A transformative experience isn't just for you

I wrote this short essay by accident, not meaning to create something else, but to just jot down a few words in reply to a very carefully constructed, considered and thought-provoking article I read.

Here is the article, in which the author gives free rein to her frustration that many people, on hearing about her experience, do not consider it real for the world.

Below, I contribute a few thoughts in response on the relativism of a person’s experience, and in particular on the impact of their cultural conditioning, ideals, and world-view on what they do next. I’ve also added a few comments on disconcerting and perturbing aspects of one’s experience, comparing unconditional love with romantic love, and on whether one needs to have had a transformative experience to be affected after all.

The veridical details of a person's spiritually transformative experience - alternatively, their period of extended perception - are, where available, of potentially great importance to our understanding of ourselves and out place in the universe. Having said that, there is another aspect of their experience which is even more important, and should grab our attention first and foremost.

I would like the reader to consider the possibility that the most important thing about an experience is not so much whether it happened or was real, but what was done about it afterwards. In what way did the subject of the experience, disorienting and alienating as it might have been, act to improve the lives of themselves and other people around them?

As a counter-example to the implied answer to this question, it is a matter of public record that the well-known philosopher Bertrand Russell had a similar experience while in the presence of a friend who was suddenly taken ill. The passages describing this incident, in his own hand, can be found in his autobiography. Yet the impact it had on him was temporary to a large extent: after a brief while he returned to his philosophising. Two years later he wrote his influential "A Free Man's Worship", a hugely influential piece which is about as much in opposition to the sentiment in the article as it is possible to get.

Borrowing from the article’s analogy, it would be as though our Mr Andersson, who had previously gone to such lengths to deny Mexico existed, had boarded a plane to Mexico, stayed for a brief while, then returned completely unimpressed, and determined to live his life as before, ignoring the impact of his journey.

Perhaps a more apposite analogy would be to the diaries of Marco Polo. Looking at it from today's perspective, we can be reasonably sure where he went, and when, plus or minus to allow for uncertainties in the historical records, clerical errors, and potential fabrications. But at the time, people were making decisions based on completely uncertain information. Was it worth sending a trade caravan to far Khitai, or would they be eaten by one-eyed monsters?

The impact of these experiences on the modern world, and its challenges and needs, was succinctly summed up by Dr Penny Sartori in her book 'The Wisdom of Near-Death Experiences':

Imagine if everyone changed their perspective on life and saw each other as interconnected and valuable people … What if everyone put the needs of others before their own needs? How radically transformed the whole world would be.

The value of these experiences is transformative on others, and on humanity:

[T]he greatest of instrumentalities for achieving the advancement and the glory of man, the supreme agency for the enlightenment and the redemption of the world, is love and fellowship and unity among all the members of the human race.

As a few asides:

For many (though certainly not all), the impact of such an experience can be disorienting and alienating. The rose-bush doesn't just contain roses - there are plenty of thorns too. Disorienting, because there are no reference points with which to relate what was experienced to the milieu they are then required to live in. Alienating, because not only does it not seen that the experience is credible to other people - who then doubt the reporter's sanity - but also that one's relationships to other people are forever changed by the reporter's change in perspective. One's life is completely upended in ways that could not have been expected, and what previously mattered a lot is now of little consequence.

Many would say that their experiences, for those that had encountered unconditional love, were nothing at all like the experience of romantic love. For them, this would be their agape to your eros. Though, as the article says, romantic love is pretty much ubiquitous, and the experience of 'falling in love' does often temporarily and superficially change one's perspective, normally one cannot rely on this feeling to sustain a long-term relationship. Our experiencer's agape not only completely transforms their outlook, but in most cases has a permanent, life-long impact.

Romantic love 'is subject to transmutation; this is merely fascination. As the breeze blows, the slender trees yield. If the wind is in the East the tree leans to the West, and if the wind turns to the West the tree leans to the East. This kind of love is originated by the accidental conditions of life. This is not love, it is merely acquaintanceship; it is subject to change’.

As one experiencer put it: "I describe it this way: Take the person that you love the most in all the world and magnify that love times a million. That is the love and comfort that I felt, yet this does not even give it justice."

One need not have had an experience - with all the angst disruption and dislocation that may imply - to feel or be affected by its impact. Per the 'benign virus' hypothesis of Dr Kenneth Ring, even reading the reports and accounts of experiencers have had measurable impacts on the outlook of those affected, as measured by standard questionnaire instruments.

The value of an experience is not limited to the validation of an individual. It is best measured on the impact on the needs of society as a whole.