a stab at the meaning of religious experiences should bow down to YOUR interpretation of it.

I see the light now.

[_amantha]

If you discount Kali, you must discount Elohim and Jehovah

Not of logical necessity. Your problem, like all secular materialists before you (with all the a priori assumptions this entails), is that you are attempting to approach the concept of revelation as a purely intellectual problem of rationally determining the nature and complexities of various phenomena of this kind.

This assumes that the particular methodologies utilized-logic and critical intellectual analysis-are methodologically suitable to that task. If they are not-if other techniques are needed as well, then what you are in essence doing is engaging in a sophisticated cursing of the darkness while refusing to light a candle.

It does not necessarily follow from the fact that there are a variety of revelatory experiences that:

1. The concept of revelatory experience itself is suspect

2. There could not be a class of revelatory experience that is authoritative or true and stands outside the others in this context.

3.Revelation and witness are not lawful; bound by rules and conditions that determine its scope and effects, depending upon the source of that revelation.


If you discount the concept of revelation a priori, however, we need not argue at all about its possible features.

If I discount Kali, I need not (in a strictly logical sense) discount Jesus Christ or Elohim because:

1. There is no particular reason, a priori, to assume, without other evidence, that someone has not received revelation from some being claiming to be Kali. The Gospel takes ample account of such phenomena.

2. LDS theology proposes precisely the kind of situation we are discussing; a ongoing battle of ideas, principles and alternate visions between Christ and Satan that began in the preexistent world and continues here, and involves various methods and tactics on both sides. What is going on in the world of spirit is of a piece and intimately connected to what is going on here, as we confront each other in this arena of ideas and opposition in all things. Hence, LDS theology both expects and comprehends the existence of multiple lines and forms of spiritual experience.

3. There are keys-Priesthood keys- and gifts (such as the gift of discernment) that allow the faithful Saints to negotiate the plethora of alternatives without letting go of the iron rod and wandering off onto "
strange roads".

4. The infallibility of the witness of the Spirit, as I said before, is in the Spirit itself. That witness, its truth and legitimacy, is imprinted upon us indelibly and unmistakably. It is not ourselves who are infallible but the source of the witness. The process by which that witness comes, and its effects, are such that the human being can then say with complete certainty that "I know of myself" that x is true. This knowledge is direct and, I dare say, in its strongest manifestations, "pure"; unmediated by filters such as logic, personal expectation, or preassumed bias.

Prove that what you interpret as spirit is not simply your interpretation. Then we can talk.

[Dr. Sunstoned]

Of course, you KNOW what a REAL spiritual experience is, without a doubt because your interpretation is infallible. You are God incarnate. Your ideas are definitely NOT speculative.

All other mortals who take a stab at the meaning of religious experiences should bow down to YOUR interpretation of it.

I see the light now.

You clearly have not been following my arguments here. I am not concerned with real vs. fraudulent spiritual experiences. I am only concerned with spiritual experiences that originate with God. And of that class, I have had some and know what they are.

Try having a philosophical discussion here Amantha, as opposed to a breast beating party for yourself.

[_Coggins7]

Prove that what you interpret as spirit is not simply your interpretation. Then we can talk.

I knew you'd run away from that extended argument like a Democrat from a lie detector, but so be it.

Are you really that naïve that you would ask a Latter Day Saint to "prove" his testimony to you? Isn't that a tad intellectually shallow, or is it the case that you really don't understand the concept of testimony as taught in the Church?

[_wenglund]

Dr. Wade said:

I find it interesting, if not ironic, that after you decring letting anyone tell us the meaning of our spiritual experiences, you quote Maslow, who is essentially tells us the meaning of our spiritual experiences--I.e. that they are "religiously" the same, perfectly "natural", and may be defined at "peak experiences", or "ecstasies" or "transcendent" experiences, that may be examioned by psychologists. ;-)

Yes Wade, I can see how all the terms Maslow used really narrows the bandwidth on the possibilities for peak experiences. Terms like "natural" and "peak" and "ecstacy" and "transcendent" preclude people from using other adjectives.

Maslow's intent was to "tell us" what our spiritual experiences should mean. I see that now. Thank you.

Did you find another area where you can build bridges between believers and non-believers? You are my hero.

You clearly missed my point. But, I appreciate you trying.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[Guest]

Coggins7 said:

1. The infallibility of the witness of the Spirit, as I said before, is in the Spirit itself. That witness, its truth and legitimacy, is imprinted upon us indelibly and unmistakably. It is not ourselves who are infallible but the source of the witness. The process by which that witness comes, and its effects, are such that the human being can then say with complete certainty that "I know of myself" that x is true. This knowledge is direct and, I dare say, in its strongest manifestations, "pure"; unmediated by filters such as logic, personal expectation, or preassumed bias.


2. Are you really that naïve that you would ask a Latter Day Saint to "prove" his testimony to you? Isn't that a tad intellectually shallow, or is it the case that you really don't understand the concept of testimony as taught in the Church

I am responding to the bolded remarks from the quotes above:

1. How do you, a fallible human being, recognize an infallible being when you experience one? Are you sure it was infallible? You are? How? Because it told you so? The fact is that you're not infallible enough to interpret anything infallibly -- even from axiomatically infallible beings. If you want to say that God is infallible, i.e. a priori, by definition, then you are relying on a human concept which is fallible to begin with, unless again, you want to say that God told you so, in which case--again--are you infallibly sure you were talking to an infallible being. Nope. Sorry.

Infallibility (a hypothetical state at best) + Fallibility = Fallibility -- there's a weak link in the chain there. Did you see it?

2. I am not so naïve as to believe that you could prove your testimony to me. Read my question again.

Apparently you are naïve enough to believe that you can prove your testimony to yourself. You are not a god. You trust yourself too much. Infallible beings (and I do not accept that these exist) can't bypass YOU in the process of communication. You are part of the deal and YOU are fallible, even though you would like to continue to arrogantly claim that you could not possibly be wrong about YOUR INTERPRETATION of what is most likely a natural, human, spiritual, peak experience.

The bottom line is that you can't be certain that you have communed with an infallible being unless you want to claim omniscience for yourself, which is what Mormons do all the time.

Your certainty is banished and therefore your testimony. Sorry, you're just like the rest of us mortals.