Concepts and Dimensions of Conversion and Religious Experience
© Domenic Marbaniang, 2003 The word conversion has different meanings for different people in different contexts. The various contexts are the occasion and object of conversion. That is, conversion takes place somewhere/sometime (occasion) of something (object). The Latin word convertere, from which our English term is derived, means “to turn or to change”. The whole of phenomena is a panorama of change. As Heraclitus rightly observed, “Nothing is permanent except ‘change’”. Conversion in the physical context is a reality. Every physical change has a physical cause. For instance, the United States Energy Research and Development Administration displays in show cases the “underground conversion” of coal “to synthetic natural gas”. Here, as per Aristotelian classification of causes, coal is the material cause, whereas the other factors that cause the conversion are the efficient causes. It is also proved that in the human being, mental causes can be efficient causes of psychosomatic s...