Dear Pieman,
As with other experiences there are kinds and degrees of NDEs and FGMs (good one!) Many of these, perhaps most, fall into the realm of theology and emotionalism. They are what one might call low order experiences and most often result in a confirmation of the faith one already has acquired or conversion to a faith that is more accommodating of the experience. But where theology leaves of, it being a matter of mental contents, spirituality and mysticism in its identifiable stages begins. This is the realm where Saints operate as well as the Sages of the Ages. Many who have experiences in this realm, the province of the FMGs, may yet remain in the practice of their religion, and with good reason. Some who come to mind are St. Thomas Aquinas, St Francisl of Assisi, St. Catherine of Sienna, St. Teresa of Avila, Meister Eckhart, St. John of the Cross, and perhaps some others.
Often, however, it happens that an individual has a genuine FMG and clearly perceives that the kind of thinking that applies in the realm of theology doesn’t apply in the realm of knowing God. Not knowing about God, which is the realm of theology in its multitudinous forms, but Knowing GOD. Thinking as we ordinarily do doesn’t go there, despite our propensity to use thinking to say something about the experience that points to it. Crazily enough, people who have “been there” immediately pick up the flavor of authority in words consistent with genuine experiences. Those who have not, and have a heavy investment in the dogmatic structure of their faith can do anything from pass off such words to experience downright panic or even go into a theologically righteous rage.
Why wouldn’t they? The very foundation of their understanding is at stake as they feel it being attacked. Of course, no such thing is happening. It just looks that way from the side of being in a faith paradigm. But you can’t explain something like a rainbow or a peak experience to someone who hasn’t experienced one. It just can’t be done. Explanation is intellectual assertion and the other is experiential substance.
Further than that, in these higher levels of FGMs the very nature of awareness begins to take on a finer and more inclusive quality that has a consequence that is utterly perfectly simple, but sounds to the theological mind set to be sheer madness. Go figure. It takes a mind of extraordinary self confidence and perception to even intellectually consider where actual spiritual practice, as simple as it is, and as hard, may lead. And that is certainly inclusive of the sincerity of many who are yet theological in their pursuit. But given the nature of the inevitable conclusion of such practice, it is little wonder that many very quietly just stop engaging with believers. Or they go the other way and say too much. It takes a balancing act of inconceivable proportions to be in this world and not of it. I know of few such cases today. None of them are religious in the ordinary sense, though they may even appear devoted. But invariably they have no faith. They have Knowledge. And if you have looked up “radical” in the dictionary, you might get an inkling of what I mean when I say that their understanding is radically different from any religious paradigms.
But there it is in a nutshell: Skeptics reject NDEs and FGMs because they either haven’t had and NDE or done the work for or been blessed by a FGM. They are not rational or rationalizable experiences. Yet FMGs are producible with the right work. In Catholicism that very narrow band of useful work is lost somewhere in the genreal definittion of “prayer” where it overlaps with “contemplation” and “meditation.” In other words competency in declaring the actuality of definable FGMs are denied to those who don’t do the work and they live a self fulfilling prophecy.
