Intuitive Knowing As Spiritual Experience

Intuitive Knowing as Spiritual
Experience
This page intentionally left blank
Intuitive Knowing as Spiritual
Experience
Phillip H. Wiebe
intuitive knowing as spiritual experience
Copyright © Phillip H. Wiebe, 2015.
All rights reserved.
First published in 2015 by

PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
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ISBN: 978–1–137–54948–8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wiebe, Phillip H., 1945–

Intuitive knowing as spiritual experience / Phillip H. Wiebe.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–1–137–54948–8 — ISBN 1–137–54948–3
1. Experience (Religion) 2. Knowledge, Theory of (Religion)
3. Intuition. I. Title.
BL53.W5346 2015
204 .22—dc23 2015013130
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
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First edition: September 2015
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He has tempered His knowledge, by giving marks of Himself which are
visible to those who seek Him, and not to those who seek Him not.
— Blaise Pascal (Pensees 194)
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
1 Introduction 1
2 Spirits 21
3 The Experience of God 59
4 Values 97
5 Christian Experience 135
6 Intuitive Knowing in Spiritual Life 169
Notes 185
Bibliography 209
Index 221
Acknowledgments
Many colleagues, both at Trinity Western University and beyond, and family
members have encouraged me to write this book. I take pleasure in dedicating
it to my daughter Alisa and son Jeremy, who, along with my wife Shirley, have
been among my strongest supporters.
I acknowledge the support of Trinity Western University in granting me a
sabbatical leave during which I was able to write a good portion of the book,
and the John Templeton Foundation in allowing me to extend my sabbatical
from six months to a full year. I also express my deep thanks to the Alister
Hardy Religious Experience Research Centre at University of Wales Campus
in Lampeter, Wales. They showed hospitality to me for nearly three months
as I perused the database begun by Hardy in Oxford, and now located in
Wales.
I acknowledge also the kind permission from the Lawrence Berkeley
National Lab to use the figure in Chapter 2. Finally, I am grateful to the
now-anonymous people who submitted their signed accounts to the Alister
Hardy Research Centre. They have deepened our knowledge of religious and
spiritual experience.
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
T
he power of the intellect to grasp concepts and truths intuitively that
are neither derivable from sense perception, such as the concept of
infinity, nor justifiable by empirical evidence, such as inviolable prin-
ciples of ethics, has been widely considered a characteristic that sets humans
apart from all other earthly creatures. Intuitive knowing is among the intel-
lectual powers we have often ascribed to ourselves, a power first recognized
in ancient Greek thought. Plato, Aristotle, and their scientific predecessors
have operated on the assumption that “like is known only by like,” and
consequently interpret our capacity to grasp general concepts, which admit
(in theory) of an infinite number of instances, and to know ultimate truths,
to involve a different “faculty” from that by which we sense or imagine the
properties of ordinary objects. These ancient thinkers have observed that our
apprehension of sensed properties of objects, such as their smell and shape,
is shared by many animals that exhibit no evidence of the rational power of
grasping the general concepts involved in the truth of an intelligible state-
ment. Until recent times, the classical understanding of human rationality
prevailed, but modern evolution is focusing its attention on the continuities
between animal and human life, not the differences. The scope of human
rationality, and the extent of our rational powers, has never been convinc-
ingly fixed. Indeed, whether we could do so is unclear, and the occurrence of
intuitive knowing contributes to questions about our ability to establish these
limits.
The pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles (495–435 BCE) has been cred-
ited with making the distinction between the human faculties involved
in the understanding of concepts, as opposed to experiencing perceptual
sensations.1 Another thinker from the same period, Leucippas, the Greek
atomist, taught that both thought and perception arise when images enter
a person from without.2 The writings of Leucippas have not survived, but
his atomism, widely known through his pupil Democritus, is the dominant
2 ● Intuitive Knowing as Spiritual Experience
metaphysic in our modern world, now modified to reflect the magnificent

scientific achievements since Copernicus. An odd feature of Leucippas’s view
is his remark that thought arises when images enter a person from without,
although neither Plato nor Aristotle took exception to this view. The mod-
ern world agrees that perceptions arise from without, as we employ our senses
to explore the world around us and even ourselves, but it does not construe
thought as arising directly from without. We might not know how thought
originates, but we consider it as arising from something within ourselves. This
capacity is variously ascribed to our intellect, or mind, or cognition, or rea-
son, or to some comparable “organ” that “assembles” our tactile perceptions
of rough sensations, say, and then forms our concept of roughness, and then
compares this concept with that, for example, of color. We, unlike Plato, do
not generally consider our apprehension of the concepts of roughness or of
color to be present by attending to something “outside” of ourselves. The
influence of empiricism is evident in discussions of concept formation today,
and this influence also extends to our understanding of knowledge.
Plato is well known for thinking that eternal ideas exist external to us,
and for articulating a sharp distinction between intellectual apprehension and
sensory perception. In The Republic he writes:
The soul is like the eye: when resting upon that on which truth and being shine,
the soul perceives and understands and is radiant with intelligence; but when
turned towards the twilight of becoming and perishing, then she has opinion
only, and goes blinking about, and is first of one opinion and then of another,
and seems to have no intelligence.3
Aristotle marks a similar distinction between thought and sense percep-

tion, but takes a different view on the Ideas (essential structures) that are
apprehended in knowing. He holds that the thinking faculty distinguishes
the form that things take—such as the form of an animal, a tree, or a
golden orb—from the material (matter) in which that form is embedded,
and construes the power to think of the essences found in various things
to require something that is nonmaterial. He writes in On the Soul: “Mind
must be related to what is thinkable, as sense is to what is sensible.”4 These
epoch-creating thinkers advanced the reality of intuitive knowing, a form of
knowledge pertaining to matters that are eternal. Plato, but not Aristotle,
described this feature of human life in terms that were overtly religious. The
Christian church applauded the endorsement of “something nonmaterial”
as essential to human knowing, whether this was formulated in Platonic
or Aristotelian terms. The intellect came to be seen as capable not only of
intuiting the reality of natural laws, a moral order, and an ontological order
Introduction ● 3
that includes God, but also of proving our immortality. Intuitive knowing
raises various problems, among them: Is this true knowing? Are “objects”
somehow apprehended by us? Do we really have this “divine” power?
Classifications of Religious Experience

The first overview of spiritual experience in Western civilization was pro-
vided by St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430 CE), whose views were shaped
by both his Platonism and his Christian faith. He adopts a tripartite view of
the human soul, and considers experience to be related to our three central
powers or faculties: the corporeal senses, the imagination, and the human
intellect. He speaks of all three kinds of experience as vision, but this term is
of limited help today. His understanding of corporeal visions includes what
we would today describe as apparitions or ghost sightings, and for this kind
of experience the term “vision” is still appropriate. He interprets imaginative
vision as including our capacity to construct “mental images” of things, and
then uses “intellectual vision”5 to denote what I am calling intuitive knowing,
and establishes it in the vocabulary of those who have examined the phenom-
ena of spiritual experience, especially experiences reported in the Christian
tradition. Augustine’s placement of apparitions alongside experiences involv-
ing the intellect is jarring to the modern or postmodern thinker. In her classic
study of mysticism, Evelyn Underhill (1875–1941) remarks that the term
“vision” is barely applicable to an intellectual experience,6 because an expe-
rience that is intellectual in character is strikingly different than one that is
broadly corporeal in nature, especially when the latter involves such contro-
versial experiences as apparitions. Underhill’s hesitancy over Augustine’s use
of “vision” shows us how much empiricism has replaced a Platonic approach
to understanding human experience. Augustine considers all three kinds of
vision as capable of bringing spiritual truths to their experiencers, and seen
from this perspective, talk of intellectual vision is not peculiar.
Augustine elucidates the distinguishing features of the three mentioned
kinds of vision by referring to three broad abilities that he saw in human life.
In reading a text such as “Love your neighbor as yourself,” he observes that,
“the letters are seen corporeally, the neighbor is thought of spiritually,7 and
love is beheld intellectually.”8 He claims that when a body is seen corporeally,
an image of it is produced “in the spirit,” and if “the spirit is irrational, as in
the beasts, the announcement made by the eyes goes just as far as the spirit.”9
With creatures having a rational soul, however, “the announcement is made
also to the intellect, which presides over the spirit.”10 Augustine identifies the
body (corpus), the imagination (spiritus), and the intellect as the human facul-
ties involved in ordinary perception and knowledge, but they are also involved
in experiences that have great spiritual significance. Translators often render

the Latin spiritus in Augustine as “spirit,” but this term is also aptly trans-
lated as “imaginative” or by cognate terms on occasion, as when Augustine
describes an imaginative vision as one in which we think of “absent bodies in
imagination.”11 The link between “spirit” and “imagination” in Augustine’s
writing is perhaps a carryover from the widespread ancient belief that the
human soul (or spirit) is the image of the living person.12 Many recent expo-
sitions of religious visions, in employing Augustine’s tripartite classification,
speak of the second kind of vision as imaginative vision, not as spiritual vision.
This choice avoids many of the problematic connotations with the terms
“spirit” and “spiritual.” To elucidate further the notion of spiritual vision and
to distinguish it from intuitive knowing, Augustine turns to a passage from
I Corinthians in which St. Paul makes a distinction between the human spirit
and the human mind:13 “If I pray in a tongue, my spirit (pneuma in Greek)
prays but my understanding is unfruitful.” Paul is speaking about glossolalia
here, but this point is generally overlooked by those who use the tripartite
order first advanced by Augustine in order to explicate the idea of imagi-
native vision. Glossolalia is still a mystery, and Paul’s use of it does little to
elucidate intellectual vision—intuitive knowing of spiritual matters.
To illuminate further the unique character of spiritual visions, Augustine
observes the similarity of some images seen in such visions to the images that
are experienced in ordinary nocturnal dreams.14 He mentions this not because
he thought that a single internal mechanism must be responsible for visions
and ordinary dreams,15 which is the view that dominates reductive discussions
of spiritual visions today,16 but because he hopes that dreams might shed light
on the mystery of visions.17 He muses on the possibility, for instance, that
his soul could occasionally be awake when his body is asleep,18 and so be
affected by images of bodies as if those images were real bodies. He also says
that images can appear when “the spirit is in a state of unconsciousness more
profound than asleep,”19 but he does not elaborate on the nature of these
enigmatic conditions.
Augustine accepts the reality of divination, and speculates on the mecha-
nism by which the soul can exercise such a power. He rejects the notion that
the soul has the power of divination in itself, as well as the possibility that the
soul might be assisted by an inferior corporeal object. Rather, he conjectures
that divination is the result of a spirit aiding the human soul. He asks a long
series of questions, including the following: “Are images produced in the soul
which were not previously there? Or are they in some spirit into which the
soul rushes and enters to see them? . . . Or does the soul see the objects some-
times in itself and at other times by means of mingling with another spirit?”20
Augustine observes that both evil and good spirits might be implicated in
Introduction ● 5
such events, which makes the discernment of their source difficult, but God
has given to some the gift of “the distinguishing of spirits”—a form of intel-
lectual vision—in order that deception in such matters can be avoided. He
understands the human spirit as having ontological integrity in a way that
modernity no longer accepts, and any suggestion that “spirit” and “image”
are interchangeable in his discussion of divination is impossible to maintain.
His speculation about the possibility that spirits might mingle, for instance,
could hardly be expressed as the mingling of imaginations, for imagining is
a capacity of a being, but he considers a spirit to be a being in its own right.
Augustine perhaps felt no need to explicate his understanding of the human
spirit, and evidently agreed with St. Paul, who thought that the human spirit
could be located in space. This contrasts significantly with modern thought
that has been unwilling, thanks to Descartes, to construe soul (or spirit) in
that way. Soul is thinking substance for Descartes, and nonmaterial; however,
matter is extended substance, and nonthinking.
Augustine’s trichotomy continues to dominate the discussion of religious
experience, partly by virtue of the fact that other influential authors begin
their discussion of experience using this trichotomy, or emphasize some fea-
ture of it. St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–74)21 adopts Augustine’s view that
intellectual vision is superior to other kinds of spiritual experiences com-
monly described as visions. St. John of the Cross (1542–91)22 and St. Teresa
of Avila (1515–82),23 whose writings have become classics on mysticism in
the West, also analyze spiritual experience in reference to these Augustinian
categories, and concur with Augustine and Aquinas in viewing intellectual
vision as the superior kind of experience. In contemporary discussions of the
experiences of visionaries, for example, Julian of Norwich (1342–c. 1416),24
and in Catholic encyclopedias published in the twentieth century,25 the influ-
ence of Augustinian thought in understanding visions, including intellectual
vision, is obvious.
Christians in the ancient and medieval eras seem to have viewed the spirit
as capable of acting and moving on its own. An allegation of spirit-travel
from the medieval age comes from the life of St. Columba (d. 597 CE), who
supposedly brought “spiritual refreshment to certain of his monks who felt
that he came in spirit to meet them on the road.”26 What the monks actually
experienced was an inexplicable fragrance of flowers on their journey from
their monastery each day to harvest a field. The explanation for their expe-
rience was provided by one of their company, St. Baithéne: “Since he [St.
Columba] may not come to meet us in the body, his spirit meets us as we
walk and refreshes us so that we are joyful.”27 Richard Sharpe, the recent
translator of the Life of St Columba, plausibly observes that modern readers
are unlikely to believe or accept the numerous miracle stories recounted of
this saint.28 However, similar accounts of fragrances associated with biloca-

tion have been reported in the twentieth century concerning Padre Pio of
Pietrelcina (1887–1968), who is also said to have visibly appeared to people
at places where his body certainly could not have been.29 These claims are
seemingly more difficult to dismiss when they concern someone who lived
as recently as Padre Pio, inasmuch as witnesses and documentation that are
up to present-day standards for evidence are more likely to be available than
that available for ancient or medieval allegations. I have argued elsewhere30
that no simple reply to skeptics about extraordinary claims can be given, and
that only when a large number of similar cases are accumulated does disbelief
in all these allegations become unreasonable—as with the large accumulation
of accounts of near-death experiences (NDEs) in the last two decades of the
twentieth century.
The experiences I will relate, which seemingly involve intellectual vision,
derive from the database started by Sir Alister Hardy (1896–1985), who
began in the 1960s to invite people to describe their religious experiences
to him. This database continues to grow as people submit their accounts to
the Research Center that he began, then endowed upon his death. This Cen-
ter is now located in Lampeter, Wales, at a campus of the University of Wales.
Opinions vary on what counts as spiritual or religious experience, but the fact
that people count their experiences as such is a place to start. The spiritual
experience that Augustine identified as intellectual vision I will interpret as
intuitive knowing that has spiritual significance.
Caroline Franks Davis has recently offered a more comprehensive clas-
sification of religious experience than that offered by Augustine. She draws
examples from Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam, placing them
into six broad categories, namely quasi-sensory, visionary, revelatory, interpre-
tive, regenerative, and numinous.31 Davis construes quasi-sensory experiences
as consisting primarily of physical sensations, such as “dreams, voices and
other sounds . . . the feeling of being touched . . . and the sensation of rising
up (levitation).”32 This category also includes visions and apparitions, about
which I will say more in the next chapter. Some of the categories that Davis
identifies are well known from studies that have already been undertaken.
William James (1842–1910), for example, is famous for his discussion of
conversion (or regenerative) experiences,33 for which he thought he could
provide an explanation that referred to the penetration of one’s ordinary con-
sciousness by one’s subliminal consciousness. Whether a place is left for the
action of a supernatural being, as in traditional Christian understanding of
conversion, is unclear. The numinous is most readily associated with the clas-
sic study of Rudolf Otto (1869–1937),34 which continues to be published
Introduction ● 7
and to attract interest. The study of apparitions is related to the formation

of societies directed to psychical research, found in the United Kingdom,
the United States, and in other countries. Interpretive experiences are ones
that people regard as spiritual because of their particular backgrounds,35
which is a category allowing for great variety, inasmuch as backgrounds vary
considerably between different faiths, and even in the same faith. Among
interpretive experiences, we need to include thoughts, hunches, spontaneous
beliefs, and feelings such as awe, ecstasy, and peace, since these are ones that
are often considered to be spiritual. If we adopt Davis’s classification sys-
tem, intuitive spiritual knowing appears to belong to either the revelatory or
interpretive groups, but it could be accompanied by other kinds of expe-
rience, as the accounts I will present will show. “Spiritual experience,” as
we often understand it, connotes an event marked primarily by feelings, so
much so that the cognitive component of such events might be overlooked.
However, such experience generally has a significant cognitive component;
otherwise, the supposedly revelatory features would not be noticed by those
who undergo experiences interpreted as intuitive knowing. Either cognitive
or affective features of an experience could be overlooked because of the
strength of the other feature, but in this study I will let expression to be
given to both.
Davis characterizes experience as “a roughly datable mental event which is
undergone by a subject and of which the subject is to some extent aware.”36
This is one plausible understanding of experience, especially in view of
modernity’s focus on immediate experience, but it is narrower than the sense
I propose to adopt. The differences between a narrow and a broad interpre-
tation can be brought out by reflecting for a moment on Davis’s reference
to levitation. If levitation is understood as it traditionally has been within
the Christian monastic tradition, it involves a body rising above the earth,
not simply “the sensation of rising up,” which Davis interprets it to involve.
St. Joseph of Cupertino (1603–63), for example, is widely said to have levi-
tated, but this allegation involves not merely his phenomenological sense of
his body rising up above the earth, which he might have reported, but the
far more significant phenomenon of his body literally rising as observed by
others. In fact, the phenomenological sense of rising above the earth might
conceivably not be present in one who (actually) levitates, if anyone does.
Naturally, Davis is not opposed to narrow and broad interpretations of expe-
rience, but I propose to study experience in a broad sense. The context of
my remarks will indicate which interpretation I am favoring, generally with-
out additional clarification, but if any ambiguity remains, I will elucidate the
sense.
Challenges of Experience
A challenge to viewing religious experience as a vital component of reli-
gion is the widespread belief, to which James contributed in his influential
book, The Varieties of Religious Experience, that religious experience has signif-
icance primarily for those who have the experience. He writes: “No authority
emanates from [mystical experience] which should make it a duty for those
who stand outside of them to accept their revelations uncritically.”37 This
claim, if accepted at face value, threatens to take vital data for religion out
of the public domain, thereby limiting the value of a close study of spir-
itual experiences. James himself includes a chapter in Varieties on healing,
which he did not confine to psychosomatic conditions, so he seems open to
experiences besides those that are wholly “private.” Moreover, in the sentence
quoted earlier, he speaks of uncritical acceptance of revelations, and perhaps
wanted this uncritical acceptance to be the object of attention. In the end,
his actual position is obscure, but his enthusiasm for experience is not in
doubt.
Detailed accounts of spiritual experience show that it is too complex and
variable to justify the blanket generalization that it has significance only for
those who undergo it. A challenge can be mounted to this blanket statement,
but having said that, I would be surprised to discover that visions, or any
other kind of spiritual experience for that matter, exhibit a “public face” very
often. This fact, if it is one, creates an immediate conflict with the expecta-
tions of science, for science is universally considered to have a public face,
inasmuch as some discovery made at one time and place should generally be
replicable elsewhere and at another time. The private nature of spiritual expe-
rience threatens to take it outside the ambit of science. In response to this
monumental question concerning spiritual experience, I would draw atten-
tion to a far-reaching conjecture with which I approach this study. I will be
open to the possibility that a central difference between science and spiri-
tuality is that scientific knowledge is objective and public, whereas spiritual
knowledge is also of an “objective reality,” but not generally public. We might
wonder, then, what the purpose behind spiritual experience could be. I would
suggest that such experience might not be to satisfy our curiosity, as we find
in scientific pursuits, but to draw us into interaction with beings that share
significant characteristics with us. The extraordinary success of the modern
sciences might have distracted us from the possibility that another kind of
knowledge exists, one that does not repudiate science in the least, but reveals
another reality whose significance to our existence as persons outweighs that
of science. If my conjecture here is more or less right, the common methods
for establishing credible scientific claims might not be fully applicable in the
Introduction ● 9
study of spirituality. I will not focus on this possible difference as the book
unfolds, but I will mention it occasionally.
A related difficulty of spiritual experience arises from the fact that if expe-
rience (in either sense) is going to be admitted as evidence, it does not enjoy
the status that belongs to scientific studies at their best. Experimental evidence
is dependent only upon the ingenuity, time, effort, and expense needed to
acquire it, and so can be very impressive.38 Experiential evidence, by con-
trast, consists of claims that cannot be readily obtained at will, but may
be sufficiently numerous to be worthy of being included in serious theoriz-
ing; examples include reports of apparitions and of NDEs. One-off claims,
which are insufficiently numerous to silence questions about their occur-
ring as reported, as in reports of virgin births, are legitimately excluded in
theorizing39 about the world. Religion and spirituality derive from what we
might call “an age of experience,” but the age in which we in Western cul-
ture now live is dominated by knowledge obtained through experimentation.
Virtually everything once advanced as knowledge on the basis of shared expe-
rience has come under critical scrutiny as experimental work has revealed
that much of what was once believed is flawed, mistaken, or even incorrectly
conceived. The dominance of experimental evidence over experiential evi-
dence has weakened the capacity of spirituality to advance its possibly unique
insights about the cosmos and the place of humans in it. The challenge for
the empirical study of spirituality is to find phenomena that occur frequently
enough to warrant critical scrutiny, to obtain sufficient phenomenological
detail so that cognitive science can examine it by using the concepts that are
central to its study, and to place this experience, if possible, into the broader
space-time-causal framework. This study will consider intuitive knowing that
has spiritual significance in the light of these objectives.
The spiritual experiences that I will focus on in this book are not especially
drawn from people in religious life. As religion has come under attack in
Western society, with every conceivable flaw in the religious becoming the
focus of derision and abuse,40 the public is less impressed than it was by
religious raptures and ecstasies41 once widely reported. A Catholic priest who
now exhibits the stigmata, as did one priest in Newfoundland a few years
ago, is quickly removed from his parish, and kept in an undisclosed location
until he can be safely released into public life, probably on the authority
of a psychiatrist. As in previous books, I will focus my attention here upon
people who are not obviously in a contemplative form of life, in order to
show that significant events are occurring among the laity of the Church,
as well as among people who have given up on it. I am not rejecting the
accounts of those in religious orders, only directing my attention to people
who might not be expected to have much by way of spiritual experience.
In solidarity with those whose stories I have told in previous work, and will
tell in this book, I will include a description of some of the circumstances and
events that contributed to a slow, but significant, change in my own spiritual
outlook over approximately 40 years. In recounting the experiences of others,
without divulging my own, I feel as though I am feigning objectivity on a
topic where a dispassionate disposition cannot be consistently maintained.
I aspire to objectivity, of course, but will reveal some of the experiences that
shape my outlook on intuitive knowing.
A comment on terminology must be included, although some readers will
find it incomplete. I have already freely used “spiritual,” “religion,” and their
cognate expressions without much by way of explanation. I follow Ludwig
Wittgenstein (1889–1951) in thinking that the meaning of words is that
which is given to them in use by competent speakers of a language.42 Since
the use of terms changes over time, their meanings change, although this is
often gradual and subtle. I also agree with Wittgenstein in thinking that a
succinct definition for well-entrenched terms in a natural language cannot
generally be supplied; moreover, a definition is only as clear as the terms used
for definition, and these might be imprecise. Here we confront the influence
of Aristotle, who maintained that a proper study of some subject required
the definition of key terms at the outset. Wittgenstein’s position cuts deeply
across those sectors of the academy where the definition of terms at the out-
set is demanded as a condition of a responsible study. Whether Wittgenstein’s
view will prevail in the long run is difficult to say, but for those of us for whom
the mysterious ways of language are illuminated by Wittgenstein, his appar-
ent insights influence the way we think and write. I do not need to define
“religion” for myself, but others might be aided in knowing that I think that
Daniel Pals has offered a first draft of a definition in holding that “religion
consists of belief and behavior associated in some way with a supernatural
realm, a sphere of divine or spiritual beings.”43 The existentialist theologian
Paul Tillich (1886–1965) is famous for having defined religion (or God) as
ultimate concern, and with this shift of definition, an extensive dialogue has
been generated.44 A study of ultimate (human) concerns takes us profoundly
into anthropology and other social sciences, but not into ontology in an obvi-
ous way. Pals’s definition of religion, on the other hand, focuses on ontological
questions, although no reason exists for thinking that considerable overlap
between the two might not exist. With the dawn of the twenty-first cen-
tury, the ontological questions embedded in religious claims have again been
pushed to the forefront, with atheists and materialists arguing the superior-
ity of their view of the universe over that proposed by any religion, maybe
even most expressions of spirituality. Perhaps a reaction to the outspoken-
ness of atheists is taking place in Western culture. University of Manchester
Introduction ● 11
theologian, Graham Ward, observes that whereas the “operation of angels,

demons, and the appearance of ghosts was a medieval commonplace, [and]
the object of enlightenment ridicule, [the belief ] is again finding support in
certain contemporary sections of western society.”45 I will focus on ontologi-
cal matters here, but the question of what things are our ultimate concerns is
never far from view.
As the term “religion” has become hobbled in recent times by the scandals
associated with religious institutions and the (possible) hypocrisy of their rep-
resentatives, the term “spiritual” and its cognate forms are increasingly being
used, and I have chosen to give this term preference. “Religion” definitely
connotes institutions that have been founded to advance particular causes,
whereas “spirituality” can be easily assimilated to beliefs and practices that
individuals undertake. Ann Taves undertakes a brief examination of these
and related terms in her Religious Experience Reconsidered: A Building-Block
Approach to the Study of Religion and Other Special Things. Her reference to
special things attempts to broaden the scope of her study, and these things
are interpreted to include singularities, such as specific trees or specific events,
or ideals, such as beauty or even Platonic forms, or anomalous phenomena,
such as earthquakes, whose assessment as anomalous can vary widely within
cultures.46 She explains that she is not attempting to redefine “religion,”47 but
is identifying concepts having significant overlap with it. Perhaps we could
say that special things might be objects of ultimate concern. In another place,
Taves observes that changes have taken place in religious studies and theol-
ogy departments over the past hundred years or so, as mysticism and occult
phenomena have become pushed to the periphery.48 The cases I will present
all involve “intuitive knowledge,” but they are apt to be seen as spiritual,
religious, special, mystical, or even occult on occasion.
Intuitive knowing is now often considered to be a paranormal or parapsy-
chological phenomenon, and in this respect, some aspects of it have come
under careful scrutiny. Joseph Rhine (1895–1980) is famous for the experi-
ments he set up in his laboratory at Duke University, where subjects would
guess at the cards drawn from a deck and perform other tasks in an effort
to determine whether any of them exhibited parapsychological (psi) abilities.
In a survey of some 40 “ganzfeld” (total field) studies undertaken over several
decades, where two people separated from each other are possibly interact-
ing by extrasensory perception so that one “sends” a message that another
“receives,” Daryl Bem and colleagues conclude that some evidence for psi
exists.49 The authors are so sure of the existence of psi that they suggest
that future researchers of it should indicate in advance what their wishes are
concerning the outcome of their research,50 in order to mitigate the possi-
bility that researchers are influencing the outcome of experiments by their
wishes. Psi abilities might in fact vary from person to person, which the card-
guessing experiments suggest, and these abilities might also vary according
to ethnic or racial groups. Such information, if it were to be sufficiently
well established to attract the endorsement of the naturalistic community
of researchers, would be an important piece of the puzzle around human
attributes, but would not diminish the value of examining intuitive knowing
as it relates to experiences that are interpreted as religious or spiritual. An over-
lap exists between the kinds of phenomena studied by parapsychologists and
the intuitive knowledge claims that are taken to have spiritual significance.
Construing parapsychology as a naturalistic science that might provide us
with insight about human powers that go beyond “ordinary” perception does
not challenge the approach that I propose to take in this book.
Cognitive science can be expected to shed light on “intuitive knowing”
that is not accompanied with (obvious) knowledge. In a study of “the feeling
of knowing,” Thomas Nelson and Louis Narens observe that introspection
has once again become a legitimate source of information, but they construe
people who report their findings of “knowledge” as “imperfect measuring
devices of their own internal processes.”51 They offer an analogy with the
study of a telescope in which its valid output and its distortions are both
noted. This insightful way of treating such introspected states as “knowing”
is different from that which has been common in Western thought, inasmuch
as introspection has often been considered to be infallible and incorrigible.52
In this psychological study of feeling-of-knowing, Nelson and Narens inter-
pret it within specific contexts allowing for measurement. One such context
resembles television game shows, in which subjects either answered a question
immediately or estimated whether or not they could answer it.53 If subjects
demonstrated their knowledge, a determination was made of how accurate
their initial feeling-of-knowing had been, thereby simulating the feeling that
many people have in ordinary life, where some bit of information is not forth-
coming immediately—it is “on the tip of the tongue”—but they claim to
know it, and often (but not always) demonstrate that they do. Such studies
have been extended to reflect the difference between the feeling-of-knowing
and confidence, where the latter is the state of believing that some informa-
tion has been correctly retrieved. One study performed at different locations
on a mountain reports that the altitude at which one is situated does not
affect confidence, but does affect feeling-of-knowing.54 In subtle and specific
contexts, the broad mental states that were once deemed incapable of further
scrutiny are yielding information regarding cognitive states.
The study of brain injuries is also contributing to our understanding of
cognitive powers.55 Antonio Damasio, professor of neuroscience at the Uni-
versity of Southern California, and his colleagues have researched the neural
Introduction ● 13
foundations of feelings, including the feeling of “intuitive knowing.” Their

work reports experiments conducted with people whose prefrontal cortices
were injured, where comparisons were then made with people without such
an injury.56 All subjects were connected to skin conductance equipment that
registered small changes in electrical activity, and the hypothesis that guided
the experiment was that people with brain injuries would not detect the
miniscule differences that normal people can. The experiment involved draw-
ing cards from four decks yielding some monetary payment, where two of the
decks were rigged to produce a smaller payoff. After some time, the normal
subjects developed a “hunch” or an “intuition” that two decks paid greater
dividends than the other two, which was registered in the electrical conduc-
tance of their skin, but the subjects with brain injury neither registered this
change nor reported any “hunch.” In these and numerous other experiments,
cognitive science is slowly changing the landscape in which we view ourselves,
including our powers of intuitive knowing. It is offering an external perspec-
tive on matters that were once largely internal. No reason exists for thinking
that the kinds of experiences of “intuitive knowing” that I will relate here are
incapable of study by cognitive science.
Experiencing “Intuitive Knowing”

I became fascinated with intuitive knowing as a result of an experience that
took place in 1993. My wife Shirley and I were living in Oxford, England,
where, in the first month, we were invited by a violinist and her husband
to attend a benefit concert at which she was playing. Her string quartet was
helping the nearby village of Ewelme to raise money to replace the existing
roof of the village hall with thatch, which is expensive but in keeping with
traditional roofing. At the door of the village hall I was offered tickets for
a draw that would be held during the evening, and for £1 I got five tick-
ets. I do not know how many people bought tickets, but a good number of
the approximately one hundred people in attendance appeared to buy some.
Soon after taking my seat, an event occurred unlike anything I had ever expe-
rienced. The most accurate description I can give of it is that I “knew” that
I would win a door prize. I don’t remember much about the concert because
I was so taken with this peculiar state of mind. My background in philos-
ophy assured me that I could not know that I would win, since this belief
was not justified, but no other description of my state of mind seemed accu-
rate. I certainly believed I would win a prize, but this does not fully capture
the mental state that I was experiencing, for I had a sense of knowing. Plato
advanced the classical view that knowledge consists of justified true beliefs.
Although some recent philosophers have challenged this position, notably
Edmund Gettier,57 who thinks that more than three conditions need to be
satisfied in order that some claim might be knowledge, virtually no theorist
thinks that fewer than the three that Plato proposed are sufficient. I imme-
diately told my wife, who was seated next to me, about this strange state of
mind. I knew that making such “knowledge” claims is skeptically viewed, and
I shared that skepticism, but I thought that I would have no credibility at all
if I had simply announced after my winning ticket was drawn that I knew it
would be all along.
To say that I accepted that I would win a prize sounds peculiar, for this
term seems most appropriate in circumstances in which we have choices, and
I certainly had not chosen58 that mental state I am calling “knowledge.” I felt
the kind of certainty that I experience with knowledge of an event that has
just transpired—as though no significant difference between the past and the
future existed. I was so sure that I would win, in fact, that I began to ponder
the possibility that I might win twice. I did not want to win a second prize,
since I did not want to appear to get more than “my fair share” and somehow
spoil the friendly atmosphere of the evening. Most of the people who gathered
seemed to know one another and to be pleased to be doing something for
their community. As a first-time visitor to the community, I just wanted to
blend in, but I “knew” that I would win a prize. I decided well before the
draw took place that if I won a second time I would decline the prize. I never
believed or “knew” that I would win a second prize, but I knew—or so it
seemed—that I would win one.
The violinist’s husband chaired the evening and conducted the draw dur-
ing the intermission. He held the hat containing the tickets high above his
head as each ticket was drawn. He asked someone near to him to pull the first
ticket, and then each winner pulled a ticket until five prizes were awarded.
I won the fourth of the prizes—an easy choice between a frying pan and a
bottle of French wine—feeling very unusual about the event that had hap-
pened and wondering how I could have “known.” Four of the five tickets,
in fact, were won by people sitting in my row of six or seven people, and
I overheard someone in the row behind us express mild resentment at the
fact that so many of the tickets were won by people in just one row. I cannot
explain this as anything but coincidence. The tickets were so inexpensive, as
were the prizes, that the suggestion that the event was rigged is preposterous.
Besides, the method that the violinist’s husband used for selecting the tickets
was hardly in keeping with rigging a draw. The audience all saw the numerous
tickets that were available for selection, and when I reached into the hat and
picked the next winner, I happened to notice that the hat had many tickets
in it. Moreover, I could not see any difference in how I picked a winner and
how others did.
Introduction ● 15
My hesitation in saying that I knew that I would win derives from my

recognition that I had no justification for my (true) belief. A complication in
any discussion of Plato’s thought on knowledge is that he did not think that
the ordinary sensible objects in the world around us are possible objects of
knowledge, for knowledge for him was the apprehension of eternal Ideas, of
which mundane objects in the physical world are mere copies, perhaps not
very good ones. However, the discussion of knowledge in the modern era
generally does not concede the reality of Plato’s world of Ideas, but addresses
the simple objects known by sensation, which Plato despised. Unlike Plato,
we consider visible and tangible things to be objects of knowledge, and can
generally offer some justification for what we see or feel, and so defend our
knowledge of the ordinary world. To speak of intuitive knowledge, however,
is to assert the existence of knowledge that is somehow qualified by the adjec-
tive, “intuitive.” The obvious sense in which this kind of “knowledge” is
qualified is that it lacks a justification, just as I did not have a justification
for (truly) believing that I would win a prize.
A ticklish question now arises: While I can assert that I did not have a
justification for my belief, can I claim that no one at all had a justification,
that is, that no justification exists?59 In this question, we catch a glimpse
of the assumption that is made in modern discussions of knowledge, where
humans alone are typically considered to be capable of knowledge. Premodern
worlds allowed for the possibility that other spirits “might have access” to the
mundane world occupied by humans, even to the point of knowing how
(some?) future events would fall out. On the assumption that neither God
nor other spirits exist, we might assert that no justification exists for apparent
cases of “intuitive knowing.” If we withdraw the assumption, however, the
question whether a justification exists is not as obviously closed. Perhaps a
justification exists, and I really did have a peculiar form of knowledge. The
truth condition in this experience of possible knowledge of some future event
is curious but ultimately poses no difficulty. Truth is not time dependent,
even though knowledge of that truth might be, for the claim that I would win
a prize in the village hall of Ewelme in 1993 was “as true then” as it was when
I was born. Exactly how a justification might exist concerning future events
is obscure, even if spirits exist. Perhaps their existence, if they do exist, can
shed light on the claim that Padre Pio seemingly bilocated, since this involves
similar (or identical) sense impressions to people far from one another at the
same time. Future events, however, take us into mysterious phenomena that
neither spirits nor the intricacies of relativistic physics can easily explain.
I initially gave no thought to the possibility that my strange experience
might have spiritual or existential significance, since “knowing” that I would
win a small prize was trivial. Sometime afterward, however, I began to wonder
if I might have been “taken to school” in Ewelme so that I might learn some-
thing about human epistemic capacities and spiritual orders that I poorly
understood. I later had mental states concerning explicitly spiritual matters
that were so similar to this one in terms of their phenomenological feel (not
the explicit content, obviously) that I was inclined to view these states also
as possible instances of acquiring “knowledge.” If the trivial event had not
occurred, in which I was able to verify the unusual claim empirically within
an hour or so of its onset, I might not have known what to make of the men-
tal states whose contents consisted of spiritual matters, the evidence for which
is contentious. In reflecting further in recent years about this experience in
Ewelme, I have wondered whether I knew that I knew that I would win a prize.
I am inclined to think that although I might have known that I would win
a prize, I did not know that I knew, but only believed that I knew. This issue
is possibly important to understanding intuitive knowledge, if this is what
I indeed experienced, since knowledge of this kind might vary substantially
from other kinds of knowledge that commonly occur.
Some instances of knowledge are such that we also know that we know,
and widely recognized examples are found concerning mathematical proposi-
tions or concerning those that depend upon nothing more than the meaning
of words for their truth. Perhaps even most claims describing events in direct
and mundane perceptual experience, such as knowing that an eagle has just
caught its prey, are ones that we not only know, but know that we know.
Such mundane knowledge claims seemingly have a “guarantee” in intersub-
jective sense experience that religious knowledge might not have. The kind
of knowledge that is present when one knows that one knows has also been
described as certain knowledge, and if we accept this view, the implication for
spiritual matters is that while we might have knowledge about them, we do
not have certain knowledge. Intuitive knowing might feel like certainty, but it
is not certain knowledge, it is just knowledge, at best, on the supposition that
some justification exists. The distinction I am drawing here between certain
knowledge and knowledge is important for epistemology, for the examples
of knowledge that are ordinarily analyzed might in fact be ones in which we
know that we know, not merely know. In fact, finding examples of simple
knowledge might be more difficult than it appears—maybe we need to go to
intuitive knowledge to find them. Failure to locate the correct examples will
produce flawed results about (simple) knowledge.
Because every knowledge claim involves an implicit truth claim, and no
obvious way exists of establishing religious truth, I will use “intuitive knowl-
edge” to give expression to the unique feel of an experience, rather than focus
on the possible truth or justification involved. The import for the nature of
the universe that we live in is never far from view, of course, but we cannot
Introduction ● 17
claim too much from experiences that might move us personally. We should
not claim too little either, for the fact that something feels like knowledge is
itself prima facie justification for taking it to be knowledge. We are instinc-
tive epistemic and ontological machines—among other things—responding to
events that cross our paths, integrating that information into our larger pic-
ture of the world, assessing experiences for the clues they might offer on the
“objects” in the world, weighing the epistemic strength of what we think
we have uncovered, and speculating about the nature of the universe we
inhabit. This sequence and much more complicated ones, initially under-
taken without deliberate efforts, have become second nature to those who
are influenced by the sciences. We can hardly ignore the feel of knowledge,
even as we acknowledge its precarious content, knowing that this feeling or
sense might mislead, as well as illuminate. Although I shall use the expression
“intuitive knowing” and its cognates to describe what people report in phe-
nomenological experience, because justifications for these claims are absent,
we cannot strictly describe the mental state as knowledge. I shall continue
to describe it as intuitive knowing, but without the scare quotes. If I were
to put scare quotes around each such knowledge claim, this book would be
full of distracting punctuation. I will supply the requisite scare quotes in con-
texts in which intuitive knowing must be differentiated from (real) knowing,
and to avoid confusion or ambiguity. We could describe these experiences as
instances of intuitive quasi-knowledge, I suppose, but this hyphenated expres-
sion is as distracting as scare quotes. In the discussion that follows I will speak
freely about the experiences that people report as knowing, sometimes siding
with them, and sometimes calling into question the knowledge supposedly
gained by describing it as quasi-knowledge.
Connatural Knowing
A brief word is needed about another form of intuition—connatural knowl-
edge—which might have some overlap with intuitive knowledge as I will
understand this here. Aquinas distinguishes between knowledge that comes
by the use of reason, from knowledge that arises from sympathy, or occurs
connaturally. He uses an example from ethics, where one might judge cor-
rectly through reason that chastity is a virtue, but then judge chastity’s virtue
through being chaste.60 He offers as another example the power of the human
intellect to judge correctly concerning spiritual matters. He considers the
latter ability to arise because of charity, which unites us to God and gives
“connaturalness or union with Divine things.”61 Aquinas credits Dionysius
(pseudo-Dionysius62) with this insight concerning connatural knowledge:
Dionysius said of Hierotheus that he not only learned in conventional ways,
but also “felt the pangs of things Divine, and from his sympathy with them,
if I may so speak, [was] perfected to their untaught and mystic union and
acceptance.”63 Aquinas makes extensive use of connaturality, teaching even
that angels acquire their knowledge through connatural means, without sense
perception.64
Jacques Maritain (1882–1973), possibly the best known Catholic philoso-
pher of the twentieth century,65 makes reference to connatural knowledge in
order to elucidate crucial aspects of human life and experience. He agrees with
Aquinas in holding that both the knowledge of ethics and of the esse divinum
come through connatural knowledge, observing that the intellectual intu-
ition of the latter “is possible only by means of the gifts of grace.”66 A third
kind of connatural knowing is said to occur in poetic knowing, or knowledge
by mode of creation. Maritain has the creative arts in general in mind here,
and speaks of the knowledge they offer as preconceptual or nonconceptual.67
Inasmuch as an artist works on material already in existence, including the
forms and beauties “already made by men, and on the mass of things that
generations have learned, and on the code of signs which is used by his fellow
men and which he receives from a language he has not made,”68 an artist is
limited. However, artists come to know themselves obscurely, but intuitively,
in acts of creation that are revelatory “both of the Self of the poet and of
some particular flash of reality in the God-made universe; a particular flash
of reality bursting forth in its unforgettable individuality, but infinite in its
meanings and echoing capacity.”69 Although this form of knowledge is not
overtly spiritual, Maritain considers it to be disclosing of humanity’s divine
endowment.
Maritain also speaks of another form of intuitive knowledge in which “the
intellect attains to the summit of its natural knowledge”70—the intuition of
being as being. This is a very simple form of seeing, “superior to any discourse
and to any demonstration, since it is at the origin of demonstrations.”71 Such
seeing could include experiencing the reality of one’s own being, thereby
exhibiting the trans-objective value of the intellect and of knowledge.72 He
speaks of the human mind attaining reality within itself, “stripped of its own
existence outside the mind and disclosing, uttering in the mind a context,
an intimacy, an intelligible sound or voice, which can possess only in the
mind its conditions of existence one and universal.”73 Maritain consequently
speaks of Thomistic philosophy as going beyond the knowledge of essences,
to knowledge of existents themselves,74 thereby constituting a special kind of
existentialism. He extends intuitive knowledge (quasi-knowledge?) to God,
describing it as prephilosophical and simply natural.75 This “primordial intu-
ition” recognizes that the existence of things that might not have been, such
as oneself, presupposes a self-subsisting Being, “which causes and activates
Introduction ● 19
all being.”76 In elaborating on the “intellectual move” in focus here, Dom

Illtyd Trethowan (1907–93) observes that it is not a syllogistic inference of
any kind, but rather the discovery that “we gain our knowledge of necessary
being by an act of attention to contingent being.”77
Maritain’s interest in the intuitive knowledge that a human self has about
itself is in keeping with an exposition of it that can be found in Augustine,
where it reaches its zenith in On the Trinity in reflecting on the Socratic adage
to “Know yourself,” Augustine suggests that even if we do not “add anything
to that which it [the mind] knows itself to be,” our discovery will still be that
every mind that reflects upon itself will know certainly that it understands,
that it exists, and that it lives.78 Here he anticipates Descartes’s famous Cogito
ergo sum, for if one’s reflection upon oneself consists only of doubts, he must
exist. Every student of Philosophy knows about this foundational claim. The
movements known to us as analytic philosophy, phenomenology, existential-
ism, and Thomism bring instances of intuitive knowing, including that which
is connatural, to our attention. My study here will reinforce and build upon
this background.
CHAPTER 2
Spirits
T
he spiritual realities that seem to some to be implicated in experiences
of “intuitive knowing” have been widely and vigorously relegated to
the periphery by the Academy and the educated elite in Western
civilization. In an essay published shortly before his death, well-known pro-
fessor of philosophy and humanities, Richard Rorty (1931–2007), wrote that
“empirical evidence is irrelevant to talk about God,” remarking that this
viewpoint, advanced by both David Hume (1711–76) and Immanuel Kant
(1724–1804), applies equally to theism and atheism.1
In citing both Hume and Kant, Rorty links up with two of the most
significant figures of the Enlightenment. We could generalize the epistemic
outlook in Rorty’s remark here to say that claims in religion, not just claims
about God, are widely considered to be devoid of corroborating or under-
mining evidence. Religion is widely considered to be “a matter of faith, not
of evidence,” and ultimately devoid of any of the rationality that we find
in our most accomplished studies, including the natural and social sciences.
Wittgenstein is famous for having propounded a view of religion according
to which people who seemingly make competing assertions about deep reli-
gious matters, such as the Last Judgment or the notion that illness might be
retributive judgment,2 do not so much disagree with each other but think
about things in completely different ways. When these different ways of
thinking are treated as conceptual schemes, or Weltanschauungen, and these
schemes are treated as beyond decisive endorsement or refutation, the stage
is set for regarding spirituality as beyond rational debate. Harvard professor
Hilary Putnam also articulates a Wittgensteinian position in his Gifford Lec-
tures for 1990–91, and seemingly endorses the position that “religious belief
is not rational or irrational but arational.”3 I wish to advance the view that
postulating spirits to exist is perfectly rational, contrary to the view that these
and many other theorists have proposed. I acknowledge the enormity of the
reversal in Western thought that I am recommending, and I also realize that

important cultural views are hardly touched by argument. While other fac-
tors are in work in changing those views, argument is nevertheless important.
In this chapter I will summarize some views that I have published elsewhere,4
but I will also advance the argument in new directions. The exposition I will
sketch in this chapter provides the underpinning for the view that intuitive
knowing (or quasi-knowing) having spiritual significance does exist.
Postmodern thought, which Rorty is often taken to typify, generally qual-
ifies its claims with references to conceptual frameworks and hermeneutical
outlooks, but Rorty does not qualify the claim that empirical evidence is irrel-
evant to talk about God. In making these sweeping pronouncements about
spiritual matters, he sounds more like the analytic philosopher he once was,
than the conceptual relativist5 that he is generally interpreted to be. His posi-
tion in 2007 is remarkably consistent with one that he advanced more than
40 years earlier concerning (evil) spirits, in the debate then over the future of
folk-psychology. In a paper published in 1965, “Mind-Body Identity, Pri-
vacy, and Categories,” Rorty argues that (supposed) references to mental
states would one day disappear, for language describing such states would
be found to have no denotation at all, just as (supposed) references to evil
spirits (demons) have none. Rorty eliminative view expressed here concerning
folk-psychology was just emerging in the mind–body debate.
Theorists of various other persuasions had offered various proposals for
ridding Western culture of the “occult” or “spooky”6 features of mind. The
renowned behaviorist psychologist B. F. Skinner (1904–90) maintained that
mental states are never required either to describe or to explain human behav-
ior. He once remarked that one of the challenges that he faced with new
graduate students was getting them to stop using terms such as “hoping” or
“desiring” in describing the behavior of laboratory animals.7 These method-
ological behaviorists did not so much deny the existence of mental states
as argue that such alleged states never needed mention, since intersubjec-
tively observable stimuli and responses were adequate to describe and explain
human behavior. In its own way, methodological behaviorism expected men-
talistic language to disappear from scientific description and explanation.
Philosophical behaviorists, on the other hand, claimed that terms purporting
to denote mental states perhaps denoted obscure behaviors, such as subvocal-
ization, or physical propensities in sentient beings, or maybe did not denote
anything at all. Wittgenstein contributed to this discussion by observing,
among other things, that “I am in pain” might replace the instinctive crying
that we see in children. Wittgenstein conceded that “He is in pain” generally
functions as a reporting statement, but he thought that “I am in pain” might
be expressive of pain, not a report of it, so his position involved a complex
Spirits ● 23
interpretation of language, which left the denotation of some mental states

ambiguous. Other well-known contributors to this debate concerning mental
terms included Rudolf Carnap8 (1891–1970) and Gilbert Ryle9 (1900–76),
both of whom occupied prestigious professorships, at Chicago and Oxford,
respectively. A third position having a reductionist bent was the claim that
mental states would be found to be identical with neurophysiological events,
for which the Australian philosopher J. J. C. Smart (1920–2012) is famous,10
or infamous.11
In response to all these theorists who wrestled with the status of mental
states, including traditionalists who thought them to refer to unique features
of a “spiritual” being, Rorty suggested that folk-psychology would eventually
be eliminated as the sciences expanded, so that the problem of the denota-
tion of expressions purporting to refer to mental states would disappear. This
made him an early advocate of a position known broadly as eliminative mate-
rialism. The intense debate in Western civilization on the status of the mind
seems to have been won not by the eliminative materialists, but by the iden-
tity theorists. However, eliminative materialists have won the debate in the
Academy over folk-religion. Belief systems that invoke spirits are now widely
viewed as having “nothing” as their subject matter, since these alleged beings
supposedly offer no way of being empirically examined. Rorty’s choice of the
theory of evil spirits as illustrative of one that had already been eliminated is
understandable, given what some predecessors had said about the topic.
Hume is famous for having repudiated the value of metaphysics, especially
any study that treated spiritual realities in a positive light. He writes:
If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for

instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity
or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning mat-
ter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain
nothing but sophistry and illusion.12
This was published in 1751, a revision of part of his Treatise on Human

Nature, published in 1739–40. Hume’s skeptical views concerning religion
were sufficient to prevent him from getting a position at the University of
Edinburgh. His posthumously published Dialogues Concerning Natural Reli-
gion continues the attack on popular religious arguments of his time, which
focused upon (apparent) design seen in nature. The view of Rorty (and
Putnam) is clearly in this tradition of interpretation. Hume’s considered views
on religion are difficult to determine, for his writings on the topic have been
variously interpreted. Hume was a central inspiration for logical positivism,
which claimed that religious claims were devoid of meaning and could not
even be considered false.
Kant also made clear his opposition to claims about spirits. Kant decries
the absurdity and folly in thinking that a person might be possessed of a
spirit who knows and shares insights about the future or any other matter.13
This remark is found in lectures that were published in 1797, based upon the
manual he used in a course on anthropology, which he taught for about 30
years. Kant treats the existence of God with respect, but the larger ontologi-
cal question of (finite) spirits is dismissed with scorn. At what point in time
Kant first felt the freedom to break with what had been received views on
spirits in European cultures is unclear. Kant notes that the belief in witches
had not been fully rooted out in his time, citing a case of a Protestant min-
ister in Scotland who testified to the existence of witches in a witchcraft
trial.14 Kant treats the claim that prophesied events (what he calls “inevitable
fate”) might be causally dependent upon human free acts (such as my expe-
rience described in the Introduction) as involving a contradiction, for the
concept of “an unconditioned destiny (decretum absolutum) involves a mech-
anism of freedom, and so contradicts itself.”15 Kant is famous for attempting
to answer questions by analyzing the concepts found in posing those ques-
tions, but this effort to address the puzzles that are generated by concrete
events only shows the imprecision of the terms “inevitable fate” and “free
act.” Kant not only is heir to the style of philosophy that we find in his
predecessors, including Descartes and Hume, but is also a model to those
who practice analytic philosophy today. The existence of finite spirits was
clearly questioned by these prominent modern theorists at the end of the eigh-
teenth century. This was also the time when criticism of the historicity of the
Hebrew and Christian scriptures began to be published. Hermann Reimarus
(1694–1768), another philosopher and advocate of the Enlightenment, is
usually credited with being the first Christian scholar16 to question biblical
historicity. He also left his work to be published after his death. This criti-
cal outlook resembles that of the Jewish scholar, Baruch Spinoza (1632–77),
whose writing a century earlier was not expected to follow the teaching of the
Church.
An important twentieth-century figure, Alfred North Whitehead (1861–
1947), in the Gifford Lectures for 1929 identifies the theory of spirits as
one that needed to be eliminated,17 which indicates his belief that it had
not yet been abandoned. Little complaint appears to have been elicited from
either Whitehead’s suggestion or Rorty’s claim a generation later (in 1965)
that it had been eliminated. Rorty could have selected a different example,
such as the theory that electromagnetic forces are transmitted in luminiferous
ether. Rorty must have been speaking about the Academy’s rejection of the
demon-hypothesis, for he surely knew that the theory was still alive in popular
culture.
Spirits ● 25
Rorty is justly celebrated for his critique in Philosophy and the Mirror of
Nature of Descartes’s baleful influence upon the Academy, and upon Western
culture in general. In his attempt to find indubitable truth, Descartes “turns
inward,” finding a vast array of sense perceptions and other mental states of
“immediate awareness” for which some explanation is needed. Our (usual)
first thought is that our sense perceptions are caused by objects having prop-
erties that “correspond” to perceptions, but Descartes argues that an evil
spirit might give us perceptions that fail to correspond to reality. Descartes
lived in an age where malignant spirits with dazzling powers were consid-
ered real, and in some places denial of such beliefs was met with lethal force.
Removing spirits from the domain of reality, which modernity has done, also
removes most of the Cartesian legacy, for by appealing to evil spirits Descartes
manages to magnify skepticism to its maximal depth and extent, beyond the
point that the existence of common delusions in dreams, or sensory variations
because of disease or old age, might warrant. Phenomena of the latter sort, of
which the ancient world knew,18 might half-convince us that the “world” that
“we” inhabit has no past, no objects, and no minds, but the evil genius that
Descartes employs makes this (absurd) possibility more thinkable. Inasmuch
as spirits have been excluded from serious theorizing, the Cartesian demon
now serves as little more than a theoretical device for generating a skeptical
philosophy. Moreover, the extreme skepticism for which Descartes is famous
is losing its hold over philosophy, thanks to Rorty, in part, although some
philosophers wonder if we might be nothing more than “brains in a vat.”19
Reintroducing Spirits
Rational grounds exist for reintroducing spirits into the ontological struc-
tures of theories of the twenty-first century, although this rationality can only
be illustrated here, not fully described, as I will explain in this chapter. The
background for the position I am advancing comes from theories that pos-
tulate the existence of unobserved (or unobservable) objects, theories that
account for otherwise inexplicable phenomena. Theories of this kind have
been in existence since ancient times, but their importance has become appar-
ent only in the last two centuries of scientific theorizing. Whole fields of
inquiry, including chemistry, atomism, cosmology, genetic theory, cognitive
science, medicine, plate tectonics, and evolutionary theory, have opened up
in the past two centuries because of the methodology implicit in a method
broadly known as retroduction (or abduction). Empiricist accounts of science
sometimes overlook the significance of theories that postulate unobserv-
ables, primarily because of the empiricist commitment to the testability
through observation of every theory. However, such a limited account of
the methodology inherent in scientific studies cannot explain the extraor-

dinarily important place that speculative hypotheses have had in the recent
developments of science. An example is the theoretical changes in the struc-
ture of atoms, especially the nature and distribution of the charged particles
indubitably implicated in them, the earliest being electrons.
A striking illustration of the method for providing reference to terms
denoting unobservable objects by locating them in a causal nexus comes from
particle physics.20 The charmed baryon particle was first postulated to exist
because of tracks on a photographic plate in a cloud chamber (shown on the
left half of the figure 2.1).
This plate is interpreted by the drawing on the right. A neutrino (devoid of
charge) that is not pictured but corresponds to the dashed line at the bottom
of the drawing on the right enters the chamber (from the bottom) and collides
with a proton (from the left). This collision produces three positive particles
(labeled as 2, 3, and 5), two negative ones (1 and 4), and a neutral one—the
charmed baryon particle pictured by a dash and identified by the lambda ().
This baryon particle has extremely short life, decaying within one-billionth
of a second and producing a distinctive “V” when it decays into a proton and
a pi-meson (6 and 7). The existence of this particle is inferred from the set
of observable events shown here. The background to this conjecture consists
of the sizeable body of knowledge about subatomic structures that preceded
x+
x– (3)
(1)
µ–
(4)
ρ
e– (6)
x+
x–
(2)
(7)
e–
A+
x+ ρ
(5)
x+
Figure 2.1 Baryon Particle Decay (courtesy of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab)
Spirits ● 27
the experiment under discussion, as well as the knowledge of relations that

such structures have to observable objects. This laboratory result allows the
vocabulary of physics to be increased in a modest way. Inasmuch as this the-
ory that postulates the existence of an unobservable object includes many
terms that denote observable objects, the new term is “anchored” in other
parts of physics and in the common-sense framework upon which physics
builds. What phenomena, we might wonder, especially ones not involving
violations of natural law, might warrant the reintroduction of spirits, which
I will understand as contextually defined? Moreover, can we find events in
which intuitive knowing is a factor, thereby implicating it within the onto-
logical domain whose reality is now in doubt? I will turn my attention to
phenomena often dismissed as occult or paranormal, and show something of
their relation to claims within (and about) religion.
Consider the strange event described in the synoptic Gospels in which
Jesus is said to have performed an exorcism in which the “evil spirits” passed
from men to swine. All three gospels tell the story of two men (or maybe
only one) in the area of the Gadarenes who were (was) so fierce that peo-
ple did not go near.21 They greeted Jesus in a very strange way, addressing
him as the Son of God and asking him if he had come to torment them.
When he commanded “the demons” to leave the men, “the demons” asked
for permission to go into the swine feeding nearby, and Jesus gave “them”
leave. The men immediately lost their ferociousness, but the swine rushed
down a slope into the sea, as though “something” had been “transferred”—
call it a “spirit” because of the cognitive, perceptual, and volitional powers
seemingly involved—from the men to the swine. The relevant events here do
not appear to breach established laws of nature, unlike levitation, say, which
conflicts22 with Newton’s law of gravitational attraction. The “transfer” of
“something” in the exorcism of the Gadarene demoniacs supplements infor-
mation about the conventional natural order, rather than conflicts with it,23
just as the discovery of charmed baryon supplements existing knowledge.
On its own, the peculiar speech of the “men” who greeted Jesus as the
Son of God, which even the closest disciples of Jesus were seemingly unsure
about, would not require an explanation appealing to demons, for it might be
a feature of dissociated identity disorder (DID), which is regularly treated by
psychiatrists. The request to “enter the pigs” makes little or no sense—another
feature of DID perhaps, and so devoid of significance to anyone but a psy-
chiatrist. The dramatic moment occurs when permission to enter the pigs is
given, and the behaviors of both the men and the pigs change. These changes,
while extraordinary, do not appear to break laws of the natural order, but,
in the light of the peculiar conversation, suggest that something has passed
from the men to the pigs. This “transfer” brings about a reinterpretation of
the dialogue just described, for it is not merely the men, seemingly, who
describe Jesus as the Son of God or request permission to enter the pigs. The
“demons,” seemingly, are the ones with the extraordinary “knowledge” of the
identity of Jesus, as well as ordinary knowledge of the immediate physical
environment, which anyone could acquire.
Four significant ontological orders come into view in this transfer incident,
which any careful person could observe, whether they had spiritual beliefs or
not. We see the difference between “normal men” and ones beset by debilitat-
ing powers. This difference might still be found among those whose abnormal
behaviors can be plausibly causally linked to diabolical influences, rather than
to genetic and social structures that adequately account for behavioral abnor-
mality. This issue is not widely studied, it appears, because of the exclusion
of spirits from theorizing. The horrific accusations, trials, and punishments
imposed upon people in the time of the Witch Trials, when evil spirits were
widely thought real, when science was too poorly developed to criticize reli-
gious claims adequately, and when men of religion influenced police forces
and courts unopposed, have understandably moved people to question the
reality of spirits. We can say with hindsight, of course, that science and sec-
ular courts have corrected an imbalance in society due to religion’s capacity
to wreak havoc in the lives of vulnerable people. The unwillingness of liberal
democrats to give religion too large a place in social structures is well founded.
Another ontological implication concerns the pigs, which are portrayed—
surprisingly perhaps—as susceptible to the influences of diabolical powers.
This story from the NT is consistent with reports of pets and other animals,
including birds, cats, mice, hounds, snakes, and bats, being used as familiars
in witchcraft.24 The behaviors of animals in such affairs are not an established
part of natural history, to my knowledge, although I would be surprised if no
detailed description of their apparent causal roles in witchcraft had ever been
offered. The behavior of the pigs is certainly peculiar, but if all we had seen or
heard were pigs rushing down a slope into the sea, we would have no reason
to think that evil spirits were implicated. Such “suicidal behavior,” it seems,
would just be an oddity of pigs, or perhaps of some species whose behavior
had not been closely studied. However, in view of both the “conversation” in
which “voices” ask to be allowed to enter pigs feeding nearby and the dramatic
change in the behavior of the men, the behavior of the pigs takes on much
greater significance. That living creatures can “absorb” such diabolical powers,
and also have them “dispelled,” reveals an aspect of the natural order that one
would not expect without direct observation.
The third ontological order concerns the evil spirits. Something seems to
have passed from the men to the pigs, releasing the men from their enslave-
ment and then generating self-destruction in the pigs. The evil spirits here
Spirits ● 29
are the epistemic counterpart of the charmed baryon particles—unobserved

things whose “definition” is supplied by the causal relationships to observed
phenomena as the story is told. The cognitive awareness that is exhibited by
the “voices” in the men is the basis for construing their source as “spirits.”
The fourth ontological order is that power that somehow operated in and
through Jesus, apparently unmatched in the community in which he lived to
the degree that he exhibited it. He once described his power to exorcise evil
spirits as the action of (merely) “the finger of God,” perhaps implying that
his power to exorcise was modest compared to that which was available to
him. If we are prepared to expand our interpretation of observation, consis-
tently with the expanded meaning now given to it as physicists speak about
“observing” unobservables on the photographic images of subatomic events
and processes, we could say that we “see” God. The fourth ontological order
comes into sharper view against the backdrop of the other three orders, espe-
cially that of evil. We might search for other phenomena in which something
mighty and benevolent—God perhaps—comes into clear view in ordinary
life, but (real) examples that are cited are often problematic in one way or
another.
The reference of the term “spirit” is secured in the context of the Gadarene
exorcism, primarily by the causal role that the postulated entities play in rela-
tion to behaviors, particularly in the transfer of a causal power from men to
swine. The spatiotemporal proximity of the events in the men and then the
swine contributes to a plausible assessment of the events as causally related—
the transfer did not start on one day and end on the next, and the pigs and
the men were not ten miles apart. The term “spirit” need not be interpreted as
denoting a nonmaterial form of substance in order for its postulation to make
sense, and here my approach breaks with tradition. The term purports to
denote a form of reality that accounts for the destructive behaviors described,
and is capable of being transferred from one kind of living thing to another.
This approach to definition allows a concept vital to spiritual perspectives to
be (re)introduced without getting caught up in stubborn problems concern-
ing either ultimate substances or our ability to satisfy more conventional views
of definition. Spirits that are postulated to exist might in fact be incorporeal—
assuming that this term can be given meaning in the light of contemporary
physics—but nothing about the method proposed here requires asserting so.
Moreover, these postulated entities might be compatible with naturalism,
although the detail of how this might be possible is unclear at present. This
means that the prospect of their reduction is neither demanded nor resisted.
The phenomena in view in this case do not provide proof for the existence
of malevolent forces and a benevolent Being (or beings), of course, and
do not distinguish between omnipotence and powers considerably greater
than those of humans. However, our scientific age does not expect proof in
empirical inquiries addressing unobservable objects. It reserves the honorific
status of “proof ” to the results of mathematics, logic, and perhaps immediate
perception.
The conceptual and theoretical innovation I am endorsing here amounts
to reenchanting the world, but I do not expect this enchantment to resem-
ble that which Western civilization once affirmed, when religion dominated
the thinking of both the populace and the educated classes. Both individuals
and social structures were once widely viewed as vulnerable to spiritual forces,
and the boundary between the self and these forces was porous, according to
Charles Taylor, unlike our view of the self where it is “buffered” and capable of
disengaging from everything outside the mind.25 Partial or total fusion with
the Holy Spirit or with evil spirits was considered a real possibility then, seem-
ingly corroborated in experience, rather than being a mere belief.26 Moreover,
sacramental acts reinforced this way of looking at the world, especially in
the Christian Eucharist, where a mere mortal is said to receive the Risen and
Exalted Christ. Taylor outlines the circumstances that led to the disenchant-
ment of Western thought in the past five hundred years. He rejects simplistic
causal explanations, but cites various seminal factors: the increasing interest
in Nature, rather than the glory of God;27 the move from seeing the cloister
as the ideal form of life, to construing Christ as the gift to all of suffering
humanity;28 the rejection of the (essentialist) view that nature defines the
natural perfection to each thing, to a (nominalistic) view where God dis-
poses of things as he sees fit;29 and the rise of religious reform movements
in both Catholic and Protestant contexts that questioned medieval ideals of
civility, discipline, religion, and secularity.30 Theorists of varying stripes have
debated the monumental change that took place in late medieval Europe, but
Taylor’s view is complex and nuanced. He does not mourn the passing of the
enchanted age, unlike the novelist and Oxford professor of literature C. S.
Lewis (1898–1963), for instance, who applauds “the discarded image” for its
“splendour, sobriety, and coherence.”31 Lewis concurs with the criticism that
this image “was not exactly true,” but he does not yield on the reality of “finite
spirits” to which that age attested. Taylor is vague on the point.
Evidence and Experience

