It is a fact that in western societies there has not been much of a history of secular spirituality divorced from religion. Christianity and Islam have had a bad time due to scientific progress (Adam & Eve, six day creation etc.).
Whilst there is a logical, and perhaps sociological, exercise to conducted in separating 'religious' and 'spiritual', in practical terms they are both unevidenced assertions; so far as rational enquiry is concerned, they are both lacking in evidentiary bases.
The failure of religious mythology has made all suggestions of unseen causes or quasi physical forces seem dubious and delusional. This is a mistake. You are throwing out the baby with the bathwater and overlooking real phenomena.
On the contrary, any number of unseen causes and 'quasi-physical' forces are well-established foundations of the modern scientific understanding of the world: strong and weak nuclear forces are literally considered to be foundational aspects of our current understanding. What you're trying to refer to aren't forces at all, they aren't effects, they are assertions about phenomena for which no causal evidence can be found. They are, functionally, not there. That's not to do with a 'Western dismissal of spirituality' in some throwing the baby out with the bath-water fit of intellectual pique, that's you recognising the Western distinction between rational enquiry and religious doctrine and mistaking which side of the divide spiritual claims falls into.
What you are suggesting are not phenomena, they are attempts at explanations for phenomena. People under extreme physical duress reporting sensory experiences is the phenomenon, no-one is disputing this happens. Your attempted explanation is 'spiritual', with nothing more than your assertion to back it. Rational science points to the measurements of ischemic damage and chemical breakdown of neurotransmitters in the brain triggering activity that would normally be the result of coordinated sensory and brain activity. Your phenomena are our phenomena; your explanations are lacking.
Many unseen and quasi physical forces do exist and they do influence our lives.
I know.
Western minds are only now beginning to open out to such possibilities (outside religious myths).
Western people are as entitled to believe without evidence as anyone else; it doesn't make it right. Millions of white people can be wrong, just like millions of people of any other ethnic persuasion.
All suggestions of quasi or exotic or extra physical phenomena need not be delusional.
No, they need not be. In order for maintaining the belief in them not to be delusional, however, you either need support for them, or to be unaware of better explanations that do have a basis. You can claim neither of these.
Once these possibilities are recognized, new ways of looking at the world and its origins will develop and this will bring about new methodologies and new ways of examining these phenomena.
Fine, bring that new methodology. But you don't have a methodology, you just have 'don't look at the evidence, listen to waffle'... that's not a methodology, that's the abrogation of integrity.
That is when a new science will develop.
You keep using that word, science - I don't think it means what you think it means. Science is not the understanding we have, and it's not the theories that explain phenomena - they are the product of science. Science is a rigorous method, and that's what you don't have - you have no method, you have no means of eliminating personal bias, no means of reducing the effects of subjectivity, no ability to isolate claimed effects and test them, you just have old claims wrapped in shiny new packaging hoping to hang on the coat-tails of actual science.
It is beginning to happen...slowly.
No, there are a few fringe thinkers who want to be deep, and a few charlatans who want to be Deepak, but underneath it all at the moment is nothing of merit.
O.
