Why is it a kind of thing that humans can experience? Why is it a thing they experience so much?
Just to answer this part very narrowly thinking about my own experiences, what is it like when I have experiences I would identify as being the same kind of thing people mean when they talk about spiritual experiences?
The answer is something like a dissolving of self identification into being blended with the rest of the world. In these experiences, I “forget” I’m separate from the rest of the world and am just part of everything. It feels like the subject-object distinction falls away and all is unified.
This can happen to greater or lesser degrees (more or less of the total sum of experience in a moment undergoes this). I suspect this is the kind of thing that would be identified as a spiritual experience.
Honestly, though, I think spirituality is a weird word to use to talk about this and I don’t. I just recognize that it seems to be pointing to the same kind of experiences I’ve described above.
Just to answer this part very narrowly thinking about my own experiences, what is it like when I have experiences I would identify as being the same kind of thing people mean when they talk about spiritual experiences?
The answer is something like a dissolving of self identification into being blended with the rest of the world. In these experiences, I “forget” I’m separate from the rest of the world and am just part of everything. It feels like the subject-object distinction falls away and all is unified.
This can happen to greater or lesser degrees (more or less of the total sum of experience in a moment undergoes this). I suspect this is the kind of thing that would be identified as a spiritual experience.
Honestly, though, I think spirituality is a weird word to use to talk about this and I don’t. I just recognize that it seems to be pointing to the same kind of experiences I’ve described above.