My interest in supposed diabolical influences was first aroused 40 years ago
by acquaintance and friendship with a minister, Leo Harris, from Adelaide,
South Australia. He conducted exorcisms, when deemed necessary, and over-
saw a case in which the “voices” in an older man announced that if “they”
were forced to leave, they would enter another, a younger man, whom they
Spirits ● 31
named. Leo said that he ordered “the voices” (my terminology) to leave the
older man, in spite of the threat, and forbade them to enter the younger man.
The older man was helped instantly, but within an hour or less Leo received
a telephone call from the younger man’s mother, asking him to come over at
once, since something had “come over her son.” Leo went immediately, and
was ushered into the room where the younger man was resting, and as soon
as Leo entered he heard “the same voices” say, “We (plural form was used)
told you we’d get him, didn’t we?” Leo did not know how he had author-
ity to help the older man but not prevent the younger one from diabolical
influence. The behaviors of the two men are apt to be seen by naturalists as
two instances of DID, where the apparent nonsense that is uttered has little
significance. Of course, psychiatry does not address the possible causal con-
nection between the two instances of seemingly bizarre speech; in fact, no
established science, apart from anthropology, perhaps, might specifically do
so. However, the remark coming from the younger man only makes sense in
view of the events that transpired earlier. Again, nothing about this case looks
like a miracle, that is, some violation or suspension of natural law. How such
beings know about the vulnerability (or its opposite) of specific individuals is
a mystery.
The incident is evidence that some forms of sentience exist that sup-
plement the natural order, as the modern age understands this, just as the
markings on photographic plates are evidence that some unobservable objects
exist that are in causal relation with matters that are observable. The claims
in atomic physics are subject to a form of rationality whose explicit character
is difficult to describe, but to ignore their rationality is to write off a substan-
tial amount of scientific achievement, and that seems incorrect. Of course,
philosophers who are skeptical by disposition, and who demand that a deduc-
tive chain of inferences must be shown to follow from some highly plausible
claims that are given the status of first principles, will disagree. These skeptical
theorists, however, are not really wrestling with the remarkable achievements
of the sciences, and somehow manage to find an audience for their dated
opinions—as though a study of the sciences cannot alter our considered
views in epistemology and ontology. Transfer cases are so striking because
they exhibit the existence of some form of sentience that is once exhibited in
one person, and then is exhibited in another person or creature. The case of
the Gadarene demoniacs is more striking than this case from the files of Leo
Harris, but even the latter has the strange form of sentience passing from one
to another. What appears as the power of God in the Gadarene case is not as
transparent as the case in Leo’s experience, but he unequivocally considered
the “healing” of the older man to be due to Divine intervention, not simply
his own human efforts. What is striking, perhaps, is that an “ordinary” form
of human consciousness is presented alongside another form of consciousness

that is somehow impaired, or damaged, or perhaps deranged. The existence
of the diabolical sentience is seen in this comparison. Without the exorcism,
one would hardly know what to make of the abnormal human behavior; of
course, we do not want to impose the theory of diabolical forces upon a
situation that naturalism, as this is commonly understand, can explain.
My nearly-three years in Australia, in the early 1970s, were momentous
for me, both because of evidence that was alleged in support of the claim
that our world has largely invisible, sentient powers at work in it, and because
of personal experiences that seemed to corroborate this evidence. Leo Harris
was a remarkable man in a number of ways. Not only was he involved in
apparent exorcisms and healings in his parish, and in other parishes to which
he was invited in Australia, New Zealand, Papua and New Guinea, but he
exhibited the integrity that one might wish of one making claims of this sort.
My two degrees in Philosophy from the University of Manitoba, which was
known for its naturalism in the 1960s when I studied there, had reinforced
my skeptical outlook toward religion, especially its extraordinary claims, but
now I had to confront claims that were first- or second-hand. I was able to
corroborate his description of one exorcism with the (partial) memories of the
one who received the exorcism, and was convinced that he did not exagger-
ate the details. I did not make any effort to research any more of his exorcism
claims, for the topic then terrified me. Unfortunately, his organization did not
have the formal method of examining miraculous and extraordinary claims
that the Roman Catholic Church has established. Leo died in 1977 while
still in his 50s, leaving a legacy of dedicated followers. Not having a strong
order of bishops who were trusted with intervening in disputes, the move-
ment he established was wracked by divisions after his death. His impression
upon me was positive, and most of the people I knew assessed him in similar
terms.
In the Gadarene exorcism case, the assessment concerning two spiritual
orders can (seemingly) be made by an external observer, and nothing of
what the men experienced, phenomenologically speaking, needs to be con-
sidered. If we had phenomenological impressions, of course, we would be
foolish to ignore this information—externally and internally derived infor-
mation should be brought together wherever possible. In the account of the
first Pentecost, which is said to have been preceded by the sound of a great
wind and by tongues of fire alighting on the first disciples of Jesus, these peo-
ple also spoke in intelligible languages, but not ones known by those who
spoke. Such wind and fire would be a source of curiosity, but it is the speech
that provides the grounds for thinking that some Sentient being(s) is(are)
bringing it about. The contrast here is between “normal” people and ones
Spirits ● 33
under the influence of this Sentience, and is not as marked, perhaps, as the
contrast we see in the exorcism of the Gadarene demoniacs.
Even David Hume appears to have understood the significance of inexpli-
cable intelligible speech. He is famous for having criticized design arguments
in his posthumous Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, but at one point
he puts the following remark in the mouth of the proponent of design,
Cleanthes:32
Suppose, therefore, that an articulate voice were heard in the clouds, much
louder and more melodious than any which human art could ever reach: Sup-
pose, that this voice were extended in the same instant over all nations, and
spoke to each nation in its own language and dialect: Suppose, that the words
delivered not only contain a just sense and meaning, but convey some instruc-
tion altogether worthy of a benevolent Being, superior to mankind: Could you
possibly hesitate a moment concerning the cause of this voice?
The debate continues around this and related ideas for a short while, and then
Hume observes that Philo, the skeptical person who seems to speak for Hume
much of the time, was confounded, not knowing what to reply.33 A possible
interpretation of Hume is that he stumbled upon arguments that postulate
unobservable objects from observations needing explanation, but was unsure
about what to make of them. He is well known for wanting to stick with
observable phenomena, which logical positivism developed into a powerful
and dismissive program. Hume used a thought experiment here, which is a
dubious stratagem with which to confront the actual world we inhabit, but
he does not dismiss the significance of intelligible speech.
Theories and Paradigms

The theory of spirits that I am advancing here is one that takes its place in
competition with theories that are naturalistic, as this is widely understood.
In Speaking of the Devil, psychotherapist Carl Goldberg asserts that he can
explain malevolent behavior more convincingly than any demon hypothesis
by conjecturing the existence of shame, contempt, rationalization, justifi-
cation, inability or unwillingness to self-examine, and magical thinking.34
We see from this statement that he construes the theory of spirits as hav-
ing been supplanted by his naturalistic theory, and I have no quarrel with
this. In fact, his stratagem puts the theory of spirits in exactly the light in
which I propose to see it, that is, a theory that must compete for prefer-
ence in just the way that broadly empirical theories do. We do not know
if a reintroduced theory of spirits advanced to explain “transfer cases,” and
other cases, will take root and prevail in the long run, and we should neither
embrace nor reject the theory of spirits because it introduces intelligences that
seem to have powers that humans lack (substantially or even entirely). The
theory of spirits as I am envisaging it here is not like the hypothesis of an
intelligent designer, then, for which the conditions for falsification cannot be
readily articulated, thereby rendering this hypothesis devoid of a prominent
feature found in (most) scientific theories.35 The criteria for being scientific
are continuing matters of dispute, but we have some sense of what these
might be. We can envisage some hypothesis using only concepts belonging to
naturalism, as we now know it, offered as an alternative to the demon hypoth-
esis. We know that theories postulating unobservable (or unobserved) objects,
or objects that are incompletely observed, have been defeated in the history of
science, so the supposition I am making here about possible competitors with
the demon-hypothesis is not unrealistic. The theory of phlogiston, for exam-
ple, which was about an invisible substance once postulated to account for
a variety of chemical changes, including burning, calcification, and rusting,
was thoroughly repudiated by chemists, so thoroughly, in fact, that the term
“phlogiston” is virtually unknown to the English public. Evidently, very little
about the theory was worth salvaging36 when the chemical elements exhibited
in the periodic table came to be known. The unobservability of phlogiston
was no obstacle to the accompanying theory being rejected.
I wish to distance myself from the view that spirituality is found primarily
at the level of the paradigms in which data are found and theories are sought.
Religious people have enthusiastically embraced the work of Thomas Kuhn
(1922–96),37 who argues that paradigms need to be recognized as provid-
ing the conceptual frameworks for both the descriptions of events and the
theories that are advanced to explain them. The view that paradigms might
not admit of straightforward confirmation, and the possibility that move-
ment from one paradigm to another might not be rational in some obvious
way—such as moving from the geocentric model of the universe articulated
by Ptolemy to the heliocentrism of Copernicus—have given some defend-
ers of spirituality some hope of securing intellectual respectability for their
cherished beliefs. The issues raised by Kuhn half a century ago remain con-
troversial, whatever his positions on these matters might have been at various
points in his life. A spiritual paradigm is often offered as one that is nei-
ther more nor less plausible than that of scientific naturalism, and this is
often buttressed with the remark that faith will be needed no matter which
paradigm might be chosen. This is not the approach I wish to take, although
I do not deny that trust might be important at some point along the way.
Defenders of naturalism also choose spiritual or religious outlooks as exam-
ples of (specious) paradigms. John Searle, a former Rhodes Scholar and now
Spirits ● 35
the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley,

asserts that the scientific and naturalist worldview is
not an option. It is not simply up for grabs along with a lot of competing
world views. Our problem is not that somehow we have failed to come up with
a convincing proof of the existence of God or that the hypothesis of afterlife
remains in serious doubt, it is rather that in our deepest reflections we cannot
take such opinions seriously.38
Searle cannot be faulted for portraying spirituality or theism as a worldview

or paradigm, for this option remains popular.
The approach that I am taking toward spirituality is different from Searle’s.
I consider spirits to be most plausibly postulated at the level of descriptions or
at the level of theories, depending on the cases under consideration. Although
spirits are often “assumed” without argument, and placed within a conceptual
framework (or paradigm) that guides both description and explanation, this
is not the level at which I propose to advance their reality. The hypothesis
of an afterlife, to stay with one of Searle’s remarks, is a theory postulating an
obscure form of reality in order to explain several kinds of phenomenal expe-
rience that are seemingly not otherwise explicable at present. The hypothesis
of the existence of “a self that survives death” must confront relevant data, just
as its competitors must. Some near-death experiences reported in recent years
are suggestive of a disembodied self, since these provide accurate descriptions
of events taking place some distance from the one having the NDE. The stu-
dent who told me about his NDE said that he “saw” his body on a hospital
bed from about ten feet above the floor from a point outside the room. He
“saw” his body stretched out before him (head first), even though his head was
right at the wall of the room in which his body lay. His perspective seemed
to be from above the ceiling of the room adjacent to the room in which
his body lay. Naturalistic explanations correctly continue to be sought and
offered for these “hallucinatory perceptions,” but no reason exists to eschew
an explanation citing “the disembodied self.”39 Some defenders of naturalism
are excessive in their repudiation of explanations that are spiritual or religious
in character,40 which has the effect of suppressing or marginalizing the data
upon which all successful theorizing is based. The perceptual report that this
student made might be of a kind that is large enough to be worthy of inclu-
sion in serious theorizing, but more data on the topic must first be secured.
Making spirituality do the real work of assembling data and then advancing
adequate explanations is very different from assuming spirituality as a kind
of paradigm that guides the selection of data and explanations. Although
I am not denying that spirituality is often considered as a paradigm, I am
advocating the cessation of this practice, all the while embracing the achieve-
ments of the natural and social sciences. I am also distancing myself from
those who think postulating spirits or God in order to account for events is
to commit the god-of-the-gaps fallacy. I do not construe spirits as plausibly
postulated whenever something inexplicable comes along. I construe them
as seemingly having mental powers, but only a limited number of contexts
make such a postulation plausible. Background information that is incapable
of being fully described is coming into view here, obviously, but we should
not sell ourselves short on our capacity to assess provisionally the kinds of
theory that are worth proposing.
Meaning
Although folk-religion is no longer a viable part of Enlightenment thought,
its “abandonment” is not an event that happened so long ago that secular-
ists cannot understand once-vital spiritual terms and their cognate forms.
Terms such as “God,” “spirit,” “afterlife,” “eternal,” “salvation,” “goddess,”
and so on, remain intelligible, their meaning varying somewhat depending
on the particular expression of spirituality to which they belong. These terms
can be interpreted as largely interdefinable, so that spirituality forms a cohe-
sive conceptual network purporting to describe elusive forms of reality whose
boundary is not known (if one exists). As long as some of these vital terms are
introduced in relation to antecedently understood phenomena, spirituality
has been given meaning. The fact that secularists do not respond to spiritual
language as though gibberish is being uttered indicates that they still under-
stand its rough import; they simply deny that any version of spirituality has a
realization. The nature of theorizing today is such that no theories postulating
unobservable objects are considered to be wholly without errors or omissions
in their known forms, and a comparable courtesy seems reasonable to extend
to theories postulating spiritual realities.
The twentieth-century debate about the meaningfulness of statements
making reference to unobservable objects was precipitated by the sensational
dogmas of the logical positivists. They claimed that in order for sentences to
be meaningful in which terms for unobservables occurred, the terms purport-
ing to denote unobservable objects needed to be defined using only terms
denoting observables. The difficulties this created for positivism were sub-
stantial, for proposed definitions (and related strategies) were incomplete
or inaccurate in some way.41 Noted philosopher David Lewis (1941–2001)
contributes an important element to the discussion concerning terms that
seemingly denote mental states, since they are not intersubjectively observ-
able. Instead of insisting that any theoretical mental term (T-term) needs
Spirits ● 37
to be defined using terms denoting observable things (O-terms), Lewis con-

siders theoretical terms as needing to be defined only by other terms that
are already understood.42 Lewis does not attempt to explain exactly how the
other terms acquire their meaning, but we can plausibly expect that some
of the mechanisms proposed by behaviorists, whose views were once widely
debated, provide a part of the answer. Naturally, other empirical mechanisms
need to be brought into consideration, and perhaps the view that meaning
is found in sentences,43 not in the elements used to create them, is the most
defensible one. No effort need be expended at the outset in attempting to
define more fully the objects that are postulated to exist, for the development
of the theory supplies increasingly richer definition of the terms purport-
ing to denote unobservable objects. Postulating a “we-know-not-what” is not
an innocent act that carries no implications, but this does not mean that
one postulation is as rich as another. The strategy I am proposing here does
not require construing God’s characteristics as best explicable using analogical
language, but I am not rejecting the value of analogies.
My approach here does not attempt to explicate fully the ways in which
terms acquire meaning. Empiricism is well known for having attempted to
describe the mechanisms operative in human life by which the most basic
concepts, and meaningful language, consequently, are acquired. Sense per-
ception is seemingly the source for our most common concepts, according to
this view, on the assumption that we have no innate ones. In keeping with tra-
ditional empiricism, some cognitive scientists have asserted that each person
is fitted with some neurological “abstractor” 44 that takes common elements
of a myriad of perceptual experiences to create general concepts, such as those
of blue or of car. Here empiricist methodology is being imposed dogmatically
upon the study of the human brain. Nothing about my method prevents the
neural domain of “abstractor” to be postulated to exist, but such a postu-
lation must be treated as conjectural; the question whether an “abstractor”
exists awaits more subtle experimental work, which might also render the
conjecture implausible.
Empiricists have attributed a power to the intellect of abstracting simi-
lar features of perceptual experience, for example, abstracting the movement
from such objects as a falling rock, a galloping stallion, and a train in tran-
sit to form the concept of motion. Even if we go along with this empiricist
explanation, however, some mystery remains over our capacity to under-
stand the similarity that is presupposed in concept-formation: Is the similarity
(in movement) between the falling rock and the galloping stallion identical
to the similarly between the galloping stallion and the train in transit, or is
it not? This question invites further questions, such as: If a single concept of
similarity exists so that the similarities in the two comparisons are identical,
how is it obtained? On the other hand, if the first similarity is dissimilar from
the second similarity, how is this concept of dissimilarity acquired? These
questions could be elaborated ad nauseum, and philosophers have endlessly
debated conundrums such as these. However, their debates hardly wring all
the mystery out of concept-formation. All of our powers are significant for
comprehending the world we are in—senses, imagination, and cognition—
especially for our understanding of beings. Cognitive science is revealing that
simple empiricism cannot answer the questions of concept formation. We are
interactive creatures, sometimes sending out and receiving stimuli without
awareness, and responding in the same way. The awareness that empiricism
has presupposed does not fit with what we know about ourselves.
Causality must be one of the most significant relations that we ever dis-
cover, although our knowledge of its pervasiveness is undoubtedly limited,
and perhaps always will be, since our first encounters with it are embedded
in acts we initiated and in responses we made during our infancy, when our
ability to understand was not linguistic. Cognitive science is helping us to
piece together some of the events leading to an understanding of common
causation,45 but the distance it can reach back into our personal histories is
unclear. Other relations beside causality help to “fix” the reference of terms
that denote unobservables. Some of these relations are expressed by simple
prepositions such as “beside,” “under,” and “in,” and by such expressions as
“is similar to,” “is greater than” and by many more. The properties that things
have are clearly vital to what they are, but the relations that things have to one
another put them in important structures, structures that help to describe the
world we inhabit.46
Objects that we somehow isolate for attention do not exist independently
of the structures in which we find them. The cosmos forms an ultimate struc-
ture, of course, within which numerous substructures exist, and within these
the objects exist that are the focus of exact studies. Our implicit knowledge
of attributes of relations speaks to our understanding of structures, and with-
out this implicit knowledge the specific knowledge of particular things would
be of little interest. Even a child of six years already knows that transitivity
is not an attribute of the relation of one thing being beside another, for she
knows that if Alice is beside Betty, and Betty is beside Charlotte, no inference
can be drawn about whether or not Alice is beside Charlotte. Many years
pass, of course, before the attributes of relations become explicit objects of
study, but if they are studied, they bring astonishing clarity to what we already
know, but might not have known that we knew.47 The principles that bestow
meaning on terms for unobservable objects in descriptive and explanatory
theories are the same ones that give meaning to many fictional objects and
beings. The creation of fiction, especially science fiction, perhaps, evidently
Spirits ● 39
achieves its goals of producing a strange but coherent narrative by embed-

ding its neologisms (nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, etc.) within a language
whose other terms are already familiar and well understood. This embedding
places the fictional objects in a conceptual space, so to speak, whose “shape”
is partially determined by the meaning that belongs to “other terms” with
which the reader is already familiar. Various properties of postulated objects,
as well as relations of postulated objects to other objects, provide the nexus
in which understanding occurs. The widespread interest in fiction suggests
that virtually everyone has some familiarity with “theories” that postulate
unobservables, even though we might not be conscious of this knowledge.
The prominent American philosopher of a century ago, Charles Saunders
Pierce (1839–1914), calls the reasoning necessary for considering theories
postulating unobservable objects as “retroduction” or “abduction,”48 and dis-
tinguishes it from deduction, whose structure is quite well defined,49 as well
as from probable inference (induction), whose content is more obscure. The
phrase “inference to the best explanation” is also used to describe retroduc-
tion, but the use of “best” here is more beguiling than helpful—the last
modestly successful explanation proposed is likely to be considered “best”
until a more successful one comes along. Theories postulating unobservable
objects are often found to be flawed or incomplete,50 in spite of our inabil-
ity to address unobservable objects directly, but the associated methodology
suggests reasonable measures by which such theories might be improved. In a
retrospective on the developments of high-energy physics over three decades,
Cambridge theoretical physicist and theologian John Polkinghorne describes
some philosophers of science and some quantum field theorists as being “so
obsessed with what is logically demonstrable that they fail to recognize what
is scientifically interesting.”51 He is giving expression here to the frustra-
tion that can be experienced when one’s interlocutors are in the thrall of a
methodology that is too limited to explain the developments of science in
the past two centuries, especially the twentieth century. The use of retroduc-
tion is consistent with most of the usual criteria in evaluating hypotheses,
such as being subject to confirming or disconfirming evidence; being capa-
ble of predicting events, including novel ones; being consistent with other
well-established theories; being simpler than competitors; and so on. More-
over, entities postulated to exist, and initially considered unobservable, might
turn out to be observed, such as the “inheritance factors” proposed by Gregor
Mendel (1822–84), which we know of as genes. In broad terms, spiritual
systems postulate the existence of beings that are either wholly unobservable,
partially observable, or are only occasionally observable. This is true for ortho-
dox forms of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, for all claim that a Supreme
Being exists, who is served by spirits who do his52 bidding and is opposed by
diabolical forces that seek to thwart his benevolent intentions. The demand
for a direct link between observation and meaningful statements, such as we
find in logical positivism, also obscures the significance of contextual def-
inition, even though the work of several well-known figures was dependent
upon it. W. V. O. Quine (1908–2000) observes that Jeremy Bentham (1748–
1832) used contextual definition, which Bentham calls paraphrasis,53 and
early in the twentieth century, Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) made contex-
tual definition central to his famous analysis of the “logic” found in definite
descriptions.54 The writings of both Bentham and Russell were well publi-
cized at the height of the positivist movement, to which Russell had more
than a casual connection. Russell’s clarifying analysis of definite description
is comparable to Plato’s definition of knowledge offered more than two mil-
lennia earlier. Exactly how positivism managed to evade the contribution of
contextual definition to logic and science is unclear.
The methodology I am advancing here threatens to obscure the boundary
between naturalism and supernaturalism as it has been understood in Western
thought. The Christian insistence upon beginning the study of religion with
a definition of God derived from holy texts has certainly contributed to the
belief that any talk of spirits is to embrace a supernatural (or supranatural
or nonnatural or antinatural) worldview. In the “transfer case” that I have
sketched, however, the “demons” and the “Something that expels them” are
related (by causality and in other ways) to objects that are indubitably natural,
such as men, graveyards, pigs, grazing fields, and seawater, as well as proper-
ties of these objects and the relations that these have to other things. We could
choose to view the spiritual beings as natural, since they are defined contex-
tually using natural terms. Judeao-Christian faith has wanted to make a clear
distinction between created things and their Creator, with which I have no
quarrel, but empirical events on their own do not provide a basis for insist-
ing upon a distinction between that Which creates and that which is created.
Neither does this “transfer case” warrant making a distinction between mate-
rial things and nonmaterial things. The older term “materialism” is losing
its appeal as physics attempts to describe the objects in its purview,55 which
now includes strange subatomic particles and their “mirror images” in anti-
matter. Physics is introducing very difficult questions about the appropriate
categories under which objects might be classified. The claim that physical
realities are incompatible with spiritual ones does not have the prima facie
plausibility of the trivial claim that material realities are incompatible with
spiritual ones.
The “transfer case” that I have discussed moves in the direction of pro-
viding a rational basis for advancing the existence of spirits, not for the
occurrence of miracles. It embeds an empirical argument, and has the
Spirits ● 41
rationality exhibited by atomism, by genetic theory, by evolutionary the-

ory, by the theory of plate tectonics, and so on. The “transfer case” that
I have briefly discussed demonstrates that empirical evidence is relevant
to spirituality. Any effort to reintroduce spirituality into Western thought
in the present intellectual climate, however, which is suspicious of tradi-
tional arguments and captivated by scientific achievements, is not likely
to find success in well-worn approaches favored in theistic circles. Some
theists might baulk at the thought of introducing the possibility of a diabol-
ical reality. However, influential twentieth-century authors who have urged
that diabolical powers should not be dismissed out of hand include C. S.
Lewis,56 historical theologian Eric Mascall (1905–93),57 and theologian Paul
Tillich (1886–1965),58 although perhaps not for reasons I have sketched
here. Reports of “transfer cases” involving maleficent forces (or beings or
agents or entities—the right term is elusive) still are made,59 suggesting that
experiences having ontological significance comparable to the biblical story
continue to occur. The fact that the British government added exorcism to
the list of recognized therapies in 199960 also suggests that some evidence for
the reality of spirits was uncovered. “Exorcisms” continue to be conducted,
but the extent to which they point to forms of reality beyond the estab-
lished natural order is unclear, for evil and holy spirits can easily be imposed
upon experiences and made to be elements in an interpretive framework in
irrational ways.
Some comment is needed about the supposed dependence of folk-religion
upon folk-psychology, especially inasmuch as folk-psychology once used the
term “soul,” which has been widely considered to be crucial to religion. More-
over, since folk-psychology is in the process of being reduced, folk-religion
might be thought to be in danger of having a vital part of its founda-
tion eroded.61 Several things can be said in response to this possibility. The
reduction of folk-psychology is not likely to be a uniform matter, in part
because various neural processes seem to be capable of undergirding particular
kinds of mental states. Moreover, reductions that consist largely of identify-
ing mental states and processes with neurophysiological ones, as opposed to
reductions that eliminate mental states and processes completely, could be
said to leave significant phenomena intact, albeit described in another vocab-
ulary. Such a (mixed) reduction of folk-psychology would deal a substantial
blow to the supremacy of common-sense ways of describing and explaining
human behavior, but it would have only a minimal effect upon spiritual-
ity, inasmuch as spirituality stands (or falls) on its own. Folk-religion could
survive the “reduction” of folk-psychology, although folk-religion would find
itself saddled with new challenges in articulating its (new) relationships to
scientific theories.62
The Socratic view that the soul was immortal63 and would be judged in
some postmortem assize64 firmly linked the soul with religion. This feature
of the soul was embraced by Christianity, during whose long hegemony over
intellectual life in Western civilization the soul’s immaterial nature and inde-
pendence from matter were emphasized. Descartes is celebrated for having
given the ontological distinction between an immortal soul and a mor-
tal body its sharpest expression,65 thereby heightening questions about the
nature of the soul, about the meaning of claims that humans have souls,
and about the soul’s relation to body. The post-Cartesian developments of
the concept of soul are well known: dualistic interactionism was questioned
and various other views of soul and soul–body interaction were advanced,
including idealism, parallelism, the double-aspect view, epiphenomenalism,
the preestablished harmony view, and various forms of materialism. The
term “soul” was then replaced with “mind,” which does not carry the reli-
gious associations of “soul”; and eventually “mind” was replaced with “mental
states,” which does not suggest a questionable substance but only properties
of something. Conscious mental states and processes are now widely seen as
properties of a person, whose definition can also be given by the contextual
method I have been describing. The concept of soul is perhaps making some-
thing of a comeback by virtue of the peculiar experiences of those reporting
NDEs.66 In its long history in Western thought, the concept of soul exhibits
the curious feature of objects whose postulation makes sense of a large body of
data. Each field of inquiry postulating unobserved (or unobservable) objects
deserves close scrutiny in itself, and we cannot assume that methodological
discoveries in one field will have an exact counterpart in another.
Although not an exact contemporary of Socrates, Gautama Buddha (≈
560–480 BCE, but possibly later67) advanced a view of the soul that the
Western tradition took many centuries to consider seriously. We can only
speculate what might have happened in the West had it had contact much
earlier with Eastern thought. Buddha refused to ascribe discrete existence to
an ‘I,” what we in the West came to know as soul, and so questions about
postmortem existence just do not arise—no self exists that can be either anni-
hilated or live forever. The psychophysical elements of one life, seemingly, are
impermanent and impersonal,68 so its discrete existence cannot be affirmed.
This position is strikingly like modern physicalism, which acknowledges our
sense of causal connectedness between psychophysical states, but denies that
anything that could be said to be the self continues after death. Buddhism
does not deny the existence of a self or a person in a social or a legal sense,69
but in a deeper metaphysical sense, the self is not an enduring reality. We can
perhaps view this position as the canonical Buddhist view, for variations on it
have emerged in philosophico-religious thought, including Hinduism.70
Spirits ● 43
Phenomenological Detail
A conspicuous feature of the Gadarene exorcism case is that nothing of
what was phenomenologically experienced by the demoniacs is included in
the account. In fact, biblical accounts of exorcism hardly describe events
either from the standpoint of those afflicted or from that of the one per-
forming the exorcism. Jesuit professor and theologian Augustin Poulain
(1836–1919) says that loss of consciousness usually occurs in a person under-
going exorcism,71 which might partially account for incomplete information
about the phenomenological aspects of possession and exorcism from those
affected. Consider the following case from the Alister Hardy files, written by a
Scottish woman in her sixties, in which “intuitive knowing” comes into sharp
view as a vital part of the phenomenological description:
Case 1 Adeline:72 One evening I had spent a pleasant couple of hours with
an aunt and her family in ____ and about ten p.m. was travelling by subway
back [to my place]. I was in a pleasantly relaxed frame of mind—my mind
idle [and] my eyes shut—when I was quite suddenly “assaulted” by a sense
of Evil. I opened my eyes to see if anyone had entered the compartment of
the train but it was empty, [except] for a middle-aged man who seemed to be
snoozing in the corner diagonally opposite and for a pleasant looking girl who
sat opposite. I was filled with an indescribable feeling of mental revulsion and
horror, my mind seeming to work like that of a threatened animal as I tried to
sense from where the threat came. I felt as if my mind was being threatened by
some destructive force and thought it might be associated with the people in
the compartment, and determined to leave the train some three stations before
I should normally leave and get a tram or walk. I left the train and was aware
that the evil was with me. I felt that I couldn’t combat it, then argued that
I couldn’t recoil so completely if it were part of me and that I must pray for
help. I started with the Lord’s Prayer (I was walking home by this time) and
prayed with an intensity that sometimes made me stagger. When I came to the
petition, “Deliver us from evil,” I “knew” that this was the key word and phrase.
I repeated [it]. I had a religious upbringing and remembered a text: “Nothing
can separate us from the Love of God,” and refused to let my mind think of
anything but those two ideas. I went to bed and slept and woke to the horror,
though I said then, “It is not with you, it is just the memory that is with you.”
The strange thing was that one part of my mind seemed to be in this conflict
and seemed to direct me, and to reason fairly logically with me, but somehow
could not reassure. I stayed in my room for a day and contemplated going [to
my parent’s] home, as I felt that I was mentally deranged. By the end of three
days this horror had departed and the memory gradually became less vivid, but
it was one of the moving factors in my life. I have no way of describing this
evil force, and never thought there was a similar force till I read of the German
concentration camps, and thought that this was the force that planned them.
This description is entirely phenomenological, and its thick description high-

lights the relative thinness of the descriptions in biblical accounts of exorcism.
Nothing about this description, however impressive from a phenomenolog-
ical standpoint, includes anything of an intersubjectively observable nature,
and so cannot contribute much by itself to the claim that spirituality or reli-
gion can make a contribution to our understanding of the world. This kind
of case is of value, then, primarily as a supplement to other cases that purport
to ground the theory of spirits. No objections to collecting cases such as this
should be offered by those who embrace naturalism, for on its own it does not
challenge their metaphysical position. Intuitive knowing (or quasi-knowing)
makes its appearance here, which adds to the significance of cases involving
the activity of spirits, both holy and diabolical.
Another case from the Alister Hardy files combines phenomenological
and intersubjective elements in an important way. The event took place in
the Rhineland, Germany, in 1947, and the account comes from an Anglican
priest whom I will identify as William. I will refer to the person who under-
went what appears to have been exorcism as Nathan, and the witness to the
event as Thomas.73
Case 2: William: On the last evening of the Rhineland Keswick Convention

three of us set out, at about 10:15 p.m. for a walk through a small wood which
led to a village on the other side. Nathan, one of the party, started to tell the
story of his life, and when we came to a clearing in the wood Thomas suggested
that we should sit down for awhile. Nathan continued to relate his story. On
joining the Royal Air Force he had missed the influence of home, and fell into
bad company, unable to resist temptation. As Nathan finished his story there
was silence. I sat with my eyes closed, wondering how I, as one of the conven-
tion leaders, could help the young fellow. What happened next was over in a
very short space of time. Breaking through the silence, and crashing through
the darkness with tremendous power came my voice, “In the name of the Lord
Jesus Christ depart.” Immediately Nathan let out a half-shout, and fell towards
me. He said afterwards, “At those words I saw a black form appear from some-
where at my feet and vanish into the wood, and, at the same time, something
indescribable left me.”
I felt an urgency for prayer, and if Nathan did not pray, something would hap-
pen to him. It was at this point an event occurred so dreadful that since I have
prayed that it should never happen again. It seemed as if horrifying pande-
monium had been let loose; as if all the powers of hell were concentrated in
that spot in the wood. I saw numbers of black shapes, blacker than the night,
moving about and seeking to come between myself and Nathan, whom I was
gripping hard. I saw three demon spirits, perhaps more, between Nathan and
Spirits ● 45
myself. These shapes were intelligences. They were different from one another.
Each had a personality of its own. They began to buffet me, not striking me
physically, but thrusting me backwards in spirit away from Nathan so as to
make me recoil, perhaps from fear, and so loosen my hold. Two other demon
spirits, about shoulder high, were just behind me, one on my right, the other
on my left. These two were moving about with a swaying, menacing up-and-
down motion, such as boxers use when seeking an opening for attack. Again
I felt an intense urgency for prayer, particularly for Nathan. “Pray Nathan,”
I called to him, but the poor fellow could do nothing but sob. With my hands
on my shoulders I cried, “The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin.”
Again and again, I repeated the phrase. I did not notice that Thomas was
silent until he said, “What a horrible atmosphere.” “Pray Thomas,” I com-
manded. “Pray for us.” Together we cried with a loud voice, “The blood of
Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin.” Then, after a pause, in a colossal voice
such as I have never heard before or since came a verse from Scripture through
my lips in terrifying power. The words were forced out of my mouth, “I give
to my sheep eternal life; they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them
out of my hand.” I was left absolutely gasping after this. My mouth had been
stretched open wider and wider, as if the words were too big for my lips to
utter. I then led with the Lord’s Prayer. For Thomas this was a real climax. He
saw nothing, but again felt the atmosphere change. As we reached the words,
“Deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory,”
the feeling of power was immense. The atmosphere was charged with a living
presence, impossible to describe. Then everything grew quiet. The air seemed
soft and pleasant, as if angel voices were singing, as if a battle had ended,
or a great storm had blown itself out. Nathan whispered, “Praise God, Oh
what joy.”
We made our way back to the conference centre. Nathan could not wait until
morning to share the news of his deliverance. Quite independently, Nathan
told of how he had seen seven black forms emerge from the trees in the wood,
and how he felt some power pushing him forward out of my grip.
The correspondence in the Alister Hardy Research Center files indicates that
the Center wrote to Thomas, asking him to give further details of the event,
but he declined to do so even though he had written a full account at the time
it occurred. He said that it was perhaps the most terrifying experience he had
ever had, and did not want to relive it in any way. Thomas evidently did not
object to the account given earlier, however, and we can perhaps interpret his
silence as giving consent to the gist of what was reported.
This case is important for the detail it provides concerning phenomeno-
logical experience, and the correlation of this with the features of the case that
are reported to have been intersubjectively observed. As William first rebuked
what he sensed to be a dark aspect of Nathan’s life, Nathan saw a black

form disappear from him and had the phenomenological sense that “some-
thing indescribable” had left him. William then had a phenomenological
sense of “horrifying pandemonium” involving the powers of hell, which was
followed by seeing black shapes come between him and Nathan—this cor-
responds to Nathan’s experience, both phenomenological and visual. Nathan
later reported seeing seven black forms, all (or most) of which William also
reported. At the climax of the deliverance, William had an indescribably
holy sense of having a sentence from the Christian Scriptures uttered in and
through him, combined with the sensation of having his mouth stretched
open wide and being physically exhausted. The overlap of this part of his
experience with Nathan’s deliverance is arguably the human participation in
delivering a man from evil on the authority of Christ through the power
of the Holy Spirit. No biblical account describes what Jesus or his disciples
might have felt as they administered exorcism. However, the tight correlation
here of what was said, felt, collectively observed, and variously experienced,
even by Thomas, who was primarily a witness to the events, makes this an
impressive addition to the Gadarene transfer cases. Both of these kinds of
case shed light on other events in which nothing significant is observed, in
the usual sense of this term, although a diabolical or a divine presence might
be “felt.” Feelings are what comprise the content of most spiritual experience,
and these generally leave naturalists understandably unconvinced about the
claims of religion. Intuitive knowing (or quasi-knowing) arguably suffuses
this case, showing that it is implicated in spiritual experiences that touch the
physical world.
Although the reintroduction of spirits into the thought of the Western
intelligentsia does not require a backdrop of seemingly diabolical influences,74
phenomena such as exorcism might provide us with a clarity that other cases
do not possess. Miracles could also do so, but reports of these are often so hard
to corroborate that their evidential value is put into question. Human beings
are sometimes said to be or to have spirits, but the modern developments
of psychology have called into question the claim that spirit is most per-
spicaciously seen in us. We might wonder what the experience of the Divine
might be like without a backdrop that is seemingly diabolical in character, and
whether such cases might be adequate to reintroduce the feasibility of spiritu-
ality into a secular culture. The work of Emma Heathcote-James, formerly a
student at the University of Birmingham in Great Britain, on contemporary
reports of encounters with beings taken to be angels, is of interest on this
question.75 The 800 reports she has collected come from people of numerous
vocational and spiritual backgrounds, including some who were atheistic or
agnostic. The size of her database is considerable enough to warrant careful
Spirits ● 47
notice. Almost a third of those who contacted her reported seeing a tradi-
tional angel with white gown and wings, while another 21 percent saw what
they considered to be their guardian angel in human form.76
One of Heathcote-James’s cases was also researched by Carol Midgley, a
reporter with The Times of London, who reports that a being considered to
be an angel was seen in a village church in Hertfordshire, England, during a
baptismal service by about 30 people (half of those in attendance). The rector
of the church said:
Case 3: “Suddenly there was a man in white standing in front of the [baptismal]
font about eighteen inches away. He was a man but he was totally, utterly
different from the rest of us. He was wearing something long, like a robe, but it
was so white it was almost transparent . . . He was just looking at us. It was the
most wonderful feeling. Not a word was spoken; various people began to touch
their arms because it felt like having warm oil poured over you. The children
came forward with their mouths wide open. Then all of a sudden—I suppose
it was a few seconds, but time seemed to stop—the angel was gone. Everyone
who was there was quite convinced that the angel came to encourage us.”77
Heathcote-James later reported: “I interviewed a lot of people about that

angel, and everybody told the same story. Their descriptions were totally
consistent.”78 Several features of this account are of particular interest. The
fact that it was intersubjectively experienced takes it into the domain that has
implications for the cosmic order. Every branch of science accepts the princi-
ple that intersubjective observation provides evidence for the reality of what is
observed. We also know from scientific investigation that the ultimate nature
of what we encounter might not be apparent from sensory experience.
This account also provides information about what was sensed by the peo-
ple in the church who saw what they took to be an angel, a feeling that
the rector put into words for Midgley: “It felt like having warm oil poured
over you.” When spiritual experience that penetrates the space-time-causal
world can be correlated with phenomenological experience (collective in this
case), then that felt experience has more importance than it would otherwise
have, for these correlated instances provide hints about what might be expe-
rienced when no marks of objectivity are featured—and this characterizes
most spiritual experience. The sensation of “having warm oil poured all over
you” is arguably felt from time to time by those who participate in spiritual
events. Although few who are educated in Western culture may be inclined
to concede that others who report this “sensation” have actually tapped into
something beyond themselves, the rare glimpses into experiences such as the
one offered by Heathcote-James and Midgley provide a basis for thinking
otherwise. I surmise that the reported sensation of “warm oil” is undergirded
by neurophysiological mechanisms in human beings. Accepting the possible

reduction of folk-psychology has no telling impact on the significance of such
an experience for folk-religion. Cognitive science is not a threat to spirituality;
rather, it will illuminate issues such as the difference between experiences that
are derived “wholly from within” and those that are not, thereby correcting
some of the overconfident claims made by those who are spiritually inclined.
Encounters with angels are a subset of spiritual experiences broadly known
as apparitions, which constitute a core experience for traditional branches of
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The Hebrew Bible describes a dozen or so
apparition or dream experiences in the lives of Judaism’s patriarchs, in which
God is said to have made covenantal promises to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and
their descendants. Christianity describes or makes reference to a comparable
number of appearances or visions of the resurrected Christ, without which the
claim that he was brought back to life in some immortal form would prob-
ably never have been advanced. Islam also has its roots in an encounter with
an angel, as Gabriel is said to have given the Qur’an to Muhammad. Note-
worthy also are the spinoffs from orthodox Christianity in which apparitions
are involved, as in Swedenborgian faith, Mormon faith, and in that of Sun
Myung Moon, the Korean founder of the Unification Church. Apparitions
or encounters with beings somehow linked to a transcendent world continue
to be reported today, and thereby continue to give credibility to claims from
folk-religion, however incomplete these attempts appear to those who are
imbued with the sophistication of the modern age. We have to factor in the
possibility that accounts that have come down to us from ancient, medieval,
and early modern times are flawed in various ways, and that some might be
fictitious. However, I think that apparitions are widely enough reported to
warrant cautious respect.
Apparitions (or Corporeal Visions)

The study I undertook of apparitions and visions of Christ focused on the
reports given to me by 30 living visionaries.79 The percipients were awake,
their eyes were open (apart from one or two cases), they identified the being
that appeared as Christ, they did not have obvious signs of psychopathology,80
and they do not appear to have brought on their experiences by ingesting
hallucinogens or by such activities as ceaseless prayer, fasting, and sleep depri-
vation. I examined their experiences using 17 phenomenological variables,
including the following:81
(a) Whether the experience occurred in an altered state of consciousness

or in what appears to be ordinary consciousness;
Spirits ● 49
(b) Whether the experience involved unusual alterations to the basic

orienting system, such as the sense of being rendered immobile;
(c) Whether audition occurred with the experience, and if it did, whether
it meshed with other sensations that were part of the experience, such
as observing someone (an apparition) mouthing the words that are
heard (or “heard”);
(d) Whether touch was attempted, and if it was, whether it meshed with
other sensory experiences, such as seeing one’s own hands touch what
the percipient felt his or her hands to touch;
(e) Whether the visual aspect of the experience resembled, or differed
from, ordinary visual experience, for example, whether the figure that
appeared was seen as three-dimensional, as solid, as moving, as nor-
mal in height, as completely formed, as obscuring other objects or as
obscured by them, etc.;
(f ) Whether causal effects (or apparent concomitants) occurred;
(g) Whether space-time-causal anomalies were part of the whole experi-
ence; and
(h) Whether the experience was collective.
I cannot begin to do justice here to the numerous specific features of these

experiences, but I will briefly discuss several that are relevant to the theoret-
ical aspects of spirituality that I am addressing, and to the question of the
conventional space-time-causal order being penetrated by something more. I
specifically want to focus on the complex ways in which experiences seem-
ingly having no obvious marks of “objectivity” implicate the world with
which we “ordinarily” interact. The primary conceptual domain used by
the percipients whom I interviewed was that of common sense, although
a few made allusions to other conceptual domains that have become wed-
ded to common sense in our thinking about the world, such as physics,
chemistry, and psychology. No difficulties arise, as far as I can see, in let-
ting as much as possible of the conceptual domains associated with scientific
thought and experiment to inform our understanding of human spiritual
experience. These cases again illustrate how intuitive knowing (quasi) suffuses
such experience.
Helen Bezanson said that her first apparition experience occurred as she
stood while prayers were said in a religious service that she attended only to
please her mother-in-law. She first had the tactile sensation of something or
someone touching her hand, but when she opened her eyes to see what or
who might have done so, she saw that no thing or person was near enough
to her to have touched her. She closed her eyes again, and again felt the same
tactile sensation. When she opened her eyes the second time she “saw” a figure
standing on a pedestal in front of her, whom she immediately identified as

Christ, perhaps in part because he appeared much as tradition has imagined
him. Helen also said that she had the impression that she was “looking at
God,” although she could not explain what this meant precisely, or what gave
her this impression. Helen wondered if anyone else saw what she saw, so she
turned and looked away to the people behind her, but no one else gave any
indication that they were having a comparable experience, and she never did
hear any report to that effect in subsequent days. She conducted this “reality-
check” several times, and found that the figure standing on the pedestal before
her was visible each time she faced the front of the building, and that he did
not follow her eyes. Radiance enveloped him as he stood there, but this glow
was not merely in the form of a halo around his head, which is how Christian
tradition has often portrayed him. Rather, light enveloped his whole body. He
looked directly at Helen and made motions with his hands that gave her the
sense that he was accepting her completely. Helen also found herself speaking
to him in a language that she had not learned, all of which mystified her, for
she was not spiritually inclined and had no particular interest in developing a
spiritual life.
Responding to this experience as “merely hallucinatory,” as some critics of
religion or spirituality are wont to do, is dismissive of the complexity of her
reported sensory experiences. The term “hallucination” itself is problematic
because of many meanings given to it,82 but this term or some synonym is
needed to discuss her sensory experience while we bracket questions about an
ontological order that might (or might not) be implicated in the experience.
We might not think that the peculiar tactile sensation was a crucial part of
the whole event, but its spatiotemporal proximity to the extraordinary visual
aspect part of the experience, and its position in the sequence of events, gives
it significance. It perhaps functioned to create the sense of puzzlement that
often precedes efforts to answer particular questions, which results in knowl-
edge. From a naturalistic perspective, Helen appears to have hallucinated in
two sensory modalities within a few seconds, the cause of which is of interest.
This case is not one in which a person has simultaneous sensations in two or
more sensory modalities, which was reported in some accounts. Barry Dyck,
for example, said that he saw a glowing figure at the end of his hospital bed
that he identified as Christ, which induced Barry to sit up and take hold of
the arms that were stretched toward him. He said that the (tactile and kines-
thetic) sensations he had of touching the arms of another “meshed” with the
visual sensation of seeing his own hands grasp those arms, so the experience
resembled those in “ordinary life” where we also see our hands touch what
we feel them touch, which generally occurs without any notice. Helen’s expe-
rience, by contrast, consisted of tactile sensations followed closely by visual
Spirits ● 51
ones. The tactile sensation moved her to open her eyes, as though she was sup-
posed to see something. In several other Christic visions, the percipient “saw”
the same being whether their eyes were open or shut. This was evidently not
“intended” in Helen’s experience.
Helen conducted a reality check in turning away from the apparition,
looking back to those standing behind her in order to see whether any gave
an indication that they were seeing the same thing, and then looking forward
to the place that the apparition first appeared. We do not know what oth-
ers might have seen, for Helen did not make inquiries, but I assume that
no one else saw anything. One of the most influential attempts to make
sense of perceptual anomalies in hallucinations is the perceptual release the-
ory, according to which jumbled memories from past experiences are brought
together in a (reasonably) coherent way, and are introduced into conscious
experience, much as they enter unconscious experience and are experienced
as dreams. This theory was endorsed by Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)83 and
other prominent researchers in psychiatric sciences near the end of the nine-
teenth century,84 and continues to be influential in shaping variations of it.
While acknowledging the peculiarity of certain aspects of Helen’s experience,
we cannot ignore those features that showed no anomaly, such as her vestibu-
lar sense of standing in a particular spot, repeatedly turning to the back and
then the front, and knowing where she was in the room.
The marvel of Helen’s experience lies in the fact that she experienced the
same visual anomaly each time she faced the front of the room, and that when
she turned to look behind her, she saw the people who were actually present.
She was evidently attempting to determine whether the radiant man she saw
at the front of the building was an anomalous sensation. However, as far as
she could tell, her sensory powers were intact, for the people she saw behind
her were the people she had previously seen prior to the onset of the visual
anomaly. If the perceptual release theory is applicable here, some explanation
is needed for the fact that the same perceptual unit was present each time she
faced the front of the building—surely the fact that she faced the front was
negligible, causally speaking, in producing the same visual sensations. Expla-
nations that cite sexual repression, wishes, or stress as primary causes for such
anomalous perceptions are even less convincing than the conjecture offered
by the perceptual release theory—surely, sexual repression or stress did not rise
and fall repeatedly because of the direction she faced, or in synchronicity
with it.
Helen’s experience can be profitably compared with Jim Link’s first
Christic vision. Jim went to his living room to watch television, turned on
the set, and then discovered that he could neither see the television screen
nor hear its sound. He momentarily wondered if he had watched so much
television that his sight and hearing had been adversely affected, but he knew
this to be absurd. Jim also attempted a reality check by looking in the direc-
tion of where he knew the living room window to be, but he discovered that
he could not see it. He described the “visual space” he found himself to be
in as one in which he was enveloped by a curtain, but he could not actually
see a curtain. As Jim stood in his living room, wondering what was happen-
ing to him, a man dressed in regal clothing slowly came into view, his head
hooded in a way that prevented Jim from seeing his face, which is usually the
most important feature in making an identification of a person. As the man
extended an arm and then beckoned Jim to come toward him, a line from the
New Testament attributed to Jesus Christ came to mind: “Come to me all you
who are weak and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Jim then “knew” that
he was having an encounter with Christ. A curious feature was that whereas
Jim’s visual and auditory senses were impaired, his sense of knowing where
he was in his house and that he was standing, his capacity to propose conjec-
tures to himself about the causes of his sudden sensory impairment, and his
presence of mind to conduct a reality check, were intact.
Jim’s experience looks much more hallucinatory85 than Helen’s, in view of
the fact that his attempt to conduct a reality check was thwarted. His expe-
rience appears to be more plausibly described than Helen’s as one in which
memories of previous perceptions are somehow jumbled and transformed,
and then “dropped” into conscious experience, along with the cognitive states
and other familiar features of complex experiences, such as their affective
tone.86 Helen’s conviction that she had encountered some recondite form of
reality, while incapable of being incontrovertibly shown, is not an implau-
sible conjecture—certainly, she had to do something with the experience.
Helen managed to integrate it into the much longer story of her life, in which
one other Christic vision occurred many years later. In this narrative, which
she tells primarily by means of the conceptual schemes embedded in the
common-sense framework rather than in relation to scientific domains that
are replacing common sense, she makes sense not only of what would pass
for ordinary experiences, but also of experiences that seemingly are linked to
the mysterious world postulated to exist by the Christian form of spirituality.
The kind of aberrant visual field that Jim described was rarely reported by the
subjects I interviewed, and most of the Christic visions I uncovered involved
spiritual experiences having a complex relationship to the space-time-causal
world we inhabit in ordinary experience.
Joy Kinsey reported an experience that also seems trancelike or dreamlike
on the surface, and so of little significance to our understanding of spiritual-
ity, but a strange concomitant gives one pause. Joy went to the front of her
church to receive prayer, and when a minister placed his hands on her head
Spirits ● 53
she lost consciousness and “encountered” a being she believed was Christ. He
conversed with her in this unconscious state, which she did not describe as
a dream, although it would appear to someone else to have been one. She
had the sense of being in a temple, and as the experience came to an end,
Christ offered her a cup of wine that had been placed at the center of a mar-
ble or an alabaster floor (still in her unconscious state). On drinking the wine,
she regained consciousness, and discovered that the people near her were in
a state of consternation because of the strong aroma of wine that came from
her mouth and permeated the room. Although she had never had an alcoholic
drink in her life to that point, she felt so “drunk” that she could not walk,
and needed help from her parents to get to their car. This case represents
interesting challenges for both psychology and the physical sciences, since
the smell of wine is a physical matter related to the precise ways in which
human olfactory senses are affected by those (complex) chemical structures
that constitute wine. Psychology is relevant to the stream of “unconscious”
events that Joy reported, but psychology by itself cannot adequately explain
the intersubjectively reported features of the experience. Many of the other
Christic experiences I researched demonstrated unpredictable and unexpected
elements. Apparitions appear to alter or to reinterpret the conventional space-
time-causal world in curious ways. We might say that apparition experiences
inveigle themselves into the warp and woof of the conventional world, often
leaving a legacy of curiosity and mystery, so that the people who are directly
implicated in these experiences are typically changed for life, having seem-
ingly become witnesses to events whose public face is limited. Some aspects
of these experiences typically resemble ordinary perception, while others dif-
fer from it, and various sensory powers can be involved. Responding to such
experiences as “merely hallucinatory” is again dismissive of their complexity,
and of their capacity to engage our ordinary world. A new “data base” upon
which to advance the plausibility of a spiritual interpretation of the world
is needed, and is already in place, I surmise, in the uncollected experiences of
countless millions that can be plausibly interpreted as encounters with spirits.
Many of these experiences carry the sense of “knowing something that one
has no right to know.”
Intuitive Knowing and Apparitions

