Found this on a web site. More level 3 material for the grist mill!
http://users.aol.com/hermlin/inquiry.html
(you should go read the entire piece)
A Definition of Spiritual Experience
Religious claims often seem to be believed in more for their personal
worth in
answering what Reinsmith identifies as our "need for an ultimate meaning
to
life" [8] than for their logical or empirical merit. While most attempts
to
define "spiritual experience" rely on complex lists of the qualities of
the
experiences themselves, I am skeptical that any such list is capable of
serving
as a sine qua non for "spiritual experience" [9]. Rather, the one thing
which
appears definitive of a spiritual experience is whether it is
interpreted or can
be interpreted in such a way as to be relevant in some sense to an
"ultimate
meaning to life." This means that the test for a truly spiritual belief
is
whether it accomplishes the goal of answering our need for meaning (and
how well it does so), and this matters more than whether that belief is
consistent, proven, or true.
This would explain Reinsmith's observation that "holders of firm
religious
beliefs do not merely resist attempts at critique, they are often
impervious to
them" [10]. This kind of behavior, which seems inexplicably irrational,
is
revealed to be quite explicable (though perhaps still irrational) when
we
recognize that the religiously devout are often interested in things
more
important to them than the truth (such as an ultimate meaning to life).
Since
the personal, emotional benefits provided by spiritual beliefs do not
depend
on those beliefs being true, their truth becomes (in practice)
irrelevant.
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Now where have I heard that before?
ERiC