A “nothing experience can be very intense”. Many intense religious
experiences in all the different religions and intense non-religious experiences
may only be mind experiences and do not give evidence their religion or
belief system is true. However, it is evident that many people, if not most
people, have a need to experience intense feelings.
Intense concentration and involvement in something other than yourself
is healthy. Finding meaning in life is very important to most people.
These experiences or involvements can be private and/or public. This is shown in people’s intense participation: in sports, games, hobbies, sex, romance;
in reading (novels, poems, scholarly works, etc.); in watching “gripping” movies or TV;
in personally helping others, in accomplishing a worthwhile thing,
in solving meaningful problems, in relevant learning, in working on
a worthwhile project, in scientific discovery; in computer programming, in hiking, gardening and other nature activities; in relating to others. In causes such as radical
fundamentalism (Jewish, Islam, Christian, Hindu, Sikh, and any other New Age
religion); Nazism, communism, capitalism, socialism, or any other “ism”;
New Age. In personal religious experiences. In Charismatic type of
religious service or political event. In drugs. In natural and man-made
catastrophes. You can probably think of many other ways.
It is important to realize that you , as a person, have some choice
and control in what endeavor you will experience these intense feelings —
intense involvements — find meaning and purpose in life.
Many of these activities also raise a person’s self-esteem.
Indeed, mystical experiences occur in people of all religions, also in
people of no religion. As Charles Templeton states, “Mystical experience
has added no insights to our knowledge of God or Christian doctrine.
The experience is not uniquely religious: the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
could go into a transport at will merely by repeating his name aloud.”
Naturalism and Religious Experience 