One of the curious features of the study of visions of Jesus that I first under-
took more than 20 years ago was the certainty reported about the identity
of the being that appeared to the percipients that I interviewed. Because the
identity of persons is generally approached by considering someone’s physical
appearance, and comparing it with what is already known about that person’s
appearance, we might expect them to have proceeded in this way. However,

the people I interviewed were intelligent enough to know that the physical
appearance of Jesus is shrouded in mystery, and that the conception we in the
West might have of him is shaped by the history of art, which does not give
solid grounds for considering one likeness or another to be authentic. The
conflicting views that characterize the iconoclastic debate within Christian
faith during the eighth and ninth centuries perhaps continue to shape debate
about how he appeared and whether we should care, for some consider his full
nature, especially his divinity, to be incapable of being captured, no matter
how competent an artistic portrayal of him might be, judged in conventional
terms. In spite of debate among scholars, many devout Christians seemingly
consider his likeness to be substantially that which appears in famous icons
and in much Christian art. Many of the percipients were sure that the being
that appeared to them was Jesus. Their legitimate grounds for skepticism,
from a naturalistic perspective, seemed to be overridden by something else
in their experience—as though they had been given “intuitive knowledge”
of some spiritual reality for which they could not adequately account. Some
reports of visions of the Virgin Mary show a similar felt certainty about the
identity of the being.87 Perhaps a similar mental state accompanies other
apparition experiences. We might wonder whether the apparition-being itself
discloses his or her identity to a person, but this is a speculation on my part.
Even the significance of normal perceptual powers in apparition experiences
is uncertain, for the NDEs reported by the blind, such as those researched
by well-known NDE researcher, Kenneth Ring,88 suggest that these normal
powers might not be crucial in making sense of apparitions and other per-
ceptual experiences. The significance of apparitions to the development of
religion and spirituality is great, and many movements identify their origins
in such experience.
Although those who experience apparitions may claim certainty about the
nature of their experience, their claims to certainty are obviously about their
feelings, not about the claims themselves. Intuitive knowledge here resembles
sensory knowledge, for we might feel certainty about an empirical matter in
which sensory perception is involved, but when we are closely questioned we
acknowledge that we might be mistaken. I doubt that we can easily evalu-
ate the impact that Descartes’s emphasis upon radical doubt has had upon
Western culture. Rarely, or never, had the educated class in the West been
encouraged to doubt the existence of a physical world, of the past, or of an
enduring self. The demise of modernity, if this is truly happening, does not
mean the demise of skepticism—just the contrary, it seems, given the pop-
ular claims of postmodernity—but classical realism in which these “givens”
were not doubted shows some evidence of a return. Western culture has
Spirits ● 55
supported institutions in which its members could “tilt at windmills,” such

as the rationalist and immaterialist philosophers who could call into question
the existence of material objects. This is as it should be. However, a defense of
the theory of spirits is made substantially more difficult if a defense of com-
mon existential realities must first be mounted. The latter is increasingly seen
as unimportant, and I will not pursue the topic more.
Augustine considers the intellect to be beyond deception in grasping the
nature of spiritual events that transpire as they occur, remarking that “either
a person does not understand, and this is the case of one who judges some-
thing to be other than it is, or he does understand, and then his vision is
necessarily true.”89 Augustine’s remarks about intuitive knowing being inca-
pable of deception occur in the context of his discussion of divination and
the gift of discernment, but they have wider application in his assessment of
the superiority of intuitive knowing over corporeal and imaginative vision.
His position on insights, devoid of deception, has virtually disappeared in the
modern age, where probabilities have replaced certainties in all areas apart
from mathematics and logic. When the Catholic Church declared in 1870
that the Pope was infallible in making magisterial decisions, it was acting
consistently with Augustinian assumptions. This declaration, of course, con-
tinues to be an obstacle to Christian unity, as critics within the Catholic
Church itself have observed,90 which speaks to the influence of skepticism
in religious life.
The hierarchy of knowledge advanced by Augustine, and subsequently
entrenched in Western thought by the Christian Church, has undergone
a radical revision as the power of sensory perception (corporeal vision, for
Augustine), so despised by Platonists, has become the source of intersub-
jective knowledge, so revered by scientists. Sensory perception, not intuitive
knowledge, now commands the highest respect, although intuition’s linger-
ing significance must be conceded because of its centrality to mathematics
and logic, both of which contribute crucial elements to the precision of sci-
ence and the testability of many of its claims. The superiority of intuitive
knowing to empirical knowing is an epistemic stance that was imposed upon
human experience by institutions with too much political power. For exam-
ple, the autobiography of Teresa of Avila91—a woman, a Jewess, a visionary,
and vulnerable on all counts—sometimes reads like a journal written under
the tutelage of an Augustinian tyrant. Teresa carefully avoids any explicit
account that might make her vulnerable to Inquisitors, so she passes off as
imaginative vision some experiences that were probably corporeal.92 What
Augustine described as imaginative vision is now a fitting category into which
such inconvenient phenomena as apparitions are stowed away, so as to hide
them from both science and religion, lest they challenge the naturalism of
the former and the dogmatism of the latter. A more complimentary view of
the human imagination is that it is a power in us devising explanations for
intersubjectively observable and other trustworthy data, thereby expanding
our knowledge beyond the narrow domain in which sense perception typ-
ically operates. Theories that postulate unobservable objects are very much
the work of the imagination, whose flights of fancy must be curbed by the
constraints that philosophers offer as friendly critics of science. We can plau-
sibly view logical positivism as a methodological outlook that (too) severely
curtailed the speculative theories that emerged when the restrictions imposed
by religion upon open inquiry were lifted.
Augustine’s view about the superiority of intuitive knowing had cre-
dence among (some) scholars until sometime into the twentieth century.
Mystical theologian Augustin Poulain discusses the topic early in the twen-
tieth century, caricaturing the two sides of this debate as mystics and
skeptics, and observing that mystics can convey “a participation in their
certainty . . . only with persons of good-will, those who are without prej-
udices, those who do not a priori deny the supernatural or one of its
kinds.”93 He concedes that illusions can exist concerning revelations and
imaginative visions, but “there are also cases where the mystic is abso-
lutely certain of the reality of the phenomenon.”94 He goes on to describe
a meeting of the Société française de philosophie, attended by 25 professors
of the Sorbonne or the University of Paris, where some defended mysti-
cism and others skepticism. In summing up the difficulty in bridging the
impasse that is now felt in every place that mystics and their detractors
interact, he writes: “[I]f the mystics cannot succeed in getting their testi-
mony as to the objectivity of their intellectual knowledge accepted as true,
we may at least require that people should no longer feign to ignore their
formal declarations on the subject.”95 This description is now a century
old, and much has taken place that encourages skeptics and naturalists to
dismiss the claims of those who think that they have been apprehended
by God.
The methodology I am using here shows us that if physics and psychol-
ogy are possible, theories that purport to denote and describe spirits are also
possible. Moreover, spirituality is subject to at least some of the constraints
to which scientific theories that postulate unobservable objects are subject.
I am construing spirituality as having a limited place in the panoply of the-
ories that we provisionally advance to explain phenomena, thereby parting
company with an important approach that attempts to implicate spiritual-
ity in all of life. Maybe the causal role of spirits is much larger than I am
taking it to be, but defending such a position would require an inconceiv-
able amount of evidence. Spirits seemingly share some important properties
Spirits ● 57
with human persons, and just as the latter have a limited but significant
explanatory role, spirits will be similarly constrained. I assume that scien-
tific achievements can generally be embraced, with the appropriate cautions
from its critics about methodological matters that are themselves subject to
change as more is known about the scope and limitations of exact studies of
various kinds.
CHAPTER 3
The Experience of God
A
s exact empirical studies have become the norm for assessing claims
about the universe and the place of humans within it, spirits in every
form have been called into question. Although God has not been
firmly excluded from the modern age, judging from the ongoing debate about
his existence in public and academic forums, finite spirits are no longer in
dispute, even for the intelligentsia within the Christian Church, although
responses to claims about them may differ within its traditional, liberal,
and evangelical branches. Theories about metaphysical realities naturally are
accompanied with views on what is knowable, and whether available evidence
can establish possible knowledge claims beyond reasonable doubt. Epistemo-
logical claims generally imply a view of human nature, including positions
on the capacities that we obviously have or fail to possess. Speaking in gen-
eral terms, traditional Christian faith not only endows the universe with
an extraordinarily rich ontology, but also attributes generous powers to the
human mind by which various beings and objects can be known. A signifi-
cant difference has emerged between the medieval era in which metaphysical
and other evaluative claims were considered to be defensible, and the mod-
ern era in which this defensibility has seemingly evaporated. Etienne Gilson
(1884–1978), founding director of the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Stud-
ies at the University of Toronto, argued that the shift away from taking being
as knowable and central to human experience, to construing thought as hav-
ing pride of place, is perhaps the crucial move in bringing on modernity.1
Descartes and the British empiricists must be cited as having played a fun-
damental role in this epistemic shift. The larger social setting in which this
change occurred is amply described by Charles Taylor in A Secular Age.
Arguments and alleged proofs for the existence of God have been con-
tested so much in Western culture that the failure of its debaters to reach solid
consensus on the matter is noteworthy. The fact that such proofs have been so
avidly sought suggests that God’s existence was already embraced by at least
some of those who have searched for them, perhaps on grounds that were
neither always declared nor obvious. Vital ideas in traditional arguments, and
likely in the thinking of many who continue to embrace God’s existence,
are that no thing or creature could come into existence by virtue of some
causal force or agent having less power or capacity than that exhibited by that
thing—“the greater cannot arise from the lesser”—and also that something
cannot come from nothing. These assumptions have figured in arguments
that address the following topics: the existence of the cosmos itself; intrica-
cies of its structure, which are apparent to both casual and trained observers;
immutable laws of nature; the emergence of the very concept of God in
human thought, typically marked by (some) infinite properties; the existence
of rational beings; the existence of self-reproducing plants and animals; the
“fine tuning” of cosmological principles allowing for the existence of a planet
in a solar system, the evolution of humans, an environment that sustains
life, and the existence of DNA molecules; the existence of moral principles
that appear to transcend culture; and the existence of self-knowing beings.
Another strategy has been developed that derives from an understanding (or
definition) of God as the greatest conceivable being,2 or the being with max-
imal greatness.3 If we allow for a distinction to be drawn between necessary
existence4 (or one whose nonexistence is impossible) and contingent existence
(one whose nonexistence is possible), the former is seemingly5 greater than
the latter, which means that God not only exists, but also exists necessarily.
God is then understood as one whose essence is to exist. Such an approach
to God’s existence appears to be confined to the Christian intelligentsia; the
ordinary believer appears to favor evidence arising from discoveries about the
cosmos.
Necessary existence is not the only controversial concept associated with
God, for infinite attributes have often been ascribed to him. Our possession
of the concept of infinity remains a marvel, especially in view of the fact that
sense experience seemingly gives us insight into nothing but finite matters,
upon which the mental process of abstraction, if it does exist, is capable of
working. In our knowledge of mathematics, specifically, infinities are piled
up upon other infinities. We know, for example, that an infinite number of
distinct rational numbers is found between 1 and 2, expressed by fractions
from which common denominators have been removed, such as 3/2, 4/3, 5/4,
6/5, 7/6, . . . 101/100 . . . ad infinitum. Moreover, we know that an infinite
number of distinct irrational numbers is found between 1 and 2, none of
which can be expressed as fractions, such as the square root of 3, the third
root of 3, the fourth root of 3, . . . ad infinitum; also the third root of 4, the
fourth root of 4, the fifth root of 4, . . . ad infinitum, also the third root of
The Experience of God ● 61
5, the fourth root of 5, the fifth root of 5, . . . ad infinitum . . . How we are

able to know the existence of such complex subdivisions within the general
notion of infinity is unclear. Our knowledge of infinity is obviously related to
our knowledge of mathematics, but the manner in which a being would have
an infinite attribute is unclear.
As the level of general education has increased in Western culture, the
weaknesses of deductive logic as a methodology have become better known,
and arguments that might have seemed acceptable several generations ago for
defending important spiritual beliefs are now seen as inadequate. Few peo-
ple appear to accept the view that we might find “first principles”—highly
plausible general statements—from which God’s existence can be inferred.
Moreover, the principle that the greater cannot arise from the lesser appears
to challenge evolutionary theory, and consequently has less power to persuade
than it once did. Also, the principle that something cannot come from noth-
ing appears to sidestep the conjectures in physics about the Big Bang, or about
the Big Bang to be followed sometime by the Big Collapse, or about other
cosmological models that admit of some empirical corroboration and also
avoid religious views of origins. The principle that something cannot come
from nothing is still considered by some philosophers to be known a priori—
a form of intuitive knowing (quasi)—but might be also seen as a universal
generalization that we have drawn from a limited number of observations
about collocations of atoms that become arranged and rearranged by us or
by nature. The capacity of the intellect to apprehend directly the existence
of God continues to be advanced in some religious circles, but this intuitive
knowing should be distinguished from the claim that a deductive proof exists
for the reality of God.
In view of the real or imagined difficulties with finding an adequate
deduction, some theists have turned to induction, with the result that God’s
existence is deemed to be highly probable, or more probable than not, or
perhaps more probable than either atheism or agnosticism. This move to
probabilistic arguments is in keeping with the emphasis upon probabilities
in much scientific investigation, and, like many scientific statements, those
about God’s probable existence are usually left imprecise, rather than given an
exact numerical value. This imprecision reflects the uncertainty about what
counts as confirming evidence for a hypothesis (or a hypothesized event),
and also the difficulty in knowing what weights to assign to different kinds
of supporting evidence. The probability statements that are of most inter-
est in science are those that estimate the probability of a hypothesis on the
total evidence, which means assigning a probability value that reflects not only
the supporting evidence for a claim, but also the evidence against. Deductive
arguments that have been offered in defense of theism, by contrast, have not
needed to reflect grounds both for and against it. As probabilistic arguments
for God’s existence have become more prominent than they once were, the
problem of evil as evidence against God’s existence has assumed substantial
significance, for it figures in the tally of total evidence. I have argued else-
where that probabilistic arguments for the existence of God face significant
difficulties over a plausible interpretation of the kind of probability that is
involved.6 Only a few of the six known concepts of probability are applicable
in discussing invisible orders of reality, and the grounds for advancing defen-
sible probability statements in such circumstances are unclear. Consequently,
I doubt that the shift from deduction to induction offers a quick remedy to
the challenge of adducing an adequate argument for God’s existence.
An important shift of interest among epistemologists is occurring in which
traditional justifications for knowledge claims using deductive and induc-
tive arguments are increasingly being seen as needing to be supplemented
with, or even replaced by, causal accounts of the beliefs that are taken to be
knowledge.7 This shift has injected a scientific outlook into epistemology,
because science is primarily concerned with questions of causes and explana-
tions, not with the justification of beliefs in terms of logical relations between
already justified beliefs and those for which we seek a justification. This “new”
interest in causes makes perfect sense when we try to explain why some aged
person who has long had perfect vision is suddenly unable to see some object
clearly and also has uncertain beliefs about its properties. No justificatory
accounts appealing to logical or probabilistic links to the other beliefs of such
a person are of help here, but the description by an ophthalmologist of eye
diseases and how they causally impair the eyesight of people, supplemented by
conjectures about the way in which ophthalmological impairment is causally
related to neurophysiological conditions undergirding epistemic states, is very
helpful. Philosophy has been practiced for millennia without the insights
that modern science has brought to human thought. Philosophy’s old way of
advancing justifications is a habit that some are reluctant to abandon, but the
value and the completeness of these justifications are under critical scrutiny.
Inasmuch as beliefs are mental states, and inasmuch as cognitive science
is searching for causes of and explanations for mental states and processes,
scientific scrutiny of the epistemic features of human experience will even-
tually encompass beliefs. No plausible reason exists for denying cognitive
science its interest in our mental states, including those states that philoso-
phers once considered to be incorrigible and infallible. We might find that
traditional justificatory stances (logical) will coexist comfortably with insights
arising from cognitive science (causal), or we might find that questions
about justifications will seem to dissolve into questions about causality, so
that the traditional philosophical approach to belief and knowledge will be
threatened. If this were to occur, however, philosophy would reveal its pen-
chant to challenge everything, and would bring its traditional methods to bear
on the issue. We cannot now do without (some) philosophical justifications,
and I doubt that this method of defending beliefs will ever fully disappear,
but I embrace an interpretation of epistemology that includes an openness
to conjectures about the causes of events, including beliefs. I wish to explore
the circumstances in which various people describe the emergence into con-
sciousness of what they describe as intuitive knowledge of God. If the domain
of plausible beliefs should ultimately include some knowledge of God, we
might expect to find a significant number of such claims. Indeed, if relatively
few experiential claims of this kind had been advanced in human history, we
might legitimately wonder why so much effort has been expended in trying to
“demonstrate” God’s existence. Spiritual experience is significant as a basis for
considering God and other spirits to exist, for no one doubts that experiences
interpreted as having such significance occur. The causes or meanings of these
experiences are at issue, of course, but the experiences themselves are not. A
general question is often raised concerning the basis for thinking that God,
rather than some other being or thing, is causally implicated in experience.
I shall keep this problem in focus as I discuss the experiences featured further.
General Theism and Christian Theism

Near-death experience (NDE) has reinforced a spiritual perspective in
Western culture that was seemingly on the point of being lost, although our
assessment of the strength of spirituality is undoubtedly dependent upon the
place in which we live and the people with whom we associate. For more
than 30 years I have lived in the Province of British Columbia, which is often
described as the most secular province in Canada, so my sensibilities might
be jaded and my assessment of the decline in religion might be exaggerated.
Public polls indicate that my province has either the lowest or the second low-
est attendance rate at religious services in Canada, and none of its 11 public
universities now serving some 440,000 students any longer has a stand-alone
Religion Department,8 which makes a significant academic statement. Our
competitor for the dubious honor of being most secular is the Province of
Quebec, which experienced “the quiet revolution” in the 1960s, when many
Catholics left their Church to protest its collusion with an intrusive and
oppressive (in Canadian terms) provincial government. NDEs suggest that
we survive the death of our bodies, however awkward this sounds, that some
Being with the right to conduct a life review exists, and that this life review is
conducted from the perspectives of morality and other deep values, broadly
speaking. NDEs echo the ultimate realities that philosopher Immanuel Kant
included in his metaphysic, in spite of his modernity: the existence of God,

the immortal soul, and an objective moral order. I will advance experien-
tial grounds here quite apart from NDEs for embracing the spirituality that
is suggested by NDEs. Any talk of NDEs being proof for the realities they
suggest is absurd, of course, but they provide evidence.
Uniquely Christian views of the cosmos add substantially to the gen-
eral form of spirituality suggested by NDEs, although orthodox Christianity
embraces the thrust of what I will call “general theism.”9 The latter form of
theism is ahistorical, and on its own, presents humanity with “bad news,”
inasmuch as it claims that our attitudes and behavior toward others, toward
living things, and possibly toward certain unobservable beings, are matters
about which we will give an account in some postmortem assize. General
theism has often added that the outcome of this assize is uncertain, for “the
wicked” might perish after punishment, while “the good” can hope for happi-
ness, possibly even heavenly bliss. A possible implication of recently reported
NDEs is that Christianity has exaggerated the prospect of hell, since the
experience of a life review in NDEs seems to be largely positive.10 Maurice
Rawlings, in Beyond Death’s Door, was first to draw attention to the negative or
“hellish” experiences, few of which were mentioned in early research into the
NDE.11 The degree to which NDEs should influence our spiritual views is a
matter of controversy, naturally, but NDEs are matters of substantial interest.
Christian faith is a historical form of theism that focuses on “good news,”
in asserting that any punishment or penalty that might be justifiably imposed
upon us for misdeeds and wicked attitudes will be suspended, if we humbly
look to Christ for clemency, but the “bad news” is implicit in its message.
The Christian Church has historically advanced the claims of general theism
and, naturally, uniquely Christian faith, as its earliest documents attest. These
complementary features are found in remarks that St. Paul is reported to have
made to a Greek audience:
The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and
earth, does not live in shrines made by man, nor is he served by human hands,
as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all men life and breath
and everything. And he made from one every nation of men to live on all the
face of the earth, having determined allotted periods, and the boundaries of
their habitation, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel
after him and find him. Yet he is not far from each one of us, for “In him
we live and move and have our being”; as even some of your poets have said,
“For we are indeed his offspring.” Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to
think that the Deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, a representation of the art
and imagination of man. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he
commands all men everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which
he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and
of this he has given assurance to all men by raising him from the dead.12
Paul’s address here at the Areopagus in Athens, as presented by St. Luke,

commends the ancient Greeks for some of their religious insights, and seeks
to add to them the distinctive features for which Christianity has become
known.
Luke’s account of an address by St. Peter to another Greek audience,
including the Italian centurion Cornelius, again reaffirms elements of both
forms of theism:
Truly I perceive that God shows no partiality, but in every nation any one
who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him . . . And he [God]
commanded us to preach to the people, and to testify that he [Jesus Christ] is
the one ordained by God to be judge of the living and the dead. To him all the
prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of
sins through his name.13
Peter is represented here as explicitly portraying God as embracing people

whose religious insight consists minimally of respect for God and for the
moral law. Some of those who wrote Christendom’s first documents were
generous in their attitudes toward those people whom Judaism considered to
be Gentiles, and others who later compiled the New Testament were gener-
ous as well, otherwise books such as Acts of the Apostles might not have been
made canonical. Clement of Alexandria, an early church father (ca. 153–217
CE), asserts that although Greek philosophy might not comprehend all of
the truth, or be strong enough to bring about obedience to Christ, “yet it
prepares the way for the truly royal teaching; training in some way or other,
and moulding the character, and fitting him who believes in Providence for
the reception of the truth.”14 The fact that early apostles of such eminence as
Peter and Paul were of the same mind is significant for all of Christendom.
Whereas a venerable tradition in Christianity maintains that embracing
God’s general self-disclosure of himself found in nature and in the voice of
conscience is sufficient for Divine approval and salvation, other Christian
voices have been much more uncharitable toward non-Christians. Some
exclusivist proponents of Christian faith insist that the rite of Baptism is
necessary for salvation, others insist that the historical events surrounding
Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, must be embraced in a conscious way, and
still others demand that Christian claims about the Holy Spirit must be per-
sonally experienced.15 Such Christian approaches to religion portray God as
disturbingly unfair, and so run contrary to the older (Hebrew) tradition that
repeatedly describes God as “righteous in all his ways.” Augustine remarked
near the end of his life: “What is now called the Christian religion, has existed
among the ancients, and was not absent from the beginning of the human
race, until Christ came in the flesh: from which time the true religion, which
existed already, began to be called Christian.”16 I concur, and will assume an
inclusivist interpretation of Christian faith and its Scriptures here. In suc-
cessive chapters I will show how intuitive knowing (seemingly) takes place
around the themes of the existence of God, fundamental values, and insight
(for some) into uniquely Christian claims.
Experiencing God
The first case of a possible “experience of God” I will consider is the
account given by an 88-year-old Scottish woman, who was brought up in
the Congregational church and later joined the Quakers.
Case 1 Amelia: 17“It all began one spring morning when, as a little girl, I ran
out of the house before breakfast and to the end of the garden which led to the
orchard. In the night a miracle had been wrought, and the grass was carpeted
with golden celandines. I stood still and looked, and clasped my hands and in
wonder at all the beauty I said ‘God.’ I knew from that moment that everything
that existed was just part of ‘that sustaining life which burns bright or dim as
each are mirrors of the fire for which all things thirst.’18 Of course, I didn’t put
it in those words, but I did know that I and everything were one in the life.
When I grew older and read philosophy I thought of all creation as the Shadow
of Beauty unbeheld, and felt that Beauty was God.” Amelia remarks that even
in the inevitable changes that life brings, she has felt certain that “God is there,
and in it all, and part of it all. So I could rest in Him.”
The most striking feature of Amelia’s description is the certain knowledge

that she reported—a cognitive state that I am describing as intuitive knowing.
Amelia’s studies in philosophy, which likely included exposure to Platonism,
might have influenced her account of the event, which gives prominence to
Beauty as though it were a Form exhibited throughout the world. However,
Amelia does not elaborate enough on the possible allusion to Plato to assess
her commitment to the general doctrine of Forms.
Although Amelia does not say exactly how old she was when this experi-
ence occurred, we can surmise that it had influenced her for something like
80 years when she described it. This fact in itself is remarkable, and speaks
to the foundational character of the experience in her life, unlike many a
childhood experience whose causal influence upon us either is negligible and
consequently forgotten at once, or is significant but largely unconscious. The
experience, which struck Amelia as one in which she acquired knowledge
about the single source of all that exists, thereby giving unity to the cosmos,
has an immediacy about it that suggests that she did not draw an infer-
ence from what she beheld. Amelia’s intellect was involved at several levels,
or in several ways, inasmuch as she described her state of mind not only as
knowledge, but also as accompanied by a feeling of certainty and security that
evidently diminished some of the anxieties that she later experienced, which
are a part of ordinary life. The experience also had an affective dimension,
inasmuch as it left her in wonder and awe at what she beheld. Another fea-
ture of her experience was aesthetic awareness, inasmuch as Amelia was taken
with the beauty of what she beheld. Aesthetic experience might implicate not
only our passional capacities but also our intellectual powers. For some peo-
ple, aesthetic experience, especially that which is evoked by music, has more
spiritual significance than any other kind of experience.
Amelia considered her experience as somehow an experience of God. This
is the most challenging issue for the philosophy of religious experience, for
neither philosophers who adduce arguments nor cognitive scientists who
adduce causes can point to something and readily call it “God.” The model
for understanding theories that I am adopting here construes God and other
spirits that are postulated to exist as indeterminate in many of their attributes.
An infinite Being might exist, but the empirical approach that I am advanc-
ing would never require ascribing an infinite property to anything. Since no
objects in our experience are obviously infinite, apart from abstract mathe-
matical sets, we have no clear knowledge how an infinite Being, if one exists,
would interact with us, or how such interaction might differ for us from
objects that are finite, but very powerful. No obvious prima facie basis for
rejecting claims such as Amelia’s exists, and the possibility that she has cor-
rectly construed the causal agent to be God is not counterintuitive. In the
methodology that I am embracing, an event cannot be considered simply on
its own, but must be considered alongside other forms of possible evidence.
Also, we must see the experience (and its report) as an element in a concep-
tual framework that offers a spiritual or religious outlook on a substantial
part of human life. The significant epistemological shifts here include: mov-
ing away from formal arguments exclusively, to a consideration of possible
causal origins; moving away from traditional claims about an infinite Being
based on standard definitions of God, to claims about a being in the empir-
ical world whose powers are greater than those of humans, but how much
greater we cannot discern; moving away from objects that can be readily
observed, to those that might be only fleetingly observed, or even to ones
that are wholly unobservable; moving away from a consideration of state-
ments on their own, with common-sense knowledge as a background for
them, to a consideration of statements as part of a complex theory embedded
in a paradigm, defensible in part by its coherence as a whole, as well as by

the confirmability of particular parts; and possibly moving from objects that
are impersonal in nature and subject to human manipulation and control,
to things are personal, unmanipulatable, and capable of having us in their
control.
In the six categories of religious experience proposed by Caroline Davis,
mentioned in my Introduction earlier, Amelia’s experience belongs to the
interpretive or the revelatory categories, although to describe the experience
as interpretive could be misleading, for it could imply that Amelia chose to
interpret her experience of unity within the cosmos and its beauty by using
spiritual categories. Whether this is a fair understanding of what a child might
think and feel is questionable. Children might not impose an interpretive
grid on their experiences in the way that adults would, who know its possible
social or political value. The spontaneous emergence of a thought into the
consciousness of a small child has an epistemic force to it that a comparable
thought in one who has had a considerable amount of religious instruction
cannot match. Davis’s categories are useful in approaching spiritual experi-
ence, but they cannot be given so much prominence that the particularity
of an experience is lost. All the phenomenological aspects of experience are
significant in understanding its nature, especially in view of the ultimate
objectives of cognitive science.
Cognitive science evidently hopes to establish that every human experi-
ence is capable of being described using the language of neurophysiology,
and in order for this objective to be realized concerning spiritual experience,
every such experience needs to be described in as much phenomenologi-
cal and experiential detail as possible. Spiritual experience taken as a whole
appears to feature every kind of mental state and process found in human life,
including: perceptual experience in all sensory modalities, and occasionally in
several modalities as once; cognitive states that include believing, accepting,
doubting, opining, “feelings” of being certain or of having knowledge, as well
as cognitive states in which some inclination to embrace a position is com-
bined with reluctance to do so; volitions that perhaps involve various “degrees
of freedom,” depending on how onerous or how welcome various possible
outcomes of acts might appear to be; affective states of numerous kinds,
including awe, wonder, terror, fear, guilt, forgiveness, love, hate, dependency,
finiteness, humility, resentment, and innumerable others; desires, wishes,
hopes, and other cognitive-affective states exhibiting intentionality; the sense
of being a self, perhaps interacting with other humans, as well as the occa-
sional sense, perhaps, of interacting with unseen beings; the sense of having
an altered state of consciousness, or a normal state, and being able to com-
pare the two; states of consciousness and experiences now widely described as
near-death and out-of-the-body experiences; and so on. Even if the objectives

of cognitive science are never realized for spiritual experience, the exact study
of spirituality is enhanced by knowledge of the experiential variations found
among different people, among people of different cultures, among people
of different spiritual outlooks, among people of the same outlook but in dif-
ferent cultures, and so on. These are familiar matters to anthropologists and
sociologists.
The next case comes from Brenda, a Cornish woman who was educated in
an Anglican convent and subjected to what she describes as “religious indoc-
trination” by her very devout parents. She shares Amelia’s conviction that
beauty is in some way a mark of the Divine order.
Case 2 Brenda:19 “As I grew up, it appeared to me that it was just that we are
psychic, and I ceased to believe ‘God’ and ‘guardian angels’ helped us [in times
of trouble]. There was a mysterious presence in nature [that was] sometimes
met with in the communion and in praying by oneself, which was my greatest
delight . . . At the age of twenty-one I married a Marxist scientist, and tried
hard to escape entirely from any faith in God. For eight years I succeeded very
well, and then found I had lost the secret behind sunsets (I noticed this first),
and in human faces—as though I had lost a dimension. This worried me very
much and I felt alienated from the stuff of life, although I had three lovely little
children and a very happy marriage. I was up against conceptions of truth as
a communist, and was forced to leave the Party because I would not ‘toe the
line’ while I was struggling with this. I began to return to reading the Gospel—
and discovered the Tao-te-ching.20 After two years or so of tension, I finally did
what these scriptures said: ‘Knock,’ ‘Let go,’ ‘Jump,’ and said inwardly, ‘If there
is Anyone there, show me.’ Then I saw. This seeing was in the form of glory
pouring from everything. It made me quite certain that it is necessary to follow
the truth as one sees it, and to take this as an absolute. Then truth will become
a path along which one walks into further truth. I knew there was an absolute
that underlay all our partial vision of truth, and this went for goodness too
and for beauty.”After this Brenda tried to become an Anglican, but could not
embrace its approach to religion, so became a Quaker. Then she writes: “Since
then I have felt (known for certain) that life will never betray me, because there
is indeed a quality in it which I can call Father, Redeemer, Creator, and if I do
stupid things and choose wrongly I shall not be left knowing this is so.”
Here is another instance in which someone “suddenly knew” something

of the reality of which religion has spoken. The classical triad of Goodness,
Beauty, and Truth is affirmed in Brenda’s experience, and keeps alive the con-
jecture that these values may have arisen out of a comparable experience in
the life of Plato or Socrates, perhaps both. Like virtually all of the items in
the database of the Alister Hardy Research Center prior to 2006,21 Brenda’s
experience is colored by her exposure to Christian faith. I mentioned ear-

lier that a difficulty arises concerning identifying the Being (or being) that is
presumed to have been encountered, especially trying to establish that this
might be God. Few people seem to have the boldness ascribed to the Hebrew
prophet, Moses, who asked the being within the burning thornbush for his
name. A second difficulty occurs in re-identifying that Being in any subse-
quent experience. These seemingly inescapable problems are perhaps no more
problematic in spirituality than they are in physics or in some other complex
science postulating unobservable objects, and background in such sciences
illuminates the complexities of spirituality. That we do not summarily dismiss
theism upon reflecting on these two difficulties is something of a marvel. I
surmise that its explanatory value in some inchoate form is deemed to carry
sufficient weight that the two identified challenges remain real but not over-
whelming. Another possibility to bear in mind is that this Being discloses his
identity in what we take to be encounters. From an impersonal perspective,
the claim that God has been encountered is a conjecture whose falsity seems
open to impressive evidence, and whose truth is elusive.
Brenda does not elaborate on what she means by “glory pouring from
everything,” although she does not appear to be describing a perceptual expe-
rience in a narrow sense—“she saw no lights and heard no voices.” Her
experience of becoming alienated from “the stuff of life,” and her capacity
to compare this with her earlier state of mind, as well as the effect of rediscov-
ering “faith” in which this alienation no longer existed, gives a comparative
dimension to her experience that enhances its richness. Alienation has been
extensively explored in existentialist and Marxist thought, and I surmise that
her exposure to Marxism might contribute to her use of this term. Brenda’s
suggestion that we must follow the truth as we see it, however inconspicuous
or minimal this might be, and then discover a path by which further insight
might be obtained, strikes me as profound, but I cannot quite put my finger
on what about this remark compels me. The nature of her “inward speech”
and its apparent role in bringing about a change in her life is of interest as well,
for she suggests that this change was caused by her “decision to speak.” At this
point in our understanding of human knowledge, those who introspect upon
the sequence in which events occur are primary in identifying possible causes
and their probable effects. The objective in cognitive science of describing
these “from the outside,” while laudable, seems distant; moreover, reaching
this objective is dependent on descriptions “from the inside.”
The experiences of both Amelia and Brenda appear to have occurred in
what we might describe as the normal state of consciousness, rather than in an
altered state. The next experience is one that occurred in an altered state to a
woman who grew up in an upper-middle-class British home with a Christian
heritage. Carol’s parents did not take her to church, but her grandparents did
during summer holidays. The event, of which she writes at 62 years of age,
occurred on a trail of the Himalayas at a remote Indian station when she was
in her early thirties.
Case 3 Carol:22 “I looked up at the snows, but immediately lost all normal
consciousness and became engulfed as it were in a great cloud of light and
ecstasy of knowing and understanding all the secrets of the universe, and sense
of the utmost bliss, the absolute certainty of the perfection and piercing purity
of goodness of the Being in whom it seemed all were finally enclosed, and yet
in that enclosure utterly liberated. I “saw” nothing in the physical sense . . . it
was as if I were blinded by an internal light. And yet I was “looking outward.”
It was not a “dream,” but utterly different, in that the content was of the utmost
significance to me and in universal terms. Gradually this sense of ecstasy faded
and slowly I came to my ordinary senses and perceived I was sitting as usual
and the mountains were as usual in daily beauty.” Carol says that the after-
math of the experience was in the form of a wonderful mental and spiritual
glow, and then adds: “I became convinced later that a spiritual Reality under-
lay all earthly reality, and the ultimate ground of the universe was benevolent
in a positive way, surpassing our temporal understanding. This conviction has
remained with me, but in an intellectual form; it has not, however, prevented
me from feeling acute personal depression and disappointment time and again,
throughout my life.” She also relates that later in life she developed a strong
interest in Buddhism, but after that felt that it was founded on a negative
premise, whereas the universe seemed to her to be positive.
This experience engaged more than Carol’s intellect, inasmuch as it began

with an awareness of a cloud of light in some way that excluded her corporeal
sight—perhaps an imaginative vision. The fact that the experience occurred
in an altered state of consciousness does not alter its significance as a contri-
bution to our understanding of how awareness of a Great Being might arise.
Her insistence that the experience was not a dream and did not resemble her
dreams, and the sense that she was “looking outward” even though the light
was internal, suggests that she is trying to say that the Reality she perceived
was external to her.
Another account in which the sense of Presence was external and entered
from without comes from a West Australian woman. Denise was christened
and confirmed in the Church of England, and at the time of her experience,
when she was 24, went to church sporadically, she says, but with sincerity.
Case 4 Denise:23 “I had been feeling very miserable, depressed and somewhat
desperate for the understanding that communication with a sympathetic per-
son could bring, and this seemed utterly unobtainable. The reasons for my
upset were basically family upsets . . . Late in the evening I went out to the
verandah where I could be on my own. I tried to read excerpts from the Bible
and hoped that I would open it at a page where the writings would provide
a miraculous passage to help me over this rough spot. But nothing came.
I then proceeded to smoke a cigarette—I had purchased some—but that did
not calm my anxieties either, and then while I was sitting, thinking, wrapped
up in myself I was suddenly “filled.” (I believe it was the Holy Spirit that I felt
“filled” with.) There is no way to describe it but that I felt as if my whole inner
being was being filled by a presence and all my worrying was gone. For a full
minute—I cannot really state the amount of time, and certainly its effect was
much longer—I felt an absolute peace and serenity. I had no wish to disturb it.
It was this calm I wanted, I begged for, and it was given to me. I did not create
it as it came to me from outside my being . . . I know undeniably that God who
is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is a very real being, and I do not have to prove
it to anyone. I do not know if all of us at some time have the opportunity to
know, and it seems so very special to me that this has happened . . . Religion or
Christian worship—as it is in my case—is now something of great depth and
pleasure. It has been removed from habit, duty, and questioning uncertainty.”
Denise’s account has been shaped by her Christian heritage, naturally, for the
expression “being filled with the Holy Spirit” is featured in NT literature and
in the doctrinal teaching of various branches of Christian faith. The term
purports to denote a spiritual experience, but the NT is almost silent on the
subjective aspects of experience, so we cannot say much about what “being
filled with the Holy Spirit” meant to those who spoke about it in the NT era.
Denise describes the effect of her experience in affective terms: she lost all her
worries, felt absolute peace, and experienced the sense of having been calmed.
These aspects of spiritual experience are well known,24 and may typify what
people think of when they hear of such experience, to the neglect of any cog-
nitive features. Some mental states are self-presenting, which means that we
know that we are experiencing a state as we do so, whereas others are not,
such as hidden desires and beliefs whose existence is revealed by psychother-
apy. Mental states such as peace, serenity, and calmness are self-presenting,
and for those who suddenly experience them, and know that they are under-
going a change as it happens, the sense that they did not generate them is
significant. The feeling-cognition seems to come from without.
“Coming from without”

The phenomenological sense of something entering “us” from without, or
the sense of encountering something neither visible nor perceivable by other
senses, could be construed by critics of spiritual experience as inferring too
much from “mere phenomena.” Just because an experience provides us with

either of these senses, some might say, we have no objective grounds for con-
sidering that something exists that provides it. To advance this existence claim
as plausible, some basis would have to be provided for thinking that God
or some other being that transcended the natural world (as we convention-
ally understand it) is either the object of direct perception or the object that
somehow has a causal influence upon us. My own experiences allow me to
identify with the phenomenological sense described by Carol and Denise, but
my background in philosophy also allows me to understand those who ques-
tion the plausibility of asserting that someone has encountered either God
or some other transcendent being. I will describe a spiritual experience that
seemed to me to “come from without,” whose source I consider to have been
either God or some Divine emissary, and then explore the phenomenological
features that contributed to my assessment of it.
I went downstairs to my study one late spring or early summer morning in
1988,25 and, for no apparent reason, was suddenly filled with indescribable
joy. I had the sense that some awe-inspiring Presence—God perhaps—was
near, and I communed with what I took to be this Presence for the entire
morning. One could call my interaction as prayer, I suppose, but it did not
fall into any of the usual categories. I kept saying, “Why do you seem so
near?” and asking, “What is this about?” I got no reply, and remained in
this peculiar state of feeling very elated (and puzzled) until just before noon.
I ordinarily find prayer difficult, but on this particular morning all I wished
to do was pray—that was extraordinary for me. When about three hours had
elapsed, the thought of undertaking research concerning people who report
having had a vision of Jesus came to me, and with this thought the peculiar
elation instantly disappeared. The thought came to me as an invitation, not a
command, and I knew that the research would include conducting interviews
with living people who believed that Jesus Christ had somehow appeared to
them, perhaps in a corporeal form. The fact that my elation abruptly ended
with the occurrence of the suggestion inclined me to think that a causal link
existed between the two. Of course, I knew that a single case is insufficient to
warrant claiming a causal tie, but I also felt that I needed to regard the experi-
ence of that morning with profound respect. In the unfolding of experiences
that are sui generis we conjecture the possible causal links on the basis of other
experiences in which causal links appear more clearly. Upon thinking that
I was being invited to undertake this research was its immediate sequel—if
some of the Christic visions I would uncover were really from God, they were
holy and I needed “divine permission” to explore them. I sensed that barging
into holy matters without being given “the green light,” so to speak, would
be an affront to God and could have a perilous outcome for me. I went for
advice to the senior minister of the church I attended. When I described what
had happened, without hesitation and with great conviction he replied, “This
thing is of God.” The immediacy and gravity of his response contributed to
my assessment of the matter, and provided some grounds for the conjecture
that I had indeed “heard something.”
The initial experience on that morning in 1988 seemed to “come from
without,” although giving more precision to this phenomenological sense
is difficult. It also seemed “to come from God,” which is a matter dis-
tinct from seeming to come from without. I had engaged in no activities
that are sometimes considered, evidently with some justification, to precede
experiences having spiritual significance and to contribute causally to their
occurrence, such as sleep deprivation, fasting, long periods of meditation or
prayer, abstaining from sexual activity, or ingesting hallucinogens. I had been
taking an anti-inflammatory medication (indomethacin) for about five years,
but the incidence of psychic disturbances or psychotic episodes associated
with the use of this medication is less than 1 percent, according to the infor-
mation that its manufacturer supplies, and nothing untoward had happened
in those five years. In order to protect my stomach from the effects of the
prolonged use of anti-inflammatory medication, I also took ranitidine, which
rarely produces hallucinations or other mental disturbances, again according
to the information provided by its manufacturer. I did not think I was hal-
lucinating at the time the experience occurred, for I was in full command
of my perceptual and cognitive powers, and perhaps could have terminated
the peculiar event had I chosen to do so. I did not want to do that, however,
for that morning was among the most extraordinary that I have ever experi-
enced. Assessing an experience as hallucinatory and advancing criteria for the
responsible use of the term is challenging, so my belief that I was not hallu-
cinating must be treated as a conjecture. My knowledge that I had neither
brought about my experience deliberately nor was seeking it contributed to
my sense that it “came from without.”
The question of what is “out” and what is “in” can be perhaps addressed by
reference to the ontological postulates that are needed for adequate descrip-
tion of objects or events in the world and for their explanation. I endorse
the prima facie plausibility of the hierarchy widely employed in describing
the relative dependencies found in the natural and social sciences, accord-
ing to which atomic physics is the base upon which various sciences build:
chemistry is dependent upon physics; biology upon chemistry (and natural
history); psychology upon biology; and various social sciences are depen-
dent upon psychology. Scientific investigation found at each level above the
first have historically had considerable autonomy from levels below them,
although physics and the ontological structures it is exploring are evidently
playing an increasing role in understanding levels above it. The psychological

sciences make crucial use of persons in undertaking their work of describing
and explaining phenomena. Persons already have ontological integrity and
epistemological significance, and are so indispensable to the social sciences
that without persons the social sciences as we know them would not exist.
The sense in which the experience I have described “came from without” was
at the level of persons—the experience came from outside myself. I cannot
comment on what was happening at the biological level, on which persons as
we conventionally know them (humans) are dependent, or on the lower levels
of science that undergird biology. These are matters for cognitive science to
explore and illuminate for us.
The broad objectives of cognitive science include an understanding of the
neurophysiological features of human life that either undergird or in some
sense possibly constitute the experiences that persons report. The sense of
our being a single continuing person, despite the significant changes that
occur in our biological structures and psychological states during our lives,
will eventually be addressed, and when it is, the phenomenological sense of
“coming from without” or “arising from within” will either be further clarified
or be shown to have no value. Whether this dichotomy corresponds to that of
normal versus altered states of consciousness, or to that of nonhallucinatory
versus hallucinatory perception, is unclear. The “place” of God in relation to
the universe and human life is inexplicable, and could conceivably be relevant
at any level of scientific description and explanation outlined in the scientific
hierarchy that I have mentioned.26 The dogmatic Judaeo-Christian view that
God keeps the universe in existence and somehow pervades all things seem-
ingly leaves no opportunity for God to be “outside” of anything, whether we
are speaking of molecules, trees, persons, or social structures. This claim is
in apparent conflict with the reported phenomenological sense that God is
not (noticeably) present at one moment but is seemingly present a minute
later. This tension between these two views can be ameliorated by embracing
the ontological integrity of each of the levels found in the scientific hierarchy,
by construing persons as having ontological and epistemological significance,
and by allowing ourselves to be led by a sympathetic but cautious attitude
toward phenomenological experience.
Cognitive science can be expected to enter creatively into the debate on
representation now widely associated with a family of similar views often
described as postmodern. Traditional empiricism taught that we can have
accurate mental representations of features of the world, but postmodern crit-
ics of this view have claimed that nothing stands between the objects that we
experience and the torrent of language—a phrase from Quine, I believe—
purporting to give descriptive expression to our mental impressions. Another
way of putting this postmodern position is to say that no trace in experience

allows us to describe the object we have encountered. This position carries
an insight into human experience, in my view, but it is too extreme. Some-
times what seems to one to be a trace is not one at all, but at other times
the trace exists. This difference corresponds to hallucinatory versus veridi-
cal perception, without which neither mental illness nor religious experience
can be adequately discussed. Postmodern critics have shown that these are
not fixed matters beyond our criticism. However, the fact that criticism is
offered and is intelligible speaks to a depth of human faculties belied by sim-
plistic views of our powers. How is it that we know that one representation
is better than another, or that no full representation of something—God, for
example, or the mechanism behind evolutionary change—is possible? These
critical remarks about our critical faculties exhibit a depth whose limit cannot
be plumbed.
The claim that God might have interacted with me is especially difficult
to address, particularly if we demand that God be construed as the Judaeo-
Christian faith has elaborated his attributes. I am still slightly hesitant about
asserting without any qualification that “God spoke to me,” but I admit
to thinking so. Perhaps I know that he did, but if I know, I only believe
that I know, and would not say that I know that I know. Spiritual expe-
riences such as the ones I have described here are daunting to address in
a public forum, for they are devoid of explicit criteria that nearly everyone
now accepts, and consequently lack the conditions required of public knowl-
edge. In addition, claims to have “heard from God” can be (and often are)
misused in the manipulation of others. Such experiences are challenging to
address in one’s own life and complicate it greatly, I might add, so I can
understand those who dismiss theism in this more personal form, perhaps
endorsing the view that God exists but does not act in the world, at least not
in any noteworthy ways. I have come to believe that God—or some Divine
emissary—does act, but I understand those who cannot agree. I would not
describe these acts as miracles, however, and prefer to restrict the denotation
of this controversial term to events that seemingly contravene or override
laws of nature. Examples of miracles in NT literature include turning water
into wine27 and the resurrection of Lazarus.28 Very few of the experiences
I am examining in this book strike me as miraculous in this sense. If intel-
ligent beings exist who are seemingly more powerful than humans are, who
have the capacities for knowledge, intention, and volition, and who inter-
act with us in various ways, perhaps primarily as intellects and occasionally
in ways that affect our perceptual or imaginative powers, then the “more
regular” interactions that they carry on with us appear to me to be part of
the order of nature itself, rather than acts that violate or contravene natural
regularities.
Attributes
The experiences of God that some people report purport to provide glimpses
into his nature, not simply the fact that he exists. For those who accept the
sole authority of the Church, or of the Bible (or both), appeals to experi-
ence in addressing the question of God’s attributes are likely to be considered
unnecessary, perhaps even impious. The experiential insights that individu-
als offer concerning topics that have been the object of extensive and sober
theological treatises might seem trivial, or, if not trivial, arrogant and ques-
tioning of recognized authority. Various events and movements, however,
have brought the Church into disrepute, the Bible into question, and tradi-
tional religious beliefs into disgrace, so personal experience is now relevant
to advancing spiritual claims in ways that might not have been seriously
valued even four or five decades ago. Inasmuch as at least some of the doc-
trines concerning God in Christian faith have been significantly forged in
the experiences of those whose lives are described in the Bible, and insofar as
experiences that are reported today are seemingly corroborative of what has
been handed down through tradition, we do well to consider the conjecture
that biblical narratives begin a trajectory in experience that is partially con-
tinued in modern life. The next case sheds light on the claim that God has
immense power.
Case 5: Evelyn29 was not brought up with any particular religion, since her
parents were “lapsed Baptists.” She did attend a Presbyterian Sunday school for
a short while when she was fourteen years of age, but two years later found
herself beset with questions about possible life after death, purpose in life, and
related topics. When she asked her father whether Jesus was the Son of God,
he replied that he did not know. A burning question for her was, “If God
exists, why does he not let us know?” She attended a healing service with the
thought that if she could see a healing miracle, she might have some evidence
for God. She writes: “I suppose God has His own way of answering questions.
I did not see my miracle, but for an infinitesimal moment of time, I felt God’s
presence. The speaker had come forward, he raised his hands in blessing, and
suggested that we begin the meeting with a silence in which we all simply
concentrated on the thought of the presence of God there with us. I bowed
my head conventionally and suddenly ‘out of the blue’ I was aware of a power
of indescribable immensity hanging over me like a great cloud. I felt almost
as though it were pressing down on me. I had not anticipated or experienced
anything like that in my life before, and then it ‘lifted’ and I was left wondering
what had hit me. But it gave me the answer to my question, at least to my
satisfaction.”
This account leaves the impression that a causal trace was left in Evelyn. Much
of our life consists of trying to identify the causes of particular sensations or
feelings, and we bring this background to experiences that we construe as

spiritual.
We might wonder what the phenomenological character of an experience
would be like that might accompany the observation of a powerful event
that is outside any human capacity to produce. Being present at the eruption
of a large volcano is one such event, but of course it is difficult to imag-
ine what observing that event might include at the phenomenological level.
Observing some of the unusual events described in the narrative literature
of the Christian Bible, such as Elijah’s parting of the Jordan River30 or the
destruction of the prophets of Baal by fire in response to his prayer,31 if these
are meant to be literally understood, would likely be accompanied by the
sense that extraordinary power was present. Of course, it is possible that no
phenomenological impression would accompany the objective events, just
as it is possible for a phenomenological impression to occur without any
obvious corresponding external event, as in the experience of Evelyn. Such
phenomenological responses do not provide a basis for asserting the definite
existence of something or Someone having that characteristic, but they are
not devoid of significance either, because the subjective sense needs explana-
tion. Moreover, subjective and objective aspects occasionally occur together,
and their simultaneous experience illuminates the possible causal connection.
I surmise that “spiritual responses” to significant acts or events (at the phe-
nomenological level) could resemble moral and aesthetic responses, inasmuch
as an appropriate phenomenological response might be expected but not be
forthcoming. In the presence of great art we might expect to be profoundly
moved, for example, but discover that the expected, even desired, response
simply cannot be stirred up. The one occasion on which I saw the Mona Lisa
was disappointing, for I hoped to be enchanted by this extraordinary piece of
art but felt nothing at all—all the other tourists milling around the painting
spoiled it for me. In a similar way a heinous act of murder might not evoke
a normal response of reprehension from someone who is preoccupied with
her own situation, such as just having heard that a much beloved parent has
just contracted a fatal disease, so that a suitable moral response is not possible
for her. She knows the murder to be wrong, but is unable to feel the moral
disapproval that is appropriate for the act, and normal for her. These features
of aesthetic and moral judgments indicate that a “cognitive stance” is implicit
in them, although they also have significant noncognitive dimensions related
to our emotions. These remarks about art and about acts that are subject
to moral evaluation suggest the possibility that we have appropriate spiritual
responses on occasion, and learn from them what that response includes at
the cognitive and affective levels. We can then imagine what an appropriate
spiritual response would be, even if it is not forthcoming on its own. I surmise
that some of the bodily postures that are associated with worship derive from
instinctive responses that were once “felt” to be appropriate (and still are),
such as kneeling, falling prostrate, bowing, and so on.
The next case involves a sense of power in a more personal sense than that
described by Evelyn.
Case 6 :32 Fiona was brought up in a nominally Anglican home in England that
she describes as more agnostic in practice than Anglican. She earned a Bachelor
of Arts degree in theology, and says that she lost her “early faith” upon encoun-
tering biblical criticism. She eventually found her faith again, and became a
Catholic. A religious painter by profession, Fiona describes an experience that
took place when she was in her mid-forties. “I came home after an evening lec-
ture at the house of some friends. It was a freezing night, so I decided to say my
prayers in bed. I had absolutely no premonition of anything unusual, but sud-
denly, I don’t know exactly what happened but it was a bit like a long electric
shock, like once years ago when I began to mend an iron without remembering
to switch it off first. Of course, this was quite different; it wasn’t mechanical,
it was a person. I could have no doubt about this at all. There was a feeling
of heat and light rushing though my blood stream, sweeping over me and par-
alyzing me almost, as if some person outside were blowing something in me
to white heat, and I was sobbing tears of love and gratitude. I was longing
for it to go on, and for some time it kept returning more and more strongly,
leaving me weak and shivery in-between. There were no visions or voices, but
the Person communicated words, or rather ideas, or certainties, with a sort
of close intimacy, much more closely than into my ear or imagination. The
impression was that this Person was taking absolute charge, dominating me
quite peacefully but powerfully, not frightening at all, but loving and—above
all—understanding. He gave me the certainty that he knew exactly my capacity
and limits. He would ‘see to me’ and give jobs to do and help me to see them
through.” Fiona speaks about various hardships that befell her as a parent and
a teacher, about the challenge of living with cancer, and then she adds: “I am
certain that nothing less than the (dark) presence of God would sustain me in
peace through the panic-fear which comes with incurable diseases, or keep me
painting in spite of inevitable malaise and tiredness.”
Fiona’s description reflects the Augustinian distinction between three kinds

of vision. The first of these seems sensory, as when she speaks of sensations
similar to that of an electric shock. The second is intellectual in nature, when
she describes the certainties that were communicated to her as ideas having
more intimacy than anything spoken in one’s “ear or imagination.” Her back-
ground in theology perhaps accounts for this possible allusion to Augustine.
Her reference to “the (dark) presence of God” perhaps echoes the mystical
literature of the Church that describes the phenomenological sense of having
God withdraw his presence, without (cognitively) viewing God as actually

having forgotten or abandoned us. Again we see the curious combination of
sensory (or perceptual) and intellectual elements, as though the first is meant
to call attention to, or establish the reality of, the second.
The sense of a personal power is even stronger in the next case, from an
English woman writing at 63 years of age.
Case 7 :33 Harriet was brought up in the Church of England, and reports
that she took her faith seriously in her youth and was confirmed in that
Church. At art school she became friends with atheists, and soon after that,
at the age of 19, also considered herself an atheist. She describes the dominant
influence in her view of life at this time as coming from the poet, John Keats:
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to
know.”34 Then World War II broke out, and her husband decided to join the
army. She found her Keatsian outlook no longer adequate, and began to think
that some force or power was behind the universe, “but to call that power
Him, or worse still, Father, is manifestly absurd”—this is what she wrote her
husband. They had a son in 1943 and a year later her world was shaken. She
writes: “My husband was still away in the army, ‘somewhere in England,’ but
in no particular danger. Our son was bouncing about in his pram outside, the
sun was shining and I was making the bed; there was nothing in my life to
make the day different to any other. Suddenly, I was filled with an absolute
certainty of the reality of God. No lights, no voices, no ecstatic feelings. Just a
quiet, utterly convincing certainty, “Of course there is God.” It was very differ-
ent from the vaguely ecstatic feelings I had had in my communing with nature.
It was cool, and quiet and certain—and very surprising. What convinced me
most, both then and later, was that contrary to all my dogmatically held views,
this God (of whom I was now certain) was not only an all-pervading power in
the universe, but also a Presence, so real and personal there in my bedroom,
that I had no difficulty at all in relating to him and feeling him as a loving
father. I got down on my knees and, for the first time in ten or more years, said
The Lord’s Prayer, which now was clear to me as a veritable blue-print for liv-
ing, in which every word was significant and indispensable. Immediately I saw,
what had escaped me up till that moment, that if there is a God (and now I was
convinced there is) our relation to him cannot fall short of total surrender.”
Harriet’s experience is significant inasmuch as it did not only communicate

the sense that a powerful force exists in the universe, but also conveyed the
sense that this force is personal. The second impression need not accompany
the first.
The question of how the sense of presence might be communicated to us
is not easily answered. The fact that the most evolved beings on Earth exhibit
consciousness, personality, and intelligence does not require that their Source
is personal, even if we endorse the view that the lesser does not derive from
the greater. We know that migrating birds find their way using ferromag-
netism, but we might not think that God must also receive information in
this way. We are dimly aware of some psychological continuum that exists
among animals, and can detect something of their various personalities and
levels of intelligence. We consider them, perhaps unthinkingly, to be beneath
us. No obvious reason exists, however, for rejecting the thought that other
beings might exist who are higher on this continuum than we are, or for
rejecting the notion that the Supreme Being differs from us to the degree
that we differ from ants and other insects. Again, we expect neurophysiology
to illuminate the portion of this continuum that it can successfully examine,
and to suggest similarities between us and other animals that are now obscure.
An argument for the existence of a powerful Presence does not appear to be
nearly as impressive as an experience of a Presence.
In a classic on the sense of God’s presence, John Baillie (1886–1960),
professor of divinity at Edinburgh University, writes that “the human
spirit . . . develops certain subtler senses or sensitivities which go beyond the
bodily senses,” which includes “a sense of the holy or of the divine, a sense
of the presence of God.”35 He considers this sense to be one that presupposes
for its possibility the experience that is obtained by means of ordinary per-
ceptual sensation, and so describes it as a form of perception, rather than a
conception to which we are led by means of argument. Philosopher William
Alston (1921–2009) has advanced the possibility of such a form of percep-
tion by examining the analogies between sense perception and what theists
describe as a perception (or knowledge) that God is present, often felt in the
“ordinary” experiences reported by those who attend services of worship. The
existence of this unique form of perception has been contested, of course,
by philosopher Richard Gale, for example, who argues that Alston consid-
ers experiences of this kind to be perceptual simply because “many mystics
describe them as such” and so begs the question of their existence.36 The
conflict between those who advance the experience of “a sense of presence”
and their detractors appears to be incapable of easy resolution. The fact that
Gale can dismiss Alston’s claim so unapologetically indicates to me that the
hard work of assembling data on “the sense of Presence” has not gotten far.
I estimate from having read or scanned more than half of the items in the
Alister Hardy collection that reference to a sense of Presence occurs per-
haps as often as a thousand times. NDEs were once in the position that a
sense of Presence is presently in—not enough were on record to prevent the
phenomenon from being ignored. The large number of accounts of similar
NDEs that accumulated in the past two decades of the twentieth century
convinced the Academy that its earlier skepticism about its occurrence was
unreasonable, even though the Academy does not know how to explain the
phenomenon.
The next case I will describe, deriving from an English woman, alleges
intersubjective observation.
Case 8:37 Irene’s experience took place in the anteroom of an operating theatre,
prior to the advent of bypass surgery, when she was 23. The surgeon had the
heart of a four-week-old baby in his hands, and was explaining the cause of
the baby’s death (on a cardiac course) to 35 Registered Nurses, of whom Irene
was one. She had considered death to that point as the final disillusionment
of earthly life. She writes: “Suddenly the room and theatre were permeated
with the scent of violets and the almost-tangible sense of peace. The surgeon, a
hard-bitten Australian, comments on the scene, [but] no source [for the aroma]
could be found. Since this time I have felt no pain at any death. I am sure
of the presence of—who knows—Love? Peace? God? I have no personal fear
of death, despite threats of hell and purgatory in my life prior to this event.
No longer do I fear, or feel angry with God because of a child’s death. I am
married, have three children, work as a sister in a neo-natal theatre—in fact,
a hard-headed professional woman. The peace is still in me, but I have never
discussed this ‘experience’ with anyone other than the staff present at the time.
All had smelled the perfume. This has always puzzled, not obsessed, me, but
has upheld faith in love. Faith, I think, is anticipatory of belief.”38
Irene’s experience was not formally corroborated by others who were present,
to my knowledge. The occurrence of intersubjective experience, of course,
indicates that some independent reality was encountered, but little can be
gleaned from this particular experience.
A striking feature of Irene’s account is the reverence with which she treats
the event. No one else besides nurses on the course was made privy to it
until she wrote about it for submission to the RERC. Her description of
herself as “a hard-headed professional woman” strikes me as an attempt to
convince her readers that she was not “a sentimental woman readily given to
accepting spiritual claims uncritically.” Critics of the rationality of spiritual
beliefs have managed to make believers look foolish and irrational, but Irene’s
response to the event, which includes both affective and cognitive features,
is not irrational. She is unable to say precisely what she encountered, but this
response is probably similar to that of physicists and biologists who encounter
things in their laboratories whose precise description and explanation can-
not be supplied, for they are dealing with unobservables. The personal stakes
regarding scientific matters seem to be lower than they are concerning spir-
ituality, since the latter might affect our ultimate destinies. Probabilities are
involved here, as well as a deeply personal cost–benefit argument. A particular
experience might have a chance much less than 1 percent of being of God,
but if it is, the outcome of the experience could make a very large difference
in one’s life; consequently, people are apt to risk the chance that God, or some
other benevolent agency, is involved. This way of recasting what happened in
Irene’s case is misleading, however, for she did not reason herself into the new
outlook, but found that it had been born.
The next experience locates the Presence that saved a boy’s life very
specifically in his spatiotemporal domain. This English man writes:
Case 9 Ivan:39 My first [religious] experience happened to me when I was about

seven years old. It was when I was on holiday with my parents in ___. We were
walking along the road, making our way back up the gorge and away from the
town itself. Unfortunately, I was lagging behind. Also, my parents were facing
the oncoming traffic whilst I was on the wrong side.40 That is, the traffic was
coming up from behind me. The incident happened on a very sharp left-hand
bend when I was half-way round it. The bank on my left rose almost vertically
and any vehicle approaching from behind would have noticed me too late.
I was suddenly aware of an invisible presence on my right, emitting a feeling
of great danger. The next thing that happened was that this presence seemed
to press me flat up against the steep bank. A second or two later, a blue Jaguar
car came fast round the bend and missed me by inches. Had I been walking,
I would have been run over. Once the car had gone, the presence left me, and
I made sure I stuck close by my parents.
Ivan does not describe the presence as God, but he clearly considered it to
be benevolent. Christian interpretations of spiritual experience often blur the
distinction between God and the angels said to do his bidding. The skimpy
bits of information available for developing a theory of spirits resemble the
limited data upon which various scientific theories have been dependent, such
as atomism or evolutionary theory in the nineteenth century. This does not
prevent conjectural theories from being proposed, although their advocates
might have to put up with close questioning until more data are forthcom-
ing. I do not know why Ivan withheld the location of the place at which
this experience occurred, for I cannot see how this information might have
revealed his identity.
Love
The next group of people reporting encounters with God focuses on another
attribute.
Case 10:41 Janice, an English woman, describes her background as vaguely

