Religious jargon
An important point needs to be made at the outset concerning religious jargon, especially as applied to states of mind, religious experiences, and ‘religious’ concepts of so-called causality, such as karma and the like. Jargon may make for easy conversation, but the casual use of loaded terms does not mean that the terms have any essential validity, or that they refer to anything at all. Jargon is a form of intellectual smoke and mirrors, and is a clear indicator of faith-based thinking, and religious pretentiousness, rather than of genuine experience. Jargon is especially pernicious when discussing eastern religions, because it increases mystification under the guise of presenting some sort of evidence, and it encourages the idea that you need to accept a system of basic ideas in order to make spiritual progress. There are also many religious teachers who rely entirely on jargon to give content and substance to their teachings, and who would have nothing – nothing at all – to teach if prevented from using loaded terms. Wherever possible, jargon should be avoided, and all accounts of experiences and phenomena – such as can be apprehended – described in a plain and simple, secular, ordinary way. If your religious experiences and metaphysical ideas have any weight to them, they will survive their translation into everyday language.