For me, Bill there are very telling earmarks of actual clarity of spiritual experinece. The big strange risk in this territory, not suffered by those investigating physics, is the ever-present plasticity of the mind in the hands of the owner. It has been demonstrated over and over again that under duress a being can drum up a convincing replica of any incident, real or imagined, can generate three-D visio of things that never happened and swear they were genuine experiences. But usually when they do this they tend to be dramatic and assertive, so that sort of flavor can be a clue.

How do you tell the difference? You weigh what you are given against a general background of lessons learned, similar tales from others, what is consistent (claiming sky-high awareness while being unable to do anything effective is not consistent, for example) and you look for answers which account for phenomena without interjecting arbitraries, calling into play things that don't need to be brought in to play, authoritarian solutions, and similar arbitraries. You examine the intentions behind the communication. You test whether what is claimed is "bizarre" or generally acknowledged in the range of non-physical experiences. You use any sense you may have developed to detect authenticity and genuineness of anecdote.

ANd somewhere int here, too, you "know". I know that is risky, because of our high respect for empirical logic-based, data-based conclusions, but somewhere i there, the knowing of the Knower has to come in to play. It does anyway, of course, but is usually painted out.

A