Anglican, and says that her experience of God took place when she came back
to her home from a holiday to discover that her mother had died—no one had
been able to notify her on holiday. Janice writes: “I was then forty-four, very
happily married [to an engineer in whose firm she was a secretary], with three
children, and a believing but somewhat detached Anglican. I can never remem-
ber a time when I doubted the existence of God, though I have not been able
to feel the great compelling power which the person of Jesus exerts on so many.
Belief in Christ as the Spirit of God is the nearest I can come to it. It is dif-
ficult to write what came next. Anything one does write is totally inadequate,
and I was too shaken and disturbed to do so at the time. My remembrance
now is inevitably coloured by subsequent reading of mystical literature, but at
that time I had not the slightest idea that such literature existed and had never
come across it. We are much sheltered by the Churches in this way; institu-
tional religion filters experience down to manageable proportions. However,
all I can truthfully say now after several years is that at some point in the next
few days—even before the funeral, I think—I had the most shattering experi-
ence of my entire life. I believe it was during a sleepless night, but it seems to
have been an experience entirely out of time as we accept the notion. With-
out any sense perception (except that I do seem to recollect an impression of
light and darkness) I was made aware of a Reality beyond anything that my
own mind could have conceived. And that Reality was a total love of all things
in heaven and earth. ‘It’ enclosed and accepted everything and every creature;
there was no distinction of its love between the star, the saint and the torturer.
All were ‘kept’ by this Power, and loved by it. I understood—then at least—the
phrases, ‘I am that I am’, and what I later read as ‘the coincidence of opposites.’
‘It’ is ‘Eternal Beauty.’ ” She later adds, “I did not doubt then, and have never
doubted since, that I was put in touch with that ultimate reality for which we
use the shorthand ‘God’.”
The most significant element of Janice’s intuitive knowing appears to have

been her knowledge of a vital link between God and love.
Love is a prominent theme in the NT documents authored by St. John,
who goes as far as asserting that, “He who does not love does not know God;
for God is love.”42 The NT authors explicate the nature of love in various
ways, perhaps most famously in the ode to love written by St. Paul, which
includes the well-known words: “Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous
or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is
not irritable or resentful . . . ”43 Whatever logical force might reside in classical
arguments for God’s existence, or their probabilistic variations, these argu-
ments hardly advance the reality of love and its significance to individual and
interpersonal life. Natural theology has its place in giving expression to possi-
ble origins of the universe in a self-sustaining Cause, who has a breathtaking
capacity to create intricate and complex phenomena, but the fleshing out of
this Being seemingly comes in the form of experiences that are aptly described
as illuminations of the intellect, and perhaps more. Richard Swinburne holds
that from the insight that God is love, we can see that God must be Triune:44
Since love always has an object, the Father has a Son whom he loves, and who
reciprocates that love; moreover, since love is perfected by someone whom
both the Father and the Son love, a third member who is quintessentially
love (the Holy Spirit) also exists. While some might be moved to embrace
Trinitarian faith by this argument, I consider the (empirical) grounds for
Trinitarian beliefs to be stronger from the remarkable events described in the
NT Gospels, in Acts of the Apostles, and in some of the NT apocryphal books.
These events straddle both sides of the life and death of Jesus, including the
time of his ministry and the events at and after Pentecost. It is possible, of
course, that some fable has been included, but I (now) doubt that all of it is
fabulous.
Janice suggests that her experience of love was connected to an encounter
with “I am that I am.” This is truly extraordinary, for nothing about the
narrative in Exodus of the encounter of Moses with “I am that I am” sug-
gests that Moses had a phenomenological sense of being loved. According
to this narrative, Moses was caring for the flock of his father-in-law when
his curiosity was aroused by a thornbush that burned without being con-
sumed. As Moses drew near to look at the bush more closely, a Being in it
called his name, instructed him to take off his shoes, and warned him not to
come any closer. In response to this, “Moses hid his face, for he was afraid
to look at God.”45 When Moses asked the Being for his name, he replied
with “I am that I am.” Although the subsequent conversation gives con-
crete expression to God’s love for the descendants of Jacob (Israel), of whom
Moses was one, Moses views his task of leading the Israelites out of Egypt
as onerous. The excuses he offers for not undertaking it are that he is not
eloquent, and also that his fellow Israelites would never believe that “I am
that I am” actually appeared to him. Hebrew tradition accepts this account
as deriving from Moses himself, and given the fact that no other person seems
to have been present, Moses is its apparent source. His description of its phe-
nomenological impact upon him indicates that he felt fear, not love (or being
loved). This interpretation is reinforced by a subsequent experience on his
journey soon afterward back to Egypt with his wife and sons. When they
stopped at an inn, he writes, “the Lord46 met him [Moses], and sought to
kill him,” because they had not circumcised one of their sons. Disaster was
averted when Zipporah, Moses’s wife, circumcised the boy. This mysterious
incident reinforces the view that Moses did not view the Lord as quintessen-
tially love. In a Psalm traditionally attributed to Moses47, he refers to God
as the “dwelling place” for many generations of Israelites, but his outlook is
bleak. He speaks about the brevity of life, which is lived under the wrath
of God and ends by being consumed by God’s anger. The remaining verses
are a plea for mercy and for gladness “according to the days wherein God
has afflicted us.” Whether Moses every knowingly experienced God as love is
unclear.
Some Protestant theologians claim that not just Moses, but Judaism in
general, never had a full understanding of God as love. Anders Nygren (1890–
1978), a Swedish professor and bishop who influenced such well-known
theologians as Karl Barth (1886–1968), Paul Tillich, and Reinhold Niebuhr
(1892–1971), contends that Christianity introduced a conception of moral-
ity into the Western world that was known neither in Judaism nor anywhere
else. This is a morality characterized by self-sacrificial love—agape—and was
exemplified most completely by Jesus and described most impressively by
St. Paul. Agape does not prudently seek to satisfy the desires of the ego,
but seeks to minister unselfishly to the needs of others in a manner Nygren
describes as “spontaneous and unmotivated, uncalculating, unlimited, and
unconditional.”48 Agape is indifferent to the value supposedly found in oth-
ers; in fact, it creates value in others by showering unmerited favor upon
them. Nygren maintains that, according to the agape-motif, humans do not
have value in themselves, not even by virtue of having souls of ultimate worth;
rather, value is created in someone by being an object of agape.49 He views
Judaism as having lacked a full understanding of agape because it held to a
retributive view of punishment—“an eye for an eye”—and viewed the scope
of fellow-concern to be limited to the “chosen people.” Agape, by contrast,
extends itself to all humanity, to friend and foe, to old and young, to women
and men, to citizen and alien, and so on. The love that Janice felt in the expe-
rience described earlier is seemingly of the agape form as Nygren understood
it, for the recipients of it are all things and all creatures, including saints and
torturers.
Perhaps some people grasp love as though it were a Platonic form. A young
man who fell in love with a married woman writes:
Case 11 Kevin:50 The desire for her grew, and [I] battled with my sense of
honour—a terrible longing, but at the same time I had a compassion for her
husband and also some element of fear of being exposed by another woman at
work who rather fancied me. After about a week of this pain of longing and
fighting to “do the right thing” etc., at a bus stop, the longing was displaced by
a Substance that pervaded everything as well as being a part of myself, a Divine
Essence because in it I could see the source of all the love, beauty, goodness,
wisdom, sex-appeal that the ordinary world could offer. It was more “real” than
world-real things, more substantial than matter/substance . . . 51
Perhaps it is a stretch to interpret this experience as one in which the Form

of Love was encountered, but the author of it does not explicitly describe the
object that he encountered to be God, so we are hard-pressed to know what

else he might have thought the object to be. It is reminiscent of the encomium
to Love found in the mouth of Socrates in Symposium, who attributes it to
Diotima.52
The illuminating of the human intellect in grasping love is hardly imag-
inable without the one whose intellect is illumined also feeling something of
what it means to be loved in that way. This newly grasped insight is simultane-
ously intellectual and affective in character. Untold numbers have apparently
experienced love coming from some invisible source, as other cases indicate.
Case 12:53 Karen, an English woman who was raised a Roman Catholic, but
describes herself as unorthodox in her beliefs, writes about an experience she
had when she was fifty-five years of age: “During the night of September 9,
1964, I awoke, and looking out of my window, saw what I took to be a lumi-
nous star, which gradually came nearer, and appeared as a soft, slightly blurred,
white light. I was seized with violent trembling, but had no fear. I knew that
what I felt was great awe. This was followed by a sense of overwhelming love
coming to me, and going out from me, then of great compassion from this
outer Presence. After that I had a sense of overpowering peace, and indescrib-
able happiness. I remember saying to myself, ‘This is no dream. I am awake,
and experiencing it with my whole self.’ I remain convinced of this. I awoke
in the morning with a feeling of having been transformed, and in the days
that followed I had a very much clearer sense of my identity, saw people more
clearly, and things in a different way. Certainty about what I must do at that
juncture in my life suddenly came to me.”
Karen’s clearer sense of her own identity is a topic to which I will return in the
next chapter; her reference to love that entered her and then went out from
her is reminiscent of a man who described love in these terms as part of his
vision of Jesus.
John Vasse54 described how a “presence” stood behind him as he was read-
ing the daily paper, wanting “entry” into his life. When John gave mental
consent he began to weep uncontrollably. To avoid being seen by his wife,
John made his way to the bathroom, where he was physically overpowered by
“something” that impaired his ability to move. For 15 minutes he was trans-
fixed to the floor by what seemed to be an external force, and when this phase
of the experience was completed, he felt cleansed of his long-standing con-
tempt and loathing for God. John regained his ability to move and made his
way to another room, but halfway there he collapsed, again feeling the weight
that had earlier crushed him. This time the immobility did not last, and as
it lifted the whole room was flooded with light, but not from any apparent
natural source. In the center of a living room wall, John saw the outline of
someone’s head, neck and shoulders. He was certain that this was Jesus, from
whom came an overpowering sense of love and compassion that extended to
John and then returned back as though in a circular motion. John was not
certain if his eyes were open during the second part of the experience, but
he is sure that the experience was sent to him by God and that the pres-
ence he sensed was Christ. John considers the experience to have had several
purposes in his life, including giving him an understanding of God as love.
This is the element we could describe as intuitive knowing. The sense of love
that entered John and then returned to its source suggests that at some level
of phenomenological experience, some people receive love for God as a gift
from God himself.
An American woman writes about her experience of love in mid-life,
combined with a feature that belongs to corporeal or imaginative vision:
Case 13:55 Lillian had a Lutheran background, but at the time of her experi-
ence, at thirty-seven years of age, she considered herself to be an atheist. She
had attended confirmation classes when she was younger, but left the church
when she was told to “just believe.” She writes: “I was standing in my upstairs
bedroom, near the foot of my daughter’s bed, in front of a large window.
An unusual ray of light caught my eye—I thought it was a reflection from a
plane or some such thing. I saw the light move through space. It enveloped me.
I was surrounded, permeated, filled completely with the most exquisite feeling
of love imaginable. I don’t have any idea how long this light was with me,
probably minutes—maybe seconds. I felt crushed by the intensity of the love,
and when this light left I was crying. I cried for quite a while, with complete
joy. My mind said, ‘God is! God is! And God loves me as I am.’ As I recall,
the light was unusual in appearance because of its rich goldenness. There is
no way in my command of the language to share with you the magnitude of
that love, nor my own feelings of humble joy.” The experience gave Lilian an
unusual amount of physical energy, and, she continues, “my mind raced with
new concepts, perspectives and awareness . . . I had a sense of ultimate good
for all people, possibly connected with death, if not life. I wanted to shout
from the rooftops that God existed, that He loves us as we are, no matter
who we are, and that his plan encompasses all men. I say ‘He’ because of my
early training—actually, my contact with what I believe to have been God was
with ‘It.’ ”
A remarkable feature of Lillian’s experience is that it lacked the personal

aspect that others report. How she was able to make the distinction in phe-
nomenological terms between a person and an “It’ is unclear, but she does
not elaborate.
The next experience contributes to a fuller understanding of intuitive
knowing.
Case 14: 56Moira writes about an experience that occurred when she was
twenty-one. At the time she gave this account—at fifty-nine—she had worked
professionally as a social worker for twenty-five years, mostly among delinquent
youths. Moira writes: “I had been brought up in the Congregational Church;
religion meant a lot to me, but at the time I was going through a period of
doubt and of disillusion with life and was torn by conflict. I was working as a
secretary in the film trade, and my contacts there—revealing a very different
world from church and home—considerably added to the conflict. On this
particular June day I had time to fill in between leaving the office and going
to a rehearsal for a play in which I was acting. It was a glorious sunny evening
and I walked through St. James’s Park57 and sat down by the water intending
to read. I never opened my book; it was very beautiful with the sun flitting
through the trees and the ducks swimming on the water, and quite suddenly
I felt lifted beyond all the turmoil and the conflict. There was no visual image
and I knew I was sitting on a seat in the park, but I felt as if I was lifted above
the world and looking down on it. The disillusion and cynicism were gone,
and I felt compassion suffusing my whole being, compassion for all the peo-
ple of earth. I was possessed by a peace that I have never felt before or since,
and—what is to me most interesting and curious of all—this whole state was
not emotional; it was as if I was not without emotion but beyond it. Since I am
by nature a very emotional person I felt this was significant. At length I rose
from the seat and slowly walked through the park towards Victoria for my
rehearsal. The experience passed off gradually and I suppose it lasted about
twenty or thirty minutes. At the time I felt it was an experience of God because
I interpreted it according to my own religious framework. . . . I have often had
emotional religious experiences and similar ones in the realm of nature, but all
these could be (though not necessarily are) psychological wish-fulfilments. The
experience I have described is different. It stands out alone. Scientifically it is
difficult to interpret, but intuitively I felt that I somehow latched on to a realm
of being which is usually hidden from us.”
Moira speaks about an illumination of her intellect that had surprisingly little
emotional content. This feature squares nicely with what Augustine appears
to have had in mind when introducing the distinctions marking corporeal,
imaginative and intellectual vision. Moira’s remark that her experience was
difficult to interpret scientifically concedes too much to science at the present
time, for no “scientific interpretation” of religious or spiritual experience in
general is available. Neurophysiology is just beginning to understand the
“scientific,” or intersubjectively observable, aspects of human experience.
Moira’s reference to wish-fulfilment as an explanation for other kinds of
spiritual experience (in addition to the one she describes in detail) reflects
her background in the social sciences, where psychological explanations for
such experiences are often advanced. In Visions of Jesus I devote a chapter
to psychological explanations for what appear to be corporeal (or possibly
imaginative) visions of Jesus, and argue there that attempts to account for
visions in psychological terms, such as sexual repression,58 stress,59 or wish-
fulfilment,60 are inadequate. These proposed explanations cannot account,
for example, for why some percipients see a human figure that moves, whereas
others see a figure that is “frozen,” or why some see facial features and others
do not, even though other aspects of the figure that appears are in clear view.
Many expect neurophysiology to account for these differences eventually, as
human experience is more completely understood, and perhaps it will. How-
ever, the appeal to peculiar psychological states as explanations has run its
course.
Providence
The knowledge of the reality of God, or of his interest in us, also comes
in forms that seemingly include curious interventions in human lives. Ivan’s
experience described earlier (Case 9) also falls into the category of providence.
Another account comes from a Catholic woman from England, writing at 87
years of age. Nora describes herself as having had daily contact with God in
thought and prayer all her life, but several experiences stand out in her mind.
Case15 Nora:61 My first experience took place many years ago, and is still vivid
in my memory. My eldest son was seven months old—the nursery was next to
the bedroom, with communicating door. My husband was away at the time.
One night I woke with a start and a feeling that someone had called me—all
was quiet, but I felt I must go quickly into the next room to look at my baby—
in those days babies slept in what we called a treasure cot, draped all round with
ribbon and lace, and canopy overhead also so decorated. I looked into the cot
but could not see the baby’s head on the pillow—it was a cold night in winter
and he had been well wrapped up. When I pulled the bedclothes down, he was
lying in the middle of the cot and had been completely covered with the bed
clothes. When I took him in my arms I realized that had I come in a moment
later, he would have been smothered! Surely this was the Act of a merciful God,
in my waking when I did, to enable me to save my baby’s life.
“Knowledge” in some form or other appears to have been given to Nora at a

precise moment, and to have evoked the sense that this insight did not come
“out of nowhere,” but had its source in God. Theological traditions obviously
contribute to the ways in which people interpret certain events. One of the
worries that would-be theists have about spiritual beliefs is that they are little
more than the imposition of some vague system of thought upon malleable
events, which might be remarkable enough in themselves, but whose causes
are unknown, such as Nora’s “knowing” that she should check her sleeping
baby. Such events, however, seemingly comprise a part of a larger group of

phenomena, some of which are anchored in the spatio-temporal-causal world,
and consequently, are somehow “about” the world. This “knowing” appears
to occur too frequently in human experience to be ignored.
An Irish Roman Catholic woman writes about a providential intervention
concerning her daughter soon after the child was born.
Case 16 Olive:62 My husband and I were employed in a private hotel . . . I was

the cook and my husband was a waiter. We could only rarely go out together
as we each had different days off, but on this rare occasion we both got an
evening off to see a film at K___, about six miles away. One of the Hotel staff
had volunteered to baby-sit and we set off to catch a bus. We had not been
long seated in the cinema when a terrible uneasiness overcame me. I could
distinctly smell burning. I fidgeted a lot and my husband asked what the matter
[was]. I told him I could smell burning. He said I’d probably dropped a bit of
my cigarette. I stooped and had a look on the carpet but no sign of any glow
[appeared]. The smell persisted and eventually I told my husband I was leaving.
He followed me reluctantly, muttering something derogatory about women.
As we boarded the bus for home I prayed for it to go faster. At each stop I almost
died. At last we were sprinting down the lane leading to our cottage. The smell
of burning was now very defined to me, though my husband could not smell
a thing. We reached the door, which I literally burst in. As I did so the dense
smoke poured out and a chair by the fire burst into flames. I rushed through
to the bedroom and got the baby out, while my husband dragged out the
unconscious girl. She had fallen asleep in the armchair and dropped her lighted
cigarette into the chair which had smouldered for hours. Yes, God sent me
home to save my baby. She is now the mother of six, living in America. God was
with me telling me to hurry home; of that I am convinced and my husband [is
also convinced]. I have had many premonitions which proved accurate over the
years . . . I am most reluctant to use this gift, perhaps because I am a Catholic
and our church frowns on such things.
The most remarkable feature of this experience is the “smell of smoke” that
Olive reported soon after taking her seat in the cinema, which evidently did
not come from anything burning in the vicinity of Olive and her husband.
The armchair that was smouldering in their home, with which she vaguely
associated her olfactory experience later, was clearly not the source of the
sensation either, so the experience should be considered to be an olfactory
“hallucination” in which her sensory experience symbolized 63 an important
reality with which the experience had no causal connection.
Among the ten kinds of hallucinatory experience described by K. W. M.
Fulford, Olive’s experience is perhaps best classified as an instance of what
he describes as normal hallucinations: “Brief hallucinatory perceptions in the
absence of a stimulus, experienced as outside and as real at the time, as when

a tired doctor, nearly asleep, hears a telephone ring, only to be assured by the
hospital switchboard that she ‘must have imagined it.’ ”64 However, Olive’s
experience was not brief. Her view that this experience was somehow caused
by a Benevolence so that she might rescue her child and its babysitter is not
absurd, but of course this claim is beyond “proof.” We might wonder why
God, or some being acting either on his behalf or out of its own sense of
benevolence, did not employ some simpler method of rescuing the two who
were about to be consumed by fire, such as “nudging” a neighbor to knock on
the door, thereby awakening the babysitter. Using what we might describe as a
veridical hallucination—experiencing the olfactory sensation of “smoke” even
though the place about to burst on fire did not cause this sensation—to alert
Olive seems to be a complicated measure to achieve the desired end. Olive
seems to have known that something involving her infant daughter was amiss,
so her experience belongs to the phenomena of “intuitive knowing,” but it
also “involves” corporeal vision, since she “smelled something.” The ways in
which spiritual experience can surprise seem endless, but detailed information
about these cases is often suppressed, even by the Church, in Olive’s opin-
ion. I surmise that the whole experience, including Olive’s intuitive knowing,
was meant to be a monument to Providence in her family’s collective
memory.
The next case also involves “intuitive knowledge” that was instrumental
in saving a life. It comes from a non-Conformist65 English woman, who says
little about her background.
Case 17 Paula:66 A child was knocked down outside our premises. She was
carried into our house by a passer-by. Several people followed the child into the
house, including a Roman Catholic monk. He spent the time praying while the
child was unconscious, and while the ambulance was awaited. She was lying on
a couch and we were expecting the doctor to come. Apparently the doctor had
been called away to another road accident and was unable to come. When the
ambulance arrived the ambulance men asked to what hospital the child was
to be taken. I seemed to be possessed suddenly with a power that was not my
own, and I was giving instructions to the men as to where they should take the
child, to what department etc., and saying the right things to the others there,
which included the child’s mother. What I did not know was that the child had
been struck on the head by a passing lorry as she fell from her bicycle, and it
was important that she should have the right attention quickly. The first thing
the doctor’s wife said to me afterwards was, “How did you know where to send
the child? She was received at the hospital by the one person who was qualified
to save her life at that particular time.” She is now a grown-up and charming
young lady.
Events involving apparent guidance or protection are seemingly so numerous

that they might form the largest class of spiritual experiences. My limited
basis for saying so is because of what I have read or heard about in personal
interactions with both Christian people and non-Christian theists.
Experiences involving guidance or protection appear to induce a disposi-
tion to seek or expect similar experiences. This is not surprising, given what
we know about behavioral conditioning as it applies to both animals and
humans. Some among those who experience the hand of Providence in their
lives are also given to interpreting many other experiences as instances of
guidance or protection even though others would not do so, thereby bring-
ing beliefs in Providence (or God) into unnecessary disrepute and question.
Theories that postulate unobservable objects (or beings), whose properties
(or attributes) are dimly perceived because indirect methods of observation
are the only means by which information about them can be obtained,
are often malleable enough to fit a variety of circumstances. God’s sustain-
ing role is considered by many Christians to be an important feature of
his interaction with the world, the basis for which is the teaching of the
Church, not anything that is obvious in nature itself. God and other spir-
its might well also act in other ways, but explanations that cite the causal
role of human agents or of law-like conditions in the spatio-temporal-causal
world are not thereby supplanted. Some mystery surrounds the human
penchant to consider God to be the causal source of events that are serendip-
itous or helpful, since an infinite power is clearly not needed to account
for them.
Moral and Providential Luck

A common complaint about incidents in which God is considered to have
intervened in the lives of people, perhaps to save a child or other loved one
from disaster, is that he seems entirely arbitrary about whom he chooses to
help and those he chooses to ignore, which is then taken to be grounds
for questioning the claim that he is fair, or possibly fully benevolent. The
young fellow who was “pushed” to the edge of the road so that he would
not be run over, and the mother who “hallucinated” her burning house in
which her child was sleeping are clear examples. We might describe this
“luck” that some people experience as providential luck, and distinguish it
from another form of luck that moral philosophers have discussed. Moral
luck is considered to arise from the fact that people and their acts are initially
subjected to moral evaluation based upon the assumption of their having
control over their acts, but further reflection suggests that they are devoid
of much of the control on which their moral culpability rests. Philosopher
Thomas Nagel, University Professor at New York University, mentions the

“bad luck” of a driver who is held to be guilty of negligence for hitting
a pedestrian on the sidewalk, who would not be considered culpable for
any wrongdoing if no pedestrian had been present. Nagel observes that life
abounds with examples of these situations in which “the luck of the draw”
affects moral assessments.67 Among the factors that he mentions are the traits
with which people are born, the kind of upbringing they have had, and the
events that might result from their acts about which they have neither knowl-
edge nor control. One person is born with a compassionate demeanor, but
another is not; one person is brought up by parents who are incapable of
love, or withhold it, and so acts in a delinquent manner, whereas another’s
loving childhood seemingly prevents such behavior; one person is born in a
wealthy nation and is never seriously tempted to steal, whereas another per-
son from a poor country stays alive by stealing; ad infinitum. Moral luck,
which Nagel thinks to be an insoluble problem,68 seems bad enough as a con-
dition of life, but if theists are correct in thinking that God exists and acts
in the world, we are also subject to providential luck, which makes life even
worse.
Nagel also observes that the problem of moral luck has the effect of dimin-
ishing the “self ” that supposedly is in control of acts,69 which is an issue that
touches upon my earlier comments about the boundary of the self. We appear
to understand the self when we consider our own view of our acting self, and
we then project this view onto others, even though we cannot adequately put
ourselves in their place. We maintain a rough boundary between our self and
that which is not our self, and between an internal view of ourselves and an
external view. However, if we then begin to give credence to genetics and envi-
ronment, or to the unexpected consequences of seemingly innocent acts, our
view of human culpability begins to change. We could interpret modernity
as having introduced most of these modifications into our view of human
agency, for we now know much more about the ways in which one’s genet-
ics and conditioning history shape the acts we are likely to perform, and this
increasing knowledge continues to modify our views of culpability. The age
of science has also enhanced the significance of causal effects in making moral
assessments, by “promising” more authoritatively than any other age to con-
nect acts and traits with their effects. Immanuel Kant’s virulent opposition
to including the effects of acts as even one factor in their moral evaluation
exhibits his resistance to an age that was still dawning, and which he helped
to bring into existence. Moral luck has the capacity to introduce skepticism
into ethics to such an extent that assessments of culpability become prac-
tically impossible. Moreover, knowledge of the fixed intentions of people,
or even their half-seriously entertained intentions prior to acts, is needed to

assign appropriate amounts of moral culpability to all the relevant parties.
Only omniscience could accomplish this. The “self ” that was once considered
culpable has been significantly diminished by factors broadly gathered under
the theme of moral luck.
The discussion of moral luck can be viewed as deriving from an attempt to
sketch the place of moral virtues and human acts in a larger causal framework,
and thereby guide the studies in neuropsychology that might one day eclipse
what we presently know only in part, and largely in the form of an outline.
All we now have are crude outlines of what we consider to be the relevant
domains in which to look for causes and for culpability. Whereas moral luck
by itself might be seen as substantially diminishing the self that acts, for those
who also consider God to be capable of somehow acting in the world, either
directly or by emissaries and forces whose nature is indiscernible, the view of
the self may be even more diminished. Our impotence in advancing defensi-
ble moral assessments could be a motive (or reason) for excluding providential
luck entirely from our purview—the events of human life seem to be difficult
enough to understand without bringing in spirituality. However, the pecu-
liar but significant experiences that I am relating in this book need to be put
somewhere. Like determinists in psychology who question human culpability
in general, predestinarian theologians remove the culpability of humans for
the religious acts they perform and the spiritual traits they possess, such as
faith. However, this narrow view of the self is not the direction I am inclined
to take, so I must also defend moral culpability.
Some philosophers who theorize about morality argue that a unique per-
spective is assumed when we take a moral point of view, although this position,
like anything else in philosophy, is disputed. David Hume,70 as well as
his friend and famous economist Adam Smith71 (1723–90), and Harvard
professor Roderick Firth72 (1917–87) make a clear distinction between a self-
interested point of view and a moral one, maintaining that the latter attempts
to be as disinterested, objective, and knowledgeable as possible about the
effects of acts and traits, and the circumstances in which acts arise or traits
are formed. This interpretation of the moral point of view is particularly per-
tinent to the discussion of moral luck, for it envisions a perspective in which
such a comprehensive form of knowledge is present that no germane cause or
effect related to a moral act or character trait is overlooked. While such knowl-
edge need not be infinite, it is much greater than that which any human can
plausibly claim to possess. The discussion of moral luck could be interpreted
as an expression of a recognized need to be much more knowledgeable than
we are when we make moral judgments, as well as an expression of frustration
about being to achieve the requisite insight. In its own innocent way, the dis-
cussion of moral luck bears out the insight that when we take the moral point
of view, we attempt to adopt a perspective that approaches that of the Deity.
I will take up the disturbing questions that arise from providential and moral
luck in Chapter 5.
CHAPTER 4
Values
T
he graphic reports in the last chapter of a Reality breaking in upon
some people’s consciousness inevitably underscore the truth that oth-
ers never have experiences of this kind. Many committed theists,
perhaps, are unaware of any single occasion upon which “knowledge of God”
was given to them, but the strength with which they hold their convictions
is not less than those for whom some experience is epiphanic. The former
are people who have always been theists, and know of no time in their lives
when they were unsure of this belief. Intuitive knowledge is seemingly present
in both experiences—the mundane and the dramatic—and the value of the
dramatic experiences lies in their capacity not only to attract our attention,
but also to allow the mundane states of mind to be more clearly seen for what
they possibly are. Spiritual communities often include people whose dramatic
experiences are not shared by others, and each group is suspicious of the other.
In his groundbreaking work on religious experience, William James speaks of
the “once-born” and the “twice-born” as a way of caricaturing the two.1
Intuitive knowing evidently extends beyond the existence of God to ethics
and matters of intrinsic worth. An American woman with Roman Catholic
background writes three years after an experience:
Case 1 Alice:2 The one and only “religious experience” of my life apparently
took place at a time of emotional crisis, though I was not aware of the fact at
the time . . . [T]hose fifteen or twenty minutes that I am writing you about was
not one of those moments [of insight, that we all have]. It was a thing apart.
I was twenty-five years old at the time, and had recently given birth to my
third child. My husband was a reformed alcoholic, not quite able to support
his growing family, and I was forced to seek an outside job. Apparently, this was
the last straw to my endurance. Each day I became more and more filled with
resentment towards those circumstances, towards life, and especially towards
my husband. The festering resentment came to a peak one night after work,
and we had a bitter quarrel. I turned away from my husband with hate and
went into the kitchen. Depressed and still seething I sat down alone at the table.
Suddenly, this distinct thought came to mind, logical, clear and persuasive—
“You, who feels sympathy for others so easily, who cries so easily for the hungry,
who feels pain for the sick and charity towards the whole world, are filled with
hate towards this unhappy soul right in your own home.” I was stunned by
this revelation. It was absolutely true. I loved the whole world but hated my
own husband. This may not seem like an earth-shattering revelation, but to
me at the moment it was. Perhaps if it had stopped at this, at this flash of
insight, I might not have realized that I was undergoing a genuine religious
experience. But I sat with my inner eyes slowly opening, and acknowledging the
truth of this revelation, I seemed to be lifted spiritually out of my surroundings
and “tuned” into a source of great wisdom. The feeling of love, peace, and
justice was overwhelming. . . . Someone had stopped me on a bitterly narrow
downhill course, and gently turned me around. I would like to say that I am
an exemplary person, but that is far from the truth. There are many moments
of relapse, and of doubt. But in spite of this, I am convinced that this was
something out of the ordinary, and the memory of it gives me strength when
I lag.
Alice’s core experience was the realization that she professed to love people,
but hated her husband—intuitive knowing pertaining to a vital relation-
ship. Alice’s experience may well have been marked by feelings, but the
intellectual insight was the revelatory and life-changing feature of it.
Sir David Ross (1877–1971), a distinguished British moral theorist, claims
that many of the “intuitively obvious” ethical principles that guide our lives
emerge from reflection upon ordinary human relationships,3 which would
naturally include one’s spouse in a particularly meaningful way, as in Alice’s
case. These principles, which spell out obligations and rights, among other
things, are difficult to list in detail, and they vary slightly from person to
person, but our obligations to parents, spouses, partners, children, and sib-
lings (or step-parents, step-children, and so on) are a natural feature of life,
as are the rights of others that devolve from our obligations to them. Such
obligations and rights are apt to be dependent upon the culture(s) in which
people live, where important differences in relationships are to be found, and
in this respect our obligations are culturally dependent. Besides our families,
our relationships with friends, neighbors, fellow-club members, employees,
employers, religious figures, and fellow citizens bring additional moral prin-
ciples into view. Ethical principles apply both to acts and to character traits,
and increasingly are international in scope as knowledge of and contact with
people across Earth is enhanced. Recent emigrations of people from Mid-
dle Eastern countries to the West have again brought moral differences to
Values ● 99
the surface, over women’s rights, for example, and the measures that cultures
might take to prevent their historic perspectives on modesty and individual
freedom from being changed. The differences between various cultural tra-
ditions suggest that varied ideals are being sought. Ethics is evidently a form
of critical reflection on acts, motives, people, and more, somehow designed
around the well-being and flourishing of humans, as well as the well-being
of other creatures, although to a lesser extent. The universal scope of ethics
is coming into clearer focus as the people of the whole Earth reflect on eco-
logical effects of numerous kinds of business, which people ignored even as
recently as three decades ago—a change substantially effected by the World
Wide Web.
Questions about conditions under which life either flourishes, or does
not, bring claims about that which has intrinsic value to the forefront. Hap-
piness and pleasure have been central to the discussion of intrinsic value
since ancient times, but the hedonists who advance these have had to con-
tend with competing claims that date at least as far back as Plato’s time,
according to which other “things” also have intrinsic value, such as wisdom,
self-integration, and being morally upright.4 Equality, justice, freedom, and
self-actualization have come into clear view in the modern era, and we can
hardly imagine that these values would decline in significance over time—
once given open endorsement, they are impossible to bottle up. Charles
Taylor explores the significant shift in thinking that brought on the modern
age, including the emergence of a sense of common public space whose activ-
ities formed a secular society different from the Christian church, the Stoic
cosmopolis, or anything seen in Greek or Roman antiquity.5 These “modern
values” appear to be insights into a social order that is not simply of our mak-
ing. Although they touch on human happiness, they might not be reducible
to it. Derek Parfit has suggested that the fulfilment of desire constitutes an
intrinsic value that is both independent of pleasure and different from the
ideals identified by Plato,6 and no harm comes from thinking of desire in
these terms.
Another account of a moral awakening comes from an English plant
pathologist of Jewish background, born in Germany to parents who were
“freethinkers of Jewish descent.”
Case 2: Carolyn7 speaks about having had several spiritual experiences, some-
times following deprivation or grief, and also when in the presence of over-
whelming beauty. She writes: “The one [experience] I can best remember
happened when an acquaintance spent a weekend with me, a girl I was quite
friendly with, though I did not like her overmuch. She had in many ways
had a hard life and was much embittered by it. It was after we had retired
for the night that I suddenly seemed to soar upwards, the world expanded
into brilliant radiance, and a feeling of tremendous joy and deep contentment
surged through me. I looked down at the girl who was sleeping peacefully and
was filled with a sense of all-embracing love, which included this being who
seemed vulnerable, innocent, precious, and in spite of, or perhaps because of,
her many shortcomings, had to be cherished and protected. The ‘experience’
did not last long; as on previous occasions, the sensation was so overpowering
that I panicked and strove to ‘get back.’ ”
Carolyn’s experience may have occurred in an altered state of conscious-

ness, for she speaks about suddenly soaring upward, looking down on the
girl who was staying with her, and striving to “get back.” Unusual percep-
tual experiences clearly captivate our attention, and suggest the existence of a
unique “world of objects” closely associated with the experience. The affective
states of joy and contentment are similar to the happiness and pleasure that
hedonism advances as most valuable, and are arguably among the most val-
ued affective states found within human experience. Proclaiming their value
might look self-interested, although we could desire them for others, in which
case such a desire is part of love.
The most influential articulation in Western history of the existence of
a moral and social order is found in the account of natural law advanced
by Thomas Aquinas.8 He describes the world as ruled by Divine providence
that has issued eternal laws, and considers humans to have had these laws
imprinted upon them by God, which are described as natural laws from our
vantage point. This position accords well with the claim that humans have
been given intuitive knowledge concerning the moral sphere of life. Aquinas
considers natural laws as orienting us toward achieving the final purpose of
human life—ultimate happiness or beatitude that is found not merely in
earthly life but also in the life of the age to come.9 Here, he reflects Aristotle’s
teleological approach to ethics, according to which ethics provides us with
practical guidance in order to achieve some objective suited to uniquely
human nature. Although Aquinas thought that the extent to which humans
participate in the Divine order varies among individuals,10 since reason can
be perverted by passion, by evil habits, and by evil dispositions, he considers
some people to be relatively free from these influences, and to them natural
laws are self-evident moral principles.11
Aquinas describes Divine law as a third kind of law, which consists of
specific directives from God by which “man may know without any doubt
what he ought to do and what he ought to avoid.”12 He considers God to
be capable of overriding natural laws by direct decrees, such as command-
ing someone to kill a person or to have sexual relations outside the bond
of marriage; Aquinas claims that whatever God commands must be morally
Values ● 101
permissible, and can also be said to be natural in some sense.13 Aquinas does
not address the challenge of determining that some command that overrides
deeply embedded moral principles is really from God, so his recognition of
a third kind of law pertinent to morality is problematic. The fourth kind of
law that Aquinas recognizes is human law (legislation), whose moral author-
ity arises from the natural laws that it generally enforces, such as the human
laws that punish crimes for murder, the injury of others, and theft. He also
observes that human law is capable of perverting the course of justice,14 which
a Hebrew Psalmist once described as “framing mischief by a law.”15 Aquinas’s
account of natural law continues to have far-reaching significance today, as
in the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church on the now-contentious
topics belonging to sexual ethics. This articulation of ethics is compatible
with the view that knowledge of its principles involves instances of intuitive
knowing.
Although Immanuel Kant’s approach to ethics is not set within an overtly
theistic context, his widely known advocacy of a moral order strikingly resem-
bles that of Aquinas. Kant pointedly remarks: “The precept, ‘Thou shalt not
lie,’ is not valid for men alone, as if other rational beings had no need to
observe it,”16 thereby revealing that he is thinking of beings above us, or
extraterrestrials. As a strategy for identifying middle axioms pertaining to acts,
he advances several general principles, the best known of which are the imper-
atives: “Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time
will that it should become a universal law,” and “Any rational being exists as
an end in himself, not merely as a means to be arbitrarily used by this or that
will.”17 When Kant considers concrete moral questions about certain kinds of
acts, such as false promising or letting all of our natural gifts lie fallow, he finds
some “conflict” or “contradiction” in decreeing that such maxims (middle
axioms) might become universal laws. Kant thinks that we have an imperfect
duty to ourselves to develop our talents, for example, because no one could
will that all people would neglect their development or education.18 This duty
is imperfect, however, for no specific actions are enjoined concerning the way
in which it must be satisfied. The Thomistic notion that we might discover
laws concerning social structures is alive in Kant’s approach to ethics, and
human reason is considered to be capable of discovering these laws. Whereas
Aquinas appeals to the self-evident character of a middle axiom, Kant claims
to find some kind of illogicality or inconsistency in efforts to deny it.
Ross’s approach to moral maxims is reminiscent of both Aquinas and
Kant. He does not attempt to give an overarching principle on which moral
values depend, but advances prima facie or conditional middle axioms as self-
evident, or as intuitively obvious, to those who are educated in and reflect
upon matters of ethics.19 Conditional axioms often provide a conclusive basis
for evaluating a particular moral situation, in his opinion, for no conflict

between intuitively obvious moral principles might present itself. I might
make a promise to someone, for example, and when the time comes for
me to discharge it, no other moral considerations are present that call my
promise into question—the prima facie duty, promise keeping, has become
actual. However, when such middle axioms conflict with one another, Ross
offers no grounds for choosing among conflicting principles. While other the-
orists appeal to very general principles such as that found in utilitarianism,
Ross leaves awkward moral choices in exactly the condition we find them in
real life. His theory does not neatly solve the problems of moral conflict by
enunciating some overarching principle that determines right and wrong in a
definitive way. We might say that Ross’s theory does not say too much, unlike
other theories that theoretically guarantee an answer to every dilemma. Some
might think that his theory does not say enough.
My interest in Ross here is to illustrate that the kind of moral order to
which earlier ethical luminaries, such as Aquinas and Kant, attest is not with-
out recent support, and other examples of such support could be adduced,
including Robert Audi in a recent book titled Moral Perception. That various
moral theories continue to be debated and tested in which specific exam-
ples of moral values are adduced as “intuitively obvious” demonstrates that
moral reflection has not moved far from the intuitive knowing that Plato,
Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas celebrate. The experiences of those who
have a moral awakening suggest the possibility that moral facts are real, as
do the assessments of respected moral theorists whose conclusions are nei-
ther nihilistic nor relativistic. Other cases detailing human experience suggest
that the moral order is discovered. Dana is an English woman baptized in the
Church of England and educated in Roman Catholic convents. Writing at 38
years of age, she reports that religion had little influence on her life.
Case 3 Dana:20 “About two years ago, when engaged in social work, it fell to
me to accompany a young girl to the local Ministry of Social Security. After
queuing along a grubby staircase and hall, we were then directed to the waiting
room. Standing along the walls and filling most of the seats were many varieties
of unkempt humanity—aggressive, apathetic, lecherous, friendly, and curious.
Squeamishly, my stomach quivered as we made our way to two seats somewhere
near the middle. I had an internal struggle to accept the fact of my being there
calmly and naturally. Suddenly, the tensions seemed to melt and I experienced
a sense of deep peace and love. I knew that everyone in the room was good,
and I was happy to be among them. It seemed as if I was suffused with a deep
golden radiance, and this sense stayed with me for several days.” She had a
subsequent experience of peace after a conflict with friends, and writes: “These
two experiences have left me with the absolute certainty that love is the basis of
Values ● 103
the universe—the social order is meaningless in real terms—and the only thing
that is required is never to relinquish the essential truth of love.”
I take it that in saying that everyone is good she means to say, not that
everyone is morally good, but that everyone has intrinsic worth. This is an
important comment.
In the Appendix of a small book provocatively titled, The Abolition of
Man, C. S. Lewis offers “illustrations of the Natural Law” or Tao from various
ancient cultures and religious traditions, including Jewish, Hindu, Egyptian,
Christian, Roman, Norse, Greek, Anglo-Saxon, Chinese, Babylonian, and
North American aboriginal peoples. The duties to children, ancestors,
spouses, elders, and other members of community are variously featured in
these ancient injunctions. The Tao also upholds veracity, honesty, and justice,
which modern society at least honors in their breach, if not in their obser-
vance. The congruity of moral traditions from various parts of Earth suggests
that intuitive knowing concerning moral matters has been worldwide. Also of
interest is the widespread endorsement of the Golden Rule or its counterpart,
the Silver Rule, as in Confucianism: “Do not unto others what you would
not have them do unto you,”21 Buddhism: “Hurt not others that you your-
self would find hurtful,”22 Hinduism: “This is the sum of duty: do naught
unto others that which would cause you pain if done to you,”23 Judaism:
“What is hateful to you do not do to your fellowmen. That is the entire Law;
all the rest is commentary,”24 Taoism: “Regard your neighbor’s gain as your
own gain, and your neighbor’s loss as your loss,”25 and Zoroastrianism: “That
nature alone is good which refrains from doing unto another whatsoever is
not good for itself.”26 The Silver Rule restrains us so that others in our cir-
cle of companionship are not unduly prevented from pursuing “the good”;
the Golden Rule enjoins us to seek “the good” to the degree that we seek
this for ourselves. In each of these the injunction to love others as much as
we love ourselves is implicit. The overlapping insights of prominent faiths,
of respected moral theorists, and of some who experience a moral awaken-
ing, suggest that intuitive knowing concerning matters of ethics and intrinsic
value is the common heritage of much of humanity.
Moral Facts?
The suggestion that a moral or social order might exist is likely to be inter-
preted to mean that moral facts are somehow real. A standard objection to
the existence of moral facts is that if these “facts” were real, they would differ
greatly from the usual facts said to exist—facts about the properties of objects,
and about the relations between objects. Even facts about the unobservable
objects of physics and other sciences do not have the counterintuitive char-
acter, seemingly, that is exhibited by moral facts. Modernity has been greatly
influenced by David Hume, who observed that value statements describing
alleged moral facts (“ought” statements) cannot be deduced from uncon-
troversial factual statements (“is” statements).27 The common reference to a
“fact–value gap” is a popular way of presenting Hume’s observation.28 Logical
positivism is famous for its advocacy of much of Hume’s skeptical philoso-
phy, and for considering ethical and other value judgments to be devoid of
factual (or cognitive) content. In spite of the demise 50 or more years ago of
logical positivism as an intellectual movement, various positions on ethical
judgments continue to be advanced that reflect positivism’s attitude toward
them. Meanwhile, ordinary people are sure that the heinousness of tortur-
ing little children is a fact, and that the value of intellectual insight and of
moral integrity are additional facts, which their educated counterparts, often
tainted with only a tincture of philosophy, often repudiate as merely cultural
preferences.
British philosopher John Mackie (1917–81), for example, defends a posi-
tion that he describes as Moral Subjectivism, central to which is the claim that
no objective values exist.29 He says that we can affirm that differences exist
between cruel acts and kind acts, for these behaviors are part of the furniture
of the world, but the values ascribed to these acts are not objective matters,
for moral values do not objectively exist. He observes that moral judgments
have authority, at least within a culture, so that considering them as merely
expressions of emotion, as did some positivists,30 misrepresents their hold
over us. When we question whether we should do research in bacteriological
warfare, for example, we are asking a question that has real impact on our
lives, but the value ascribed to such warfare does not exist as part of the uni-
verse. Mackie considers two arguments to provide the basis for his skeptical
outlook. The first is the familiar argument from relativism, deriving from the
variations among the world’s peoples about moral values and moral beliefs.
According to Mackie, the best explanation for these differences is that moral
facts do not exist at all, and different people adhere to different ways of life.31
Mackie considers relativism to be a better explanation for the presence of dif-
ferent moral codes than the claim that these differences arise from seriously
inadequate and badly distorted perceptions of objective values.
Mackie’s second argument is from the “queerness” (his word)32 or “odd-
ness” of moral facts, which he considers to be more important than the
argument from relativism. The metaphysical argument here is that if moral
facts do exist then they are very odd, and utterly unlike anything else in
the universe. Moreover, if we were to be aware of moral facts, we would
need some special faculty to do so, but the techniques by which we acquire
Values ● 105
supposedly special knowledge, such as sensory perception and introspection,

do not supply an adequate basis for explaining the existence of such knowl-
edge in ethics. Mackie grants that if Platonic Forms were to exist as Plato
taught, we would have a basis for objective moral values, but he rejects the
existence of Forms, as do most analytic philosophers. He considers our attach-
ment to the objectivity of moral values to result, perhaps, from our propensity
to extend our attitudes, wants, and demands onto objects, in a way that is
analogous to our tendency to read our feelings into objects. Mackie also sug-
gests that ethics might be a system of law from which the legislator has been
removed, citing the decline of Christian thought and influence in modern
Europe as an example.33 So although we can account for the emergence of
objectivity as a theory about ethics, Mackie sees the view as erroneous.
The issues concerning ethical or moral facts are substantial ones, but I will
not give them the attention here that they deserve, since this is not a treatise
on ethics. However, some response to Mackie’s view is warranted. Hume’s
observations about the difference between evaluative and factual statement
are instructive and noteworthy, as is Mackie’s claim that if moral facts do exist,
then these facts are “odd.” However, Hume’s contention that value judgments
cannot be deduced from factual ones has been given more prominence than it
warrants. It derives from a methodological view that assumes that we can find
a sizeable body of indubitable claims from which we can deduce a cohesive
structure that we can call “science.” This is a limited way of understanding
methodology, however. Rather, descriptions of phenomena and the explana-
tions (or causes) advanced to explain them, as well as the paradigms within
which descriptions and explanations are found, are a theoretical structure
whose attempt to “model” particular features of reality will be insightful, but
also incomplete. Deduction is involved in the testing of these structures, but
the notion that we might find indubitable first principles from which credi-
ble claims can be deduced is fanciful. Moreover, since theories that postulate
unobservable things (object, properties, relations, processes, and so on) will
be included in some of these “models,” the testing of these theories will rely
on indirect evidence. Hume’s preoccupation with the question whether one
statement follows from another (presumably “secure”) statement, on which
some beginning students of philosophy are still fixated, derives from a flawed
conception of the sciences and other rational structures. The general theories
that guide much of our study are conjectures whose credibility increases or
decreases as evidence is adduced for or against those theories.
One recent response to Mackie is offered by Terence Cuneo, who revives
the claim of Thomas Reid (1710–96), a Scottish philosopher, that humans
possess a capacity to perceive moral qualities in persons, which is not sub-
stantially different from our capacity to perceive such nonmoral properties as
fickleness or intelligence.34 This response ascribes more power to the human

mind than classical empiricists such as Hume are willing to grant, and it
raises questions about how we perceive such properties as fickleness and intel-
ligence. Intelligence is easier to discuss than fickleness, since intelligence has
become associated with a test for its presence, unlike fickleness (to my knowl-
edge), which could be fitted with an analogous test but likely has not been,
since fickleness has comparatively little social or political significance. The
social sciences are well known for taking concepts from the common domain
and supplying tests for the “correct” ascription of a property to someone.
Intelligence is often said to be that which Intelligence Quotient (IQ) tests
measure, and humanity appears to be going along with such “dictates” of
social scientists on the matter. The social scientific approach to understand-
ing intelligence is different from the approach taken by Cuneo, for social
sciences infer IQ from test results, rather than attempt to “read intelligence off
directly.” I surmise that intelligence differences that were “intuitively appar-
ent” were initially used to assist in the creation of defensible IQ tests, and
that appropriate correlations between “intuitive assessments” and test scores
are still sought, but intelligence has become a definitive finding of social sci-
ence. Intelligence resembles the concept of temperature, which has a much
longer history than IQ. Tests for establishing temperature have overridden
any “intuitive assessments” that were expressed by such inexact qualitative
terms as “hot,” “cold,” “tepid,” “lukewarm,” and so on. The approach taken
by the social sciences threatens to remove an important tradition about the
manner in which some properties are found. A defender of the traditional
approach might observe that the social sciences would not even bother with a
test for IQ if intelligence were not already (directly) perceived. This observa-
tion is insightful and no doubt correct, but the “operational imperative” that
drives the sciences demands that any test for IQ supplant whatever is meant
by “intelligence,” traditionally understood. In a dispute over the absence or
presence of some attribute—more likely, the degree to which an attribute
is present—the social scientific interpretation is increasingly allowed to pre-
vail, in courts, for example. Cuneo’s reservations about insulating virtues and
vices from the march of science are understandable, but his conservatism only
delays the inevitable. He enjoys the luxury of “reading off ” moral qualities
because the social sciences have not progressed far enough.
Whereas logical positivism charges that moral judgments have no cogni-
tive meaning, Mackie claims that moral judgments have no objective import.
Cognitive import,35 which is a different matter than objective import, pertains
to a statement’s being true or false, or being the object of some cognitional
verb such as “to know” or “to doubt.”36 When we cheer on one’s favorite team,
as in “Hurrah for the Montreal Canadiens!” we are uttering a noncognitive
Values ● 107
sentence, not making an assertion; its utterance has primarily emotive force.37
When we make a moral judgment, however, such as “Slavery is wrong,” we
seemingly make a cognitive claim, for the additional claims, “It is true that
slavery is wrong,” or “I know that slavery is wrong,” or “I doubt that slavery
is wrong” are perfectly sensible, and clear matters of argument. The claim,
“I know that hurrah for the Montreal Canadiens,” is absurd, which graphi-
cally reveals the (primarily) noncognitive nature of “Hurrah for the Montreal
Canadiens!” Positivists attempt to reconstruct the nature of moral judgments
by casting them as noncognitive sentences, but this understanding is com-
pletely at odds with how moral judgments are generally understood. Ordinary
people who make moral judgments might not be explicitly aware of the dis-
tinction between cognitive and (primarily) noncognitive sentences, but their
shared understanding embeds an important metaphysical claim. We could say
that Mackie in effect concedes that ordinary people who make moral judg-
ments are right to treat them as cognitive sentences, even though they are
not aware of what they are doing as they speak, but he is not willing to con-
cede their (implicit) understanding of moral judgments as objective claims.
Mackie’s point is not a linguistic one, but one that repudiates the implicit
ontological claim in the ordinary use of moral judgments. His position has
its analog in religion, where theorists contend that the terms purporting to
denote spirits, their attributes, and the relations between these beings have
meaning, in a linguistic sense, but spirits do not exist, ontologically speak-
ing. Mackie in effect holds that ordinary people are correct in construing
moral judgments to be cognitive, rather than noncognitive, as the positivists
insisted, but they are incorrect in construing moral judgments to be objec-
tive. Many philosophers—not the ordinary language school—have argued
that “ordinary people get many things wrong,” and this is an instance of it.
Implicit in Mackie’s view is that many claims taken to describe facts are
not “odd,” such as the claims made about observable objects. The compar-
ison of these facts with “moral facts” is what makes the latter look peculiar.
However, if we look at some of the other domains that philosophy has within
its purview, such as logic and epistemology, say, we discover other “facts” that
are not about observable objects. The validity (or fallaciousness) of an argu-
ment is a fact, “a logical fact,” we might say, and the justifiability of the belief
that oil and water do not mix is another fact, “an epistemic fact,” perhaps.
Other epistemic facts are that the discovery of black ravens is evidence for the
hypothesis that all ravens are black, and that descriptive statements are “theory
laden” (shaped by a conceptual framework). These facts are admittedly pecu-
liar, but once logical and epistemic facts are seen to exist, admitting moral
facts into our world, such as the claim that “low-level” terrorists should not
be tortured in order to obtain information about their infamous leader,38 is
not a large step. Del Kiernan-Lewis observes that the problem of evil would
not be an argument against theism if moral facts did not exist.39 That this
problem is seriously considered by both defenders and opponents of theism
suggests that these theorists construe moral facts to exist, although this con-
strual might be implicit. Philosophy has an admittedly peculiar nature, and
when “the facts” it examines are compared with facts involving objects from
the domain of intersubjective observables, they do look “odd.” However, to
reject all of these outright would be to dismiss the unique contributions to
knowledge that philosophy offers. Moreover, to reject the validity or falla-
ciousness of arguments is to end discussion tout court, for logic is the fulcrum
upon which all argument rests. A controversial implication of the argument
I am advancing here is that if moral facts must be admitted into the class of
“philosophical facts,” so must “aesthetic facts.” I cannot take the space here
to defend “facts” about beauty and art, for that argument is too long and too
complex.
In a book discussing the merits of a position similar to Mackie’s—moral
nihilism—Princeton philosopher Gilbert Harman also observes that moral
facts are clearly unusual, if they are real.40 Harman suggests that we might be
helped to think about moral judgments if we consider color perception, about
which much has been written, especially about the relation of the common-
sense way of looking at color perception compared to a scientific outlook.
Common-sense attributes a color to a surface, such as the yellow color seen
on lemons, which is expressed in ordinary language as a property about an
object. The scientific understanding of color perception, however, attributes
an important causal role to three things: the nature of the light source, the
molecular structure of the surface of the lemon from which that light is
reflected, and the neurophysiological features of people (only a few of whom
are colorblind, which is an interesting claim in itself ) who observe the lemon
and have the phenomenological experience of seeing yellow. A common-sense
color property has come to be understood, because of science, as a complex
relation, describable as a stable form of surface spectral reflectance.41 Inas-
much as scattered light such as daylight is the dominant form of light that we
experience, and inasmuch as colorblind people are rare and do not authorita-
tively “establish” the color of things, we meaningfully construe the lemon to
exhibit the stable form of surface spectral reflectance known as yellow.
In a similar way, we might plausibly interpret a moral judgment such as
“Slavery is wrong,” which seemingly ascribes a property to a kind of act, as
asserting, among other things, a relation between typical42 acts of enslaving
people, and the typical effects those acts have upon both slaves and those
who enslave others themselves. The typical effects upon slaves are obvious, as
are the typical effects upon those who become slave-owners, including their
Values ● 109
desensitization to other moral matters. Some reason already exists for think-
ing that the moral value of acts and traits is related in complex ways to effects
of those acts and traits, so in this respect, utilitarianism captures insights
about ethics. Utilitarianism might not be the whole truth about moral values,
however, for it might not adequately address whether acts are fair, or whether
traits are compatible with justice. Interpreting moral properties as complex
relations certainly complicates moral thinking, but ethics already looks com-
plicated, and any theory that simplifies ethics unduly appears to be flawed for
this reason alone. Harman’s remarks strike me as especially insightful. An issue
I have glossed over here is the precise character of the intrinsic values to which
acts and traits are causally linked. As this chapter develops, I will allow the
focus to shift away from moral matters to questions of what is of ultimate and
intrinsic worth.
Just as logic uncovers “truth” in the form of rules that allow truth to be
transmitted in arguments, ethics purports to uncover truth in the form of gen-
eral practical principles. We could refuse to consider logic for what it is, and
try to interpret human speech that advances arguments as just so much bark-
ing and baying at the moon. Such positions have been articulated in human
history since at least the time of Cratylus, a fifth-century BCE philosopher
who was reputed to be so skeptical of the plausibility of any claim at all that
he refused to talk, and simply wagged his finger. We could also attempt to
view the utterance of words that are seemingly expressive of moral values as
being little more than a voice exercise, or an eruption of passion—forms of
moral nihilism. The human intellect is evidently capable of great inventive-
ness when it decides to direct its critical gaze upon itself, and tries to destroy
what it patently finds. The heroic extremes advanced by Cratylus and some of
his radical postmodern friends are supposedly thinkable—although asserting
this belies their alleged irrationality—but they are unliveable.
In an interesting observation about the relative value of things, Augustine
asserts that living things are greater than dead things, which he (plausibly)
views as a statement of comparative value to which all humanity gives its
accord.43 A woman in New Zealand describes an experience that strikes me
as belonging to intuitive knowing concerning life itself. Adele says her reli-
gious background was a combination of Church of England and Quaker, and
reports that her experience took place about ten years before submitting it to
the Alister Hardy Center. A nurse by profession, she narrates:
Case 4 Adele: 44 I was living in a bush township, [a] lonely life but not isolated.
[I was] not overly religious at the time, in fact, inclined to be depressed and
undecided about God on the whole. I had a budgie to which I was greatly
attached, and one day in my bedroom I accidentally stepped on him and killed
him, but before dying he managed to fly back to his cage. In that split second,
time stood still and I was in touch with the Infinite, and knew that all life
is one and eternal. The experience is really impossible to describe, as human
words are quite inadequate, but I include the following quotations which are
not mine:45 “You are suddenly filled with the incredible truth, and it is with
you for the rest of your life,” and “One knew with utter certainty that one was
totally at one with the Universe, with God, with Life.” I have never lost this
conviction, although I have been through very great troubles since, have had
four coronaries, and several other illnesses. I now try to respect all forms of
life, all races, colours, and creeds. I try to live a Christian life to the full, and
consider [that] as a Christian I should be able to go into any church or chapel
to worship. I also believe in Karma and Reincarnation, and if younger would
like to become a Sufi.
Adele’s experience about the unity of life and the reality of the Infinite is
epiphanic, and supersedes the power of any argument that might be adduced
for such claims. Perhaps some who are coerced into stating the reasons for
their spiritual beliefs, and cite the existence of life itself, unwittingly misrep-
resent what has transpired—they have experienced something akin to what
Adele reports, but when it is recast as an argument, their claim looks weak,
and they are then easily disabused of what is actually a profound moment.
Such is the nature of philosophy at its totalitarian worst. Adele’s experience is
(modest) evidence for the reality of intuitive knowing—just one item in a vast
array.
Although Adele singles out the value of life as the dominant value trans-
mitted by the experience, her inclusion of “all forms of life, all races, colours,
and creeds” suggests that she also came to understand the equal value of
all humankind. This value has only come to be appreciated in the world
on a significant scale during the twentieth century, whose history notori-
ously includes horrific events exhibiting racial intolerance in its most extreme
forms. More than one hundred million people are reported to have been
slaughtered for reasons that have much to do with racial origin, although
political motives for some of these holocausts should not be ignored. Human
equality is a prominent Christian value, although Christians must take their
share of blame for failing to advance it unequivocally. Other social forces
have contributed to the emancipation of women, the declaration of civil
rights in the United States, the overthrow of apartheid in South Africa, and
the dissolution of the oppressive46 Soviet empire. The success of these social
movements, even in the face of horrific holocausts happening at much the
same time, suggests that, in the words of David Hume, “[some] univer-
sal principle of the human frame [is touched], to which all mankind have
an accord and symphony.”47 Hume construes all of humanity as somehow
Values ● 111
“tuned in to the same frequency,” demonstrating that he is not endorsing a

