The sense of the spirit as a form of conversation.
Asian journal of psychiatry June 1, 2012 Russell Meares
Spiritual experience is characterized by euphoria and a feeling of expanded, unified consciousness. Understanding this state can be aided by examining borderline personality disorder (BPD), where a 'painful incoherence' reflects a failure in the proper development of the 'self,' understood as higher-order consciousness. Both spiritual experience (a state 'larger than self') and recovery from BPD involve an ascent in a hierarchy of consciousness, suggesting a common basis. The self develops through a specific form of analogical conversation, first seen in infant proto-conversations. Symbolic play in the second year partially internalizes this relatedness through a quasi-inner conversation with an illusory other, proposed as the embryonic form of mystical communion with self and God.