Religious & Spiritual Experience SCM Guide

Spiritual, religious, sacred, or mystical experiences may be broadly defined as subjective human experiences that appear to the person undergoing them, or to others, to convey or imply contact with or knowledge about a transcendent power, presence, or superior reality beyond the realm of the physical. Research has shown that these forms of awareness of ‘something beyond’ are of considerable significance in the ordinary lives of very many people, as well as being elements of signal importance in the origin and development of religion: not least by deepening characteristically spiritual or religious attitudes, emotions, beliefs, values and practices, along with fundamental orientations of life and quests for meaning.