malevolent form of subjectivism that destroys the ground for moral evil.48
We might wonder whether some moral or metaphysical order exists in which
humans are all equal. Metaphysical and moral matters are so inextricably
intertwined in Adele’s experience that separating them—say, into life and the
equal value of all humankind—is to disturb the unity in which they were
experienced.
The next case also touches on existential realities, but the focus is slightly
different. Brandon describes his church background as strict Baptist, and
reports that he was required to attend three times on Sunday when he
was a child, where an emphasis was placed on John Calvin’s doctrine of
predestination. His experience took place when he was eight years of age.
Case 5 Brandon:49 During the time the sermon “dragged its slow length along,”
like Pope’s wounded snake,50 I spent a fair time watching the pale green-washed
walls down which the condensation trickled. I would see one drop travel very
slowly down; if it met and coalesced with another, it would run quickly down
several inches. As a change I would turn my eyes to the little swarm of flies
wheeling and circling under the lights suspended above. There was no orna-
mentation, varnished deal pews, walls bare except for one table to the memory
of a past minister. I must have read hundreds of times the cryptic remark under
his name, “He being dead yet sleepeth.” In about 1905, when I was about eight,
something happened that is difficult to describe in words. Analogies help, but
are not exactly it. If one imagines one has an etheric or life-body permeating
the physical, and imagines a light switched on to fill a body with a glow, leaving
the physical unaffected except for a faint tingling, that would be an indication
but not complete or precise. The atmosphere, the walls, the whole of existence
had a new significance and importance; some dignity and nobility had been
added or else some commonness and mediocrity had been washed out. The
mental shift also was striking. I knew with a different kind of knowing that
everything was absolutely and unfailingly all right, valid, authentic, and I was
an intrinsic part of this all-rightness, and that whatever happened I was unique,
as everything else was unique, aware of another kind of existence, of immutable
security and importance. I, as it were, saw into it, and this message or aware-
ness did not enter my being through any of the five portals by means of which
we usually learn; in other words, it was not sense-revealed. Now, nearly seventy
years later, it is a memory of a memory, and I am using my present vocabulary
to describe what happened to a boy of eight. It has never recurred, alas, but has
never lost its significance. Until now I have never mentioned it to anyone; it is
too important for casual chat.
As with some cases in the previous chapter, this experience in childhood that
somehow served as Brandon’s guiding light through most of his life carries
significance for that reason alone, at least at this stage in our understanding
and assessment of lived experience. Who can deny him the conviction that
he experienced a trace of something Eternal?
Brandon’s sense that everything is unique and authentic, and that he was
part of this authenticity, is difficult to categorize precisely, for it touches on
issues at the heart of philosophy in several ways. It possibly speaks to the way
that the world is, and so touches on issues intrinsic to metaphysics. It also
has moral connotations, or ones that touch on intrinsic worth, inasmuch as
the experience suggested to Brandon that everything has dignity and nobility.
This feature suggests that existents themselves, whatever they might be—no
matter how humble, perhaps—have worth and significance. Inasmuch as we
experience the sense of worth of particular things, events, or people, such a
sentiment is understandable and within the purview of everyone. Brandon’s
remark that this insight was not a suitable topic for casual chat touches on
the sacredness of spiritual experience.
The Self
A significant number of experiences that either focus on the thinking and
reflective self, or reveal something of its mystery, are interpreted as spiritual
by those who have them. The first case I shall present comes from a teacher
from England, who married a man from India and moved there with him
later in life.
Case 6 : Geraldine51 is a Unitarian, like her father, which meant, she said, that
she accepted the value of religion but was suspicious of religious dogma. Her
first experience took place at five years of age, when “a lady in white” appeared
in her bedroom. Geraldine hid in the curtains in an effort not to be seen,
but “the lady” came over to her and touched her hair. She writes of another
experience later in childhood: “[I was] enjoying shuffling through ankle-deep
dry leaves, and suddenly in the middle of my play came an embryo vision
of the mystery of identity—‘Why am I me?’ ‘What does my “I-ness” mean?’
I remember great awe, and feeling of strangeness and the unreality of the exter-
nal world.” Later she struggled with skepticism, as a consequence of studying
Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason as part of her philosophy degree; at the same
time she sensed the authority of Jesus Christ, and eventually converted to
Catholic faith. She says, however, that the Catholic Church does not adequately
represent all of her convictions about spiritual matters.
Geraldine seems to link her experience of an apparition at five years of age

with a later experience in which she found herself puzzling over the meaning
of personal identity claims. We can plausibly conjecture that her apparition
Values ● 113
experience contributed to the later sense that “the external world” might be
unreal, whereas she (as an I) was real, perhaps just like “the lady in white.”
Geraldine’s experience of the mysterious self is very different from that of
Jerry, an educated Englishman writing at the age of 53, with a background in
the Church of England but more oriented to spiritualism.52
Case 7 Jerry:53 “Although I am convinced of the spiritual case as a result of

many years” experience in this field, [several] have done far more to bring home
to me the oneness of the cosmos than anything else. As a result of these I am
neither atheist, [nor] theist, nor agnostic in any of the recognized meanings
of those words. I am convinced, however, that life transcends the physical in
some way we comprehend only in the dimmest way, except in these momentary
flashes which I feel sure must be common to all minds sufficiently open to
appreciate the nature of the revelation . . .
[One experience took place after] I had been to an orchestral concert given
by our local orchestra and had enjoyed it very much. In those days good music
stimulated my emotions to the extent that I perspired excessively, but otherwise
there was no outward sign of any abnormal mental state that anyone else would
notice. The walk home was a distance of one-half to three-quarters mile. About
200 or 300 yards from my home—I could take you to the exact spot now—it
suddenly happened. It was a slightly frosty night and the sky was very clear.
On such nights I was in the habit of ranging the sky for the few constellations
I could recognize. On reaching the particular spot something happened which
I am sure I shall find great difficulty in describing. If you can imagine yourself
not as a photographic flash bulb, but as the light from that bulb and that
the light is sentient, that is the nearest I can get to explaining how I felt at
that moment. I was perfectly conscious of where I was and of my immediate
physical surroundings, but for that brief moment it was as though my whole
self was able to expand to and encompass the furthermost star. It was an influx
of a certain knowledge in that one flash, that somewhere in the makeup of
the cosmos is a factor which transcends time and distance.” He adds that the
experience was one of bi-location, or, more precisely, one of “total-location.”
The peculiar nature of this experience contrasts with ordinary experience

where the self is generally interpreted (by itself ) as having a “geographical
perspective” in relation to the rest of the world. In ordinary experience, for
example, we rely on our eyesight, and other senses perhaps, such as touch and
hearing, to inform us of our point of reference. The self is “located” where
our perspective exists in relation to the objects that are “outside” the self.
In Jerry’s case, he had the phenomenological sense that his real self —this is
his phrase—was as much in the surrounding natural scene as in his physical
body. This unique perspective is perhaps difficult to understand for those of
us who have never experienced what Jerry describes. Perhaps he is trying to
describe an out-of-body experience (OBE) without using that terminology,

but it is unlike most OBEs inasmuch as those experiences generally involve
the phenomenological sense of being outside one’s own body and looking at
it, at least for a time. Jerry had the sense of being both within his body, which
is normal, and being without it at the same time, which is not. Jerry’s experi-
ence is perhaps too rare to warrant giving it serious attention, but OBEs are
being closely studied in the Western scientific community, in part because of
the numerous reports of NDEs, many of which include an OBE.
Descartes has been widely interpreted as having held that nothing spatial
is applicable to the mind (or soul), which he defines as thinking substance.54
This is not quite his complete position, however, for he did allow that the
soul has a point at which it acts on the body, namely in the pineal gland.55
Exactly how the mind acts on the body remains a problem, but the causal
interactionism that he proposed between two distinct forms of being has
been an important view in the Western philosophic tradition. The difficul-
ties that Descartes’s views have engendered, and the numerous metaphysical
responses to Descartes that have been offered in the history of philosophy,
are perhaps reason enough to call his view into question. Materialism, which
has taken different forms, is easily the most prominent alternative to dual-
ism, and idealism is also historically significant, although few today want to
assert that only ideas (and minds perhaps) are real. The Cambridge philoso-
pher and theologian Henry More (1614–87) advances the view that spirits,
like bodies, are extended in space.56 He distinguishes bodies from spirits
by defining spirits as capable of penetrating other things, including other
spirits, whereas bodies are not. More also considers spirit to be indivisible,
much like the Greek atomists initially understood atoms. More’s position
on the nature of spirit could reassert itself in Western culture, if the cur-
rent effort in academic culture to distance itself from Descartes is successful,
and if NDEs are allowed to shape philosophical, cultural, and theological
thought.
The next account, which challenges widespread beliefs about the reality
and the integrity of “the self,” is given by a 39-year-old man who identifies
himself only as living in London, England. He says that he underwent an
experience of enlightenment, or awakening, after a period of disillusionment
with life, over its meaninglessness and “the drudgery of living.” He had been
practicing yoga for some time and decided to train to be a teacher. Upon
reading and contemplating I am That by Sri Nasargadatta Maharaj (1897–
1981), he experienced an “insight” that brought him to a new state of being.
It occurred as he walked down a street.
Case 8 Kelvin:57 “I noticed that the body carried on its business of walking,
of navigating roads and avoiding being run over, all this without my being
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involved. This was a real surprise. Now I had a keen sense of a separate
consciousness from the body and mind . . . I saw perhaps that this conscious-
ness was not actually inside the body or mind at all, and I began to at least
accept the possibility that the body-mind are really inside consciousness, not
the other way around.” A short while later he felt that this larger consciousness
he should accept was located in physical space and to the left of his face. He
writes: “With the surrendering, it came into the body, a very physical sensation
of sinking into me, and I knew it was settled for good. That acceptance had
made the body cleaner, like a perfect conductor . . . [The] energies that surged
through me for the best part of an hour were part of a purification process,
known in yoga as kundalini. This life energy caused very pleasant but surpris-
ingly strong convulsions and contortion, so much so that I wondered if my
back or neck might actually break!” The feeling of remoteness from physical
life that followed resulted from his knowledge of “the obvious fact that you as
a separate identity don’t actually exist at all!” A later development consisted of
a feeling of knowledge that “the world is consciousness and consciousness is
the world.” Kelvin says that he met a few who had comparable experiences,
and also observes that Nasargadatta considers this to be an experience that is
ordinary and that everyone can have.
Here we have an experience that points in a different direction than do those

that awaken one’s knowledge of one’s self. I include it here primarily to show
that reported experiences vary significantly, and bring different existential
(and metaphysical) possibilities into view.
Kelvin writes about noticing that his body behaved without “him” being
involved, suggesting some level of dissociation; then he was aware of a sep-
arate consciousness apart from “his” body and mind. The “him” in the
previous sentence evidently refers to his mind, but the “his” later in the
sentence does not appear to denote the same thing as “him”—the mean-
ings of the terms that generally refer to one’s self, including these pronouns,
are now so complicated that giving coherent descriptions is difficult. The
sense of a consciousness larger than himself is not particularly remarkable,
unlike the awareness that this consciousness was to the left of his face. In this
respect, Kelvin’s experience resembles other apparition experiences in which
some “being” is sensed to be nearby, and is seemingly situated in space rela-
tive to oneself even though such senses as sight or touch are not involved.58
The “energies” that Kelvin describes as surging through him are interesting in
several ways, and I take it that his background knowledge of Eastern mysti-
cal practice convinced him that his experience was indeed that of kundalini.
This experience has been cultivated in yoga for many centuries, but Western
acquaintance with it derives largely from recent students of religion giving it
close attention, one of whom was the famous Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung
(1875–1961).
Jung describes kundalini as a form of energy that gives those who experi-
ence its awaking a “divine urge,” an urge belonging to “the eternal world of
the gods” that can carry us along and motivate us to do marvelous things.59
This “living spark” is also known in Western psychology as the anima, which
has an impersonal nature to it60 and from whose standpoint the ordinary
rational world looks illusory. The kundalini experience presents phenomena
that appear to belong to a reality that is independent of us—the collective
unconscious, in Jung’s terms—which we are safer to consider as occurring
independently of ourselves “in another realm” than trying to incorporate into
our own lives.61 Jung considers such experiences to be a feature of childhood,
when children live before they can say “I”; they generally separate themselves
from it with difficulty, and some never forget it.62
Jung says that experiences subsequent to the first awakening include ones
in which the ego disappears completely, “and the psychical is no longer a
content in us, but we become contents of it . . . And the force returns to the
origin, God.”63 This description matches what Kelvin describes of his experi-
ence. Jung views the experience of kundalini as crucial in our understanding
of our place in life,64 and agrees with Eastern teachers in thinking that the
awakening associated with kundalini can be developed by the chakras (centers
of psychic energy) of Eastern experience, which correspond with initiation
rites and rites of passage found in other religious traditions.65 He considered
the medicine of his time as not having yet acknowledged the causal efficacy of
the “collective unconscious.”66 Jung cautions those of a Western bent who are
interested in kundalini, but have no familiarity with the “rules” that Eastern
mystics have cultivated in dealing with it,67 for this “impersonal, nonhuman
order” tends to cling to us, or we to it, but a mishandling of it can lead to
a minor form of lunacy, or even to schizophrenia.68 Kelvin’s sense that his
neck or back might break not only suggests that he was unprepared for the
horizons that opened up to him, but also that the experience might have been
pathological. Kelvin’s experience seemingly challenges the integrity of the self,
but he retains the use of personal pronouns, as I noted, which suggests that
“some” self remains intact.
Other dramatic experiences reinforce the significance of the self, in accord
with common experience. The next account was submitted by a 57-year-
old British woman, writing about an incident that occurred 15 years earlier.
This case involves both the experience of things of great value—peace and
happiness, in this case—as well as some intuitive knowing into the mysterious
nature of human life:
Case 9 Joanne:69 In 1956 my eldest son was drowned at the age of five years.
My love for him was the most wonderful thing in my life. Some few days after
Values ● 117
his death, in my great sorrows, I was sitting alone in the study of my mother’s
house and I prayed to God with all my heart, to ask him, when so great a love
existed between two people, to give some sign of its being eternal and inde-
structible, as in fact I believed it to be. I also prayed strongly to my son to
“Go on” with his new life and not wait for me to join him. Suddenly I knew
that he was standing beside me on the hearthrug; so strong was this feeling that
I put my hands to my eyes as though to open them in an effort to see him. I was
at once surrounded by such a feeling of peace and happiness that I had never
known before or [have] since. At the same time, I felt myself lifted up from
my chair and my body became quite weightless—indeed, the walls of the room
dissolved themselves and withdrew into the distance as though they were quite
unreal, like a stage set, and my son stood at the end of a great lane of shim-
mering light with beautiful colours, leading into infinite space and to another
dimension which I felt it was beyond my earthly eyes to see. It was as though
for a moment or two I glimpsed the “other world” in which he now lived—at
the same time I was “sore afraid.”70 Far from vanishing instantly, this “vision”
faded away very gradually and the walls and things in the room resumed their
normal [appearance], enclosing me once again into their narrow space, and it
only disappeared entirely on someone entering the room. I would like to say
that what happened to me was entirely unexpected, and I am convinced that it
was no figment of my imagination.
Joanne’s experience seemingly consisted of both intuitive knowing and some

other form of visionary experience. Her statement about trying to open her
eyes wider, as though by doing so she might actually see what she sensed
to be present, suggests that her normal powers of sight were not involved.
Perhaps the experience included imaginative vision, although such a simple
description could easily fail to do justice to important details, such as Joanne’s
sense that her son was present with her. I take it that she did not merely
imagine him to be present, but also sensed him in some way that is difficult
to describe. Joanne’s sensation of rising from her chair and being weightless
suggests that the experience might have been an OBE. I take it that she did
not mean to say that her body was weightless, but that she was weightless, but
she does not include the perspectival feature of typical OBEs. The following
account does just that.
An American woman, a psychologist by profession, describes an experi-
ence that occurred in mid-life:
Case 10 Lorraine:71 I was fifty years old, recuperating, I thought, from a

very serious illness which had very nearly taken my life. I awoke one morn-
ing expecting to feel very much improved. Instead, I felt very much worse.
Although despair and depression are not natural to my nature, I was filled
with both and felt that I could fight no longer; this illness was too much to
overcome. Tears started to flow, and suddenly I was on the ceiling in a corner
of my bedroom, looking down at myself weeping and very sorry for myself.
A voice “said (?)”, “Look at that body down there. There is nothing that body
can do which can prevent you from doing what you want to do, if you will
work with it, but right now it needs to heal. Be patient with it; give it time.
Be content to be sick until the body becomes strong again. And remember, it
cannot stop or limit you—not ever.” Then there was a snapping sound, and
I was locked back into my shell, but with a whole new attitude. Not only did
I learn to be patient and content to allow time to heal, but beliefs which I had
set aside years ago in favour of Humanism flowed back into my being with a
certainty which has never left me.72 I know that [the] potential of life is lim-
itless; I know that my body and my spirit, though integrated, are not one and
the same. I even dare to say that I know that “I,” whatever that is, will go on
after the change that is death. I do not know the how’s or the why’s, and I am
impatient with theology and dogma; we should be beyond both.
The intuitive knowing of the mysterious nature of human life is paramount

in this account, which includes a spirit—to use her language—however
antiquated and inadequate this expression might be.
Dennett’s Self
The dispute in Western culture concerning the soul seems to have been won
by those of a modern bent. The unresolved disputes between science and reli-
gion, as well as those between science and common sense, include a clash on
the status of the reflective self (or person). Cognitive science is disposed to jet-
tison any concepts or interpretations derived from the common-sense domain
that do not further the exact study of human consciousness and intelligence.
Writing in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, philosopher Paul Thagard
puts the objectives of cognitive science in the following terms:
Our conclusions about how the mind works must be based on more than
“common-sense” and introspection, since these can give a misleading picture of
mental operations, many of which are not consciously accessible. Psychological
experiments that carefully approach mental operations from diverse directions
are therefore crucial for cognitive science to be scientific.73
In keeping with the naturalistic objectives of much cognitive science,

prominent American philosopher Daniel Dennett argues that a self should
be considered to be a fiction, similar to the way in which physicists consider
the center of gravity of an object to be a fiction, or the way in which peo-
ple who are created in novels are (often) fictions or abstractions.74 Dennett
Values ● 119
adopts the distinctions between abstractions, observable objects, and inferred

entities drawn by Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953), a German professor of
physics, mathematics, and philosophy. Reichenbach observed, for example,
that atoms, molecules, and neutrinos are not abstract objects, although they
are theoretical and unobserved, and Dennett agrees. However, the center of
gravity of an object is an abstract object, even though it enters into descrip-
tions and explanations. For example, the center of gravity of an ordinary
chair sitting on the floor is above the floor, located at a point well within
the boundary on the floor created by its legs. In tipping a chair until it falls
over, however, a point is reached where the horizontal force that is pushing
the chair over allows an imaginary vertical line to be drawn from the chair’s
center of gravity to the Earth’s center of gravity in such a way that this line
intersects with the floor at a point outside the boundary created by the sup-
porting legs. At such a point, the (vertical) force of gravity causes the chair
to fall to the floor. The center of gravity of a chair might not be found in
the body of the chair itself, such as its seat, arms, or back; it might be in the
“space” near one of its parts, depending upon the chair’s structure and the
material(s) used in its composition. The concept of the center of gravity of
an object is essential to Newtonian (and subsequent) physics, and helps to
explain many features of the movement of ordinary objects as well as those in
space, such as the Moon’s revolution around Earth. Dennett is correct to say
that centers of gravity are not “real” in the way that chairs are real, and that
we might usefully view them as abstractions or fictions.
The third kind of entity that Dennett describes is one that is inferred, such
as the person we know as Aristotle, whose existence is inferred from biograph-
ical records, from books he is thought to have authored, and from other kinds
of evidence that point to his former existence. Dennett holds that within
the three-fold classification of objects, only inferred entities and observ-
able objects have ontological respectability. Dennett observes that inferred
entities can be distinguished from abstract objects inasmuch as certain ques-
tions about inferred entities have answers, even if they might not be known,
whereas comparable questions about abstract objects or fictions just have no
answers—fictions are said to be indeterminate.75 Dennett observes, for exam-
ple, that the question whether Sherlock Holmes, the famous character created
by writer Arthur Conan Doyle, had a mole on his left shoulder cannot be
answered, inasmuch as Sherlock Holmes is a fictional being and nothing was
presumably written anywhere by Doyle about the appearance of Holmes’s
left shoulder. However, a comparable question about Aristotle has an answer,
even though we have no way now of determining what it is, for Aristotle is
not a fiction. Although Dennett does not say anything about the mental life
of Aristotle, features of it also belong to the class of determinate things, just
as features of his body do. We might question, for instance, whether Aristotle
derived secret pleasure from hearing the music of a flute, in spite of his repu-
diation of its value in inculcating moral values.76 This question has an answer,
even though we might never know it, but we cannot meaningfully ask this
question of Sherlock Holmes. If Aristotle’s bodily and mental states are both
determinate ones, we might wonder at Dennett’s claim that Aristotle’s self is
a fiction, for the questions raised here about Aristotle’s possible mole and his
possible secret pleasures seem to be about Aristotle himself, who is describable
by both bodily and mental states.
Dennett also objects to the self on the grounds that it is not visible,77 and
in support of this remark, he quotes a famous statement of David Hume in
his Treatise of Human Nature: “For my part, when I enter most intimately
into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or
other, of heat or cold, light or shade, pain or pleasure. I never can catch
myself.”78 Hume’s critics have pointed out the absurdity in asserting, “I never
can catch myself,” for who is the I that cannot catch myself, and who is the
myself that I cannot catch? Asserting that “My self is a fiction” in a meaning-
ful way requires a thinking and reflective self. A clever talking parrot could
learn to “say” the phrase, “My self is a fiction,” but its “saying” so would be
a joke,79 for the parrot (seemingly) cannot mean what it “says.” Many would
say that in perceptions of heat or cold, of light or shade, of pain or pleasure,
we do catch a fleeting glimpse of the self that both has perceptual experience
and also knows that it does so. From the fact that the self might not be vis-
ible we cannot conclude that the self does not exist, for it appears to have a
status comparable to the “unobservables” found in many a scientific theory.
These objects are now widely regarded as meaningfully describable, and capa-
ble of entering into explanations. In one sense of the term, “observable,” the
self is observable, but we speak of this kind of observation as introspection.
Dennett and others with an extreme modern bent seem to be intent on even-
tually excluding introspection entirely in accounts of the self—as though the
entire world might be authoritatively engaged from the “safe” perspective of
an observer. The irony of this claim is that we could only arrive at author-
itative external perspectives by taking introspective reports as authoritative,
and correlating them with phenomena that are observed from an external
perspective, such as brain activity.
Dennett follows Hume in claiming that I can catch a fragment of what is
conventionally considered to be myself. In support of his position, Dennett
cites the research of Michael Gazzaniga, professor of psychology, on rare
individuals in whom the corpus callosum—a collection of nerve fibers con-
necting the right and left hemispheres of the brain—has been surgically
severed.80 These individuals do not have the normal unifying link that allows
Values ● 121
information to be shared by both hemispheres, one of which (the left)

controls language, and the other of which (the right) controls sensory infor-
mation from the left side of a person, such as touch sensations of the left
hand. An example of how the severed corpus callosum affects human knowl-
edge occurs when the right (sensory) hemisphere “knows” that the left hand
is touching an object in the left pocket of a coat, but the left (speech) hemi-
sphere is unable to say so. Dennett follows Gazzaniga81 in claiming that the
disunity that is in obvious evidence in split-brain individuals is symptomatic
of everyone who is supposedly “normal,” insisting that we all assign a unity to
our experience that is not fully borne out by the brain structures that we pos-
sess. I have italicized the pronouns in the previous sentence, for if the claim
that the self is a fiction is accurate, no simple way exists of correcting language
to reflect this fact. The “we” that assigns unity to his or her experience might
not be identical to the one that possesses a brain, on the assumption that we
can make sense of what Dennett is saying. Dennett needs a criterion (exter-
nal?) for the notion of a self-fragment, on the supposition that we can take
him seriously, or do the name “Dennett” and the pronouns in the first half
of this sentence also need to be italicized in order to show that their deno-
tations are in question? As soon as proper names of people, or pronouns, or
definite descriptions denoting specific individuals are in evidence, questions
arise about the self (or selves) that is (are) implicated.
Dennett advances other reasons for considering the self to be a fiction. He
discusses Dissociative Identity Disorder, formerly known as Multiple Person-
ality Disorder, whose nature is now widely known through movies such as
The Three Faces of Eve. He suggests that while some instances of this disor-
der might be “created” by therapists, other instances might be genuine. He
regards the pathological form of this disorder to be an extreme case of a phe-
nomenon found in everyone, since we all, at times, are “confabulators, telling
and retelling ourselves the story of our own lives, with scant attention to
the question of truth.”82 Dennett’s overall sympathy is evidently with scien-
tific scrutiny of human behavior and its causes, which results in the common
sense but imprecise notion of a self (or person) being placed in question.
The imprecision of this concept is already well known from disputes in legal
contexts over whether someone can be plausibly assigned responsibility for
some act when they are impaired, or overcome with depression, or tempted
unusually strongly, and so on. However, until we obtain a useable criterion
of what Dennett seems to think of as a self-fragment, many of which are sup-
posedly involved in the construction of a self, we have little option but to
continue using the hazy concept of a self, which everyone who speaks a nat-
ural language has mysteriously acquired. Moreover, whether a definition of
“self-fragment” could avoid the hazy concept of the self is unclear.
In elucidating what he means by the self, Dennett speaks of “the conscious

self that is unproblematically in command of the mind’s resources.”83 This is
the reality he takes to be a fiction. Since “the mind’s resources” presumably
includes those states of being known to Sigmund Freud and most psycholo-
gists since his time as unconscious or subconscious ones, we can agree with
Dennett that “the conscious mind” does not control these without difficulty,
if it does at all. Put in this light, his claim that the self is a fiction is trivially
true. The classical image of the human mind, which predates the “thin” view
that Hume offered to “the Enlightened,” gives it the capacity to take items
from sense perception, from memory, from the imagination, from apparent
self-awareness, from what it deduces or regards as probable from this informa-
tion, and perhaps more, in an effort to conjecture upon the external objects
that might be present, and also to postulate the existence of the self. This
approach does not presuppose spiritual beliefs about the soul, but simply
describes the workings of the intellect. Perhaps the data that cognitive science
can bring to bear on the question of a self—from split-brain experiments,
from psychiatric disorders, from psychologically abnormal births, from arti-
ficial intelligence, and from other sources—will eventually provide a basis for
reconstructing the self, but the data cannot exclude the remarkable experi-
ences in which people seemingly acquire a concept of the self, or begin to
realize the values associated with its life, or to experience something of its
growth.
The self has long been a challenge to understand, and the discoveries about
human behavior and the brain in the past century or two only add to its mys-
tery. The experiences I related in the previous section are not made more
intelligible by adopting the approach offered by Dennett and those of like
mind; indeed, the experiences seem more intelligible when we presuppose
the existence of a continuing self. Cognitive science might achieve a point
where it can dispense with “intuitive awareness” in assigning intelligence to
someone, but it cannot dispense (now) with the self. The importance to cog-
nitive science of “the self ” in some intelligible sense can be seen in recent
efforts to identify the neural events that undergird (or constitute) the sense of
self that people ordinarily experience. In a recent study, William Kelley and
colleagues imaged brain activity in subjects who were thinking about adjec-
tives that were relevant to themselves (e.g., “Does the word ‘honest’ describe
you?”) or to others, as well as adjectives whose general meaning alone was con-
sidered (e.g., “Does the word ‘honest’ mean the same as ‘trustworthy?’ ”).84
The fMRIs showed that a separate region of the medial prefrontal cortex was
engaged when subjects thought about themselves, which suggests that “self-
referential processing is functionally dissociable from other forms of semantic
processing within the human brain.”85 This study (and others like it) indicates
Values ● 123
that cognitive science now understands “self ” in much the same way that
ordinary people do.
The Incomplete Self

The next cases begin to introduce the view that while the self has a dis-
crete phenomenological existence, it is incomplete or unfinished in some
important sense, and needs to be “completed” from something outside of
ourselves.
Case 11: Karen,86 a 21-year-old Catholic student of theology, writes about her
“deep, gnawing, crumbling despair” over a moral failing and her incomplete
work: “I got up from my desk, walked to my bed and laid down, stared up
at the ceiling. I laid there for perhaps fifteen minutes, going over in my mind
the depressing net I was entangled in. I began to cry and, at the same time, to
speak out loud to whatever god was there to listen. I remember actually calling
out for help as I felt myself reaching a point of hysteria. Though tear-filled, my
eyes were open and I continued to stare at the ceiling directly above my bed.
But suddenly the ceiling was moving towards me, and if I had reached out with
my hand, I could have touched it as it bobbed to meet me. I suddenly felt very
warm, very calm, and very expansive, as though I were nowhere. Yet I saw my
room, the ceiling, the window beside my bed—I was there. But the atmosphere
was not. I was not breathing; I was not moving my body, and yet my body was
moving. I suddenly realized that I was floating above my bed right up to the
ceiling level. Looking down, I saw my body lying below me on the bed, just as
before: the face stained with tears, the eyes open and staring up at myself. I felt
no fear at all. My body was below me; my self was at the ceiling—watching,
bodiless, but with the definite feeling of some kind of bodiliness. It was myself
floating at the ceiling. I was much bigger than the body I saw below me; so
expansive that the physical body on the bed below seeming insignificant. I felt
only warmth, ecstatic joy and ‘at-one-ness’ with something so powerful that
I could not then, and now, describe it. The entire experience could not have
lasted more than a few seconds. But in those few seconds I was whole in a way
that I had never been whole before . . . . My entire self had seen my body; my
entire self sensed a greater presence. I remember thinking that no one would
believe if I told them of my experience; that I might have been temporarily
insane, but that regardless of these things, I wanted it to happen again. But if
it did happen again, I did not want to ‘return’ to my body: I wanted to remain
outside with whatever it was that drew and held me there.”
Reports about “the self ” and “its body,” such as Karen’s, have become well
known since the emergence of NDEs in Western culture. Dennett’s view of
“the self ” is at odds with the phenomenological feel of the self as Karen relates
it—her “entire self ” hung in the air, “looking at” her body, but without having
any sense that she had eyes. The sense that “the entire self ” was not in “its
body,” which somehow moved without “the self ” moving it, defies explana-
tion at present, as does Karen’s sense that “the self ” was not only whole in a
way that she had never felt (or known) before, but also united with “some
other thing” marked by caring and kindness. The importance of such details
is augmented by cognitive science’s aspiration to be comprehensive about
our mental life, so that no “residue” describable only by resources of folk-
psychology will remain. No progress is made by vilifying Karen’s account
as dualistic, for we have no exact idea about the final ontological commit-
ments that will be needed to give adequate expression to the full scope of
human experience. The account that Karen offers was given in the only ter-
minology available to her, and to assert that such accounts can be ignored
because they endorse the view that “the entire self ” can be experienced is to
take David Hume’s “sifting humour” too far in the description of experience.
Karen’s experience puts Hume’s claim about never catching “himself ” into
sharp relief—perhaps we often catch “the entire self.” Karen’s remark derives
from a phenomenological experience, Hume’s from a philosophical agenda.
Karen’s experience is congruous with that of mystics who report that levita-
tion (a physical matter) and ecstasy (a psychological matter) are occasionally
combined.87
Karen’s experience reinforces the view that the self might exist apart from
the body, for no simple explanation exists for her reported perceptual mem-
ory of her body. In Visions of Jesus I described an OBE in which a woman
had the perceptual sense of being caught between two “surfaces” made of
wood, only one of which was moving.88 She realized that “she” was near a
wooden ceiling in her home below which a ceiling fan with wooden blades
rotated. A skeptic of OBEs might wonder whether this was only a memory
of a previous sensation, dropped into conscious experience as a hallucina-
tion, and then given too much ontological weight. The probability of this
skeptical explanation is low, however, for she had never positioned her body
so that her head was near the ceiling while a fan rotated immediately below
it! Someone skeptical of Karen’s experience would also have to concede that
only in rare circumstances does one “see one’s own body” beneath them from
the unique perspective afforded by the ceiling of a room. The possibility that
Karen’s experience provides a basis for thinking that the entire self can be
experienced and that it might be distinct from the human body is at least as
plausible as the claim that cognitive science in the future will render this kind
of experience irrelevant for metaphysics. I am not advancing this experience
here as evidence for postmortem existence, only as one in which the self—the
whole self—is said to have been experienced.
Values ● 125
Another woman speaks about an experience of her self as complete, which

took place when she was 29, at the end of a five-month period when a ner-
vous breakdown kept her from work. Her father was Unitarian, her mother
Presbyterian, a consequence of which was that no religious observances were
expected of her as she was growing up.
Case 12: Holly89 writes: I had been conscious for several months previously of
a need to make a “living” contact with God (though intellectually I was not
sure—and am still not sure—that I accepted the existence of God, however
conceived). During my illness, I had a keen sense of guilt (quite a common
experience I think) which led gradually to a conviction that, as I was not a
loving or loveable individual, there was an unbridgeable chasm between myself
and God. I became conscious of an utterly whole-hearted love of God on my
part (nothing held back) and an unquestioning acceptance, at the same time,
that, in the nature of things (and not as an act of will on God’s part) my
unworthiness made it certain that I would always be separate from him, both
in life and after death. I came to a point where I felt that I had “emptied”
the whole of my being in submission to God, while accepting that I must
always remain “separated” from him. I cannot place what then happened in a
particular period of time: it may have been in a flash or it may have come upon
me gradually over perhaps six to twelve hours, but I felt an inrush of love which,
while it took me by surprise as if it came from “outside,” yet appeared to reach
me by rising up from the depth of my own being. It felt warm and “personal”
though not with the limited personality of a human individual. I understood
what integration of the personality meant, and felt, for the first time, that I was
a “whole” person, no longer at war with myself. My physical and mental energy
was much greater than before. Everything seemed “new” and I felt I could look
with much greater understanding at all the human situations I had met up to
that time. I saw (literally—with a sort of inner eye) that the love of God and the
love of man are two sides of the same coin—in fact, inseparable. It seemed clear
to me, too, that no sorrow, guilt, or misfortune could separate me or anyone
else, from God. Though the joy and confidence that this experience gave rise to
did not last beyond four months, I still look back on it as the most impressive
event of my life.
Several things about this account are noteworthy. The first is Holly’s sense
that the experience came from “without,” but at the same time seemed to
derive from deeply within herself. My discussion in the previous chapter
touched on the problem of locating “the origin” of spiritual experiences, espe-
cially those deemed to be of God. Henry More’s conjecture that spirits might
“mingle” is an evocative way to think about these encounters.
A second feature of Holly’s experience is her sense that she had become a
whole person, at least for a while, and that the war within herself had ceased.
The phenomenological sense of tension within oneself has been an important

source of theorizing in Western society, and its most influential ancient writ-
ers are probably Plato and St. Paul, although some might also cite the Psalms
and the prophetic literature of the Hebrew Bible.90 Plato uses phenomenolog-
ical experience of “the war within” to establish his famous tripartite account
of human personality: appetites, reason, and spirit (or anger). He recounts
the story of Leontius,91 who observed some dead bodies lying on the ground
at a place of execution. Leontius felt “a desire to see them,” and also “a dread
and abhorrence of them,” and for a time covered his eyes as he struggled with
this conflict. At length, his desire got the better of him so he ran up to the
dead bodies and angrily said to his eyes, “Look, ye wretches, take your fill of
the fair sight.” Plato observes that in this experience, reason was at war with
desire, and “anger” was siding with reason for a time, until desire triumphed.
Another example that demonstrates something of “the war within” is found
when someone thinks he has been wronged, who then “boils and chafes” for
justice and suffers anything “until he either slays or is slain; or until he hears
the voice of the shepherd, that is, reason, bidding his dog bark no more.”92
Plato recognizes the spirited part of our personality as having its own role in
motivating us to act.
A comment is needed on Holly’s reference to emptying herself: “I came
to a point where I felt that I had ‘emptied’ the whole of my being in
submission to God.” The phenomenological sense of “emptying oneself ”
presupposes that the one doing so is conscious of herself as herself, which
gives some credence to the existence of an integrated self. Many mystics
have reported some such action, including Thomas Merton (1915–68), the
famous Trappist monk, who speaks of a “placid unknowing” that is “the
natural climate in which the spiritual self may yield up its secret identity.
Suddenly there is a clap of thunder and the ‘doors’ of the inner conscious-
ness fly open.”93 This inner self is not an ideal self, he explains, especially
not a being marked by “greatness, heroism, and infallibility. On the contrary,
the real ‘I’ is just simply ourself and nothing more. Nothing more, noth-
ing less. Our self as we are in the eyes of God, to use Christian terms.”94
Merton discusses the awakening of the inner self in relation to the teaching
of Zen Buddhism, observing that in Zen, little effort seems to be expended
in moving beyond the inner self to find God, while for Christianity, aware-
ness of the inner self is a stepping stone to awareness of God. He concedes,
however, that Christianity might have added an “interpretation and extrapo-
lation on top of the experience itself,” whereas Zen might be attempting to
give only a phenomenological account.95 I assume that the phenomenology
of human spiritual experience cannot be separated from an interpretive tra-
dition. Perhaps future studies will allow the varied experiences across cultures
and spiritual outlooks that constitute essential moments in people’s personal
Values ● 127
history to shed light on phenomenological elements that can be distinguished

from the interpretations that people give to their experience.
The next experience is of an English woman, married to a Methodist
minister serving parishes mostly in Ireland. She describes the experience of
“meeting herself ” in terms that also fit with the notion that the self might be
“incomplete.”
Case13 Ivy:96 It was the time we had a dreadful manse, belonging to a poor
circuit in a small Irish town—it had fifty-four steps from top to bottom, and
such was its peculiar construction that there were very few of those steps that
you did not have to traverse every single day to do even the minimum of nec-
essary chores. Also, on the circuit there was no church hall, and only a small
vestry, so every sort of meeting was duly held in the manse. One day in spring,
after a very trying winter, I had been getting ready for an important meeting of
senior circuit members, and had prepared supper for about fourteen [people].
It was getting late—nearly time for them to arrive, and I still hadn’t set out the
cups and saucers onto the trays, nor had I had the time to change my frock.
Desperately I dashed around the kitchen and walked up the first tall flight of
stairs to the bathroom to wash my face and hands. But at the corner of the
passage leading to the bathroom I stopped dead, for standing by the door was
a figure, a figure that certainly had not been in the house before. I had been
alone in the house all the afternoon as my husband was out sick-visiting, and
even now had not returned. I stood absolutely still and stared at the figure,
and it seemed to be looking back at me with wide, yet unseeing eyes. It was
beautiful—it seemed to be carved from glass—not clear glass [but] some kind
of slightly opaque crystal of a delicate grey, its plain soft grey robes being in
lovely folds. Starting from its feet my eyes followed the flowing lines upward
and came to rest on the head and face—“Of course,” I found myself saying,
“of course, it’s me.” I knew it was me—I recognized that that figure standing
there was my inner self exteriorized that I might see it—and I felt quite calm.
Only when I looked again I saw that there was an unawakened look about the
face. It seemed almost as if it was in a chrysalis state—unfinished and waiting.
Almost without knowing it, I moved towards it. Just then there was the sound
of a key at the door and voices, and my husband coming in, together with
some of the expected guests. At the sound the figure glided past me, turned the
corner of the stairs, and disappeared. I changed my dress and acted hostess all
the evening, doing things as in a dream, wondering again and again what was
so unfinished about my “me.” Finally, tired out, I went to bed. Just as I was
dropping off to sleep, quite distinctly I heard a Voice say, “Love is the fulfilling
of the law,”97 and I knew at once that it was the action of selfless loving that
would finish the work and wake to life my inner “me.”
Ivy’s experience is often described as seeing a doppelgänger, which is a term

borrowed from the German language to describe the parapsychological phe-
nomenon of seeing an apparition of oneself, usually. While many of these
experiences seem to precede some disaster or be associated with some peril,

in Ivy’s case the experience was associated with her awakening. The doppel-
gänger piqued her curiosity in a way that made her question its significance
until she obtained an answer.
The intuitive knowing in this case had two dimensions to it, the first being
a realization that in some sense she was “unawakened,” whereas the second
was the insight that selfless loving would fully awaken her inner self. This
“mystical insight” was not that of a contemplative who chose well-known
austerities and deprivations in order to achieve that end, but that of a harried
parson’s wife who in her own way “chose” deprivations by agreeing to marry
a parson, to move with him from parish to parish, and to serve him and the
many other people who came to their home. Ivy’s experience reminds me of
my mother, also the harried wife of a single-minded parson.
Immortality
Traditional beliefs in the soul and its immortality unquestionably presuppose
the discrete existence of “the self.” Immortality has been widely interpreted
to mean that “the self ” does more than survive the death of a very par-
ticular body, for the immortal soul has been commonly considered to be
something whose annihilation is impossible. Plato argued for immortality
on the grounds, among others, that the soul (or mind, or intellect) is simple,
or without parts, and so “cannot break apart.”98 He also advances the view
that something capable of apprehending eternal Forms and reasoning about
them must be suited to the objects it is capable of knowing.99 Christian faith
has contributed its own complications to any thought about the immortal
soul, or the surviving self, by advancing the doctrine of the resurrection of
every human person (body and soul) in some climactic end to the world as
we know it. Greek views on survival, immortality, and reincarnation, and
Christian views on survival, immortality, and the resurrection of the body,
have left the distinct impression in Western culture that a human being is
an embodied, thinking, reflective self, having inestimable value. Whatever
intrinsic value might lie in pleasure, happiness, eternal bliss, fulfillment of
desire, moral goodness, or rationality, these experiences are found in persons,
whose value far transcends any one, or even all, of them.
The mere mention of the soul now is apt to be regarded, even by many
Christians, as claiming or assuming the existence of something dubious—
the endorsement of a crude dualism. Moreover, the notion that anything
might be immortal is considered too grand, and out of step with the temporal
nature of all things, seen from an empirical perspective. The atomistic view of
nature that has come with modern science has left the impression that what
Values ● 129
might be eternal are atoms, not the unique configurations they take in living
things, including persons. The Catholic and Orthodox Churches, in keep-
ing with early Christian traditions, continue to affirm the soul’s immortality,
but Protestant scholarship seems to have virtually abandoned the doctrine.
If Protestant churches address eschatological issues at all, they advance the
doctrine of the resurrection of all humanity as embodied persons, in keep-
ing with a widespread resistance in Western culture to the “dualism” of body
and soul in traditional thought. Many educated Christians now appear to
be comfortable in articulating their most cherished beliefs about human exis-
tence in speaking of persons, where any implication of life after death is absent
or left obscure. Although NDEs could eventually provide a rational basis for
reintroducing the concept of soul,100 and for renewing the belief in its immor-
tality (or survival, at least), such a change does not appear to be underway at
present. Naturalism still holds sway.
Catholic thought on the soul has also evolved in the past century. The
Catholic Encyclopedia of 1909 defines the human soul as “the ultimate internal
principle by which we think, feel, and will, and by which our bodies are
animated,” and construes it as a substance in its own right, which implies that
it is “not itself composite, extended, corporeal, or essentially and intrinsically
dependent on the body.”101 This Encyclopedia endorses the Thomistic stance
of the Council of Vienna (1311), according to which “the rational soul, which
is one with the sensitive and vegetative principle, is the form of the body.”
Aristotle’s metaphysics is the source of this understanding of the soul, which
considers each of the hierarchical branches of living things—plants, animals,
and rational beings—as having distinctive “souls” or “principles.” Aristotle
teaches that plants exhibit only a vegetative soul, which means that they grow
and flourish by absorbing appropriate foods, and that animals exhibit both
a vegetative soul and a sensitive soul, for they not only feed themselves but
also move themselves and have sensory capacities.102 Humans exhibit all of
these characteristics, and, in addition, can reason by virtue of their “rational
souls.”103 This language is antiquated, for we would now speak more naturally
of plants and animals having capacities, rather than principles or souls.
The Catholic Catechism of 1997 retains some of the thought of the Catholic
Encyclopaedia published almost a century earlier, describing a human being as
“created in the image of God . . . a being at once corporeal and spiritual.”104
The human soul is said to be “the innermost aspect of man, that which is of
greatest value in him, that by which he is most especially in God’s image,”
and as signifying “the spiritual principle in man.”105 The unity of soul and
body is said to be so profound that “one has to consider the soul to be the
‘form’ of the body: that is, it is because of its spiritual soul that the body
made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man,
are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.”106
Instead of claiming, as Maritain did some 50 years earlier, that the human
soul is an individual substance, the new Catechism refuses to separate the
soul from the body. It goes on to say that the unique form of life found
in humans is due to the immortal soul, so that both life and rational pow-
ers can be ascribed to its presence. In addition to the language of soul and
immortality, the Catechism freely uses the language of person and self, which
is perhaps not surprising, given the prominence these terms have acquired
in recent decades. Inasmuch as the Catholic Church refuses to abandon the
tradition within which its core doctrines emerged, it continues to use the lan-
guage of soul, but in its efforts to relate to people today, especially the public
to whom the Catechism is addressed, it has also embraced some other impor-
tant expressions. In describing a person as a being “capable of self-knowledge,
of self-possession and of freely giving himself and entering into communion
with other persons,”107 the Catechism bears the imprint of John Paul II (1920–
2005), who writes of the high value that has come to be associated with
personhood.108 “Self-possession” is the least transparent of these characteri-
zations, but this characteristic conforms with the general understanding of
the rights and the dignity that belong to persons.109
That the immortality of the self would be experienced, and not merely
taught as a dogma to be accepted by the faithful in traditional religious
communities, is not surprising. The first case I will report comes from Perry.
Case 14 Perry:110 An Englishman writes to Sir Alister Hardy: “I was brought up

a Unitarian and while at Lincoln College, [attended] the services at [another]111
college until I realized that I had lost my faith and was an agnostic . . . We were
living in the country, and one evening while we were out for our usual walk
between tea and supper, we saw a figure in a white robe approaching us. We rec-
ognized her as she drew near as an acquaintance. She appeared unaware of our
presence. We whispered her name as she passed us and then, when we turned
our heads, she had vanished. We knew that she had been bed-ridden for a year
or two, and soon after our return made enquiries and found that she had died
some hours before she appeared to us. I took this as proof of an after-life, but
remained agnostic about a Supreme Being and the orthodox view of heaven.
Two of our party are still living and may write to you. One is my brother –
and the other is a cousin, the Rev.–. At the time the latter was training at [the
same] college for the Unitarian ministry, but this experience made him believe
that the Unitarian teaching about the Resurrection was inadequate, and he
transferred to the Church of England, and is now a retired vicar.”
The simultaneous sensory experiences reported to have occurred puts this

experience in the intersubjectively observable domain, and provides another
(rare) corroboration of traditional religious claims.
Values ● 131
An Irish woman of Catholic background writes about her experience of

coming to understand the immortality of the soul:
Case 15: Mona112 says that she had become a neurotic with “a gloomy cast of
mind,” and that she longed for death as an end to an unendurable existence.
It was then that she and her husband became friends with a man with whom
they developed a friendship closer than she ever expected to have in her life-
time. When he suddenly died, the shock and desolation were crushing. She
writes: “I remember thinking, ‘At a time like this a belief in the soul’s immor-
tality must be the most tremendous support,’ but I could not pretend to share
it, and indeed did not try. On the following Sunday, the 25th of May, my hus-
band and I were driving along a country road, returning from a visit to the
institution where our handicapped son now is. We were talking sorrowfully of
our dead friend when suddenly I knew that his spirit lived, and was as close to
me that moment as it had ever been in life. When I say ‘knew,’ words are inad-
equate to convey the experience. This was ‘knowing’ more vivid and real than
anything I have experienced in the literal sense. It was as if for a moment one
had known Reality, and in comparison the world of the senses was the dream.
I was filled with an unutterable joy, which I shall never be able to describe. I
seemed to apprehend, in a measure, the inexhaustible love of God for us, which
envelops the universe, and everything in it. Above all, I understood, beyond all
questioning, that nothing in life, however seemingly insignificant, is ever lost
or purposeless, but all tends toward the fulfilment of a design which will one
day be made clear to us.” She later adds that her neurosis disappeared after
this event, and never returned. She also describes this event as a rebirth that
obliterated the atheism in which she had previously lived.113
The certainty that Mona felt about immortality appears to be an instance of

intuitive knowing. This conviction was empirically based, which allowed her
to compare her cognitive states before and after. Those instances of intuitive
knowing whose origins are unknown to us, and are part of our lives for as long
as we remember, might not have the clarity that spontaneous experiences pro-
vide. Her remark about the sharp contrast between “the world of the senses”
and “Reality” offers us another possible glimpse into the experiential origins
of Platonism.
In another case an Englishwoman writes of the death of her father, who
had served in the Royal Air Force, and, at the peak of his profession came
down with arteriosclerosis of the brain. Rosetta said that her family awaited
his imminent death.
Case 16 Rosetta:114 “Early in October he began to slip into a coma . . . and my

mother telephoned me to tell me that she personally felt it could not be many
days, but that there was no point in my coming until he had died as he was
quite unconscious. In the early hours of the morning of October 18th I woke
suddenly to a loud knocking on my bedroom door. It was perfectly loud and

distinct, a double rap, twice repeated. In the instant of waking I sat up, to
hear a man’s voice, slow, strong and very clear but unrecognizable as the voice
of anyone I knew, saying near to me, ‘And so the soul sets out upon its lone
journey.’ In that split second—of hearing the knock and then, immediately,
the voice—I received an impression of the night sky, brilliantly starlit, a great
gushing gale of wind streaming up and away across it, the immense upsweeping
surge of power—and of freedom. Even as I absorbed, with photographic clarity
that even time has not dimmed, this impression, the dying resonance of the
voice still upon the air, the knock came again, twice repeated, as before, on
the door, and the house seemed to me to be full of movement. At the first
knock I had instinctively sprung up in bed and woken my husband; he heard
the second knocks clearly. I said to him, ‘There’s someone at the door.’ He got
up and opened the door—no one there. He went downstairs and tried both
back and front doors, while I sat in bed with a sort of ringing in my head—the
impression left behind of the turbulent, brilliant gale-tossed night sky beyond
the windows. Yet it was a still, windless night, cloudy, no stars visible, and the
trees in our garden in full leaf—no naked boughs at all. My husband came back
and I told him that my father was dead. It was 4:20 a.m.” Rosetta continues to
relate an instantaneous understanding that life and earthly struggles not related
to God are futile, and that the blueprint to life is provided by Christ’s teaching.
She also sensed that an immense force had claimed her father. She got up, made
a cup of tea, and waited for daylight, finding that “the conviction of life after
death, of the resurrection of the soul, was amazing in its strength and clarity.”
At 6 a.m. the telephone rang—her sister rang to tell her that their father had
died peacefully at 4:20 earlier that morning.
These accounts of acquiring a conviction about life after death resonate

strongly with my own, associated with the death of my father in 2001.
Father lived for the last 30 years or so of his life in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in
which my brother David and my sister Lois also reside. Expecting that David
would probably know about Father’s death before I would, I implored him
to notify me the moment he learned that Father had passed away, whatever
time of day or night it was. He solemnly promised. About a week before
Father’s death, he refused his medication and no longer ate or drank, so we
knew he would not last long. My sister Ruth from British Columbia flew to
Winnipeg to be near Father, and my two sisters kept a vigil in his room in an
extended-care facility. Although I felt a few twinges of guilt about not joining
them, I did not really think that I needed to be there, and felt later that
I might have missed what happened if I had been. I awoke with a start one
morning at about four o’clock. I had just dreamt that a relative by marriage
had announced his intention to investigate the properties of the blood on the
Shroud of Turin. This dream had profound significance for me, for a reason
Values ● 133
that I will describe in the next chapter, and immediately put me in an attitude
of prayer. As I began to pray I became aware of a presence that made my hair
stand on end, and also elated me. It seemed to be beside my bed and on my
left, no more than two feet away, but I saw nothing.
I did not associate the presence with any human being, but I did consider
it to be holy and benevolent. I asked God why he was doing or allowing this,
but I received no answer. I continued in an attitude of prayer, and at about
4:30 in the morning the telephone rang. It was David, informing me that
Father had died about ten minutes earlier. The coincidence of this event in
Winnipeg and my experience in Langley half a continent away was cogni-
tively overwhelming. I felt that I had been given a message about Father’s
destiny. I then entered a silent reverie in which I rehearsed the names of sig-
nificant people who are known to Judaeo-Christian tradition. I “knew” that
they were “alive” in some sense, and “knew” for the first time also that Mother
and my sister Eunice, both of whom had died years earlier, were “alive” along
with Father. This conviction has not dimmed with time. I now accept the
dogma of what is conventionally described as the immortality of the soul, but
I well understand both those who cannot and those for whom the question is
an enigma. I also understand those who object to the word “soul,” and would
be content to say that something survives that has the attributes that mark a
person’s unique personality.
I mentioned that the coincidence of my experience in Langley with an
event in Winnipeg about 1,400 miles away had a cognitive impact upon me,
inasmuch as I became convinced that the two were causally linked. Some
people whose experiences I am featuring in this book also reported a similar
cognitive effect, and I surmise that it occurs more widely than anyone knows.
No one else needs to deal with the event in my life at the time of Father’s
death, but I must do so. I could try to deny or repress the conviction, insist
to my colleagues that I reject the belief in survival, and take my chances on a
postmortem assize. This would be one way of dealing with it. The traditional
approach to justification that has been practiced by philosophy offers little
comfort to those of us who have experienced such coincidences, for from my
“sense of presence” at the time that Father passed; the claim that he survived
his death does not follow. This remark is gratuitous and condescending, of
course, for it implies that those who puzzle over coincidences are illiterate
in logic, and cannot follow an argument in which a conclusion is purport-
edly drawn from a single premise. The more important question is whether
any other form of rationality besides deduction is relevant in assessing these
matters.
Carl Jung is famous for having explored the murky domain of
synchronicity, and for suggesting that some acausal principle is at work,
connecting events that are meaningful but not causally linked.115 The irra-
tional influences that might be in operation could include the inclination to
interpret events in keeping with one’s predilections, which in my case might
have been a desire (perhaps secret) to embrace traditional Christian beliefs.
However, secret desires are easy to ascribe to people, but difficult to estab-
lish as real, especially inasmuch as they involve mental states—desires—that
have a high probability of being known to be present by the person who has
them. One factor in favor of the claim that causality might be present in
coincidences is the close proximity in time between an event and its cause,
such as the (conjectured) “release” of Father’s spirit at his death at the time of
some sense of presence beside me. On the other hand, single events cannot be
assessed on their own but must be viewed in relation to similar phenomena,
whose reports undoubtedly vary in degrees of reliability. This incident, then,
must be seen in a larger setting, including NDEs, which form something of
“an evidential wedge,” along with other experiences having spiritual signifi-
cance that are comparatively poorly reported. We can perhaps see some of the
epistemic principles of confirming evidence at work here, for theorists gener-
ally view confirming evidence for a theory also as confirming evidence for the
deductive implications of the theory, and vice versa.116 Theories concerning
spirituality appear to be susceptible to critical analysis in ways that conform
to such analyses arising from indisputably scientific contexts.
Nothing about this incident that awakened a belief in Father’s continued
existence strikes me as miraculous, although others may take exception to
my saying so. The existence of individual spirits, such as that to which my
Father’s identity is (was?) bound, or that of an angel, does not violate any laws
of nature. Neither does the offer of a gift at my bedside.
CHAPTER 5
Christian Experience
U
niquely Christian faith, like Orthodox Judaism, avers that the
Creator God has acted in human history, most notably in making
a covenant with Abraham, the patriarch acknowledged by Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam, and then in events in the nation of Israel. Christianity
additionally claims that God is a triune Being, that he has acted in and
through Jesus of Nazareth, a historical figure, and continues to do so through
the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Holy Trinity. The liberal branch of
Christianity, strongly influenced by modernity, baulks over the claim that
God has acted in history, and has articulated many ingenious interpreta-
tions of the Bible’s narratives in breaking ranks with orthodoxy. The claim
that God has acted in the history of the world is unlikely to be defensible in
any straightforward way, for it is embedded in conceptual structures whose
propositional components cannot be assessed individually. Claims about God
and other spirits, including their properties and relations to other things,
must generally be considered as an integrated whole, but these collective
claims are not devoid of evidential support, and neither are they immune
to being undermined by evidence. Comprehensive theories about unobserv-
able objects are often flawed, and might even be fundamentally mistaken in
various ways.
The orthodox interpretation of Christian faith includes claims about
things that are miraculous in nature, in the sense that natural laws are
(seemingly) overridden. This tradition also makes claims about interactions
between humans and (other) spirits, but these acts are not obviously mirac-
ulous. When Moses mistook a radiant being for a thornbush that was on
fire, and heard a voice from the thornbush addressing him by name, no
obvious laws of nature were broken, but when Moses threw his staff down
on the ground and it became a snake, a natural law was broken. Wooden
staffs or poles are common objects, whose normal behavior is established by
numerous observations, and when they are dropped or thrown to the ground,
they remain wooden! A similar distinction can be found in the alleged events
described in the NT, as when the angel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary
and informed her that she would conceive a son by the power of the Holy
Spirit. Gabriel’s appearance and announcement were not violations of natu-
ral law, but Mary’s conception of Jesus was. When beings taken to be angelic
or demonic (seemingly) appear, or are deemed to be present from phenom-
ena they are presumed to cause, the features of the universe are not so much
overridden, as supplemented. Similarly, if Martians or sentient beings from
outside our solar system having no spiritual significance were real and were to
be observed, the acts they perform or the events they initiate need not violate
natural laws. Such beings can be expected to act out of their attributes, and
their actions need not interfere with existing natural laws that pertain to the
familiar beings and objects that we presently know to be part of the cosmos.
Cases could arise that defy easy classification, but the distinction I am drawing
is an attempt to clarify the nature of experience, not because some “essential
feature” is obviously in play. The experiences that I will discuss in this chapter
will include some miracles, as well as other phenomena that are not. Uniquely
Christian claims are historical ones, and historical claims are also empirical
ones; moreover, since empirical claims are linked in direct or indirect ways
to the realm of observables, central dogmas of Christian faith have implica-
tions for the observable domain. Some of these dogmas depend profoundly
on miraculous allegations. The same could be said for Orthodox Judaism,
Islam, and also for those variants on orthodox Christianity that make histori-
cal claims, such as we find in the Mormon and Swedenborgian churches. The
same might be said for other religions or spiritual traditions, which consider
various forms of interaction to have occurred between humans and other
beings that transcend the conventional order.
My characterization here of miracles as events that are violations of nat-
ural law is incomplete, since the terms “law,” “nature,” and “violation” are
in need of interpretation. However, since these terms are well entrenched
in a natural language and any attempts at defining them will also be given
using other well-entrenched terms, any definitions will carry forms of impre-
cision that cannot be easily rectified. The sciences have generally tried to
remove such imprecision by introducing strict operations for the use of key
terms, and these operational definitions are readily found in both natural
and social sciences. Sciences suited for the precision afforded by mathemat-
ics typically introduce terms capable of quantitative expression. In these and
other ways, scientific terms overcome the inexactness of ordinary language,
but a comparable strategy for handling the relevant terms for spiritual phe-
nomena does not exist. Religion, philosophy, literary studies, art criticism,
Christian Experience ● 137
history, and perhaps other disciplines belong to intellectual communities in

which the consensus needed to introduce operational definitions in a fruitful
way hardly exists; individual authors retain their penchant to use important
terms in slightly different and controversial ways. Limited political and eco-
nomic advantage comes from rectifying the meaning of ambiguous language
in these fields, unlike the language of the natural sciences, and, to a more
limited extent, that of the social sciences. This imbalance in exact studies is
not likely to be rectified for a long time.
Miracles could be alternatively understood to be events brought about
by the unique beings postulated to exist by religion, which is how Catholic
theologian Karl Rahner (1904–84) understands miracles.1 Although this
approach might seem attractive, in order for it to be workable it requires
much more knowledge of causes than we have. Once spirits are deemed to
exist and to act in our world, their causal roles are possibly so extensive as to
be unlimited, for spirits have generally been considered to be ubiquitous and
to control their own observability. A view of the universe that includes spirits
might seem odd, but to say so is to reveal the extent to which modernity has
captured the Academy. We could charitably view the modern age as one in
which the existence and causal roles of spirits have simply been bracketed, not
permanently excluded, in order to determine what might be discovered about
causation without allowing spirits to complicate the question. Modernity
would then be waiting, merely, for this phase of its suspended belief to be
completed. I will continue to use the first interpretation of miracle, without
attempting to resolve the related issues of meaning and interpretation. This
is in keeping with my conviction that our intellectual efforts should not be
directed primarily toward language and its interpretation,2 but rather toward
an understanding of objects and events, the theories that purport to explain
the events, the paradigms that are implicit in the descriptions of events and
theories, and their related methodological principles. Issues concerning the
interpretation of language naturally are present wherever language is used,
but they are too great to resolve in any general way. Specific disagreements
often warrant close attention to the use of vital terms, but my critical realism
moves me beyond language.
Orthodox Christian faith is embroiled in the controversy over the real-
ity of spirits, although many in the Church seem reluctant to accept this.
To embrace their reality openly is to experience alienation from those who
embrace the much simpler metaphysic celebrated by modernity, and even
from general theists. Metaphysics remains as contentious a topic as it ever
was, and any discussion of Trinitarian dogmas inevitably takes one into
historical interpretations of Christianity’s creeds and its holy book, where
metaphysics is extensively implicated. Many Christians are probably willing
to concede that narratives in the Hebrew Bible are more likely to consist
of fable or myth, in their pejorative senses, than are the narratives of the
New Testament (NT). In a recent book on the Deity of Jesus, renowned
Oxford philosopher Richard Swinburne comments about the fabulous nature
of the story of Jonah being swallowed by a whale, but he does not regard as
fables the remarkable stories concerning the Virgin Birth and the Resurrec-
tion of Jessus,3 which are perhaps more difficult to defend than the story
of Jonah. Adducing evidence for The Virgin Birth is much harder than the
Resurrection,4 and finding unequivocal evidence for the latter is not itself
easy.5 In another book dealing with the “encounters” in which Jesus is said
to have been “seen” after his Resurrection, Swinburne advances as evidence
for the Resurrection Paul’s remarkable statement that Jesus was seen by 500
followers.6 Such an event, if it actually occurred, would be very significant
evidence for the postmortem survival of Jesus, for it suggests that this appear-
ance took the form of something other than “a mere apparition.” Apparitions
that are collectively observed are an embarrassment for naturalism, which
denies both “the post-mortem survival of spirits” and “the bodily Resurrec-
tion” ascribed by orthodox Christians to Jesus, typically in defence of his
Deity. However, a bald statement alleging that 500 persons saw someone
to be alive, who was plausibly thought to have been killed, hardly counts
as evidence today, whatever its value might once have been thought to have.
No details are given about the place and time of this collective event, or about
the identity of any perceivers. My instincts on what is fable and what is not
are rather different from Swinburne’s,7 and I cannot account for these differ-
ences. The literature on the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection is voluminous,
and I will not attempt to address the many issues of evidence. However, as
this chapter develops, I will attempt to describe the “evidential dialectic” that
occurred in my life, which eventually allowed me to believe the dogmas of
the Resurrection and the Virgin Birth without feeling that my intellectual
integrity had been compromised or that I had been coerced into the position,
“Just believe!” This dialectic includes moments of “insight” that I consider
to have been intuitive knowing. This process has also contributed to my
epistemic view that religious knowledge may be objective but largely pri-
vate, whereas scientific knowledge is objective but public. I do not know how
such a position could be established—if saying this even makes sense—since
“establishing” some claim generally means that criteria for public knowledge
are satisfied.
Conversion
The most widely known religious experience involving intuitive knowing
must be conversion, a phenomenon whose significance was brought to the
attention of Western culture, especially its Academy, through the work of

