Quote:Nearly three-in-ten Americans say they have felt in touch with someone who has already died, almost one-in-five say they have seen or been in the presence of ghosts, and 15% have consulted a fortuneteller or a psychic. Fully 16% of Americans believe in the "evil eye" or that certain people can cast curses or spells that cause bad things to happen to someone.
Nearly half of the public (49%) says they have had a religious or mystical experience, defined as a "moment of sudden religious insight or awakening." This is similar to a survey conducted in 2006 but much higher than in surveys conducted in 1976 and 1994 and more than twice as high as in a 1962 Gallup survey (22%). In fact, this year's survey finds that religious and mystical experiences are more common today among those who are unaffiliated with any particular religion (30%) than they were in the 1960s among the public as whole (22%).
This is interesting, though should not be a total surprise to those who know what is going on, namely us. Read the entire story
here.
Very interesting indeed, surprised by 49%. Since the run up to the harvest is exponential in terms of energy penetration/waves, I wonder what the total figures up to 2012 would be...
We'll have the knowledge post harvest
Nice! Thanks for posting this! One of my pet peeves with organized religions is that they are so based on the experiences and words of others, and not on the personal spiritual muscle. I have, though, had this feeling that organized religion is getting more spiritual these days, and it's good to see some support for this. This sense, for me, just comes from having listened to many a preacher while playing church gigs.
Great find, Pereginus. It's nice to know we're not such a minority group afterall..
I actually did research on this for a thesis. Not the one I graduated on. We dropped it after it turned out that we would get too much opposition from the so called intellectuals.
The goal was to interview 20 people for each of 3 different groups (Christians, new agers and atheists). To try and find the mystical experience. I interviewed 20 people in total before we pulled the plug. I found traces in each and every one of them.. With some I had to go deeper than with others but I found it in all of them.
It is my guess that those who claim not to have the experience actually often do have it anyway but would not call it religious or mystical. That was what I wanted to demonstrate in the thesis, that it's a normal human experience essentially neutral to religions or creeds, and not a random thing that just happens to some weirdos. It is my guess that people who don't have the experience are a minority IF they exist at all. I found none but research I found a few years after (Where they invoked the experience by stimulating brains) seemed to indicate that some people really don't have it they could not even be invoked to experience it.
The religious experience as defined by William James is exactly the same as the mystical experience. It was funny to note that the New agers had mystical experiences just not religious experiences and the Christians vice versa. I guess it's more words
What is a moment of awakening then? The only experience I've had that I'd classify as tangibly mystical is when I laid around in bed, after some really depressing days. Then my heart-area exploded with heat and a love so great that nothing upon this existence could create it. This lasted maybe 2-3 seconds, then I was back to normal, staring dumbly in the cealing for some minutes. When I think back, it just seems like a dream. It was something that trancended the borders of our reality, and thus I probably couldn't take all of it back here as memories..