subject: Obtaining Knowledge And Experience; Unlocking Wealth And Abundance [print this page] Experience is sometimes gained through the mental processing of perceived events, or through wisdom acquired while reflecting on, or interpreting such events. Some experiences accumulate over a period of time, while some are gained through a single event that is momentary, specific. The different types of experience include: virtual, emotional, physical, vicarious, mental, and spiritual. Knowledge comes from experience and experience comes from learning from past decisions.
Physical experience is prompted by a change in the environment or by an object. This type of experience is therefore observable. Mental experience is conceived as consciousness and intellect, which occurs in any combination of emotion, thought, memory, and perception. It can
also occur as imagination, which may include all unconscious cognitive processes. Mental experience is basically a thought process. It is related to the processes in the physical brain.
Some philosophers regard the identity of the brain and mental state to control only a few sensations. However, most philosophers consider the brain to participate in all mental experiences. Examples of mental experience are found in the skills and approaches used by mathematicians.
They believe that mathematical entities are not dependent on the human mind. In other words, humans did not invent mathematics. They only discovered how to apply it and experience it. Trigonometry for instance is a form of mathematics that could only have been discovered. The existence of curves, right angles and triangles are real entities, and not an invention of a human mind.
Emotional experience also comes in the form of empathy and emotional intelligence. Mystics claim to undergo spiritual experience. Philosophers explain such experience as a changed state of consciousness, which may occur accidentally after a painful physical experience. Such situations may include a traumatic accident, very high fever, oxygen deprivation, and temporal-lobe epilepsy, infections such as meningitis, psychosis, sleep deprivation, nitrogen narcosis, and fasting. Mystic experiences can also occur intentionally through mind control techniques or sensory deprivation, mystical disciplines, prayer, hypnosis, and meditation. Such techniques include surat shabda yoga, Sufism, mantra meditation, dream yoga, and yoga. Some religions induce mystic experience through the use of psychoactive drugs such as opiates, alcohol, and entheogenic plants and substances such as datura, psilocybin mushrooms, cannabis, ayahuasca, peyote, salvia divinorum, and DXM.
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