William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience. Conversion narratives
became well known in the eighteenth century through the writings of John
Wesley (1703–91),8 but earlier groups, including Puritans, Quakers, and
other non-Conformists, had also encouraged this form of writing. Some of
the antecedents of these early modern converts are St. Paul and St. Augustine,
whose accounts were (and remain) well known.9 The significant changes in
spiritual outlook that are known as conversion seem to be complemented by
changes in outlook that are not spiritual in nature, and might be explained
in naturalistic terms; this gives impetus to looking for natural explanations
of spiritual conversion. However, people who give accounts of religious or
spiritual conversions generally implicate the largely invisible world of spirits,
although they do this in various ways.
People continue to report conversion experiences in terms that comply
with Christian dogmas. The descriptions of these experiences typically refer to
some claim that becomes so luminous that it is reported as knowledge or as a
certainty. Consider the following description of an experience of what seemed
to be certain knowledge of a central Christian dogma to its experiencer:
Case 1: Bradley10 writes at the age of seventeen about an experience that he

had a year earlier. “I was brought up as an Anglican, and am a ‘believer.’ I use
the word ‘believer’ advisedly, as I certainly did believe. However, last Octo-
ber I experienced what is known as conversion, and I moved from ‘belief ’ to
‘knowledge’ and absolute certainty (Job 19: I know that my Redeemer liveth.11)
I suddenly realized the implications of the ‘belief,’ and for the first time I appre-
ciated the great reality of God, as an immensely powerful force instead of a pale
metaphysical concept. It is difficult, and probably impossible, to adequately
describe my experience of the living God, but I find that the whole emphasis
of my life has changed from self to God. God, instead of occupying one day
a week, or one period an evening, now occupies every moment (as far as pos-
sible, since a perfect relationship with, and knowledge of, God is impossible).
In the face of my doubt and attacks, the amazing and undeniable change in
me is my first knowledge of ‘the peace of God which passes all understand-
ing.’ I would never previously have imagined this incredible calmness and total
absence of worry about anything at all. It is not until one has the experience
of God that one appreciates how naïve it is to describe God as a ‘projection’
of ourselves.12 This experience is far above any mystical self-induced ‘religious
ecstasy’ or the emotional response to a few ‘hallelujahs’ at an evangelistic rally.
This is something which no psychology could ever explain away. In the words
of Paul, ‘I have become utterly convinced that nothing . . . can separate me from
the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ ”
This case could have been placed in Chapter 2, where I discussed cases
of apprehending the reality of God’s existence, but he uses the language
of Christian conversion to describe his change of intellectual outlook, and

expresses his new convictions in relatively explicit Christian language. The
next case is even more explicitly Christian:
Case 2: Connor13 is an English man, writing at forty years of age. He describes

himself as having grown up in a family of strong evangelical background, where
churchgoing tended to be interdenominational although both parents were
basically Church of England. He writes: “At school my natural questioning
of beliefs led to a partial and then total rejection of faith. In my latter school
days an interest in psychic research brought me to an experience of a ‘super-
natural’ power released in a group of fellow students which convinced me of
the reality of unseen forces and the wisdom of not dabbling indiscriminately in
the occult, however innocent this may seem at first sight. My ‘conversion’ came
as the result of a service I attended where a powerful sermon preached on the
text of Revelation 12:11 confronted me most powerfully with the claims of the
scriptures, ‘And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and the word of
their testimony, and they loved not their lives unto death.’ It was not just that
I realized that God became involved in human affairs for our sake in the per-
son of Jesus but that I, too, am involved in the eternal struggle between Good
and Evil, and this struggle is both real and personal. The conviction that Christ
dealt with the problem of sin and effected the ground of a new relationship with
God was growing in my consciousness. The result of the experience led me to
prayer of deep confession, when I was aware that the Spirit of God was search-
ing my life, and confronting me with hidden sin, he now took responsibility
for. It was not until the next day, as I sat in a crowded London Underground
train, that I was aware of a very real presence which I knew to be the Living
Christ. I knew He wanted me to commit my life to Him, and I did so. The
conviction that He wanted me in full time ministry led me to seek ordination.
That was a beginning. The years since have presented their fair share of prob-
lems, difficulties, terrible failure, and doubts, yet in many ways the strength of
the conversion experience holds firm. I do believe in Jesus Christ as personal
Lord and Saviour.”
Christians do not always realize that the language they use to express their
spiritual convictions is rife with far-reaching Christian assumptions. Bradley
speaks about being inseparable from “the love of God in Christ Jesus our
Lord,” and Connor about believing in “Jesus Christ as personal Lord and
Saviour,” for example. If these statements are meant as more than a reiter-
ation of well-known clichés, they presuppose traditional Christian views on
the identity of Jesus. Lurking in the background of such language are ques-
tions about the way in which the spiritual beings that are mentioned can be
plausibly identified, and a second question about the way in which a spirit is
reidentified in any subsequent experience.
The “linguistic turn” that marks twentieth-century views of methodology

pays close attention to the influence upon descriptions of the cultural and
social context in which people are reared. This attention is especially impor-
tant in the study of religion, where the language that people use in offering
descriptions of their experience might be tailored to meet the expectations of
the social group of which they are a part, or the metaphysical assumptions
of the form of spirituality whose language they have learned. I cannot give
this topic the attention it deserves, apart from observing that extreme forms
of linguistic relativism cannot be coherently articulated, inasmuch as doing
so depends upon fixed meanings in the terms used to express this relativism.
On the other hand, however, religious communities are well known for teach-
ing their views by rote, perhaps accompanied by coercion in one form or
another, so that children reared in those environments competently use the
“referring language” of religion without knowing whether the things of which
they purport to speak do in fact exist. The challenge of providing accurate
descriptions of spiritual matters is as great as doing so in some other theory
that postulates the existence of unobservable objects (or beings). Religion is
often castigated for being insufficiently exact, and consequently susceptible to
being imposed on reality, but the same objection can be made to evolutionary
theory, psychoanalysis, atomism, and other theories that postulate unobserv-
able objects. The realization that different conceptual frameworks can be
imposed on data has heralded a new enthusiasm for conceptual relativism.
The next case of conversion gives expression to misgivings about the
language often used by Christians.
Case 3: Derrick14 identifies himself only as English. He writes: “I had been sent
to a Naval Psychiatric Hospital near Bristol for examination. I was examined by
a psychiatrist with thoroughness for some days and, at the end, written off as
an obsessional neurotic. This verdict I found frightening. I felt the bottom was
dropping out of my life, that I would no longer be responsible for myself, that
I should become a sort of marionette to be psychiatrically jogged into order
whenever my wires got too tangled, [and] that I should, in fact, cease to be
an individual altogether. I shall never forget the emptiness of feeling that those
ideas (whether they were true or false) produced. Perhaps it was an emptiness of
soul, a vacuum which had to be filled with something, if it was to be a soul at all;
it was as if sanity depended upon soul and if soul ceased, or was not filled, all life
would be emptied and sanity threatened. It was a bleak and bitter period which
lasted ten minutes, half an hour, one minute—I am not certain At the height
of the panic when I didn’t know what to do, I was conscious of, not a voice or
a presence in recognizable form but (perhaps) a certainty in living terms, a live
certainty which was as if there were an ‘I’ present outside me and directed at
me personally. It was not a great idea, a glorious hope, an enlightened wish; it
was personal, an ‘I,’ an ‘I’ for me, then (and now), [who] was certainly Christ.
I had been brought up a Christian but I had not practiced any Christianity for
many years. I had become a not very rational agnostic. I knew about Christ
but I had never known Him; but here he was. I was sure of it. Perhaps I looked
at Him, as the mystics say, and perhaps He said, ‘I can save you.’ I remember I
wriggled about a bit at that. ‘Save?’ That had an ugly sound—evangelicalism,
emotionalism, hooey. How could I square that with my life? How should I ever
be able to talk to my friends again or even meet them? What would my wife
make of it all? This fear proved quite groundless and any reverberations have
been entirely the fault of my own heavy-handedness, folly or insensitiveness.
If I was ‘saved’ I should be a sort of religious outcast, a fanatic, a bit dotty.
I decided I would go half-way with it, make a sort of side chapel of the whole
thing. My main life would go on as before and I would keep this ‘saved’ business
up my sleeve for emergencies. How would that do? . . . In the end I was clear
that a choice would have to be made—my old life and what I could make of it
on my own, or my whole life given to Him. Well I did choose Christ and felt
immediately secure, calm, refreshed and utterly renewed.”
To embrace the meaningfulness of “being saved,” or of the meaningfulness

of the distinction between “embracing Christ” and “merely knowing about
Christ,” is to embrace an ontological outlook that is controversial in Western
culture, and subject to misunderstanding, perhaps also ridicule and con-
tempt, as Derrick suggests. Derrick does not comment on his subsequent
psychiatric condition, and some might write off the value of his account
because of his neurosis, but his self-reflection in this account strikes me as
insightful. Some neurotics are especially attuned to their mental outlook, per-
haps excessively so, but they might also bring information to light that those
without neuroses miss. They might be even more attuned than “normal” peo-
ple to the reality of spirits.15 The modern worldview is much simpler than the
one presupposed in orthodox Christian faith, and, for some, more plausi-
ble for that reason alone. However, simplicity has been difficult to define,
which contributes to controversies over the relationship between simplicity
and truth.
I surmise that untold numbers of people have experiences—intuitive
knowing?—that could be plausibly categorized as conversion. The accounts
in this chapter are significantly narrower in scope than the “conversion
experiences” that William James chose to describe under that label.16
Jesus
I puzzled over the identity of Jesus for nearly 40 years. The freedom to think
and speak openly about this, however, only came with leaving home to go to
university, for my parents’ powerful influence over the expression of spiritual
ideas in our home prevented me from raising many of my questions and

from advancing possible views that I knew to be unorthodox. Other friends
from Christian homes, whose fathers were not ministers, spoke about sim-
ilar restrictions. This is how many Canadians grew up in the 1950s and
1960s, when Christian faith was clearly the religion of the majority of citizens.
Immanuel Kant evidently knew about religious coercion, for in an essay on
Enlightenment he observed that the “enlightened” outlook includes, among
other things, freedom from coercion from both dictators and pastors.17 Those
of us who live in Western democracies now have substantial freedom of
expression, and have little to fear from governments, although conflicts with
Middle Eastern and Asian countries are beginning to threaten our freedom
to discuss Islam. Individual freedom from the influences of ministers, priests,
and other religious authorities appears to be increasing, but exceptions could
not doubt be found. The “enlightenment” that Kant advocated has become
substantially true.
Questioning and criticizing Christian faith is now tolerated in Western
culture to such a degree that more tolerance is hardly imaginable—but athe-
ists who have been oppressed recently might disagree with me on this point.
If we were to imagine a continuum with atheism on one end and orthodox
Christianity on the other, we would find that virtually any view found along
this continuum can be openly advanced in public without serious political
interference. I do not mean that individuals who wish to take a public stance
on spiritual matters will not suffer from ostracism, hostility, and the loss of
positions in firms, but they will be protected by statutes and courts, often
quite generously, and will readily find others of like mind with whom they
may explore and publish their views in peace. The life of Jesus, which includes
his teachings and mission, is now debated to such an extent that almost any
imaginable view on the topic can be taken. The import of the orthodox view,
which has more or less dominated in Christian lands by virtue of religious
and political regimes that were influenced by Christianity, is so far-reaching
that it warrants scrutiny in as much freedom from political or religious inter-
ference as possible. Contexts in which political forces are still aligned with
Christian faith in the enforcement of its unique dogmas are not conducive
to the fair assessment of its remarkable claims. The loosening of the bond
between Christianity and the state is a gigantic benefit to Christianity itself,
although many Christians do not see the present situation as a boon. They do
not appreciate the political freedom that is needed for the critical, yet sym-
pathetic, stance needed in the assessment of claims of Divine intervention in
human affairs.
Those from my era who also took doctorates in philosophy of science,
and had comparable Christian backgrounds, cannot escape the questions that
arise at the point where the study of historical religions, analytic philosophy,
and scientific methodology meet. William James observed that although

numerous options on religion might be theoretically proposed, only a subset
of these would be “living options”18 for an individual. The only other options
on religion for me during my university education were naturalism or deism.
Spiritualism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and even Judaism were so mini-
mally in view in the Canadian and Australian universities in which I took my
degrees between 1963 and 1973 that I did not consider them seriously. This
says something about me, I suppose, but it also speaks about the cultural
milieu in which I lived. The existential realities of a particular person’s life
are a function of their home, their community, their nation, their ethnicity,
and other factors that are well known to those familiar with the social sci-
ences. Western culture has even moved during the decades since 1972, when
I began to teach. Students now have even more freedom of thought than
I enjoyed, and possibly more spiritual options as well, although the strength
of naturalism in philosophy seems as great as it was four or five decades ago.
I am speaking most specifically about the situation here in Canada, but I
surmise that more freedom of thought is also being enjoyed elsewhere.
I remember thinking when I was 18 or 19 that the evidence for the
Resurrection of Jesus consisted primarily of the information adduced in its
Scriptures, and in the fact that an organization had come into existence
known as the Church. The existence of the Church did not impress me much
as evidence for its alleged origins, just as I was not impressed with the exis-
tence of the Mormon Church as evidence for its alleged origins in Joseph
Smith’s angelic encounter, so the most psychologically significant question
for me was the accuracy of the Bible. In this I not only revealed my Protes-
tant upbringing, of course, but I also echoed a doubt that has been openly
discussed for nearly 200 years, with varying degrees of freedom, in countries
where orthodox Christian faith once flourished. Even if I had reflected on
my typical Protestant outlook, however, I would not have been psycholog-
ically capable of giving the existence of the Church more epistemic weight
than I did. Someone else could have insisted—as a Catholic friend did—
that I change the evidential weight of the Church’s existence, but the pursuit
of knowledge (or substantiated opinion) in a person takes its own course.
I doubt that I would have had my mind changed if a dozen friends had sug-
gested that I start my assessment of Christian dogmas by considering the
Church and its Tradition, rather than the Bible. The epistemic path that one
takes in life is a curious succession of states whose features we incompletely
grasp, although the changes that occur can be astonishing, even to ourselves.
The causes of these changes are partly known to us, I assume, and partly
unknown. I was impressed with the criticism of the Bible that flourished in
Protestant academic circles, but I cannot pretend that my knowledge of this
was deep, since my focus of attention in university was first on mathematics

and psychology, and then on philosophy. Theology was a “hobby” as I strug-
gled to secure an integrated view of life. I read some of the famous German
theologians from the early part of the twentieth century, including Bultmann,
Brunner, Barth, Tillich, and Bonhoeffer, as well as other theologians whose
books were sold in the fine theological bookstore that served the seminary of
the United Church of Canada in Winnipeg, as well as its educated public.
When I embraced the interpretive stance of those who demythologize the
Bible, the question concerning the identity of Jesus had its own distinctive
answer—orthodox views were implausible because the events on which the
doctrine of his Deity could be based, including his Virgin Birth and Res-
urrection, had not occurred. I did not think that such a strange event as
a Resurrection, alleged to have occurred nearly 2,000 years ago, could leave
some significant causal trace beyond that already known, extending to my era.
I consequently thought that all the relevant evidence for the Resurrection had
already been gathered, and that the little evidence that Christendom possessed
constituted all the evidence that it could acquire. I also thought that nothing
would ever change my mind. I found that declaring that I was no longer a
Christian to be unbelievably freeing, and saw my natural inclination to aban-
don Christian theism as consistent with my disinclination to embrace any
robust form of spirituality. I considered the fact that virtually all the philoso-
phers that I met were atheists or agnostics as providing evidence that the
epistemic conclusions I was coming to about Christian theism were reason-
able. I admired the egalitarian and benevolent ethic that Christianity officially
espoused, and had no intention of ever abandoning those ideals; moreover,
I thought that I could embrace those ideals without embracing the embarrass-
ing metaphysic of Christianity. I was not an atheist exactly, for I wondered
why anything existed at all, even if it was well ordered, which I questioned,
but I considered the Christian dogmas that were rooted in specific histori-
cal claims about Jesus to be mythological and the claim that God acts in the
world to be epistemically indefensible. The independence that the Academy
encourages, which perhaps became especially pronounced in Canada during
the 1960s, allowed me to develop my own views. I felt great freedom in con-
sidering various philosophical positions, including those that marked a form
of analytic philosophy that was still strongly influenced by logical positivism.
I admired the tactic of making ontological claims “disappear,” which was a
significant objective of many of the philosophers whose writings I read.19
I greatly admired the writings of Russell, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Goodman,
Wilfrid Sellars, Rorty, and others. To varying degrees, these authors outline
methods by which common-sense beliefs and even the common-sense frame-
work itself can be replaced with something much more sophisticated, which
for me meant that it was coherently articulated in scientific language and

supported by evidence. I found a community of university students who had
many of the questions that I had and were reaching similar conclusions.
I was 20 or 21 when I first met someone who reported that a being had
appeared to him whom he considered to be Jesus Christ. I was astonished
by this allegation, but was too intimidated by the paranormal nature of it
to examine the report closely. I met several people during the next five years
who reported similar “encounters,” which I saw as calling into question the
claim that all of the problematic New Testament narratives could be plausibly
demythologized. I easily dismissed the trustworthiness of the Old Testament
narratives, but the Greco-Roman flavor of some of the New Testament nar-
ratives seemed to make them at least worthy of discussion, even if it was only
to conclude that their value lay in their mythical power. After my time in
Adelaide, when I began doctoral studies (in 1970), I began to develop some
convictions about spiritual matters and became a participant in the activities
of the Church, but I was uncertain about many of the dogmas of Christian
faith, including the identity of Jesus. The doctrine of the Trinity struck me as
absurd.
The research that I did on visions of Jesus, beginning in 1988, unques-
tionably gave me a deeper appreciation of the claim that Jesus is now a living
being, and also drew me closer to what I now consider to be his presence.
In Visions of Jesus (published in 1997) I defend the epistemic significance of
ongoing visionary experiences for Christian faith, arguing that they modestly
corroborate the claims found in the New Testament about various people hav-
ing seen Jesus alive after his death. This argument undermines the cogency
of the claim that the extraordinary parts of the New Testament all need to be
demythologized. My position does not commit me to the view that nothing
warrants being demythologized, so I incorporate various positions elaborated
by biblical critics. I believed at this point in my life (1997) that I had finally
settled questions about the Resurrection, but another event occurred several
years later that suggested otherwise.
In 1981 or 1982, I became interested in the Shroud of Turin, and then
began to follow some of the debate about its age and its possible connec-
tion with the burial of Jesus. It was more of a hobby than an area in which
I could claim expertise within the community of Shroud investigators, which
now embraces more than two dozen academic disciplines, although the gen-
eral problem of evidence on which I had written my doctoral dissertation is
obviously related to virtually everything that is being said about the Shroud.
As other events were unfolding in my personal religious life, I began to see
that the Shroud and the visions of Jesus could be possible avenues of sup-
plementary evidence for the Resurrection. In 1996, I gave my first illustrated
lecture on the Shroud, by which time I had come to accept the Shroud as
the authentic burial cloth of Jesus. In 2000, a rare opportunity to view the
Shroud was given by its keepers, and I prepared a paper for presentation at
a conference in Italy on the Shroud. I also booked a stop in Turin to see the
famous Shroud. Those who organized the Shroud Exhibition in Turin that
year made it possible for visitors to reserve a specific time to see it, thus elim-
inating the long line-ups that characterized many previous exhibitions. On a
beautiful August morning (August 25), I walked straight into the Cathedral
of St. John the Baptist in Turin and found myself before the Shroud, which
was hanging only about 12 feet away. An extraordinary thing happened to me
as I stood there, for “someone” spoke to me. My mind was overwhelmed with
three specific claims: First: “The Resurrection is real, Phillip,” then, “If this
man had such an extraordinary ‘ending’ to his (natural) life, the extraordi-
nary beginning attributed to him is possible,” and finally, “Why would such
a man die?” I say that my mind was overwhelmed because the impact was at
the cognitive level. Of course, these cognitive insights had an impact on my
whole being, and I fell on my knees to worship the one whose image I believe
was present before me. However, the impact was initially (and primarily) cog-
nitive, and only minimally emotional. These “insights” had the quality of the
experience in Ewelme that I described in the Introduction above—“intuitive
knowledge,” but “knowledge” about something that I had no opportunity to
verify empirically. This experience in Turin elicited an even stronger impres-
sion that “I had been taken to school” in the experience in Ewelme, and
that “intuitive knowledge” is possible about matters that are meant to remain
largely hidden.
The first “insight,” about the Resurrection, surprised me. I thought I had
dealt fully with its historicity, but the fact that I felt even more conviction
about it after seeing the Shroud suggested to me that I still had doubts—
doubts that even I might not have fully known about. Perhaps these were
remnants from my outlook years earlier when I considered the Resurrection
to be a mere myth? The fact that the Virgin Birth became credible was a
moment of truth, for I immediately knew that I had never been able to
embrace it. Christmas means much to me now, and the doctrine of the Incar-
nation has become the source of much wonder and awe in my life. The third
“thought” reinforced the conviction that the death of Jesus was the death of
God. That a man, if we may call him that, with such an extraordinary begin-
ning and ending, allowed himself to die, indicated to me that his death has
the significance that orthodox Christian thought has affirmed for 2,000 years.
I was also impressed with the thought that such an extraordinary man was
not overtaken by enemies who somehow managed to outsmart him. In other
words, I felt that he willingly embraced death, and performed acts that he
knew would inevitably lead to his crucifixion. When I left Italy at the con-
clusion of the conference and reflected on what had happened in Turin, I felt
that I had unknowingly been on a pilgrimage. The event in Turin seems to
me now to have been the culmination of a long effort to secure conviction
about the question, “Who is Jesus?”
I suspect that many who are brought up in the Church would like to have
“conviction about things unseen,” but for one reason or another we find that
we do not, and also have no way of knowing whether such conviction can
be found. Moreover, if it can, we do not know what part (if any) we might
have in securing it. The fact that conviction is lacking in our lives is often
seen more clearly when it emerges, for then we are in a position to compare
our new state of being with our former one. One kind of “faith,” perhaps,20 is
present when we find ourselves attracted by the possibility of the Divine, and
then orient ourselves so that we might be acted upon to bring to us the kind of
conviction that only God can supply. As long as we are waiting for something
to happen, we only have the wistful longing that marks the first kind of faith.
The first kind of faith is often exhibited, I surmise, when people stand up and
repeat one of the historic creeds, but are not sure that they really believe in
the Creator God, or, more likely, that they really believe in “Jesus Christ, our
Lord, who was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary,” and
so on. What these “faithful people” eventually find, however, is that they are
infused with conviction, at least about some things belonging to the invisible
world. I realize that I am conjecturing here on the basis of reviewing my own
adult experience of more than 40 years, and of discussing with others their
journeys of faith. This way of looking at personal pilgrimages was confirmed
for me by a Cistercian abbot who addresses the nature of Christian expe-
rience. Abbot Cuthbert Butler (1858–1934) approvingly quotes Augustine
Baker, who wrote:
In regard of the understanding, there is a divine light communicated, not

revealing or discovering any new verities, but affording a most firm clear assur-
ance and experimental perception of those verities of Catholic religion which
are the objects of our faith which assurance the soul perceives to be divinely
communicated to her.21
Butler emphasizes that the form of contemplation he is describing here is

intended for every baptized Christian,22 and I have taken comfort in the
thought that my path has probably not been extraordinary. However, I do
not meet many in the Church who have been converted from a Bultmannian
perspective in which Christianity is unburdened of its historical claims; I
continue to meet those who have essentially become disciples of Bultmann,
perhaps reluctant ones.
The two challenges faced by people oriented toward a scientifically based

naturalism, as I was, is to discern whether something of value is worth search-
ing for in orthodox Christian faith. If the answer to this is “Yes,” the second
challenge is to wait and see if our wistful hopes will be replaced by convic-
tions. Some issues of orthodox faith remain on the “back burner” for me,
where conviction has either not come at all or has not fully come. I consider
evidence to be important in considering these challenges—I recognize that
some people are graciously given conviction in the absence of much, if any,
evidence—but the individual conviction that these unseen matters are true
might not be wholly dependent on such evidence. The Church must address
the question of the historical authenticity of its claims in order to ensure
that what it teaches has basic credibility, and here evidence is vitally involved.
However, an individual’s search for spiritual truth, while often embracing
what the Church teaches about the origins of its faith, might go beyond the
mere probabilities that the search for historical authenticity inevitably turns
up. This conviction, in my view, is something that only God can provide, and
when it occurs it is intuitive knowing, comparable to the intellectual vision
celebrated by St Augustine of Hippo.
My confidence that settled beliefs about Christian dogmas are not needed
for divine favor derives from the mysterious pilgrimage I found myself walk-
ing. One of the contributors to the Alister Hardy collection describes an
experience with which I resonate:
Case 4: Annabelle,23 a Scottish woman, writes at sixty-one years of age: “I was

born into a Scottish Presbyterian home, and grew up attending Sunday school
and Bible class. At that time the Bible made little impact on me. It seemed a
strange book of things and people in a different sphere of life. The characters,
St. John, St. Peter, and Christ himself, did not seem real people to me. When
the time came for me to become a full member of the Church and attended
a communicant’s class, I was terribly worried. I was being told that I should
believe, and I was in fear that I might be asked, at the ceremony preparatory
to taking Communion, to state that I believed the Creed. To me I could only
accept what I had been taught. How could I know that it was true? I became
a Sunday school teacher myself and that set me to studying the Bible more
carefully, but as I taught I was always conscious of a certain lack of assurance
in myself. One day I picked up a book in the library, Ecce Homo by Sir John
Seeley, and from then I read all the books on Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus the man,
that I could lay my hands on and I loved this man Jesus. But was he the Son of
God? Having two older brothers who were agnostic didn’t help. I have always
had an awareness of God; my doubts concerned Jesus Christ. I was engaged
in various Church activities but was still plagued with this uncertainty, even
though I knew I wanted to believe in God and in Jesus Christ as his son. This
uncertainty persisted for a long time until one day, recalling to memory the
first eighteen verses of St. John, Chapter 1, I thought ‘dead words.’ As I started
to repeat them again, without hesitation, the meaning suddenly burst in on
my mind. ‘The Word was with God, the Word was God, the Word became
flesh.’ A tremendous joy overwhelmed me; I knew that God was, and that in
Christ mankind could really know him. I felt I had passed from darkness into
light. ‘In him was Life and that life was the light of men.’ There are still a good
many questions unanswered and present space programmes create more, but
for myself I cannot not believe in God, despite the tragedy and pain which
innocent people suffer, despite the terrible evil in the heart of man, and despite
the seeming silence of God throughout it all. I am aware of him in everything
around me; in him I live and move and have my being.”
Another contributor to the Alister Hardy collection writes about “being

spoken to” in a way with which I relate:
Case 5:24 Rebecca is an English educational psychologist, writing at sixty-three.

She describes herself as having had a Church of England background; then
became “a vaguely Christian agnostic” at university; then a Roman Catholic
at thirty-one; then, at forty, under the influence of Marxism, a professed athe-
ist; then agnostic; and then at fifty-eight a Roman Catholic again. She writes:
“When I had reached the point of wishing to return to the Catholic Church,
there was one great obstacle in the way: I had to give up a relationship which
the Church forbade. This involved giving great pain to another person, and
it was this that weighed heavily with me, rather than my own renunciation.
I had written to a priest whom I had met in the past, and he had written back
quite gently telling me that I knew what I ought to do, and urging me to pray
about it. My reaction to his letter when it arrived was, ‘Of course, he has to
say that. He doesn’t know that I have prayed and have always seemed to find
the answer that I cannot inflict this cruelty whatever the consequences to me.’
As the day went on, I could not forget the priest’s words, and the action he
proposed became a possible matter of consideration, though revoltingly cruel.
I decided to go into a Catholic Church that afternoon and there, before the
Blessed Sacrament, open my heart to God once again, and he must decide.
I expected it to be like the other times. It was not. I prayed, ‘Can I crucify
another human being?’ Instantly and very clearly the answer came, ‘Do you
prefer to crucify me?’ There could be only one response. Somehow I was given
the courage to carry out what I had to do, face to face with the person I had to
hurt. It was the most difficult thing I have ever done.”
The precise phenomenological characteristics of “being spoken to” are diffi-

cult to describe, but it is not audible language, and neither is it comparable to
recollection of something heard before. It is surprising but not threatening,
at least not for me, and it carries a phenomenological quality very different
from something we simply imagine.
I have already offered the view that science and spirituality purport to
identify and describe matters that are objectively real, in terms that are intel-
ligible to us, but they differ inasmuch as science is primarily public, whereas
spirituality is primarily personal. This is a conjecture that has been precipi-
tated by the experiential accounts in this book, especially my own, and also
the accounts of the experiences of others in my earlier books, Visions of Jesus
and God and Other Spirits. As I have pondered the changes in spiritual out-
look that have taken place in my life, I have marveled at their modesty (but
significance to me) in relation to all that which the Christian church wishes
to affirm as a completed faith. With each step of intuitive knowing, if this is
what I have been experiencing, I have been brought closer to early Christian
creeds, such as the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed, but these creeds
seem so incomplete compared with the claims of Protestants who say that
they believe the entire Bible, or those of devout Catholics who say that they
fully embrace the Catholic Faith as described, say, in their Catechism. Perhaps
something still awaits me, but at this point I cannot imagine what that would
be. Each of the “insights” along my personal journey, such as “knowledge”
of the Virgin Birth, seemed so far outside my reach prior to receiving them
that I could not imagine what believing these claims would be like. Another
matter that has surprised me is that so much time elapsed from being a deist
to becoming a Christian theist—I appear to have moved so little, in Christian
terms, in about four decades.
If I am accurate in thinking that science and spirituality differ in the degree
to which they are public, the justificatory stance adopted by science will not
generally apply to spirituality. Only those features of spirituality that are pub-
lic will satisfy the criteria for evidence articulated in the sciences. Science,
by its very nature, advances claims that many people are able to corrobo-
rate or verify. If spirituality fails to exhibit this public face, we should not
wonder that communities that are committed to scientific inquiry find spiri-
tual claims problematic. We might understandably wonder why the Cosmos
is this way. One possibility is that the Deity, aided by beings whose roles are
obscure and thwarted by other beings whose natures are destructive, wishes to
develop a private relationship with each human being, which includes puzzles
that relate to the strange “world” that He inhabits. He then patiently waits
until we solve the puzzles and are prepared to embrace some “insights” deriv-
ing from them that move us along. Religious experience suggests that God is
not at our beck and call, but that he will respond to each heartfelt inquiry
at some point in time. The position I am articulating here about a possible
difference between science and spirituality is a philosophical view touching
broadly on matters of metaphysics and epistemology, and shares all the chal-
lenges that such claims in philosophical discourse typically possess. As such,
it is open to both corroborating and undermining evidence, but evidence for
philosophical positions is slow to emerge.
My views that ongoing Christic visions and the Shroud of Turin offer
public evidence for the Christian faith are controversial. Uncertainty about
the nature of evidence itself is part of the basis for the controversy, espe-
cially misgivings about the view that spiritual claims are subject to evidence.
In addition, some people within the Church are unhappy with the thought
that the Bible might be profitably supplemented with evidence for its extraor-
dinary claims. Some Christians recoil at the suggestion that present-day
apparitions might support biblical accounts of post-Resurrection encoun-
ters, whereas others in the Church want the visionary experiences of only
“approved mystics” added to the New Testament list. Such positions are
ultimately rooted in deep-seated philosophical views about religion, sci-
ence, evidence, perceptual-cognitive experience, mythology, hermeneutics,
and much more. I have offered cautious views elsewhere about the signifi-
cance of visionary experiences,25 giving us hints of a largely hidden world.
The Shroud of Turin is much more “concrete” than visionary experiences,
but the Shroud might be relevant to the Resurrection in a most surprising
way. If its image is that of Jesus, then it possibly offers evidence for the dis-
appearance of a body in just the way needed for a Resurrection that no one
witnessed, but if its image is not that of Jesus, it shows us the kind of evi-
dence the Church needs in this skeptical age but does not have.26 The Shroud
either reinforces a claim from the ancient world, or it undermines this claim
and puts Christian faith at even more risk than several centuries of NT crit-
icism have done. These two matters of evidence—Christic visions and the
Shroud—not only have had a profound impact upon me, as I have explained,
but they also introduce evidence with a public face. Critical reflection on the
possibility of evidence for spiritual claims is theoretically open to resolution,
but passions run so high on spiritual matters that some epistemic principles
must be found outside spirituality before they can be applied in it.
The Alister Hardy Research Center includes the following account from
an Australian woman, whose experience occurred during sleep. Deborah had
been a practicing Christian for about three years:
Case 6 Deborah:27 “Suddenly, the text, ‘I am the resurrection and the life’
from the Christian Bible was shining in my head, and enlightenment as to the
precise meaning of this was received in a way that knowledge had never come
to me before; that is, grounds and conclusion were perceived simultaneously.
The explanation was, to me, perfect, and even now, were the entire universe
to unite in logical refutation of the truth of that enlightenment I should not

be moved to doubt it. There is no way, through the media we have at our
disposal, of passing on the revelation as I received it, and this was the first
thought that occurred to me when I awoke. I remember feeling a deep regret
about this; however, through the processes of conscious thought I was able
to piece together a very faulty, shadowy premise of the fact ‘revealed.’ What
was extraordinary to me was that to do this I had to draw upon information
I’d been storing away in my mind over the years since early adulthood when
I first became interested in human physiology, biochemistry, physics, at those
extremely minor levels which prompt the lay-man to read avidly articles on
topics from such fields, published in ‘popular’ magazines.”
Deborah’s account addresses claims and the grounds on which they are based
in a form that is familiar to everyone who is exposed to science. Her inability
to pass this on is a feature that is consistent with my conjecture that spiritual
claims seldom have, and perhaps are not meant to have, the characteristic of
science, as public knowledge.
A common reaction to reports of certain kinds of spiritual experience is
that some neurosis or psychosis is their source. Psychotic people sometimes
refer extensively to spiritual matters, and the bizarre way in which they might
do so has left the impression that religion and psychosis are closely connected.
Spiritual beliefs can be a prominent feature in mental illness, to which psy-
chiatrists and psychiatric researchers can attest from their encounters with
patients. However, many spiritual people exhibit no signs of mental illness,
and a blanket explanation of such experience as due to psychosis seems unsup-
portable. Still, religious experiences that are deemed to be “extreme” might
be thought to be caused or associated with mental illness in some way. Tests
been devised for use by psychological therapists to detect particular mental
disorders, and the nature of questions touch upon matters that are found
in spiritual experience, thereby reinforcing the view, perhaps unintentionally,
that peculiar experiences are indicative of a mental disorder. Neuropsychiatric
interviews pose questions about hearing things that other people could not
hear, such as voices, or about having thoughts put into one’s mind. Reviews of
the experiences I have related in this book suggest that some of their reporters
might suffer from some psychosis, according to such tests. Critics of religion
sometimes accuse the anonymous sources of accounts of spiritual experience
in such unflattering terms, and I have shared some of my own experiences in
solidarity with those whose experiences I have recounted here and in other
published writings. Naturalists have rebutted the other traditional stratagems
for advancing the existence of God—as Creator and Designer, as Sustainer
of the universe, as Miracle-worker, and so on—and when experience is pro-
posed, naturalists point to possible mental imbalances that might be at work.
Naturalism, whether wittingly or otherwise, seeks to cut off every possible

avenue for an argument to the reality of spirits. Vociferous protests against
charges of being mentally imbalanced are themselves apt to be seen as evi-
dence of such imbalance, just as vociferous denials to having had a heart
attack are taken as evidence, seemingly, that such an attack has occurred.
No single experience or single experiencer can be protected from this accusa-
tion; only an overwhelming number of cases deriving from experiencers who
evidently exhibit mental stability, by virtue of their daily interactions with
family and fellow workers over many years, can repair the doubt that has
been generated over spiritual experience by overenthusiastic supporters of the
psychiatric sciences. In this respect, the spiritual experiences of those who are
not “professional mystics,” but interact freely and “normally” with others in
society, are now preferable to those of people who belong to organizations
that encourage and help to cultivate spiritual experience by ascetic practices.
I have argued elsewhere that confirming evidence for some ordinary fea-
ture of a report does not extend to the extraordinary feature of that report.28
This principle indicates that we cannot obtain evidence for the miraculous
aspects of a religion simply by corroborating the features of a reported event
that are uncontroversial. For example, we might find confirming evidence
for St. Luke’s description of the rulers and satraps in first-century Judea and
its surrounding areas, but this evidence does not contribute appreciably to
Luke’s claim that Jesus was born of a virgin. The plausibility of this principle
concerning confirming evidence can be seen by considering someone’s report
of having been abducted by an alien, who is later questioned about “ordi-
nary” matters at the time of the event, such as details about the weather and
other public events occurring just prior to the alleged abduction. Accuracy
about “ordinary” matters does not provide significant weight for the report
of the “extraordinary” event itself. My epistemic claim here has its plausibil-
ity strengthened by the fact that the weight of evidence is generally deemed
to be as I have described it. I am not suggesting that common assessments
of evidential strength or relevance cannot be overridden, but I do think that
they are the point at which critical discussion must begin.
If the existence of alien beings were to be rendered credible by (other)
evidence, this evidence would add its weight to the claim that some people
have experienced kidnapping (also known popularly as abduction). Whether
such an event should be regarded as a violation of a law of nature is unclear.
I have argued for the existence of “spirits”—to stay with traditional language
for a moment—although I take no position on their ultimate ontological
structure, or their incompatibility with what physics will uncover. Their exis-
tence strengthens the claim that the conception of Jesus in Mary was brought
about by the Holy Spirit, but this dogmatic claim is not as well supported
as the claim about the Resurrection of Jesus. Inasmuch as (public) evidence
for the Resurrection can be found, whose occurrence might be more proba-
ble than the critics of historical Christian faith generally allow, accepting the
Resurrection might not be irrational, even though the natural order has been
disrupted. Intuitive knowing—if that is what I experienced when I saw the
Shroud of Turin in 2000—concerning the Resurrection of Jesus seemingly
gave me “certainty” about an empirical matter that is not devoid of some
(public) evidence. My own experience inclines me to the view that intuitive
knowing could occur with respect to events whose (public) evidential sup-
port varies substantially. Each instance of intuitive knowing has the epistemic
“feel” of knowledge—a cognitive state that is not (appreciably) affective—
but we seemingly cannot know that we know, we only believe that we know.29
This epistemic stance allows us (personally) to set aside particular dogmatic
claims as settled, even though these issues are not settled for others.
The Eucharist
Some experiences of intuitive knowing touch on topics on which
Christendom is divided, such as the nature of the Eucharist, and so call
into question the claim that such experience is genuine knowing. If someone
claims to know that the bread and wine used in the Eucharist have become the
body and blood of Christ, the implication is that this change in substance has
indeed happened. These issues have divided Protestants from their older con-
freres, whose faith and practice comes substantially from a Tradition found
in the early centuries of Christian faith. Differences can be found among the
Protestants, of course, for Lutherans have traditionally held that Jesus is really
present in the Eucharist, and Calvin seems to have taught a similar posi-
tion. Before the Bible existed, a Church existed that had common practices,
that worshipped in ways that were peculiarly Christian, that reverenced their
clergy who generally belonged to three recognized orders (deacon, priest, and
bishop), that had an ethic based upon charity toward all, that construed “the
dead in Christ” as on-going participants in the life of the Church on Earth,
and that considered the death of Jesus of Nazareth to be an event in which
his followers could vicariously participate through the Eucharist. The ancient
churches, deriving from Jerusalem, Ephesus, Antioch, Rome, Alexandria, and
other locales, place the Eucharist at the center of Christian worship. Grounds
for doing so can be found in spiritual experience.
An English man, of Greek Orthodox faith, describes his experience of the
Eucharist as follows:
Case 7 Gerald:30 “Over sixty years ago when attending a retreat at my Catholic
school as a boy of about twelve, I was convinced of the Actual Presence of
Christ at the Altar when the bread and wine was consecrated. . . . I felt His
actual transference into the substance blessed. The heightened mystery was not
only the certainty of his presence, but the miraculous entry into the consecrated
material. I have never so definitively re-experienced this at communion—the
deep impression lingers that such conversion has taken place.”
I suppose that responses might differ to Gerald’s report because it occurred

when he was a boy of only 12, and his capacity to deal with a deep theological
matter might not be thought trustworthy. On the other hand, he remembered
it clearly some 60 years later.
Although Protestant churches generally take issue with the way in which
the Catholic Church understands and teaches the Mass (or Eucharist or The
Lord’s Supper), they construe participation in this rite to be a holy matter,
not to be taken lightly or irreverently. Some radical Protestant churches tol-
erate the celebration of The Lord’s Supper by laity among themselves, in the
absence of any clergy, but the practice does not appear to be common. Bib-
lical instruction on the rite does not describe the conditions for its “proper”
celebration, and Protestants who are especially anticlerical take advantage of
the paucity of biblical detail concerning the Eucharist. The source of the
Tradition’s view that some substantial change takes place in the Mass is mys-
terious, but we must respect the fact that various views about the cosmos vied
for ascendancy when vital dogmas were debated. The atomism that now per-
vades our scientific culture was present in the ancient world, but it competed
relatively unsuccessfully with the views of Plato, Aristotle, and “the magical
tradition.”31 The last of these is known for the view that magic might trans-
form base metals, such as lead, into precious ones, such as gold or silver. The
magical tradition comports most readily with the Christian doctrine of tran-
substantiation, but the Aristotelian view of nature has also been pressed into
service as a way of making this doctrine intelligible. Aristotle’s view capitalizes
on the common-sense belief that a thing is not simply the sum of its proper-
ties. A sugar cube, for example, is not simply the sum of its cubicalness, its
sweetness, its color (whiteness, say), and other properties; rather these proper-
ties are said to be found in something whose reality is not observed using any
of our senses, but is understood by our intellect to undergird these properties.
The term “substratum” has been adopted to denote the something undergird-
ing a thing’s properties. This position allows the Church to defend its unusual
doctrine by asserting that the substantial change occurs in the substratum,
so the bread and wine blessed in the Eucharist appear (to the senses) to be
unchanged.
The NT itself contains texts that comport well with the Tradition,
although Protestants often choose to overlook them. First in importance of
these texts are those that describe the Last Supper, where Jesus took bread
and wine and said of them, respectively, “This is my body” and “This is my
blood.” I imagine that the varied meanings of “is” (and its equivalents in other
languages) were not lost on the ancients, and some among them surmised that
the “is” in these statements was the “is” of identity. The demonstrative pro-
noun on the left-hand side of the identity statement purports to denote what
the (incomplete) description on the right-hand side also denotes—a body and
its blood. The “is” of predication, as in “The sugar cube is white,” is perhaps
more common than the “is” of identity, but the two senses cannot be con-
fused with each other any more than either of them can be confused with the
“is” of existence, as in “There is a tame tiger in our yard.” The “is” of identity
is paradigmatically found when we use a proper name and a definite descrip-
tion to refer to a single object, as in “Mount Everest is the tallest mountain
on Earth.” This sentence could be expanded to say that the name “Mount
Everest” denotes the identical object as the definite description, “the tallest
mountain on Earth.” The immediate implication of the words of Jesus is that
the bread that he broke and shared is his body, and the wine is his blood. This
makes no literal sense, of course, but the fact that it was said suggests that we
are to contemplate its peculiarity and its mystery.
Another level of meaning needs to be considered when contemplating the
mystery of what Jesus initiated, as well as its continuing mystery as the words
are repeated in the Eucharistic rite. If we let our thought digress for a moment
to performative utterances we begin to see the special nature of some formal
verbal acts. John Austin observed that performative utterances are generally
in the first person, that they use indicative verbs in the present tense, and
are typically said in a socially structured situation where the utterance has
meaning.32 The judge in court who says to the convicted felon, “I order you
to be executed,” thereby gives the order, which others then carry out, and the
grown child who audibly says to his dying mother, “I promise to care for my
younger sister,” thereby promises that care, and so on. Austin’s work is now
well known, and has been found to have wide application. Of course, circum-
stances occur in which people who have no capacity to order an execution or
the intention to carry out a promise utter words that appear to be orders or
promises, but the “misfiring” of set phrases only reinforces their significance
when they are properly used. A lawyer who has just become a judge might
practice the dreadful sentence a time or two in her chambers before actually
passing sentence in court, and a son who intends to make a false promise to
his mother might say the sentence to himself in advance of his visit so that
its intonation is just right. Such verbal acts are not performative utterances.
The fact that a particular sentence functions primarily as a serious perfor-
mative utterance does not ensure that this is the only way in which it will
be used.
Although the statement of Jesus, “This is my body,” does not have the
first-person form that performative utterances typically take, contexts can be
found in which statements similar to it function as performatives. We could
plausibly construe Jesus’ remarks during his suffering on the cross to his
mother and to the disciple John, both of whom were present as Jesus spoke,
in this light. In saying to John, “Behold your mother,” in the presence of
Mary, and in saying to Mary, “Behold your son,” in the presence of John, he
is establishing a relationship between them that is not part of nature, since
Mary is not John’s mother. In these utterances, he is giving expression to his
final wishes of filial care and affection, and time is of the essence. If he had
said to John, “This is your mother,” the impact would have been the same.
He would have used the “is” of identity, but to interpret this sentence only at
the level of grammar is to miss the act—the performative—that this remark
would have accomplished.
So it is with the Eucharist. He is about to submit his incomparable Being
to disgusting and profane acts, ending in a horrible death. In saying of the
bread whose simulacra will be eaten in countless subsequent acts of remem-
brance, “This is my body,” he establishes that to eat the bread will be to
participate in his death, and to commune with him. Paul goes on to say
that to take the Eucharistic elements in an unworthy manner is to profane
the body and blood, and in explaining that such profanity possibly causes
sickness or premature death he ascribes awful powers to those elements.33
Something has changed, for ordinary bread and wine do not ordinarily cause
sickness or death. In the first Eucharistic meal, Jesus makes the eating of the
bread a communing with his body by a “performative act,” and the (lesser)
priests who function now under his august office as Most High Priest34 do
the same, but to fuss over the (mere) locution is to miss the illocutionary
act that is accomplished. No insight is added by saying that the change hap-
pens at the level of the substratum, for such an attempt at explanation diverts
our attention to metaphysical matters that exceed our created powers—we
do not know how holiness becomes attached to such simple things as bread
and wine, or to people and the sacred rites they perform, for that matter.
But maybe it helps to speculate about the metaphysics, so as to overcome
obstacles to accepting “intuitive knowledge.” I cannot quite identify with the
descriptions of a transfer of substance offered by Gerald and Jeremy (above),
but I “know” that the Eucharistic elements are holy. However, I am unsure
about how this happens and why my conviction is the way it is. Has a
(Holy) spirit “mingled” with ordinary bread and wine? Do I have intuitive
knowledge?
The next account comes from a British woman with Roman Catholic
background, writing in her late thirties:
Case 8: Gertrude35 writes: “It is extremely difficult to differentiate between

‘feelings’ of profound reverence, awe, joy, peace, and an uplifting of my spirit,
and the greater experience of a moment of insight, the awareness of the pres-
ence of God.” She reports that at about twenty years of age, while sitting in a
garden on a summer’s afternoon, “I became conscious I was not alone—I knew
God was there with me, and it seemed ‘quite ordinary’ that He should be, and
I felt very happy.” She writes further about an event some years later on an
unforgettable morning: “I was kneeling at the altar rail and waiting for com-
munion. I can only say it was as if I heard his footsteps and that I knew He
was standing before us. I believe that both of these experiences were moments
of insight, different from feelings.”
Here we have “intuitive knowing” marked not by any intense emotions but by
insights that differ from feelings. These terse descriptions of empirical events
are too incomplete to be construed as “scientific,” but the events add to the
general evidence for this form of spiritual experience.
By way of contrast, another man writes about his “unfailing ability” to
detect the presence of consecrated elements. Maynard identifies his vocation
as the director of a Chemical Engineering firm.
Case 9: Maynard,36 with French and British background, writes at forty-nine

years of age: “Although brought up as a Roman Catholic, I do not accept all
tenets with blind acceptance. Though a weekly churchgoer, I would hardly
be accepted as a ‘Good’ Catholic. I have a most enquiring mind and do not
accept everything as Gospel. My belief that Christ is truly present under the
appearance of bread and wine in the Sacrament is unshakeable, due to certain
experiences in early life. Nevertheless one can also sense the presence of Christ
in services such as Benediction. This ‘sensing’ may be said to be felt, as one can
distinguish the feeling of dampness or indirect sunlight rather than the more
blatant sensing of heat or colour, or light and dark. I have always, on those not
altogether rare occasions of visiting non-Catholic places of worship, felt that
there was something missing with regard to this sense of presence. Much in the
same way as visiting a Catholic church when the Sacrament is not being kept.
So far, it is agreed that this proves nothing except that one could well have
been conditioned over the years to the state of affairs. Within the last five or six
years I have made a point of visiting for architectural and interest reasons the
Cathedrals of England. On entering of the former places of Catholic worship
I was overwhelmed by the ‘sense of presence,’ since confirmed on another visit.
So much so that I am convinced that the Sacrament remained hidden—left
over perhaps since the Reformation. My first visit to the Sacré-Coeur Church
in Paris was made at night some years back whilst on a sightseeing trip to
Montmartre. Again the sense that the Sacrament was being exposed was felt
before one could approach the high altar to confirm one’s feelings. Last month
another visit was made under similar circumstances—showing people round at
night. The strong sense of presence was noticeable—by its absence—despite

the fact that I had been aware that the Sacrament is usually on permanent
exposition in this church (A fact of which I was unaware until my first visit).
Sure enough, on the last occasion the Sacrament was not exposed. To suggest
that one can differentiate between Churches where the Sacrament is present
or not, and further where it is exposed or not does seem to be somewhat far-
fetched—but the above experiences are to my mind sufficiently accidental as
to eliminate wishful thinking!”
Maynard’s belief in his unerring gift of intuitive knowing regarding the

Sacrament, even to the point of detecting its remnants in English cathedrals
from the sixteenth century, is more difficult to accept than individual claims
about specific instances of intuitive knowing. I include this account in juxta-
position to these other experiences. The unerring “gift of intuition” has not
been in my view to this point, and I doubt its authenticity.
The Life to Come

