Active and Passive Spiritual Experiences

so I will be polite this time. I am not sure if false or psych. experience can lead to arrogance, because of course I am not familiar both with that experience and the definition of it. Yet I think , that head injury, concussion or other medical accidents can lead to slight altering of ones mood or acting or maybe habits. If I am a psychologist or a doctoral student of psychology i would be thrilled to work with a living person [also intelligent)   who partially lost his or her memory because of being shot. that would be something..  of course I would be also interested in his mood and overall personality.  good example is fictional character of J. Bourne- written by Ludlum. I bet, Ilia, youre familiar with the book.

What a load of unfounded bunk. First you have no idea of the definition of what constitutes a psychological concept. There being no singular concept that can be isolated in terms of a spiritual experience or any other personal or group experience. Both humility and arrogance can be found in all humans simultaneously despite experience, and can not rationally be assigned to any said experience as they are human emotional responses to the individuals perceived world and are not dependent on any singular experience to be realized. A shared experience is as diverse in emotional response to individual world views as is the number of individuals sharing the experience. There is no psychological concept that determines what is or what is not a valid spiritual experience. There is no psychological concept that validates or invalidates a experience. One can not reasonably validate or invalidate someone elses experience. Though we have some psychologist and individuals going around constantly asserting their right to invalidate others experiences. One can not validate nor invalidate perception, emotion, personality, behavior, the sub-conscious mind or any other human attribute no matter whether the social impression is positive or negative if/when one singular attribute may be a individuals dominate social expression. That fact is the validation. That the singular humility or arrogance dominates an individuals social expression can not be invalidated nor even validated by any concept. Concepts being in the abstract and derived from what is or appears to be conceptualized/interpreted. Active and passive roles can not be labeled positive and negative and one does not lead necessarily to a positive or negative experience or outcome. Especially in terms of a active or passive experience impacting pride. Since many others sharing the same experience may not even attribute the emotional response pride to the outcome of that experience. In terms of the human experience there are probably an equal number of haughty religious leaders as there are leaders in the various fields of science. To suggest that it is rightful to excuse a arrogant scientist his or her behavior because of what science has brought to mankind is a blatant bias that serves no purpose. The individuals arrogance has brought nothing to his science or mankind, except perhaps that everyone has to cope with in that 'arrogant environment' if that individual is a dominate fixture. One could even postulate that such an environment would be detrimental to good science. In the end all one can really say is that this article is proof of the authors arrogance in placing his unfounded assumptions and ingrained biases as facts determining other peoples emotional and behavior responses to the human experience. The same old same old underlying meme that science trumps religion. Yawn. By 2012 one would expect even the most crippled by their petty biases would have come to the realization that these are not subjects nor professions approaching the question of WHY from the same angle. That they are not by design competitors, for each is bringing something to the broad table of human experience omitted by the other.

" That they are not by design competitors, for each is bringing something to the broad table of human experience omitted by the other."
If what you mean is that different fields create different ways of understanding things, then you are correct. There are any number of smart people in science, philosophy and spirituality, and many of them contribute something.

Ishambat: Interesting, humility vs pride and arrogance and the relationship to spiritual experiences. Fitting into the spiritual equation many religious orders have a call to humility, and arrogance and overbearing pride have always been equated with "sin".

In ancient Greek society hubris, extreme pride or arrogance, was considered one of the greatest crimes. The Greeks did not generally think of hubris as a religious matter.

Given the nature of some of the lead stories on nowpublic, as well as your own apparent psychological interest in this subject, I would like to hear our opinion of the philosopher Aristotle's definition of hubris:

"Aristotle defined hubris as shaming the victim, not because anything happened to you or might happen to you, but merely for your own gratification. Hubris is not the requital of past injuries—that is revenge. As for the pleasure in hubris, its cause is this: men think that by ill-treating others they make their own superiority the greater."

Crucial to this definition are the ancient Greek concepts of honor (τιμή, timē) and shame (αἰδώς, aidōs). The concept of honor (τιμή, timē) included not only the exaltation of the one receiving honor, but also the shaming of the one overcome by the act of hubris. This concept of honor is akin to a zero-sum game. Rush Rehm simplifies this definition to the contemporary concept of "insolence, contempt, and excessive violence".

(from wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubris)

In ancient Greek society hubris, extreme pride or arrogance, was considered one of the greatest crimes. The Greeks thought of hubris as a crime against society. Violations of the law against hubris included what might today be termed assault and battery; sex crimes ranging from rape of women or children to consensual but improper activities, in particular anal sex with a free man or boy; or the theft of public or sacred property. For the Greeks hubris or extreme pride or arrogance was as an act the crime. Not as a thought. For the Greeks to belittle the person of another was beneath contempt and a greater crime than murder. The question of how one can determine which spiritual experience is labeled a [true] experience, providing the individuals reaction is a humbling one, or called a [false] spiritual experience if an individual exhibits arrogance post experience is beyond me. Especially if we use words and phrases like 'the logical response' or 'right thinking' when speaking of a spiritually uplifting experience. That's my assumption, that such an experience would be uplifting and perhaps even bring about a sense of euphoria, pretty much negating 'a logical response' or 'right thinking' under the emotional stresses that would be at play. From what I've read highly charged spiritual experiences are akin to alien abduction stories. You either shout it from the roof tops and get called a crank, or you never discuss the matter period and it become a deep dark festering secret that prematurely ages you. And while anyone can pontificate about the true spiritual experience [which I believe is a sign of arrogance itself] it would be impossible to attribute humility as the only proper response. That's an idealist world view imposing a right and wrong that excludes the individual, personality, learned behavior... the sum of the individuals experiences. Their nature. In terms of human nature arrogance seems to be much more prolific an expression than is humility. But I think that has more to do with human socioeconomic competition and plays it's own role in human advancement. Again labeling one right thinking and the other a false experience is to be dismissive of far too much and a limited ideal.

"Which is why I write here to draw distinction between different kinds of spiritual experience" ....But you don't offer up different KINDS of spiritual experiences.... You simply label a experience right if humbling and label another wrong and arrogant. Most certainly a very limited spiritual experience selection. One deemed right, one deemed wrong with no variations or exceptions to your dictate. For those of us who are students of the human sciences such dismissal of the subjective [individual] experience, motivations, intentions, is vital in reaching any conclusion of whether or not one would be humbled by the experience or not, or if one were to take ownership of the experience and express some pride in the outcome and perhaps exhibit a level of arrogance. People are far more complex than living up to some ones dictate that the only real spiritual,experience is when one comes out the other side humbled. Submissive. Apologetic. Humiliated. Broken. Because coming through an equal experience with a sense of pride. Arrogance. Haughty. Pretentious. Even hubris, You declare Is not a true spiritual experience. That the experience then become false. For some reason you can not see that peoples independent reactions to subjective stimuli does not determine whether that experience was true or false and that assigning right and wrong to their reactions doesn't make it so. If such was the case in practice every person before the courts for theft would receive the exact same sentence and there would be no mitigating circumstances or consideration of objective value. There would be no effort to understand the impact that the experience had on the individual. You're like Gen. G. Patton slapping a soldier because the experience of war impacted him differently than others and Patton couldn't fathom the difference so labeled the guy a coward.