Material religion

The Inventory of Nonordinary Experiences (INOE): Evidence of Validity in the United States and India

“…We rated this response as a 4 (Probably not understood) because the paraphrase is poor, and, although it is possible to imagine that this respondent experiences a non-ordinary presence every time they watch a superhero movie, a more plausible interpretation is that they interpreted the item more broadly than we intended, so to include any depiction of a non-ordinary being, rather than the felt presence. The translated paraphrases of the Presences (nonordinary) item included invisible (6), supernatural (2), and divine (1) powers or energies; gods, spirits, or ghosts (4); beyond our understanding, impossible (2), unusual (2) uncontrolled by humans or machines, also paranormal, other-worldly.…”

“…If a person reports having had a transformative experience, they are linking a feature of their experience -a voice that seems to originate outside their head, a feeling of unity or oneness, an upwelling of joy, or surviving an accident -with a cultural concept (e.g., God, the devil, Ultimate Reality, or karma), and they are asserting that the linked concept allows their experience to count as religious or spiritual. The appraisal of the experience, both in terms of this cultural concept and the classification of the experience as religious, spiritual, pathological, etc., are matters of debate and dispute-not only among laypeople, but among religious and spiritual authorities, clinicians, and academic scholars (5)(6)(7). Appraisal, as used here, refers to the outcome of a multi-level process that humans and other animals rely on when determining what is happening, that is, to interpret situations and events (8).…”