The Bible begins its enigmatic “story” with an Edenic Paradise created for the
glory of God and the fulfilment of all humanity. This story in the first chap-
ters of Genesis has been made a battleground by the forces supporting and
opposing evolutionary theory, unfortunately exacerbated by a literal reading
of the text. As the story unfolds in subsequent Hebrew and Christian sacred
writings we are assured that another Paradise is already prepared or in process
of being completed. While it is true to say that Jewish, Christian, and Islamic
faiths never lose sight of a Lawgiver who will hold people to account, they
also include a promise of Paradise. In the Christic visions that I described
in Visions of Jesus, the people whom I interviewed reported the sense either
that that another Reality had seemingly broken in upon them or that they
had penetrated It. This heavenly “world” involves inhabitants of its own, and
continues to be reported, although the terminology that experiencers might
use is not uniform.
The next report of experience must be placed alongside the impressive
collection of Marian visions, known to much of Christendom. In placing
these and other visionary experiences in the difficult position of having to
reply to objections of every kind, the Catholic Church has managed to cull
some telling accounts from a larger body whose credibility might otherwise
be thought questionable. I doubt that the account below has been subject to
the usual scrutiny, and the man who reported it might not fit the profile of
desired witnesses because of the hostile attitudes he reports as once having
had.
Case 10 Norbert:37 A British man writes: “Until October 1969 I could take or
leave religion. I believed that there was some sort of God, and that was that.
I had an inborn hatred of the Pope and everything he stood for. Then, while
I was serving with Queen’s Regiment in Belfast, a strange thing happened to
me. One cold, damp night I was patrolling the grounds of a Catholic school
just off Falls Road, and cursing the people who lived in that area, under my
breath as I went my way. About an hour passed, and I had a feeling that I was
not alone. I must say, I was surprised that the feeling did not frighten me, as
it was about 2:45 in the morning and quite dark. Suddenly I felt quite warm
and at peace not only with myself, but with everyone. From across the road the
black shape of a Catholic Church seemed to draw my attention. When I finally
turned, I saw in the sky a white light. As I looked the light gradually took the
shape of the Virgin Mary. My friend came into the courtyard at this moment
and he saw exactly the same [thing] as I did. She was standing, her arms out-
stretched towards us. It nearly made my friend die of fright, but it had the
opposite effect on me. Although Our Lady did not speak, all those misgivings
I once had melted away. Soon after this I converted to the Catholic faith and
have never looked back. I know that God, in his personal love for me, sent me
this manifestation of Our Blessed Lady to save me from hell.”
The Catholic Church has consistently taught that a “company of witnesses”

exists, including faithful believers who died in the faith. This company
includes “The Mother of God” (Theotokos) whose help has often been
acknowledged. This case is potentially impressive because it apparently
involved intersubjective observation, but the author does not appear to have
asked his friend to provide a corroborative account of his own experience.
A final example of communion of saints concerns a Christian notable who
lived recently, St. Thérèse of Lisieux (1873–97). Despite her young age at
death, Thérèse contributed sufficiently to Catholic spirituality to be honored
as a Doctor of the Church. The following account comes from an English
woman living in India, who was brought up Unitarian.
Case 13 Noreen:38 Noreen says that her father taught her “to be deeply con-
cerned about religion, to try and think objectively about it, and to question
accepted dogma.” At ten, she avidly read St. John’s Gospel, “in a hunger
(largely unconscious, I think) for reassurance and comfort.” She took a degree
in Philosophy, and under the influence of Kant, “decided for a thoroughgoing
scepticism.” She went to India to teach and then married an Indian colleague,
as a result of which she experienced hostility from both Indian and English
people “in an unending cycle of bitter reactions. It was then that it struck
me that the Sermon on the Mount was perhaps not just an impossible idea,
but an actual, practical, code of conduct. This led me to a more careful con-
sideration of the Synoptic Gospels, though still with my father’s reservations in
mind—the fruit of the influence on him of liberal exegesis . . . My search led me

to the Catholic Church. I do not mean to suggest that I think that such should
necessarily, or even frequently, be the path of seekers, but it just happened that
was for me. After much initial already mentioned resistance, I began, in the
rebound, to accept everything I met in my new Church, probably often too
uncritically. The lives of the Saints were for me a new experience of mythic
richness, and I got rather swept off my feet by hagiography. I was so attracted
to St. Teresa [sic] of Lisieux that I actually asked her, in prayer, to appear to
me. Looking back, I am ashamed of this. Actually, there was an underlying
train of serious, if naïve, thought, which made this request not quite such a
brash spiritual-sensation-seeking as it appears on the surface. That same night
I became aware of someone standing by my bed. I am sure it was a dream, but
my actual external surroundings were clear to my senses throughout. It was the
monsoon season and I was sleeping on an upstairs verandah with the sound of
rain heavy on the leaves of the trees just beyond the verandah-rail. I knew it was
St. Teresa standing by my bed, and there was a sort of inner light emanating
from her and outlining her against the dark foliage behind. I have no memory
of how she looked below the shoulders, because my eyes were fixed on her face,
and I was rapt in the most vivid joy I have ever felt, a joy qualitatively different
from normal joys. But this did not stop me from feeling curious about a dark
veil I saw on her head, which seemed to me of a brown colour, and I put out my
hand to touch, and felt it was woollen. She caught my two hands in her own,
and pressed them palm to palm, enclosing them with her own two palms. I was
a very new and in some ways very ignorant Catholic, and it was only some years
later that I discovered by accident that this is the normal gesture with which
a Mother Superior takes a novice’s hands in hers, when the novice makes her
profession. I also learnt much later that Carmelites wear brown habits under
their white cloaks, and may even wear dark brown veils. At the time, I though
all nuns wore black, so this detail of the dream seemed nonsensical.”
Such an experience of communion is also of a kind, I hypothesize, whose

frequency cannot be calculated. The reports that come from people who are
not particularly spiritual, and do not belong to religious orders, often seem
devoid of guile, for these people have “nothing to prove,” or perhaps very
little. The fact that critics of spiritual experience often accuse experiencers of
mental instability, even psychoses, means that experiencers will be reluctant
to describe what has transpired. Some cost, or risk of it, is associated with
public reports, increasing the likelihood, seemingly, that what is reported is
sincere. In its own way, criticism of spiritual experience increases the likeli-
hood that those who report spiritual experiences have actually had them. Of
course, some people are sensation seekers, based on other evidence, and their
reports need to be discounted. The people in religious orders, by contrast,
are often viewed as cultivating their extraordinary experiences, thereby cast-
ing some suspicion on what they report. This is an unfortunate accusation, of
course, for they are probably straightforwardly honest. Naturally, experience

of “communion” seems to some “outsiders” to be unfair, which brings me to
the topic that I promised to visit in the last chapter.
Providential Luck
I defined “providential luck” in Chapter 3 as Divine favour (or disfavour) that
was seemingly unfair, much as “moral luck” has been understood by philoso-
phers as favourable or unfavourable outcomes of choices, unseen causes,
unforeseen events, and so on. I also observed that God is often blamed for
intervening in one situation but not in another, as though he had favorites.
This interpretation of events is understandable, for the ways of God are mys-
terious even for those who claim to know him well and put the best light
on events. However, Christian faith offers hope to those who think that they
have been the recipients of providential “bad luck.” Christian faith teaches
that all the dead will one day be resurrected, and suggests that the inequities
that characterize life on Earth will be smoothed out. It also holds out some
hope that all of humanity will be reunited to God. In the response that I shall
develop here, the problem of moral luck is also overcome.
The doctrine of the resurrection of the dead (the body) is remarkable,
especially in view of the traditional belief that a person’s “spirit” somehow
“survives” bodily death. One might think that survival of the latter kind might
be a satisfactory postlude to human life, even though it is disembodied, but
Christian faith clearly offers a promise of a more complete kind of life to
come. In the locus classicus on this matter, St. Paul compares our earthly bodies
with the spiritual bodies we will one day possess: “What is sown is perishable,
what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory.
It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is
raised a spiritual body.”39 A striking feature of this passage is the reference to
a spiritual body that will come into being, whose exact meaning is difficult
to determine. The appearances and visions of Jesus after his Resurrection are
often taken as the model for understanding the unique kind of existence of
which Paul speaks, but in view of the special nature of Jesus, we would be
hasty to assume that a resurrected human would have all of his attributes.
Paul’s remarks are often interpreted to mean that only Christian believers
are promised this transformation, but in remarks earlier in I Corinthians 15
he suggests that this resurrection into immortality might be experienced by
everyone who has ever lived. Paul writes:
For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the
dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive: Christ the
first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end,
when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and
authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under
his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.40
The remarkable reference to Adam, because of whom all are subject to death,
is matched with a reference to the work of Christ by which all will be made
alive. This idea is also present in Paul’s letter to the Romans where he writes,
“Then as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one man’s
act of righteousness leads to acquittal and life for all men.”41
The long passage in I Corinthians is the only place where the Resurrection
of Christ and the resurrection of all humanity are discussed in detail, although
Paul makes frequent reference to both, especially the first.42 Paul dismisses the
questions of those who wish to know more about a resurrected body, writing:
You foolish man! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what
you sow is not the body which is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or
of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind
of seed its own body.
The nature of this resurrected (human) body and the question whether
Paul intends us to interpret his remarks as applying to all humanity, not
merely the believing community, are important in addressing providential
(and moral) luck. Christian faith holds out the possibility that compensation
might be made in a future life to all those who feel that they have been the
object of providential or moral “bad luck.” Jesus says of himself:
Most assuredly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead
will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live. For as the
Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself,
and has given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son
of Man. Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are
in the graves will hear His voice and come forth—those who have done good,
to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of
condemnation.43
Whether this passage is speaking about Divine retribution, rather than com-
pensatory justice, is difficult to discern. Retribution is now often repudiated
without much argument, for the ancient law of “An eye for an eye, and a
tooth for a tooth” is dismissed as barbaric, and insufficiently sensitive to the
social and genetic conditions in which crime occurs.
The “intuitively obvious” principles concerning compensatory justice are
fairly easy to enunciate in a general way, although their implementation is
another matter. Compensatory justice shares features with retributive justice,

but it does not have the seemingly cruel dimension that retribution gener-
ally carries with it. We—naïvely or otherwise—consider compensation to be
owed to those who have been wronged, by those who have wronged them,
and to be paid in an amount that is commensurable with the wrongdo-
ing. The source of my “intuitions” about compensatory justice is difficult to
identify, and some of my readers might not agree with me, perhaps because
they construe my “intuition” to be too deeply influenced by my cultural or
national origins, or because of other beliefs that have skewed my judgment.
I cannot adequately reply to such an objection, but I would draw attention to
a highly publicized instance of compensation given to a national group after
World War II because of wrongs done to them.
A significant number of Japanese Canadians lived on the west coast of
Canada, near to where I reside, when Japan invaded Pearl Harbor. The
Canadian government evidently did not trust these Canadian residents to
avoid collaboration with armed forces from Japan, who were obviously
intent upon invading North America. The USA also felt this threat, and
together with Canada, constructed the Alaska Highway, which was used to
carry armaments to the northernmost parts of both nations. Both govern-
ments additionally responded to the perceived threat of collaboration by
confiscating the homes, properties, and businesses owned by Japanese, and
then sending them inland to internment camps. Protests from the Japanese
Canadians of loyalty to Canada and the injustice of their treatment went
unheeded by the federal government under Prime Minister Mackenzie King,
and they sat out the rest of the war in miserable conditions. After the war
was over, they made efforts to obtain redress for the hostile actions taken
against them, but for a long time these efforts went unheeded. Even the
socialist Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who made “A just society”
a central theme in his campaign rhetoric, did not offer them an amount
that could rise above an insult. Finally, in 1988, the government under
Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, with the assistance of an accounting firm
that tried to estimate their losses, gave the Japanese Canadians an award
that they were willing to receive. Each person who was interned received
about $21,000,44 and the matter has disappeared from public view. I sur-
mise that some Japanese Canadians might harbor resentment about the small
size of the award, but the fact that neither their spokespersons nor the public
media are addressing it widely suggests that the attempt at making repara-
tions satisfied some minimal expectations concerning compensatory justice.
A similar incident of forced internment involving Canadian Ukrainians
occurred during World War I, but their efforts to secure reparations have
been unsuccessful. The passing of time appears to be “resolving” the sense
of injustice in their case, but of course time by itself cannot heal such
wounds.
I surmise that every nation having some antiquity could inform us of some
racial or ethnic group that has suffered in ways similar to that of Japanese
Canadians—description of injustices of this kind seem to make up a good
deal of the history of the Earth’s peoples. We can easily see the difficulties that
arise from trying to compensate the wrongs perpetrated against the Japanese
Canadians: Were the reparations enough? Were the reparations appropriately
adjusted so that those who suffered more received more? Since the reparations
were made in the form of money, which was obtained primarily from taxation
of Canadian citizens and residents, might not Japanese Canadians themselves
have been one source of the money, so that they made reparations to them-
selves? Should not the children of those who were interned, who themselves
did not experience internment but felt its effects, be compensated for any
economic or social disadvantage they experienced because of their parents’
internment? Does the right to compensation disappear with time, so that
the offspring of those who were injured can eventually no longer legitimately
claim such compensation? We evidently can raise such questions because of
some sentiment (intuition?) about the nature and enduring value of compen-
satory justice, but we cannot easily answer them. The possibility that humans
might be resurrected in some embodied form holds out hope for compensa-
tion with respect to both moral and providential bad luck. What a world we
would inhabit if those desiring compensation were given it in an amount that
they found satisfactory, and those giving compensation took delight in doing
so! The doctrine of the resurrection keeps such hopes alive.
The doctrine of the resurrection also reinforces the possibility that retribu-
tion will be visited upon some who have lived wicked lives. The Government
of Canada during World War II seemingly did not deserve to be punished
for what they did to the Japanese Canadians, for they might have simply
failed to assess correctly the collective intentions of the Japanese who lived in
Canada. This government made a mistake and committed an injustice, but
it might not have been badly intentioned, so exacting retribution might not
get at the just response. However, compensation in some substantial form
was required, and the general public concurred, apart from some murmuring
about the final cost, which was just under 500 million dollars. Compen-
satory justice can be a feature of retribution inasmuch as certain forms of
deliberate or seriously negligent wrongdoing warranting punishment lend
themselves to demanding compensation as part of a punishment. When a
convicted thief is sentenced, for instance, a common expectation is that the
one whose goods were stolen should receive compensation from the thief,
preferably in the form of restitution of the stolen goods. The moral imperative
of such restitution goes without argument. Some additional punishment also

seems appropriate, however, although the justification of this depends upon
one’s theory of (retributive) justice, whether that is the educative value to
the miscreant, the deterrence of others, upholding respect for law, and so
on. Although the thought is compelling that some retribution beyond mere
restitution should also be exacted from the convicted thief, supplying an
incontestable justification is not easy.
The thought of receiving compensatory justice is obviously a promise to
some who have been badly treated, perhaps by the accidents of nature, or
by the indifference, negligence, or ill-will of parents, siblings, fellow-citizens,
and so on. The thought of being required to supply it is also a threat, as is
the possibility that we might experience retributive justice in the life to come.
Christianity has had both defenders and opponents during its entire history,
and its outlook on compensation and retribution helps to explain opposition
to it. Compensation and retribution both carry the sense that some mea-
sure of the amount of the wrongdoing can be plausibly estimated, for which
compensation or retribution is justly demanded. These measures are often
difficult to provide, but their existence, at least in theory, is found in the
fact that we can often say whether a proposed compensation or retribution is
too much or too little. Whereas compensation carries no significant negative
connotation in general, retribution does. Retribution may have been unfairly
condemned and prematurely dismissed, however, for its merit lies in setting
an upper limit on the amount of justifiable punishment, a limit that pun-
ishment might exceed if it were to be determined only by its causal effects.
Postmortem punishments in a resurrected body, and demands for compen-
sation, if they are going to be just, must also reach an end. This is how “the
restoration of all things,” which is hinted at here and there in the NT, but
never spelled out in explicit detail, keeps alive the hope that providential
and moral luck will be addressed eventually. Perhaps we can also hope that
every human being will ultimately live in kinship with all humanity and also
with God.
CHAPTER 6
Intuitive Knowing in Spiritual Life
T
he evidence that I have adduced for intuitive knowing is very modest,
but it points the direction in which further studies could go. Many
fields of inquiry now deemed to be scientific began with studies focus-
ing on some particular feature of nature, in an effort to determine whether
some objects or properties of objects that seemed to be present in fact were.
Then efforts were expended to see whether laws or regularities featuring
those objects and their properties could be found. Intuitive knowing that
has spiritual significance (spiritual knowing) appears often enough in human
experience to warrant study in more depth. Although the adjective “spiritual”
need not carry any ontological significance, I have allowed ontological ques-
tions to arise and have entertained the possibility of spirits existing without
an attempt to explicate this notion fully. In keeping with my remarks about
theories in Chapter 2, if spirits actually exist, their explication will be found
in the complex network of causal (and other) relations in which they are con-
cretely featured. Since intuitive knowing by itself cannot provide adequate
grounds for maintaining spirits to be real, the scope of the required network
will extend to phenomena that penetrate the space-time-causal continuum, or
involve intersubjective observation, or in some other way take us beyond the
subjective nature of human experience. No simple account of how spirituality
can be empirically grounded is presently capable of being given, and in this
respect, the theory purporting the existence of spirits resembles theories from
the sciences. Whole arrays of evidence coming from seemingly related (but
possibly discrete) kinds of phenomena need to be assessed, with the under-
standing that this evidence will vary in credibility and cogency. The scope
of relevant forms of data cannot be specified in advance, although we have
some idea where to look, given the description of beliefs and practices gener-
ally described as spiritual or religious. Intuitive knowing (or quasi-knowing)
takes its modest place in this evidence, earning its value not in itself, but by
virtue of its causal (and narrative) links to other phenomena whose evidential
force in making spirituality part of the cosmos is more impressive.
Spiritual knowing does not appear to be a phenomenon that can be gen-
erated at will, but we might wonder if ordinary people can perhaps prepare
themselves for its entry into their lives, on the chance that this form of grace
might be favored by the Being (or its emissaries) with whom we have to do?
In a provocative study undertaken a century ago Augustin Poulain offers an
approach to prayer in which intuitive knowing makes an impressive appear-
ance. His Graces of Interior Prayer appeared in at least ten editions, the fifth of
which (1907) was endorsed by the Pope at the time, and has been translated
into various European languages. This fact by itself gives us a glimpse of how
sympathetically this form of knowledge was recently considered to be, and
the expectation that (Christian) mysticism was its source. Poulain expresses
his intent as simply to describe the mystic states of consciousness that have
been reported in Christian experience, generally states of mind that could
be called prayer in some form—hence the book’s title. He supplements his
descriptions with significant quotations from more than 150 Christian mys-
tics. He grants that some descriptions offered by these mystics are confusing,
and that their terminology is not consistent, but he also considers descriptions
as having become clearer with time as one state of consciousness is compared
with others. He then remarks: “In this respect mysticism participates in for-
ward movement which is to be seen in all the descriptive sciences.”1 However,
he cautions any would-be scientist against thinking that any human science
can fully achieve its desired end, since nature is too profound, and then warns
those who seek the mystic states of consciousness about the errors that might
befall them if they pursue them too assiduously. I find Poulain’s view of mys-
ticism as a form of descriptive science attractive. Cognitive science seems to
be preparing itself for neural descriptions of every state of consciousness, and
exact studies of mystical states can only help us achieve these ends, which will
include—and already does—those states of consciousness deemed or known
to be mystical.2
In explicating kinds of prayer, Poulain distinguishes ordinary prayer from
extraordinary or mystic prayer, describing the latter as involving “supernatural
phenomena which always evade our endeavours.”3 These supernatural states
are ones that are brought about by God alone, and are incapable of being
brought about by us. In the words of St. Teresa of Avila, these mystic states
are such that “no skill or effort of ours, however much we labour, can attain
to.”4 Poulain makes this definition even more exact by asserting that mystic
states are supernatural ones that contain knowledge, which give his objectives
clear significance to my study. Poulain’s work is remarkable when seen against
Intuitive Knowing in Spiritual Life ● 171
the naturalism that marks our time, although communities undoubtedly exist
that accept the assumptions that are needed to embrace his work as a descrip-
tive science. He acknowledges that although ordinary acts of prayer include
some supernatural feature, in mystic states “something shows us more or less
clearly that God is intervening.”5 He describes these states to be rare among
Christians in general, but not among the really pious.6 In mystic states “we
receive something from another source,” but we would err if we were to con-
strue a mystic’s passiveness as overlooking the action that is implicit in their
receptivity.7 Poulain also takes care to distinguish mysticism from asceticism,
which he interprets as an outlook and set of behaviors primarily directed
to acquiring virtues.8 He uses some of the vocabulary of the mystics in the
Christian tradition, but qualifies their meaning so that they serve his exact
explicative interests.
In discussing ordinary kinds of prayer, as opposed to extraordinary, he
introduces four categories, the first two of which, recitation and medita-
tion, he glosses over as irrelevant to his purposes, since we initiate these
kinds of prayer. The third form, affective prayer, involves a dominant idea
that is accompanied with “very ardent affections,” perhaps love or praise or
gratitude, etc. Then he adds, “The deduction of truths is partly replaced by
intuition. From the intellectual point of view the soul becomes simplified.”9
Again, his explicative interests intersect with mine in this book. Affective
prayer becomes the prayer of simplicity (or the prayer of simple regard),
the fourth form, when our will becomes involved, and when our affections
vary little and can be expressed with very few words.10 Although some have
claimed that such a state of mind can be generated each morning by an
act of the will, Poulain considers such self-generated states as not mystic in
character. He concedes that the differences he is noting between different
states of consciousness are not exact, for “Nature does not proceed by sudden
bounds.”11 This qualification is consistent with his belief that God is some-
how causally implicated in all forms of prayer, even those that seem perfectly
ordinary. Here he engages in that all-encompassing form of spirituality that is
often encountered among the religious, but is less than convincing. Poulain
does not repudiate the value of using our imagination, which naturally lies
within our power, but he does not particularly encourage it as a means of
reaching mystic states.12 He considers a person’s natural dispositions, intel-
lectual abilities, and vocation as having an influence on how quickly one
reaches these states. He considers women as more inclined than men to
reach the prayer of simplicity, observing that they can often “sum up their
prayers in a few words.”13 I assume that Poulain is generalizing from his read-
ing and experience, but this possible gender difference is often mentioned.
In demanding that only men could occupy the offices of priest and bishop,
the early Christian tradition possibly guaranteed the presence of at least some
men in their churches!
Poulain describes the purpose of prayer in its various forms as promoting
a love for God, but he cautions about letting this affection become a substi-
tute for the duties of the spiritual life, which include instruction in doctrine
and growth in virtuous dispositions. In the pursuit of all these, the mem-
ories of what has been previously learned “present themselves in a simpler,
more condensed, more intuitive form . . . just as a man, who is well versed
in a science, takes in a crowd of facts at one glance.”14 In this remarkable
statement, Poulain gives expression to a contention in Western civilization
that can be traced to Plato, who spoke of rising through a series of lesser
insights to an intellectual apprehension of the Form of the Good, which,
when discovered, illuminates the steps to its apprehension.15 Poulain briefly
surveys the history of prayer in Christian experience, observing that ancient
churches “accustomed themselves to live with very few ideas . . . [when] the
soul was less complicated, slower than our own.”16 He views the Renaissance
as having brought much greater diversity of thought to Western civilization,
a consequence of which is that human thought is now more restless, but
not deeper, and with this change affective prayer has taken on a significance
that was not necessary in the Church’s earlier history. Poulain quotes various
authors with whom he is in substantial agreement, including St. Teresa of
Avila, St. John of the Cross, St. Jane Frances de Chantal, St. Francis Ignatius,
St. Alphonsus Liguoiri, and numerous others in religious orders. Their ter-
minology on kinds of prayer might differ from his, but they recognize a form
of it lying between the spiritual meditative acts that people perform of their
own volition, and the ecstatic union that is unachievable by one’s own will,
no matter how intense one’s effort.
When Poulain turns his attention to extraordinary prayer, he again identi-
fies four stages. He adopts the terms “prayer of quiet,” “the prayer of union,”
“ecstatic union,” and “deifying union” (or “spiritual marriage”) in order to
signify important moments along the second part of the continuum,17 again
observing that many other terms have been employed in Christian tradi-
tion. In the prayer of quiet, the divine action is said to be insufficiently
strong to hinder distractions, but in the prayer of union the influence is
so great that “the soul is fully occupied with the divine object.”18 He then
discusses various topics well known to those who have read the Western
Christian mystics, including “the dark night of the soul,” whose expression
and description were made famous by St. John of the Cross, as well as rev-
elations and apparitions, including those taken to be apparitions of Jesus
Christ, and the trials undertaken by those who give themselves to prayer
of various kinds. These are illustrated by experiences that Poulain himself

seems to have had, and experiences directly described to him by anonymous
others.
In his discussion of the effects of mystic union upon the human body,
he mentions the immobility of limbs, and then cites the reported levitations
of Catherine of Emmerich (1174–1824), who often “climbed” the columns
of the church without a ladder in order to clean or decorate cornices that
were humanly inaccessible.19 Poulain does not question the veracity of their
reports, and I will not go into the miraculous claims made. He sums up the
object of prayer as follows:
Sometimes, when entering into prayer or some other exercise, with dryness
and disgust, after suffering this pain, she [the soul] suddenly perceives that the
Bridegroom is present, and this presence, with regard to which she feels great
certainty, causes a loving and reverent trembling . . . This presence (whether
transient or not) operates in such wise as to make us perceive, feel, and know
with certainty that God is in the soul and that the soul is in God.20
Poulain evinces no doubt that (intuitive) knowing occurs, or that God is

perceived. His view contrasts sharply with the general skepticism in our
age on both points. I have introduced the existence of spirits as a sepa-
rate matter, over and above spiritual knowing, as though the two can be
distinguished. At some level they perhaps can be, but the indissoluble link
between epistemology and ontology always makes its presence felt, for no
claim to real existence can be made without a challenge concerning its
justifiability.
Karl Rahner offers a curious evaluation of mystical and related states of
consciousness, including prophecy, in Visions and Prophecies. Part of a series
on Quaestiones Disputatae, this book treats spiritual intuitive knowing as pos-
sibly a natural parapsychological phenomenon having no Divine instigation,
or possibly a “word” in which God imparts knowledge of some future event.21
Of course, he recognizes that fabrications and diabolical deceptions must
be included among the possibilities in trying to categorize apparent knowl-
edge of some future event. Adding natural parapsychology to the domain
in which human experience is located, in addition to Divine and diabolical
influences, makes the identifying of the source of some instance of spiritual
knowing even more difficult than it is without this addition. Rahner acknowl-
edges that events whose causal origins might include free acts performed by
humans are mysterious, but God can know them without prejudice to its
freedom, since “As the living and omniscient God he transcends time and
history . . . and is equally close to everything that happens or is to happen
in time.”22 Rahner makes scant reference to Poulain in this book, and offers
a less generous view than Poulain of the ways in which God interacts with
those who pray. Rahner’s cautious outlook is often encountered in Christian
circles, it seems, whether these are Catholic or Protestant. By contrast, St.
Paul explicitly writes that the Holy Spirit has been “allowed to mingle” with
human spirits so that we might have knowledge of God and his ways.23 His
words encourage one to consider a higher view of human life than Christian
theology often teaches. However, theologians and other persons with author-
ity in the Church are apt to downplay some biblical passage that gives the
laity more latitude than an institutional structure can tolerate. The history
of Christian mysticism suggests that laity and members of monastic orders
will continue to experience spiritual knowledge, although it is likely to be of
value primarily to those who experience it, and of limited value to those who
do not.
Cognitive Science and Religion

Whether the study of spirituality has a future in the Academy is unclear. In a
discussion of religious studies, former president of the American Academy of
Religion (AAR) Robert Neville identifies “theological studies” as a discipline
within religious studies that deals with “first-order normative issues,” that is,
“the matters about which religions intend to suppose or assert something true,
good, or obligatory insofar as these are religiously important.”24 As a norma-
tive discipline, in this view, theology advances normative judgments that are
vulnerable to criticism from all sides, with the hope that these judgments
will be capable of sustaining themselves through the process of correction.
He evidently considers theology to be able to adjudicate disputes about what
is true, which must include claims about what is real and what is fictitious.
Such disputes include ones over spiritual beings, although he does not say this
explicitly. Neville goes on to describe the attitudes toward allowing religion to
be vulnerable as once dividing the AAR, with “Barthians” resisting criticism
of supposed revelations given to them by God, and “Tillichians” accepting
criticism of first-order normative issues. He then observes that this early-
twentieth-century dispute was won by Tillichians, who “easily acknowledge
and honor revelations of many types.”25 The value of philosophy is implicitly
acknowledged here, since its critical appraisal of ontological claims has been
central to its history.
Other commentators on religion seem to think that the study of its con-
tent is little more than a study of the states of consciousness that people
deem to have normative religious significance, inasmuch as the ontological
structures once associated with religion are nowhere to be found. In a recent
book on religious experience, Ann Taves claims that research on religious
experience can only ask why individuals ascribe the cause of an experience
to supernatural agents, but that “no way to scientifically assess” religious
explanations exists.26 The examples she chooses to examine easily allow her
to conclude that supernatural agents are not implicated. On this view of
religion, its subject matter is a causal connection between beliefs and/or
practices once viewed as pertaining to supernatural agents. As such, religion
becomes a domain within cognitive science, where the sources of various con-
cepts, practices, and beliefs are the objects of critical scrutiny. Inasmuch as
neurophysiology is illuminating the causal matters concerning mental states
whose origins might not be easily detected in our own experience, or in that
of others, for that matter, research on spiritual experience is a chapter in
cognitive science.
This was a direction that several prominent theorists of religion offered to
religious studies several decades ago. Thomas Lawson and Robert McCauley
review several kinds of efforts in religious studies to rise above overtly
theological interests, including the attempts of hermeneutists and of phe-
nomenologists, and then defend cognitive science as a development that
might provide a new direction for religious studies. They are particularly anx-
ious about attempts to “insulate certain phenomena from scientific analysis
and reserve it for interpretive treatment alone,”27 for they consider science to
be the premier activity for gaining knowledge of the world. In keeping with
this outlook, they interpret “religion” to be a “system of shared knowledge,
which is cognitively represented in the minds of participants.”28 More specifi-
cally, “such a discipline would identify itself as a cognitive science that aims to
devise explanatory theories about the forms of knowledge typical of religious
systems and the roles such systems of knowledge play in religious action.”29
Their overt object is to remove the study of religion from the humanities,
where the study of texts is central, and also the social sciences, where inter-
pretive problems tend to dominate discussion, and then find a place for it
in the sciences, in particular, cognitive science. Lawson and McCauley are
associated with the Institute of Cognition and Culture at Queen’s University
Belfast.
Taves offers “an ascription approach” to the study of religious beliefs and
practices, in effect “bracketing” the ontological questions that have been
uppermost in the minds of many who have taken part in religious or spiritual
rituals. In a Buddhist monistic practice, for example, an abbot assumes the
posture of a Buddha and offers a message with the authority of an enlight-
ened patriarch, so that both monks and visiting patrons come “face-to-face
with a living Buddha.”30 Participants here agree on a goal, and also agree on
a path by which this goal is achieved; the phenomenon is considered closed
and “self-authenticating,” thereby giving the experience a character that it
would not otherwise possess.31 A similar strategy is proposed for interpreting

the manifestation of the real presence of Christ as the goal of the Eucharist:
“practices deemed efficacious by the group lead to the specific religious goals
and the goals are, by definition, realized when the practices are enacted.”32
Although Christians might debate with one another about both the goal to be
achieved and the means of achieving it, when agreement is reached by groups
(or individuals) about goals and means, in Taves’s view, a “self-authenticating”
experience is secured. Something is left out in these descriptions of religious
ritual, however, for questions remain about the reality of “a living Buddha”
and “the real Presence.” Researchers in religion might be content with giv-
ing us accounts of “self-authenticating” experiences, but philosophy wants to
question the authenticity that is proposed. Its penchant to ask ontological
questions cannot be stifled.
The phenomena that Taves is describing are capable of being studied at
the level of neurophysiology, which would reveal something peculiar, perhaps,
about activities and beliefs deemed religious by participants. The future for
religion then becomes this subdomain within the broader framework of cog-
nitive science. This understanding of religion is consistent with what Lawson
and McCauley describe as the objective of religious studies: “forms of knowl-
edge typical of religious systems and the roles such systems of knowledge play
in religious action.” “Forms of knowledge” appears to mean something like,
“What religious devotees consider to be knowledge,” where “knowledge” has
been denuded of its classical association with “truth claims.” I fully applaud
the integration of cognitive science into the study of religion, but think that
the claims about existence of sentient beings, traditionally associated with
spirituality, remain in need of closer study.
Another expression of support for the scientific study of religion comes
from Robert Wuthnow, professor of sociology at Princeton University. He
observes that science teaches empirical rigor, systematic investigation, obtain-
ing replicable data, and advancing views that “may prove to be wrong.”33 He
concedes that finding universal laws is no longer important, and that qual-
itative findings, rather than quantitative ones, are acceptable. He observes
that since human behavior is “contextual and contingent,” its meaning can
be examined from multiple perspectives. In extolling the value of com-
parative studies, he expresses sentiments found also in William James one
hundred years ago.34 Wuthnow thinks that James would have been intrigued
with recent studies of prayer, religious experience, and healing. In advancing
these views about the nature of science, and how it may find itself engaging
religious and spiritual experience, Wuthnow sketches a different “philoso-
phy of science and religion” than that offered by Taves, or by Lawson and
McCauley.
Philosophy of Science and Spirituality

I made brief reference in Chapter 2 to philosopher Quentin Smith, who con-
strues the role of philosophy to be the advancement of naturalism at the
expense of religion. He examines its role in the pre-Socratic period, when
philosophy emerged as a critique of religious beliefs and offered various
speculative theories to account for the changes in the universe, some of which
survived to form science, including a nascent form of the atomism that gov-
erns our understanding of the physical world. He observes that philosophy
was suppressed by the Christian Church, until the beginning of the modern
period when the Church’s ascendancy over ontological questions finally came
to an end. He advances philosophy as a champion of naturalism, as though its
critical powers in considering alternatives are exhausted. While I agree with
what I interpret to be some chagrin over the high-handed measures taken
by the Church, I doubt that philosophy has lost its interest in ontological
claims.35
If a shift is seriously under way in Western culture to replace “religion”
with “spirituality,” this can only be good news for philosophy. Philosophy’s
historical interest in the phenomena that might have evidential relevance to
the reality of spirit can easily be documented. Philosophy’s interest in spiri-
tual reality has sometimes been narrowly interpreted as an interest in mind
as this is known in human experience, as though this might provide us with
a paradigm of understanding spiritual beings in other forms. We could per-
haps place the blame for this approach upon Descartes, but his successors
who frame the relevant questions as narrowly as he did are also making
choices about the examination of a general problem. Mental states might
well be reducible, as I observed in Chapter 2, which would leave only the
problem of God, for many philosophers. They, like many of their academic
colleagues, including many in religion, it seems, believe that the study of para-
normal phenomena has nothing to teach us about other forms of intelligent
sentience. Philosophy’s primary task, as I see it, is to reflect on the ontolog-
ical claims made by various academic disciplines, to identify and assess the
epistemic assumptions that are brought to this task by theorists from these
disciplines, and to explore the methodological structures apparent in those
theories. Whether spirituality can be meaningfully isolated from religion at
this point in time is unclear, especially in a review of what scholars of reli-
gion say about their own field, as illustrated earlier in this chapter. Inasmuch
as the sciences have brought some powerful methodological views into the
Academy, acquaintance with some of these is important as a background
to understanding and evaluating spirituality. The assumption I am bring-
ing forward in this remark is that our knowledge of one field of inquiry is
enhanced by knowledge of some other discipline area. I will illustrate what

I mean.
In an essay on the unique character of biology, Ernst Mayr argues that
we need to draw a distinction between functional biology and historical
biology.36 The former deals with the physiology of living organisms, their
cellular structures, and their genomes, he says, whereas the latter is concerned
with evolutionary (historical) biology, which Darwin established as a field
within biology.37 Mayr identifies four principles that were once proposed for
a study of a natural science—principles drawn from physics—that proved
to be inapplicable in biology:38 (a) supposing that sharply separated kinds
exist in the world, while suitable for thinking about triangles and quadran-
gles, proved to be incapable of accommodating the variation found in living
things; (b) accepting deterministic Newtonian laws “left no room for vari-
ation or chance events,” which biology requires; (c) demanding reduction
of all things to their subatomic constituents overlooked the interactions that
occur among the many parts in a biological system, including interactions
among “genes of the genotype, between genes and tissues, between cells and
other components of the organism, between the organism and its inanimate
environment and between different organisms”;39 and (d) demanding that a
science produce laws overlooked the fact that theories in biology are based
not on laws but on concepts, such as “selection, speciation, phylogeny, com-
petition, population, imprinting, adaptedness, biodiversity, development,
ecosystem, and function.”40 Biological evolution is a historical narrative, con-
sequently, and must be studied by reference to the kind of observations that
are in its purview, such as the extinction of dinosaurs. These matters are
open to evidence, but this part of biology differs from its functional side.
Mayr’s paper is a helpful reminder that “science” is not uniform across the
Academy. Mayr notes that observation and comparison are also important in
the humanities.41
Wuthnow rejects the view42 that a “scientific” study of religion would
have to be quantitative in nature, observing that carefully sifting through
letters and diaries in an archive is every bit as scientific as computing life-
expectancy tables. He stresses the empirical rigor, systematic interpretation,
and replicability of studies, conceding that neither great truths nor universal
laws might be found. In these remarks he suggests several models of “ratio-
nality” that can be applied in the study of religion or spirituality. No single
view of rationality43 is likely to emerge from a study of various disciplinary
domains, although familiarity with several can obviously alert one to the fea-
tures that are important in articulating that “rationality” in another particular
case. The rationality of spirituality can probably be sketched, but doing so
requires familiarity with methodological views in other fields of exact study;
moreover, spirituality might feature components that are unique to it.
Concluding Remarks
I will conclude this study with a few remarks relevant to the further study of
spirituality:
1. Reports of NDEs and OBEs are reviving the ancient and medieval
view that humans might be spirits (or have spirits), and threaten the
secularity of the modern period with its confident claim that nothing
of this sort exists. The overwhelming number of NDEs reported in
the past 30 years from around the world, including cases allowing for
objective corroboration of knowledge evinced by those who have had
NDEs, have given the notion of spirit a credibility that it has not pre-
viously had in the modern era. The grounds for reenchantment of the
cosmos have ironically arisen from modernity’s success in developing
technological triumphs that allow comatose people to be revitalized.
2. Spirits, though invisible, can be contextually defined by the causal
roles attributed to them, and by other relations seemingly present
between spirits and other objects whose existence is not in doubt.
Terms purporting to denote spirits occur innocuously in narratives
attempting to describe events in human experience, and acquire mean-
ing from such narratives. No more mystery attaches to the acquisition
of meaning here than in any other domain in which narrative forms a
similar function. Most sciences, for example, postulate the existence of
unobservable objects by this method.
3. Although the existence of human spirits assumes automatic spiritual
significance for most people, for others the spiritual significance is
acquired by the interaction of human spirits with ones seemingly not
part of the natural order, as in alleged Spirit-baptism, demonic posses-
sion, exorcism, or apparitions of religious figures. These phenomena
suggest important descriptive details about the world of spirits. Other
phenomena warranting more scrutiny include trance-states, glossolalia,
prophecy, soothsaying, telepathy, telekinesis, and the experience of
pure consciousness. This list could be supplemented, no doubt, by
consideration of the world’s religions, and the “mysticism” espoused
therein. Ann Taves observes that many of these phenomena were
excised from the content of religious studies during the twentieth
century, although they had been studied previously.44 As a discipline
area, philosophy neither assumes nor precludes spiritual forms of exis-
tence without critical scrutiny. Philosophy owes no ultimate allegiance
to naturalism, theology, religion, spirituality, parapsychology, or any
comparable field, but attempts to adjudicate competing ontological
claims as dispassionately as it can, recognizing, at the same time,
that every effort of this sort might fail to satisfy some important
desideratum.
4. Intuitive knowing, especially that having spiritual significance for the
one experiencing the “knowing,” is set within an extensive and com-
plex domain (theory) that includes grounds for thinking that spirits
exist, and that describes the experience in which spirits are seemingly
implicated. Everything in this theory is open to critical scrutiny and
possible change, and in this respect it does not differ substantially from
theories in the sciences where unobservable objects are postulated to
exist. However, every feature of religion and spirituality has come under
criticism—some of it accurate and warranted—so that the question
of whether we are speaking about anything at all is always at hand.
We cannot generally point to some undisputed field of evidence and
say that the theory that postulates spirits is clearly placed beyond rea-
sonable doubt. If we could do that, say by reference to NDEs, we could
view the significance of spiritual knowing with more sympathy, show-
ing how spiritual knowing fits with the existence of spirits of various
forms. However, since NDEs provide uncertain value for the theory
of spirits, we cannot proceed in a straightforward way. The study of
spiritual knowing offers its own evidence, albeit weak, for a theory that
seemingly has a close connection to other phenomena whose strength
as evidence is unknown. We might be repeatedly tempted to throw
everything out and just embrace naturalism, whose achievements are
impressive, but each time some captivating case again suggests that this
would be a mistake.
5. Apparitions form a body of claims whose content obviously over-
laps with that often offered in evidence of postmortem existence.
The study of apparitions uncovers important evidence for sentient
beings that are independent of human persons. When the Institute
of Psychophysical Research at Oxford University made public appeals
for first-hand accounts of apparition experiences (in 1968 and 1974),
they received about 1,800 responses.45 The study by Celia Green and
Charles McCreery that ensued is an important sequel to the Report of
the Census of Hallucinations that was published in 1894, drawn then
from nearly 10 percent of 17,000 people who reported having experi-
enced a hallucination, which included apparitions in different forms.
These and other studies of apparitions have significance for spiritual-
ity, for they deal with obscure existents. An effort needs to be expended
toward documenting paranormal phenomena from around the world.
Because modernity has rejected paranormal allegations so assiduously,
it has possibly concealed older bodies of data from view. Present-day
data could give credibility to that which has been historically signifi-
cant, and possibly preserved in a useful form. Anthropology is one field
of inquiry that seems to most knowledgeable about past and present
experiences of a paranormal kind.
6. Paranormal phenomena blend into miraculous ones, whose reality I
have minimized in this study, except for those topics in Christianity
that focus on miracle. My reluctance to address miracles could be inter-
preted as an effect of modernity upon me, whose naturalism is “the
default” to which I readily advert, until I reflect upon the evidence
to the contrary, and the experiences that have altered my ontologi-
cal outlook. In the Marian apparitions reported around the world, we
generally find a mix of data, including miraculous claims in addition
to the apparitions themselves. In the reports from San Sebastian de
Garabandal,46 for example, we have the accounts of four girls who ini-
tially reported seeing an angel, and then accounts from other children
who also spoke about the angel. Soon afterward, however, the “angel’s”
identity was taken to be the Holy Virgin. Two thousand reports were
advanced over the next two years, which included several reports of
angels who looked like twins, an angel taken to be St. Michael, and “a
large eye that . . . seemed to be the eye of God.”47 Large bodies of sim-
ilar evidence carry an epistemic significance that small bodies do not,
but ascertaining the appropriate denotation of “large” and “small” is
very difficult.
7. An interesting review of the evidence for life after death has been
undertaken by Robert Almeder, who was professor of philosophy at
Georgia State University until his recent retirement. His background
in epistemology and philosophy of science shapes his approach to this
evidence, which includes out-of-body experiences (OBEs), communi-
cations with the dead, possession cases, and cases that are suggestive of
reincarnation. Ian Stevenson remains the most accomplished researcher
of experiences suggestive of reincarnation, and Almeder gives his work
sympathetic consideration. Almeder says that “the belief in reincar-
nation is certainly as well established as (if not better than), say, the
belief in the past existence of dinosaurs.”48 His chapter on the topic49
includes a discussion of biblical texts on the topic, and the views of
various theologians, including early Church fathers. He observes that
reincarnation also has a response to the problem of Providential luck,
which I discussed earlier.50 Our view of persons is apt to become
distinctly enlarged by considering the evidence for human survival,
and this view only touches tangentially on the existence of other sen-
tient beings. In all these experiences we see a component of intuitive
knowledge of matters beyond the mundane world, which gives them

spiritual or religious significance, not only to those who have the expe-
riences, but often also to others who are wondering about the cosmos
we inhabit. Almeder is critical of the cases that he reviews, but this crit-
icism is set within reasonable bounds, making his study both informed
and plausible. So he concedes the hallucinatory nature of the remark-
able experience that Sir Alfred J. Ayer (1910–89), of positivistic fame,
reported after his heart had stopped for four minutes, but Almeder
goes on to discuss near-death experiences (NDEs) in which indepen-
dently verifiable events were witnessed by the ones with the NDE.51
Striking the balance between skepticism and credulity is important in
the consideration of paranormal phenomena.
8. Reference to the experience of outstanding public figures, such as A. J.
Ayer, sheds some light, perhaps, on how evidential force is assessed.
The fact that he was a skeptic of religion for all of his life, until his
NDE near its end, gives his report more evidential value, seemingly,
because of his background, position, and prestige. We can attempt to
imagine the epistemic impact of, say, one hundred independent reports
of NDEs from professors of Ayer’s standing from as many universities.
Their similar NDEs would have considerable weight, I suggest, and
surmise that our assessments of the evidential weight of reports takes
into account subtle aspects of those who make them. Relevant factors
in the assessment of personal reports include the educational back-
ground of the persons reporting, their background beliefs, their age
and experience, their cultural orientation, their current availability for
further reporting, their willingness to be identified, and the presence of
significant, identifiable biases in them.
9. The phenomena that have the most significance for a re-enchanted
world are those that penetrate the space-time-causal continuum. I have
illustrated these in several ways in this book, including experiences that
are intersubjectively observable or somehow leave some physical trace
in our world. The extent of these cases is not known, primarily because
spiritual experience in its fullest sense is inadequately researched. The
research of spiritual experience must include the phenomenological
aspects reported by experiencers, and the neurophysiological correlates
that can be uncovered; but to be content with these goals is to fall prey
once again to the epistemic agenda offered to Western civilization by
the Cartesian approach to knowledge, that is, to fail to see beyond the
reports to the Cosmos itself, and what human experience reveals or sug-
gests about it. Most experiential data will have little significance for any
but the experiencer, but occasional cases do not fit this narrow purpose:
The space-time-causal continuum is suddenly breached in a completely

unpredicted way, and a case for a form of sentience transcending the
human domain is again in view. Miracles, so-called, also penetrate the
space-time-causal continuum, and so find their way into a spiritual
outlook that is as comprehensive as possible, but they involve epis-
temic challenges beyond the ones to which I have given my attention
here.
No grounds exist for rejecting spiritual claims as beyond cogency or plausi-

bility, but grounds exist for denying natural sciences as we now know them
their claim to be the final arbiter of what exists. The task that remains is to
document the scope and nature of spirituality. Religion departments in uni-
versities might choose not to become involved in this task, but this need not
deter researchers and theorists from other academic domains in addressing the
scope and significance of spiritual experience, including intuitive knowing.
Notes
Chapter 1
1. According to the famous German classicist of a century ago, Erwin Rohde (1966)
Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality among the Greeks, 8th edn, 2
vols. (trans. W. B. Hillis) (New York: Harper & Row), pp. 380–83.
2. Walter Kaufmann (1968) Philosophic Classics: Volume I: Thales to Ockham, 2nd
edn (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall), p. 45.
3. Francis M. Cornford (ed. and trans.) The Republic of Plato (London: Oxford
University Press, 1945), Bk. VI, 508d.
4. De Anima, Richard McKeon (ed.) The Basic Works of Aristotle (New York:
Random House, 1966), Bk. 3, Chapter 4.
5. St Augustine of Hippo (1982) The Literal Meaning of Genesis (trans. J. H. Taylor)
(New York: Newman Press), (“Lit. Gen”. hereafter), vol. 12, passim.
6. Evelyn Underhill (1930) Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of
Man’s Spiritual Consciousness, 12th rev. edn (London: Methuen), p. 283.
7. Or imaginatively.
8. Augustine, Lit. Gen. 12.11.22.
12. Rohde, Psyche, pp. 4–5.
13. Augustine, Lit. Gen. 12.8.19; see I Corinthians 14: 14f.
15. This is implied by much earlier writers, such as Titus Lucretius Carus (1951)
On the Nature of the Universe (trans. R. E. Latham) (London: Penguin Books),
bk. V, 1167–81.
16. Phillip H. Wiebe (2000) “Critical Reflections on Christic Visions,” Journal of
Consciousness Studies, Controversies in Science and the Humanities (Special Issue:
Cognitive Models and Spiritual Maps, Jensine Andresen, and Robert K. C. Forman
(eds.)), 7, 119–44.
17. Augustine, Lit. Gen. 12.18.39; see his A Treatise on The Soul (De Anima et
ejus Origine) (trans. Peter Holmes, and Robert E. Wallis) in Philip Schaff (ed.)
A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church vol. 5
186 ● Notes
(Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans), Chapter 34, for further discussion of the
similarity of dreams and apparitions.
18. Augustine, A Treatise on The Soul, Chapter 34.
21. Thomas Aquinas (1948) Summa Theologica (“ST ” hereafter) in Fathers of the
English Dominican Province II.I.111 (ST, second part, part I, ques. 111), I.55
(part I, ques. 55), and other passages.
22. See John of the Cross (1987) Ascent of Mount Carmel (London: SPCK) for
extended discussion.
23. See The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila by Herself (trans. J. M. Cohen) (London: Pen-
guin Books, 1957), and The Interior Castle or The Mansions (trans. K. Kavanaugh,
and O. Rodriguez) (London: SPCK, 1979); cf. Phillip H. Wiebe (1999) “The
Christic Visions of Teresa of Avila,” Scottish Journal of Religious Studies, 20,
73–87, where I discuss the possibility that some of her experiences were corporeal,
in spite of her insistence that she never experienced corporeal vision.
24. For examples of modern commentators who adopt the Augustinian classification
in discussing Julian’s experience, see Paul Molinari (1958) Julian of Norwich: The
Teaching of a 14th Century English Mystic (London: Longman, Green & Co.);
Grace Jantzen (1987) Julian of Norwich: Mystic and Theologian (London: SPCK);
Brant Pelfrey (1989) Christ our Mother: Julian of Norwich (London: Darton,
Longman and Todd); Frances Beer (1992) Women and Mystical Experience in
the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press); and Ritamary Bradley (1992)
Julian’s Way: A Practical Commentary on Julian of Norwich (London: Harper
Collins).
25. See articles on visions and related phenomena in Charles Herbermann, Edward
A. Pace, Conde B. Pallen, Thomas J. Shahan, and John J. Wynne (eds.) (1912)
The Catholic Encyclopedia 15 vols (New York: Robert Appleton); W. J. McDonald
(primary ed.) and Catholic University of America (1967) New Catholic Encyclope-
dia 18 vols (New York: McGraw-Hill); and Karl Rahner (ed.) (1975) Encyclopedia
of Theology: A Concise Sacramentum Mundi (London: Burns & Oates).
26. Adomnán of Iona (1995) Life of St Columba (trans. Richard Sharpe) (London:
Penguin), bk. 1, Chapter 37; my ital.
27. Adomnán, St. Columba, 1. 37.
28. Introduction, p. 3; Adomnán is thought to have used a shorter account written in
the 630s or 640s in order to compile his account about a century after Columba
lived.
29. See the accounts related in C. Bernard Ruffin (1991) Padre Pio: The True Story
(Revised and Expanded) (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor), esp. Chapter 28.
30. Phillip H Wiebe (1997) Visions of Jesus: Direct Encounters from the New Testament
to Today (New York: Oxford University Press), Chapter 3.
31. Caroline Franks Davis (1989) The Evidential Force of Religious Experience
(Oxford: Clarendon), Chapter 1.
32. Davis, The Evidential Force, p. 36.
Notes ● 187
33. William James (1960) The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human
Nature (London: Collins), lect. 9 and 10.
34. Rudolf Otto (1950) The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor
in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational, 2nd edn (trans. John
W. Harvey) (London: Oxford University Press). A biography of Otto’s spiritually
formative years is given in Gregory Alles (2001) “Toward a Genealogy of the
Holy: Rudolf Otto and the Apologetics of Religion,” Journal of the American
Academy of Religion, 69, 323–41.
35. Davis, The Evidential Force, p. 33.
36. Davis, The Evidential Force, p. 19. This definition is similar to that found in
Simon Blackburn (ed.) (1994) The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (Oxford
and New York: Oxford University Press): “a stream of private events, known
only to their possessor . . . [which] makes up the conscious life of the possessor,”
p. 130.
37. James, Varieties, p. 414.
38. I follow Stephen Braude (1986) The Limits of Influence: Psychokinesis and the
Philosophy of Science (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul), in placing evidence
into three classes.
39. Perhaps “initial theorizing,” since our dataset will evolve.
40. A study of pedophilia among Catholic priests in the United States in 2004,
prepared by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice for the US Confer-
ence of Catholic Bishops, indicated that only 4 percent of them are involved,
but media coverage has exaggerated its occurrence, perhaps unintention-
ally; see http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=
3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCoQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.usccb.
org%2Fissues-and-action%2Fchild-and-youth-protection%2Fupload%2FThe-
Nature-and-Scope-of-Sexual-Abuse-of-Minors-by-Catholic-Priests-and-Deacons-
in-the-United-States-1950-2002.pdf&ei=TGMlVabjKpSNoQTj34DYDg&usg=
AFQjCNHDdX9Rivo2TvrqeCwmAG6jS4lL7Q (accessed April 8, 2015).
41. Cf. Marghanita Laski (1990) Ecstasy in Secular and Religious Experiences (Los
Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher), Chapter 1, for general discussion of the kinds of
experience widely considered ecstatic.
42. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1967) Philosophical Investigations (trans. G. E. M.
Anscombe) (Oxford: Blackwell), part. I.
43. Daniel Pals (1996) Seven Theories of Religion (New York: Oxford University
Press), p. 270, based on a study of Sir James Frazer, Sigmund Freud, Emile
Durkheim, Mircea Eliade, E. E. Evans-Pritchard, E. B. Tylor, and Clifford
Geertz. This definition does not capture the Buddhist understanding of spiri-
tuality.
44. See Jonathan Z. Smith (2010) “Tillich’s Remains . . . ,” Journal of the American
Academy of Religion, 78, 1139–70, for a review of this in American academic
culture (and beyond).
45. Graham Ward (2006) “The Future of Religion,” Journal of the American Academy
of Religion, 74, 183.
188 ● Notes
46. Ann Taves (2009) Religious Experience Reconsidered: A Building-Block Approach to

the Study of Religion and Other Special Things (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton
University Press), Chapter 1.
47. Taves, Religious Experience Reconsidered, p. 29.
48. Ann Taves (2011) “2010 Presidential Address: ‘Religion’ in the Humanities and
the Humanities in the University,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion,
79, 287–314.
49. Daryl Bem, John Palmer, and Richard S. Broughton (1990) “Updating the
Ganzfeld Database: A Victim of Its Own Success?” Journal of Parapsychology, 65,
1–6.
50. Bem et al., “Updating the Ganzfeld Database,” 5.
51. Thomas O. Nelson, and Louis Narens (1994) “Why Investigate Metacognition?”
in Janet Metcalfe, and Arthur P. Shimamura (eds.) Metacognition: Knowing About
Knowing (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press), p. 18;
ital. orig.
52. See A. Minh Nguyen (2008) “The Authority of Expressive Self-Ascriptions,”
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review, 47, 103–36, for discussion of these two
attributes, as well as indubitability and self-intimacy.
53. A. C. Miner and L. M. Reder (1994) “Feeling of Knowing and Question Answer-
ing,” in Janet Metcalfe, and Arthur P. Shimamura (eds.) Metacognition: Knowing
About Knowing (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press),
p. 51.
54. Miner and Reder, “Feeling of Knowing,” p. 50.
55. Arthur Shimamura (1994) “The Neuropsychology of Metacognition,” in Janet
Metcalfe, and Arthur P. Shimamura (eds.) Metacognition: Knowing About Know-
ing Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), pp. 253–76.
56. New York Times, March 4, 1997.
57. Edmund Gettier (1963) “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” Analysis, 23,
121–23.
58. I doubt that we could choose to know some claim.
59. Some epistemologists (internalists) argue that someone to claim knowledge,
she or he must have a justification; others (externalists) think only that some
justification must exist.
60. Aquinas, ST II.II.45.3.
61. Aquinas, ST II.II.45.4.
62. The author, Dionysius, presents himself as a first-century Christian, a con-
vert of St. Paul, but is now widely thought to be a fifth- or sixth-century
Christian Neoplatonist; see art. “Dionysius,” by Kevin Corrigan, and L. Michael
Harrington, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; see http://plato.stanford.edu/
(accessed April 8, 2015).
63. Aquinas ST II.II.45.3, quoting from The Divine Names, in Pseudo-Dionysius,
The Divine Names and Mystical Theology (trans. J. Jones) (Milwaukee, WI:
Marquette University Press, 1980). Hierotheus, from Athens, was a convert of
St. Paul’s.
Notes ● 189
64. Aquinas, ST I.55.1–2.

65. Art. “Jacques Maritain,” by William Sweet, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy;
see http://plato.stanford.edu/ (accessed April 8, 2015).
66. Jacques Maritain (1966) “Natural Mystical Experience and the Void,” in Joseph
W. Evans, and Leo R. Ward (eds.) Jacques Maritain: Challenges and Renewals
(South Bend IN: University of Notre Dame Press), p. 80.
67. Maritain, “Natural Mystical Experience and the Void,” p. 246.
74. Jacques Maritain (1962) A Preface to Metaphysics: Seven Lectures on Being
(New York: Mentor Omega, New American Library), p. 19.
75. Jacques Maritain (1961) On the Use of Philosophy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press), p. 60.
76. Maritain, On the Use of Philosophy, p. 60.
77. Dom Illtyd Trethowan (1948) Certainty: Philosophical and Theological
(Westminster, UK: Dacre Press), p. 43; orig. ital.
78. St Augustine of Hippo The Trinity, (trans. A. W. Haddan) in Philip Schaff (ed.)
A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church vol. 3,
pp. 1–228, (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1956), 9.7.12.
Chapter 2
1. Richard Rorty, and Gianni Vattimo (2004) The Future of Religion (ed. Santiago
Zabala) (New York: Columbia University Press), p. 33. Rorty reiterates the point
in “Some Inconsistencies in James’s Varieties” (2004) in Wayne Proudfoot (ed.)
William James and a Science of Religions: Reexperiencing The Varieties of Religious
Experience (New York: Columbia University Press).
2. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1966) Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology,
and Religious Belief (ed. Cyril Barrett) (Oxford: Blackwell), pp. 54–55.
3. Hilary Putname (1992) Renewing Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, p. 192.
4. Particularly in Phillip H Wiebe, Visions of Jesus: Direct Encounters from the New
Testament to Today (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
5. A more accurate description might be conceptual framework relativist, which
highlights the view that not concepts merely, but whole conceptual frameworks
capable of being in competition with one another, are impossible to ground in
some compelling way. Philosopher Kai Nielsen denies that Rorty is a relativist in
any form, even concerning conceptual frameworks, since the contrast between
a conceptual scheme and its content is incoherent, in (1999) “Taking Rorty
190 ● Notes
Seriously,” Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review, 38, 503–18, pp. 511–12.

