Book excerpt: One and the same sensory scene can be differently experienced by different people or by the same person at different times, depending upon their bodily and emotional condition and the concepts which they apply. Mark R. Wynn applies this familiar truth to the realm of religious experience: religious commitments and convictions can make a difference to a person's bodily and emotional condition and their repertoire of concepts, and accordingly the capacity toexperience the everyday world differently may be one mark of spiritual maturity. On this view, becoming more mature in spiritual terms is not so much a question of directing your gaze away from this world andtowards a non-material realm; it is instead a matter of discovering how the ordinary, everyday world can be newly experienced.