Skeptics may hold that religious experience is an evolved feature of the human brain amenable to normal scientific study.

A religious experience (sometimes known as a spiritual experience, sacred experience, mystical experience) is a subjective experience which is interpreted within a religious framework.[1] The concept originated in the 19th century, as a defense against the growing rationalism of Western society.[2] William James popularised the concept.[2] In some religions, this may result in unverified personal gnosis.[3][4]

The Book of Hours was largely developed at the artist’s colony at Worpswede, but finished in Paris. It displays the turn towards mystical religiosity that was developing in the poet, in contrast to the naturalism popular at the time, after the religious inspiration he experienced in Russia. Soon thereafter, however, Rilke developed a highly practical approach to writing, encouraged by Rodin’s emphasis on objective observation. This rejuvenated inspiration resulted in a profound transformation of style, from the subjective and mystical incantations to his famous Ding-Gedichte, or thing-poems, that were published in the New Poems.

This kind of mystical occurrence is in fact always happening in myriad ways. What we think is rare is not really so; what’s rare is our being open to it, right in the midst of the ordinary.

no Inner Party member wavers for an instant in his mystical belief that the war is real, and that it is bound to end victoriously, with Oceania the undisputed master of the entire world. All members of the Inner Party believe in this coming conquest as an article of faith.