Evidence of both positions appears to be found in Rorty’s writing.
6. For a representative expression of this view see Patricia Churchland, and Terence
J. Sejenowski (1990) “Neural Representation and Neural Computation,” in
William G. Lycan (ed.) Mind and Cognition: A Reader (Oxford: Blackwell),
p. 227.
7. B. F. Skinner (1960) “Behaviorism at Fifty,” in T. W. Wann (ed.) Behaviorism and
Phenomenology: Contrasting Bases for Modern Psychology (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press), p. 106.
8. For example, in Rudolf Carnap (1990) “Psychology in Physical Language,” in
William G. Lycan (ed.) Mind and Cognition: A Reader (Oxford: Blackwell),
pp. 23–28.
9. For example, in Gilbert Ryle (1949) The Concept of Mind (London: Hutchinson).
10. For example, in J. J. C. Smart (1959) “Sensations and Brain Processes,”
Philosophical Review, 68, 141–56.
11. According to an obituary, Smart’s position on mind-body was often dismissively
described in Great Britain as “the Australian fallacy”; see http://www.monash.
edu.au/news/show/vale-j.-j.-c.-smart (accessed February 18, 2015).
12. David Hume (1974) An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding in the
Empiricists (New York: Anchor/Doubleday), sec. 12, pt. 3; my ital.
13. Immanuel Kant (1974) Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (ed. and
trans. Mary J. Gregor) (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff ), sec. 36; in sec. 53 he
construes a mind as perverse that has a taste for “mystical books and revelations
that transcend sound human understanding.”
14. Kant, Anthropology, sec. 13. Kant observes that the Scottish judge had scoffed at
this testimony.
15. Kant, Anthropology, sec. 36.
16. In Apologie oder Schutzschrift für die vernünftigen Verehrer Gottes (Apologia or
Defense for the Rational Reverence of God), and elsewhere, he offered an analysis
of the historical Jesus, some of which was published anonymously by Gotthold
Lessing in Wolfenbütteler Fragmente, during 1774–78 (art. “Hermann Samuel
Reimarus,” Encyclopedia Britannica).
17. Alfred North Whitehead (1978) Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology
(New York: The Free Press), p. 150.
18. Cf. Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism; see http://www.google.ca/url?sa=
t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=5&ved=0CD0QFjAE&url=http%3A%
2F%2Fwww.oswego.edu%2F∼dhoracek%2F220%2FSextus%2520Empiricus%
2520-%2520Outlines%2C%2520Book%25201.rtf&ei=1qIlVfD3HJfjoASk5YG
QCw&usg=AFQjCNEvT_SiL6Sq0LBfbt6Sa-WTsOc-IA (accessed April 8,
2015).
19. This phrase derives from Hilary Putnam (1982) Reason, Truth, and History
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 1–21.
20. This diagram and explanation are from Frank Close, Michael Marten, and
Christine Sutton (1987) The Particle Explosion (Oxford: Oxford University
Notes ● 191
Press); see http://www.graphics.stanford.edu/∼hanrahan/talks/selfillustrating/

walk010.html (accessed February 18, 2015).
21. Matthew 8 reports two demoniacs, but Mark 5 and and Luke 8 report only one.
I will ignore this difference and refer to two.
22. This notion needs more unpacking than I can provide here.
23. I have discussed this case more fully in “Finite Spirits as Theoretical Entities.”
24. Raven Grimassi (2003) The Witch’s Familiar: Spiritual Partnership for Successful
Magic (St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications), Chapter 1.
25. Charles Taylor (2007) The Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press),
pp. 37–38.
26. Taylor, A Secular Age, p. 39.
27. Taylor, A Secular Age, p. 90–91.
30. Taylor, A Secular Age, pp. 99–112.
31. C. S. Lewis (1964) The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and
Renaissance Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 216.
32. David Hume (1970) Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (ed. Nelson Pike)
(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill), part 3.
33. Cf. Nelson Pike (1970 Commentary on Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill), pp. 224–34.
34. Carl Goldberg (1996) Speaking with the Devil: Exploring Senseless Acts of Evil
(Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books), pp. xii–xiii.
35. Leighton Sawatzky drew my attention to this difference.
36. A recent historian of chemistry has observed that phlogiston theory was insightful
on certain problems related to oxidation; cf. Douglas Allchin (1992) “Phlogiston
After Oxygen,” Ambix, 39, 110–16.
37. Thomas Kuhn (1970) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd edn (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press).
38. Quentin Smith (2001) “The Metaphilosophy of Naturalism,” Philo: The Jour-
nal of the Society of Humanist Philosophers, 4, 195–215, p. 199; quoted from
John R. Searle, The Rediscovery of the Mind (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992),
pp. 90–91.
39. Cf. Mario Beauregard, and Denyse O’Leary Mario (2007) The Spiritual Brain.
A Neuroscientist’s Case for the Existence of the Soul (San Francisco: Harper),
pp. 153–56.
40. For example, philosopher Quentin Smith, in “The Metaphilosophy of
Naturalism.”
41. See Frederick Suppe (1974) Structure of Theories (Urbana, IL: University of
Illinois Press), “Introduction,” for a detailed account; and for a modification of an
earlier account of meaning for theoretical terms see Carl Hempel (1970) “On the
‘Standard Conception’ of Scientific Theories,” in M. Radner, and S. Winokur
(eds.) Analysis of Theories and Methods of Physics and Psychology (Minnesota Studies
in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 4) (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota
Press), pp. 142–163.
192 ● Notes
42. David Lewis (1972) “Psychophysical and Theoretical Identifications,” Australasian

Journal of Philosophy, 50, 250–51.
43. Cf. W. V. O. Quine, and J. S. Ullian (1978) The Web of Belief, 2nd edn
(New York: Random House), Chapter 3; see http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=
j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB0QFjAA&url=
http%3A%2F%2Femilkirkegaard.dk%2Fen%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2FW.
-V.-Quine-J.-S.-Ullian-The-Web-of-Belief.pdf&ei=QLQlVZGhFNezoQTp9o
GwBw&usg=AFQjCNEXg_w0v-Xvm5BTclfcpIY3frT6zA (accessed April 8,
2015).
44. See Eugene d’Aquili (1993) “The Myth-Ritual Complex: A Biogenetic Structural
Analysis,” in James B. Ashbrook (ed.) Brain, Culture, and the Human Spirit: Essays
From an Emergent Evolutionary Perspective (Lanham, MD: University Press of
America), pp. 45–75. Figure 3.1 (p. 47), identifies a region identified as “The
Abstractor Operator.”
45. For a recent discussion of the general problem, see Mike Oaksford, and Nick
Chater (2010) “Causation and Conditionals in the Cognitive Science of Human
Reasoning,” The Open Psychology Journal, 3, 105–18.
46. The nineteenth-century Austrian philosopher Alexius Meinong thought that
properties and relations were essential to a thing’s identity; cf. J. N. Findlay
(1963) Meinong’s Theory of Facts and Values, 2nd edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press),
p. 208. Many philosophers follow Gottfried Leibniz in construing properties by
themselves as serving this function.
47. This has been my consistent experience in teaching the Logic of Relations, as part
of Symbolic Logic, to undergraduates over many years.
48. For a discussion of its significance to science see articles by C. S. Peirce
in Justus Buchler (1955) Philosophical Writings of Peirce (New York: Dover),
e.g., Chapter 11 “Abduction and Induction,” pp. 150–56; cf. H. O. Mounce
(2007) Metaphysics and the End of Philosophy (London: Continuum International
Publishing Group), Chapter 1.
49. I qualify deduction this way, for some arguments defy resolution as valid or
invalid, for example, certain arguments that follow St. Anselm in holding that
the existence of God follows from his definition.
50. For example, electrons were found to be subatomic particles by J. J. Thompson
in 1897; knowledge of their nature has naturally undergone significant changes
in the past century or so.
51. John Polkinghorne (1989) Rochester Roundtable: The Story of High Energy Physics
(New York: W. H. Freeman), p. 169.
52. I defer to these traditions in using this pronoun, although I would not want too
much to be inferred from it.
53. W. V. O. Quine (1994) “Epistemology Naturalized,” in Hilary Kornblith (ed.)
Naturalizing Epistemology, 2nd edn (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), p. 17.
54. I. M. Copi (1979) Symbolic Logic, 5th edn (New York: Macmillan), pp. 146–47.
For a discussion of how Bertrand Russell understood this definition, see Bertrand
Russell (1972) “The Philosophy of Logical Atomism (1918),” in David Pears
(ed.) Russell’s Logical Atomism (London: Fontana), pp. 1–125.
Notes ● 193
55. Seth Crook, and Carl Gillett (2001) “Why Physics Alone Cannot Define
the ‘Physical’: Materialism, Metaphysics, and the Formulation of Physicalism,”
Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 31, 333–60, argue that physics alone cannot
define physicalism.
56. C. S. Lewis (2001) The Screwtape Letters (San Francisco: HarperCollins) is his
most famous advocacy.
57. Eric L. Mascall (1965) The Christian Universe (New York: Morehouse-Barlow),
Chapter 6.
58. Paul Tillich (1967) Systematic Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press),
passim.
59. In Phillip H. Wiebe (2011) “Deliverance and Exorcism in Philosophical Per-
spective,” in William K. Kay, and Robin Parry (eds.) Exorcism and Deliverance:
Multidisciplinary Studies (London: Paternoster), pp. 156–80, I describe three
cases, including the one from Leo Harris.
60. Reported by the Canadian daily, The National Post, September 27, 1999.
61. See the exchange of views on cognitive science and religion between Edward
Slingerland (2008) “Who’s Afraid of Reductionism? The Study of Religion in
the Age of Cognitive Science,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion,
76, 375–411, and Francisca Cho, and Richard Squier (2008) “Reductionism:
Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 76,
412–17, followed by various replies.
62. Slingerland, “Who’s Afraid of Reductionism? evinces no objection, primarily
because of the complexity that science would uncover.”
63. Plato, Phaedo 79b-e, in The Dialogues of Plato (1937) 2 vols (trans. B. Jowett)
(New York: Random House).
64. Phaedo 63c.
65. Descartes’s view is complicated by the role that he gave to the pineal gland as a
point (in space) where matter and mind interacted. See art. “Descartes and the
Pineal Gland,” by Gert-Jan Lokhorst in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
66. Cf. Carol Zaleski (1996) The Life of the World to Come: Near-Death Experience
and Christian Hope (New York: Oxford University Press), Chapter 2.
67. Art. “Buddha,” by Mark Sideritis in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
68. “Buddha,” by Sideritis.
69. Richard P. Hayes, “How can there be Personal Continuity through One or More
Lifetimes?” Lecture 4: University of Leiden, 2009; see http://www.unm.edu/
∼rhayes/numata.html (accessed February 19, 2015).
70. Art. “Mind in Indian Buddhist Philosophy,” by Christian Coseru in Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
71. Augustin Francois Poulain (1921) The Graces of Interior Prayer: A Treatise on Mys-
tical Theology, 6th edn (trans. Leonora L. Yorke Smith) (London: Kegan Paul
Trench Trubner), Chapter 63, para 6.
72. Account 001476. In this account, and in subsequent accounts from the Reli-
gious Experience Research Center (RERC), Department of Religious Studies,
University of Wales, Lampeter, Ceredigion, I have made only very small edito-
rial changes in order to give consistency to spelling, grammar, punctuation, and
194 ● Notes
emphasis. These accounts will be identified by “RERC” followed by the number

the Center has assigned to them. The names I use are pseudonyms.
73. RERC 000248.
74. Cf. William Power (1992) “Ontological Arguments for the Existence of Satan
and Other Sorts of Evil Beings,” Canadian Philosophical Review: Dialogue, 31,
667–76, who argues that “only empirical arguments or experience of some sort
are plausible and worthy of consideration in such matters” (p. 675).
75. See Emma Heathcote-James (2002) Seeing Angels: True Contemporary Accounts of
Hundreds of Angelic Experiences (London: John Blake), for some accounts.
76. Encyclopedia of the Unusual and Unexplained, art. “Guardian Angels”; see http://
www.unexplainedstuff.com/ (accessed February 19, 2015).
77. The Vancouver Sun, December 12, 2000; cf. Heathcote-James, Seeing Angels,
pp. 46–47.
78. Encyclopedia of the Unusual, art. “Guardian Angels.”
79. Phillip H Wiebe, Visions of Jesus, esp. Chapter 2, pp. 40–88, from which accounts
mentioned below derive.
80. The percipients all held down jobs, participated in community life, and in other
ways seemed devoid of psychopathologies; experts apparently disagree on suitable
criteria for psychopathology, however.
81. See Celia Green, and Charles McCreery (1975) Apparitions (Proceedings/Institute
of Psychophysical Research) (London: Hamish Hamilton), for discussion of other
experiences featuring many of the perceptual anomalies that I found.
82. See K. W. M. Fulford (1991) Moral Theory and Medical Practice
(New York: Cambridge University Press), p. 231, for ten phenomena con-
strued as hallucinatory in psychiatric literature; also James R. Brasic (1998)
“Hallucinations,” Perceptual and Motor Skills, 86, 851–77, for further review.
83. Sigmund Freud (1952) The Origin and Development of Psycho-Analysis (Chicago:
Encyclopaedia Britannica), lect. VII, pt. B.
84. L. J. West (1975) “A Clinical and Theoretical Overview of Hallucinatory
Phenomena,” in R. K. Siegel, and L. J. West (eds.) Hallucinations: Behavior,
Experience and Theory (New York: Wiley), p. 287.
85. I have examined the claim that hallucinations might occur in degrees, in Phillip
H. Wiebe (2004) “Degrees of Hallucinatoriness and Christic Visions,” Archiv für
Religionspsychologie, 24, 201–22.
86. Robert C. Fuller (2007) “Spirituality in the Flesh: The Role of Discrete Emotions
in Religious Experience,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 75, 25–51,
remarks: “There is no such thing as emotion-free religiosity” (p. 45).
87. See W. J. Walsh (1906) The Apparitions and Shrines of Heaven’s Bright Queen
4 vols (New York: Cary-Stafford Co.), for numerous accounts of Marian
apparitions in Catholic Tradition, some of which exhibit this certainty.
88. Kenneth Ring, Sharon Cooper, and Charles T. Tart (1999) Mindsight: Near-
Death and Out-of-Body Experiences in the Blind (Palo Alto, California: William
James Center for Consciousness Studies: Institute of Transpersonal Psychology)
reports these. A report is available at http://www.near-death.com/experiences/
evidence03.html (accessed February 18, 2015).
Notes ● 195
89. Lit. Gen. 12.14.29. He reiterates the point at 12.25.52 in the words: “But in the
intuitions of the intellect it is not deceived.”
90. Hans Küng (2001) The Catholic Church: A Short History (trans. John Bowden)
(New York: The Modern Library), Chapter 7, esp. pp. 159–68.
91. The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila by Herself (trans. J. M. Cohen) (London: Penguin
Books, 1957).
92. I have argued this in “The Christic Visions of Teresa of Avila.”
93. Poulain, Graces of Interior Prayer, Chapter 31, para. 46.
94. Poulain, Interior Prayer, 31, 47.
95. Poulain, Interior Prayer, 31, 48.
Chapter 3
1. Etienne Gilson (1937) The Unity of Philosophical Experience (New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons), Chapter 12, esp. p. 316.
2. St. Anselm, Proslogion, Chapter 2–4 is the classical source, in Alvin Plantinga
(ed) (1965) The Ontological Argument (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books),
pp. 3–19.
3. Alvin Plantinga (2001) “A Contemporary Modal Version of the Ontolog-
ical Argument,” in Michael Peterson, William Hasker, Bruce Reichenbach,
and David Basinger (eds.) Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings, 2nd edn
(New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 181–93.
4. Cf. Richard Swinburne (2004) The Christian God (Oxford: Oxford University
Press), Chapter 5, discusses possible interpretation of necessity as it relates to the
Christian God.
5. The cogency of this distinction is disputed by W. V. O. Quine (1963) From a
Logical Point of View, 2nd edn (New York: Harper & Row), esp. Chapter 8, who
thinks that necessity cannot be predicated of things, only of propositions. This
view seems to be widely embraced among philosophers.
6. Phillip H. Wiebe (2004) God and Other Spirits: Intimations of Transcendence in
Human Experience (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 195–202.
7. See W. V. O. Quine (1994) “Epistemology Naturalized,” pp. 15–31, and Jaegwon
Kim (1994) “What is ‘Naturalized Epistemology?’ ” pp. 33–55, 2nd edn in
Hilary Kornblith (ed.) Naturalizing Epistemology (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press),
for complementary views.
8. The University of British Columbia once did, but it has been merged
with Near-Eastern Studies and Classics. It still offers degrees in religion to
the level of doctorates; also, other public universities offer some courses in
religion.
9. Cf. Richard Swinburne (2008) Was Jesus God? (Oxford: Oxford University Press),
pp. 5–23, on “bare theism.”
10. See Mark Fox (2003) Religion, Spirituality and the Near-Death Experience
(London: Routledge), pp. 44–46, for discussion of the controversy concerning
“negative” NDEs.
196 ● Notes
11. The International Association for Near-Death Studies indicates that distressing fea-
tures occur in NDEs perhaps as much as 15 percent of the time; see http://iands.
org/distressing-near-death-experiences.html (accessed February 18, 2015).
12. Acts of the Apostles 17: 24–31. The first quotation in this speech is sometimes
attributed to Epimenides of Crete (6th c. BCE), and the second comes from
Phaenomena, by Aratus of Cilicia (ca. 315–240 BCE), according to Herbert
G. May, and Bruce M. Metzger (eds.) (1965) The Oxford Annotated Bible with the
Apocrypha: Revised Standard Version (New York: Oxford University Press), notes
on Acts 17.
13. Acts of the Apostles, 10: 34–35, and 42–43.
14. Clement of Alexandria (1995) The Stromata, or Miscellanies in Alexander
Roberts, and James Donaldson (eds.) Ante-Nicene Fathers: The Writings of
the Fathers Down to A.D. 325, vol. 2 (trans. B. P. Pratten) reprint of
Edinburgh edition (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson), pp. 299–568, Book 1,
Chapter 16.
15. With the charismatic-Pentecostal movement registering phenomenal growth in
recent decades, a resurgence of its nascent exclusivism can be expected.
16. St Augustine of Hippo (1968) “The Retractations,” (trans. Mary Inez Bogan) in
Fathers of the Church, vol. 60 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America
Press), p. 1.13.
17. RERC 000407.
18. This is drawn from Percy Bysshe Shelley, Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John
Keats, stanza 54; in Mark Sandy “Adonais.” The Literary Encyclopedia. First pub-
lished 20 September 2002 [http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&
UID=6843, accessed 06 May 2015.]
19. RERC 000817.
20. A Chinese classic dating from about 600 BCE and attributed to Lao-tzu; art.
“Laozi,” by Alan Chan in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
21. It has recently extended its research into countries where Christian faith is not
dominant, including China, Japan, and Turkey.
22. RERC 000514.
23. RERC 000426.
24. This was perhaps what some mystics describe as “the prayer of quiet.”
25. I could be mistaken by one year—this possibly happened in 1987. I was not
journaling significant events at the time.
26. Nancey Murphy (1995), in “Divine Action in the Natural Order: Buridan’s
Ass and Schrödinger’s Cat,” in Robert J. Russell, Nancey Murphy, and Arthur
R. Peacocke (eds.) Chaos and Complexity: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action
(Vatican City: Vatican Observatory Publications, and Berkeley, CA: The Cen-
ter for Theology and the Natural Sciences), pp. 325–57, views God as acting at
the quantum level and also upon persons, but her reasons for restricting Divine
action to these two domains are unclear.
27. See the extensive discussion of this NT account, described in The Gospel of
St. John (Chapter 2), in Robert A. Larmer (1988) Water into Wine? An Inves-
tigation of the Concept of Miracle (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press).
Notes ● 197
A longtime critic of Larmer’s work is Christine Overall (1997) “Miracles and

God: A Reply to Robert A. H. Larmer,” Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review,
36, 741–52, and in (2006) “Miracles, Evidence, Evil, and God: A Twenty-Year
Debate,” Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review, 45, 355–66. Larmer’s (2004)
“Apology for Theism,” Dialogue, Canadian Philosophical Review (Revue canadi-
enne de philosophie), 43, 555–68, is personal/philosophical biography related to
his understanding of “miracle,” developed further in (2014) The Legitimacy of
Miracle (Lexington Books: Plymouth UK).
28. St. John 11.
29. RERC 001661.
30. 2 Kings 2: 8; Elisha is said to have duplicated this feat, cf. 2 Kings 2: 14.
31. 1 Kings 18.
32. RERC 001057.
33. RERC 003860.
34. These are the last lines of his “Ode on a Grecian Urn.”
35. John Baillie (1962) The Sense of the Presence of God (London: Oxford University
Press), pp. 52–53.
36. Richard Gale (1994) “Why Alston’s Mystical Doxastic Practice Is Subjective,”
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 54, 869–75.
37. RERC 000696. The account was written 13 years after it occurred.
38. John Bishop (2007) Believing by Faith: An Essay in the Epistemology and Ethics of
Religious Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press), defends the epistemological
action of “taking some claim to be true” in order to discover insights that might
not be otherwise accessible.
39. RERC 004463.
40. This occurred in Great Britain, where cars drive on the left.
41. RERC 004182.
42. I John 4: 8.
43. I Corinthians 13: 4–5.
44. Swinburne, Was Jesus God? pp. 28–30, and elsewhere.
45. Exodus 3: 6.
46. “I am that I am” is an etymology of the Israelite name for God, which the
RSV translates, following ancient synagogue practice, as “the Lord” (Oxford
Annotated Bible notes, p. 70).
47. Psalm 90.
48. Anders Nygren (1982) Agape and Eros (trans. Philip S. Watson) (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press), p. 91.
49. Nygren, Agape and Eros, pp. 78–79. Nygren rejects the position that the Scripture
teaches that humans have immortal souls; rather, Scripture teaches that the dead
will be resurrected.
50. RERC 003038.
51. The capitalization of “Substance” and “Divine Essence” is in the original.
52. Symposium 202–13.
53. RERC 000532.
54. See my Visions of Jesus, pp. 47–49.
198 ● Notes
55. RERC 002764.

56. RERC 000363; italics added.
57. This appears to be a reference to St. James’s Park that is in the heart of London,
UK, and close to the area of Victoria in London of which she later speaks.
58. For example, Michael Carroll (1986) The Cult of the Virgin Mary: Psychological
Origins (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), p. 141f.
59. Julian Jaynes Julian (1976) The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the
Bicameral Mind (Toronto: University of Toronto Press), p. 91f.
60. Gardner Murphy (1945) “An Outline of Survival Evidence,” Journal of the
American Society for Psychical Research, 39, 2–34.
61. RERC 002448.
62. RERC 001929.
63. In the sense of some iconic resemblance between the sign and the signified.
64. K. W. M. Fulford (1991) Moral Theory and Medical Practice (New York:
Cambridge University Press), p. 231.
65. This term is widely used in Great Britain to describe churches that do not
conform to the forms of worship advanced by the Church of England, and
related Anglican bodies, such as the Church of Ireland and the Church in Wales.
Nonconformist churches include the Baptists, Methodists, and Quakers.
66. RERC 002885.
67. Thomas Nagel (1979) “Moral luck,” in Louis J. Pojman, Ethical Theory: Clas-
sical and Contemporary Readings 5th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2007),
pp. 294–302.
68. Nagel, “Moral Luck,” p. 301.
69. Nagel, “Moral Luck,” pp. 299–300.
70. David Hume (1966) An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, 2nd edn,
reprint of 1777 edn (LaSalle, IL: Open Court), sec. 10, pt. 1.
71. Adam Smith (2002) The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Knud Haakonssen (ed.)
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 128–32.
72. Roderick Firth (1952) “Ethical Absolutism and the Ideal Observer,” Philosophy
and Phenomenological Research, 12, 317–45. See Thomas L. Carson (1984) The
Status of Morality (Boston: D. Reidel), and Charles Taliaferro (1988) “Relativis-
ing the Ideal Observer Theory,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 49,
123–38, for discussions of the merits of the ideal observer theory. This theory
is not a normative one, where criteria for identifying moral value are proposed,
but a meta-ethical one, in which the meaning or import of moral judgments is
proposed.
Chapter 4
1. William James (1960) The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human
Nature (London: Collins), lec. 6 & 7.
2. RERC 002965.
3. Sir David Ross (1930) The Right and the Good (Oxford: Clarendon Press),
Chapter 2.
Notes ● 199
4. His Philebus argues for this.

5. Charles Taylor (2007) A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press),
pp. 191–92.
6. Derek Parfit (1984) Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press),
Appendix I.
7. RERC 001259.
8. Aquinas, ST, II.I, ques. 90–95.
9. Aquinas, ST II.I.90.2.
10. Aquinas, ST II.I. 91.1–2.
11. Aquinas, ST II.I. 94.
12. Aquinas, ST II.I. 91.4.
15. Psalm 94:20.
16. Immanuel Kant (1993) Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 3rd edn [1785]
(trans. James W. Ellington) (Indianapolis: Hackett). pref.
17. Kant, Groundwork, Sec. 2, “Transition from Popular Moral Philosophy.”
18. Kant, Groundwork; this is one of three attempts to formulate what he called “the
categorical imperative.”
19. Ross, The Right and the Good, Chapter 2.
20. RERC 000498.
21. Confucius (2012) The Analects of Confucius (trans. James Legge) (Adelaide,
South Australia: University of Adelaide), Analects 15.23; see http://ebooks.
adelaide.edu.au/c/confucius/c748a/index.html (accessed February 22, 2015).
Some Confucian scholars have remarked on the coherence of his ethic with
that of Kant; cf. Katrin Froese (2008) “The Art of Becoming Human: Morality
in Kant and Confucius,” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, 7, 257–68.
22. Cited in Cardinal Francis Arinze (2002) “Reflections by Cardinal Francis Arinze
on the Day of Prayer at Assisi, January 24, 2002,” see http://www.vatican.va/
roman_curia/pontifical_councils/interelg/documents/rc_pc_interelg_doc_2002
0116_arinze-assisi_en.html (accessed February 18, 2015), cf. Udanavarga 5:18.
23. Arinze, “Reflections by Cardinal Francis Arinze,” cf. Mahabharata 5.15.17.
24. Arinze, “Reflections by Cardinal Francis Arinze,” cf. Talmud, Shabbat 31a.
25. Arinze, “Reflections by Cardinal Francis Arinze,” cf. Tai Shang Kan Ying P’ien,
Treatise of the Exalted One on Response and Retribution, 213–28.
26. Arinze, “Reflections by Cardinal Francis Arinze,” cf. Dadistan-i-dinik 94.5.
27. David Hume (1967) A Treatise of Human Nature, L. A. Selby-Bigg (ed.)
(Oxford: Clarendon Press), bk. 3, pt. 1, sec. 1.
28. The existence of a fact–value gap is a different matter than the inability to
deduce an evaluative statement from a factual one, according to Julian Dodd,
and Suzanne Stern-Gilley (1995) “The Is/Ought Gap, the Fact/Value Distinc-
tion and the Naturalistic Fallacy,” Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review, 34,
727–45.
29. John Mackie (1977) Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (London: Penguin
Books), p. 15.
200 ● Notes
30. Sir A. J. Ayer (1946) Language, Truth, and Logic, 2nd edn (London: Gollancz),
is the best-known English exposition of positivism, which construes value
judgments as having only emotive and/or prescriptive meaning.
31. Mackie, Ethics, Chapter 1.
34. Terence Cuneo (2003) “Reidian Moral Perception,” Canadian Journal of Philos-
ophy, 33, 229–58.
35. See the defense of the cognitivity of theological statements in Theodore
M. Drange (2005) “Is ‘God Exists’ Cognitive?” Philo: A Journal of Philosophy, 8,
137–50. This contradicts the famous positivist position on the topic, as in A. J.
Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic.
36. For explicit discussion of cognitivity near the time logical positivism was
generally abandoned, see Peter Glassen (1959) “The Cognitivity of Moral
Judgments,” Mind, 68, 57–72; Carl Wellman (1968) “Emotivism and Ethical
Objectivity,” American Philosophical Quarterly, 5, 90–99, concurs, published a
decade later. Positivism is evidently being reexamined, cf. Michael Friedman
(1999) Reconsidering Logical Positivism (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press).
37. Some cognitive content is present, of course, for this cheer differs from “Hurrah
for the Toronto Maple Leafs!”
38. This issue was publicly debated after the assassination of Osama bin Laden
in 2011.
39. Del Kiernan-Lewis (2007) “Naturalism and the Problem of Evil,” Philo: A Jour-
nal of Philosophy, 10, 125–35. A curious dilemma arises: either no evaluative
facts exist, in which case the standard theistic explanations of creation fail, or
such facts exist, in which case the problem of evil arises. I take it that theists
should embrace such facts, and the problem of evil.
40. Gilbert Harman (1977) The Nature of Morality: An Introduction to Ethics
(New York: Oxford University Press), Chapter 1.
41. Cf. Don Dedrick (1995) “Objectivism and the Evolutionary Value of Colour
Vision,” Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review, 34, 35–44.
42. The generic nature of moral judgments suggests that we look at typical acts
and typical effects; acts that are admittedly wrong in almost every circumstance
could be plausibly construed as having exceptions in some highly unusual cir-
cumstances. This feature of moral judgments is widely conceded, although some
hard-liners might be difficult to dissuade.
43. Augustine Trin. 15.4.6.
44. RERC 002093.
45. I cannot trace the source(s) of these quotations.
46. See Vladimir Ilich (1966) The Emancipation of Women; From the Writings of V. I.
Lenin (New York: International Publishers) for his articulation of the social and
political equality of women as early as 1920.
47. David Hume (1966) An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, 2nd edn,
reprint of 1777 edn (LaSalle, IL: Open Court), sec. 9, pt. 1.
Notes ● 201
48. Hume has been interpreted as a subjectivist, a noncognitivist, and as a defender

of an ideal observer theory. All three theories bring out curious aspects of moral
judgments.
49. RERC 002929.
50. This is quoted from Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism (1711). Available
at (accessed May 6, 2015) http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/ldc/ling001/pope_
crit.htm
51. RERC 003590.
52. Spiritualism in Great Britain is narrower in scope than the spirituality that I am
speaking about in this book, although the former is part of the latter.
53. RERC 002461.
54. Rene Descartes (1960) Meditations on First Philosophy in Which are Demon-
strated the Existence of God and the Distinction Between the Human Soul and
Body (trans. Laurence J. LaFleur) (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill), meditation 2.
55. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article, “Descartes and the Pineal Gland.”
56. See Jasper Reid (2003) “Henry More on Material and Spiritual Extension,”
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review, 42, 531–58.
57. RERC 002003.
58. See the case of John Vasse in my Visions of Jesus, pp. 47–49, which has also been
mentioned. Teresa of Avila speaks of sensing an apparition of SS. Paul and Peter
on her left, in The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila by Herself, Chapter 29.
59. Carl Jung (1996) The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga: Notes of the Seminar Given
in 1932, Sonu Shamdasani (ed.) (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press),
p. 21.
60. Jung, Kundalini Yoga, p. 26.
68. This is also known as kundalini psychosis.
69. RERC 001912.
70. This peculiar expression of fear is found in the King James Version of the Bible,
to describe the response of the shepherds to an angelic visitation that heralded
the birth of Jesus, Luke 2:9.
71. RERC 000812.
72. She writes 11 years after the incident.
73. Paul Thagard, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, at http://plato.stanford.edu/
(accessed May 6, 2015), Art. “Cognitive Science.”
74. Daniel Dennett (1992) “The Self as a Center of Narrative Gravity,” in Frank
S. Kessel, Pamela Cole, and Dale L. Johnson (eds.) Self and Consciousness:
Multiple Perspectives (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum), pp. 103–15.
75. Dennett, “The Self,” p. 106.
202 ● Notes
76. Aristotle, Politics, in Richard McKeon (ed.) The Basic Works of Aristotle
(New York: Random House, 1941), p. 1341a.
77. Dennett, “The Self.”
79. Dennet seems to think that a computer could generate referentially meaningful
utterances “even though it does not know what it’s doing.” While I do not agree,
I will not address the controversial claims concerning artificial intelligence.
80. Gazzaniga has published widely on his research, including Michael S. Gazzaniga
(1988) Mind Matters: How Mind and Brain Interact to Create our Conscious Lives
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin).
83. Dennett, “The Self,” p. 113.
84. W. M. Kelley, C. N. Macrae, C. L. Wyland, S. Caglar, S. Inati, and T. F.
Heathertont (2002) “Finding the Self? An Event-Related fMRI Study,” Journal
of Cognitive Neuroscience, 14, 785–94.
85. Kelley, et al., “Finding the Self?” p. 785.
86. RERC 003190.
87. Cf. Poulain, Graces of Interior Prayer, Chapter 13, pt. 2 & pt. 12.
88. Phillip H. Wiebe (1997) Visions of Jesus: Direct Encounters from the New
Testament to Today (New York: Oxford University Press), p. 85.
89. RERC 002349.
90. Particularly Psalms 51, 130, and 143; I owe this comment to a friend and
colleague, Craig Broyles.
91. Plato, Republic in Francis M. Cornford (1945) (ed. and trans.) The Republic of
Plato (London: Oxford University Press), p. 439.
92. Plato, Republic 440.
93. Merton, Thomas (2003) The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation, William
H. Shannon (ed.) (New York: HarperCollins Publishers), p. 10; ital. orig.
94. Merton, The Inner Experience, p. 11.
95. Merton, The Inner Experience, p. 11.
96. RERC 000337.
97. This is drawn from Romans 13:10.
98. Plato, Phaedo, in B. Jowett (trans.) The Dialogues of Plato, 2 vols (New York:
Random House, 1937), 78c.
99. Plato, Republic v. 477–80; vi, 506–509.
100. I have discussed this in Wiebe, Visions of Jesus, pp. 95–98; cf. Carol Zaleski
(1996) The Life of the World to Come: Near-Death Experience and Christian Hope
(New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 58–64.
101. Catholic Encyclopedia (1909), Art. “Soul.”
102. Aristotle, De Anima, in Richard McKeon (ed.) The Basic Works of Aristotle
(New York: Random House, 1941), bk. 2, chap. 2ff.
103. Aristotle, De Anima, bk. 3, chap. 3ff.
104. Catechism of the Catholic Church with Modifications from the Editio Typica (1997)
(Corporate Author) 2nd edn (New York: Doubleday), para. 362.
Notes ● 203
105. Catholic Catechism, para. 363.

108. See Karol Wojtyla (1979) The Acting Person: A Contribution to Phenomenolog-
ical Anthropology (trans. Analecta Husserliana, and Andrezej Potocki) (Berlin:
Springer), which reflects influences of Thomism, existentialism, and phe-
nomenology. I owe this insight to Kian O’Higgins.
109. See Robert L. Vance (2006) “Moral Being in Contemporary Views of the Self,”
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review, 45, 713–29, for a discussion of recent
analyses of the self.
110. RERC 000445.
111. He uses the initials “MC,” probably to denote Manchester College.
112. RERC 000809.
113. She mentions her “atheism” only in passing.
114. RERC 000629.
115. Carl Jung (1972) Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle (trans.
R. F. C. Hull) (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul). Perhaps a causal link does
exist, but not one explicable only in physical terms.
116. These were explored a half-century ago in Carl G. Hempel (1943) “A Purely
Syntactical Definition of Confirmation,” The Journal of Symbolic Logic, 8,
122–43, and Carl Hempel (1965) “Studies in the Logic of Confirmation,”
in Carl Hempel (ed.) Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essays in the
Philosophy of Science (New York: The Free Press), pp. 3–46.
Chapter 5
1. Lisa J. Schwebel (2004) Apparitions, Healings, and Weeping Madonnas:
Christianity and the Paranormal (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press), p. 164.
2. I have been influenced on this point by Karl Popper (1902–94), philosopher of
science for many years at the University of London.
3. Richard Swinburne (2008), Was Jesus God? (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
4. See Phillip H Wiebe, God and Other Spirits: Intimations of Transcendence in
Christian (New York: Oxford University Press), Chapter 2.
5. See Phillip H. Wiebe (1997) Visions of Jesus: Direct Encounters from the New
Testament to Today (New York: Oxford University Press), Chapter 4.
6. Richard Swinburne (2003) The Resurrection of God Incarnate (Oxford: Oxford
University Press), pp. 155–59.
7. See Wiebe (2009) “Review of Richard Swinburne, Was Jesus God?” Notre Dame
Philosophical Reviews; see http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/archives/2009/.
8. Bruce Hindmarsh (2005) The Evangelical Conversion Narrative: Spiritual Autobi-
ography in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press), Chapter 2.
9. St. Paul’s story is narrated several times in Acts of the Apostles, and Augustine’s
Confessions is a classic.
10. RERC 000668.
204 ● Notes
11. This is the Elizabethan English on which many British were once brought up.
12. This view is often ascribed as originating with Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872);
see art. “Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach,” by Van A. Harvey in Stanford Encyclopedia
of Philosophy.
13. RERC 000891.
14. RERC 000307.
15. Cf. Wilson van Dusen (1974) “Hallucinations as the World of Spirits,” in
John White (ed.) Frontiers of Consciousness: The Meeting Ground Between Inner
and Outer Reality (New York: Julian Press), for commentary on this, based
on his study of a hundred hallucinators in California mental health centers.
This view was also expressed to me by John White, a psychiatrist and asso-
ciate professor of psychiatry at the University of Manitoba for many years (now
deceased).
16. Cf. Wayne Proudfoot (2004) “Pragmatism and ‘an Unseen Order’ in Varieties,”
in Wayne Proudfoot (ed.) William James and a Science of Religions: Reexperiencing
the Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Columbia University Press),
pp. 31–47.
17. Immanuel Kant (1983) “An Answer to the Question, ‘What is Enlightenment?’ ”
in Ted Humphrey (ed. and trans.) Perpetual Peace and other essays on Politics,
History, and Morals (Indianapolis: Hackett), pp. 41–48.
18. Cf. William James (1998) “The Will to Believe,” in William L. Rowe, and
William J. Wainwright (eds.) Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings, 3rd edn
(Fort Worth, TX.: Harcourt Brace), pp. 461–71.
19. Cf. Rudolf Carnap (1959) “The Elimination of Metaphysics through Logical
Analysis of Language,” in A. J. Ayer (ed.) Logical Positivism (New York: Free
Press), pp. 60–81.
20. Paul Tillich influenced me very much on this topic in the 1960s.
21. Dom Cuthbert Butler (1966) Western Mysticism: The Teachings of Augustine,
Gregory and Bernard on Contemplation and the Contemplative Life, 2nd edn
(New York: Harper & Row), pp. 49–50, quoting from Augustin Baker’s Sancta
Sophia, from the seventeenth century.
22. Butler, Western Mysticism, p. lix ff.
23. RERC 000068.
24. RERC 000603.
25. Wiebe, Visions of Jesus, esp. Chapter 7.
26. See Phillip H. Wiebe (2010) “The Promise (and Threat) of the Shroud,”
in Paola Di Lazarro (ed.) Proceedings of the International Workshop on
the Scientific Approach to the Acheiropoietos Images (IWSAI 2010) (Frascati,
Italy: ENEA Research Centre); available at http://www.acheiropoietos.info/
proceedings/proceedings.php (accessed May 6, 2015).
27. RERC 001463.
28. Phillip H. Wiebe (1996) “Authenticating Biblical Reports of Miracles,” in Robert
A. Larmer (ed.) Questions of Miracle (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s Uni-
versity Press), pp. 101–20. See also the reply to me by Robert Larmer (ed.) (1996)
Notes ● 205
Questions of Miracle (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press),

pp. 121–31.
29. Even if we had intuitive knowing of the fact that some prior experience was
intuitive knowing, we would appear to be involved in experiences that form an
“infinite” regression.
30. RERC 000895.
31. See Hugh Kearney (1967) Origins of the Scientific Revolution (London:
Longmans).
32. John Austin (1962) How to Do Things with Words (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press), esp. Chapter 2.
33. I Corinthians 11: 27–31.
34. Hebrews 5–7, where Jesus is described as belonging to the priestly order of
Melchizedek, who also offered bread and wine; see Gen. 14:18.
35. RERC 000888.
36. RERC 000565.
37. RERC 003008.
38. RERC 003590.
39. I Corinthians 15:42–44.
40. Vss. 21–26.
41. Chapter 5, vs. 18; my ital.
42. Alain Badiou characterizes Paul as having reduced Christian faith to this fable,
and observes that Paul might have made use of the birth narratives, the life and
the teachings of Jesus, but did not, in Alain Badiou (2003) Saint Paul: The Foun-
dation of Universalism (Cultural Memory in the Present) (trans. Ray Brassier) (Palo
Alta, CA: Stanford University Press), p. 4.
43. John 5:25–29.
44. Prime Minister Trudeau’s government offered about $10 million dollars (about
$460 per person).
Chapter 6
1. Auguste Poulain (1921) The Graces of Interior Prayer: A Treatise on Mystical The-
ology, 6th edn (trans. Leonora L. Yorke Smith) (London: Kegan Paul Trench
Trubner)., Pref. to 1st ed., p. xiv (5th ed.).
2. Cf. R. Fischer (1975) “Cartography of Inner Space,” in R. K. Siegel, and L. J.
West (eds.) Hallucinations: Behavior, experience and Theory (New York: Wiley),
pp. 197–239, for work already done along these lines.
3. Poulain, Graces, Chapter1, para. 3 (1.3 hereafter).
4. Poulain, Graces 1.8.
206 ● Notes

11. Poulain, Graces 2.11. William James remarks that generation and regeneration
are matters of degree, and that “here as elsewhere, nature shows continuous
differences,” Varieties, lect. 10.
15. Plato, Republic in The Dialogues of Plato, 2 vols. (trans. B. Jowett) (New York:
Random House), bk. vi, esp. 502c–511b.
19. Poulain, Graces 13.2; he drops this remark on levitation as though the phenom-
ena were uncontroversial.
20. Poulain, Graces 5.28; ital. orig.; quoted and translated from Nouet, La conduite
de l’homme d’Oraiason (Paris, 1664), bk. 4, Chapter 6.
21. Chapter 4.
22. Karl Rahner (1964) Visions and Prophecies: Quaestiones Disputatae (trans.
C. Henkey, and R. Strachan) (London: Burns and Oates), pp. 99–100.
23. I Corinthians 2: 12. I have added the phrase, “allowed to mingle,” which is an
expression that Augustine uses.
24. Robert Neville (1993) “Religious and Theological Studies,” Journal of the
American Academy of Religion, 61, 185–200 (p. 191).
25. Neville, “Religious and Theological Studies,” p. 194.
26. Ann Taves, (2009) Religious Experience Reconsidered: A Building-Block Approach to
University Press), p. 90.
27. E. Thomas Lawson, and Robert N. McCauley (1993) “Crisis of Conscience,
Riddle of Identity: Making Space for a Cognitive Approach to Religious
Phenomena,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 61, 201–23 (p. 218).
28. Lawson, and McCauley, “Crisis of Conscience,” p. 218.
29. Lawson, and McCauley, “Crisis of Conscience,” p. 221; my ital.
30. Taves, Religious Experience Reconsidered, p. 52; quoting from Robert Sharf ’s study,
“Ritual,” in D. S. Lopez (ed.) Critical Terms for the Study of Buddhism (Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 2005), p. 265.
33. Robert Wuthnow (January 24, 2003) “Is There a Place for ‘Scientific’ Studies of
Religion,” The Chronicle of Higher Education (Washington, DC), p. 13.
34. Wuthnow, “Is There a Place for ‘Scientific’ Studies of Religion,” p. 32.
35. Cf. H. O. Mounce (2007) Metaphysics and the End of Philosophy (London: Con-
tinuum International Publishing Group), who says that the core of ancient and
medieval philosophy was metaphysics—the study of what is most fundamental
in reality (p. 7)—which modernity has relegated to the periphery.
Notes ● 207
36. Ernst Mayr (1996) “The Autonomy of Biology: The Position of Biology Among
the Sciences,” The Quarterly Review of Biology, 71, 97–106.
37. Mayr, “The Autonomy of Biology,” p. 18.
38. Mayr, “The Autonomy of Biology,” p. 18ff.
42. Wuthnow, “Is There a Place for ‘Scientific’ Studies of Religion? ”
43. Rationality, like epistemology, could be gendered, which brings in even more
diversity than we have without this possibility; cf. Rebecca Kulka, and Laura
Ruetsche (2002) “Contingent Nature and Virtuous Knowers: Could Epistemol-
ogy be ‘Gendered?’ ” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 32, 389–418.
44. Ann Taves (2011) “2010 Presidential Address: ‘Religion’ in the Humanities and
the Humanities in the University,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion,
79, 287–314.
45. Celia Green and Charles McCreery (1975) Apparitions (Proceedings/Institute of
Psychophysical Research) (London: Hamish Hamilton), p. viii.
46. Sandra Zimdars-Schwartz (1991) Encountering Mary: From La Salette to
Medjugorje (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
47. Zimdars-Schwartz, Encountering Mary, p. 129.
48. Robert Almeder (1992) Death and Personal Survival: The Evidence for Life After
Death (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield), p. 2.
49. Almeder, Death and Personal Survival, Chapter 1.
50. Almeder, Death and Personal Survival, p. 75ff.
51. Almeder, Death and Personal Survival, p. 176–77.
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Index
Note: Locators followed by the letter ‘n’ refer to notes.
Adam (Old Testament (OT)), 163–4 Braude, Stephen, 187n

aesthetic sense, 67, 78, 108 Bultmann, Rudolf, 148
Alles, Gregory, 187n Butler, Abbot Cuthbert, 148
Almeder, Robert, 181–2
Alston, William, 81
Carnap, Rudolf, 23
anima, 116
Anselm of Canterbury, St, 192n Carson, Thomas, 198n
Apocrypha (New Testament (NT)), 85 Catholic Catechism, 129–30, 151
apostles (NT), 65 causality, 38, 40, 62, 133–4
Aquinas, St Thomas, 5, 100–2, 117–18 Churchland, Patricia, 190n
Aratus, 196n Clement of Alexandria, 196n
Areopagus, 65 cogito ergo sum, 19
Aristotle, 1, 2, 10, 100, 102, 119–20, cognitive states, 8, 15
129 vs. affective, 7, 52, 67–8, 72, 78, 82,
Audi, Robert, 102 87, 100, 155, 171
Augustine of Hippo, St, 19, 79, 89, 102, acceptance, 8, 15
139, 149, 203n alienation, 70
classification of religious experience, certainty, 14–17, 53–5, 67, 71,
3–6 79–80, 87, 102, 110, 118
superiority of intuitive knowing, dreams, 4, 6, 51, 71, 186n
55–6 faith, 21, 34, 69, 79, 82, 130,
Ayer, Sir A. J., 182 148–50, 197n
hallucinatory, 50–3, 74–6, 91–2,
Badiou, Alain, 205n 180, 194n, 204n
Baillie, John, 81 quasi-knowledge, 17–18, 22, 44, 46,
Baker, Fr Augustine, 148 49, 61, 169
Barth, Karl, 86, 174 collective experience, 46–7, 49, 135,
Bem, Daryl, 11 138
Bentham, Jeremy, 40 Columba, St, 5–6
Big Bang Theory, 61 common-sense framework, 27, 41, 52,
Bishop, John, 197n 67, 108–9, 118, 145–6, 156
brain hemispheres, 120–1 compensatory justice, 164–7
222 ● Index
concept formation, 1–2, 37–8 fact-value gap, 104, 199n

abstracting, 37–8 fallacies, 190n
abstractions, 118–19 God-of-the-gaps, 36
conceptual schemes Feuerbach, Ludwig, 204n
(Weltanschauungen), 1, 21–3, fiction, 39
52, 189n self as, 118–22
confirming evidence, 39, 61, 134, 154 Findlay, J. N., 192n
Confucius, 199n Firth, Roderick, 95–6
contextual definition, 40 folk-theories, 41
Copernicus, 2, 34 folk-psychology, 22–3, 47–8, 124
Cornelius (NT), 65 folk-religion, 36–7
Cratylus, 109 Fox, Mark, 195n
Cuneo, Terence, 105–6 Freud, Sigmund, 51, 122
Friedman, Michael, 200n
Damasio, Antonio, 12–13 Fulford, K. W. M., 91–2, 194n
d’Aquili, Eugene, 192n
Darwin, Charles, 178 Gadarene demoniacs (NT), 27–9, 31–3,
Davis, Carolyn Franks, 6–7, 68, 187n 43, 46
deception, 5, 55, 173 Gale, Richard, 81
Democritus, 1 Gazzaniga, Michael, 120–1
demythologizing, 145–6 Gettier, Edmund, 13–14
Dennett, Daniel, 118–23, 202n Gilson, Etienne, 59
Descartes, Rene, 177, 193 Glassen, Peter, 200n
Dionysius (pseudo), 17–18, 188n Goldberg, Carl, 33
Diotima, 87
Government of Canada, 165–6
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, 119–20
Green, Celia, 180
Drange, Theodore, 200n
Elijah (OT), 78 hallucinogen, 48, 74

Emmerich, St Catherine of, 173 Hardy, Sir Alister, 6, 130
Empedocles, 1 Hardy Research Center, 43, 44–5,
empiricism, 2–3, 25–6, 37–8, 59, 75–6, 69, 81, 149, 150
106 Harman, Gilbert, 108–9
Epimenides, 196n Harris, Rev Leo, 30–2, 193n
epistemology (and epistemologists), Heathcote-James, Emma, 46–8
16–17, 28–9, 31, 55, 59, 62–3, Hebrew Scriptures, 24, 48, 65, 101,
67–9, 75, 107–8, 134, 138, 144–5, 126, 137–8, 160
152, 154–5 tradition, 85
Eucharist, 130, 155–60, 176 Hempel, Carl, 191n
Sacrament, 30, 150, 159–60 hermeneutics, 22, 152
Transubstantiation, 156 Hierotheus, 17
evil, problem of, 62, 109, 200n
existentialism, 10, 18–19, 70, 203n identity (personal), 157–8
experiment, 9, 11–13, 23, 37, 148 infinite, 1, 18, 60–1, 67, 93, 95, 110
split-brain experiment, 122 introspect (and introspection), 12, 70,
thought experiment, 23 105, 118, 120
Index ● 223
James, William, 6, 8, 97, 138–9, 142, Mascall, Eric, 41

144, 176, 206n Mayr, Ernst, 178
Jesus, the Christ passim McCreery, Charles, 180
John of the Cross, St, 172 Meinong, Alexius, 192n
John Paul II, Pope (Karol Wojtyla), 130, Melchizedek (OT), 205n
203n Mendel, Gregor, 39
Julian of Norwich, 5, 186n mental illness, 76, 153, 204n
Jung, Carl, 115–16, 133, 203n Merton, Thomas, 126
justification (epistemic), 1, 8, 13–17, methodology, 22–3, 25–6, 37–40,
62–3, 64, 74, 107, 133, 151, 167, 56–7, 61, 67, 141
173, 188n definition, 10–11, 28–9, 36–40, 60,
121, 136–7, 187n, 192n
Kant, Immanuel, 21, 24, 63, 94, 101–2, operational definition, 105–6
112, 143, 161, 190n, 199n unobservables, 25–42, 56, 64, 67, 70,
Kelley, W. M., 122 93, 103–5, 135, 141, 179–80
Kiernan-Lewis, Del, 108, 200n Midgley, Carol, 47–8
King, Prime Minister Mackenzie, 165 mind-body problem
Kuhn, Thomas, 34 eliminative materialism, 22–4, 41
kundalini, 115–16, 201n identity theory, 21, 23
neural events, 12–13, 37, 41, 122,
Lao-tzu, 196n 170
Larmer, Robert, 196n, 197n, 204n physicalism, 42, 193n
Laski, Marghanita, 186n reduction, 4, 23, 29, 41, 48, 99,
Lawson, E. Thomas, 12 177–8, 193n
Lenin, Vladimir, 200n miracles, 46, 76, 77, 181, 183, 196n,
Lessing, Gotthold, 190n 204n
Leucippas, 1–2 defining, 136–8
Lewis, C. S., 30, 41, 103, 193n modern era, 15, 59, 99, 179
Lewis, David, 36–7 Molinari, Paul, 186n
logic, 39, 61–2, 105, 133, 171, 192n moral theory (ethics)
proof, 29–30, 35, 59, 61, 64, 92, 130 Golden Rule, 103
Lord’s Prayer, The, 43, 45, 80 intrinsic worth, 97
love, 3, 68, 79, 82, 83–90, 97–100, moral facts, 103–11
102–3, 126–7 moral law, 65, 101–3
luck moral order, 2–3
moral, 93–6 moral point of view, 95–6
providential, 93–6, 163–7 and NDEs, 63–4
Lucretius, 185n nihilism, 108–9
Luke, St (NT), 65, 154 oddness of, 104–5, 107–8
principles, 98–9
Mackie, John, 104–8 More, Henry, 114, 125
magical tradition, 33, 156 Moses (OT), 70, 85–6, 135
Maritain, Jacques, 18–19, 130 Mounce, H. O., 206n
Marx, Karl (also Marxism), 69–70, 150 Muhammad, 48
Mary, The Virgin, 136, 138, 154, 158, Mulroney, Prime Minister Brian, 165
161 Murphy, Nancey, 196n
224 ● Index
Nagel, Thomas, 93–4 phenomenological description, 68,

naturalism, 29, 32, 34–5, 40, 44, 55–6, 72–5, 78–9, 85, 88, 108, 113–14,
129, 138, 144, 149, 154, 171, 177, 123–7, 150–1, 175, 182, 203n
179–81 phlogiston, 34, 191n
necessary existence, 60 Plato (and Platonic), 1–3, 11, 13–15,
Nelson, Thomas O., 12 40, 55, 66, 69, 86, 99, 102, 105,
Neville, Robert, 174 128, 131, 156, 172
Newton, Isaac (or Newtonian), 27, 119, Polkinghorne, John, 39
178 Popper, Karl, 203n
Nguyen, A. Minh, 188n positivism, 23, 33, 36, 40, 56, 104–7,
Nicene Creed, 151 145, 182, 200n
Niebuhr, Reinhold, 86 postmodern thought, 22, 54, 75–6, 109
Nygren, Anders, 86, 197n Poulain, Fr Augustin Francois, 43, 56,
170–4, 206n
objective (and objectivity), 8, 10, 47, 49, probability, 39, 55, 61–2, 70, 82, 84,
56, 64, 73, 78, 95, 104–7 122, 124, 149, 155
trans-objectivity, 18 psychology, 8, 12, 22, 33, 42, 46, 53,
ontology, 10, 31, 59, 173 56, 72, 74–5, 81, 89–90, 116, 118,
Otto, Rudolf, 6–7, 187n 120, 122, 145, 180
Overall, Christine, 197n altered states of consciousness, 48,
68, 70–1, 75, 100
Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, 6, 15 neuropsychology, 95
Pals, Daniel, 10, 187n psychoanalysis, 141
paradigm, 33–6, 67–8, 105, 137 psychosis (and psychopathology), 8, 12,
paranormal phenomena 22, 33, 42, 46, 53, 56, 145, 180
apparition, 48ff, 53–5, 115, 127–8, Ptolemy, 34
138, 172, 179–81, 186n, 201n punishment
bilocation, 6 compensatory, 164–7
divination, 4–5, 55 retributive, 21, 86, 164–5, 166–7
exorcism, 27–30 Putnam, Hilary, 21, 23
glossolalia, 4, 179
levitation, 6–7, 27, 124, 173, 206n
Quine, W. V. O., 40, 75, 195n
near-death (NDE), 6, 9, 35, 42, 54,
63–4, 69, 123, 182, 196n
psi, 11–12 Rahner, Karl, 137, 173–4
spirit-travel, 5–6 rationality, 1, 3, 21, 25, 31, 34, 40–1,
parapsychology, 11–12, 127–8, 173, 60, 82, 101, 105, 109, 116, 133,
179 155, 178, 207n
Parfit, Derek, 99 Rawlings, Maurice, 64
particle physics, 29, 40, 192n reality-check, 51–2
baryon particle, 26–7, 29 Reichenbach, Hans, 119
Paul, St (NT), 4–5, 64–5, 84–6, 126, Reid, Thomas, 105
138–9, 158, 163–4, 174, 188n, Reimarus, Hermann, 24, 190n
201n, 203n relations (ontological), 27, 29, 38–40,
Peirce, Charles S., 192n 62, 103, 105, 107, 109, 135, 169,
perceptual release theory, 51 179
Index ● 225
religious experience Orthodox (Eastern), 129, 155

authority of, 7–10 Pentecostal, 196n
Christic vision, 48–53, 73–4, 152, Presbyterian, 77, 125, 149
160, 186n Puritan, 139
classifications of, 3–7 Quaker, 66, 69, 109, 139
connatural knowing, 17–19 Sufi, 110
conversion, 6, 138–42 Swedenborgian, 48, 136
corporeal vision, 3, 186n; see also Taoist, 103
Apparition Unitarian, 112, 125, 130, 161
discernment, 5, 55 Yoga, 114–15
extraordinary prayer, 170–3 Zen Buddhism, 126
healing, 176–8 Zoroastrian, 103
illusory, 56 Rhine, J. B., 11
imaginative (or spiritual) vision, 3–6, Ring, Kenneth, 54
55–6, 71, 88, 89–90 Rorty, Richard, 21–5, 189n
interpretive, 67–8 Ross, Sir David, 98–102
Marian vision, 160–1, 181, 194n Russell, Bertrand, 40, 192n
miracle, 5–6, 32, 39–40, 46–7, 76, Ryle, Gilbert, 23
181, 196–7n; defining, 136–8
numinous, 6–7 San Sebastin de Garabandal, 181
prayer of quiet (or union), 172, 196n science, 12, 23, 25–6, 31, 34, 55–6,
resurrection, 76, 128–9, 138, 144–8, 61–2, 70, 74–5, 89, 94, 128, 144,
154–5, 163–4, 166–7 169–72, 179–81, 183, 192n
religious traditions cognitive, 9, 12–13, 38, 48, 62,
Anglican (Church of England), 44, 68–90, 75, 118–24, 174–6,
69, 79, 83–4, 139, 198n 193n
Baptist, 77, 111 concepts in, 104–8, 136–7
Buddhist, 6, 42, 71, 103, 126, philosophy of, 39, 143, 177–8, 203n
175–6, 187n public character, 8, 47, 151–4
Calvinist, 111, 155 Searle, John, 34–5
Catholic, Roman, 5, 9, 18, 30, 32, self (or person), 18–19, 68, 94–5,
55, 63, 87, 91, 101, 112, 148, 112–18, 203n
150–1, 155–6, 158, 159–60, Daniel Dennett’s, 118–23
161, 162, 174, 186n, 187n, dissociative identity disorder, 27, 31
194n immortal, 35, 42, 54, 128–34
Conformist, 139, 198n incomplete, 123–8
Congregational, 66, 89 porous, 30
Hindu, 6, 42, 103, 144 sense perception, 1–2, 18, 56, 81, 84
Islamic, 6, 39, 48, 135, 136, 143, auditory, 52
144, 160 olfactory, 53, 91–2
Jewish, 39, 48, 65, 86, 103, 135, tactile, 2, 49–51
136, 144 visual passim
Lutheran, 88, 155 sentience, 31–3, 177, 183
Methodist, 127 sexual activity, 74, 101
Moon, Sun Myung, 48 sexual repression, 51, 90
Mormon, 48, 136, 144 Sharpe, Richard, 5
226 ● Index
Shroud of Turin, 132, 146–7, 152, 155 witches, 24, 28

skepticism, 14, 25, 54–6, 81, 94, 173, Suppe, Frederick, 191n
182 Swinburne, Richard, 84, 138, 195n
Skinner, B. F., 22 synchronicity, 51, 133–4, 203n
Slingerland, Edward, 193n
Smart, J. J. C., 23, 190n Taliaferro, Charles, 198n
Smith, Adam, 95 Tao, The, 69, 103
Smith, Jonathan Z., 187n Taves, Ann, 11, 174–6, 179
Smith, Quentin, 177 Taylor, Charles, 30, 59, 99
Sorbonne, The, 56 Teresa of Avila, St, 5, 55, 170, 172, 186n
soul, 2–3, 41–2, 86, 114, 118, 122, Thagard, Paul, 118
171, 173 theory-laden description, 107
after-life, 35–6 Therese of Lisieux, St, 161
annihilation, 128 Tillich, Paul, 10, 41, 86, 204n
immortality, 128–34, 197n Trethowan, Dom Illtyd, 19
St Augustine of Hippo on, 3–5 Trudeau, Prime Minister Pierre Elliot,
survival, 129, 133, 138, 163, 181 165
space-time, 9, 47, 49, 52, 169, 182–3
Spinoza, Baruch, 24 Underhill, Evelyn, 3
spirit, 4–5, 24–30, 47, 81, 114, 118,
126, 129, 134, 140, 158, 163, 177, Van Dusen, Wilson, 204n
179 veridical experience, 76, 92
Holy Spirit, 46, 65, 72, 85, 135–6, Virgin Birth, The, 138, 145, 147, 151
148, 154, 174
Sri Nasargadatta Maharaj, 114 Walsh, W. J., 194n
stress, 51, 90 Ward, Graham, 11
supernatural beings Wellman, Carl, 200n
angels, 11, 18, 46–8, 83, 134, 136, Wesley, John, 139
144, 181, 201n White, John (author cited), 204n
demons, 11, 22, 24, 27–8, 31–4, 40, White, John (Canadian psychiatrist),
43–6, 136, 179, 191n; 204n
Cartesian, 25 Whitehead, Alfred North, 24
ghosts, 3, 11 Wiebe, Phillip, 186n, 193n
God passim Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 10, 21–2, 145
guardian angels, 47, 69 Wuthnow, Robert, 176, 178

Intuitive Knowing As Spiritual Experience

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metaphysic in our modern world, now modified to reflect the magnificent

Aristotle marks a similar distinction between thought and sense percep-

Classifications of Religious Experience

in experiences that have great spiritual significance. Translators often render

this saint.28 However, similar accounts of fragrances associated with biloca-

and to attract interest. The study of apparitions is related to the formation

theologian, Graham Ward, observes that whereas the “operation of angels,

foundations of feelings, including the feeling of “intuitive knowing.” Their

Experiencing “Intuitive Knowing”

My hesitation in saying that I knew that I would win derives from my

all being.”76 In elaborating on the “intellectual move” in focus here, Dom

reversal in Western thought that I am recommending, and I also realize that

interpretation of language, which left the denotation of some mental states

If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for

This was published in 1751, a revision of part of his Treatise on Human

the methodology inherent in scientific studies cannot explain the extraor-

the experiment under discussion, as well as the knowledge of relations that

are the epistemic counterpart of the charmed baryon particles—unobserved

Evidence and Experience

of human consciousness is presented alongside another form of consciousness

Theories and Paradigms

the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley,

Searle cannot be faulted for portraying spirituality or theism as a worldview

to be defined using terms denoting observable things (O-terms), Lewis con-

achieves its goals of producing a strange but coherent narrative by embed-

rationality exhibited by atomism, by genetic theory, by evolutionary the-

This description is entirely phenomenological, and its thick description high-

Case 2: William: On the last evening of the Rhineland Keswick Convention

what he sensed to be a dark aspect of Nathan’s life, Nathan saw a black

Heathcote-James later reported: “I interviewed a lot of people about that

by neurophysiological mechanisms in human beings. Accepting the possible

Apparitions (or Corporeal Visions)

(a) Whether the experience occurred in an altered state of consciousness

(b) Whether the experience involved unusual alterations to the basic

I cannot begin to do justice here to the numerous specific features of these

standing on a pedestal in front of her, whom she immediately identified as

Intuitive Knowing and Apparitions

appearance, we might expect them to have proceeded in this way. However,

supported institutions in which its members could “tilt at windmills,” such

The Experience of God

5, the fourth root of 5, the fifth root of 5, . . . ad infinitum . . . How we are

General Theism and Christian Theism

included in his metaphysic, in spite of his modernity: the existence of God,

Paul’s address here at the Areopagus in Athens, as presented by St. Luke,

Peter is represented here as explicitly portraying God as embracing people

The most striking feature of Amelia’s description is the certain knowledge

in a paradigm, defensible in part by its coherence as a whole, as well as by

near-death and out-of-the-body experiences; and so on. Even if the objectives

Here is another instance in which someone “suddenly knew” something

experience is colored by her exposure to Christian faith. I mentioned ear-

This experience engaged more than Carol’s intellect, inasmuch as it began

“Coming from without”

much from “mere phenomena.” Just because an experience provides us with