Soul Invictus

I am familiar with Christianity via my upbringing in the Church. Therefore, I understand that in the Christian faith, the holding power, or manifestation of God in man is with his Holy Ghost/Spirit. For sake of immateriality, choosing Ghost or Spirit is not of particular importance. I was discussing with someone that although the validity of God's existence to someone is verified through their subjective experience that they call the Holy Ghost, that I was not convinced that other religions did not have some sort of supernatural/emotional experience to attribute their allegiance to God. Living in the U.S., I am not as exposed to many other faith systems, so I cannot ascertain whether Buddhists, Muslims,Hindus, etc have a similar experience or not. I do wish to undertake a comparison of religions to compare similar themes. I don't think there any faith has an exclusive experience that cannot be found in other religions. I cannot be sure what the experiences of other religious peoples in other are. Hopefully the board can offer some assistance.

Karalora

The "oceanic experience" is available to all normally functioning humans.

I don't know whether Muslims and Hindus give it a specific name, but Buddhists call it "enlightenment"--a small-scale, temporary enlightenment, but enlightenment all the same.

I just call it "Wow", and know that ultimately it doesn't matter whether the Goddess just kissed me on the brain or my brain kissed itself. It's still a cool thing to feel.

Heurismus

That's an interesting slant on it.
I had that same 'Wow' feeling when a friend and I hobbled away from a motorcycle accident, which in all honesty we shouldn't have. I had the feeling that something had saved us, but then it was also a psychological corrective. 'Do you realise what just happened?' Yep, the next time I approach a side road, expect the unexpected and don't trust to luck next time. The cage driver by the way was banned from driving, poor sod, but then he didn't suspect that that there might be other road users travelling along the highway. Thick Bastard.

long winded fool

A religion that doesn't have some kind of a more or less "shared" emotional experience doesn't last. While I have no hard data, it's a good bet that ALL major religions have an experience emotionally similar to "enlightenment" or "being filled with the spirit" that devotees shoot for, that, if you truly believe, anyone can actually experience. What each person does with it afterwards is an excellent measure of the value of the religion, in my opinion.

Jabu Khan

Hinduism its the vitas(life forces) right? Bhuddists have nirvana. Islam not sure but they pray 5 times aday so they must be trying to feel some connection.