MULTIMODAL SEMIOTICS OF SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCES: REPRESENTING BELIEFS, METAPHORS, AND ACTIONS



5  Why are descriptions of spiritual experiences so interesting?

Spiritual experiences are similar to all other experiences: Each experience is lived through the body,
whether it is sitting through a colloquium or having a divine vision. These experiences are based on
concepts and categories, which bridge the mind and the world, and are constructed by our interaction
with and encyclopedic knowledge of the world. Many scholars from Merleau-ponty on would agree that
perception of any type is not passive reception of data, but an action-oriented restructuring of the world.
As subjects we have a continuing identity of ourselves, and memory plays an important role by
reconstructing past events on our present context and not simply by retrieving data stored like a
computer might do. This continuous reconstructing of past experiences gives way to coherence and
plausibility in our narratives, relating them to future plans and goals. in this sense cognitive sciences see
the self, or the person, as an ecological system, a multileveled psycho-somatic unity, and Blending Theory,
as i understand it, would say that conceptual integration is a continual process. Each experience, whether
it’s meeting a friendly face for the first time or having an epiphany of what you should be doing in a given
situation, is never experiences if not relationally and contextually, because as humans we embody all our
experiences, including the most abstract.

However, spiritual experiences are different from other experiences: Within spiritual experiences, what

“appears” paradoxically is often different to what really “is”, yet people have a sense of great conviction, to
use the term following William James, and that is probably because of the way the narrative self works.
intuitively spiritual, mystical or religious experiences do seem to have a different quality from other
profane experiences. The effects of visions, revelations and divine encounters often have great impact on
the persons experiencing them, both psychologically and socially. Usually there is a sense of self
(awareness), cognition (revelation, knowledge) and emotions. people change their lifestyles, and the
effects often endure time. Rarely do people do so with mundane experiences that have no physical or
directly social causation. subjects often describe these experiences as objectively real, and more “intense”
experiences are considered “ineffable” (although i would argue that “ineffability” does not exist in most
cases, unless you’re completely dumbstruck, because people in fact use metaphors to communicate and
represent their experiences).

For my study, a spiritual experience can be identified with anything in relation to the transcendent, for
example anything from feeling the presence of God in one’s everyday life to having visions.

Before presenting you some of my interview data, i will talk just a little about metaphors of God in sacred
Texts and the cognitive origins of anthropomorphism in religious thought.



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