Tuesday, 12 November 2024

What to make of significant-moments/ peak experiences/ epiphanies/ revelations? ...Because they don't interpret themselves.

I have for decades had a strong interest in those moments of experienced "numinous significance"; those times and places where - either at the time, or in retrospect - we have a conviction that something-has-happened which is of relevance to our life, generally. 

It seems that many people have these "peak experiences" - they vary with age, circumstances, place and company; some people have them a lot, and some (apparently) not at all. 

The actual raw experiences - their emotional and sensory qualities - seem pretty similar and identifiable as such. Yet whether they are significant; and, if so, what is their significance seems to depend on the interpretative scheme that is applied - and a wide range of schemes are applied. 

I think it is Not the intensity of emotion that matters, but the lingering sense of significance - the way an event recurs in memory, and that "something important, and potentially good" happened. 

But understanding what happened, and what are its meaning and implications; is where there are such big differences between people. 


I have read many books and essays by mystical/ spiritual/ esoteric/ occult type people; and it is evident that most of them have these "peak experiences" and regard them as central to - whatever it is they believe. Yet that which they believe varies extremely widely and often in opposite directions! From atheism of an hedonic flavour, right through New Age spirituality to devout adherents of formal and traditional religions -  of many kinds and with perhaps opposite tendencies.  

From this; it seems clear that such experiences are not "evidence" or "proof" of any particular "system" or metaphysical assumptions. This applies even when the experience is one of "theophany" - a vision of God for example. 

Reading the reports from people who believe they have experienced the presence of God, it is clear that the believed experience alone does not really get them anywhere in the longer term; because they need to understand, explain, make sense of their experience - and that requires such larger, perhaps pre-existing, scheme of assumptions. 


There is therefore probably an excessive emphasis on the occurrence of mystical/ spiritual (etc) experiences, and a relative (or complete) neglect of the matter of making sense of such experiences. 

In other words: the significance of unitary, discrete experiences is not self-evident. 

The scheme by which one makes sense of peak experiences, and indeed of all kinds of life-experiences, is a different matter - and apparently a deeper and more significant matter; than even the most significant of moments. 


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