If you have had an experience encountering gods or something similar, spirituality becomes a path for exploring and understanding that experience or bringing you closer to it.

On the other hand, if you don't have such an experience, spirituality can be conveniently used for various purposes, such as not only the path to enlightenment but also escaping from suffering, being interested in something unusual, pursuing worldly benefits, or simply following a trend.

Without such an experience, explanations of spirituality become something that is understood intellectually or created through imagination.

On the other hand, if you have such an experience, spirituality becomes a path for remembering that experience, trying to return to a similar state, or pursuing and understanding what that experience actually was.

It seems that even basic aspects of spirituality, such as meditation, pranayama (breathing techniques), or samadhi (a state of deep concentration) in yoga, are interpreted and practiced quite differently depending on whether they are based on such an experience.

If you have such an experience, meditation, asanas (exercises), or pranayama (breathing techniques) are seen as practices for approaching that experience. On the other hand, if you don't have such an experience, they are seen as something mysterious, but effective, health practices or activities that may bring peace.

Well, even so, both approaches can be effective, so I think the path is similar regardless of whether you have such an experience or not, but I think there is a significant difference in understanding depending on whether you have such an experience or not.

Personally, I wonder if there are people in this world who have absolutely no such experience, and I think that everyone has such an experience, but they may have forgotten it or not given it much importance. However, when I talk to yoga instructors, I get the impression that surprisingly few people have such spiritual experiences, such as having an out-of-body experience and meeting their higher self. So, perhaps there are relatively few people who have such experiences. Of course, I haven't taken any statistics, so I don't know the exact percentage, but surprisingly, even those who are called spiritual leaders may not have such experiences. Therefore, perhaps there is not much correlation between the position in a spiritual organization and the actual spiritual level or current position.

■Interpretation of Sat-Chit-Ananda based on personal experience.

People who have personal experiences interpret the feelings and changes they experience during yoga or other practices based on their own experiences.

On the other hand, people who do not have such personal experiences seem to only interpret the sensations as they are, and often interpret that those sensations and interpretations are not very meaningful. In one yoga organization, instructors teach that "what you see or hear during meditation is not important. Images of light, sound, or deities can hinder meditation." While that may be true, individual sensations can help in understanding personal experiences.

The exploration continues until personal experiences become commonplace and ordinary. When spirituality becomes a part of daily life, those personal experiences become unremarkable, and the meaning of personal experiences may diminish. In some cases, it can even be said that "personal experiences were not that meaningful after all." Even then, personal experiences may fade into the recesses of memory, and one may come to understand that personal experiences may not have been that important. However, the path continues, and even so, personal experiences can be very effective as signposts.

For example, experiencing astral projection and confronting one's higher self (group soul), which is the original source of one's soul, the original soul from which one separated as a fragment, and which can be interpreted as either a higher self or a group soul, can be a personal experience.

When one's soul merges again with that higher self (group soul), shares memories, and then separates again to descend into one's physical body, the interpretation of spirituality can be quite different.

If one's existence is actually just an illusion, and one's self can change through soul separation and fusion, then when one merges or separates with the higher self (group soul), only about half of one's original self remains, while the other half is received from the higher self (group soul). So, what happened to the original half? It was left behind with the higher self (group soul). One's self is created by leaving behind half and receiving half anew, and as a result, what one thought was oneself is actually quite ambiguous. The reason one thinks of oneself as such is because one is temporarily a fragment of the soul. In reality, one is repeatedly creating fragments from the higher self (group soul) and accumulating life experiences.

When you merge with your higher self (group soul), it is a sea of light, filled with love, and has a high and abundant amount of energy. To express or understand such a state, studying and understanding yoga and Vedanta can be helpful. For example, in yoga and Vedanta, it is said that the true self is Sat, Cit, Ananda, which is interpreted as existence, pure consciousness, and being full (bliss). However, for others, such understanding may be the study of scriptures or the pursuit of enlightenment. For me, it is a key to understanding the state of merging with and separating from my higher self (group soul), which is my original experience.